“Philosophy Between the Lines- The Lost History of Esoteric Writing” by Arthur M. Melzer

Melzer makes the case that many pre-modern philosophers, for various reasons, practiced esotericism in their writings. “An esoteric writer or writing would involve the following characteristics: first, the effort to convey certain truths—the “esoteric” teaching—to a select group of individuals by means of some indirect or secretive mode of communication; second, the concomitant effort to withhold or conceal these same truths from most people; and third (a common but not strictly necessary characteristic) the effort to propagate for the sake of the latter group a fictional doctrine—the “exoteric” teaching—in place of the true doctrine that has been withheld.” Esoteric writing is a mode of communication that hides its true, deeper meaning so that it is not obvious to all.

This tradition of esoteric philosophy started at least as far back as Plato. In the Phaedrus, Plato reports Socrates as saying that “a written text is too univocal, it says the same things to all people whether they can understand and appreciate it or whether they would be corrupted by it.” In the Theaetetus, Plato’s Socrates explains that this mode of esoteric explanation goes back even further in time, “a tradition from the ancients who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures.” Aristotle, as well, is reported to have written to his pupil, Alexander the Great, “You have written me about the acroatic discourses, thinking that they should be guarded in secrecy. Know, then, that they have been both published and not published. For they are intelligible only to those who have heard us.” In other words, if one was not tutored personally by Aristotle on the nature of his true meaning, his philosophy would be obscure and not be understandable.

Melzer next relates the Christian tradition. In Matt 7:6, Jesus states, “Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” Later in Matt 13:10-12, “Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to [the people] in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and they do not hear, nor do they understand.” This form of esoteric teaching was taken as a given by later Christian philosophers. Aquinas states that the common people were “neither able nor worthy to receive the naked truth, which He revealed to His disciples.” Calvin wrote, “Christ declares that he intentionally spoke obscurely, in order that his discourse might be a riddle to many, and might only strike their ears with a confused and doubtful sound.” Augustine stated, “the Lord’s meaning was therefore purposely clothed in the obscurities of parables.”

Because today so many modern philosophers have come to doubt that their predecessors wrote esoterically, Melzer collects even more evidence that this was a common feature of pre-modern philosophy. Epicurus wrote, “I have never wished to cater to the people; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.” Cicero claimed that the faculty of reason was “disastrous to the many and wholesome to but few.” Spinoza wrote of “the masses whose intellect is not capable of perceiving things clearly and distinctly.” Nietzsche stated, “One does not only wish to be understood when one writes, one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention—he did not want to be understood by just “anybody.””

Melzer posits that the entire purpose of philosophy took a great turn with the Enlightenment. For the ancients, there was a renunciation of the political sphere for the life of the mind and personal truth. “For the more a contemplative philosopher understands his own life to be based on the radical rejection and transcendence of the ordinary, political life of those around him, the more he must feel isolated and fear the potential hostility of that community.” There is an inescapable tension between the City and Man (the philosopher). On the contrary, modern philosophy seeks to harmonize the political and the personal. It seeks “to overcome the tension between theory and praxis, to actualize their potential unity…. Enlightenment philosophers seek the best ways to address and transform the political world, in order to bring it into harmony with reason. Counter-Enlightenment philosophers seek the best ways to address and transform other philosophers, in order to bring them and their reasoning into harmony with the political world.” However, on both scores, there is the purpose of bringing philosophy and politics together, one way or another. The ancients believed this was an unresolvable tension, which never could be bridged. The conflict between the City and philosophy “consists in a conflict between two incompatible ways of life. The city requires authoritative settlement and closure; philosophy demands openness and questioning. The city necessarily bases itself on custom, the philosopher seeks to base his life on reason—and these two foundations, custom and reason, are fundamentally opposed.”

Melzer next details his four main suppositions for why esoteric writing was practiced. The first was a fear of persecution. Tacitus wrote, “Seldom are men blessed with times in which they may think what they like and say what they think.” Pierre Bayle agreed, “Those who write with a view to publishing their thoughts accommodate themselves to the times and betray on a thousand occasions the judgement they form of things.”

