Pt. 2 Thus, Solon spoke: “Gentlemen, it is my opinion that what so confuses our present age is the poison of envy and the spite that comes from it. This spite is what reigns over men. Our only hope against it is to infuse mankind with the charity and affection that God commands. But, how do we remove all of the occasions to inspire man’s envy? How do we replace it with the instinctive reciprocity that animals exhibit to one another of the same species? I say that all of these occasions for envy arise from the disparity of means! Can you truly deny it? If we were to introduce the concept of personal property to the animals - this ‘whats mine, whats yours’ mentality - they would at once tear each other to shreds. But having nothing of their own, look at the harmony in which the animals live! It is by the absence of personal property that we are blessed to preserve the peace. Indeed, God willed that mankind love on this earth in peace, not that the greedy should divide it up, making what is common to all of us become ‘whats mine, whats yours’. If it is true that greed is the source of inequality, then it is also true that all men are descended from the same parents, and so we are brethren: one and all. Therefore, each human brother ought to have a brother’s share. But the disproportion of wealth is unimaginable. Some possess more than they can ever hope to manage while others have not enough to even begin managing. Adding salt to the wound, it is so often the case that the virtuous man winds up a beggar while the wicked and the ignorant become rich. Disparity, my friends, is the root. From it comes the fact that the rich injure the poor, and the poor envy the rich. There is no better way to reform this age than the redivide the wealth of the world, allotting an equal share to everyone. To prevent the problem from arising again we should outlaw buying and selling. Let the many meet their individual needs according to the mother of all public peace: trade and barter, through which parity among goods is established invisibly.” Solon’s opinion was the subject of a long debate, and it was swiftly laid aside when Seneca intervened shortly. Seneca spoke: “If there should ever come such a new division of the world as you have described, an even greater disorder would follow. Too much would fall into the possession of fools, and far too little into the hands of intelligent and capable men; you’d soon find that plague, famine, and war are not God’s most severe scourges. No, the greatest affliction God could put on mankind would be to enrich the vulgar masses, for all other plagues would follow from this in due course.” Then Chilon spoke: “Which of you wise philosophers cannot see that all of these mischiefs come from the lust of silver and gold? What wickedness will men not commit just to have a great deal of it? We must conclude that there is no better way to rid ourselves of this oppressive rot that to forever banish metals from the world. These are the occasion for all evil.” There was a feeling within the council that Chilon’s opinion was correct but superficial. They concluded that man treasures silver and gold because, being a way to measure, they come to be the balance of all things. Man needs a metal to establish prices according to which he purchases what he thinks to be necessary. If there were no silver or gold, man would just find something to replace them, and deeming that new thing valuable, he would begin to covet it. One councilman reminded the rest of the case in the Indies, where they used cockle-shells for money. There they value shells more than gold or silver. Then Cleobulus spoke: “My masters, iron is responsible for our present condition, and you have only to banish it from the world. Surely gold and silver serve a necessary purpose, but iron, though it is meant for plows and spades, is fashioned by men into swords and daggers.” The assembly judged this opinion to be very true, but concluded that in order to expel iron from the world would require taking up that very iron against men, for in order to resist them men had only to reach for their swords and armor. They felt, in the end, that it was wrong to multiply mischiefs, to cure one wound while simply creating another. After all, men still need their plows and spades. Then Pittachus spoke: “Most knowledgeable gentlemen, this world has grown deplorable because, rather than achieving things according to virtue, men take the shortcuts of vice. What’s more, this corrupted generation rewards them for it! It hands them the prizes that truly belong to the virtuous. This inversion of the natural way of things has become so established that people no longer can gain positions of status by meriting them. Instead, like thieves they sneak into the houses of honor by putting ladders up to its highest windows. The way to reform this age is to make the most severe laws, by which we’ll compel men to be virtuous and ensure that whosoever intends to occupy dignified offices can only get there the hard way. We must block all of the crooked byways that ambitious hypocrites use to succeed, for they appear to be multiplying like locusts, spreading their contagion all over the world. When rascals are praised and mounted on the thrones of success, the danger is to virtue itself! No reasonable person can look at the mighty today and say for sure just how they got there.” This opinion of Pittachus was highly praised by the assembly, and it would surely have been approved if Periander had not interjected. Then Periander spoke: “What Pittachus says is true, but the question we ought to be asking ourselves is why Princes, having such interest in the affairs of State, do not give these dignified offices to the ablest and most deserving men! Surely, it should be to their advantage to surround themselves with the most capable people. Instead we find them promoting filthy creatures from out of the mire, men having no worth or honor. But here I say: these can only be the opinions of men who have never themselves been Princes! It is not for interests of the State that Princes neglect their subjects and deny ascendancy to their own children. Far be it from a Prince to destroy himself on account of blind fondness to his own servants, oh no. Princes do not act by chance, and their choices are not guided by passion or generosity, but instead by cold cunning and political skill. Of course we philosophers shall say that the best way to