The Golden Ass

Book Reviews

June & July 2002

The Koran
Mynyard-Smith: "Evolution and the Theory of Games"
Nabokov, Vladimir: "Lolita"
Stone, I. F.: "The Trial of Socrates"
Symmachus (c.340-405) - "Letters"

reservations about "Lolita"

To avoid any misunderstanding, this is neither a morality issue nor a bashing of Vladimir Nabokov. "Pnin" is his best English novel and one of the best in all American literature; period. From his Russian period I would choose "Glory" as the most balanced masterpiece. I know the master himself and his aficionados think and thought otherwise. They would root for "Dar" ("The Gift") or "Invitation to a Beheading." Nabokov did show his talent from early on; he developed an impeccable taste for quality and his debut novel "Mashenka" is the best thing Chekhov could ever have written.

There is an old wisecrack, that every author actually writes only one book - his first - and all the follow-ups are just variations. Lawrence Sterne is a case in point. Some authors even write one book only. Lawrence Sterne is a case in point - almost. This observation is not always fair to the writer's creative scope. Sometimes he just doesn't live long enough. Lawrence Sterne ... . Nabokov died in his late seventies and despite of a refugee's hassled life found the time to variegate on four or five basic stories: one of these always has the villain as the first person protagonist: as in "Despair," or "Lolita."

"Lolita" is generally hailed as Nabokov's masterpiece. The colorful publishing history did help. The usual stupidity of censors and smutty journalism helped even more. But undoubtedly it is a novel by Nabokov, which means it is created by an artist for the sake of art. And certainly the Author's hallmark, his linguistic felicity, the cat and mouse game of tricky plotting, the shifty repetition of mirror images and echoing motives is everywhere evident. But the attentive reader soon will notice that in the quality of writing the book falls apart in three very uneven stretches.

The first part is brilliant, the end a masterpiece of black slapstick burlesque, but in a private message to the author, Mary McCarthy criticized the second part as a piece of sloppy writing, and I am afraid she is right. The quality is not quite up to the first part. But that is not what really disturbed me: Nabokov is a true artist, and that means at some point, truth and beauty, like two parallels, meet in infinity. Nabokov is not going to spare us the truly nasty character traits of Humbert Humbert. He is not to hide from the reader's view the hysterical fits and daily tears of the abused child.

It is perhaps a shortcoming of the method: seen through the educated mind of her cultured abuser, poor Lolita is barely more than a savage brat in a velvety hide and endowed with the right kind of dimpled bottom. What this view cannot provide is the normal child, which Lolita had been, before Humbert Humbert stepped into and on her life. Things come to a point where the reader would like to ask the author: hey - what's all this? Do I really need to read any more of Humbert's antics? Do I want to? The protagonist's snooty sarcasm had its amusing moments, but this here is just sickening.

Lolita grew up in a world where she was made to understand that she could trust in the values of a prolonged and sheltered childhood. In her world only the family doctor has any right to lay a finger on her mons pubis. Along comes Humbert who uses every trick in the book to get more than just a finger to this place. The way things accumulate, Nabokov's sumptuous prose is beginning to leave a bad taste in the mouth. It's no longer funny. And we are in for a long stretch, America is a wide country with more motels than Liechtenstein has people.

An artist in our time, most likely, is an outsider for the outsider - however he is still standing for something of value, even if this day and age is not in the habit of appreciating it. But what is Humbert standing for if not for his own depravity? I just don't see it. It is true, pederasty among consenting males had been an accepted practice for millennia; our whole concept of professional apprenticeship is rooted in the prehistory of sexual partnerships between adults and boys. But Lolita is the child of a very different era. And Humbert knows it. Yet all he can see in her, is a capricious pet.

Humbert suffers a true lovers agony, so it seems. "Lolita," in a twisted way, must be a love story. Humbert himself is suggesting it, when he stands before her door packing a gun. He will not kill her, because after all he loves her, even in her squalid pregnancy as the wife of a crippled veteran. Yet that should actually send a signal to the reader. Driven to extremes we very well can kill who we love. So even if Lolita is an object of desire, there is missing a common ground between the protagonists. They neither share a common notion of "love" nor even a common affection or disaffection.

Nabokov is very effective in suggesting that Lolita feels absolute nothing for her hairy lover, only the desperate dejection of a trapped animal trying to escape. Sex for her is basically a little sport before she goes into the shower. There is still no emotional dimension to it and Humbert's intervention can only create a hopeless cynicism. It even comes to the point where Lolita quite deliberately prostitutes herself for material favors and the means to engineer her escape. In the end it must have left a telling signature on her face and an infinitely despondent emptiness in her mind.

Nabokov would not be known as a great artist if his novel and the characters in it would lack in coherence. But how "realistic" is the psychological model that underpins their various traits and behaviors? Not that it is an important question by Nabokov's own standards. But it may actually add a redeeming touch to acknowledge, that this story of child-abuse is just a fairy tale - a squalid Cinderella story with no happy ending. Happy endings are cheating anyway.

*)the math of ethics
John Mynyard-Smith (*1920): "Evolution and the Theory of Games," 1983 Cambridge University Press

"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much ... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons."
Douglas Adams (*1952)

I. conflict is the father of all progress
Since the dawn of human speculation, when under the sway of tribal politics and the priests' and shamans' carefully cultivated ignorance, the concept of empiricism was not yet discovered or snubbed with disdain, it seemed reasonably self-evident and conveniently assertive for the ruling classes, that the whole creation by divine fiat had sprung into being in an already perfect shape, and that invisible sky-hooks sustain and suspend the life and wellbeing of everything in the whole Universe.

