THE CHOICE OF HERACLES 
 
THE 
 
 CHOICE OF HERACLES 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF 
 
 HAMPDEN-SIDNEY COLLEGE 
 
 BY 
 
 FAIRFAX HARRISON 
 
 JUNE 10, 1913 
 
m 
 
 V ^V 
 

 THE CHOICE OF HERACLES 
 
 "To the entent that I wyll declare ho we gouernours of 
 realmes and cities may be prepared, 1 will use the policie of 
 a wyse and counnynge gardener: who purposynge to haue 
 in his gardeine a fyne and preciouse herbe, that shulde be to 
 hym and all others repairynge thereto, excellently comodiouse 
 or pleasant, he will first serche throughout his gardeyne where 
 he can finde the most melowe and fertile erth ; and therein 
 wil he put the sede of the herbe to growe and be norisshed." 
 
 Sir Thomas Elyot. 
 
 It is our pride to term Virginia conservative, not, as some 
 Philistines connote the word, with an intendment of what 
 is behind the times, but with a congratulatory apprecia- 
 tion that here are a people alive to all the real progress of 
 the age in which we live, but still clinging with respect to 
 that concept which spells patriotism — the subordination of 
 the individual to the community under equal laws. Here, 
 as in few parts of our broad United States, men still 
 regard that as good which their fathers did because their 
 fathers did it. We live at the end of an old era as well as 
 at the beginning of a new. We can still look back with 
 perspective while our eyes are beginning to reflect the light 
 of vision of the future. With this great privilege of imme- 
 diate contact with a background of which we can well be 
 proud, surrounded by the stately relics of a race which 
 moved slowly perhaps, but was guided more by principle 
 than by sentiment and emotion — a race which none dares 
 contemn, but all gentlemen are bred to honor— it is fitting 
 
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that Virginia should equip her sons for the contests of the 
 new life with whatever is best in the tradition of the past ; 
 that we should pass on the torch our forefathers passed to 
 us, if it still illuminates, as I shall to-day try to maintain 
 that it does. 
 
 Our modern creed tells us that those who laid the foun- 
 dation of our nation demanded too large a sacrifice of the 
 inherent rights of the individual to the general good of the 
 commonweal; that for all the fine French philosophy of 
 the Declaration of Independence, the government which 
 resulted from it was rather a government of Man than of 
 men and women; in fine, that it gave opportunity for the 
 very things it sought to overthrow— the growth of classes 
 and special privilege. In our reaction it may be ques- 
 tioned whether we are not going too far in our concern for 
 the Individual, and whether a modicum of that kind of 
 education which formed the principles of the Fathers 
 might not teach us that, after all, the rights of the Indi- 
 vidual conservatively might ever be subjected to such 
 limitation as sentimentality cannot be expected to appre- 
 ciate, but which wisdom, founded on a knowledge of hu- 
 man history, and indeed of Nature herself, can safely 
 impose. One is reminded of a philosophical observation 
 by Darwin : 
 
 "Perfect equality among the individuals composing the Fuegian 
 tribes must for a long time retard their civilization. As we see 
 those animals whose instinct compels them to live in society, and 
 obey a chief, are most capable of improvement, so it is with the 
 races of mankind. Whether we look at it as a cause or a conse- 
 quence, the most civilized always have the most artificial govern- 
 ments." 
 
 There have been three previous periods in the history 
 of the world when men, in reaction against the tyranny of 
 classes or of states, were actuated by that high passion of 
 
 4 
 
idealism for the individual which breathed through the last 
 inaugural address which has come to us from the Capitol 
 in Washington. The literature of Greece reveals a moment 
 when men were freeing themselves from the grip of the 
 state and seeking an unrestrained expression of individual 
 rights, with the privilege to discover and to explore them- 
 selves. It is no longer the age of iEschylus, finding its 
 catharsis in the poet's rehearsal of the fortunes and feel- 
 ings of kings and prophets and princely heroines — it is the 
 age of Euripides the disintegrator, who searched the heart 
 of personal experience and gave a poignant expression to 
 what he discovered. He in turn yielded the stage to 
 Menander and the unheroic emotions of Everyman in the 
 New Comedy, just as Browning has given way to Bernard 
 Shaw. 
 