Melzer suggests a second reason for esoteric philosophy was to protect dangerous truths. Melzer states “there are some important truths that are “inconvenient”—dangerous to society or to ordinary life…. All human beings are not equal in their capacity to handle such difficult truths…. It is morally permissible…. to conceal or dilute the truth.” Aquinas writes, “A teacher should measure his words that they help rather than hinder his hearer…. There are matters, however, that would be harmful to those hearing them if they were openly presented…. These matters, therefore, ought to be concealed from those to whom they might do harm.” Jean d’Alembert commenting on The Spirit of the Laws, states “Montesquieu, having to present sometimes important truths whose absolute and direct enunciation might wound without bearing any fruit, has had the prudence to envelope them, and by this innocent artifice, has veiled them from those to whom they would be harmful, without letting them be lost for the wise.”

A third reason to cloak truths in esoteric writing was as a method of teaching. Melzer states, “The purpose of pedagogical esotericism…. more directly concerns philosophy itself: the transmission of philosophical understanding. In this sense, it is esotericism’s purest form…. One must embrace obscurity (of the right kind) as something essential to effective philosophical communication.” Alexander Herzen wrote of obscure teachings, “In allegorical discourse there is perceptible excitement and struggle: this discourse is more impassioned than any straight exposition. The word implied has greater force beneath its veil and is always transparent to those who care to understand. A thought which is checked has greater meaning concentrated in it—it has a sharper edge; to speak in such a way that the thought is plain yet remains to be put into words by the reader himself is the best persuasion.” In the Phaedrus, Plato’s Socrates puts these words into the mouth of the Egyptian god, Thamus, through “[writings] you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction, and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant.” Kierkegaard writes, “One can deceive a person for the truth’s sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person into truth.” Augustine suggests, “Lest the obvious should cause disgust, the hidden truths arouse longing; longing brings on certain renewal; renewal brings sweet inner knowledge…. It is true that any doctrine suggested under allegorical form affects and pleases us more, and is more esteemed, than one set forth explicitly in plain words.” Nietzsche adds, “the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.”

Melzer describes his fourth reason for esoteric writing as political, which he states as a uniquely modern form. It is “defined as esotericism in the service of the newly political goal of philosophy: to actualize the potential harmony of reason and social life through the progressive rationalization of the political world.” It is the goal the ancients viewed with skepticism, if not impossibility. Macaulay writes, “Logic admits of no compromise. The essence of politics is compromise…. Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables for the vulgar.” In a letter to Voltaire, d’Alembert states, “Time will enable people to distinguish what we have thought from what we have said.”

Melzer continues by explaining the proper way to read esoteric texts. Nietzsche suggests when grappling with his own writings, “A book like this, a problem like this, is in no hurry; we both, I just as much as my book, are friends of lento [slowly]…. I am a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading…. For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow…. It teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.” Montesquieu argues for giving the author the benefit of the doubt and withholding judgement before taking the work as a whole when deeply reading, “When one reads a book, it is necessary to be in a disposition to believe that the author has seen the contradictions that one imagines, at the first glance, one is meeting. Thus it is necessary to begin by distrusting one’s own prompt judgements, to look again at the passages one claims are contradictory…. When a work is systematic, one must also be sure that one understands the whole system. You see a great machine made in order to produce an effect. You see wheels that turn in opposite directions; you would think, at first glance, that the machine was going to destroy itself, that all the turning was going to arrest itself…. It keeps going: these pieces, which seem at first to destroy one another unite together for the proposed object.”

