CHAPTER IV - THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

Marius the Epicurean - Volume 1

by Walter Pater

CHAPTER IV - THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, MARIUS THE EPICUREAN - VOLUME 1 by Walter Pater

O mare! O littus! verum secretumque Mouseion,+
quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis!
Pliny's Letters.

[43] IT would hardly have been possible to feel more seriously than
did Marius in those grave years of his early life. But the death of
his mother turned seriousness of feeling into a matter of the
intelligence: it made him a questioner; and, by bringing into full
evidence to him the force of his affections and the probable
importance of their place in his future, developed in him generally
the more human and earthly elements of character. A singularly
virile consciousness of the realities of life pronounced itself in
him; still however as in the main a poetic apprehension, though
united already with something of personal ambition and the instinct
of self-assertion. There were days when he could suspect, though it
was a suspicion he was careful at first to put from him, that that
early, much [44] cherished religion of the villa might come to count
with him as but one form of poetic beauty, or of the ideal, in
things; as but one voice, in a world where there were many voices it
would be a moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this voice,
through its forcible pre-occupation of his childish conscience, still
seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusive character, defining
itself as essentially one of but two possible leaders of his spirit,
the other proposing to him unlimited self-expansion in a world of
various sunshine. The contrast was so pronounced as to make the
easy, light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among the
temptations of the new phase of life which had now begun, seem
nothing less than a rival religion, a rival religious service. The
temptations, the various sunshine, were those of the old town of
Pisa, where Marius was now a tall schoolboy. Pisa was a place lying
just far enough from home to make his rare visits to it in childhood
seem like adventures, such as had never failed to supply new and
refreshing impulses to the imagination. The partly decayed pensive
town, which still had its commerce by sea, and its fashion at the
bathing-season, had lent, at one time the vivid memory of its fair
streets of marble, at another the solemn outline of the dark hills of
Luna on its background, at another the living glances of its men and
women, to the thickly gathering crowd [45] of impressions, out of
which his notion of the world was then forming. And while he learned
that the object, the experience, as it will be known to memory, is
really from first to last the chief point for consideration in the
conduct of life, these things were feeding also the idealism
constitutional with him--his innate and habitual longing for a world
altogether fairer than that he saw. The child could find his way in
thought along those streets of the old town, expecting duly the
shrines at their corners, and their recurrent intervals of garden-
courts, or side-views of distant sea. The great temple of the place,
as he could remember it, on turning back once for a last look from an
angle of his homeward road, counting its tall gray columns between
the blue of the bay and the blue fields of blossoming flax beyond;
the harbour and its lights; the foreign ships lying there; the
sailors' chapel of Venus, and her gilded image, hung with votive
gifts; the seamen themselves, their women and children, who had a
whole peculiar colour-world of their own--the boy's superficial
delight in the broad light and shadow of all that was mingled with
the sense of power, of unknown distance, of the danger of storm and
possible death.

To this place, then, Marius came down now from White-nights, to live
in the house of his guardian or tutor, that he might attend the
school of a famous rhetorician, and learn, among [46] other things,
Greek. The school, one of many imitations of Plato's Academy in the
old Athenian garden, lay in a quiet suburb of Pisa, and had its grove
of cypresses, its porticoes, a house for the master, its chapel and
images. For the memory of Marius in after-days, a clear morning
sunlight seemed to lie perpetually on that severe picture in old gray
and green. The lad went to this school daily betimes, in state at
first, with a young slave to carry the books, and certainly with no
reluctance, for the sight of his fellow-scholars, and their petulant
activity, coming upon the sadder sentimental moods of his childhood,
awoke at once that instinct of emulation which is but the other side
of sympathy; and he was not aware, of course, how completely the
difference of his previous training had made him, even in his most
enthusiastic participation in the ways of that little world, still
essentially but a spectator. While all their heart was in their
limited boyish race, and its transitory prizes, he was already
entertaining himself, very pleasurably meditative, with the tiny
drama in action before him, as but the mimic, preliminary exercise
for a larger contest, and already with an implicit epicureanism.
Watching all the gallant effects of their small rivalries--a scene in
the main of fresh delightful sunshine--he entered at once into the
sensations of a rivalry beyond them, into the passion of men, and had
already recognised a certain [47] appetite for fame, for distinction
among his fellows, as his dominant motive to be.

