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 CONTENTS vii

JOHN STUART MILL 920

Utilitarianism 923

SØREN KIERKEGAARD 962

Fear and Trembling (Problema I: “Teleological Suspension
of the Ethical”) 966
Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Section II, Chapter 2, “Subjective Truth,
Inwardness; Truth Is Subjectivity”) 974

KARL MARX 983

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (“Alienated Labor”) 986
Manifesto of the Communist Party (Chapters 1 and 2) 995
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Preface) 1004
Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anarchy (selections) 1005

CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE 1007

The Fixation of Belief 1009

WILLIAM JAMES 1019

Pragmatism (Lecture II: What Pragmatism Means) 1021

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 1033

The Birth of Tragedy (Chapters 1–3) 1037
The Gay Science (selections) 1043
Twilight of the Idols (selections) 1045
The Anti-Christ (First Book, 2–7, 62) 1057

TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY 1061

EDMUND HUSSERL 1065

Phenomenology (Encyclopaedia Brittanica article) 1068
viii CONTENTS

W.E.B. DU BOIS 1076

The Souls of Black Folks (Chapter 1) 1079

BERTRAND RUSSELL 1085

The Problems of Philosophy (Chapters 1 & 15) 1088

MARTIN HEIDEGGER 1096

Introduction to Metaphysics (Chapter 1: “The Fundamental Question
of Metaphysics”) 1101

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 1127

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Preface Sections 1–3.1431,4, 4.06, 4.1,
5, 5.6, 6.4–7) 1131
Philosophical Investigations (Paragraphs 1–47, 65–71, 241, 257–258,
305, 309) 1139

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 1156

Existentialism Is a Humanism 1160

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR 1174

The Second Sex (Introduction) 1177

WILLARD VAN ORMAN QUINE 1189

Two Dogmas of Empiricism 1192

JACQUES DERRIDA 1207

Of Grammatology (“The Written Being/The Being Written”) 1210
Preface

T here is no better introduction to philosophy than to read some of the great philoso-
phers. But few books are more difficult to read than Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Spinoza’s
Ethics. Even works that are less puzzling are sometimes like snippets of a conversation
that you overhear on entering a room: What is said is clear, only you cannot be sure you
have got the point because you do not know just what has gone before. A slight point
may be crucial to refute some earlier suggestion, and a seemingly pointless remark may
contain a barbed allusion. As a result of this difficulty, some students of philosophy cry
out for a simple summary of the “central doctrines” of the great philosophers. Yet carv-
ing up great books to excerpt essential doctrines is one of the greatest sins against the
spirit of philosophy. If the reading of a whole Platonic dialogue leaves one more doubt-
ful and less sure of oneself than the perusal of a brief summary, so much the better. It is
part of the point of philosophy to make us a little less sure about things. After all,
Socrates himself insisted that what distinguished him from other persons was not that he
knew all, or even most, answers but rather that he realized his ignorance.
Still, one need not despair of joining this ongoing conversation. In the first place,
you can get in near the beginning of this conversation by starting with Plato and moving
on from there. Given that they are over two thousand years old, his early dialogues are
surprisingly easy to follow. The later Platonic dialogues, Aristotle, and much which fol-
lows will be more difficult, but by that point you will have some idea of what the con-
versation is about.
Secondly, the structure of this book is designed to make this conversation accessi-
ble. There are section introductions and introductions to the individual philoso-phers.
These latter introductions are divided into three sections: (1) biographical (a glimpse of

ix
x PREFACE

the life), (2) philosophical (a resume of the philosopher’s thought), and (3) bibliographical
(suggestions for further reading). To give a sense of the development of ideas, there are
short representative passages from some of the less important, but transitional, thinkers.
To make all the works more readable, most footnotes treating textual matters (variant
readings, etc.) have been omitted and all Greek words have been transliterated and put in
angle brackets. My goal throughout this volume is to be unobtrusive and allow you to
hear, and perhaps join in, the ongoing conversation that is Western philosophy.

WHAT’S NEW IN THIS EDITION?

• New translations of Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics, and On

the Soul by Joe Sachs.
• New translation of Spinoza’s Ethics by Samuel Shirley.
• New section on Pyrrho using a reading from Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of
Pyrrhonism.
• New section on Charles Sanders Peirce with the reading “The Fixation of Belief.”
• New section on William James with the reading “What Pragmatism Means” from
Pragmatism.
• New section on W.E.B. Du Bois with the reading “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”
from The Souls of Black Folks.
• Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism is now given complete.
• New reading by Jacques Derrida, “The Written Being/The Being Written”
from Of Grammatology.
• Updated bibliographies reflecting the most recent scholarship on each thinker
and philosophical school.

Throughout the editing of this edition, I have tried to follow the editorial princi-
ples established by Walter Kaufmann in his 2 volume Philosophic Classics (1961) on
which this current series is based: (1) to use complete works or, where more appropri-
ate, complete sections of works (2) in clear translations (3) of texts central to the
thinker’s philosophy or widely accepted as part of the “canon.” While little remains of
Professor Kaufmann's introductions or editing—and the series has now grown to 7
volumes—his spirit of inclusion and respect for ideas continues. Those who use this
volume in a one-term introduction to philosophy, history of philosophy, or history of
intellectual thought course will find more material here than can easily fit a normal
semester. But this embarrassment of riches gives teachers some choice and, for those
who offer the same course year after year, an opportunity to change the menu.

* * *
I would like to thank the many people who assisted me in this volume, including the
library staff of Whitworth College, especially Hans Bynagle, Gail Fielding, and
Jeanette Langston; my colleagues, F. Dale Bruner, who made helpful suggestions on all
the introductions, Barbara Filo, who helped make selections for the artwork, and
 PREFACE xi