Melzer concludes with a section on Leo Strauss and the opposition between philosophy and poetry. For Strauss, Socrates is the philosopher par excellence. His greatest opponents were not the sophists, but the poets. Strauss wrote, “The great alternative to classical political philosophy is poetry.” Melzer explains the side of the poets, “For the philosophers are typically detached from and contemptuous of the human things, the merely mortal realm; they are rationalists seeking the universal, the necessary, and the eternal. It follows that true wisdom is the preserve not of the philosophers but of the poets who immerse themselves in human life, who know it from the inside, and who are able to imitate and articulate the unique experience of the human in all its inescapable particularity, contingency, and changeableness.” If Socrates was successful it was in defending “the philosophic life successfully against this double challenge to its legitimacy, the religious and the poetic (or “historicist”).” The beauty of Socrates was his ability to return again and again to the dirtiness of the particular world, despite his flights towards eternal truths. “The famous Socratic turn, that is, his return to the human things. No matter how high philosophy, with divine madness, soars toward the sun, it must always recollect its origin in and continued dependence upon the cave, the world of opinion, the average-everyday, the commonsense surface of things.” Melzer suggests, “esotericism is the literary counterpart of the Socratic method. A properly esoteric text does not allow the philosophic reader to form a dependence on the writer or on foundations laid in the past; rather it artfully compels him to develop and rely on his own inner powers.”

“Another Philosophy of History” by Johann Herder (translated by Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin)

Herder was a Lutheran pietist who lived in eighteenth century Prussia. He set himself up as anti-rationalist, but that was too extreme. Rather, he was certainly against the prevailing French philosophes of his day who propounded the ultimate primacy of positivism and Enlightenment thought. Herder was a cultural pluralist, always skeptical of any universal ideal. He believed in a peculiar form of historicism, in which each successive stage of human development was not necessarily better than, just different from the ones that had preceded it. Each age had unique peculiarities imbued in it through a particular culture. His was definitely not a Whig theory of history. He associated the oriental age with one where theology held sway. “Naturally, the most ancient philosophy and forms of government in all countries would originally have had to be theology! A man marvels at everything before he sees.” The next stage of mankind took place in Egypt. “Everyone could be found where he had his property- thus public security, the administration of justice, order, law enforcement came into being, which would never have been possible in the Orient’s nomadic condition…. Thus man was placed under the bondage of the law: the inclinations that had once been merely paternal, child-like, shepherd-like, patriarchal now became civil, village-like, city-like…. The sense of family weakened and became instead concern for the same, social rank, artistic talent that was handed down, along with one’s station, like a house or field.” The next development in history was that of the Phoenicians. “The first commercial state, founded entirely on trade, which expanded the world beyond Asia for the first time, planting peoples and binding them together…. As the hatred of foreigners and imperviousness towards other people faded- even if the Phoenician did not visit other nations out of a love of mankind- a kind of friendship among peoples, understanding between peoples, and law of peoples emerged.” Herder next moved on to Greece. “Their establishment of common games and competitions for even the minutest places and peoples, always with minor differences and variations- all this, and ten times more, gave Greece a unity and diversity that here, too, made for the most beautiful whole. Hostility and assistance, striving and moderating: the powers of the human spirit were most beautifully balanced and unbalanced. The harmony of the Greek lyre!” Finally, Herder proceeded to the Roman peoples. There was “the magnanimous disposition of the soul that looked past lusts, effeminacy, and even the more refined pleasures and acted [instead] for the fatherland. [There was] the composed hero’s courage never to be reckless and plunge into danger, but to pause, to think, to prepare, and to act. There was the unperturbed stride that was not deterred by any obstacle, that was greatest in misfortune and did not despair. There was, finally, the great, perpetually pursued plan to be satisfied with nothing less than their eagle’s dominion over all the world…. The name [of Rome] bound peoples and parts of the world together that had never so much as heard of each other before. Roman provinces! In all of them, Romans trod: Roman legions, laws, ideals of propriety, virtues, and vices. The walls that separated nation from nation were broken down, the first step taken to destroy the national character of them all, to throw everyone into one mold called “the Roman people.”” The importance was not so much the accuracy of Herder’s history, but the cultural pluralism that he expressed. Each epoch was unique and could not have existed except for according to the particularities of that age.

For Herder, however, the individual was the only essence that was whole. “What an inexpressible thing the peculiarity of one human being is; how difficult it is to be able to put the distinguishing distinctively, how he feels and loves, how different and peculiar all things become for him after his eye sees them, his soul measures, his heart senses…. All human perfection is therefore national, secular, and, examined most closely, individual. One does not develop anything but that for which time, climate, need, world, fortune gives occasion: separated from the rest.” The human being is, of necessity, about particulars. “Human nature is no vessel for an absolute, independent, immutable happiness as defined by the philosopher; rather she everywhere draws as much happiness towards herself as she can: a supple clay that will conform to the most different situations, needs, and depressions. Even the image of happiness changes with every condition and location…. Basically, then, all comparison becomes futile.”

