As might have been expected Okyrhöe was deeply impressed by the handsomeness and dignity of Telemachos; and as for Pontopereia she couldn’t resist permitting a passionate prayer to Athene to embody itself in words in her mind: a prayer that if she should be called upon to utter words of prophetic insight in the presence of this silent, austere, good-looking man, with such broad-shoulders and such an intensely abstracted look on his stern face, she might be true to herself, true to her inspiration, and true to the great goddess who would use her as a reed through which to pour forth the rhythmic waves of her message to the world.
Their meal that night was indeed only half through when, constrained by a sudden urge whose origin was wholly obscure to her, Pontopereia asked Telemachos a plain direct unequivocal question.
“What would you say, My Lord Telemachos, was the real heart of your teaching? I mean the sort of thing you would have to explain to any student of philosophy, whether a boy or a girl, who wished to be considered as your proper disciple?”
Telemachos glanced quickly and a little uneasily at his father as if to assure himself that the old man would not mind his launching out upon such a topic at such a time; but as he received no warning against it, and, in place of that, saw something resembling the flicker of a benevolent smile cross his progenitor’s face, he addressed himself to Pontopereia with sincere pleasure.
And the truth was that the longer she listened to him the more did Pontopereia feel drawn to the man and thankful she had risked her question. “He’s lonely;” she told herself, “he’s lonely and unhappy. He’s invented this philosophy of his to fill a void. His philosophy is his kingdom, his wife, his children, his weapons, his ships, his ploughs, his horses, his granaries.” And indeed his words, when he spoke, almost humorously fulfilled her prediction.
“I would tell this imaginary disciple of mine, lady‚” he said, “to make philosophy a substitute for every kind of success he can possibly want — no! more than a substitute, a fulfilment! I would say: ‘What do you really want from life?’ You’ve probably never asked yourself! Few of us do when we’re young. But anyone who has watched you will know you’ve wanted the satisfaction of your hunger, your thirst, your lust, your hunting spirit, your fighting spirit, your collecting mania, your athletic mania, your building mania, your passion to be beautiful, to be a great artist, to be desired by many. Well, and what have you already attained in regard to this desire of yours? You’ve got the rudiments, the embryonic beginnings of all of them. You’ve got a body and a soul. You are a human being. You are living on the earth with the ocean around the earth, and the sun and the moon above the earth, and the stars above the sun and the moon, and the eternal ether above the stars.
“Well! consider your situation. You are a separate individual. You are a lonely individual. And though you may have got parents and brothers and sisters your happiness depends upon your own feelings for life, not upon their feelings for life nor upon their feelings for you. Well! you are surrounded by things that are made of the four elements, made of earth, made of fire, made of water, made of air. Very good. You have the power of embracing these things: of seizing upon them and embracing them so closely that you become one with each one of them.
“But these things, although like yourself they are separate and individual, are made up, just as you are yourself, of the four elements. Very well then! It is clear that when you, a human being, embrace the earth, you are embracing something made of the same material that you are made of. That is to say that a person made of air, water, earth, fire, is embracing other objects or entities or beings, also made of earth, fire, water, air. Thus with your mind and all your senses, thus with your body and all your soul you become one with the whole earth and with the ocean that surrounds the earth, one with the sun and moon, and one with the stars, and one with the immeasurable divine ether that surrounds the stars. Your body and your soul by this embrace become one with the body and the soul of the divine ether and with all that it surrounds. Earth, ocean, sun, moon, stars, ether, they are now one living thing; and to this one living thing, you, a separate living thing, are now joined in an inseparable embrace.
“You, and these things, now become one, have now become a larger one, an immeasurable one, but you still have the power in yourself, the terrific inexhaustible power in yourself, to work upon; to influence, to direct, to drive, to move this New Enormity, this vast new world, this world which you have created by embracing what you have embraced. In one sense therefore you have thus created a new world by joining the old world. Yes, you have created a new earth and ocean and sun and moon and a new immeasurable divine ether.
“Nor do you stop with this; for you go on working upon, and driving, and forcing, and moving, and directing, and re-creating, this immeasurable earth-ocean-sun-moon-ether, moulding it nearer and nearer to the secret desire of your heart; that is to say moulding this newly created earth-ocean-sun-moon-ether, and compelling it to obey your will.
“Now you may naturally say that you are only one of the innumerable separate individual lives who are working and willing and re-creating and re-moulding this existent one or super-one made of earth-ocean-sun-moon-stars and immeasurable depths of divine ether; and you will be perfectly right in saying this. You are only one of the many wills who are driving this earth-ocean-sun-moon-stars and immeasurable depths of ether forward upon its way. Its way whither?
“Ah! that is the impenetrable secret of which you are yourself a living part and a partial creator. You, a secret agent, have an obscure purpose in your mind; and so have your innumerable fellow-agents driving the universe on its way; but on its way to what—ah! that remains an impenetrable secret!”
Having completed his discourse Telemachos gave Pontopereia a hurried smile and a friendly but rather stiff little bow and once again, as at the beginning of his words, turned his head and glanced hurriedly and a little apprehensively at his father. Pontopereia missed nothing of these two motions; and from the nature of his smile, and from the quality of that respectful little obeisance addressed to herself, she clearly took in, as it can be believed the sharp-witted Okyrhöe did also, more of the man’s own essential character than was revealed in the vague and obscure method of philosophizing he had been at such pains to advocate.
Telemachos had his father’s massive, clear-cut, majestic, and severe cast of features. Where the general outline of their faces differed, apart from the fact that the old hero had a beard while his son was clean-shaved, was that Odysseus’s features were rugged and rock-like while Telemachos’s were like smoothly polished marble. Of the two of them, the son was the handsomer, the father the more easy-going, humorous and informal.
As you looked at the two of them you could see the effect of the fact that the father’s life had been passed, and was still being passed, in a constant and lively stream of contact with friends and enemies, while the son’s was now being divided between solitary walks along the edge of the sea and meditations in a small chamber surrounded by deep recesses full of parchment-rolls, either inscribed by the careful fingers and the exquisitely prepared pigments of ancient Sumeria, or by the less careful and much more daring imagination of the artists of Crete.
Telemachos could have devoted the closing periods of his discourse to an eloquent analysis of the nature of the cosmos, and of the part played in that nature by the four elements, as well as by the souls of the living entities, who are, as he explained, urging and driving and steering forward the whole body of life, and he probably would have done so, had he not suddenly felt in the depths of his being an inexpressible longing to escape from the whole business; not only from the urging and driving and stirring, not only from the desperate willing and the heroic share, if only an infinitesimal share, in the creation of the future, but from the things in themselves; yes! from the ancient earth herself, mother of us all, from the sun and the moon and the stars and from the divine ether;—from it all, from it all, from it all!