 Again, at the end of the splendid history of the Roman 
 Republic, man sought once more to live for himself and no 
 longer for the state. Literature ceases to be epic in the old 
 Greek sense; it has become personal, esoteric. Catullus 
 plays upon our own private experience as freshly as the 
 Lydian waters still laugh on Sirmio, to-day as when, re- 
 turning from Oriental wanderings, he came once more to 
 his beloved Lago di Garda. But chiefly do we find the 
 new note in Virgil — no longer the stern, compelling 
 eloquence of Ennius, but a sweet sentimentalism which a 
 school-girl can understand. 
 
 Once more, at the close of another age — that of feudal 
 Europe — do we find men considering intensely the rights, 
 and even more the wrongs, of the individual. We are 
 taught to look upon the defense of Calas by Voltaire as 
 psychologically the highest moment of a great career of 
 illumination. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to suggest that each of these 
 periods of divagation of the interests of the citizen from 
 those of the state was followed by a subjugation of the 
 
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dearest of all individual rights— that of political liberty; 
 that Philip and his son put out forever the lamp of Greek 
 liberty; that Augustus destroyed the fabric which more 
 than anything material represented "the grandeur that 
 was Rome" ; that Napoleon crushed during a cruel hour a 
 nascent national independence. It is equally unnecessary 
 to deduce from what has been said that individuals find 
 their freest expression only under personal tyranny, which, 
 depriving them of concern in the welfare of all, diverts 
 them to a private fingering and fondling of their own 
 souls. It is enough to realize that we are living to-day in 
 another such age of dissent from the standards of the past ; 
 that our literary prophets drive home disillusion in order 
 to make us modern — Ibsen, behind the leering mask of 
 comedy, with the same clairvoyance as moved Erasmus or 
 Lucretius. 
 
 Our search is, then, for a gospel which each of us may 
 interpret as authority for the freest choice of moral stand- 
 ards ; and we hurry through all beliefs, dissecting as we go 
 those which have been held in the most sacred esteem. We 
 seek natural explanations of those dear prejudices which 
 have moved men to wonder and secret sympathy through 
 countless ages, and what was religion has for some become 
 merely mores, taboos, sun myths— an interesting subject 
 for research, but no longer a restraint of conduct. 
 
 And so our modern system of education, discontent 
 with the studies which have moved men to high and noble 
 endeavor, prescribes in place of them a pabulum of applied 
 science — the most reasonable, as it is the most dreary, of 
 the utilities of the modern world. We hear accepted lead- 
 ers of opinion insist that we shall no longer waste our time 
 with building of character; that the true end of education 
 is to sharpen our wits for the conflict of life, to arm our- 
 selves with weapons of immediate use. 
 
 All the cry of the schools is of vocational education. The 
 
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lad who has learned to read is to begin, forsooth, at once to 
 prepare himself for a trade or even a profession. To study 
 the classics, to drink inspiration at the fountains of the 
 past, is no more profitable, we are told, than the efforts of 
 Tantalus to slake his thirst. I do not mean to suggest that 
 vocational education is without its uses — far from it: but 
 that among such men as I am addressing to-day it might 
 well be confined to the individual whose bent of mind dis- 
 covers a probable career as a technician. Even if a man is 
 eventually to specialize, he is a sounder man if he does so 
 on a solid foundation of tradition. Vocational educa- 
 tion as. a system for all is what I deplore. It is a sage 
 counsel only for the industrially inept, for wage-earning 
 mechanics at the highest, but most necessary shall we say 
 for the negro — not for potential leaders of men. The trail 
 of it is, however, everywhere evident, even in our higher 
 schools and colleges, with the result that we are breeding a 
 race of average men whose education operates like a labor 
 union to deprive the best of the opportunity of his natural 
 equipment, and to reduce efficiency to a level attainable by 
 the incompetent. This is responsible for the most-to-be- 
 regretted type in our industrial life to-day — the man in 
 authority who is merely an official, competent to enforce 
 rules, diligent, earnest, faithful it may be, but incapable of 
 imagining new things. 
 