Herder takes a step back to describe the triumph of the tribes of Gaul over the decaying Roman Empire. “Of course they despised arts and sciences, luxury and refinement- which had wrought havoc on mankind. But as they brought nature instead of the arts, healthy Northern intelligence instead of the sciences, strong and good, albeit savage customs instead of refined ones, and as everything fermented together- what a spectacle! How their laws breathed manly courage, sense of honor, confidence in intelligence, honesty, and piety! How their institution of feudalism undermined the welter of populous, opulent cities, building up the land, employing hands and human beings, making healthy and therefore happy people. Their later ideal, beyond [mere] needs, tended towards chastity and honor, [and] ennobled the best part of human inclinations.” Herder’s view on religion was as a spur for human agency. “Religion is meant to accomplish nothing but purposes for human beings, through human beings.” The ages of history were moved less by reason and agency than by contingency and fate. Ideas ripened when the time and soil was right. After all, it was the particulars that made the age. “How often had such Luthers stood up before-and had foundered…. Human being, you have always been just a small, blind instrument, [used] almost against your will.”

Herder did not disparage his age, but he always wanted to put its accomplishments in their proper context. “Wisdom was always narrowly national and therefore reached deeper and attracted more strongly.” One thing he vehemently detested was the spirit of colonization, for it broke down proper differences in cultures. “Where are there no European colonies, and will there not be any? The fonder savages grow everywhere of our liquor and luxury, the more ready they also become for our conversion!… The more means and tools we Europeans invent to enslave, cheat, and plunder you other continents, the more it may be left to you to triumph in the end! We forge the chains by which you will pull us [one day], and the inverted pyramids of our constitutions will be righted on your soil- you with us.” The endless search to satisfy Mammon was also a bane to the spirit of the age. “All the arts we practice, how high they have risen! Can one imagine anything above that art of government, this system, this science for the education of mankind? The entire and exclusive driving force of our states: fear and money. Without the least need of religion (the childish driving force!), or honor, or freedom of the soul, or human happiness.” Herder ends by summing up his view of what the nature of history truly is. “What a work it is, this whole containing so many shadowy clusters of nations and ages, colossal figures with barely a perspective or view, so many blind instruments that are acting in a delusion of freedom and yet do not know what or what for, that are unable to survey anything and yet are taking part as eagerly as if their anthill were the universe- what a work!”

“Heidegger’s Ways” by Hans-Georg Gadamer (translated by John W. Stanley)

Gadamer is perhaps Heidegger’s second best known pupil, after Arendt. This book is a collection of his essays and lectures on Heidegger’s philosophical work and his evolving thoughts. Gadamer begins, “The first question of the first beginning was: What is the Being of the human Dasein? Certainly not mere consciousness. But what kind of Being is this that neither lasts nor counts the way that the stars or mathematical truths do, but rather constantly dwindles like all life caught between birth and death, and yet in spite of its finitude and historicity is a “there” [ein Da], a here, a now, a presence in the moment [Gegenwart im Augenblick], not an empty point, but a saturated temporality and a collected totality? The Being of the human Dasein is said to be just such a “Da” in which the future and past are not simply moments rolling toward and then away from the present; rather, the future is each individual’s own future, and each individual’s own history constitutes its own Being from the accident of birth on. Because this Dasein, which projects itself into its own future, must accept itself in its own finitude—a kind of discovery of oneself as “thrown” into Being…. Every “Da,” like all things earthly, dwindles, passes away, and is carried off into oblivion—yet, it is a “Da” precisely because it is finite, that is, aware of its own finitude…. That there is something at all and not nothing—this most radical exaggeration of the question of metaphysics speaks of Being as if it were something known.” Gadamer continues, “The question concerning “nothing” and the thought provoking, fundamental experience of “nothing” were brought up so that thinking would be forced to think the Da of Dasein. This is the mission that Heidegger, in an ever more-conscious turn away from the metaphysical question concerning the Being of beings and the language of metaphysics, recognized as his own. This question preoccupied him his entire life.”

