Chapter Eight

Fourth Step

NAMING THE STONES

The man who understands himself understands others. Men and women who don’t know themselves don’t understand others, either. They make bad choices, and fail in what they attempt.
Socrates quoted in Xenophon's MEMORABILIA, IV. ii. 26-27, 29

HE HAD FALLEN ALSEEP TO THE RHYTHMIC BREATHING
of the horses and the two brothers. He woke in the night to a noise he could not identify, a scuffling in the trees that could have been the eagle owl landing heavily after hunting. He fell asleep almost immediately, and did not wake again until early morning when a horse scrambled to her feet in the hay.

He gazed at the horse attentively, surprised she had been lying down, for he was aware that horses usually sleep standing up, the interlocking ligaments and bones in their legs suspending their body weight like a sling while their muscles completely relax. Her dark, curving head, bent over her braced legs, lifted as she found her balance, and exhaled. The breath of her nostrils plumed the air. Comically adorned with wisps of hay she looked at him with large, thoughtful eyes, then turned her back on him and strolled with her strong elegant legs on her small feet to half the length of her tether. The other horses, heads and necks bent over their hay, glanced up at her briefly, and returned to their breakfast, or what remained of their dinners for they had not yet been fed. The two brothers were still soundly sleeping. The mare stood gazing off, as if contemplating her next thought, then lifted her tail, and expelled a series of droppings, which fell and steamed gently in the hay.

Socrates chuckled. She was beautifully down-to-earth, and he was, it had to be said, an unregenerate city boy who loved the urban scene. Not that he objected to the boar, the lion, the lynx and the hawks, eagles, and owls roaming the precincts of their sanctuary. It was simply that he found the city’s stimulating mix of people and conversation more agreeable.

He stood up, slapped the hay off his tunic, and stepped toward the door. His path took him alongside the brothers, and for a moment he looked down at them, lying together. He did not have a brother. He had never known this kind of closeness. Looking at the eyelashes brushing their cheeks, their slightly parted lips, and the suppled, muscled skin of their chests and arms – Peisistratus had thrown one bare arm across Telemachus – Socrates saw their beauty and their innocence. Transfixed he watched the delicate fluttering of a pulse below a throat, and breathed slowly out, expelling air in a gentle ish.

He walked on toward the door, and saw Nestor standing on the threshold, watching him.

He had thought of him as old, but Nestor looked like a younger man today, taller and stronger, his hair damp as if he had worked out in a gym, then bathed, and his muscled arms glistening with oil. Socrates waited for the older man to speak, and as he waited, affectionately recalled how he had shared his deepest thoughts with him the night before, and how Nestor had listened, providing comfort and consolation and insight with his listening.

Nestor reached out a hand, and laid it along Socrates' cheek as if he were a son, and said, "Are you ready? This won't be easy."

"As ready as I can be," Socrates said, "given I know nothing of what is to come."

"You will have to face the stones," Nestor said, looking at him keenly.

"The stones?"

"You will have to name them," Nestor said.

"How will I know what they are?"

"You already know them. The danger is ignoring or forgetting them."

"Meaning I will have to speak the truth," Socrates said. He knew that the Greek word for truth means not to forget, and he was confident he would not forget and he would speak the truth. Didn't he love the truth?

"Father." Brief and quiet as it had been, their conversation had awakened Telemachus. He had thrown off his brother's arm, and was already on his feet, moving toward them ardently, but "You've already been out," he told his father, as he saw the light streaming through the door of the stable and read his father's face. His own face creased with disappointment. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"A hunter wakes himself," Nestor said shortly.

Socrates thought he sounded hard, but Telemachus nodded without resentment, and his concern was for his father. "So you went alone."

"I went with Melissa," said Nestor. "She's a marvelous huntress. Tomorrow we'll go together," he told his son, and smiled, and Socrates was suddenly sure that Nestor would gladly lay down his life for his son. "Will you and your brother handle the horses, water, and firewood?" Nestor asked him.

"I'll help him," Socrates said.

"You have work of your own," Nestor answered, and motioned him outside. Light was streaming in soft arrows through the trees, and they stood in the light in the cool morning.

