hoped too that foes without cause become friends born from humiliation. My blows even their scores and what's more unite them as brothers before a much larger adversary.Like tigers who discard the challenge of territory when the king's elephants begin flushing out the cat's lairs.
The whip is punishment for the lash. The scourge draws a better fever. The stick a bridge between reluctant neighbours. Like an ass stuck in mud, we pull his haltered lead, pat his back for favour and tap his rear to give all propel. Three for a boy, three for a mule. The results must be equal. A little braying, a little wide eye sorrow in look and then the err is shed. Neither will stray from the easier path again.
Beggar's Young Son: From your probing of their ills, sir, I can easily see you are no mere muleherder in your path of teaching. You have dwelt long and hard on each step down this path leading to harsh grounds. But if you would be so kind as to forgive the mumblings of such an unlearned school as I, there is a point or two I would beg sharpen.
The natures of men or sprouting men are little understood and what is worse are little probed. Some say this is because the seeker likes not to find what he himself is as he finds things in other men. Some say the paths inside are too many, branching, splitting, rejoining and sure to become a life's maze of bewilderment. Others argue the core of a man is shrouded in gods and demons at battle in gray mists growling low. Any who venture this far cannot enter this pulsating core of rain and fire.
What ever the whys or wants, men are clothed in the curtains of their skin. So what must we do then? If we sewed a dog into a pig's skin and then gave it to a farmer, what would he do? Would he bring it to his hearth and feed it meat? No, he puts it in the sty and casts slop to its trough.
And thus we do with men. We treat the man as the outside begs treatment. We give like to like.
The joyful we give song. The discontent we give shrug. The rich get more. The hungry receive emptier bowls. Beauty receives elegant fittings. Ugly is clothed with harsher rejects. The shy are ignored in corners. The loud heard in every room. Tyrants given a glare of homage. The brutal welcomed amongst brutes. The mad are given the whole room to spin. The meek given much less space to cower.
And the criminal, what is his reward for like to like? Surely the murderer is killed, the bully beaten, the treasonous tongue cut away and the thief robbed of his freedom.
So the beating of the boys is a continuum of the law which would demand to beat the beaters. Now, of course, when I first arrived I only knew you were beating the boys, which had you not the role of judge and executioner, would be unlawful.What, however, if the boys were in fact beating each other as punishment for a previous beating of some other boy. A few days ago, they beat some boy, then tried each other and were in the throes of evoking punishment when you interrupted. Would this not make your beating of them unlawful?
Now by chance the fathers arrive and see you beating their boys. Whereupon they beat you for what father does not have the lawful right to protect his family from attack? Your fellow teachers emerge and beat them. The father's friends gather and beat them. The royal guards are called out and beat the mob into dispersal. The king can tolerate no upheaval without due punishment. Who is beaten for this civil discourse: all? the boys? a few of the mob?
You can laugh and call this absurd and it is, except that it shows beatings do not end beatings. No do they resolve the nature of the cause. You can teach a dog not to eat table scraps fallen from a table but you cannot teach it not to eat. Or it ceases to become a dog.
Likewise with the criminal man. Punishment of like against like is a salve to the punishers wound; it does not seep inside the criminal. A punished thief may not steal but he will want to steal; the fraud disclaims his verdict.
Does it matter to the society, or the city, if a hundred thieves roam wanting but unable to steal? No, we seek no new answer for their behalf. They will take upon themselves the chance of unnotice and feed their want. Till caught again and again.Punishment is no solution; no hope. At least, of no Hope to the punished. It has in its grasp, however, an ‘answer of’ for the punisher.
Shall I beg your humble notice a little more gentlemen or would you prefer send the fool that I may be to tread his trippings elsewhere?
Big Nose: “As a Master primarily of Ethics, I could dispel at least ten quotes to banter at your ramblings of beatings. I would, at least, argue the point of punishment as of no hope to the punished though I would agree it is not what the punished had hoped for. Your simplicity is novel to me, however, so continue. And if we accomplish nothing else we give new penalty upon these boys in their long vigil at the lesson. Proceed, young fellow.”