Corliss Slack and John Yoder, who provided historical context; Stephen Davis,
Claremont McKenna College; Jerry H. Gill, The College of St. Rose; Rex Hollowell,
Spokane Falls Community College; Arthur F. Holmes, Wheaton College; Stanley
Obitts, Westmont College; Wayne Pomerleau, Gonzaga University; Timothy A.
Robinson, The College of St. Benedict; Glenn Ross, Franklin & Marshall College; and
Charles Young, The Claremont Graduate School, who each read some of the introduc-
tions and gave helpful advice; Edward Beach, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and
John Justice, Randolph-Macon Women’s College who graciously called my attention to
errors in previous editions; my former secretary, Michelle Seefried; my production
editor, Shiny Rajesh of Integra, my project managers, Sarah Holle and Cheryl Keenan
of Prentice Hall; and my former acquisitions editors, Mical Moser, Ross Miller, Karita
France, Angela Stone and Ted Bolen. I would also like to acknowledge the following
reviewers who made helpful suggestions: Marianina Alcott, San Jose State University;
James W. Allard, Montana State University; David Apolloni, Augsburg College; Robert
C. Bennett, El Centro College; Sarah Borden, Wheaton College; Herbert L. Carson,
Ferris State University; Mary T. Clark, Manhattanville College; Stuart Dalton,
Monmouth College; Sandra S. Edwards, University of Arkansas; Steven M. Emmanuel,
Virginia Wesleyan College; David Griesedieck, University of Missouri, Saint Louis;
John Hurley, Central Connecticut Sate University; Stephen E. Lahey, LaMoyne
College; Helen S. Lang, Trinity College; R. James Long, Fairfield University; Scott
MacDonald, University of Iowa; Angel Medina, Georgia State University; Nick More,
Westminster College; Paul Newberry, California State University–Bakersfield; Eric
Palmer, Allegheny College; David F. T. Rodier, American University; Katherine
Rogers, University of Delaware; Gregory Schultz, Wisconsin Lutheran College;
Stephen Scott, Eastern Washington University; Daniel C. Shartin, Worcester State
College; Walter G. Scott, Oklahoma State University; Howard N. Tuttle, University of
New Mexico; Richard J. Van Iten, Iowa State University; Donald Phillip Verene, Emory
University; Tamara Welsh, Univeristy of Tennessee–Chattanooga; Sarah Worth,
Allegheny College; and Wilhelm S. Wurzer, Duquesne University.
I am especially thankful to my wife, Joy Lynn Fulton Baird, and to our children,
Whitney, Sydney, and Soren, who have supported me throughout this enterprise.

Forrest E. Baird
Professor of Philosophy
Whitworth University
Spokane, WA 99251
email: fbaird@whitworth.edu
 Philosophers in this Volume
400 B.C. 200 B.C. 0 A.D. 200 400 600 800 1000
Plato
Aristotle
Pyrrho
Epicurus
Epictetus
Sextus Empiricus
Plotinus
Augustine
Boethius
Anselm

Other Important Figures

Socrates
Alexander the Great Porphyry
Zeno of Citium Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite
Cleanthes Mohammed
Julius Caesar Charlemagne
Lucretius Avicenna
Philo of Alexandria
Jesus
Paul
Justin Martyr
Marcus Aurelius
Ptolemy (astronomer)
Clement of Alexandria
Tertullian
Origen

A Sampling of Major Events

Death of Socrates
Punic Wars and rise of Roman Empire
Wall of China built
Jerusalem Temple destroyed
Furthest extent of the Roman Empire
Council of Nicea
Roman Empire divided
Fall of Rome
Schools of philosophy in Athens
closed by Justinian
Muslim conquest
of Northern Africa
and Spain
Peak of Mayan
civilization in Central
America

400 B.C. 200 B.C. 0 A.D. 200 400 600 800 1000
 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Hildegard of Bingen John Stuart Mill
Moses Maimonides Søren Kierkegaard
Thomas Aquinas Karl Marx
William of Ockham Friedrich Nietzsche
Pico della Mirandola Edmund Husserl
Thomas Hobbes Bertrand Russell
René Descartes Martin Heidegger
Princess Elizabeth Ludwig Wittgenstein
of Bohemia Jean-Paul Sartre
Blaise Pascal Simone
Baruch Spinoza de Beauvoir
John Locke Willard Van
Gottfried Leibniz Orman Quine
George Berkeley Jacques
David Hume Derrida
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Immanuel Kant
G.W.F. Hegel
Mary Wollstonecraft

Peter Abelard Louis XIV Mahatma Gandhi

Averroës Isaac Newton G. E. Moore
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) J. S. Bach Martin Buber
Genghis Khan Voltaire Jacques Martin
Francis of Assisi Thomas Reid Adolf Hitler
Bonaventure J. W. Goethe Gilbert Ryle
Dante Alighieri Mozart A. J. Ayer
Catherine of Siena Napoleon Michel Foucault
Leonardo da Vinci Bonaparte
Martin Luther Beethoven
John Calvin Simon Bolivar
Galileo Queen Victoria
Shakespeare John Dewey
Rembrandt Henri Bergson
George Santayana

Paris University founded Wright brothers

Magna Carta invent airplane
Bubonic Plague World War I
Ming Dynasty in China Russian
Gutenberg invents moveable- Revolution
type printing World War II
Columbus sails to America Korean
Luther begins Protestant Reformation War
English defeat Spanish Armada Vietnam
Charles I executed War
English “Glorious Revolution” First men
Declaration on the
of Independence moon
French Revolution
Chaka founds Zulu Empire
American Civil War

1200 1400 1600 1800 2000

This page has been left blank intentionally
 ANCIENT GREEK
PHILOSOPHY
‫ﱸﱷﱶ‬

S omething unusual happened in Greece and in the Greek colonies of the Aegean
Sea some twenty-five hundred years ago. Whereas the previous great cultures of
the Mediterranean had used mythological stories of the gods to explain the oper-
ations of the world and of the self, some of the Greeks began to discover new
ways of explaining these phenomena. Instead of reading their ideas into, or out of,
ancient scriptures or poems, they began to use reason, contemplation, and sensory
observation to make sense of reality.
The story as we know it began with the Greeks living on the coast of Asia
Minor (present-day Turkey). Colonists there, such as Thales, tried to find the one
common element in the diversity of nature. Subsequent thinkers, such as
Anaximenes, sought not only to find this one common element, but also to find
the process by which one form changes into another. Other thinkers, such as
Pythagoras, turned to the nature of form itself rather than the basic stuff that takes
on a particular form.
With Socrates, the pursuit of knowledge turned inward as he sought not to
understand the world, but himself. His call to “know thyself,” together with his
uncompromising search for truth, inspired generations of thinkers. With the writ-
ings of Plato and Aristotle, ancient Greek thought reached its zenith. These giants
of human thought developed all-embracing systems that explained both the nature
of the universe and the humans who inhabit it.
All these lovers of wisdom, or philosophers, came to different conclusions and
often spoke disrespectfully of one another. Some held the universe to be one sin-
gle entity, whereas others insisted that it must be made of many parts. Some

1
2 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY

believed that human knowledge was capable of understanding virtually every-

thing about the world and the self, whereas others thought that it was not possible
to have any knowledge at all. But despite all their differences, there is a thread of
continuity, a continuing focus among them: the human attempt to understand the
world and the self, using human reason. This fact distinguishes these philoso-
phers from the great minds that preceded them.
The philosophers of ancient Greece have fascinated thinking persons for cen-
turies, and their writings have been one of the key influences on the development
of Western civilization. The works of Plato and Aristotle, especially, have defined
the questions and suggested many of the answers for subsequent generations. As
the great Greek statesman Pericles sagely predicted, “Future ages will wonder at
us, as the present age wonders at us now.”

