CHAPTER IX ARRIAN’S DEPARTURE

When we came out from the crowded room, as Arrian was nowhere to be seen, I went at once to his lodging. To my surprise, he was busy packing, amid books and papers, and a student’s other belongings. “Thanks, many thanks,” he said, “for this timely visit. This is my last day in Nicopolis. I was just coming round to wish you good-bye. You know I had to go to Corinth. Well, when I got there, I found a letter from my father bidding me wait a few days for further news from him; and on the fourth day came a message that I was to conclude my studies at once and return to Bithynia, as his health had quite given way and his affairs required all my attention. I had intended to start to-day at the fifth hour; but I have just learned that the vessel will not sail till the eighth. So sit down. Epictetus there is not time to call upon. When I write to you I shall ask you to deliver him a letter from me. Sit down, and begin by telling me about the lecture I have just missed, while it is fresh in your memory.”

When I had finished, he said, turning over the papers he was sorting, “I remember another of his lectures in which he warned us against a licentious and effeminate life. Here it is, and these are his exact words: ‘Do not, in the name of the Gods, do not you, young man, fall back again! Nay, rather go back to your home and say, now that you have once heard this warning, It is not Epictetus that has said this. How should he? It is some God wishing well to me and speaking through him. It would never have come into the mind of Epictetus to[92] say this, for it is never his custom to make personal appeals. Come, then; let us obey the voice of God, lest we fall under God’s wrath.’ I have never forgotten these words, and I trust I never shall. I think a God speaks through Epictetus. Do you not agree with me?”

“I do indeed,” said I, “but I am not convinced that God speaks all that Epictetus says, and that there is not more to be spoken. For example, he says, ‘You have but to will and it is done.’ Is that a common experience? Is it yours? He says, ‘Take from yourself the help you need.’ Do you find in yourself all the help you need? When you fall, he says, ‘Get up,’ as though we were boys in the wrestling-ring. But what if we have been stunned? What if one’s ankle is sprained or a leg broken? Do you remember what you said to me at the end of my first lecture, ‘Will it last?’ You also said that Epictetus could make us feel just what he wished us to feel—as long as he was speaking. Well, while I was sitting on the bench in the lecture-room, I felt that getting up from vice was as easy as sitting on that bench. When I walked out, it began to seem less easy. Now that I am quite away from the enchanter, talking the matter quietly over with you, the feeling has almost vanished; and I am obliged to repeat your question about this, and about much more of our Master’s doctrine, ‘Will it last?’”

“Some of it will last,” said Arrian, “We must not expect impossibilities. I have heard him admit that it is impossible to be sinless already, but he bade us remember that it is possible to be always intent on not sinning.” “Did he mean,” asked I, “by ‘already,’ that we could not be sinless in this life, but that we might be sinless at what he calls the feast of the Gods, after death?” Arrian did not at once reply. Presently he said, “I do not think so. I believe he meant that we must not expect to be sinless as soon as we have reached the intermediate stage of what he calls ‘the half-educated man.’ We must wait till we have reached the further stage, that of complete education, where, as you said just now, a man never blames himself, because he does not find in himself any fault that he could blame.”

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Here Arrian made a still longer pause. Then he continued, in his usual slow, deliberate way, but with a touch of hesitation that was not usual with him, “I have here a few duplicates of my notes. Among them are some on the subject on which your remarks bear, and about which (I gather) you would like to question me—the immortality of the soul. In my hearing, he has seldom used that precise phrase. And, when he has used the epithet ‘immortal,’ it has generally applied to life like that of Tithonus—I mean, a deathless life in this present world. To desire such a life, deathless and free from disease, he thinks unreasonable. But I remember his saying once, that he was prepared for death, ‘whether it were the death of the whole or of a certain part’—that was his expression. And I think he may possibly believe that the Logos within us is reabsorbed, after death, into some kind of quintessential or divine fire from which it sprang. But I cannot say that this satisfies me.”

Neither did it satisfy me. But I said nothing. Arrian, too, was silent, turning over some of his papers and marking passages for my perusal. But presently, rousing himself, “Did you agree with me,” he said, “about the passage you transcribed, when we last met, concerning that sect of the Jews which he called the Galil?ans?” I could see that Arrian wished to divert the conversation to “the Galil?ans,” as being a subject of a less serious character than the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But the subject of the Galil?ans or Jews had become much more serious for me now than it had been when we last conversed together. How much more, I shrank from telling him, in the few minutes at our disposal. He was good, just, a truthful scholar, a gentleman, and a kind friend. Given a few days more—even a few hours—in one another’s company, and I should not have kept my secret from him. But how could I hope, in so brief an interval, and amid so many preoccupations, to make him understand what a vast continent of new history, religion, literature—and, above all, “feeling” as opposed to “logic”—had emerged before my mind’s eye, during my recent voyages of exploration in the scriptures and in Paul’s epistles? So I replied briefly that I agreed with his view.[94] Epictetus, I said, seemed to me to be speaking, not of the Galil?an “custom,” but of their “feeling,” as also in the case of the Jews. “And indeed,” I added, “the force of this ‘feeling’ in producing courage appears to me most remarkable.” With these words I rose to go.

