"And in the midst of it is a cave which is turned the way of hell. And therein dwells Scylla, whining for prey: her cry, indeed, is no louder than that of a newly-born whelp: but she herself is an awful thing—nor can any creature see her face and be glad; no, though it were a god that rose against her. For she has twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six necks, and terrible heads on them; and each has three rows of teeth, full of black death.
"But the opposite rock is lower than this, though but a bow-shot distant; and upon it there is a great fig-tree, full of leaves; and under it the terrible Charybdis sucks it down, and thrice casts it up again; be not thou there when she sucks down, for Neptune himself could not save thee."
The reader will find the meaning of these types gradually elicited as we proceed.
[97] Hence Dante's companionship of Cahors, Inf., canto xi., supported by the view taken of the matter throughout the middle ages, in common with the Greeks.
[98] Shakespeare would certainly never have chosen this name had he been forced to retain the Roman spelling. Like Perdita, "lost lady," or "Cordelia," "heart-lady," Portia is "fortune-lady." The two great relative groups of words, Fortune, fero, and fors—Portio, porto, and pars (with the lateral branch, op-portune, im-portune, opportunity, etc.), are of deep and intrinsic significance; their various senses of bringing, abstracting, and sustaining, being all centralized by the wheel (which bears and moves at once), or still better, the ball (spera) of Fortune,—"Volve sua spera, e beata si gode:" the motive power of this wheel distinguishing its goddess from the fixed majesty of Necessitas with her iron nails; or ἀνάγκη, with her pillar of fire and iridescent orbits, fixed at the centre. Portus and porta, and gate in its connexion with gain, form another interesting branch group; and Mors, the concentration of delaying, is always to be remembered with Fors, the concentration of bringing and bearing, passing on into Fortis and Fortitude.
[99] Out of whose mouths, indeed, no peace was ever promulgated, but only equipoise of panic, highly tremulous on the edge in changes in the wind.
[100] The reader must not think that any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power of the words which we have to use in the sequel. Not only does all soundness of reasoning depend on the work thus done in the outset, but we may sometimes gain more by insistence on the expression of a truth, than by much wordless thinking about it; for to strive to express it clearly is often to detect it thoroughly; and education, even as regards thought, nearly sums itself in making men economise their words, and understand them. Nor is it possible to estimate the harm that has been done, in matters of higher speculation and conduct, by loose verbiage, though we may guess at it by observing the dislike which people show to having anything about their religion said to them in simple words, because then they understand it. Thus congregations meet weekly to invoke the influence of a Spirit of Life and Truth; yet if any part of that character were intelligibly expressed to them by the formulas of the service, they would be offended. Suppose, for instance, in the closing benediction, the clergyman were to give its vital significance to the word "Holy," and were to say, "the Fellowship of the Helpful and Honest Ghost be with you, and remain with you always," what would be the horror of many, first, at the irreverence of so intelligible an expression, and, secondly, at the discomfortable entry of the suspicion that (while throughout the commercial dealings of the week they had denied the propriety of Help, and possibility of Honesty) the Person whose company they had been asking to be blessed with could have no fellowship with knaves.
[101] As Charis becomes Charitas [see next page], the word "Cher," or "Dear," passes from Shylock's sense of it (to buy cheap and sell dear) into Antonio's sense of it: emphasized with the final i in tender "Cheri," and hushed to English calmness in our noble "Cherish."
[102] While I have traced the finer and higher laws of this matter for those whom they concern, I have also to note the material law—vulgarly expressed in the proverb, "Honesty is the best policy." That proverb is indeed wholly inapplicable to matters of private interest. It is not true that honesty, as far as material gain is concerned, profits individuals. A clever and cruel knave will, in a mixed society, always be richer than an honest person can be. But Honesty is the best "policy," if policy means practice of State. For fraud gains nothing in a State. It only enables the knaves in it to live at the expense of honest people; while there is for every act of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth to the community. Whatever the fraudulent person gains, some other person loses, as fraud produces nothing; and there is, besides, the loss of the time and thought spent in accomplishing the fraud; and of the strength otherwise obtainable by mutual help (not to speak of the fevers of anxiety and jealousy in the blood, which are a heavy physical loss, as I will show in due time). Practically, when the nation is deeply corrupt, cheat answers to cheat, every one is in turn imposed upon, and there is to the body politic the dead loss of ingenuity, together with the incalculable mischief of the injury to each defrauded person, producing collateral effect unexpectedly. My neighbour sells me bad meat: I sell him in return flawed iron. We neither of us get one atom of pecuniary advantage on the whole transaction, but we both suffer unexpected inconvenience;—my men get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs off the rails.
[103] "τὰ μὲν οὗν ἄλλα ζῶα οὐκ ἔχειν αἴσθησιν τῶν εν ταῖς κινήσεσι ταξεων οὐδὲ ἀταξιῶν, οἷ δὴ ῥυθμὸς ὄνομα καὶ ἁρμονία ἡμῖν δὲ οὔς εἴπομεν τοὺς θεοὺς [Apollo, the Muses, and Bacchus—the grave Bacchus, that is—ruling the choir of age; or Bacchus restraining; 'sæva tene, cum Berecyntio cornu, tympana,' etc.] συγχορὲυτας δέδοσθαι, τούτους εἴναι καὶ τοὺς δεδώκοτας τὴν ἔνρυθμόν τε καὶ ἑναρμόνιον αἴσθησιν μεθ’ ἠδονῆς ... χόρους τε ὠνομακέναι παρὰ τῆς χαρὰς ἔμφυτον ὔνομα."—"Laws," book ii.