The concept of slow engineering from bottom up was an unwelcome reminder for the wretched life of people who had to work with their own hands and were left with little if any say on the big issues. Thrift and creativity may happen in their pinched little lives, but the upper crust beheld it with disdain as a threat to stability and the status quo. From eternity everything had its designated place; deviation and development could only mean degeneracy from an ancient gold standard, the perfection in the garden of Eden.

However a certain Anaximenes (until 502 BC) begged to differ and developed the first crude form of Darwinism. Perhaps inspired by observations on sacrificial victims, he noticed that mammalian embryos go through phases of development from a single cell organism to a gill breathing amphibian before they take their final shape. Anaximenes concluded that all life must have originated in the oceans and life on land is the offspring from amphibian life forms. A great speculative insight.

And dangerous too! It challenged the status quo. Eternal order and ideas of an afterlife do not tally well with notions of permanent change. What could possibly be the meaning in perpetual change? If we dismiss the work of a divine architect, are we not left with a bungling DIY tinkerer, a lesser demon, who never manages to make up his mind? Bad news for privilege and ancient bloodlines. Evolution had the appearance more of a game and like all games it has only one indiscriminate purpose: to keep going, to stay alive.

Why? Because this is the will of the participants. (So Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was not so far off from the truth after all!) Differences in scientific Darwinism are recognizable by their position on selection. The hard "selectionists" put their money on fatal interventions from a harsh environment, from volcanic disasters, and the occasional meteor to weed out the misfits: in their scheme of things the dinosaurs are believed to have disappeared in such indiscriminate catastrophe.

However for some unexplained reason it had failed to wipe out our own rodent like ancestors. The same applies for life in the oceans. If indeed the impact of meteors had been the cause for the extinction of a great deal of marine life, then we also must account for the fact, that for some mysterious reason the lives of the much more ancient sharks and crocodiles had been spared. In fact this so called "Killer Meteorite" even gave reprieve to such frail organisms like frogs and amphibians.

The fossil record seems to suggest that during long and idyllic intervals, life, in a leisurely way, manages to occupy all the available nooks and crannies even in an seemingly inhospitable environment, without suffering from any other but self-inflicted selective pressures, such as mating rituals and the eternal war between predator and prey. Yet now and then, sudden bursts of new variations of genes and species seem to rock the idyl and in a comparably brief span of time take the place of more ancient phyla.

My math is woefully inadequate to cope, but even to my untutored eye, such sudden changes are entirely explainable in terms of gradually accumulating but random mutations, which at some point in situations of a smaller group's accidental isolation may become a dominant feature that will affect a later reunion or confrontation with the gene-pool. (At the Orkneys, biologists are observing a colony of seagulls where the hens reject a mate if it doesn't show a yellow marking around the eye. A new species is in the making.)

The simple truth is, Heraclit (c.535-c.475) got it right all the way: conflicts between peers over food and mating issues, and the eternal war between predator and prey are the engines of progress, socially as well as biologically. However in order to play a favorable hand at crunch time, it has already to be made available. It is only logical: mutations do occur, but the most favorable mutation is not likely to occur on schedule. Few mutations actually improve on the genome. Some are even damaging.

But the overwhelming majority of mutations are just neutral deviations, chips to stay in the game without any obvious improvement, another round in a dormant lottery. Based on this, the dynamics of sequestered separation, temporary inbreeding, and reintroduction of the genotype's new variant to the gene-pool - if it doesnt simply out-competes the ancient peers - explain the various turns in Mendel's roulette of species separation and species crystallization across the environmental scales.

Permanent conflict is key: competition and a tactical balance between self-interest and strategic alliances of common interest, even of symbiotic relations between different species. Which favors not just the "fittest." On the contrary it is the surviving misfit who plays the genetic lottery most successfully, because he depends on his better efficiency and cunning to rig the rules and succeed against the bullies. The biologist and political anarchist Count Kropotkin (1842-1921) once wrote a book "Cooperation in Nature."

He thought to amend the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" but Kropotkin missed out on the basic fact that cooperation too is just another strategy of conflict. There are alliances, but never a total, all inclusive interest. In evolutionary terms, it makes sense to love somebody. However loving just about everybody and universally turning the cheek is tantamount to resigning from the game altogether - which means individual and collective death. But self-sacrifice can make sense. Parents defend their brood.

The name of the game is neither survival of the meanest, nor survival of the fittest, but survival of the species on the base of behavioral strategies that benefit the collective. Not because of individual awareness for the need of such unselfish behavior, but simply because only the groups and societies which do practice sociable behavior amongst themselves do survive and provide their members with better chances and services for breeding and feeding. A group awareness is not needed, just survival of the sociable.

The individual too doesn't need to know, but if it fails to function the group will either correct the misfit, or jeopardize its own existence, and with it the benefits for the individual member. There is clearly a conserving and conservative element at work. The popular myth that Evolution is honing our skills and aiming at continued improvement, is just that: a myth. Although it is true, once brainpower had been invented, the competition from within supports the success of better brains.