“Well,” said he, “I fear we shall hardly meet again in Nicopolis. But I shall always cherish the recollection of the hours we have spent together here, and of our common respect for our common Master, whom you already love, and whom, if you come to know him as I do—in his home, and in his kindness to those who need kindness—you will (I trust) love still more.” “I do love him,” said I. “But tell me, do you love all his teaching about indifference to what is happening? You know how our Master scoffs at the agony of Priam looking on the ruin of Troy. Well, suppose you were a Roman citizen, as I am sure you will be before long. Or, rather, suppose you were our new Emperor Hadrian, and saw the northern barbarians not only at our gates but inside our walls, and the City in flames, and the Dacians doing in Rome what the Greeks did in Troy to the Trojan men and women, would you, our Emperor Hadrian, feel it right to say, ‘All this is nothing to me’?” “By the immortal Gods,” exclaimed Arrian, “I should not.” “And if Epictetus were in Hadrian’s place, or Priam’s place, do you think he could say it?”

I had to wait for an answer. “What I am going to say,” he replied at last, “may seem to you monstrous. But I really cannot reply No. I cannot tell what he would say. I am not able to judge him as I should judge others.” Then he proceeded, with an animation quite unusual in him, “Of any other Hadrian or Priam I should say that such an utterance stamped him as either liar, or beast, or stone. But Epictetus—absorbed in Zeus, devoted to His will, resolved to believe that His will is good, and seeing no way out of the belief that all things happen in accordance with His will—might not Epictetus conceivably feel, in moments of ecstasy, that all these fires and furies, massacres and outrages, cannot prevent him from believing in Zeus and being one with Zeus, so that he himself, Epictetus, might be, nay, must be, in the bosom of Zeus (so to speak) at[95] the very moment when not only Rome, but all the cities, villages, and hamlets of the world—nay, when the universe itself was being cast into destruction? Well, I am out of my depth. I confess it. But will you not agree with me thus far, that if Epictetus said that he felt thus, he would really feel thus?”

“Yes,” replied I, “I am sure that he would not say it unless he felt it. But I am not sure that he might not feel it merely because he had forced himself to feel it. However, let us say no more now on such subtle matters. It is no small help to have been lifted up by such a teacher above the mere life of the flesh. We part, do we not, in full agreement that Epictetus has been, for both of us, a guide to that which is good?” And thus we did part. I accompanied him to the quay. “May we meet again,” were my last words. “May it be soon,” were his.

But we never met. The death of his father plunged him almost immediately into domestic cares and matters of business. When the pressure of private affairs relaxed, it was soon followed by affairs of state. This was due in part perhaps to his having been a pupil of Epictetus. The new emperor, long before he became emperor, had always admired our Master; whose recommendation (I am inclined to think) had something to do with Arrian’s subsequent promotions. At all events, when I was on service in the north, I heard without any surprise, and with a great deal of pleasure, that my former fellow-student—known now to literary circles as Flavianus, a Roman citizen, and author of the Memoirs of Epictetus—had been appointed governor of Cappadocia.

From time to time we corresponded. But it was not upon the topics that used to engross us in old days. He took a great interest in geography. Military service, at one time in the north and then in the east, gave me some knowledge of this subject, which I was glad to place at his disposal. He also studied military affairs with a view to writing on Alexander. Here again I was of use to him. But we never resumed in our letters that subject about which he had once said to me, “More of this to-morrow.” Our paths had branched off, leading us far away from each other in everything except mutual good will[96] and respect. He had become a Roman magistrate. Subsequently he was a priest of Demeter. I had become a Roman soldier, but—a Christian. Many of my friends knew this and I have little doubt that Arrian guessed it. Privately I feel sure he always loved me. Officially he must have been forced to disapprove. Hadrian, it is true, discouraged informations against the Christians, and I had been hitherto connived at: but could I condemn my old friend if he shrank from opening up old speculations that might lead him into unofficial, suspected, and dangerous results? Much more might I myself rather feel condemned for keeping silence. Sometimes I have felt thus. But not often. More often I feel that it was better for him not to know what I know, than to know it, in a sense, and to reject it. Presented in mere writing, I felt sure that it would have been rejected. Writings and books brought me on the way to Christ, but something more was needed to make me receive Christ.

Arrian, I think, avoided such opportunities as presented themselves for meeting. I am sure I did. If we had met, surely I should have been constrained to open my mind to him. Once, at least, I touched (in a letter) on our old conversation about “logos” and “pathos.” He replied that, in his new career, both “logos” and “pathos” had to give place to pragmata, “business,” which, he thought, was likely to take up all his energies during the rest of his life.

Even if I had opened my mind, I cannot help thinking that his would have remained unchanged. One thing, however, I do not think about, but know—namely, that, if we had met, Arrian and I would still have had common ground, as of old, in our love of truth and justice, and that we should still have esteemed, respected, and loved each other. For myself, love him I always shall, not for his own sake alone, but also because he helped me directly and immediately to understand Epictetus, and indirectly and ultimately to perceive the existence of something beyond any truth that Epictetus could teach.