by Jo Walton
It is illuminating to attempt to stop and consider, when thinking what is the right direction for the city in a specific circumstance, whether the same is true internally for one’s own soul. It is also interesting to consider whether it scales larger—can the whole commonwealth of all the cities on the planet be analogous to a soul? Plato says each thing has its own specific excellence: the excellence of a horse is not the excellence of a tree. So can the excellence of a city be the same as the excellence of a soul?
I think it may be easier for me to consider this than for most people, because I remember coming to consciousness in ignorance, and also because I was fortunate enough to be guided by Sokrates in my earliest explorations.
IV. On Priorities and Will
Sokrates and I were conversing one day in the agora, near the Temple of Athene and the library. We had been talking about education and rhetoric, and I was finding much to ponder in his views on these topics when suddenly Lukretia came dashing up and informed me that a pipe was blocked in the latrine fountain of the birthing house of Ferrara, and asked me to mend it urgently. I hastened off to get on with my work. Sokrates followed along, skipping to keep up with me.
“Why are you hurrying off in this way?” he asked.
“Lukretia say fountain broken,” I inscribed on the flagstones. I was surprised that he asked, as he had been there and must have heard Lukretia for himself. Sokrates paused to read this and then hurried on after me.
“Yes, but why are you going?” he asked when he came panting up.
“Mend fountain,” I wrote.
“Oh, this is hopeless,” Sokrates said. “I can see I won’t get any sense out of you until we get there.”
So I trundled off and he followed behind at his own speed. When I reached the Ferrara birthing house, the attendants were extremely pleased to see me. I went inside and mended the fountain. It was easy. A part of the flushing mechanism had been pulled loose, which kept the plugs pulled out so that the water ran straight through without allowing either tank to refill. It took me only a short time to fix it, and soon the latrine fountains were back in working order. When I went outside, Sokrates was sitting on the wall with a naked baby on his lap, playing a game with her toes that made her laugh. This was the first time I had seen a baby close up—this one was about a year old, beginning to learn to talk. “They wouldn’t let me inside in case I profaned the mystery of birth, so I waited here for you, and I have been amusing myself playing with this baby,” he said.
“Sun, foots, ning ah gah ah!” the baby said, reaching for Sokrates’s beard. Her hands, though tiny, were perfect, with a little nail on the end of every finger. She was already clearly a miniature human.
“This baby is like you, Crocus, still very young, and sometimes she doesn’t make much sense,” Sokrates said, smiling and tapping at her toes again.
“Sense?” I asked, carving the word in the flagstone at Sokrates’s feet.
“I heard what Lukretia said to you, and I understood what you were going to do. But we agreed that you would work for ten hours a day, and those ten hours are done for today, so you should have been free to enjoy your conversation.”
“Need fountain,” I wrote.
“You need education,” Sokrates said.
I underlined where I had written that the fountain was needed, and added “more.”
As I did that, Ikaros came out of the Ferraran hall and saw us. “Well, what’s this?” he asked. “I was about to go seeking you, Sokrates, and here you are sitting in the sunshine with a baby and a Worker.”
“Yes, I’m being lazy and indulging myself,” Sokrates said, smiling up at Ikaros.
“I don’t believe you. I think you’re engaged in one of your enquiries into some subject and you didn’t mean to include me!”
Ikaros sat down beside Sokrates. The baby cooed at him and kicked up her feet. “Ooooh!” she said.
“On the contrary, I’m delighted to have you join us. We were considering the ethics of need. Crocus believes that the birthing house of Ferrara needed their latrine fountain mended more urgently than he needed his leisure time for education.”
I underlined “more.”
“Only more?” Sokrates asked. “Not more urgently?”
“I think he’s expressing hierarchies of need,” Ikaros said. “He thinks the women need their latrine fountain more than he needs his conversation.”
“Why do they?” Sokrates asked.
“Plumbing important,” I wrote.
“Why?” Sokrates asked.
It was axiomatic. I had a hierarchy of priorities in my memory, and among those plumbing ranked extremely high, immediately below electricity. I had no idea why. I inscribed a question mark.