But this hasn't put a halt to the tried and tested concepts of minimal or no brainpower. If survival time indicates success, than zero brained bacteria and worms and sparrow brained dinosaurs are still millions and billions of years ahead of man. Big brains may still turn out as too specialized, too over-engineered and too costly on the environment. Then one day we might find ourselves out-matched by who knows which competitor: probably a jerky walker on six feet with facet eyes and proboscis.

And we wouldn't even recognize the creature for what it is: the meek who shall inherit the Earth, after we, in our limited wisdom and infinite arrogance have exhausted our options. I don't say this to prophesy doom and gloom. Just remember that there is no necessity for continued improvement and progress. The next Dark Age might be lurking around the corner. For all I know, the human race can already sit on the sharp end of the stick without actually realizing it for another 10,000 years.

In fact it looks very much as if we are engineering our own replacement. There are no final aims, only a temporary crystallization of the genotype, which in brief intervals, creates the "ideal" prototype for a new variation, before inbreeding and degeneracy close for good another stairwell in Borges' infinite library. It is a game of numbers - Babylon's infinite lottery - in Everett's Universe, the only place where the evolution of consciousness is inevitable in an interpretation that does not require consciousness to create reality.

II. morals by the numbers
But does the concept of evolution not fail to explain the nature of our more unselfish choices? What is at the core of our ethical makeup? Does the seemingly irrational character of our morals not defy explanation without a divine law-giver? Even the Pope of Darwinism, the Nobel laureate Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) could find it extremely irritating when biologists, like Professor Motoo Kimura, pointed out that Darwin's universal fitness gym might not be such a tough place after all.

In 1983 Motoo Kimura published a book titled "The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution." He provided ample demonstration for the fact that - at least in the evolution of proteins - a selection of the fittest might not be necessary and simply rolling the dice can lead to similar results in the same amount of time. Dobzhansky responded to Motoo Kimura's preliminary papers with a strangely irrational and testy outburst:

"If this would be so, evolution would be meaningless and going nowhere. For people who try to find meaning in their existence nothing makes sense except evolution by natural selection."

I am not quite sure I follow. But be that as it may, how do ethics rise from the mud and shape the mores of a collective even without the awareness of the participants? A little bit of game-theory provides the clue. In order to create a stabile environment for breeding and nursing, which prevents renegade individuals to take undue advantages, certain strategies of conflict prevention and minimizing frictions have proved to be more successful than more confrontational options.

However the same does not apply to strategies that avoid conflicts altogether. Professor Mynyard-Smith, very convincingly, demonstrated how this works in a statistical model. The three possible tactics of conflict - escalating a fight at all costs, conventional sparring without inflicting serious injury, and unconditional retreat - can be combined to form five different strategical approaches, which, in a somewhat simplified form, may be labelled as follows:

(1) as a "Dove," who will spar conventionally but immediately retreats when it becomes dangerous;
(2) as a "Hawk," who immediately escalates the situation to an all or nothing fight regardless of the risk;
(3) as an "Avenger," who will do some sparring but only raises the stakes with the risk of serious injury if the opponent escalates;
(4) as a "Bully" who mimics a hawk, but beats timely retreat in the face of retribution;
(5) as an "Explorer" who will start with conventional sparring but escalate if the opponent doesn't seem to raise the stakes.

to evaluate the scores we assign:

 +2 points for certain victory
 +1 point for a 50% chance of winning
  0 points for losing a fight without getting harmed
-10 points for suffering serious injury

Now let's put it in a table:

                                   Dove      Hawk    Avenger   Bully    Explorer
             Dove                 +1           0            +1          0             0
             Hawk                +2         -10           -10         +2           +2
             Avenger            +1         -10            +1         +2           -10
             Bully                +2            0             0         +1            +2
             Explorer           +2            0           -10          0           -10

The "Bully" will never suffer injury, but in a population of "Bullies," the "Hawk" and the "Avenger" would be more successful, therefore the "Bully's" strategy doesn't provide stability in a mixed society. There is only one strategy providing long term stability: that of the "Avenger." In a society of representatives for all five strategies, none of the other four has a long term chance to secure food and a partner for breeding. For instance a "Hawk" in a population of "Avengers" has a 50% chance of severe injury in his very first fight.

Not a good chance for his gene to be passed on, especially if the rest of the population is restricting their aggression to conventional sparring between "Avengers," with little risk of injury. Incidentally we observe that most animal societies practice the "Avenger's" strategy, despite the fact that it may lead to individual losses. But it is the most efficient way to preserve the collective. Human societies too manage their conflicts on the base of legal treaties (i.e. "laws") which represent such patterns of social contest.

Does this mean our morals are ingrained in our gene? Not necessarily. Lower organisms have little or no choice at all, they depend on the right gene, because in the long run of all the bad genetic choices only the right gene will come out as the winner. Animals with higher faculties however learn from experience and some even transmit this acquired knowledge to their young. Not every conflict has deadly consequences. A brush with near disaster might just be enough to wise up and change tactics.

Major Works by John Mynyard-Smith (*1920)
· Books
1983 Evolution and the Theory of Games, Cambridge University Press
1989 Evolutionary Genetics, Oxford University Press
1995 The Major Transitions in Evolution, W. H. Freeman
· Papers
1964 Group selection and kin selection, Nature, 200
1968 Evolution in sexual and asexual populations, The American Naturalist, 102
1973 The logic of animal conflict, Nature, 246
1977 Parental investment: a prospective analysis, Animal Behavior, 25

*)The Koran

"The sword is the key of heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim."
Mohammed (571-633)

I. the man
According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet was distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue.