* * *
For a comprehensive, yet readable, work on Greek philosophy, see W.K.C.
Guthrie’s authoritative The History of Greek Philosophy, six volumes.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962–1981). W.T. Jones, The Classical
Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969); Frederick Copleston,
A History of Philosophy: Volume I, Greece & Rome (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1962); Friedo Ricken, Philosophy of the Ancients, translated by Eric
Watkins (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991); J.V. Luce, An
Introduction to Greek Philosophy (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992);
C.C.W. Taylor, ed., Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From the
Beginning to Plato (London: Routledge, 1997); David Furley, ed., Routledge
History of Philosophy, Volume 2: Aristotle to Augustine (London: Routledge,
1997); Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000); James A. Arieti, Philosophy in the Ancient World
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Anthony Kenny, Ancient
Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy (Oxford University Press,
2004); and Stephanie Lynn Budin, The Ancient Greeks: An Introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009) provide basic introductions. Julie K. Ward, ed.,
Feminism and Ancient Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1996) provides a feminist
critique while Robert S. Brumbaugh, The Philosophers of Greece (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1981) is an accessible introduction with pictures, charts, and maps.
SOCRATES
470–399 B.C.
PLATO
428/7–348/7 B.C.

Socrates has fascinated and inspired men and women for over two thousand
years. All five of the major “schools” of ancient Greece (Academics, Peripatetics,
Epicureans, Stoics, and Cynics) were influenced by his thought. Some of the early
Christian thinkers, such as Justin Martyr, considered him a “proto-Christian,”
while others, such as St. Augustine (who rejected this view) still expressed deep
admiration for Socrates’ ethical life. More recently, existentialists have found in
Socrates’ admonition “know thyself” an encapsulation of their thought, and oppo-
nents of unjust laws have seen in Socrates’ trial a blueprint for civil disobedience.
In short, Socrates is one of the most admired men who ever lived.
The Athens into which Socrates was born in 470 B.C. was a city still living in
the flush of its epic victory over the Persians, and it was bursting with new ideas.
The playwrights Euripides and Sophocles were young boys, and Pericles, the
great Athenian democrat, was still a young man. The Parthenon’s foundation was
laid when Socrates was twenty-two, and its construction was completed fifteen
years later.
Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and of Phaenarete, a mid-
wife. As a boy, Socrates received a classical Greek education in music, gymnas-
tics, and grammar (or the study of language), and he decided early on to become
a sculptor like his father. Tradition says he was a gifted artist who fashioned
impressively simple statues of the Graces. He married a woman named
Xanthippe, and together they had three children. He took an early interest in the
developing science of the Milesians, and then he served for a time in the army.
When he was a middle-aged man, Socrates’ friend, Chaerephon, asked the ora-
cle at Delphi “if there was anyone who was wiser than Socrates.” For once the
mysterious oracle gave an unambiguous answer: “No one.” When Socrates heard

3
4 PLATO

of the incident, he was confused. He knew that he was not a wise man. So he set
out to find a wiser man to prove the answer wrong. Socrates later described the
method and results of his mission:

So I examined the man—I need not tell you his name, he was a politician—but this was
the result. Athenians. When I conversed with him I came to see that, though a great
many persons, and most of all he himself, thought that he was wise, yet he was not
wise. Then I tried to prove to him that he was not wise, though he fancied that he was.
By so doing I made him indignant, and many of the bystanders. So when I went away,
I thought to myself, “I am wiser than this man: neither of us knows anything that is
really worth knowing, but he thinks that he has knowledge when he has not, while
I, having no knowledge, do not think that I have. I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser
than he is on this point: I do not think that I know what I do not know.” Next I went to
another man who was reputed to be still wiser than the last, with exactly the same
result. And there again I made him, and many other men, indignant. (Apology 21c)

As Socrates continued his mission by interviewing the politicians, poets, and arti-
sans of Athens, young men followed along. They enjoyed seeing the authority fig-
ures humiliated by Socrates’ intense questioning. Those in authority, however, were
not amused. Athens was no longer the powerful, self-confident city of 470 B.C.,
the year of Socrates’ birth. An exhausting succession of wars with Sparta (the
Peloponnesian Wars) and an enervating series of political debacles had left the city
narrow in vision and suspicious of new ideas and of dissent. In 399 B.C., Meletus and
Anytus brought an indictment of impiety and corrupting the youth against Socrates.
As recorded in the Apology, the Athenian assembly found him guilty by a vote of 281
to 220 and sentenced him to death. His noble death is described incomparably in the
closing pages of the Phaedo by Plato.
Socrates wrote nothing, and our knowledge of his thought comes exclusively
from the report of others. The playwright Aristophanes (455–375 B.C.) satirized
Socrates in his comedy The Clouds. His caricature of Socrates as a cheat and
charlatan was apparently so damaging that Socrates felt compelled to offer a
rebuttal before the Athenian assembly (see the Apology, following). The military
general Xenophon (ca. 430–350 B.C.) honored his friend Socrates in his Apology
of Socrates, his Symposium, and, later, in his Memorabilia (“Recollections of
Socrates”). In an effort to defend his dead friend’s memory, Xenophon’s writings
illumine Socrates’ life and character. Though born fifteen years after the death of
Socrates, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) left many fascinating allusions to Socrates in
his philosophic works, as did several later Greek philosophers. But the primary
source of our knowledge of Socrates comes from one of those young men who
followed him: Plato.

* * *
Plato was probably born in 428/7 B.C. He had two older brothers, Adeimantus and
Glaucon, who appear in Plato’s Republic, and a sister, Potone. Though he may have
known Socrates since childhood, Plato was probably nearer twenty when he came under
the intellectual spell of Socrates. The death of Socrates made an enormous impression on
Plato and contributed to his call to bear witness to posterity of “the best, . . . the wisest and
most just” person that he knew (Phaedo, 118). Though Plato was from a distinguished
family and might have followed his relatives into politics, he chose philosophy.
 INTRODUCTION 5

Following Socrates’ execution, the twenty-eight-year-old Plato left Athens and

traveled for a time. He is reported to have visited Egypt and Cyrene—though some
scholars doubt this. During this time he wrote his early dialogues on Socrates’ life and
teachings. He also visited Italy and Sicily, where he became the friend of Dion, a rela-
tive of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, Sicily.
On returning to Athens from Sicily, Plato founded a school, which came to be
called the Academy. One might say it was the world’s first university, and it endured as
a center of higher learning for nearly one thousand years, until the Roman emperor
Justinian closed it in A.D. 529. Except for two later trips to Sicily, where he unsuccess-
fully sought to institute his political theories, Plato spent the rest of his life at the
Athenian Academy. Among his students was Aristotle. Plato died at eighty in 348/7 B.C.
Plato’s influence was best described by the twentieth-century philosopher Alfred
North Whitehead when he said, “The safest general characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

