De legendis gentilium libris
De legendis gentilium libris Late Antiquity Basil of Caesarea GreekThere are many things, my children, that prompt me to advise you of what I judge to be best, and what I am persuaded will profit you if you choose it. For both my time of life, and my long training in many affairs, and indeed my full share of that change which teaches all things by turns, have made me experienced in human matters, so that I can point out to those just setting out upon life, as it were, the safest of roads.
By natural kinship, too, I stand to you next after your parents, so that I myself bear you no less goodwill than your fathers; and you, I think—unless I quite misjudge your minds—do not long for your parents while you have me before your eyes.
If, then, you receive my words eagerly, you will belong to the second rank of those whom Hesiod praises; but if not, I would say nothing harsh, while you yourselves will of course remember those verses in which he says that the best man is he who of himself discerns what must be done, and good likewise is he who follows what others have shown him, but the man fit for neither is useless for everything.
Do not wonder if, though you go each day to your teachers and consort with the famous men of old through the writings they have left, I claim to have found out for myself something still more profitable.
This very thing, then, is what I have come to advise: that you must not, once and for all, hand over to these men the rudders of your mind as though it were a ship, and follow wherever they lead; but, while receiving from them whatever is useful, you must know also what ought to be passed over. What these things are, then, and how we shall distinguish them—this is what I shall teach you, taking my start from here.
We, my children, hold that this human life of ours is no thing at all worth reckoning, and we count nothing whatever to be good, nor give it that name, which furnishes us its full benefit only up to this present life.
Neither distinction of ancestry, then, nor strength of body, nor beauty, nor stature, nor the honours paid by all men, nor kingship itself, nor anything one might call great among human things do we judge even worth a prayer, nor do we look up to those who possess them; but we press onward in our hopes to something further off, and do all that we do for the furnishing of another life.
Whatever, therefore, contributes to this for us, we say we must love and pursue with all our might; but whatever does not reach toward it we must overlook as worth nothing. What this life is, then, and where and how we shall live it, would take longer to reach than the present occasion allows, and require greater hearers than you.
Yet by saying this much I might perhaps show you sufficiently that, if one were to gather in his thought the whole happiness of mankind from the time men have existed, and bring it together into one, he would find it not equal even to the smallest fraction of those goods, but that the sum of all things fair here falls further short, in worth, of the least of those, than a shadow and a dream fall short of the truth.
Or rather, to use a more fitting example: by as much as the soul is in all respects more precious than the body, by so much also is the difference between the two lives. To this life the sacred writings lead us, schooling us through mysteries.
Yet so long as, by reason of our age, it is not possible to follow the depth of their meaning, we train the eye of the soul beforehand upon other writings not wholly different—as upon shadows, so to speak, and reflections—imitating those who practise their drills in arms, who, having gained skill in feints and in dancing, reap in the contests themselves the profit of their play.
And so we too must consider that a contest lies before us, the greatest of all contests, for the sake of which we must do everything and toil to the utmost in preparing for it; and we must consort with poets and prose-writers and orators and all men, wherever some benefit toward the care of the soul is likely to come.
As, then, the dyers first prepare by certain treatments whatever is to receive the dye, and then apply the colour, whether it be purple or some other; in the same way we too, if the glory of the good is to remain unfading in us for all time, must first be initiated in these outer studies, and then go on to hear the sacred and hidden teachings; and, like men accustomed to look at the sun in water, so shall we then turn our eyes upon the light itself.
If, then, there is some kinship of these writings with one another, the knowledge of them will profit us; but if not, at least to set them side by side and learn the difference is no small help toward confirming the better.
To what, indeed, might one liken each of the two educations, that you might hit upon the image? Perhaps as the proper excellence of a plant is to teem with seasonable fruit, though it also bears a certain adornment in the leaves that wave about its branches—so too with the soul: its foremost fruit is truth, yet it is no graceless thing to be wrapped about with the wisdom that comes from without, like leaves that afford the fruit both shelter and a not unseemly look.
It is said, then, that even that great Moses, whose name for wisdom is greatest among all men, first trained his mind in the learning of the Egyptians, and so came to the contemplation of Him Who Is.
And like to him, in later times, they say that the wise Daniel learned the wisdom of the Chaldeans at Babylon, and only then laid hold of the divine teachings.