 With all deference to current opinion to the contrary, I 
 believe with old Sir Thomas Elyot that proper education 
 for holding places of authority is as vital to the welfare of 
 the state as the education of the many. As we are now 
 facing new and fundamental questions of politics, of social 
 science and economics, there was perhaps never a time 
 when, as a nation, we more required leaders of poise and 
 self-restraint, capable of bringing to the solution of the 
 new the experience of the old, not that they may solve these 
 questions only as they have been solved in the past, not 
 
 7 
 
that they may resist the pressure of the new, but that they 
 may be able to choose what is sound and avoid what is 
 merely specious. 
 
 I yield to none in admiration of the man who knows — 
 the man equipped with modern science; but I venture, 
 nevertheless, to assert that without background, as he too 
 often is, he may be a narrow man, and in very truth plays, 
 after all, but a small part in the world. He cannot move 
 men to action — he can only facilitate their poor material 
 and human convenience, which breeds more wants than it 
 satisfies; he cannot stir the heart to singing — he can only 
 reckon its pulsations. 
 
 My appeal is, then, to a view of life which will take ac- 
 count of the past as well as of the future, in education as 
 in the conduct of affairs for which education is the prepara- 
 tion. The objection is often made to that kind of 
 equipment which is founded largely upon study of the 
 humanities, that such a man enters life a mere amateur. 
 He knows nothing useful, and so, it is said, he is unfit for 
 industry, which in our age and in our civilization is the 
 chief end of life, and so of education ; that, for example, in 
 international commercial competition he is putty in the 
 hands of a technically trained German. I venture, how- 
 ever, to maintain the thesis that a man with a literary 
 education is as well equipped to lead the industrial world 
 as is a vocationally educated physicist or mechanical en- 
 gineer of similar natural parts and character. It is a 
 familiar experience in industry, as it is practised to-day, to 
 see the man who has little or no special training in science 
 —indeed, alas! sometimes little education of any kind out- 
 side of the school of experience— leading successfully 
 some great industry, solving its problems with full use of 
 all the mysteries of applied science, and reaping the re- 
 wards of power and honor which come with successful 
 
 8 
 
leadership. How he does this is not far to seek. He hires 
 the specialist as he requires him, and that too, unfor- 
 tunately for current educational theory, usually at a com- 
 paratively small wage. He does not himself need to know 
 what others can tell : he can use technical men as he uses a 
 table of logarithms. But, for leadership in its largest 
 aspect, he does need a personal and ever available equip- 
 ment of high principle, courage, both moral and physical, 
 and imagination — qualities which are native in some char- 
 acters, but may be cultivated in most through touch and 
 contact with the thoughts and minds of the great souls 
 who have by those qualities achieved great deeds in the past 
 — that immortal company the tradition of whose acts or 
 words constitutes the body of literature which we term the 
 classics. 
 
 I urge, then, upon those who would lead in industry, as 
 in other conflicts of life, to build character and imagination 
 by the study of the humanities. It is, however, no easy 
 school that I counsel, no promenade or pasear through the 
 contemporary literature of predigested knowledge — the 
 books about books— which crowd our libraries, the ancient 
 history drugged with modern politics, not Grote and 
 Mommsen, but Thucydides and Tacitus. I summon him 
 who would know and understand 
 
 "the springs 
 Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world," 
 
 back to the sources, to the originals in all ages, that by the 
 very labor of the search the knowledge may be more se- 
 curely gained and taste the sweeter in achievement. He 
 has weary days and straining nights before him, but he 
 has deathless privilege, the communion with great souls. 
 Scholarship in its technical sense is not now my subject. 
 It is not the life of an Oxford don, nor of a German privat- 
 docent, that I hold up to the emulation of a young Amer- 
 