Gadamer discusses Heidegger’s conception of time. “Light is shed not only on the enigmatic irreversibility of time—in that it never emerges, it only passes away—but it also becomes obvious that time does not have its Being in the now or in a series of nows; rather is has its Being in the futurity [Zukunftigleit] that is essential to Dasein…. Forgetting attests to the fact that something happens to us—rather than that we do it. It is a way in which the past and passing away show their actuality and power.” Gadamer continues, “Human Dasein is distinguished by the fact that it understands itself in terms of its Being. In order not to lose sight of the finitude and temporality of human Dasein, which cannot ignore the question of the meaning of its Being, Heidegger defined the question of the meaning of Being within the horizon of time. The present-at-hand, which science knows through its observations and calculations, and the eternal, which is beyond everything human, must both be understood in terms of the central ontological certainty of human temporality.”

One other major concern in Heidegger’s work is the nature of art. Gadamer suggests, “Heidegger asserts that the essence of art is the process of poeticizing. What he means is that the nature of art does not consist in transforming something that is already formed or in copying something that is already in Being. Rather, art is the projection by which something new comes forth as true…. The work of art is an exceptionally tangible event of the “Da” into which we are all placed…. The artwork cannot be considered an object, as long as it is allowed to speak as a work of art…. The thing [das Ding], as something of ours, possesses its own original worldliness and, thus, the center of its own Being so long as it is not placed into the object-world of producing and marketing.”

Finally, Gadamer concludes by, once again, noting the emphasis on the lifespan of the individual human in Heidegger’s work, “We know from our own personal, existential experiences [Existenzerfahrung] of Being how fundamentally interconnected the “Da” of human Dasein is with its own finitude. We know it as the experience of darkness, a darkness in which we stand as thinking beings and back into which all that we raise up into light falls. We know it as the darkness from which we come and into which we pass. But this darkness is not merely a darkness opposed to the world of light; we are ourselves shrouded in darkness, which merely confirms that we are. Darkness plays a fundamental role in constituting the Being of our Dasein.”

“Xunzi: The Complete Text” by Xun Kuang (translated by Eric L. Hutton)

Xunzi was a follower of Confucius who lived in an inauspicious age. His philosophy reflects his times. “If one’s intensions are cultivated, then one will disregard wealth and nobility. If one’s concern for the Way and yi is great, then one will take kings and dukes lightly. It is simply that one examines oneself on the inside, and thus external goods carry little weight. A saying goes, “The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things.””

On honor, Xunzi opines, “The gentleman can make himself honorable, but he cannot ensure that others will honor him…. And so, the gentleman is ashamed of not being cultivated; he is not ashamed of being maligned. He is ashamed of not being trustworthy; he is not ashamed of not being trusted. He is ashamed of being incapable; he is not ashamed of not being employed. Thus, he is not tempted by good reputation, nor is he intimidated by slander. He follows the Way as he goes, strictly keeping himself correct, and he does not deviate from it for the sake of material goods. Such a one is called the true gentleman. The Odes says, “Warm and respectful of others, virtue alone is his foundation.” This expresses my meaning.”

Xunzi’s treatise is most concerned with living an upright life even in times of strife. Improving oneself through right conduct was of utmost importance. “If I want to go from being lowly to being noble, from being foolish to being wise, from being poor to being rich, is it possible? I say: Only through learning! If one carries out such learning, then one is called a well-bred man. If one is enthusiastic and devoted to it, then one is a gentleman. If one truly comprehends it, then one is a sage. At the best one can become a sage, and at the least one can become a well-bred man or gentleman.”

The correct path to an upright life is through following the traditions and rituals of the past. Rituals are the key to a well ordered world, a functioning state, and a proper gentleman. “And so, if a person puts even one amount of effort into following ritual and yi, he will get back twice as much. If he puts even one amount of effort into following his inborn dispositions and nature, he will lose twice as much…. And so, ritual serves Heaven above and Earth below, it honors forefathers and ancestors, and it exalts lords and teachers. These are the three roots of ritual…. These five kinds of conduct—differentiating noble and lowly, distinguishing exalted and lesser, gathering in harmony and joy without becoming dissolute, treating appropriately junior and senior without leaving anyone out, and enjoying comfort and relaxation without becoming disorderly—these are sufficient to rectify one’s person.”

