After that incident, I found him distracted, heavy furrows in his bulging forehead. I did not pester him out of his reverie, for as our great teacher had taught us, thinking is the greatest virtue of a man’s life and I would not cheat even bulldogs out of it.
He blocked my way, one day when I was walking. I looked up in his face which was as intently serious. We had our last conversation which in many respects was so true to his fundamental nature that I cannot but describe it you. Alas, it was also his last conversation.
“You know, Callianus, if it were not for you, I would probably be wallowing as a Kantidean. But, you taught me to ask questions, so I have a great question for you, Callianus,” he said.
“Glad to know, Amicus, that you have questions for us. And what could your question be?”
“Life is an end in itself, Callianus, and to enjoy this end in itself, we have to think. Therefore, thinking is a virtue and a virtuous man spends his life thinking,” he opened rather breathlessly.
“Yes, Amicus, you are very right” I said to him.
“According to you, thinking is required to spend a good life and life can be only good if there is a lot of good thinking. Now, you must surely have heard about the death of Archimedes.”
“Ah, Archimedes. I have heard of him.”
“He was thinking very hard, Callianus, when a Roman soldier came and asked him if he was Archimedes. For you see, the soldier had a standing order to kill every citizen in the town except Archimedes. But Archimedes was thinking so hard, he answered that he did not know who Archimedes was and the next thing you know, he was beheaded by the Solider.”
“Oh, yes. Roman soldiers. They are brutes.”
“So, Archimedes was thinking and he lost his life because of it. For if he were not thinking, he would have answered the Roman soldier that he himself was Archimedes and thus, would have been spared the beheading.” he finished in triumph.
“Listen to my story, Amicus and I will tell you how Aesop died. He was deep in thinking, our Aesop, framing his little fables in his mind. An eagle that day had hunted a turtle for its food and was flying in the sky with the dead turtle in its beak. The turtle was too heavy, Amicus, and the eagle’s beak got slack with tiredness, so the eagle dropped the turtle. Where else should the turtle fall except on out friend Aesop’s head? And because the turtle fell from such a great height and because our friend was quite bald and had no hair which could absorb the shock, his head split open into two. Your solider, my dear Amicus, is like my turtle. We should not stop thinking because of them, my dear.”
“How wise you are, dear Callianus. I tell you a story and you come up with a better story to confirm my moral, just like that! Your story and my story confirm the same moral, Callianus. They both disprove your axiom that thinking is required for life. Thinking, Callianus, has surely lead Archimedes and Aesop, not to life but to death.”
I confess I was a little taken aback at this and I plunged my finger into his thick skull and said, “You are not thinking in principles, Amicus. Think in principles.”
Any other day he would be abashed at such an admonition but he was unrepentant that day. “I am thinking in principles, Callianus, for I have just disproved your principle.”
“Then, think in fundamentals Amicus,” I said to him, repeating my second favorite admonition.
“Do you mean whether I can establish that thinking was the primary cause of Archimedes’ death? Do you want to argue that the primary cause of Archimedes’ death was the Roman Soldier, for it is his hand and his choice that took the head off Archimedes’ neck?”
I stared at him rather quellingly.
“I disagree with you, Callianus,” he went on. “For the primary cause of Archimedes’ death was his own choice to think. If he had not chosen to think and answered the question, the soldier would not have chosen to raise his sword against him. Therefore, Callianus, by choosing to think Archimedes had chosen to die.”
I confess then I had lost all my patience with him and started on one of my angry rants. “Hegelian Iacchus has taken your soul, Amicus! Think in abstractions,” I said using my third favorite admonition.
That stopped him for a moment but our Amicus is resilient like a bulldog.
“Do you mean to say just because Archimedes was going through the motions of thinking doesn’t mean he is thinking? But, Callianus, a man may be thinking any amount of thinking but he should always be thinking some. There is no such thing as zero amount of thinking, Callianus.”
Eagles are stubborn creatures. For it was at this moment, that an eagle was flying in the skies, clutching in its beak a rather fat turtle. But its beak was no stronger than previously and the eagle dropped the turtle again.
Our friend Amicus had quite a mane of bushy hair, but that proved insufficient to counteract the force of the falling turtle and the head of Amicus split into two.
Poor Amicus, had he not chosen to think so hard that day, he would surely have been alive today.
Add Comments
Comments (3)