The fame he conceived for himself at this time was, as the reader
will have anticipated, of the intellectual order, that of a poet
perhaps. And as, in that gray monastic tranquillity of the villa,
inward voices from the reality of unseen things had come abundantly;
so here, with the sounds and aspects of the shore, and amid the
urbanities, the graceful follies, of a bathing-place, it was the
reality, the tyrannous reality, of things visible that was borne in
upon him. The real world around--a present humanity not less comely,
it might seem, than that of the old heroic days--endowing everything
it touched upon, however remotely, down to its little passing tricks
of fashion even, with a kind of fleeting beauty, exercised over him
just then a great fascination.

That sense had come upon him in all its power one exceptionally fine
summer, the summer when, at a somewhat earlier age than was usual, he
had formally assumed the dress of manhood, going into the Forum for
that purpose, accompanied by his friends in festal array. At night,
after the full measure of those cloudless days, he would feel well-
nigh wearied out, as if with a long succession of pictures and music.
As he wandered through the gay streets or on the sea-shore, the real
world seemed indeed boundless, and himself almost absolutely free in
it, with a boundless [48] appetite for experience, for adventure,
whether physical or of the spirit. His entire rearing hitherto had
lent itself to an imaginative exaltation of the past; but now the
spectacle actually afforded to his untired and freely open senses,
suggested the reflection that the present had, it might be, really
advanced beyond the past, and he was ready to boast in the very fact
that it was modern. If, in a voluntary archaism, the polite world of
that day went back to a choicer generation, as it fancied, for the
purpose of a fastidious self-correction, in matters of art, of
literature, and even, as we have seen, of religion, at least it
improved, by a shade or two of more scrupulous finish, on the old
pattern; and the new era, like the Neu-zeit of the German enthusiasts
at the beginning of our own century, might perhaps be discerned,
awaiting one just a single step onward--the perfected new manner, in
the consummation of time, alike as regards the things of the
imagination and the actual conduct of life. Only, while the pursuit
of an ideal like this demanded entire liberty of heart and brain,
that old, staid, conservative religion of his childhood certainly had
its being in a world of somewhat narrow restrictions. But then, the
one was absolutely real, with nothing less than the reality of seeing
and hearing--the other, how vague, shadowy, problematical! Could its
so limited probabilities be worth taking into account in any
practical question as to the rejecting or receiving [49] of what was
indeed so real, and, on the face of it, so desirable?

And, dating from the time of his first coming to school, a great
friendship had grown up for him, in that life of so few attachments--
the pure and disinterested friendship of schoolmates. He had seen
Flavian for the first time the day on which he had come to Pisa, at
the moment when his mind was full of wistful thoughts regarding the
new life to begin for him to-morrow, and he gazed curiously at the
crowd of bustling scholars as they came from their classes. There
was something in Flavian a shade disdainful, as he stood isolated
from the others for a moment, explained in part by his stature and
the distinction of the low, broad forehead; though there was
pleasantness also for the newcomer in the roving blue eyes which
seemed somehow to take a fuller hold upon things around than is usual
with boys. Marius knew that those proud glances made kindly note of
him for a moment, and felt something like friendship at first sight.
There was a tone of reserve or gravity there, amid perfectly
disciplined health, which, to his fancy, seemed to carry forward the
expression of the austere sky and the clear song of the blackbird on
that gray March evening. Flavian indeed was a creature who changed
much with the changes of the passing light and shade about him, and
was brilliant enough under the early sunshine in [50] school next
morning. Of all that little world of more or less gifted youth,
surely the centre was this lad of servile birth. Prince of the
school, he had gained an easy dominion over the old Greek master by
the fascination of his parts, and over his fellow-scholars by the
figure he bore. He wore already the manly dress; and standing there
in class, as he displayed his wonderful quickness in reckoning, or
his taste in declaiming Homer, he was like a carved figure in motion,
thought Marius, but with that indescribable gleam upon it which the
words of Homer actually suggested, as perceptible on the visible
forms of the gods--hoia theous epenęnothen aien eontas.+

A story hung by him, a story which his comrades acutely connected
with his habitual air of somewhat peevish pride. Two points were
held to be clear amid its general vagueness--a rich stranger paid his
schooling, and he was himself very poor, though there was an
attractive piquancy in the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of
another figure might have been despised. Over Marius too his
dominion was entire. Three years older than he, Flavian was
appointed to help the younger boy in his studies, and Marius thus
became virtually his servant in many things, taking his humours with
a sort of grateful pride in being noticed at all, and, thinking over
all this afterwards, found that the [51] fascination experienced by
him had been a sentimental one, dependent on the concession to
himself of an intimacy, a certain tolerance of his company, granted
to none beside.

