第5章

The daemon within me says taxes don't really matter."Maybe the paterfamilias of the period, who did the paying, worried about new sandals for the children, his wife insisting she hadn't a frock fit to be seen in at the amphitheatre; that, if there was one thing in the world she fancied, it was seeing a Christian eaten by a lion, but now she supposed the children would have to go without her, found that philosophy came to his aid less readily.

"Bother these barbarians," Marcus Aurelius may have been tempted, in an unphilosophical moment, to exclaim; "I do wish they would not burn these poor people's houses over their heads, toss the babies about on spears, and carry off the older children into slavery.Why don't they behave themselves?"But philosophy in Marcus Aurelius would eventually triumph over passing fretfulness.

"But how foolish of me to be angry with them," he would argue with himself."One is not vexed with the fig-tree for yielding figs, with the cucumber for being bitter! One must expect barbarians to behave barbariously."Marcus Aurelius would proceed to slaughter the barbarians, and then forgive them.We can most of us forgive our brother his transgressions, having once got even with him.In a tiny Swiss village, behind the angle of the school-house wall, I came across a maiden crying bitterly, her head resting on her arm.I asked her what had happened.Between her sobs she explained that a school companion, a little lad about her own age, having snatched her hat from her head, was at that moment playing football with it the other side of the wall.I attempted to console her with philosophy.Ipointed out to her that boys would be boys--that to expect from them at that age reverence for feminine headgear was to seek what was not conformable with the nature of boy.But she appeared to have no philosophy in her.She said he was a horrid boy, and that she hated him.It transpired it was a hat she rather fancied herself in.He peeped round the corner while we were talking, the hat in his hand.

He held it out to her, but she took no notice of him.I gathered the incident was closed, and went my way, but turned a few steps further on, curious to witness the end.Step by step he approached nearer, looking a little ashamed of himself; but still she wept, her face hidden in her arm.

He was not expecting it: to all seeming she stood there the personification of the grief that is not to be comforted, oblivious to all surroundings.Incautiously he took another step.In an instant she had "landed" him over the head with a long narrow wooden box containing, one supposes, pencils and pens.He must have been a hard-headed youngster, the sound of the compact echoed through the valley.I met her again on my way back.

"Hat much damaged?" I inquired.

"Oh, no," she answered, smiling; "besides, it was only an old hat.

I've got a better one for Sundays."

I often feel philosophical myself; generally over a good cigar after a satisfactory dinner.At such times I open my Marcus Aurelius, my pocket Epicurus, my translation of Plato's "Republic." At such times I agree with them.Man troubles himself too much about the unessential.Let us cultivate serenity.Nothing can happen to us that we have not been constituted by Nature to sustain.That foolish farm labourer, on his precarious wage of twelve shillings a week:

let him dwell rather on the mercies he enjoys.Is he not spared all anxiety concerning safe investment of capital yielding four per cent.? Is not the sunrise and the sunset for him also? Many of us never see the sunrise.So many of our so-termed poorer brethen are privileged rarely to miss that early morning festival.Let the daemon within them rejoice.Why should he fret when the children cry for bread? Is it not in the nature of things that the children of the poor should cry for bread? The gods in their wisdom have arranged it thus.Let the daemon within him reflect upon the advantage to the community of cheap labour.Let the farm labourer contemplate the universal good.