The Rage of Thales: A Fable
Thales, who lived in Miletus, heard the thunder crack over the harbor, and observed a cause. The origin of the thunder, he thought with a start, can be found in the collision of the clouds, and the origin of that collision lies in the vagaries of the winds, which in turn receive their impetus from the sea’s commotion. So of the thunder, no story need be told, no arcane will conjectured; its beginnings are with the air and the tides, their changes.
Elated with this sudden insight, he rushed into the agora, where the people bustled about the stalls, haggling over the prices of the sacrificial animals. It was a feast day, and all were set to attend the rituals at the temple, and all were desirous of presenting the god the finest beast in order to secure good fortune in the year to come. He accosted first this man, then this other, intent to share his revelation with any who would listen, but none would listen, so keen was each man to go splendid to the temple. So out of frustration and untamable zeal, he leapt upon a plinth erected in the midst of the plaza, in order to harangue the crowds. Eventually, some few, and then a few more, did pay attention to his words, which were these:
“Men of Miletus, hear me before you go up to the temple. The thunder is not a living being, nor the work of a living being. You need only look into the nature of things without prejudice to discover their origins. See how the motion of one object begets the motion of another. One thing changes, and this changes another thing in turn. At no point is a will at work. Whatever you observe, if you would understand it, ask only what has caused it, not who intended it. There was a cause of that phenomenon, and a cause of that cause, and so on, to the very inception of time. No story whatsoever can be told of how things came to be.”
There was elation in his eyes as he spoke, and consternation in the faces of his listeners. They could not say just what it was in this prophet’s doctrine that disturbed them, but something was new there, and something was different. There were a handful there – men of irascible thoughts and feelings – who stirred at this sudden teaching, and intuited in its meaning something that resonated with their own responses to life. One of these, a ponderous tall man, gaining confidence from the ecstatic demeanor of Thales, blurted out his own reflections, saying:
“I too have often noticed that when there is a storm, the clouds grow dense and dark, and it must be that the winds compressed inside of these, on account of their fineness, cause the thunder to roar when they break free. And the lightning too, by contrast, appears when the black clouds are ruptured and split apart.”
And when he had finished saying this, his companion – a son of Eurystratus – carried these speculations to an end, declaring:
“If one traces these causes back to their beginning, we will discover that air is the first principle of all things, since from its condensation all the other elements take form, and when things die, or are destroyed, they dissolve at last to air. Air is in eternal motion too, and is never exhausted. Just as the soul, which is air, holds a man together, so the whole universe is bound as one by the winds and air, which we may therefore regard as the origin of all things.”
Thales smiled benignly on the young man who spoke thus, but before he could affirm his words, another broke in, less amenable, objecting to the purport of a discussion he was slowly starting to fathom:
“And what of the logos? What of the reason implanted in things at their inception? If all things are air, or traceable to air, what becomes of the thought at the beginning? If connecting one phenomenon to another only leads us to a substance, where is the will that bestows a meaning on any one of them? Where is the word in which all things have their origins?”
With a glimmer of ebullience streaked across his expression that betrayed his anticipation of the question, Thales boomed in retort:
“My friend, you still weave fables, and take these fables for the reason of things. But reason does not inhere in stories, or in words. Things concatenate in space and time. There they may be measured. That measurement is the logos of their existence. All that can be said of their essence is all that can be measured. Everything else asserted is fallacious. Therefore, the logos of things is to be found in number, not in words.”
As one wick will catch the flame from another, the ponderous tall man caught the fire of Thales’ speculations, and kindled to his own conceptions:
“Indeed, since it is silent, entire, changeless, number alone suffices to measure the world’s clamorous mutability. Prescinded from the fractures of the world’s decay, number alone deserves to stand at the beginning and end of all things. It is impassive, suffers nothing, but perdures forever whole, immaculate, and always the same. It is devoid of all that mars human life – a vacuity of all evil, a kind of apeiron, or emptiness of all things earthly. For only by attaining a kind of view from nowhere, purified of all things human, can the mind ascend to the purview of the gods. Measuring, ordering, commanding – number consecrates man the lord of this world.”
A greater commotion ensued among the people at these words, and some who had been consumed by business at the stalls nearby caught the purport of the discussion, and gathered closer to listen, until the crowd swelled considerably in number and agitation. Among these, one stood at first dumbfounded, hardly able to resist the jostling shoulders that swayed him back and forth, until the full contours of these men’s doctrine dawned upon him, at which he grew furious and indignant and fierce. He was a priest of the temple, come down to the marketplace to procure more beasts for the sacrifice; his arms and his robe were still smeared in the blood of the rituals. But now that he caught wind of these new men and their theories, he pushed himself forward through the throng and thundered his outrage, until the citizens pushing around him, awed by the authority of his station, kept still and heard him:
“Who is this that says the logos is a number? Who professes such an inhuman creed? Do numbers strive or desire or conceive? Is there any purpose in them, or in the statements they comprise? If there is no meaning in the logos, what meaning can there be in the world it has generated?”
