The Gift of Fire | Page 2

does not seem to
be the worst thing in the world, leads little by little to some
consideration of vice, which does seem to be the worst thing in the
world. It is troubling to notice that when we are foolish or "only
foolish," as we easily deem it, we find ourselves all the more likely to
do bad things. And when we can see, as I think I have so often
managed to demonstrate, that some very foolish people are in a position
to bring the consequences of their folly not only on themselves but on
others, we do have the suspicion that something bad is going on. Surely,
if we could certainly pronounce certain persons wise, we would think it
a good thing to fall under their influence, and it seems only natural and
inescapably right to expect some badness from the influence of fools.
So it was that I gradually found, in my own considerations of nonsense,
less play and more brooding, less glee and more melancholy, and the
growing conviction that the silly mind, just as much as the wicked
mind, if there is such a thing, makes bad things happen. And my

meditations on foolish language, my own included, grew somber and
satirical.
Satire is a cunning, landless opportunist who poaches along the borders
of the two great realms of Tragedy and Comedy. The hunting is good,
no doubt, for the satirist is nourished by folly and vice, of which there
is said to be never any shortage. But, perhaps because I was reared in
Comedy's fair land, I am not convinced of that. Folly is thick on the
ground, no doubt, but where is vice? I know, I truly do know and can
demonstrate, just as surely as one can provide a proof in geometry, that
certain influential persons, especially in the schools, do bad things to
other people. But they are not villains. They do not will badness. On
the contrary, probably far more than most of us, they deliberately
intend to do good things. And I am certain that they would do good
things, if only they could make sense.
But all of that, obviously, could be said of any one of us. Outside of the
pages of fantastic fiction, there is no one who says in the heart, I will
do evil. We all intend the good, and would, at least often, do it if we
could. But we don't always understand what the good is.
That is hardly a new idea. But, while I have known about it for a long
time, heard it with the hearing of the ear, as it were, I haven't truly
known it. Between those conditions - knowing about, and knowing - I
think there is a very big difference. The point of this book was, for me,
the discovery of that understanding. True education is not knowing
about, but knowing. It is the cure of folly and the curb of vice, and our
only hope of escaping what Socrates once called "the greatest peril of
this our life" - not sickness or death, as most of us would say, but the
failure to make sense about the better and the worse, and thus to choose
the wrong one, thinking it the other.
This is, I'm afraid, a presumptuous book. It is a book about how to live
by a man who doesn't know how to live, but who has begun to learn
that he doesn't know how.

Who Is Socrates, Now That We Need Him?
When Benjamin Franklin was hardly more than a boy, but clearly a
comer, he decided to achieve moral perfection. As guides in this
enterprise, he chose Jesus and Socrates. One of his self-assigned rules
for daily behavior was nothing more than this: "Imitate Jesus and
Socrates."
I suspect that few would disagree. Even most militant atheists admire
Jesus, while assuming, of course, that they admire him for the right
reasons. Even those who have no philosophy and want none admire
Socrates, although exactly why, they can not say. And very few, I think,
would tell the young Franklin that he ought to have made some
different choices: Alexander, for instance, or Francis Bacon.
Jesus, just now, has no shortage of would-be imitators, although they
do seem to disagree among themselves as to how he ought to be
imitated. But the imitators of Socrates, if any there be, are hard to find.
For one thing, if they are more or less accurately imitating him, they
will not organize themselves into Socrates clubs and pronounce their
views. If we want to talk with them, we will have to seek them out; and,
unless we ourselves become, to some degree at least, imitators of
Socrates, we will not know enough to want to seek