PARTISAN REVIEW
himself. Hercules took greater pain than you do; was more anxious, also,
to do well; rather melancholy, especially when he had just completed
an adventure. But what I like in you is your enjoyment; that is where
you differ from Hercules. I shall commend you for never letting your
mind interfere. You can leave that to others who are not men of action,
but are clever at inventing sound and good motives for those who are.
"Do you realize that we are cousins? I too (but don't repeat this
to Minos, who knows nothing about it) -I too am Greek. I was forced
regretfully to leave Attica, after certain differences had arisen between
myself and my nephew Talos, a sculptor, like myself, and my rival.
He became a popular favorite, and claimed to uphold the dignity of
the gods, by representing them with their lower limbs set fast in a
hieratic posture, and thus incapable of movement; whereas I was for
setting free their limbs, and bringing the gods nearer to ourselves. Olym–
pus, thanks to me, became once again a neighbor of the earth. By way
of complement, I aspired, with the aid of science, to mould mankind
in the likeness of the gods.
"At your age, I longed above all to acquire knowledge. I soon de–
cided that man's personal strength can effect little or nothing without
instruments, and that the old saying 'Better a good tool than a strong
forearm' was perfectly true. Assuredly you could never have subdued
the bandits of Attica and the Peloponnese without the weapons which
your father had given you. So I thought I could not employ myself more
usefully than by bringing these auxiliaries nearer
to
perfection, that I
could not do this without first mastering mathematics, mechanics and
geometry to the degree, at any rate, in which they were known in Egypt,
where such things are put to great use; also that I must then pass from
theory to practice by learning all that was known about the properties
and qualities of every kind of material-even of those for which no
immediate use was apparent, for in these (as happens also in the human
sphere) one sometimes discovers extraordinary qualities which one had
never expected to find. And so I widened and entrenched my knowledge.
"To familiarize myself with other trades, other crafts and skills,
other climates and other living things, I set myself to visit distant coun–
tries, put myself to school with eminent foreigners, and remained with
them until they had nothing more to teach me. But no matter where I
went, or how long I stayed, I remained a Greek. In the same way it is
because I know and feel that you are a son of Greece that I am interested
in you, my cousin.
"Once back in Crete, I told Minos all about my studies and my
travels; and went on
to
tell him of a project which I had cherished.
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