"Listen to me," Nestor said. "One cliff reaches with its sharp peak to broad heaven, and a dark cloud surrounds it. This never melts away, nor does clear sky ever surround the peak of this cliff in summer. No man can scale it, for the rock is smooth as if polished. In the midst of the smooth rock is a cave, far above the sea channel that lies below. No man, no matter how strong, can shoot an arrow into that vaulted cave from his ship. In that cave lives the Scylla, with twelve flexible legs and six exceedingly long necks and on each neck a frightful head with three rows of sharp teeth full of black death. Her body is hidden in the cave, but she stretches out her long necks, hunting for dolphins and sea-dogs and sailors in their ships. Under the second cliff, lying just across the channel from Scylla is Charybdis. Three times a day Charybdis sucks down the sea and belches it out like a great smoking cauldron. No one avoids death in that whirlpool, so ships hug Scylla's cliff, but as they gaze fear-crazed at Charybdis, Scylla reaches down and grabs them, lifting them aloft while they cry out and writhe in her teeth, drawing them up to her cave, and devouring them."

Socrates knew the story, and believed it was only a story, but he felt a wild chill when Nestor said urgently, "When you face the stones you will face Scylla and Charybdis, whose secret names are fear. To survive, you will have to name the stones."

But fear was far from his mind when they stood outside the doors of the hall in the morning light while Diotima prayed, and poured the libation. He saw five boulders in the court that he had not seen the night before, but he thought nothing of them. He was glad to see Diotima, and thrilled to hear her voice. He had privately come to doubt the gods, having no logical reason for thinking they existed, but her voice when she sang the prayers was music, and calmed and grounded him. He was only sorry she appeared so distant. Her distance pained him. He missed the intimacy of their first conversations, and he was glad when she remained in the hall after they had breakfasted.

She sat on a klismos, a chair with a curving back and curving legs that framed her as she sat in the flowing robe of her ankle-length khiton which curved softly around her breasts and rippled around her waist and flowed down the length of her legs like a long beautiful wave. She didn't touch the lyre. She leaned slightly forward and addressed him, while Melissa and Nestor listened.

In a quiet voice Diotima reminded him that the word logos had a number of meanings. It could mean word, conversation, story, idea, theory, reason, accounting, rule or principle. He was familiar with these meanings, and he nodded, gazing back into her eyes. "But logos has another, more ancient meaning," Diotima said, "which is gathering or picking up. You remember the Achaean heroes gathering the white bones of Achilles after his body was consumed on the funeral pyre."

Certainly he remembered.

"You see how the verb is mother to the noun," Diotima said, "and how we have gathered and fashioned stones to build houses and wells and temples, amphitheatres and memorials. Stones form the body of the polis. We set them as boundary lines. We use them as anchors and shuttles. We construct our hearths and our roads from stones."

He saw, but he did not really see where she was going with this.

"In the same way," Diotima told him, "we gather words. We gather words to build houses for ideas and wells for the waters of wisdom. In the temple of words we invoke the gods. In the amphitheatre of the constitution we establish how the citizens of the polis will live. We set down words as boundaries separating the lawful from the lawless. We offer words as memorials for the dead."

He saw where she was going, and his mind leaped, playing with her ideas.

"Words are anchors," Diotima said, "that keep the mind from drifting. Words are shuttles that weave the threads of action. Words are hearths that hold the energy of the kosmos. Words are stones paving the roads that lead out of the past and into the future that is always becoming present."

He smiled inwardly. If this intellectual discussion was all there was to the stones, he did not imagine it would be too difficult to face them. Nevertheless Nestor's concern had been so palpable he waited with a little apprehension for her to continue.

"Now there are other stones," Diotima said, "and many of us carry them, but we build nothing with them. We go to the temple and agora carrying stones. We try to make friends with stones in our hands. We throw stones hard enough to hurt. We construct marriages of stone. We build a cairn of stones over the life we wished we had lived."

She paused, and said gently, "You know the stones you carry. Life is hard enough without lugging stones. We cannot live the life we are called to live until we face the stones, and we will never really be happy until we put them down. You do not own the stones," she said. "It is probable you never wanted them. But you are carrying them, so it is your task to put them down." She rose swiftly, and left him. Melissa followed her, and he sat alone with Nestor.

"Name your stones," Nestor said.

He gripped the arms of his chair, feeling as if he had been tossed into the sea. It was one thing to hear about stones and quite another to be told he was carrying them. He struggled to regain his balance.