Beggar's son:” Man commits crime by act...indeed he is tried, convicted, punished in the full consideration that this act he has done is a WILLFUL act. If we, as a society, would wish this act to not be continued or repeated, should we not then ensure that the repetition of the act is NOT WILLFUL?
Ensure that either the act is no longer WILLFUL or that the non-Act is WILLFUL. Can a man act in a NON-WILLFUL way? Can a man NOT act in a WILLFUL way?”
Big Nose:” It is easy to do both. If I push you to the ground, you are forced to sit but it is not by your WILLFUL act. If I ask you to sit and you will not, then you are Not acting in a WILLFUL way.”
Beggar: ”Can the opposite be true? Can I NOT-ACT in a NON-WILLFUL way and NON-ACT in a WILLFUL way?”
Big Nose: “Of course. If you don’t steal, you commit the ‘NON-ACT’ of not stealing in a willful way; if you don’t steal my stick because I hold it out of your reach then you commit the NON-Act not in a willful way but in the NON-WILLFUL way.”
Beggar: :”In other words, NON-WILLFUL is defined as a WILL imposed upon oneself...and WILLFUL would, of course, be SELF-WILL imposed upon oneself. An act may or may not be a result of this WILL...and the same can be said for a NON-ACT. When we look at them though NON-ACT is actually non-existent whereas NON-Willful is actually existent.”
Big Nose: “ You err, young man. NON-ACT is not non-existent , for it is actually the state of the ACT not existing, not that which could or could not act. In other words if you do not sit, you stand...we are not saying you do not exist. We could but we are not, we will assume in your arguments that the state that is NON-NON-ACT could exist if NON-ACT does not!”
Beggar’s son: “Then let us say that a man steals by his Self-Will or he doesn’t steal by his Self-Will. We can also assume a man doesn’t steal because of an Imposed- Will. Can we assume a man steals because of an Imposed-Will?”
Big Nose: “ I say no. A man can force himself to do or not do something but he can only be prevented from doing something, he can’t be forced to do something against his real Will.”
Beggar: “But if I threaten to kill this boy unless he steals for me, does not his thievery come as a consequence of my Will, not his?”
Big Nose: “No. He chooses a lower virtue for his life.”
Beggar: “ If, then, virtue is measured by the act of refusing thievery, can we say that the man who does not steal because of an Imposed-Will is virtuous?”
Big Nose: “ We cannot. For virtue, as a moral perfection, is a State of Man, it is something that is ‘done’, that is ‘aspired to...towards’. The act of not-stealing does not make a man virtuous as he may not steal simply because there is nothing to steal...or his has no hands. Give the non-thief object, opportunity or means and we have a thief...give such to a virtuous man and we still have NO thief.
The Virtuous man is defined by his state of virtue not solely by the acts of virtue, since a non-virtuous man may not steal but that does not necessarily imply virtue. The Virtuous man, however, can lessen his virtue by doing acts of non-virtue such as thieving.”
Beggar: “I agree then but ponder what is Virtue? Is it simply a morale acceptance of society and its judgements?”
Big Nose: “ You mock me, boy, with such an easy question for you know very well that it is far more than ‘society’s acceptance’...for that bec
omes merely ...’the norm’...’the average’...one might as well say...’the brute’...”
Beggar: “ It could begin there, could it not?”
Big Nose: “ It could but it should certainly not end there. For the ways and whims of men and their judgements is like laws written in sand. Besides, the morals of a soldier are not the same as the morals of a beggar or a schoolmaster. They cannot be for the very nature of what they do defines their natures.”
Beggar: “ I would agree it defines their place in men but does it necessarily define them as a man...as a virtuous man or not?”
Big Nose: “I would call Virtue as something beginning at Morals and rising towards a sense of Honour and a stance of Nobility.”
Beggar: “Virtue. Morals. Honour. Nobility. The same words. The same things defining the same things like two lost men giving each other directions. They can only tell where they have been, not where they wish to go.
Where we wish to go is to be without corruption, without dishonour, without condemnation, without sin, without pursuit of Law or Authority, without reproach. Virtue in a man becomes that elevation whereupon all men from all sides must look up to that man in his inherent ‘good conduct’, even the inner man , himself will ‘look up inside himself at times and be surprised at his own instinct of moral
The Seven Days of Wander Page 30
