But I recalled that I had, in the stockade of Tyros, recollected the matter of honour. I had entered the stockade alone, not expecting to survive. It was not that I was the friend of Marlenus of Ar, or his ally. It was rather that I had, as a warrior, or one once of such as caste, set myself the task of his liberation.
I had accomplished this task. And, in the night, under the stars, I had recollected a never-forgotten honour.
But wounds had I to show for this act, and a body heavy with pain, whose left side I could not move.
I had recollected my honour, but it had won for me only the chair of a cripple. To be sure, carved in wood, high on the chair, was the helmet with crest of sleen-fur, the mark of the captain, but I could not rise from the chair.
My own body, and its weakness, held me, as chains could not.
Proud and mighty as the chair might be, it was the throne only of the maimed remains of a man.
I was rich!
I gazed into the darkness of the hall.
Samos of Port Kar had purchased Talena, as a mere slave, from two panther girls, obtaining her with ease in this manner while I had risked my life in the forest.
I laughed.
But I had recollected my honour. But little good had it done me. Was honour not a sham, a fraud, an invention of clever men to manipulate their less wily brethren?Why had I not returned to Port Kar and left Marlenus to his fate, to slavery and doubtless, eventually, to a slave’s death, broken and helpless, under the lashes of overseers in the quarries of Tyros?
I sat in the darkness and wondered on honour, and courage. If they were shams, I thought themmost precious shams. How else could we tell ourselves from urts and sleens? What distinguishes us from such beasts? The ability to multiply and subtract, to tell lies, to make knives? No, I think particularly it is the sense of honour, and the will to hold one’s ground.
But I had no right to such thoughts, for I had surrendered my honour, my courage, in the delta of the Vosk, I had behaved as might have any animal, not a man.
I could not recover my honour, but I could, and did upon one occasion, recollect it, in a stockade at the shore of Thassa, at the edge of the northern forests.
I grew cold in the blankets. I had become petulant, bitter, petty, as an invalid, frustrated and furious at his own weakness, does.
But when I, half paralysed and crippled, had left the shores of Thassa I had left behind me a beacon, a mighty beacon formed from the logs of the stockade ofSarus, and it blazed behind me, visible for more than fifty pasangs at sea.
I did not know why I had set the beacon, but I had done so.
It had burned long and fiery in the Gorean night, on the stones of the beach, and then, in the morning it would have been ashes, and the winds and rains would have scattered them, and there would have been little left, save the stones, the sand and the prints of the feet of sea birds, tiny, like the thief’s brand, in the sand. But it would once have burned, and that was fixed, undeniable, a part of what had been, that it had burned; nothing could change that, not the eternities of time, not the will of Priest-Kings, the machinations of others, the wilfulnessand hatred of men; nothing could change that it had been, that once on the beach, there, a beacon had burned.
I wondered how men should live. In my chair, I had thought long on such matters.
I knew only that I did not know the answer to this question. Yet it is an important question, is it not? Many wise men give wise answers to this question, and yet they do not agree among themselves.
Only the simple, the fools, the unreflective, the ignorant, know the answer to this question.
Perhaps to a question this profound, the answer cannot be known. Perhaps it is a question too deep to be answered. Yet we do know there are false answers to such a question. This suggests that there may be a true answer, for how can there be falsity without truth?
One thing seems clear to me, that a morality which produces guilt and self-torture, which results in anxiety and agony, which shortens lifespans, cannot be the answer.
But what is not mistaken?
The Goreans have very different notions of morality from those of Earth.
Yet who is to say who is the more correct?
I envy sometimes the simplicities of those of Earth, and those of Gor, who, creatures of their conditioning, are untroubled by such matters, but I would not be s either of them.If either should be correct, it is for them no more than a lucky coincidence. They would have fallen into truth, but to take truth for granted, is not to know it. Truth not won is not possessed. We are not entitled to truths for which we have not fought.
Do we not know learn by living, as we learn to speak by speaking, to paint by painting, to build by building?
Those who best know how to live, sometimes it seems to me, are those least likely to be articulate in such skills. It is not that they have not learned, but, having learned, they find they cannot tell what they know, for only words can be told, and what is learned in living is more than words, other than words beyond words.We can say, “This building is beautiful,” but we do not learn the beauty of the building from the words; the building it is which teaches us its beauty; and how can one speak the beauty of the building, as it is? Does one say it has so many pillars, that it has a roof of a certain type, and such? Can one simply say. “The building is beautiful?” Yes, one can say that but what one learns when one sees the beauty of the building cannot be spoken; it is not words; it is the buildings beauty.