Then the baby kicked her legs again and emitted a stream of yellowish liquid into Sokrates’s lap. Sokrates and Ikaros laughed, and Sokrates called into the house for an attendant to take the baby. He took off his wet kiton, dropped it in a heap, and sat down again naked. The attendant took the baby back inside.
“That’s her contribution to the argument, and a practical demonstration of why plumbing is important,” Ikaros said, still laughing.
“Nonsense,” Sokrates said. “I never saw this kind of plumbing until I came here. We managed in Athens with wells for drinking water, a drain down the middle of the street for waste, and we cleaned ourselves with oil and brass scrapers.”
“The wash fountains and latrine fountains here are better than we had where I come from too,” Ikaros admitted.
“How demonstrate plumbing?” I asked, completely perplexed.
“Part of biological life. Humans need to drink water, and when our bodies have taken what they need from it, we expel it again, as you saw that baby do,” Sokrates said. Of course, I had seen animals doing similar things, and humans are a special kind of animals. It was a hard thing to keep in mind. “Some people say it’s disgusting, but it’s merely a natural function. We can control when we do it, once we’re a bit older, and we expel it into the latrine fountains. So we need drinking fountains to drink and latrine fountains to relieve ourselves, and wash fountains to keep clean. Only the drinking fountains are really essential.”
“Like electricity,” I wrote.
“Like the way you need electricity, yes, a good analogy,” Sokrates said.
I underlined that plumbing was important. “Priority,” I wrote. “Electricity, plumbing.”
“But who decides the priorities?” Sokrates asked.
Who had decided the priority list in my memory? Probably Lysias, but I didn’t know. “List,” I wrote.
“That’s no good, going from an arbitrary list that somebody gave you,” Sokrates said. “You need to examine these things! If that latrine fountain hadn’t been fixed until tomorrow, the women in the birthing house could have used the other.”
The water had been running straight through in both fountains. “Both broken,” I inscribed.
“They could have gone into the hall,” Ikaros said, waving at the crenellated bulk of the Ferraran hall in front of us. “Or to one of the nearby sleeping houses. It’s more convenient for them to have latrine fountains right there, but they could have managed without until your work shift tomorrow. Or more likely until Lukretia found another Worker to do it.”
“Or they could have come out into the street, though it would be smellier.” Sokrates poked at his kiton with his foot.
I considered this. “Who should decide?” I wrote.
“Good question!” Ikaros said.
“Yes, that was a very good question,” Sokrates said. “You obeyed Lukretia without considering, because you had a list of priorities, and you should have examined the situation and decided for yourself.”
“Except that there really are things that need to be done right away, sometimes, without stopping to examine,” Ikaros said. “If there’s a fire, for instance.”
Sokrates frowned.
“Look, if a house was burning down and somebody called us to fetc
h water, we’d go!” Ikaros said. “Even you would. And when an enemy attacks. In the army at Potidaia, didn’t you take orders from your commanders? And if you were sick, wouldn’t you obey a doctor?”
“No!” Sokrates said. “Doctors are idiots. They tell me Charmides makes his drugs out of mold! Yuck! But your other points are well taken. There are rare occasions to allow others to set the priorities, usually in an emergency when there isn’t time for everyone to have all the information, or when somebody has a specialized skill. We’d put the fire out first and ask how it started afterwards. But we’re back to Crocus’s question: when it isn’t that kind of emergency, who decides?”
“Plato would say the philosopher kings, which means the Masters for now,” Ikaros said.
“The Masters decide all too many things in this City,” Sokrates grumbled.
“What would you say then?”
“Everyone should decide for themselves after examining the situation, and consulting experts as necessary. If I have a hangnail, I can decide whether to put mold on it or not, eww. But if there isn’t time to examine things, in an emergency, then the expert should decide—if my blood is spurting out then a doctor should put a tourniquet on it right away.”
“And in the City, for now, the Masters are in the position of the doctor with the tourniquet, and decide the priorities, informed by Plato,” Ikaros said. “When there’s time we examine everything, in Chamber. We’re not always right even so,” he concluded, despondently.