* * *
It is difficult to separate the ideas of Plato from those of his teacher, Socrates. In virtu-
ally all of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is the main character, and it is possible that in the
early dialogues Plato is recording his teacher’s actual words. But in the later dialogues,
“Socrates” gives Plato’s views—views that, in some cases, in fact, the historical
Socrates denied.
The first four dialogues presented in this text describe the trial and death of
Socrates and are arranged in narrative order. The first, the Euthyphro, takes place as
Socrates has just learned of the indictment against him. He strikes up a conversation
with a “theologian” so sure of his piety that he is prosecuting his own father for murder.
The dialogue moves on, unsuccessfully, to define piety. Along the way, Socrates asks a
question that has vexed philosophers and theologians for centuries: Is something good
because the gods say it is, or do the gods say it is good because it is?
The next dialogue, the Apology, is generally regarded as one of Plato’s first, and
as eminently faithful to what Socrates said at his trial on charges of impiety and corrup-
tion of youth. The speech was delivered in public and heard by a large audience; Plato
has Socrates mention that Plato was present; and there is no need to doubt the historical
veracity of the speech, at least in essentials. There are two breaks in the narrative: one
after Socrates’ defense (during which the Athenians vote “guilty”) and one after
Socrates proposes an alternative to the death penalty (during which the Athenians
decide on death). This dialogue includes Socrates’ famous characterization of his mis-
sion and purpose in life.
In the Crito, Plato has Crito visit Socrates in prison to assure him that his escape
from Athens has been well prepared and to persuade him to consent to leave. Socrates
argues that one has an obligation to obey the state even when it orders one to suffer
wrong. That Socrates, in fact, refused to leave is certain; that he used the arguments
Plato ascribes to him is less certain. In any case, anyone who has read the Apology will
agree that after his speech Socrates could not well escape.
The moving account of Socrates’ death is given at the end of the Phaedo, the last
of our group of dialogues. There is common agreement that this dialogue was written
much later than the other three and that the earlier part of the dialogue, with its Platonic
doctrine of Forms and immortality, uses “Socrates” as a vehicle for Plato’s own ideas.
These first four dialogues are given in the F.J. Church translation.
6 PLATO

There are few books in Western civilization that have had the impact of Plato’s
Republic—aside from the Bible, perhaps none. Like the Bible, there are also few books
whose interpretation and evaluation have differed so widely. Apparently it is a descrip-
tion of Plato’s ideal society: a utopian vision of the just state, possible only if philoso-
phers were kings. But some (see the following suggested readings) claim that its
purpose is not to give a model of the ideal state, but to show the impossibility of such a
state and to convince aspiring philosophers to shun politics. Evaluations of the Republic
have also varied widely: from the criticisms of Karl Popper, who denounced the
Republic as totalitarian, to the admiration of more traditional interpreters, such as
Francis MacDonald Cornford and Gregory Vlastos.
Given the importance of this work and the diversity of opinions concerning its
point and value, it was extremely difficult to decide which sections of the Republic to
include in this series. I chose to include the discussion of justice from Books I and II,
the descriptions of the guardians and of the “noble lie” from Book III, the discussions of
the virtues and the soul in Book IV, the presentations of the guardians’ qualities and
lifestyles in Book V, and the key sections on knowledge (including the analogy of the
line and the myth of the cave) from the end of Book VI and the beginning of Book VII.
I admit that space constraints have forced me to exclude important sections. Ideally, the
selections chosen will whet the student’s appetite to read the rest of this classic. I am
pleased to offer the Republic in the outstanding new translation by Joe Sachs.
The marginal page numbers are those of all scholarly editions, Greek, English,
German, or French.

* * *
For studies of Socrates, see the classic A.E. Taylor, Socrates: The Man and His Thought
(London: Methuen, 1933); the second half of Volume III of W.K.C. Guthrie, The
History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Hugh H.
Benson, Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992);
Anthony Gottlieb, Socrates (London: Routledge, 1999); Christopher Taylor’s pair of
introductions, Socrates and Socrates: A Very Short Introduction (both Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999 and 2000); Nalin Ranasingle, The Soul of Socrates (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2000); Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, The
Philosophy of Socrates (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000); and James Colaiazo, Socrates
Against Athens (London: Routledge, 2001). For collections of essays, see Gregory
Vlastos, ed., The Philosophy of Socrates (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); Hugh H.
Benson, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992); Terence Irwin, ed., Socrates and His Contemporaries (Hamden, CT: Garland
Publishing, 1995); and the multivolume William J. Prior, ed., Socrates (Oxford:
Routledge, 1996); and Lindsay Judson and Vassilis Karasmanis, eds., Remembering
Socrates: Philosophical Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For discus-
sions of the similarities and differences between the historical Socrates and the
“Socrates” of the Platonic dialogues, see Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral
Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), especially Chapters 2 and 3.
Books about Plato are legion. Once again the work of W.K.C. Guthrie is sensible,
comprehensive, yet readable. See Volumes IV and V of his The History of Greek
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 and 1978). Paul Shorey,
What Plato Said (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1933); and G.M.A. Grube,
Plato’s Thought (London: Methuen, 1935) are classic treatments of Plato, while Robert
 INTRODUCTION 7

Brumbaugh, Plato for a Modern Age (New York: Macmillan, 1964); I.M. Crombie, An
Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, two volumes (New York: Humanities Press,
1963–1969), R.M. Hare, Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); David J.
Melling, Understanding Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Bernard
Williams, Plato (London: Routledge, 1999); Julius Moravcsik, Plato and Platonism
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000); and Gail Fine, The Oxford Handbook of Plato
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) are more recent studies. For collections of
essays, see Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, two volumes
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971); Richard Kraut, ed., The Cambridge Companion
to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Nancy Tuana, ed., Feminist
Interpretations of Plato (College Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994);
Terence Irwin, ed., Plato’s Ethics and Plato’s Metaphysics and Epistemology (both
Hamden, CT: Garland Publishing, 1995); Gregory Vlastos, ed., Studies in Greek
Philosophy, Volume II: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1995); Nicholas D. Smith, ed., Plato: Critical Assessments (London:
Routledge, 1998); Gail Fine, ed., Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and
Gerald A. Press, ed., Who Speaks for Plato? (Lanham, MD: Rownan and Littlefield,
2000). C.D.C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1989) pro-
vides insights on this key dialogue. For further reading on the Republic, see Nicholas P.
White, A Companion to Plato’s Republic (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1979); Julia
Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Nickolas
Pappas, Routledge Guidebook to Plato and the Republic (Oxford: Routledge, 1995);
Daryl Rice, A Guide to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
Richard Kraut, ed., Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays (Lanham, MD: Rowan
& Littlefield, 1997); Sean Sayers, Plato’s Republic: An Introduction (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1999); Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Republic (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2005); Luke Purshouse, Plato’s Republic: A Reader’s Guide
(London: Continuum, 2006); and C.R.F. Ferrari, ed., The Cambridge Companion
to Plato’s Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Terence Irwin,
Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) and Gabriela Roxanna Carone,
Plato’s Cosmology and Its Ethical Dimensions (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005) examine several dialogues while thoroughly exploring Plato’s ethical
thought. Finally, for unusual interpretations of Plato and his work, see Werner Jaeger,
Paideia, Vols. II and III, translated by Gilbert Highet (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1939–1943); Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies; Volume I: The
Spell of Plato (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962); and Allan Bloom’s
interpretive essay in Plato, Republic, translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic
Books, 1968).
 8 PLATO