 9 
 
ican who would become a captain of industry. The life of 
 a Scaliger, a Casaubon, a Bentley would be an anachro- 
 nism in our teeming world of industry. But from such as 
 these there is much more than scholarship to learn. Be- 
 cause their tools are those I recommend to him who would 
 know how to lead men, and because their methods are those 
 of the painful endeavor which alone yields enduring suc- 
 cess in any form of human enterprise, their lives may be 
 our inspiration as we read the books which their labors 
 have made readable. Here, for example, is Joseph 
 Scaliger pleasantly pictured for us by his great contem- 
 porary Casaubon, ever debonair in the use of his hard- 
 won learning : 
 
 "A man who, by the indefatigable devotion of a stupendous 
 genius to the acquisition of knowledge, had garnered up vast stores 
 of uncommon lore. And his memory had such a happy readiness 
 that, whenever the occasion called for it, whether it were in con- 
 versation or whether he were consulted by letter, he was ready to 
 bestow with lavish hand what had been gathered by him in the sweat 
 of his brow." 
 
 So it is that true classical study can never be dilettan- 
 tism. "Not without dust and heat" may one obtain a 
 literary education which may serve in the practical life to 
 come. I will take the liberty of illustrating my point by a 
 version from one of the books I recommend. It is the 
 old, old parable of the joy which comes in work, as Prodi- 
 cus the Sophist wrote and polished and read it to number- 
 less audiences of young Greeks in the great fifth century, 
 and was commended therefor by Socrates. Its moral is 
 to-day no less pertinent than is its charm of expression, 
 though the full measure of that charm must, indeed, be 
 sought in the Greek original. It is the parable of The 
 Choice of Heracles. 
 
 10 
 
"When Heracles was emerging from boyhood into the bloom of 
 youth, having reached that season in which the young man, now 
 standing upon the verge of independence, shows plainly whether 
 he will enter upon the path of virtue or of vice, he went forth into 
 a quiet place and sat debating with himself which of these two 
 paths he should pursue ; and as he there sat musing, there appeared 
 to him two women of great stature which drew nigh to him. The 
 one was fair to look upon, frank and free by gift of nature, her 
 limbs adorned with purity and her eyes with bashfulness ; sobriety 
 set the rhythm of her gait, and she was clad in white apparel. The 
 other was of a different type: the fleshy softness of her limbs 
 betrayed her nurture, while the complexion of her skin was em- 
 bellished that she might appear whiter and rosier than she really 
 was, and her figure that she might seem taller than nature had 
 made her ; she stared with wide-open eyes, and the raiment where- 
 with she was clad served but to reveal the ripeness of her bloom. 
 With frequent glances she surveyed her person, or looked to see if 
 others noticed her ; while ever and anon she fixed her gaze upon the 
 shadow of herself intently. 
 
 "Now when these two had drawn near to Heracles, she who was 
 first named advanced at an even pace towards him, but the other, 
 in her eagerness to outstrip her, ran forward to the youth, exclaim- 
 ing, 'I see you, Heracles, in doubt and difficulty what path of life 
 to choose ; make me your friend and I will lead you to the pleasant- 
 est road and the easiest. This I promise you : you shall taste all of 
 life's sweets and escape all bitters. In the first place, you shall not 
 trouble your brain with war or business ; other topics shall engage 
 your mind; your only speculation, what meat or drink you shall 
 find agreeable to your palate; what delight of ear or eye; what 
 pleasure of smell or touch; how you shall pillow your limbs in 
 softest slumber ; how cull each individual pleasure without alloy of 
 pain; and if ever the suspicion steal upon you that the stream of 
 joys will one day dwindle, trust me, I will not lead you where you 
 shall replenish the store by toil of body and trouble of soul. No ! 
 others shall labor, but you shall reap the fruit of their labors ; you 
 shall withhold your hand from nought which shall bring you gain. 
 For to all my followers I give authority and power to help them- 
 selves freely from every side.' 
 
 11 
 
"Heracles, hearing these words, made answer : 'What, O lady, is 
 the name you bear?' To which she : 'Know that my friends call me 
 Happiness, but they that hate me have their own nicknames for 
 me — Vice and Naughtiness.' 
 