Thales heard this remonstrance, and smiled. His confidence in the rightness of his discovery did not falter. He responded:
“You confound the nature of man and the nature of the gods. It is men who do these things. But the logos is divine, and such changes would be unworthy of its divinity.”
Unswayed, unpersuaded, the priest brushed back his scattered locks, and retorted:
“The gods are not like men, neither are they wholly unlike them. They do not act and think like men, but they do act and think. The word is an analogy, which clears for us a way from earth to heaven. In the word, human life is sanctified, purified, preserved; in its application it consecrates human life, and renders it a fit vehicle of our salvation. We speak of the peace of the gods, and attribute to their dwelling some portion or semblance of the peace we attain here below. We speak of the love of the gods, and come to regard them as an apotheosis of the ecstasy of love. To say of the logos that it is a word is to profess that man is glorified as man, and achieves his own proper divinity in his humanity. It is to say that behind every experience – contained in the essence of every sayable thought – inheres a truth too ultimate to be said. But to inquire into the pains and the victories and the virtues and the crimes of human life and only find a number is to deny all this.”
The ponderous tall man, growing increasingly impatient at the doctrine of the priest, fired back:
“To find number in all things is to find the means to control all things. We attribute power to the logos; you, but childish tales.”
“And for that power over things,” returned the priest, his eyes aflame, “you would exchange all comprehension of them. You would content yourself with a reckoning of beings, rather than some understanding of them. You speak contemptuously of stories, but what endows things with their meaning except their story? Nothing means outside its story. The rose blooms in the thicket – there it may be observed, the causes of its growth and decay recorded. Thus far, it has no meaning. But in the story of its development – in its directed emergence from seed to fruit – the meaning of its presence can be told, because it can be narrated.”
“Who denies,” thundered Thales in response, “that stories may be told of men. It is men who desire, set plans, make use. It is their wills that make the substance of a story, and their wills that impose a meaning on beings. But nothing about the logos can be inferred from this. Man is the sole intender, and his will the sole original of meaning.”
At this, the priest did not rant or rail in response. His features grew quite mild, introspective, and he paused in his thoughts, as though his tongue stood poised on the verge of some uncertain matter, and must advance with circumspection. After a moment, having traced the outline of some words that seemed to approximate the momentous insight hovering over him, he spoke again:
“If there is no story to be told of the flower or the mountain, what story is to be told of man? If no word may be spoken of the world, what words may be spoken of man, who is but an emanation of the world? What tawdry or heroic deeds could he be up to amid a sphere unwilled? We tell a story of the cosmos so we may tell stories of ourselves, and from the significance of those stories we infer the significance of the cosmos in which they unfold.”
Again he paused, and his expression contorted with a look of strain, the weight of the matter nearly overwhelming him to silence. But after a brief spell, he went on:
“We say of this man he acts well or ill, of this one that his actions are noble or base, because the things towards which their wills are directed have in them some good, or its absence, evil. But where do things derive their goodness from except their sheer existence, their presence in the world? And that presence is not required of them, but bestowed upon them gratuitously. The act of grace that imparts to them their presence is the story of the world. The will that makes them – and in making them, makes them good – is the final and entire end of the intellect. Therefore, the logos is a word, and that word is love.”
A silence prevailed in the wake of these words, as the crowd pondered them, and his opponents vied with them, and he himself, in a spell of introspection, reflected upon their depths. Then, like one rapt and blind to the world at hand, he began to recite in a voice resembling a chant the ancient and arcane lore of his beloved mysteries:
“This is why it is said the Mother of Life, our blessed Demeter, braved all the horrors of hell to remonstrate for the return of her daughter, because it was Persephone who wandered the crags of Attica, bestowing vibrancy on all the flowers that rose there, making them worthy of song and praise. And that is why we honor the two, the mother and her child, in anthem and rite and worship, because it is through their love that we have a world to love, a world to strive and to seek in, where our lives make sense.”
Again, there was a slight pause, but this time it did not last for long, because suddenly, in a burst of derision, Thales threw back his head and coughed a cavernous laugh, with a force that dispelled the last vestiges of the fable lingering in the air. Then he looked keenly at his followers, and spoke:
“A child will not surrender her fancies, nor a fanatic his legends. Leave these men to their myths; let us go instead and inquire after the truth.”
He leapt from the plinth, and stalked proudly out of the agora, the ponderous tall man and his friend following after, with some three or four others from the crowd, while the priest lowered at their backs and the others stood staring first in one direction, then the other, not quite sure what to make of the scene they witnessed, until after a bit, the dissidents no longer visible, they gathered up their purchased offerings and followed the priest back up to the temple.