govern a kingdom is to give the highest offices to men of high merit! But the fact that almost no Princes take this advice is not on account of carelessness. Princes prefer crude men without merit over highly principled men because men of principle are dangerous. No doubt, a Prince needs capable men to surround him, but they also require men who are faithful. It is so often the case that valorous men are taken by their own lofty principles sooner than they are taken by loyalty to the Prince. Most men overrate their worth, but the virtuosos place such a high honor on their own greatness that they believe they add to the Prince’s reputation, as opposed to being credited themselves by their lord’s graciousness. In course, valorous and principled men will prove their faith to their morals, when what it called for is faith in a man. Thus, a Prince seeks fidelity over accomplishment. When he stands in need of loyalty, there can be no more useful a servant than one whose loyalty can be purchased with gold. A man of principle is more difficult to buy.” Then spoke Bias: “The reason for the world’s depravity is because mankind has shamefully abandoned the laws God laid down when He bestowed each race with its respective part of the world. To ensure peace on earth, He put the French in France, Spaniards in Spain, Germans in Germany and demons into Hell. Yet greed has caused the men from some nations to enter into others. If God does nothing in vain, then it must have been purposeful that He put the Pyrenean mountains between Spain and Italy, the Alps between Italy and Germany, the Channel between France and England, and the Mediterranean between Africa and Europe. The difficulties faced in passing the rivers and passages are the very signs that we ought to be content in the places we have been given. The Divine Wisdom knew that there would be war and incurable disease if man exceeded his given boundaries, and so He also confounded men in all their languages so that they’d even cease to speak the same tongue. It is their boldness that caused the Romans to ruin the affairs of other men and so at the same time disrupt their own. Why could they not have been satisfied with the dominion over Italy that they’d been given? Our remedy, then, is to force every nation to return to their own countries. To prevent this problem in the future, we must tear down the bridges, smear the ways over the mountains, and make all the land more inaccessible to navigation, by the use of technology, than even Nature herself had made them. Further, we should institute the severest penalties, and no boats should pass from one nation to another across any river or sea.” The council regarded Bias’s opinion with unusual attention, but they found it was not good. They said that the greatest problems between nations were not truly national, but the result of Princes that had so perfected the arts of dividing and conquering. They said that each nation possesses a certain manner, in terms of its resources and competencies, which gathered all up together were able to afford mankind a perfection not available to any one nation by itself. So travel must be necessary to gather all the wisdom of mankind, just as Ulysses had done by wandering. Moreover, they found the landscape so naturally given to certain ways of travelling, that by such routes spice flowers from Indonesia could flow into Italy in such large measure that an Italian might mistake them as having come from her own garden. Thus, Cleobulus rose again: “Gentlemen, by the diversity and extravagancy of our opinions, I sense that our Reformation business is impossible. If I may speak freely, I am frustrated. You all stand up to speak from the pulpit as though it were a bar stool, striving to impress us with your genius, rather than benefit the whole assembly by saying something sound. I’ve surveyed all of your opinions, and they are chimeras! What sophistical claptrap! Our chief concern should be that the solution is practical, and that it may do its work secretly **(4)** and be packaged in such a way as to be received cheerfully by those we shall reform. Otherwise, we risk deforming the world. Take the case of a Doctor. We’d be justified to rebuke any Doctor that prescribes a medicine to his patient this is impossible to use, or which might afflict him more than the disease itself! The solutions you have all given so far are just the kind that would convince man he was beyond the hope of all care! Men must be cheerful, and they must have hope. The great Tacitus tell us that anyone who would cut down an old oak tree is ill-advised if they start at the top branches. Likewise, we cannot cut our grim overgrowth from the top; our method must be to lay the axe at the very root! Therefore, the key to to the Reformation of the age consists in these few words: REWARD THE GOOD AND PUNISH THE BAD!” Then Cleobulus returned to his seat, not aware that he had greatly offended Thales. Thales returned: “Look how you have so smugly dismissed the opinions of these esteemed gentlemen for nonsense, Cleobulus. I’d have thought you’d been about to deliver us some miraculous antidote from a faraway place! Instead, you’ve espoused both the easiest and most impossible solution that anyone could ever dream! Did you truly believe that any of us was unaware that our business depends upon rewarding the good and punishing the wicked!? Dare I ask you to identify which among us, or anyone, is perfectly good? Who shall cast the first stone, Cleobulus? Who among us is exactly evil? I’d also like to know how you are able to discern what no man alive ever has: the way to tell true goodness from counterfeit. We live in an age when the wickedest are those who seem the best, and where actually good men are thought to be scandalous! It isn’t just Princes that do honor to cheaters and liars by listening to them. Look around you: nobody appears to have the sensibility but for the sweet music of liars! It is clear that the Truth of a man’s virtues can only be known or rewarded by God, who sees all things, and by whom all vice is also discovered. There is no law that men could ever pass which wouldn’t offend someone, and who, in objecting to it, would not come to be labeled a devil in spite of their otherwise goodly lives.” Thales’s rebuttal immensely satisfied the council, who at this point began to look at Periander. Thinking that this must mean they were waiting for his input, he rose up.