In the familiar offices of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca: the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive; his wit easy and social; his imagination sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive.

He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and, although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian:

His youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian traveller.

He compares the nations and the regions of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds, with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times; and resolves to unite under one God and one king the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied the caravan of his uncle.

His duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world.

The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet were those of his wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend; since he presented himself as a prophet to those who were most conversant with his infirmities as a man. Yet Cadijah believed the words, and cherished the glory, of her husband; the obsequious and affectionate Zeid was tempted by the prospect of freedom; the illustrious Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, embraced the sentiments of his cousin with the spirit of a youthful hero; and the wealth, the moderation, the veracity of Abubeker confirmed the religion of the prophet whom he was destined to succeed.

By his persuasion, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were introduced to the private lessons of Islam; they yielded to the voice of reason and enthusiasm; they repeated the fundamental creed, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;" and their faith, even in this life, was rewarded with riches and honors, with the command of armies and the government of kingdoms.

[Footnote 119: Mahomet's life, from his mission to the Hegira, may be found in Abulfeda (p. 14 - 45) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p. 134 - 251, 342 - 383.) The legend from p. 187 - 234 is vouched by Al Jannabi, and disdained by Abulfeda.]

II. the book
Some useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist.

Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim, that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God, and of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of his wives.

Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker: the work was revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance.

This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius. The harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version, the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds.

The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language. If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes?

The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus had been confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was repeatedly urged, by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to produce a similar evidence of his divine legation; to call down from heaven the angel or the volume of his revelation, to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a conflagration in the unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by the demands of the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and aggravate the guilt of infidelity.

But the modest or angry tone of his apologies betrays his weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal established, beyond suspicion, the integrity of the Koran. His dream of a nocturnal journey is seriously described as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious animal, the Borak, conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem: with his companion Gabriel he successively ascended the seven heavens, and received and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the angels, in their respective mansions.

Beyond the seventh heaven, Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the veil of unity, approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt a cold that pierced him to the heart, when his shoulder was touched by the hand of God. After this familiar, though important conversation, he again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the Borak, returned to Mecca, and performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years.

[Footnote 98: The nocturnal journey is circumstantially related by Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed, c. 19, p. 33,) who wishes to think it a vision; by Prideaux, (p. 31 - 40,) who aggravates the absurdities; and by Gagnier (tom. i. p. 252 - 343,) who declares, from the zealous Al Jannabi, that to deny this journey, is to disbelieve the Koran. Yet the Koran without naming either heaven, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, has only dropped a mysterious hint: Laus illi qui transtulit servum suum ab oratorio Haram ad oratorium remotissimum, (Koran, c. 17, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii. p. 407; for Sale's version is more licentious.) A slender basis for the aerial structure of tradition.]

III. the doctrine
The liberality of Mahomet allowed to his predecessors the same credit which he claimed for himself; and the chain of inspiration was prolonged from the fall of Adam to the promulgation of the Koran. During that period, some rays of prophetic light had been imparted to one hundred and twenty-four thousand of the elect, discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and grace; three hundred and thirteen apostles were sent with a special commission to recall their country from idolatry and vice; one hundred and four volumes have been dictated by the Holy Spirit; and six legislators of transcendent brightness have announced to mankind the six successive revelations of various rites, but of one immutable religion.

The authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, rise in just gradation above each other; but whosoever hates or rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with the infidels. "Verily, Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his word, which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him; honorable in this world, and in the world to come, and one of those who approach near to the presence of God."

The wonders of the genuine and apocryphal gospels are profusely heaped on his head; and the Latin church has not disdained to borrow from the Koran the immaculate conception of his virgin mother. Yet Jesus was a mere mortal; and, at the day of judgment, his testimony will serve to condemn both the Jews, who reject him as a prophet, and the Christians, who adore him as the Son of God. The malice of his enemies aspersed his reputation, and conspired against his life; but their intention only was guilty; a phantom or a criminal was substituted on the cross; and the innocent saint was translated to the seventh heaven.

Mahomet, perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of charity: the standard may vary with the degree and nature of property, as it consists either in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or merchandise; but the Mussulman does not accomplish the law, unless he bestows a tenth of his revenue; and if his conscience accuses him of fraud or extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a fifth.

The two articles of belief, and the four practical duties, of Islam, are guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Mussulman is devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment and the last day. The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the final judgment of mankind; and in his copy of the Magian picture, the prophet has too faithfully represented the forms of proceeding, and even the slow and successive operations, of an earthly tribunal.

By his intolerant adversaries he is upbraided for extending, even to themselves, the hope of salvation, for asserting the blackest heresy, that every man who believes in God, and accomplishes good works, may expect in the last day a favorable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to the character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger from heaven should depreciate the value and necessity of his own revelation.

In the idiom of the Koran, the belief of God is inseparable from that of Mahomet: the good works are those which he has enjoined, and the two qualifications imply the profession of Islam, to which all nations and all sects are equally invited. Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments; and the tears which Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother for whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of humanity and enthusiasm.