EUTHYPHRO

Characters
Socrates
Euthyphro
Scene—The Hall of the King*

2 EUTHYPHRO: What in the world are you doing here in the king’s hall, Socrates?
Why have you left your haunts in the Lyceum? You surely cannot have a suit before
him, as I have.
SOCRATES: The Athenians, Euthyphro, call it an indictment, not a suit.
b EUTHYPHRO: What? Do you mean that someone is prosecuting you? I cannot
believe that you are prosecuting anyone yourself.
SOCRATES: Certainly I am not.
EUTHYPHRO: Then is someone prosecuting you?
SOCRATES: Yes.
EUTHYPHRO: Who is he?
SOCRATES: I scarcely know him myself, Euthyphro; I think he must be some
unknown young man. His name, however, is Meletus, and his district Pitthis, if you can
call to mind any Meletus of that district—a hook-nosed man with lanky hair and rather
a scanty beard.
EUTHYPHRO: I don’t know him, Socrates. But tell me, what is he prosecuting you for?
c SOCRATES: What for? Not on trivial grounds, I think. It is no small thing for so
young a man to have formed an opinion on such an important matter. For he, he says,
knows how the young are corrupted, and who are their corrupters. He must be a wise
d man who, observing my ignorance, is going to accuse me to the state, as his mother, of
corrupting his friends. I think that he is the only one who begins at the right point in his
political reforms; for his first care is to make the young men as good as possible, just as
a good farmer will take care of his young plants first, and, after he has done that, of the
3 others. And so Meletus, I suppose, is first clearing us away who, as he says, corrupt the
young men growing up; and then, when he has done that, of course he will turn his
attention to the older men, and so become a very great public benefactor. Indeed, that is
only what you would expect when he goes to work in this way.
EUTHYPHRO: I hope it may be so, Socrates, but I fear the opposite. It seems to me
that in trying to injure you, he is really setting to work by striking a blow at the founda-
tion of the state. But how, tell me, does he say that you corrupt the youth?
b SOCRATES: In a way which sounds absurd at first, my friend. He says that I am a
maker of gods; and so he is prosecuting me, he says, for inventing new gods and for not
believing in the old ones.
EUTHYPHRO: I understand, Socrates. It is because you say that you always have a
divine guide. So he is prosecuting you for introducing religious reforms; and he is going
into court to arouse prejudice against you, knowing that the multitude are easily prejudiced

*The anachronistic title “king” was retained by the magistrate who had jurisdiction over crimes affect-
ing the state religion.

Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, translated by F.J. Church (Pearson/Library of the Liberal Arts, 1987).
 EUTHYPHRO 9

The Acropolis and the Parthenon

a. The Parthenon, Athens, built 477–438 B.C. The Parthenon, dedicated to Athena, patron deity of
Athens, was at one period rededicated to the Christian Virgin Mary and then later became a Turkish
mosque. In 1687 a gunpowder explosion created the ruin we see today. The Doric shell remains as a
monument to ancient architectural engineering expertise and to a sense of classical beauty and order.
( © James Davis/Eye Ubiquitous/Corbis)
b. Restored plan of the Acropolis, 400 B.C. The history of the Acropolis is as varied as the style and size of
the temples and buildings constructed atop the ancient site. (Public Domain)
c. This model of the Acropolis of Athens recreates the complexity of fifth century B.C. public space,
which included centers for worship, public forum, and entertainment. (With permission of the Royal
Ontario Museum © ROM)
d. Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns with their characteristic capitals. (© AS400 DB/Corbis)

about such matters. Why, they laugh even at me, as if I were out of my mind, when I talk
about divine things in the assembly and tell them what is going to happen; and yet I have c
never foretold anything which has not come true. But they are resentful of all people like
us. We must not worry about them; we must meet them boldly.
SOCRATES: My dear Euthyphro, their ridicule is not a very serious matter. The
Athenians, it seems to me, may think a man to be clever without paying him much
attention, so long as they do not think that he teaches his wisdom to others. But as soon
as they think that he makes other people clever, they get angry, whether it be from d
resentment, as you say, or for some other reason.
EUTHYPHRO: I am not very anxious to test their attitude toward me in this matter.
SOCRATES: No, perhaps they think that you are reserved, and that you are not anx-
ious to teach your wisdom to others. But I fear that they may think that I am; for my
love of men makes me talk to everyone whom I meet quite freely and unreservedly, and
 10 PLATO

without payment. Indeed, if I could I would gladly pay people myself to listen to me. If
then, as I said just now, they were only going to laugh at me, as you say they do at you,
it would not be at all an unpleasant way of spending the day—to spend it in court, jok-
ing and laughing. But if they are going to be in earnest, then only prophets like you can
tell where the matter will end.
EUTHYPHRO: Well, Socrates, I dare say that nothing will come of it. Very likely
you will be successful in your trial, and I think that I shall be in mine.
SOCRATES: And what is this suit of yours, Euthyphro? Are you suing, or being sued?
EUTHYPHRO: I am suing.
SOCRATES: Whom?
4 EUTHYPHRO: A man whom people think I must be mad to prosecute.
SOCRATES: What? Has he wings to fly away with?
EUTHYPHRO: He is far enough from flying; he is a very old man.
SOCRATES: Who is he?
EUTHYPHRO: He is my father.
SOCRATES: Your father, my good man?
EUTHYPHRO: He is indeed.
SOCRATES: What are you prosecuting him for? What is the accusation?
EUTHYPHRO: Murder, Socrates.
b SOCRATES: Good heavens, Euthyphro! Surely the multitude are ignorant of what is
right. I take it that it is not everyone who could rightly do what you are doing; only a
man who was already well advanced in wisdom.
EUTHYPHRO: That is quite true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Was the man whom your father killed a relative of yours? But, of
course, he was. You would never have prosecuted your father for the murder of a
stranger?
EUTHYPHRO: You amuse me, Socrates. What difference does it make whether
the murdered man were a relative or a stranger? The only question that you have to
ask is, did the murderer kill justly or not? If justly, you must let him alone; if unjustly,
c you must indict him for murder, even though he share your hearth and sit at your
table. The pollution is the same if you associate with such a man, knowing what he
has done, without purifying yourself, and him too, by bringing him to justice. In the
present case the murdered man was a poor laborer of mine, who worked for us on our
farm in Naxos. While drunk he got angry with one of our slaves and killed him. My
father therefore bound the man hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, while he
sent to Athens to ask the priest what he should do. While the messenger was gone, he
entirely neglected the man, thinking that he was a murderer, and that it would be no
d great matter, even if he were to die. And that was exactly what happened; hunger and
cold and his bonds killed him before the messenger returned. And now my father and
the rest of my family are indignant with me because I am prosecuting my father for
the murder of this murderer. They assert that he did not kill the man at all; and they
say that, even if he had killed him over and over again, the man himself was a mur-
e derer, and that I ought not to concern myself about such a person because it is impi-
ous for a son to prosecute his father for murder. So little, Socrates, do they know the
divine law of piety and impiety.
SOCRATES: And do you mean to say, Euthyphro, that you think that you under-
stand divine things and piety and impiety so accurately that, in such a case as you have
stated, you can bring your father to justice without fear that you yourself may be doing
something impious?
 EUTHYPHRO 11