But that these outer studies are not useless to souls has been said sufficiently; how you ought to partake of them would be the next thing to tell.
First, then, as to what comes from the poets, that I may begin from there: since they are of all sorts in their utterances, you must not give your mind to all alike. But whenever they recount to you the deeds or words of good men, you must love and emulate them, and try as far as possible to be such yourselves.
But when they come to wicked men, you must flee such imitation, stopping up your ears no less than they say Odysseus did against the songs of the Sirens. For familiarity with base words is a road that leads to base deeds.
Wherefore the soul must be guarded with all watchfulness, lest through the pleasure of the words we unawares take in something of the worse, like men who swallow poison along with honey.
We shall not, then, praise the poets when they revile, or jeer, or portray men in love or drunk, nor when they define happiness by a laden table and unrestrained songs. Least of all shall we attend to them when they discourse about the gods, and especially when they treat of them as many, and these not even of one mind.
For among them brother is at strife with brother, and parent with children, and these again wage truceless war against those who bore them. And the adulteries of the gods, their loves and open unions—and these above all of Zeus, the chief and highest of them all, as they themselves say—things at which one would blush even to speak of beasts: these we shall leave to the stage.
The same I have to say of the prose-writers also, and especially when they compose their tales to beguile their hearers. And the art of lying that belongs to orators we shall not imitate. For neither in the courts nor in other affairs is falsehood fitting for us who have chosen the straight and true road of life, to whom it is enjoined by law not even to go to law.
But rather we shall accept those passages of theirs in which they have praised virtue or condemned vice. For as with flowers, the rest of men have enjoyment only of their fragrance or their colour, but to the bees it falls to gather honey from them as well, so here too those who pursue in such writings not the merely sweet and pleasant alone may lay up from them some benefit for the soul.
According to the whole image of the bees, then, you must partake of these writings. For they neither approach all flowers alike, nor do they try to carry off whole those on which they alight, but, taking only so much of them as is fit for their work, they let the rest go.
And we too, if we are wise, having taken from these writers only what is akin to us and kindred to the truth, shall pass over the remainder. And just as in plucking the bloom of the rose-bed we avoid the thorns, so in such writings too we shall garner what is useful and guard against what is harmful.
From the very outset, then, it is fitting to examine each of the lessons and fit it to its end, drawing, as the Dorian proverb has it, the stone to the line.
And since we must descend to our own life by way of virtue, and since virtue has been hymned much by poets, much by prose-writers, and far more by men of philosophy, it is to such writings above all that we must attend.
For it is no small benefit that a certain familiarity and habituation to virtue be engendered in the souls of the young, since the lessons of such matters are by nature unalterable, being stamped deep through the tenderness of their souls.
Or with what other intent are we to suppose that Hesiod composed those verses which all men sing, than to urge the young to virtue—how the road that leads to virtue is at first rough and hard to travel, full of much sweat and toil, and steep?
Wherefore it is not for everyone either to set foot upon it, because of its steepness, or, having set foot, to reach the summit easily. But once a man is up, he can see how smooth and fair it is, how easy and well-furnished, and pleasanter than the other road, the one that leads to vice—which, this same poet says, may be taken whole and at a stretch from close at hand.
To me, indeed, he seems to have recounted these things for no other purpose than to urge us on to virtue and to call upon all to be good, and that we may not, growing soft before the toils, fall away before the end. And indeed, if any other has hymned virtue in like fashion, let us accept his words as bearing toward the same goal with ours.
As I once heard from a man skilled in discerning a poet's meaning, the whole poetry of Homer is a praise of virtue, and everything in it bears toward this, except what is by-work—and not least in those passages where he has portrayed the leader of the Cephallenians, saved naked from the shipwreck. First the king's daughter felt awe at the mere sight of him alone—so far was he from incurring shame at being seen naked and alone—since the poet had made him adorned with virtue in place of garments.
And then he was judged of such worth by the rest of the Phaeacians too, that, forsaking the luxury in which they lived, they all looked to him and emulated him, and there was at that time no Phaeacian who would have prayed for anything sooner than to become Odysseus—and that a man saved from a shipwreck.
For in these passages, said this interpreter of the poet's meaning, Homer all but cries aloud: "You must take care for virtue, O men—virtue which swims out with a man even from shipwreck, and, when he reaches dry land naked, will show him more honourable than the prosperous Phaeacians."