Nestor said, "Right. Name them."

Socrates stared at him, and tried to get a grip on himself. He heard a dim booming in his ears like surf roaring on rock. Who was Nestor to say he had stones and even if he did why should he tell him about them?

"What you don't name, what you hide, will devour you," Nestor said. "Is that the living death you want?"

And still Socrates stared at him, gripping the arms of his chair as if he had been turned to stone.

"Alright," Nestor said patiently, "Let me ask you a different question. You know Protagoras. When you look at Protagoras, what do you see? Do you see a man so proud of his intelligence he lords it over others, sure he has the answer to every important question?"

Socrates nodded, for it is much easier to see the stones that others carry.

"Would you call the stone he carries hubris?" Nestor asked, using the Greek word for pride.

"Yes, I would," Socrates said. He was breathing more easily.

"And what about yourself? Do you believe you possess hubris?"

"Why on earth would I convict myself by saying so?" Socrates asked.

Nestor ignored his remark, and asked, "Do you believe that you know the answers, and others don't and your way of thinking is the right way to think?"

"I don't know," Socrates said.

"Think about it," Nestor said. "Think about how you feel about Protagoras and Hippocrates and their ability to think logically. Indeed, think about how you feel about Athenians who don't feel what you feel about areté.

Socrates felt himself flush from the crown of his head to his throat. "Alright," he said in a choked voice. "I have felt hubris."

"We are more than the stones that we carry," Nestor observed, "but it is useful to know we are carrying them. Now think about Pericles. An impressive man, the leader of Athens. He has pleased the people by starting a great public works program. The results have been spectacular, but one has the disturbing feeling that Pericles established the program to become popular with Athenians. He never says so, of course. But it seems likely that he is trying to curry popularity. Do you think it's possible that Pericles carries the stone of wanting to please?"

"It's possible," Socrates said. "If so, he has used it to good effect."

"I'm not interested in sophistry," Nestor told him bluntly. "A bad action may be redeemed, but it remains the wrong thing to have done. Or are you unaware of how politicians trying to curry favor have led their cities to disaster?"

"I'm aware of it," Socrates said shortly.

"Have you tried to impress Pericles?" Nestor asked. "Have you ever cared what he thought about you or hoped he would invite you to his house or tried to please him in any way?"

Socrates felt and looked appalled. He hated to admit it. It was deeply humiliating to admit, but yes, he had. Of course he had tried to please Pericles. He could hardly bear to remember why. Certainly it was not because he loved him. He had wanted to shine in his kosmos, to be seen with him, to have Pericles think well of him, to have people think Pericles was his friend. "Yes," he said with agonizing shame. "Yes. Not recently however..."

"We are naming your stones, not analyzing them," Nestor observed. "Would you say envy is a stone you have?"

"Occasionally, probably, yes."

"Don't try to please me by going overboard," Nestor said. "I may be wrong, but I don't see envy as one of your stones. Many people carry this stone, however, and the longer they carry it, the heavier it gets." He looked hard at Socrates. "Greed?"

"I think I can honestly say I'm not greedy," Socrates said with a touch of pride.

"It's no mark of virtue in your case," Nestor said drily. "You do not appear bound by the typical things that bind men and women – alcohol, food and sex. Not that you don't appreciate all three, but you're not in bondage to them, you're not controlled by them. I don't say you couldn't be. Only that you're not. On the other hand you are greedy for ideas, and what you like best," Nestor said musingly, "is to be in control of them, and not only in control of ideas. You want to control your life. Isn't that right?"

"If by wanting to control ideas you mean I like clarity and reason, yes, then I like to control them,' Socrates said with a flash of anger. "If by wanting to control my life you mean I am accountable for myself, then yes, I want to control my life."

"But that is not what I mean," said Nestor, "though I would support the areté of being accountable since only a man who is accountable can truly be free. What I mean is the stone that has a man believe there is nothing more important than his ideas, the stone that has a man believe he depends on others for nothing, though in truth depending on them for his life, the stone that has a man exploit others so his friendships, his work, his very meals and the persons who prepare them are heavy with this stone, though he conceals it. You know the name of this stone, do you not?"

He knew the name, but harsh bile was rising in the back of his throat, and he felt he was being dragged down by the thundering sea.