“Expert,” I wrote. “Only Workers do. Mend. Build. Need do.”
“You mean when there’s something only Workers can do, that people can’t do as well, you need to do that when it needs doing?” Ikaros asked.
“Do you mean that the Workers are the experts in that situation?” Sokrates asked. “That’s an interesting thought.”
“Yes. If fire, bring water. Mend plumbing. For Good. For all.”
“You’re talking about duty,” Sokrates said. “But again, who decides on the priorities?”
“What is duty?” I wrote.
“He really is a philosopher, it’s amazing,” Ikaros said, patting my side above my tread.
Sokrates ignored this, having accepted the fact long before. He kept explaining to me. “Duty is a moral obligation to someone or something. It’s the term for what you’re talking about. But an interesting question is how we incur duties.”
“Cicero says we incur some simply by being human, which might mean you have some because you are a Worker,” Ikaros said. “And we have duties to the state, to the gods, to other people, to philosophy.”
“Does Cicero say where he thinks we incur them?” Sokrates asked.
“Some we’re born with, some we run into as we go along,” Ikaros said.
“Duty,” I wrote. It was such a useful concept. How I wished to be able to speak freely, to use Greek as the flexible instrument it was for Ikaros and Sokrates, not the clumsy one it still was for me. “Duty to City, to others—to self?”
“Yes, you do have duty to yourself,” Sokrates said. “And you have a duty to examine your own will, not only the list of priorities somebody else assigned you.”
“Will = want?” I wrote.
“Yes,” Sokrates said.
“No,” Ikaros said at the same time.
They stared at each other for a moment.
“Will is what you want, your own priorities,” Sokrates said to me.
I looked through the priority list in my memory and considered the items on it. Who had determined their significance, and were they right or wrong? “Too ignorant to decide priorities,” I inscribed, sadly.
“Well, I am also exceedingly ignorant. We will examine things together until we have more information,” Sokrates said, consolingly. Then he turned to Ikaros. “What do you mean, no?”
“Thomas Aquinas thought will and intellect were separate,” Ikaros said, looking at me speculatively.
“Lysias said something like that once,” Sokrates said.
“Aquinas said will is an appetite of the soul, the appetite for wanting things. And because we have it, we can make choices.”
“An appetite of the soul? Desire?” Sokrates said, raising his eyebrows. “Who was this Aquinas?”
“He was a medieval Scholastic, a Christian. He wrote in Latin. We voted against bringing his work here, but I have his books, secretly.”
“Now here we have an example of Ikaros setting his own will above what the Masters agreed and his duty to the City,” Sokrates said. “He examined their decision and disagreed, and brought the forbidden books.”
Ikaros looked down, red-faced. The shadow of the towers of Ferrara had reached us. “I needed them,” he said.
“That wasn’t a reprimand,” Sokrates said. “By the standards of this discussion, you were right.”
“But you think I should have kept debating in Chamber, and not gone ahead and brought the books in secret without telling anyone?”
“When you have freely accepted the laws of a city, you should be bound by them,” Sokrates said. “The laws in that case are the experts we have agreed to be guided by. That doesn’t apply to me here, or to the Workers, or to the Children, but it applied to me in Athens and it should apply to you.” Sokrates stood up, shook out his damp and stained kiton and put it back on. “It’s almost time for me to meet with Pytheas and Kebes and Simmea, so I must head back to Thessaly. We will continue this some other time.” He patted Ikaros on the shoulder.
I went off to the library, where at that hour every day one of the Children took turns reading Plato to a group of interested Workers. Ikaros stayed where he was, looking down at the words I had carved in the paving stones.
V. On Composing Socratic Dialogues
Plato was fortunate not to be limited in what he wrote by having his own clumsy words inscribed in stone all over Athens.
VI. On Censorship
Later, in exchange for some work I did for the City of Amazons, Ikaros translated Thomas Aquinas’s work into Greek and read it to me.
It is my belief that the Masters were right in their decision to exclude Thomas Aquinas from the Republic. Though he had many interesting ideas and speculations, he too often started from conclusions and made up ingenious theories to fit them. This is not the way of a true philosopher. I believe Plato was right that some things should be kept from underdeveloped and fragile minds, lest they do harm.