And so indeed it is. As for other possessions, they belong no more to their owners than to anyone at all who chances upon them, shifting this way and that as in a game of dice; virtue alone of possessions cannot be taken away, abiding with a man both living and dead. Whence Solon too, it seems to me, said to the rich: "But we will not exchange with them our virtue for their wealth, since the one abides forever, while men's riches now one man, now another holds."
Like to these are the words of Theognis also, in which he says that the god—whatever god he means—inclines the balance to men now this way, now that: now to be rich, now to have nothing.
And moreover the Cean sophist Prodicus too, somewhere in his own writings, philosophized akin to these on virtue and vice; to him also we must give heed, for the man is not to be cast aside.
His discourse runs somewhat thus, as far as I remember the man's thought—for the actual words I do not know, save that he spoke them simply, without metre: that when Heracles was quite young, and nearly of this very age which you now are, deliberating which of the two roads he should take—the one that leads through toils to virtue, or the easiest—two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice.
At once, even in their silence, they showed the difference in their appearance. For the one was tricked out by cosmetics into beauty, melting with luxury, and led a whole swarm of pleasures clinging to her; these she displayed, and, promising still more than these, tried to draw Heracles to herself.
But the other was withered and squalid, with a stern look, and spoke far otherwise; for she promised nothing slack or sweet, but countless sweats and toils and dangers over every land and sea—and the prize of these was to become a god, as his account has it; and following her it was that Heracles in the end arrived.
And nearly all who have any reputation for wisdom have, each according to his power, set forth in their own writings, in greater or lesser degree, a praise of virtue; and these we must believe, and try to show forth their words in our life. For he who confirms by deed the philosophy that with others reaches only as far as words, "he alone has understanding; the rest are flitting shadows."
And such a thing seems to me much as if a painter had imitated some wondrous beauty of a man, but the man himself were in truth such as that painter showed upon his panels.
For to praise virtue brilliantly in public and to spin out long discourses about her, while privately honouring pleasure before temperance and gain before justice—this, I would say, is like the actors on the stage who often come on as kings and potentates, being neither kings nor potentates, nor perhaps even free men at all.
Then a musician would not willingly endure that his lyre be out of tune, nor a chorus-leader that his chorus be anything but in perfect concord; yet will each man individually be at variance with himself, and present a life that does not agree with his words?
But "the tongue has sworn, the mind is unsworn," he will say with Euripides, and will pursue the seeming good before the being good. Yet this is the uttermost limit of injustice, if we are to believe Plato at all: to seem just without being so.
The writings, then, that contain the precepts of noble things let us accept in this way. But since worthy deeds of the men of old are preserved to us either by the succession of memory or guarded in the words of poets and prose-writers, let us not be left without the benefit from this source either.
For instance: a man of the marketplace was reviling Pericles, and he paid no heed; and it lasted the whole day, the one unsparingly drenching him with insults, the other not caring at all. Then, when it was already evening and dark, and the man was scarcely going off, Pericles escorted him home by torchlight, so that his own exercise toward philosophy should not be spoiled.
Again, a man, provoked at Euclid of Megara, threatened him with death and swore it; but Euclid swore in turn that he would surely appease him and stop his being harsh toward him. How greatly worth it is that some such example should enter the memory of a man already mastered by anger!
For one must not simply believe tragedy when it says, "Wrath arms the hand against enemies." Rather one must, above all, not rouse oneself to anger at all; or, if that is not easy, then, putting reason upon it as a bridle, not let it be carried too far.
But let us bring our discourse back again to the examples of worthy deeds. Someone fell upon Socrates the son of Sophroniscus and struck him unsparingly in the very face; and he did not resist, but offered the drunken brawler his fill of wrath, so that his face was already swollen and bruised from the blows.
When, then, the man had ceased striking, Socrates did nothing else, but is said to have inscribed upon his forehead, as on a statue the sculptor's name: "So-and-so made this"—
and thus far did he avenge himself. These things, since they bear nearly toward the same goal as ours, I say it is greatly worth it for you, at your age, to imitate. For this deed of Socrates is brother to that precept, that to him who strikes upon the one cheek it is fitting to offer the other also—
so far from defending oneself. And the deed of Pericles or of Euclid is akin to enduring those who persecute us and bearing their wrath gently, and to praying good things for our enemies rather than calling down curses. He who has been trained beforehand in these matters will no longer distrust those precepts as impossible.
