Page:The American Essay in War Time, Agnes Repplier, 1918.pdf/8

256 have us do something for them. Every human relation involves responsibility; whereas when we have drawn from an ancient volume all the wit and sweetness it can yield, we put it back on the shelf and have done with it.

This is the true spirit of the essayist who is meditative rather than satiric; yet it is to the pen of Mr. Crothers that we owe a most delicate and pitiless exposition of that moral debility which has blighted the far-famed scholarship of Germany. With admirable art he has embodied the Prussian philosophy in a letter from Epaphroditus to Epictetus. The master bids the slave to be content with slavery, since it in no wise interferes with intellectual and spiritual progress: "In all that concerns thy higher life thou shalt be free. Thy master will watch thy flight into pure virtue with approval. He will be the lower limit of thy activity. He will prevent thy powers from being wasted on matters unworthy of thee. Thy problem is to be as free as it is possible to be while yet his slave." What Epaphroditus asks—and it seems to him a just demand—is that the wisdom of the slave shall be the possession of the master. Epictetus must be wise within bounds, and his teaching must support the well-ordered fabric of established rule. It is for him to give men correct answers before they are prompted to ask difficult questions. Thus and thus only shall authority be fortressed by intelligence. "Man is a rational animal, and loves to have a reason for what he is compelled to do."

To this acute and specious argument Epictetus opposes one overmastering fact. A slave, he admits, may be a lofty philosopher, but only a free man can teach the truth: "The teacher does not hold his thought. He releases it. It straightway flies to another mind, and urges it to action. How can you expect your lame slave to follow his freed thoughts that now have entered into minds more enterprising and courageous than his own. If I teach justice, how shall I prevent some quick-witted young man from doing a just deed which may disturb the business of my master?"