Sale of Creeds (11-15)

Oh, vile creed! Monstrous creed! Avaunt!

But look you, it is all so easy; it is within every man’s reach. No education is necessary, no nonsensical argumentation. I offer you a short cut to Glory. You may be the merest clown—cobbler, fishmonger, carpenter, money-changer; yet there is nothing to prevent your becoming famous. Given brass and boldness, you have only to learn to wag your tongue with dexterity.

All this is of no use to me. But I might make a sailor or a gardener of you at a pinch; that is, if you are to be had cheap. Three-pence is the most I can give.

He is yours, to have and to hold. And good riddance to the brawling foul-mouthed bully. He is a slanderer by wholesale.

Now for the Cyrenaic, the crowned and purple-robed.

Attend please, gentlemen all. A most valuable article, this, and calls for a long purse.’ Look at him, A sweet thing in creeds. A creed for a king. Has any gentleman a use for the Lap of Luxury? Who bids?:

Come and tell me what you know. If you are a practical creed, I will have you.

Please not to worry him with questions, sir. He is drunk, and cannot answer; his tongue plays him tricks, as you see.

And who in his senses would buy such an abandoned reprobate? How he smells of scent! And how he slips and staggers about! Well, you must speak for him, Hermes. What can he do? What is his line?

Well, for any gentleman who is not strait-laced, who loves a pretty girl, a bottle, and a jolly companion, he is the very thing. He is also a past master in gastronomy, and a connoisseur in voluptuousness generally. He was educated at Athens, and has served royalty in Sicily[*], where he had a very good character. Here are his principles in a nutshell: Think the worst of things: make the most of things: get all possible pleasure out of things.

You must look for wealthier purchasers. My purse is not equal to such a festive creed.

Zeus, this lot seems likely to remain on our hands.

Put it aside, and up with another. Stay, take the pair from Abdera and Ephesus; the creeds of Smiles and Tears. They shall make one lot.

Come forward, you two. Lot No. 4. A superlative pair. The smartest brace of creeds on our catalogue.

Zeus! What a difference is here! One of them does nothing but laugh, and the other might be at a funeral; he is all tears—You there! what is the joke?

You ask? You and your affairs are all one vast joke.

So! You laugh at us? Our business is a toy?

It is. There is no taking it seriously. All is vanity. Mere interchange of atoms in an infinite void.

Your vanity is infinite, if you like. Stop that laughing, you rascal.—

And you, my poor fellow, what are you crying for? I must see what I can make of you.

I am thinking, friend, upon human affairs; and well may I weep and lament, for the doom of all is sealed. Hence my compassion and my sorrow. For the present, I think not of it; but the future!—the future is all bitterness. Conflagration and destruction of the world. I weep to think that nothing abides, All things are whirled together in confusion. Pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, great and small; up and down they go, the playthings of Time.

And what is Time?

A child; and plays at draughts and blindman’s-buff.

And men?

Are mortal Gods.

And Gods?

Immortal men.

So! Conundrums, fellow? Nuts to crack? You are a very oracle for obscurity.

Your affairs do not interest me.

No one will be fool enough to bid for you at that rate.

Young and old, him that bids and him that bids not, a murrain seize you all!

A sad case. He will be melancholy mad before long. Neither of these is the creed for my money.

No one bids.

Next lot.

The Athenian there? Old Chatterbox?

By all means.

Come forward!—A good sensible creed this. Who buys Holiness?

Let me see. What are you good for?

I teach the art of love.

A likely bargain for me! I want a tutor for my young Adonis.

And could he have a better? The love I teach is of.

Very unconvincing that. A teacher of the art of love, and never meddle with anything but the spirit? Never use the opportunities your office gives you?