I would not pass over the deed of Alexander, who, having taken captive the daughters of Darius, witnessed to be of wondrous beauty, did not even deign to look upon them, judging it shameful that he who had conquered men should be conquered by women. For this bears toward the same as that other saying, that he who looks upon a woman with pleasure, even if he does not accomplish the adultery in deed, yet by admitting the desire into his soul is not acquitted of the charge.
And the deed of Cleinias, one of the disciples of Pythagoras, it is hard to believe came about by chance to accord with our precepts, and not rather by deliberate imitation. What was it that he did? When he might by an oath have escaped a fine of three talents, he paid it rather than swear, and that when he would have sworn truly—having heard, it seems to me, the command that forbids us the oath.
But, as I said at the beginning, let us return again to the same point. We must not accept everything in turn, but only what is useful. For it is shameful, while rejecting the harmful among foods, to take no account at all of the lessons that nourish our soul, but, like a torrent, to sweep along and cast in whatever comes to hand.
And yet what reason is there that a helmsman should not give way idly to the winds, but steer his vessel toward harbour; and an archer should aim at his mark; and indeed a smith too, or a carpenter, should aim at the end proper to his art—while we should fall short even of such craftsmen in being able to discern our own concerns?
For surely it is not that there is some limit to the work of handicraftsmen, but no goal to human life, toward which a man must look in all he does and says, if he is not to be wholly like to the brute beasts? Or else we should be plainly as ballastless ships, with no mind seated at the rudders of the soul, carried up and down through life at random.
But just as in the gymnastic contests—or, if you like, in music—the exercises belong to those contests for which the crowns are set; and no one who practises wrestling or the pancratium then trains to play the lyre or the flute.
Polydamas, at least, did not; rather, before the Olympic contest, he would halt running chariots, and by this strengthened his might. And Milo could not be thrust off his oiled shield, but held out against the pushing no less than statues fastened with lead.
And, in a word, their exercises were preparations for the contests. But if they had busied themselves with the strains of Marsyas or of Olympus the Phrygian, leaving the dust and the gymnasiums, would they soon have won crowns or glory, or escaped being a laughing-stock in body?
Nor again did Timotheus, on the other hand, give up melody and spend his time in the wrestling-schools; for then it would not have been his to surpass all men in music—he who so excelled in the art that he could rouse the spirit by the strenuous and severe harmony, and again, when he wished, relax and soften it by the slack one.
By this very art, indeed, it is said that once, when he piped the Phrygian strain to Alexander, he made him spring up to arms in the midst of his dinner, and then brought him back again to his fellow-banqueters by relaxing the harmony. So great a power, both in music and in the gymnastic contests, does practice afford toward the winning of the end.
And since I have made mention of crowns and athletes: those men, after suffering countless things upon countless, and increasing their strength from many sources—sweating much in gymnastic toils, taking many blows in the trainer's school, choosing a regimen not the most pleasant but the one the trainers prescribe, and, that I may not waste words, so passing their days that the life before the contest is a training for the contest—then at last strip for the stadium, and toil and risk everything, to win a crown of wild olive or of parsley or some other such thing, and to be proclaimed victors by the herald.
But for us, to whom prizes of life are set so wondrous in number and in greatness that they cannot be told in words—shall it be ours to seize them while we sleep with both eyes and live in great licence, taking them with the other hand?
Then ease would be worth much in life, and Sardanapalus would be borne to first place of all in happiness, or Margites too, if you like, whom Homer said was neither ploughman nor digger nor any other thing useful for life—if indeed these verses are Homer's.
But is not rather the saying of Pittacus true, who said that it is hard to be good? For only by passing in truth through many toils could it fall to us scarcely to attain those goods, of which we said in the foregoing that there is no example among human things.
We must not, then, be slothful, nor exchange great hopes for a brief ease, if we are not to incur reproaches and undergo punishments—not, indeed, among men here (though even this is no small thing to one who has understanding), but in those places of justice, whether under the earth or wherever in the universe they happen to be.
For to him who has erred from what is fitting unwillingly, perhaps some pardon might come from God; but for him who has deliberately chosen the worse there is no excuse against undergoing punishment many times over.