The doom of the infidels is common: the measure of their guilt and punishment is determined by the degree of evidence which they have rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which they have entertained: the eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the Magians, and idolaters, are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed the mask of religion.

After the greater part of mankind has been condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be judged by their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will be accurately weighed in a real or allegorical balance; and a singular mode of compensation will be allowed for the payment of injuries: the aggressor will refund an equivalent of his own good actions, for the benefit of the person whom he has wronged; and if he should be destitute of any moral property, the weight of his sins will be loaded with an adequate share of the demerits of the sufferer.

According as the shares of guilt or virtue shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mahomet, will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet has judiciously promised, that all his disciples, whatever may be their sins, shall be saved, by their own faith and his intercession from eternal damnation.

It is not surprising that superstition should act most powerfully on the fears of her votaries, since the human fancy can paint with more energy the misery than the bliss of a future life.

by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

*)the grandfather of "de-construction"
"The Trial of Socrates," by I. F. Stone

Socrates claimed at his trial to be a gadfly, a reminder of uncomfortable mores, but on the occasions when Athens was faced with tough moral decisions, Socrates was nowhere to be seen. His favourite aristocratic disciple, Alcibiades, never ceased to lobby the totalitarian government of Sparta, and to heap contempt on the participatory government of Athens. Socrates hated the power of popular opinion. Being not a member of the elite himself he was the first elitist of western political theory.

Socrates' oligarchic students showed themselves quite willing to put his teachings into practice even by means of murder, treason and theft. In the end Athens lost the war with Sparta and was saddled with an oligarchy called the thirty. This government summarily executed a large number of democrats and many more fled into exile. Eventually democracy was restored and Socrates put on trial and executed because his aristocratic students had listened to his teachings.

We know that Socrates didn't learn a thing from the experience of two bloody dictatorships, even when the 'Thirty' had silenced him too. Socrates' saintly image is a creation of Plato. He created the cult that passes Socrates off as a martyr for free speech while the records present him throughout his carrear as its enemy. Maybe the real Socrates had been trumped too often by real thinkers. Not unlike Jesus, history has little to say about the real Socrates outside the confines of his inner circle.

Athenians made fun of him, he became the butt of their comedy's wit. Aristophanes wouldn't have depicted him the way he did, if nobody could recognize the man in the caricature. Socrates liked to flaunt his ignorance in cosmological matters - "I know that I don't know" - was his favourite sound bite, and the ensuing applause used to drown the objection: "because you didn't bother to learn." At home, Socrates refused to work and placed a heavy burden on his wife, while he hung out with the boys.

This smug enemy of Athens' democracy has never been my favorite saint. Just put yourself in the position of his Athenian fellow citizens. There you go and mind your own business and suddenly find yourself cornered by Socrates and a gang of jeering aristocratic loafers, who double with laughters when Socrates humiliates you in a dialectical cat-and-mouse game of leading questions; and he doesn't let you go before he has you red-faced admitting whatever he asks for, just to get rid of him.

Plato wrote not just the "Defence." In his "Republic" he has Socrates advocating a state directed and deliberate misinformation of the most vulnerable - the "royal lie." In the "Laws," Plato himself recommends inquisition, star chambers, secret trials, censorship and euthanasia. After his hormones no longer supported a lifestyle of pederasty, Plato even started frowning on homosexuality. And this is an aspect which should concern everyone: a sexually intolerant legislation always comes with some sort of totalitarian agenda.

So was it right to execute Socrates for his opinions? Certainly not. But was this a trial about his opinions and how he said it, or about participation in conspiracies to overturn Athenian democracy? Can we trust the men who reported the case - Plato and Xenophon - one incidentally being the grandfather of modern censorship, who even didn't shy away from publicly burning the books of his opponents, the other exiled for his aristocratic policies? Plato is notoriously not to be trusted when it comes to plain truths.

No. In all likelihood the trial was a political payback. Democracy saw her enemy in the eyes, and she knew his name. Polls and juries respond to the moment, artists and jurists write for posterity, they are the ones left to be heard. Socrates' story had been written by the enemies of democracy, and while Athens' people went on with life and faded away in the tides of time, the speakers of their opposition still occupy our bookshelves and our attention. Mr. Stone makes a convincing case.

*)Symmachus (c. 340-405) - Letters

When faced with indictments against Christians in his province, Pliny the Younger (61-113), during his tenure as Governor had three questions for the Emperor Trajan: first, whether in punishing Christians he should make exceptions for those not of an age to be completely responsible for their actions; second, whether he should make allowance for those who repented their Christian past and abandoned the new creed; and third, whether it was the very name of 'Christian' that was to be punished or whether he was to examine for crimes committed as a result of adherence to that faith. Trajan's response was simple: avoid witch-hunts and punish only those who refused to make their abhorrence of Christianity public by sacrificing to 'our gods.' Beyond all legalism, Trajan was obviously answering to the underlying concern which had troubled Pliny in the first place. What Pliny could not stand about these people, in fact, was their pigheadedness: "Neque enim dubitabam, qualecumque esset quod faterentur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri."