 "But just then the other of those fair women approached and 
 spoke : 'Heracles, I too am come to you, seeing that your parents 
 are well known to me, and in your nurture I have gauged your 
 nature; wherefore I entertain good hope that if you choose the 
 path which leads to me, you shall greatly bestir yourself to be the 
 doer of many a doughty deed of noble emprise ; and that I too shall 
 be held in even higher honor for your sake, lit with the lustre shed 
 by valorous deeds. I will not cheat you with preludings of plea- 
 sure, but I will relate to you the things that are according to the 
 ordinances of God in very truth. Know then that among things 
 that are lovely and of good report, not one have the gods bestowed 
 upon mortal man apart from toil and pains. Would you obtain 
 the favor of the gods, then must you pay these same gods service ; 
 would you be loved by your friends, you must benefit these friends ; 
 do you desire to be honored by the state, you must give the state 
 your aid ; do you claim admiration for your virtue from all Hellas, 
 you must strive to do some good to Hellas; do you wish earth to 
 yield her fruits to you abundantly, to earth you must pay your 
 court ; do you seek to amass riches from your flocks and herds, on 
 them must you bestow your labor; or is it your ambition to be 
 potent as a warrior, able to save your friends and subdue your 
 foes, then must you learn the arts of war from those who have the 
 knowledge, and practise their application in the field when learned ; 
 or would you e'en be powerful of limb and body, then must you 
 habituate limbs and body to obey the mind, and exercise yourself 
 with toil and sweat. . . . Toils like these, O Heracles, son of noble 
 parents, it is yours to meet with, and, having endured, to enter 
 into the heritage assured you of transcendent happiness.' " 
 
 These are immanent lessons of success in a selfish world, 
 but the fierce joy which comes of consciousness of work 
 well done is not the only reward of him who builds his 
 character upon the humanities. He who equips himself 
 
 12 
 
for life with an education of science, but with "small Latin 
 and less Greek," what is his intellectual resource in his 
 hours of ease and divertisement? If he is a banker, like 
 Sir John Lubbock, he can doubtless amuse his leisure with 
 ants and bees; but if he is an entomologist for his liveli- 
 hood, he cannot reasonably expect diversion in banking as 
 an avocation: it is probable that the Comptroller of the 
 Currency might intervene with an awful veto. But he 
 who has founded his career upon a study of the great dead 
 whom we term the classics, has not only a fund of experi- 
 ence and tradition of achievement to guide and stimulate 
 his workaday life, but, when work is done, he has a sweet 
 well of imagination to dip into, vastly to be preferred to 
 the muck of a modern literature of unrest and sordid dis- 
 content. He may betake himself to that wonderful isle of 
 the poet's conjuring, there to invite his soul and refresh his 
 faculties. He, too, can live in Arcady. 
 
 "And I have fitted up some chambers there 
 Looking towards the golden Eastern air 
 And level with the living winds, which flow 
 Like waves above the living waves below. 
 I have sent books and music there, and all 
 Those instruments with which high Spirits call 
 The future from its cradle, and the past 
 Out of its grave, and make the present last 
 In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, 
 Folded within their own eternity." 
 
 Gentlemen of the Literary Societies of Hampden-Sid- 
 ney College: It was eighty-seven years ago, this week, 
 that my grandfather had the honor of addressing your 
 grandfathers here. I understand that he then maintained 
 eloquently, from another point of view, the thesis which I 
 have to-day attempted to maintain in the colder light of 
 our contemporary life. That in the midst of our kaleido- 
 
 13 
 
scopic social and economic conditions it is possible for an 
 American of this generation to find himself in substantial 
 intellectual agreement and sympathy with his grandfather 
 on such a question is due, I believe, in no small measure to 
 the steady influence of such institutions of sound learning 
 as Hampden-Sidney College. I felicitate you as her sons, 
 and I wish for your Societies a long continuance of the 
 prosperity and ennobling aspiration which owes its vitality 
 to so benign an alma mater. 
 
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m 28 1913 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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