The morality of Earth, from the Gorean point of view, is a morality which would be viewed as more appropriate to slaves than free men. It would be seen in terms of the envy and resentment of inferiors for their superiors. It lays great stress on equalities and being humble and being pleasant and avoiding friction and being ingratiating and small. It is a morality in the best interest of slaves, who would be only too eager to be regarded as the equals of others.We are all the same. That is the hope of slaves; that is what it is in their best interests to convince others of. The Gorean morality on the other hand is more one of inequalities, based on the assumption that individuals are not the same, but quite different in many ways. It might be said to be, though this is oversimple, a morality of masters. Guilt is almost unknown in Gorean morality, though shame and anger are not. Many Earth moralities encourage resignation and accommodation: Gorean morality is bent more towards conquest and defiance; many Earthmoralities encourage tenderness, pity and gentleness, sweetness; Gorean morality encourages honor,courage, hardness and strength. To Gorean morality, many Earth moralities might ask.” Why so hard?’. To these Earthmoralities, the Gorean ethos might ask, “Why so soft?’
I have sometimes thought that the Goreans might do well to learn something of tenderness, and, perhaps, that those of Earth might do well to learn something of hardness. But I do not know how to live. I have sought the answers, but I have not found them.The morality of slaves says. “You are equal to me; we are both the same”; the morality ofmasters says. “ We are not equal; we are not the same; become equal to me; then we will be the same.” The morality of slaves reduces all to bondage; the morality of masters encourages all to attain, if they can, the heights of freedom. I know of no prouder, more self-reliant, more magnificent creature than the free Gorean, male or female: they are often touchy, and viciously tempered, but they are seldom petty or small: moreover they do not hate and fear their bodies or their instincts; when they restrain themselves it is a victory overtitanic forces; not the consequence of a slow metabolism; but sometimes they do not restrain themselves; they do not assume that their instincts and blood are enemies and spies, saboteurs in the house of themselves; they know them and welcome them as part of their persons; they are as little suspicious of themas the cat of its cruelty, or the lion of its hunger; their desire for vengeance, their will to speak out and defend themselves, their lust, they regard as intrinsically and gloriously a portion of themselves as their thinking or their hearing.Many Earth moralities make people little; the object of Gorean morality, for all its faults, is to make people free and great. These objectives are quiet different it is clear to see. Accordingly, one would expectthat the implementing moralities would, also be considerably different.
I sat in the darkness and thought on these things. There were no maps for me.
I, Tarl Talbot, or Bosk of Port Kar, was torn between worlds.
I did not know how to live.
I was bitter.
But the Goreans have a saying, which came to me in the darkness, in the hall,“Do not ask the stones or the trees how to live; they cannot tell you; they do not have tongues; do not ask the wise man how to live, for, if he knows, he will know he cannot tell you; if you would learn how to live, do not ask the question; its answer is not in the question but in the answer, which is not in words; do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so.”
I do not fully understand this saying. How, for example, can one proceed to do what one doers not know how to do?The answer,I suspect, is that the Gorean belief is that one does, truly,in some way, know how to live, though one may not know that one knows.The knowledge is regarded as being somehow within one.Perhaps it is regarded as being somehow innate, or a function of instincts.I do not know. The saying may also be interpreted as encouraging one to act, to behave, to do and then, in the acting, the doing, the behaving, to learn.These two interpretations, of course, are not incompatible.The child, one supposes, hasthe innate disposition, when a certainmaturation level is attained, to struggle to its feet and walk, as it did to crawl, when an earlier level was attained, and yet it truly learns to crawl and to walk and then to run, only in the crawling, in the walking and running.
The refrain ran through my mind. “Do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so”
But how could I live, I, a cripple, huddled in the chair of a captain, in a darkened hall?
I was rich, but I envied the meanest herder of verr, the lowest peasant scattering dung in his furrows, for they could move as they pleased.
I tried to clench my left fist. But the hand did not move.
How should one live?
In the codes of the warriors, there isa saying, “Be strong, and do as you will. The swords of others will set your limits.”
I had been one of the finest swordsmen on Gor. But now I could not move the left side of my body.
But I could still command steel, that of my men, who, for no reason I understood, they Goreans, remained true to me, loyal to a cripple, confined to a captain’s chair in a darkened hall.
I was grateful to them, but I would show them nothing of this, for I was a captain.
They must not be demeaned.
“Within the circle of each man’s sword,” say the codes of the warrior, “therein is each man a Ubar”
“Steel is the coinage of the warrior,” say the codes, “With it he purchases what pleases him”
When I had returned from the northern forests I had resolved not to look upon Talena, once daughter of Marlenus of Ar, whom Samos had purchased from panther girls.
But I had had my hair carried to his hall.