That was in the earliest days; and then, as their intimacy grew, the
genius, the intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him.
The brilliant youth who loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers,
and seemed to have a natural alliance with, and claim upon,
everything else which was physically select and bright, cultivated
also that foppery of words, of choice diction which was common among
the élite spirits of that day; and Marius, early an expert and
elegant penman, transcribed his verses (the euphuism of which, amid a
genuine original power, was then so delightful to him) in beautiful
ink, receiving in return the profit of Flavian's really great
intellectual capacities, developed and accomplished under the
ambitious desire to make his way effectively in life. Among other
things he introduced him to the writings of a sprightly wit, then
very busy with the pen, one Lucian--writings seeming to overflow with
that intellectual light turned upon dim places, which, at least in
seasons of mental fair weather, can make people laugh where they have
been wont, perhaps, to pray. And, surely, the sunlight which filled
those well-remembered early mornings in school, had had more than the
usual measure of gold in it! [52] Marius, at least, would lie awake
before the time, thinking with delight of the long coming hours of
hard work in the presence of Flavian, as other boys dream of a
holiday.

It was almost by accident at last, so wayward and capricious was he,
that reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father--a
freedman, presented late in life, and almost against his will, with
the liberty so fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the
sacrifice of part of his peculium--the slave's diminutive hoard--
amassed by many a self-denial, in an existence necessarily hard. The
rich man, interested in the promise of the fair child born on his
estate, had sent him to school. The meanness and dejection,
nevertheless, of that unoccupied old age defined the leading memory
of Flavian, revived sometimes, after this first confidence, with a
burst of angry tears amid the sunshine. But nature had had her
economy in nursing the strength of that one natural affection; for,
save his half-selfish care for Marius, it was the single, really
generous part, the one piety, in the lad's character. In him Marius
saw the spirit of unbelief, achieved as if at one step. The much-
admired freedman's son, as with the privilege of a natural
aristocracy, believed only in himself, in the brilliant, and mainly
sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to acquire.

And then, he had certainly yielded himself, [53] though still with
untouched health, in a world where manhood comes early, to the
seductions of that luxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, in
the freer revelation of himself by conversation, at the extent of his
early corruption. How often, afterwards, did evil things present
themselves in malign association with the memory of that beautiful
head, and with a kind of borrowed sanction and charm in its natural
grace! To Marius, at a later time, he counted for as it were an
epitome of the whole pagan world, the depth of its corruption, and
its perfection of form. And still, in his mobility, his animation,
in his eager capacity for various life, he was so real an object,
after that visionary idealism of the villa. His voice, his glance,
were like the breaking in of the solid world upon one, amid the
flimsy fictions of a dream. A shadow, handling all things as
shadows, had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them.

Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly and
abundantly, because with a good will. There was that in the actual
effectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to make
the most of opportunity; and he had experience already that education
largely increased one's capacity for enjoyment. He was acquiring
what it is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the
art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the
elements of distinction, in our everyday life--of so exclusively
living in them--that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or
débris of our days, comes to be as though it were not. And the
consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one particular
book, then fresh in the world, with which he fell in about this time-
-a book which awakened the poetic or romantic capacity as perhaps
some other book might have done, but was peculiar in giving it a
direction emphatically sensuous. It made him, in that visionary
reception of every-day life, the seer, more especially, of a
revelation in colour and form. If our modern education, in its
better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind of idealising
power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its professed
instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of ancient
literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened also,
long ago, with Marius and his friend.

NOTES

43. +Transliteration: Mouseion. The word means "seat of the muses."
Translation: "O sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things have
you uncovered to me, how many things suggested!" Pliny, Letters,
Book I, ix, to Minicius Fundanus.

50. +Transliteration: hoia theous epenęnothen aien eontas. Translation:
"such as the gods are endowed with." Homer, Odyssey, 8.365.