"What, then, are we to do?" someone might say. What else but take care of the soul, keeping all leisure from other things?
We must not, then, be slaves to the body except so far as is wholly necessary; but we must provide the best things for the soul, freeing it through philosophy, as from a prison, from its fellowship with the passions of the body, while at the same time making the body too superior to the passions—serving the belly with what is necessary, not with what is most pleasant. For such men as cast about for caterers and cooks, and ransack every land and sea, paying tribute as to some harsh master, are pitiable in their busyness, suffering nothing more endurable than those punished in Hades, who simply card wool into fire, and carry water in a sieve, and pour into a jar full of holes,
having no end of their toils. To busy oneself with haircuts and clothing beyond what is necessary belongs, by the saying of Diogenes, either to the unfortunate or to the unjust. So I say one must hold it equally shameful to be, and to be called, a fop, as to play the harlot or to plot against others' marriages.
For what difference would it make to a man of understanding whether he is wrapped in a fine robe or wears some cheap garment, so long as nothing is lacking to be a defence against winter and heat?
And in other things likewise let nothing be furnished beyond need, nor let a man tend the body more than is better for the soul. For it is no less a reproach to a man truly worthy of that name to be a fop and a lover of the body than to be basely disposed toward any other of the passions.
For to bring all one's zeal to bear that the body may be in the fairest condition belongs to a man who does not know himself, nor understands the wise precept that man is not the thing seen, but needs a more excessive wisdom by which each of us, whoever he is, shall come to know himself. And this is harder for those who have not cleansed the mind than for the bleary-eyed to look up at the sun.
Now the cleansing of the soul, to speak summarily and sufficiently for you, is to despise the pleasures that come through the senses—not to feast the eyes on the absurd displays of jugglers or on sights of bodies that send forth a sting of pleasure, nor to pour through the ears a corrupting melody upon the souls.
For passions, the offspring of illiberality and meanness, are by nature engendered from such a kind of music. But we must pursue the other kind, the better, the one that leads to the better—the very kind that David, the poet of the sacred songs, used, when, as they say, he restored the king from his madness.
It is said too that Pythagoras, falling in with drunken revellers, bade the flute-player who led the revel change the harmony and pipe to them the Dorian strain, and that they thereby came so to their senses through the melody that, casting away their crowns, they went home ashamed.
Others rave like Corybantes and are driven to frenzy by the flute: so great is the difference whether one is filled with sound or with corrupt melody. So that of this kind now in vogue you must partake less than of anything most shameful.
To mingle with the air all manner of vapours that bring pleasure to the smell, or to anoint ourselves with perfumes, I am ashamed even to forbid. And what could one say about the duty of not pursuing the pleasures of touch and taste, except that these constrain men who have given their leisure to hunting them down to live, like cattle, bent over the belly and what is below it?
In a word, the whole body is to be despised by him who is not minded to be buried in its pleasures as in mire; or else we must cling to it only so far—as Plato says—as we win from it a service for philosophy, speaking somewhat like Paul, who exhorts that we should take no forethought for the body unto the occasion of lusts.
Or how do they differ who take thought that the body may be in the best condition, but overlook as worth nothing the soul that is to use it—from men who are zealous about their instruments but neglect the art that works through them?
Quite the contrary: one must chastise and restrain the body, as one restrains the impulses of a wild beast, and lull the tumults that arise from it in the soul, smiting them with reason as with a whip—rather than, slackening every rein of pleasure, let the mind be overlooked, like a charioteer dragged off and carried away by the violence of unmanageable horses. And one must remember Pythagoras, who, perceiving one of his companions fattening himself well with exercises and food, said thus: "Will you not stop making your prison harder for yourself?"
Wherefore it is said that Plato too, foreseeing the harm from the body, deliberately chose the unhealthy district of Attica, the Academy, that he might cut away the excessive well-being of the body, as one prunes the vine of its growth into superfluous shoots. And I have heard physicians say that the extreme of robust health is even perilous.
Since, then, this excessive care of the body is both unprofitable to the body itself and a hindrance to the soul, to be subject to it and to serve it is plain madness.
But if we practise despising it, we should scarcely admire anything else of human things. For what further use shall we make of wealth, if we dishonour the pleasures that come through the body? I, for one, do not see, unless, like the dragons in the fables, one should find some pleasure in keeping watch over buried treasures.