The panoply of religious experience in the Roman world before Constantine was simply bewildering: back-yard fertility rites vied with state- supported cults, Platonic philosophers devoted their entire life and work to explore the countless stations on the ascend to the inner sanctuary of the universe, public cults indigenous to the various parts of the empire looked back on traditions of centuries and millennia. The divinity of the emperors was still an official doctrine to forge political consent; there was a vast array of private enthusiasms. That such a spectrum of religious experiences should produce a single-minded population capable of forming itself into a single pagan movement with which Christianity could struggle is simply not probable. But it was convenient for the Christians to believe that this was the case. By the late fourth century Christian writers introduced the term "paganus" in an act of Christian idiosyncrasy to lump all non-Christians into one mass. We need not assume that the success of the term represents any essential feature of the various cults and creeds themselves.

In less than one generation a once prosecuted minority had become the persecutors of literally the rest of the human race if it refused baptism, though the habit had been there from the very beginning. Before Constantine's edict of toleration in 314, Christian sects had already squabbled and frequently came to blows over heresies, even committed manslaughter; now they harassed the infidels and killed heretics with impunity. The state was on their side. Yet paganism did not die from a single stroke. Christianity in its various forms had started as an affair for traders and artisans, the nearest thing to a middle-class in Roman times, who in the beginning still had hesitated to acknowledge their own slaves as brothers. In fact Christian administrations resisted the eventual abolition of slavery when pagan legislators pushed the issue on humanitarian grounds. But discipline and zeal soon attracted even high ranking officials to the new faith. Only aristocrats and peasants proved to be a more difficult target - in a sense, they still are. A true aristocrat occupies himself with breeding and bloodlines and like a peasant, he needs to be rooted in the land; Christian morals offer him little. And for the peasant there is too much at stake, to risk the next harvest for giving preference to just one God and offending all the others.

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 340/345 - c. 402/405) was of the 3rd generation of hereditary peers born into dynastic wealth of senatorial standing: his birth decided his station in life as a senator and orator. The Roman Senate was the hub of Roman society, a club of dynasts which were required by law to own a certain minimum of capital or landed property to maintain their membership. Senators of the period had to contribute to the imperial coffers four pounds of gold bullion annually, apart from the usual taxation. They could afford it. One of the wealthiest senators ever was the philanthropist Herodes Atticus (101 - 177 AD.). He had sponsored immense building projects everywhere in Greece and saved the Olympic Games from slow decline. Another Herod, almost as rich, Herod Agrippa I. (10 BC. - 44 AD.) had a second job as King of Judea and Galilee - from 41 to 44 AD. He was the emperor's spokesman in the House. Such honors came for a price: Symmachus, found himself in a situation, where at enormous costs he was practically forced to entertain from his own pocket the Roman public with circus games (Ep. IV:8; V:62). He writes of hired artisans from Sicily, of imported rare animals - Dalmatian bears, lions from Libya, dogs from Scotland, even crocodiles - and of recruiting gladiators, "worse than the band of Spartacus," but as popular as modern rock stars (Ep. II:46; 76; 77; IV:12; 33; 42; 63; 8; 58; 59; 60; 62; V:56; 82; VI:42; 43; VII:59; 100; 121;122; IX:20; 24; 125; X:10; 13; 15; 19; 20; 26; 28; 29).

More useful and within his duties was the maintenance and construction of aqueducts, roads, and temples. In 384 Symmachus served the empire as proconsul in Africa where he recommended a promising young man for an opening as teacher of rhetoric in Milan. The young man was later known as St. Augustine and would recommend forced conversions - cogite intrare - and find a theological angle to provide the theoretical ground for war and persecutions, all strictly based on a Manichaean interpretation of the New Testament, which is not so far off from the original intent in a collection of basically Gnostic documents. In the same year, Symmachus became appointed prefect of Rome and this caused a conflict with another Saint, Ambrose of Milan, a melancholy but aloof church politician, whose policy, under a mantle of unbending politeness, relied on acts of violence, calculated to look like caprices. He became a player of more significance for the course of history, than Jesus Christ himself. A few years earlier Constantine's bigot son had ordered the removal of the statue of Victory from the senate house. Symmachus pleaded for the return of the statue. He said:

"... In the exercise, therefore, of a twofold office, as your Prefect I attend to public business, and as delegate I recommend to your notice the charge laid on me by the citizens. Here is no disagreement of wills, but it is our task to watch on behalf of your Graces. For to what is it more suitable that we defend the institutions of our ancestors, and the rights and destiny of our country? We demand then the restoration of that condition of religious affairs which was so long advantageous to the state. Who is so friendly with the barbarians as not to require an Altar of Victory? We will be careful henceforth, and avoid a show of such things. But at least let that honour be paid to the name which is refused to the goddess - your fame, which will last for ever, owes much and will owe still more to victory. ... Do you refuse to desert a patronage which is friendly to your triumphs? For a power that is wished for by all, let no one deny the liberty also to venerate what he acknowledges to be desired. Allow us, we beseech you, as old men to leave to posterity what we received as boys.

Where shall we swear to obey your laws and commands? By what religious sanction shall the false mind be terrified, so as not to lie in bearing witness? All things are indeed filled with God, and no place is safe for the perjured, but to be urged in the very presence of religious forms has great power in producing a fear of sinning. That altar preserves the concord of all, that altar appeals to the good faith of each, and nothing gives more authority to our decrees than that the whole of our order issues every decree as it were under the sanction of an oath. ... We ask, then, for peace for the gods of our fathers and of our country. It is just that all worship should be considered as one. We look on the same stars, the sky is common, the same world surrounds us. What difference does it make by what pains each seeks the truth? We cannot attain to so great a secret by one road alone. ...

