Superphysics
The Need for a Bailiff
6 minutes • 1150 words
But, perhaps I am preventing you from going, as you long have wished to do, Ischomachus?
No, I should not think of going away until the gathering in the market is dispersed.
Of course, of course, you are naturally most careful not to forfeit the title they have given you of “honest gentleman”. Yet, 50 things at home are asking your attention at this moment. Only you undertook to meet your foreign friends, and rather than play them false you go on waiting.
I have stewards and bailiffs on the farms who can take care of those.
How do you find a bailiff?
Do you search until you find someone with a natural turn for stewardship and then try to purchase him? For example, as when you want a carpenter.
First, you discover someone with a turn for carpentry. Then you do all you can to get possession of him. (4)
Or do you educate your bailiffs yourself? (4)
The latter.
I try to educate them myself. This is because he who fills my place and manages my affairs for me, my “alter ego,” (5) needs but to have my knowledge.
The first thing he who is properly to take your place when absent must possess is goodwill towards you and yours; for without goodwill, what advantage will there be in any knowledge whatsoever which your bailiff may possess?
None. A kindly disposition towards me and mine is precisely what I first endeavour to instill.
How do you pick out whom you will and teach him to have kindly feeling towards yourself and yours?
By kindly treatment of him, to be sure, whenever the gods bestow abundance of good things upon us.
If I take your meaning rightly, you would say that those who enjoy your good things grow well disposed to you and seek to render you some good?
Yes, for of all instruments to promote good feeling this I see to be the best.
Granted the man is well disposed to you does it therefore follow, Ischomachus, that he is fit to be your bailiff?
It cannot have escaped your observation that albeit human beings, as a rule, are kindly disposed towards themselves, yet a large number of them will not apply the attention requisite to secure for themselves those good things which they fain would have.
Yes, when I seek to appoint such men as bailiffs, I teach them also carefulness and application.
How can that be? I always thought it was beyond the power of any teacher to teach these virtues.
Nor is it possible, you are right so far, to teach such excellences to every single soul in order as simply as a man might number off his fingers.
What sort of people have the privilege? (9) Should you mind pointing them out to me with some distinctness?
In the first place, you would have some difficulty in making intemperate people diligent—I speak of intemperance with regard to wine, for drunkenness creates forgetfulness of everything which needs to be done.
Are persons devoid of self-control in this respect the only people incapable of diligence and carefulness? or are there others in like case?
People who are intemperate with regard to sleep, seeing that the sluggard with his eyes shut cannot do himself or see that others do what is right.
What then?
Are we to regard these as the only people incapable of being taught this virtue of carefulness? or are there others in a like condition?
Surely we must include the slave to amorous affection. (11) Your woeful lover (12) is incapable of being taught attention to anything beyond one single object. (13)
No light task, I take it, to discover any hope or occupation sweeter to him than that which now employs him, his care for his beloved, nor, when the call for action comes, (14) will it be easy to invent worse punishment than that he now endures in separation from the object of his passion. (15) Accordingly, I am in no great hurry to appoint a person of this sort to manage (16) my affairs; the very attempt to do so I regard as futile.
Or, “where demands of business present themselves, and something must be done.” (15) Cf. Shakesp. “Sonnets,” passim. (16) Or, “I never dream of appointing as superintendent.”
What of those addicted to gain? Are they, too, incapable of being trained to give attention to field and farming operations?
On the contrary, there are no people easier to train, none so susceptible of carefulness in these same matters. One needs only to point out to them that the pursuit is gainful, and their interest is aroused.
But for ordinary people? Given they are self-controlled to suit your bidding, given they possess a wholesome appetite for gain, how will you lesson them in carefulness? how teach them growth in diligence to meet your wishes?
By a simple method: When I see a man intent on carefulness, I praise and do my best to honour him. When, on the other hand, I see a man neglectful of his duties, I do not spare him= I try in every way, by word and deed, to wound him.
Can a man devoid of carefulness himself to render others more careful? No more possible (he answered) than for a man who knows no music to make others musical.
If the teacher sets but an ill example, the pupil can hardly learn to do the thing aright. (19) And if the master’s conduct is suggestive of laxity, how hardly shall his followers attain to carefulness! Or to put the matter concisely, “like master like man.”
I do not think I ever knew or heard tell of a bad master blessed with good servants. The converse I certainly have seen ere now, a good master and bad servants; but they were the sufferers, not he.
No, he who would create a spirit of carefulness in others must have the skill himself to supervise the field of labour.
To test, examine, scrutinise.
He must be ready to requite where due the favour of a service well performed, nor hesitate to visit the penalty of their deserts upon those neglectful of their duty.
The answer of the barbarian to the king seems aposite.
You know the story, how the king had met with a good horse, but wished to give the creature flesh and that without delay, and so asked some one reputed to be clever about horses: “What will give him flesh most quickly?” To which the other: “The master’s eye.”
So, too, it strikes me, Socrates, there is nothing like “the master’s eye” to call forth latent qualities, and turn the same to beautiful and good effect.