He who has been schooled to be free in his disposition toward such things would be far from ever choosing anything mean and shameful, in deed or word. For whatever is beyond need, even if it be Lydian gold-dust, or the work of the gold-bearing ants, he will despise the more, the less he has need of it; and he will limit need itself by the necessities of nature, not by the pleasures.
For those who have passed beyond the bounds of the necessary are like men borne down a slope, who, having nothing firm to come to rest upon, nowhere halt in their forward rush; but the more they heap around themselves, the more they need, equal or greater, for the satisfying of their desire—according to Solon the son of Execestides, who says: "No limit of wealth lies revealed for men."
And against these things we must use Theognis as teacher, who says: "I neither long to be rich nor pray for it, but may it be mine to live on little, having no ill." And I admire too the contempt of Diogenes for all human things together—he who showed himself richer even than the Great King, by needing fewer things than that king for his life.
But for us, it seems, unless we have the talents of Pythius the Mysian, and so many acres of land, and herds more numerous than to count, nothing will suffice. Yet, I think, it is fitting neither to long for wealth when it is absent, nor, when it is present, to take pride in possessing it rather than in knowing how to dispose of it well. For the saying of Socrates is good:
when a rich man was greatly proud of his money, he said he would not admire him until he had also tested whether he knew how to use it.
Or would Pheidias and Polycleitus, if they had been greatly proud of the gold and the ivory—of which the one made the Zeus for the Eleans, the other the Hera for the Argives—have been laughing-stocks, adorning themselves with another's wealth and forsaking their art, through which the gold itself was shown sweeter and more precious? But shall we, supposing that human virtue does not suffice of itself for adornment, think we do things worthy of less shame?
Shall we, indeed, despise wealth and dishonour the pleasures of the senses, but pursue flattery and fawning, and emulate the craft and cunning of Archilochus' fox?
There is nothing the man of sense must flee more than living for reputation, and looking about at what seems good to the many, and not making right reason the guide of his life—so that, even if he must contradict all men, even if he must lose repute and run risks for what is noble, he should choose to swerve in nothing from what he has rightly resolved.
Or how shall we say that the man not so disposed falls short of the Egyptian sophist, who became a plant and a beast whenever he wished, and fire and water and all things,
if indeed he too will now praise justice among those who honour it, and now let loose contrary words when he perceives injustice in good repute—which is the way of flatterers? And as they say the polyp takes its colour from the ground beneath it, so he will change his thought to suit the minds of those he is with.
But these things we shall learn more perfectly in our own teachings; for the present, let us only sketch a kind of outline of virtue from the outer learning. For to those who diligently gather the benefit from each source, as to the great rivers, many additions come naturally from many quarters.
For to lay up little upon little is rightly held by the poet to make for an addition no less to knowledge of any kind than to money.
Bias, then, to his son setting out for Egypt and asking what he might do that would most gratify him, said: "Acquire provision for old age"—meaning by the provision virtue, though he confined it within narrow bounds, since he limited the benefit from it to human life.
But I, even if one should name the old age of Tithonus, or of Arganthonius, or of the longest-lived among us, Methuselah, who is said to have lived a thousand years lacking thirty, or should measure out the whole time since men have existed, will laugh as at the thoughts of children, looking to the long and ageless eternity, of which it is no more possible for the mind to grasp an end than to suppose a death for the immortal soul.
Toward that I would exhort you to acquire your provisions, leaving, as the proverb has it, no stone unturned from which some benefit toward it might come to you. And let us not shrink because these things are hard and require toil; but, remembering him who counselled that each man should choose for himself the best life, and expect that it will become pleasant through habit, let us set our hand to the best things.
For it is shameful to let slip the present season, and afterward at some time to call back the past, when there shall be no more profit in grieving.
I, then, have now told you part of what I judge to be best, and the rest I shall counsel you throughout all your life. But you, since there are three kinds of sickness, do not show yourselves like to the incurable kind, nor display a disease of the judgement resembling that of those afflicted in body.
For those who suffer from small ailments go of themselves to the physicians; those seized by greater sicknesses call to themselves those who will heal them; but those who have been carried away into the wholly incurable melancholy do not even admit those who come to them. May you not now suffer this, fleeing from those whose reasonings are sound.