With what advantage to your treasury are the prerogatives of the Vestal Virgins diminished? Is that refused under the most bountiful emperors which the most parsimonious have granted? Their sole honour consists in that, so to call it, wage of chastity. As fillets are the ornament of their heads, so is their distinction drawn from their leisure to attend to the offices of sacrifice. They seek for in a measure the empty name of immunity, since by their poverty they are exempt from payment. And so they who diminish anything of their substance increase their praise, inasmuch as virginity dedicated to the public good increases in merit when it is without reward. ... The treasury retains lands bequeathed to virgins and ministers by the will of dying persons. I entreat you, priests of justice, let the lost right of succession be restored to the sacred persons and places of your city.

Let men dictate their wills without anxiety, and know that what has been written will be undisturbed under princes who are not avaricious. Let the happiness in this point of all men give pleasure to you, for precedents in this matter have begun to trouble the dying. Does not then the religion of Rome appertain to Roman law? What name shall be given to the taking away of property which no law nor accident has made to fail. Freedmen take legacies, slaves are not denied the just privilege of making wills; only noble virgins and the ministers of sacred rites are excluded from property sought by inheritance. What does it profit the public safety to dedicate the body to chastity, and to support the duration of the empire with heavenly guardianship, to attach the friendly powers to your arms and to your eagles, to take upon oneself vows efficacious for all, and not to have common rights with all? ...

And let no one think that I am defending the cause of religion only. For from deeds of this kind have arisen all the misfortunes of the Roman race. The law of our ancestors honoured the Vestal Virgins and the ministers of the gods with a moderate maintenance and just privileges. This grant remained unassailed till the time of the degenerate money-changers, who turned the fund for the support of sacred chastity into hire for common porters. A general famine followed upon this, and a poor harvest disappointed the hopes of all the provinces. This was not the fault of the earth, we impute no evil influence to the stars. Mildew did not injure the crops, nor wild oats destroy the corn; the year failed through the sacrilege, for it was necessary that what was refused to religion should be denied to all. ...

[Now the zinger:] But some one will say that public support is only refused to the cost of foreign religions. [meaning: "then why is it not refused to Christians?] Far be it from good princes to suppose that what has been given to certain persons from the common property can be in the power of the treasury. For as the State consists of individuals, that which goes out from it becomes again the property of individuals. You rule over all; but you preserve his own for each individual; and justice has more weight with you than arbitrary will. ... May the unseen guardians of all sects be favorable to your Graces, and may they especially, who in old time assisted your ancestors, defend you and be worshipped by us. We ask for that state of religious matters which preserved the empire for the divine parent of your Highnesses."

Before the imperial court made a decision, it consulted St. Ambrose of Milan. He counseled to reject Symmachus' proposal. And so it was. But in 387, when Magnus Maximus became emperor, Symmachus delivered the coronation address as speaker of the House and this time his plead succeeded. For a brief period of time, statue and privileges were restored. In 391 Symmachus became consul of Rome. His son, himself a senator who eventually yielded to pressure and converted to Christianity, collected and published his father's correspondence in ten volumes.

Symmachus knew that his culture, which is the customary way people do things and think, was coming to an end, but he made a decision not to side with the victorious and became a pagan apologist. Christian posses, often led by their bishops, took the opportunity to legally vandalize pagan monuments, overturn and disfigure statues, pillage temples, and clear public libraries of blacklisted books, which often meant, all the books. And if in the confusion a synagog went up in flames, this was quite alright. Everywhere in the empire the oracles ceased to prophesy, temples fell in abandon, the boards of religious functionaries and priests found it increasingly difficult to recruit replacements; even the Olympic Games came under scrutiny and eventually closed down by imperial edict. To stem the tide, Symmachus and his colleagues accumulated in one person various religious offices from all over the empire. Members of the pagan elite simultaneously sought initiation in as many mystery cults as possible, even on proxy for another person, and not just in Eleusis.

According to Pausanias, every square-foot of Greek soil had once been home to some or other epiphany of the numinous, but this religious cottage industry had fallen in disrepair. The time would come when the corybants in their sudden madness would no longer lift snakes to the sky and with shining teeth tear the raw meat from a goat's shank. It became more difficult to find initiates willing to undergo an expensive ceremony of rebirth and step into a basin underneath the altar to have the sacrificial gore of a slaughtered steer and a ram drench their hair and garb. And as if this wasn't enough, one had to wear for ever the bloody garb in public, and even to refrain from bathing. Women still wept for Attys and Tammuz and celebrated their resurrection, but worshippers who gathered for the orgies of the Great Mother found themselves more and more disappointed in their lewd expectations. "Gnosis" - knowledge - alone would not guarantee salvation, the minutes of ritual became all important.

Pagans as much as Christians had developed a perspective of the afterlife that outshone the surrounding misery. On both sides a whole hierarchy of demons and angels assisted the soul's ascendancy to the divine spirit. Sorcery and divination of familiar spirits became common practice for pagans and Christians alike. On the height of ecstasy the athletes of mysticism from both camps claimed to perceive "a solitary light suddenly revealing itself - not as a reflection from some object, but pure and self-contained." The similarity was more than superficial, but the Christian's call for domination was absolute. We know from Ep. I:29; II:39 , that Symmachus used his position to protect a number of otherwise unknown philosophers from harassment by Christian authorities. So the better educated among the gentes turned their remaining energies to studying: in a time when the monotheist religions waved their holy books in the face of the infidel, Symmachus and like-minded scholars set out to publish definite editions of their own canon of classics.