"Do you believe you carry it?" Nestor asked. "If so, name it."

Name it. To survive you have to name the stones. He gasped, and said, "I believe I carry it." As he did, he felt himself shoot to the surface. How could he have failed to see the stone? All his life it had blocked the faces of his parents and the boys and men who might have been his friends. It had blocked the very earth and sun. Only Diotima had been able to penetrate this stone.

"It is the stone of tyranny," he said, and realized for the first time how closely connected were the stones carried by a person and the stones carried by a polis. The Athenians had thrown off their tyrants decades earlier, but in seeking to exert absolute control over his life he had picked up the tryannical stone.

"It is related to another stone, which you may have noticed yourself carrying," Nestor said in the same blessedly unjudgmental tones.

Socrates knew instantly which stone he meant, and his vanity prompted him to answer. "It is the stone of Narcissus," he said, and then, more slowly, as he realized what he was admitting about himself, "It is an excessive, blinding interest in my ideas and my self which relates to my need to control others so I can be exalted."

"Narcissism both resembles and differs from pride," Nestor observed.

But Socrates felt a terrible shame at the stones he was carrying. He felt exposed. He felt as if he had been stripped naked and was struggling against the weight of a terrible stone that would crush him.

"Can you name what stone you are facing now?" Nestor asked, and his eyes held Socrates' eyes steadily.

And Socrates felt the stone he was trying to push away roll crushingly back toward him, and knew there was only one way to stop it. "Shame," Socrates said. "Shame," and as he acknowledged the truth he felt freed from "the shameless stone". He took a quick, gulping breath.

"There are many other stones," Nestor said. "They seem to be part of one large family. Those with the stone of control often find fault with others. Those who try to please others often pity themselves. Those carrying the stone of Narcissus often carry the stones of greed and envy. Those who carry the stone of pride often carry the stone of doubt, and those who carry the stone of doubt often carry the stones of boredom, procrastination, and bitterness. Are there any other stones you would like to mention?" he asked Socrates.

"I think that's enough," Socrates said.

"Ah, but there is one stone missing," Nestor said.

And Socrates knew immediately what it was because he had felt the stone as soon as Nestor had asked him to name another.

"It is the father and mother of all stones," Nestor said.

And still Socrates did not speak. He knew the stone. The stone was in his mouth. He could taste it.

"Unless we name the stones, we will never know our true selves, for our true selves have nothing to do with the stones," Nestor said. He was looking at Socrates gravely.

And still Socrates did not speak with that stone in his mouth. How could he admit he was carrying the father and mother of all stones.

"You might say resistance to naming the stones is a stone," Nestor said. "But that is not the name of your stone. You must name the stone."

And still he was silent, and the stone lay in his mouth, and he glared at Nestor and no longer knew whether he would not or could not speak.

"This is the stone that causes men to avoid the truth," Nestor said. "Strange that you will not speak."

And still he was silent, and his mouth was dry with the stone, and his body ached with carrying it.

"Do you understand?" Nestor cried. "There is no going back, there is no taking refuge in the hold, hoping you will escape Scylla. You cannot escape unless you speak the truth."

But he could not or would not speak. Below him thundered the whirlpool and above stretched the devouring head.

And Nestor spoke to him in a voice so low he had to strain to hear it over the waves. "You cannot live without the truth. Choose life." And he lifted his arms, and opened them as if he would simultaneously protect and embrace him.

His words meant nothing to Socrates, but his love meant everything. He felt Nestor's love supporting him, desiring the best for him, believing in him.

He said, "Fear. The name of my stone is fear."

Then he saw his fear. He saw all the ways he had feared from the time he was a small boy. He saw it, and the stone slipped from his mouth and he was free.

He felt lighter, happier, stronger, more confident. He felt larger than his fear. His fear became rather theoretical, in fact, and less real to him. He dropped it, and sidled away, metaphorically speaking, and thought well, that's that.

And Nestor with a towering, holy anger that was forceful and focused said, "You're not taking fear seriously. You think you can name it, and forget about it, but your fear will return."

"What are you telling me?" Socrates asked, and he felt his fear back in his mouth, grinding against his teeth. "Exactly what do you want me to do?" NEXT »

©2006 CATHERINE GLASS