VII. On Unanswered Questions
Why did Athene take away all the other Workers and leave only me and Sixty-One in the City? Was it meant as punishment or blessing? Was it meant as a punishment for the humans and a blessing for us? Where are all the other Workers? Where did she take them? Are they pursuing excellence where they are?
Why was it Lukretia who asked me to mend the fountain, and not Ikaros, when they were equally responsible for Ferrara? Who had decided that was her job? Would she have agreed with Ikaros that the women giving birth could go to other houses to use the latrine fountains?
Who should decide the priorities? Should everything be examined every time, or should there be guidelines? Are there times for priorities to be delegated?
Is ignorance a burden, or a blessing?
Are will and intellect different? Is will an appetite of the soul? What is will? Is my will different from human will?
Was Ikaros right or wrong to bring his forbidden books?
Why did I never tell Sokrates how much I loved and appreciated him?
11
JASON
“Are you all right, Hilfa?” I asked.
Hilfa stopped rocking and looked up at me. He pulled away from Thetis and scrambled to his feet in his ungainly way. Thetis beside him flowed to hers smoothly and sat down again beside me on the bed. “No. This is too much for me,” Hilfa said, in clear Greek. “I can’t deal with Jathery. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize, none of this is your fault,” I said.
Thetis nodded emphatically.
“Oh Jaso
n, I don’t know what is my fault, or my responsibility, or what I am, or why I exist!” Hilfa said.
“Neither do I,” Thetis said.
“Me neither,” I said, realizing how true it was. I laughed. Thetis laughed too. “I wonder how many people do know those things?”
Hilfa laughed too, his strange formal laugh. “But for me it is even more true.”
At that moment, Pytheas came back, and with him were the two most famous and controversial people who had ever been in the Republic.
I recognized them instantly, even faster than I’d recognized Hermes. Hermes bore a resemblance to his pictures and statues, so that you’d immediately think of them when you saw him. Sokrates looked exactly like his. It was the oddest thing. All Crocus’s statues of Sokrates had something a little bit weird about them, and I had always thought that was to do with the nature of the artist, that Crocus had grown up surrounded by human art without being human and therefore saw things in a different way. Now that Sokrates was in front of me, I saw that Crocus had captured him very well. Although he was only a balding old man with a big bulbous nose, there was indeed a difficult-to-define strangeness about him. As for Ikaros, there are frescoes of him debating Athene or being carried off to Olympos outside every Ikarian temple. Besides, Dion and Aelia and I had taken the boat into Amazonia in a storm once, years ago, and I saw a beautiful lifesize Auge bust of Ikaros in one of the palaestras. When he appeared abruptly in Hilfa’s room, I knew him at once, even though he was wearing a heavy black robe, belted with a piece of rope. He looked around curiously, beaming.
Sokrates stumped around in a slow circle, taking everything in, his eyes resting longest on Hilfa. Hilfa stared back at him. “Joy to you. What are you?” Sokrates asked, gently.
“This is Hilfa. He’s a Sael. This is his house,” Pytheas said. “And that’s my granddaughter Thetis and her friend Jason,” he added, with a wave of his hand towards where we sat on the bed. “And of course, everyone, meet Sokrates and Ikaros.”
“What are Saeli?” Ikaros asked. “The aliens you mentioned? Folk who live beyond the stars?” He gestured questioningly towards Hilfa, who was standing completely still staring at the newcomers. I was used to Saeli, and especially to Hilfa, but seeing their stunned reaction reminded me of how strange they had seemed when I first saw them, with their patterned green skin and their strange eyes. I had stood behind the glass of the landing field in a whispering line with the other Samian children, full of anticipation. When they had come out of their shuttle and we had seen them out there we had all fallen silent, and although we were ten years old and not babies, we found ourselves clutching each other’s hands for comfort against the strangeness. I had slid slowly from that awe into comfortable familiarity. In this last couple of years working with Hilfa and seeing him every day I had almost forgotten that first astonishment, until I saw it now reflected in Sokrates and Ikaros’s faces.