EUTHYPHRO: If I did not understand all these matters accurately, Socrates, I should
not be worth much—Euthyphro would not be any better than other men. 5
SOCRATES: Then, my dear Euthyphro, I cannot do better than become your pupil
and challenge Meletus on this very point before the trial begins. I should say that I had
always thought it very important to have knowledge about divine things; and that now,
when he says that I offend by speaking carelessly about them, and by introducing
reforms, I have become your pupil. And I should say, “Meletus, if you acknowledge b
Euthyphro to be wise in these matters and to hold the correct belief, then think the same
of me and do not put me on trial; but if you do not, then bring a suit, not against me, but
against my master, for corrupting his elders—namely, myself whom he corrupts by his
teaching, and his own father whom he corrupts by admonishing and punishing him.”
And if I did not succeed in persuading him to release me from the suit or to indict you
in my place, then I could repeat my challenge in court.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, by Zeus! Socrates, I think I should find out his weak points if he
were to try to indict me. I should have a good deal to say about him in court long before c
I spoke about myself.
SOCRATES: Yes, my dear friend, and knowing this I am anxious to become your
pupil. I see that Meletus here, and others too, seem not to notice you at all, but he sees
through me without difficulty and at once prosecutes me for impiety. Now, therefore,
please explain to me what you were so confident just now that you knew. Tell me what d
are righteousness and sacrilege with respect to murder and everything else. I suppose
that piety is the same in all actions, and that impiety is always the opposite of piety, and
retains its identity, and that, as impiety, it always has the same character, which will be
found in whatever is impious.
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly, Socrates, I suppose so.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, what is piety and what is impiety?
EUTHYPHRO: Well, then, I say that piety means prosecuting the unjust individual
who has committed murder or sacrilege, or any other such crime, as I am doing now,
whether he is your father or your mother or whoever he is; and I say that impiety means e
not prosecuting him. And observe, Socrates, I will give you a clear proof, which I have
already given to others, that it is so, and that doing right means not letting off unpun-
ished the sacrilegious man, whosoever he may be. Men hold Zeus to be the best and the
most just of the gods; and they admit that Zeus bound his own father, Cronos, for 6
wrongfully devouring his children; and that Cronos, in his turn, castrated his father for
similar reasons. And yet these same men are incensed with me because I proceed
against my father for doing wrong. So, you see, they say one thing in the case of the
gods and quite another in mine.
SOCRATES: Is not that why I am being prosecuted, Euthyphro? I mean, because
I find it hard to accept such stories people tell about the gods? I expect that I shall be
found at fault because I doubt those stories. Now if you who understand all these mat-
ters so well agree in holding all those tales true, then I suppose that I must yield to your b
authority. What could I say when I admit myself that I know nothing about them? But
tell me, in the name of friendship, do you really believe that these things have actually
happened?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, and more amazing things, too, Socrates, which the multitude do
not know of.
SOCRATES: Then you really believe that there is war among the gods, and bitter
hatreds, and battles, such as the poets tell of, and which the great painters have depicted c
in our temples, notably in the pictures which cover the robe that is carried up to the
 12 PLATO

Acropolis at the great Panathenaic festival? Are we to say that these things are true,
Euthyphro?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, and more besides. As I was saying, I will report to you
many other stories about divine matters, if you like, which I am sure will astonish you
when you hear them.
SOCRATES: I dare say. You shall report them to me at your leisure another time. At
present please try to give a more definite answer to the question which I asked you just
d now. What I asked you, my friend, was, What is piety? and you have not explained it to
me to my satisfaction. You only tell me that what you are doing now, namely, prosecut-
ing your father for murder, is a pious act.
EUTHYPHRO: Well, that is true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Very likely. But many other actions are pious, are they not, Euthyphro?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Remember, then, I did not ask you to tell me one or two of all the many
e pious actions that there are; I want to know what is characteristic of piety which makes
all pious actions pious. You said, I think, that there is one characteristic which makes all
pious actions pious, and another characteristic which makes all impious actions impi-
ous. Do you not remember?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: Well, then, explain to me what is this characteristic, that I may have it
to turn to, and to use as a standard whereby to judge your actions and those of other
men, and be able to say that whatever action resembles it is pious, and whatever does
not, is not pious.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I will tell you that if you wish, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Certainly I do.
7 EUTHYPHRO: Well, then, what is pleasing to the gods is pious, and what is not
pleasing to them is impious.
SOCRATES: Fine, Euthyphro. Now you have given me the answer that I wanted.
Whether what you say is true, I do not know yet. But, of course, you will go on to prove
that it is true.
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Come, then, let us examine our statement. The things and the men
that are pleasing to the gods are pious, and the things and the men that are displeasing
to the gods are impious. But piety and impiety are not the same; they are as opposite as
possible—was not that what we said?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And it seems the appropriate statement?
b EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, certainly.
SOCRATES: Have we not also said, Euthyphro, that there are quarrels and disagree-
ments and hatreds among the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: We have.
SOCRATES: But what kind of disagreement, my friend, causes hatred and anger?
Let us look at the matter thus. If you and I were to disagree as to whether one number
c were more than another, would that make us angry and enemies? Should we not settle
such a dispute at once by counting?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: And if we were to disagree as to the relative size of two things, we
should measure them and put an end to the disagreement at once, should we not?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
 EUTHYPHRO 13