Next, Xunzi returns to admonishing greed and the covetousness of material possessions. “Anyone who in his intensions thinks little of good order will greatly value material goods. Anyone who greatly values material goods on the outside will be worried on the inside. Anyone whose conduct departs from good order will be endangered on the outside. Anyone who is endangered on the outside will be fearful inside. If one’s heart is worried and fearful, then even if one’s mouth is stuffed with grass-fed and grain-fed meats, one will not know flavor…. Thus one can be confronted with the finest of the myriad things and yet not be able to feel satisfaction…. Thus, one may be confronted with the finest of the myriad things and yet will be full of worry. One may possess all the most beneficial of the myriad things and yet be full of hurt…. Thus, such a one wants to nourish his desires but abandons fulfilling his dispositions…. This is called making oneself a servant to things…. Thus, even while lacking the finest of the myriad things, one can still nourish one’s joy, and even while lacking a position of power and eminence, one can still nourish one’s fame.”

The normative fact that most distanced Xunzi from fellow Confucian disciple, Mencius, was their view of human nature. Xunzi viewed it as essentially evil and, therefore, in need of cultivation and improvement. “People’s nature is bad. Their goodness is a matter of deliberate effort. Now people’s nature is such that they are born with a fondness for profit in them. If they follow along with this, then struggle and contention will arise…. They are born with desires of the eyes and ears, a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds. If they follow along with these, then lasciviousness and chaos will arise, and ritual and yi, proper form and order, will perish therein. Thus, if people follow along with their inborn dispositions and obey their nature, they are sure to come to struggle and contention, turn to disrupting social divisions and order, and end up becoming violent…. If people’s nature is bad, then from what are ritual and yi produced? I answer: In every case ritual and yi are produced from the deliberate effort of the sage; they are not produced from people’s nature…. The sage accumulates reflections and thoughts and practices deliberate efforts and reasoned activities in order to produce ritual and yi and in order to establish proper models and measures.”

Finally, Xunzi quotes his mentor Confucius on the proper conduct of the gentleman, “Confucius said, “When the gentleman has not yet succeeded, then he takes joy in his ideals, and when he has succeeded, then he takes joy in bringing good order to affairs. Thus, he has joy to the end of his life, without a single day of worry. As for the petty man, when he has not yet succeeded, then he worries that he will never succeed, and when he has succeeded, then he fears that he will lose it. Thus, he has to worry to the end of his life, without a single day of joy.””

“The Professor and the Siren” by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (translated by Stephen Twilley)

The Sicilian aristocrat, Lampedusa, wrote the three short stories assembled in this collection, along with his famous novel, The Leopard, in the last two years of his life, starting in 1955. Together, these works paint a majestic picture of a mythical age of Sicily now long gone. In a cafe in Turin, the eponymous professor of the first tale regales a young journalist, (and fellow Sicilian transplant), he has taken under his wing, “If Sicily remains as it was in my time, I imagine nothing good ever happens there. Nothing has for the past three thousand years.” Having lived in the north for the past fifty years, he asks of his young charge, “Tell me about our island. It’s a beautiful place, even if it is inhabited by donkeys. The gods once sojourned there—and perhaps in some endless Augusts they return.” By now, memories of his youth rolling through his mind, the professor continues, “Sicily’s sea is the most vividly colored, the most romantic of any I have ever seen; it’s the only thing you won’t manage to ruin, at least away from the cities. Do the trattorias by the sea still serve spiny urchins, split in half?” Before waiting for a response, he opines, “They’re dangerous as all gifts from the sea are; the sea offers death as well as immortality.” Finally, the professor gives his interlocutor a backhanded compliment of sorts, “Please know that I genuinely care for you: Your ingenuousness touches me, and it seems to me that, as is sometimes the case with the best kinds of Sicilians, you have managed to achieve a synthesis of the senses and reason.”