Which meant, that the best gift for a friend, Symmachus could think of, was a corrected copy of Livy (Ep. IX:13). But it was Virgil, who almost had become an object of worship. Symmachus never tired to extend on the commentaries, or learn by rote entire passages, and even noted the Aeneid's use for sortilegia - book oracles - (Ep. III:11; 13; IV:34). Symmachus' own medium of expression was the letter, he saw Pliny the Younger as his literary model, but knew that in his day and age there would be no second Pliny. In a different period he would have been an essayist, but this was not the time for unsolicited opinions to go public. Even letters weren't safe; the secret service routinely inspected the mail-bags. The intelligentsia responded with rejection and escapism. If not against his will, no author would care to mention anything referring to Rome after the fall of the Republic. The rivers appeared to run shallower and mountains had shrunk in size; the whole cosmos was in decline.

For a last time all the creative energy was to be concentrated on a "science" of oratory, which banked its stock in learning and political persuasion on the fine art of oral delivery. Figures of speech occupied the finest minds of the period, syntactic intricacies, for which we have no longer names, the prosodic characteristics of words, the all important question whether to start a sentence with anapests or spondees. Every gesture, the toss of a cloak's hemp, was part of a code of histrionic delivery, which expressed an entire concept of physical and intellectual education. Every sentence, every line was a carefully crafted piece of art, but Symmachus himself knew all too well that and why times had changed since Cicero (Ep. II:35; I:45; IV:28; V:86; VII:9). The Senate had became more and more of an "asylum mundi totis" (Ammian XVI:20) - the last refuge for culture and humanity, and for the civic spirit of republicanism (Ep. VI:55; VIII:41; IX:67). Senators began to address each other as "brother" (Ep. I:89; V:62).

Symmachus has left us the memories and sometimes obituaries of his most courageous colleagues (Ep. I:2). He himself took considerable risks and in his addresses to Valentinian I, he interceded on behalf of the persecuted and oppressed (Ep. III:33-36; X:34). But as a grandee with independent means, he felt himself to be above the rat race for titles and promotions (Ep. IV:42). The style of his letters is strikingly modern - a mix of archaic simplicity with the latest jargon and abstract terminology (Ep. III:22; 44). The man had more dictionaries than people for friends - but as a truly modern mind he also was aware of the aesthetic rationale underpinning his work and reflected with bitterness on the political insignificance of his correspondence.

In the name of a quaint perception of ancient virtues, Symmachus like most of the grandees, had put his own daughters to carding and spinning the wool, or at least supervising the uncounted maidservants on his dozens of villas and their incredibly extended estates, with their administrative staffs of stewards, notaries, accountants, masons, oxcart drivers, sailors, and messengers, who supervised entire villages of slaves and the newly emerging institution of soil bound serfs (Ep. VI:67; 79). The extinction of so many of the senatorial dynasties concentrated such estates or "latifundia" in less and less hands. It affected the entire Italian economy, which depended on corn imports from Africa. The great landowners found themselves under suspicion by the regime, and burdened with costly "honors," and ever more frequent billeting. (Ep. I:5; 10; II:52; VII:66; IX:40; 48) Despite their enormous resources often strapped for ready cash, these men of almost princely status lived a life of travelling the seasons and their estates.

Symmachus himself had manor houses at the "Via Appia" and the Vatican, villas at Ostia, Praeneste, Lavinium, and, for shelter against the summer-heat, at Tibur; a farm at Formiae, a house in Capua, and estates in Samnia, Apulia, and across the Mediterranean in Morocco. For the holiday season he owned retreats at the paradisiacal coast of Naples. The gulf of Bajae had always been the Roman's favorite spa; they used to sail on colorful barges from the Avernian lakes into the gulf towards Puteoli, and from other ships and the villas at the shore a gentle breeze carried music, laughter and the splashes of swimmers (Ep. VIII:23), though Symmachus himself claimed, that he came to "Campania ... ubi alte turbis quiscitur; ... Lucrina tacita ... Bouli magnum silentes ... (Ep. I:8) - to find peace and quiet away from the bustle of city life: "... the new wine is going to be crushed, and shall be consigned to the care of oak barrels; stepladders reach all the way into the tops of the fruit trees; we now press the olive; and in hours of leisure we go after the game, and baying hounds sniff after the tracks of the boar (Ep. III:33).

And for a special treat, one would travel to Athens and imagine to relive the old days of beauty and philosophy (Ep. II,3; III: 51). A revery, catered to by a competitive tourist industry. Skippers earned an extra bonus for their quota of students and visitors they managed to land in Athens' Pireius and hand over to contracted schools or freelancing instructors. The rivalry of schools and universities often led to brawls between the "quires" of armed students, even to bloodshed and murder and kept the criminal courts busy. But even at the turn to the 5th century, and after Constantine's state had sponsored the pillaging of famous works of art for his new capital, Athens had still preserved the architectural core of its former grace, but the idols had fallen silent, and their message didn't reach the ears of a new generation.

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