SOCRATES: And should we not settle a question about the relative weight of two
things by weighing them?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: Then what is the question which would make us angry and enemies if
we disagreed about it, and could not come to a settlement? Perhaps you have not an d
answer ready; but listen to mine. Is it not the question of the just and unjust, of the hon-
orable and the dishonorable, of the good and the bad? Is it not questions about these
matters which make you and me and everyone else quarrel, when we do quarrel, if we
differ about them and can reach no satisfactory agreement?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, it is disagreements about these matters.
SOCRATES: Well, Euthyphro, the gods will quarrel over these things if they quarrel
at all, will they not?
EUTHYPHRO: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: Then, my good Euthyphro, you say that some of the gods think one e
thing just, the others another; and that what some of them hold to be honorable or good,
others hold to be dishonorable or evil. For there would not have been quarrels among
them if they had not disagreed on these points, would there?
EUTHYPHRO: You are right.
SOCRATES: And each of them loves what he thinks honorable, and good, and just;
and hates the opposite, does he not?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But you say that the same action is held by some of them to be just,
and by others to be unjust; and that then they dispute about it, and so quarrel and fight 8
among themselves. Is it not so?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the same thing is hated by the gods and loved by them; and the
same thing will be displeasing and pleasing to them.
EUTHYPHRO: Apparently.
SOCRATES: Then, according to your account, the same thing will be pious and
impious.
EUTHYPHRO: So it seems.
SOCRATES: Then, my good friend, you have not answered my question. I did not
ask you to tell me what action is both pious and impious; but it seems that whatever is
pleasing to the gods is also displeasing to them. And so, Euthyphro, I should not be sur- b
prised if what you are doing now in punishing your father is an action well pleasing to
Zeus, but hateful to Cronos and Uranus, and acceptable to Hephaestus, but hateful to
Hera; and if any of the other gods disagree about it, pleasing to some of them and dis-
pleasing to others.
EUTHYPHRO: But on this point, Socrates, I think that there is no difference of
opinion among the gods: they all hold that if one man kills another unjustly, he must be
punished.
SOCRATES: What, Euthyphro? Among mankind, have you never heard disputes c
whether a man ought to be punished for killing another man unjustly, or for doing some
other unjust deed?
EUTHYPHRO: Indeed, they never cease from these disputes, especially in courts of
justice. They do all manner of unjust things; and then there is nothing which they will
not do and say to avoid punishment.
SOCRATES: Do they admit that they have done something unjust, and at the same
time deny that they ought to be punished, Euthyphro?
 14 PLATO

EUTHYPHRO: No, indeed, that they do not.

SOCRATES: Then it is not the case that there is nothing which they will not do and
say. I take it, they do not dare to say or argue that they must not be punished if they have
d done something unjust. What they say is that they have not done anything unjust, is it
not so?
EUTHYPHRO: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then they do not disagree over the question that the unjust individual
must be punished. They disagree over the question, who is unjust, and what was done
and when, do they not?
EUTHYPHRO: That is true.
SOCRATES: Well, is not exactly the same thing true of the gods if they quarrel
about justice and injustice, as you say they do? Do not some of them say that the others
are doing something unjust, while the others deny it? No one, I suppose, my dear friend,
e whether god or man, dares to say that a person who has done something unjust must not
be punished.
EUTHYPHRO: No, Socrates, that is true, by and large.
SOCRATES: I take it, Euthyphro, that the disputants, whether men or gods, if the
gods do disagree, disagree over each separate act. When they quarrel about any act,
some of them say that it was just, and others that it was unjust. Is it not so?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
9 SOCRATES: Come, then, my dear Euthyphro, please enlighten me on this point.
What proof have you that all the gods think that a laborer who has been imprisoned for
murder by the master of the man whom he has murdered, and who dies from his impris-
onment before the master has had time to learn from the religious authorities what he
should do, dies unjustly? How do you know that it is just for a son to indict his father
and to prosecute him for the murder of such a man? Come, see if you can make it clear
b to me that the gods necessarily agree in thinking that this action of yours is just; and if
you satisfy me, I will never cease singing your praises for wisdom.
EUTHYPHRO: I could make that clear enough to you, Socrates; but I am afraid that
it would be a long business.
SOCRATES: I see you think that I am duller than the judges. To them, of course, you
will make it clear that your father has committed an unjust action, and that all the gods
agree in hating such actions.
EUTHYPHRO: I will indeed, Socrates, if they will only listen to me.
c SOCRATES: They will listen if they think that you are a good speaker. But while
you were talking, it occurred to me to ask myself this question: suppose that Euthyphro
were to prove to me as clearly as possible that all the gods think such a death unjust,
how has he brought me any nearer to understanding what piety and impiety are? This
particular act, perhaps, may be displeasing to the gods, but then we have just seen that
piety and impiety cannot be defined in that way; for we have seen that what is displeas-
d ing to the gods is also pleasing to them. So I will let you off on this point, Euthyphro;
and all the gods shall agree in thinking your father’s action wrong and in hating it, if you
like. But shall we correct our definition and say that whatever all the gods hate is impi-
ous, and whatever they all love is pious; while whatever some of them love, and others
hate, is either both or neither? Do you wish us now to define piety and impiety in this
manner?
EUTHYPHRO: Why not, Socrates?
SOCRATES: There is no reason why I should not, Euthyphro. It is for you to con-
sider whether that definition will help you to teach me what you promised.
 EUTHYPHRO 15

EUTHYPHRO: Well, I should say that piety is what all the gods love, and that impi- e
ety is what they all hate.
SOCRATES: Are we to examine this definition, Euthyphro, and see if it is a good
one? Or are we to be content to accept the bare statements of other men or of ourselves
without asking any questions? Or must we examine the statements?
EUTHYPHRO: We must examine them. But for my part I think that the definition is
right this time.
SOCRATES: We shall know that better in a little while, my good friend. Now consider 10
this question. Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?
EUTHYPHRO: I do not understand you, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I will try to explain myself: we speak of a thing being carried and car-
rying, and being led and leading, and being seen and seeing; and you understand that all
such expressions mean different things, and what the difference is.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I think I understand.
SOCRATES: And we talk of a thing being loved, of a thing loving, and the two are
different?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: Now tell me, is a thing which is being carried in a state of being carried b
because it is carried, or for some other reason?
EUTHYPHRO: No, because it is carried.
SOCRATES: And a thing is in a state of being led because it is led, and of being seen
because it is seen?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then a thing is not seen because it is in a state of being seen: it is in a
state of being seen because it is seen; and a thing is not led because it is in a state of
being led: it is in a state of being led because it is led; and a thing is not carried because
it is in a state of being carried: it is in a state of being carried because it is carried. Is my
meaning clear now, Euthyphro? I mean this: if anything becomes or is affected, it does
not become because it is in a state of becoming: it is in a state of becoming because it c
becomes; and it is not affected because it is in a state of being affected: it is in a state of
being affected because it is affected. Do you not agree?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: Is not that which is being loved in a state either of becoming or of
being affected in some way by something?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the same is true here as in the former cases. A thing is not loved
by those who love it because it is in a state of being loved; it is in a state of being loved
because they love it.
EUTHYPHRO: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: Well, then, Euthyphro, what do we say about piety? Is it not loved by d
all the gods, according to your definition?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Because it is pious, or for some other reason?
EUTHYPHRO: No, because it is pious.
SOCRATES: Then it is loved by the gods because it is pious; it is not pious because
it is loved by them?
EUTHYPHRO: It seems so.
SOCRATES: But, then, what is pleasing to the gods is pleasing to them, and is in a
state of being loved by them, because they love it?
 16 PLATO

EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: Then piety is not what is pleasing to the gods, and what is pleasing to
the gods is not pious, as you say, Euthyphro. They are different things.
e EUTHYPHRO: And why, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Because we are agreed that the gods love piety because it is pious, and
that it is not pious because they love it. Is not this so?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And that what is pleasing to the gods because they love it, is pleasing
to them by reason of this same love, and that they do not love it because it is pleasing to
them.
EUTHYPHRO: True.
SOCRATES: Then, my dear Euthyphro, piety and what is pleasing to the gods are
11 different things. If the gods had loved piety because it is pious, they would also have
loved what is pleasing to them because it is pleasing to them; but if what is pleasing to
them had been pleasing to them because they loved it, then piety, too, would have been
piety because they loved it. But now you see that they are opposite things, and wholly
different from each other. For the one is of a sort to be loved because it is loved, while
the other is loved because it is of a sort to be loved. My question, Euthyphro, was, What
is piety? But it turns out that you have not explained to me the essential character of
piety; you have been content to mention an effect which belongs to it—namely, that all
b the gods love it. You have not yet told me what its essential character is. Do not, if you
please, keep from me what piety is; begin again and tell me that. Never mind whether
the gods love it, or whether it has other effects: we shall not differ on that point. Do your
best to make clear to me what is piety and what is impiety.
EUTHYPHRO: But, Socrates, I really don’t know how to explain to you what is in
my mind. Whatever statement we put forward always somehow moves round in a circle,
and will not stay where we put it.
SOCRATES: I think that your statements, Euthyphro, are worthy of my ancestor
c Daedalus.* If they had been mine and I had set them down, I dare say you would have
made fun of me, and said that it was the consequence of my descent from Daedalus that
the statements which I construct run away, as his statues used to, and will not stay where
they are put. But, as it is, the statements are yours, and the joke would have no point.
You yourself see that they will not stay still.
EUTHYPHRO: Nay, Socrates, I think that the joke is very much in point. It is not my
d fault that the statement moves round in a circle and will not stay still. But you are the
Daedalus, I think; as far as I am concerned, my statements would have stayed put.
SOCRATES: Then, my friend, I must be a more skillful artist than Daedalus; he only
used to make his own works move, while I, you see, can make other people’s works
move, too. And the beauty of it is that I am wise against my will. I would rather that our
statements had remained firm and immovable than have all the wisdom of Daedalus and
e all the riches of Tantalus to boot. But enough of this. I will do my best to help you to
explain to me what piety is, for I think that you are lazy. Don’t give in yet. Tell me, do
you not think that all piety must be just?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
12 SOCRATES: Well, then, is all justice pious, too? Or, while all piety is just, is a part
only of justice pious, and the rest of it something else?
EUTHYPHRO: I do not follow you, Socrates.

*Daedalus’ statues were reputed to have been so lifelike that they came alive.
 EUTHYPHRO 17

SOCRATES: Yet you have the advantage over me in your youth no less than your
wisdom. But, as I say, the wealth of your wisdom makes you complacent. Exert your-
self, my good friend: I am not asking you a difficult question. I mean the opposite of
what the poet [Stasinus] said, when he wrote:

“You shall not name Zeus the creator, who made all things: for where there is fear b
there also is reverence.”

Now I disagree with the poet. Shall I tell you why?

EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: I do not think it true to say that where there is fear, there also is rever-
ence. Many people who fear sickness and poverty and other such evils seem to me to
have fear, but no reverence for what they fear. Do you not think so?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: But I think that where there is reverence there also is fear. Does any
man feel reverence and a sense of shame about anything, without at the same time c
dreading and fearing the reputation of wickedness?
EUTHYPHRO: No, certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then, though there is fear wherever there is reverence, it is not correct to
say that where there is fear there also is reverence. Reverence does not always accompany
fear; for fear, I take it, is wider than reverence. It is a part of fear, just as the odd is a part
of number, so that where you have the odd you must also have number, though where you
have number you do not necessarily have the odd. Now I think you follow me?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: Well, then, this is what I meant by the question which I asked you. Is
there always piety where there is justice? Or, though there is always justice where there
is piety, yet there is not always piety where there is justice, because piety is only a part d
of justice? Shall we say this, or do you differ?
EUTHYPHRO: No, I agree. I think that you are right.
SOCRATES: Now observe the next point. If piety is a part of justice, we must find
out, I suppose, what part of justice it is? Now, if you had asked me just now, for
instance, what part of number is the odd, and what number is an odd number, I should
have said that whatever number is not even is an odd number. Is it not so?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then see if you can explain to me what part of justice is piety, that I e
may tell Meletus that now that I have been adequately instructed by you as to what
actions are righteous and pious, and what are not, he must give up prosecuting me
unjustly for impiety.
EUTHYPHRO: Well, then, Socrates, I should say that righteousness and piety are
that part of justice which has to do with the careful attention which ought to be paid to
the gods; and that what has to do with the careful attention which ought to be paid to
men is the remaining part of justice.
SOCRATES: And I think that your answer is a good one, Euthyphro. But there is
one little point about which I still want to hear more. I do not yet understand what the 13
careful attention is to which you refer. I suppose you do not mean that the attention
which we pay to the gods is like the attention which we pay to other things. We say, for
instance, do we not, that not everyone knows how to take care of horses, but only the
trainer of horses?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
 18 PLATO

SOCRATES: For I suppose that the skill that is concerned with horses is the art of
taking care of horses.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And not everyone understands the care of dogs, but only the huntsman.
EUTHYPHRO: True.
b SOCRATES: For I suppose that the huntsman’s skill is the art of taking care of dogs.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the herdsman’s skill is the art of taking care of cattle.
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you say that piety and righteousness are taking care of the gods,
Euthyphro?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: Well, then, has not all care the same object? Is it not for the good and
benefit of that on which it is bestowed? For instance, you see that horses are benefited
and improved when they are cared for by the art which is concerned with them. Is it
not so?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I think so.
c SOCRATES: And dogs are benefited and improved by the huntsman’s art, and cattle
by the herdsman’s, are they not? And the same is always true. Or do you think care is
ever meant to harm that which is cared for?
EUTHYPHRO: No, indeed; certainly not.
SOCRATES: But to benefit it?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: Then is piety, which is our care for the gods, intended to benefit the
gods, or to improve them? Should you allow that you make any of the gods better when
you do a pious action?
EUTHYPHRO: No indeed; certainly not.
SOCRATES: No, I am quite sure that that is not your meaning, Euthyphro. It was for
d that reason that I asked you what you meant by the careful attention which ought to be
paid to the gods. I thought that you did not mean that.
EUTHYPHRO: You were right, