The Gift of Fire | Page 8

go along with the square of the
hypotenuse.
I doubt that I could get around Socrates, although I would give it a try,
by pointing out that circumstances alter cases, to which he would
probably reply, perhaps even with passing reference to that
exasperating square of the hypotenuse, that cases don't seem to alter
principles, but that, on the contrary, it is precisely because we can
detect some underlying principle that we can recognize a case. Nor
would I be able to convince him that, in getting even, I had actually
done my persecutor a big favor, bringing him to his senses and making
him a wiser and better person, which outcome was not really my
intention at all. If he had, in fact, been made a better person by my
revenge, the credit would not be mine but his, for having managed to
find the better in spite of having been dealt the worse. Therefore, on
those all-too-rare occasions when I do manage to take a swift and sweet
revenge, I don't mention it to Socrates.
Now that is strange behavior, and it is even stranger that it is generally
called nothing but "normal" behavior, out of the same presumption, no
doubt, that brings us to think Socrates a freak. But lots of people will
do just as I do where they find themselves treated, as they see it,
unjustly. Lots of those people know every bit as well as I do that
Reason does indeed show that it is better to suffer than to do an
injustice.
So here we are, they and I, whoever they might be, not only doing what

we know to be contrary to the perfectly demonstrable conclusions of
Reason, bad enough, but then going on to call that "normal," a lot
worse. It is as though we were willing to say that it is normal for human
beings, in whom the power of Reason is the quintessential attribute, not
only to reject its conclusions but even to despise them. We might just
as well say that sanity is, of course, a fine and wholesome condition,
but that insanity is normal.
I can not speak for others, but in my own case I find this a vexing
conclusion, for when I say that everyone is a little bit crazy, I am surely
including myself, a member in standing - "good standing" seems
inappropriate at the moment - of the numerous company called
"everyone." I do go around in the world putting myself forth as an
"educated man," whatever that means. And what can it mean, indeed, if
an educated man has to admit, and gladly takes the strange satisfaction
that goes with the admission, that he is at least a little bit crazy and just
as normal as anyone else who sees Reason but doesn't like it?
It would be one thing if I alone called myself educated, out of some
profound misunderstanding of the meaning of education. Then, I could
either be set right, or left to my own special craziness. But the fact is
that the world also calls me, and countless other people just like me,
educated. The world says, in other words: Here is a man who can see
some truth and choose not to live by it, a man who excuses himself as
normal for giving his feelings and appetites domination over his mind,
a man who might actually hate the square of the hypotenuse should it
occur to him that his behavior might be circumscribed by the principle
it reveals. All of which is to say, here is an educated man.
That already seems to be approaching the preposterous, but the world
goes even farther. Here we have one educated man cunningly devising
the discomfiture and destruction of his enemies, another cleverly
contriving to take possession of the goods of others by force or fraud,
and yet another passing out one-way tickets for long rides in boxcars.
What sort of definition of education must we have, that we suppose it
neither in impediment to immoral behavior nor an imperative to
rational behavior?

I am driven, in search of some answer to that question, to compare
myself with my unlucky counterpart, the uneducated man. Here he
stands, the poor ignoramus, knowing neither Dante nor Debussy. He
has never heard of Socrates or of syllogisms. He can neither write a
grammatical sentence nor read one. He is not impelled to meditation by
the square of the hypotenuse, and he wouldn't for a minute swallow any
of that nonsense about putting up with injustice. Ah, how different we
are. He watches reruns of "Laverne and Shirley," and I stick to
"Masterpiece Theater" and "Nova." He and his pals, furthermore,
outnumber me and mine enormously. No wonder the world is always in
such a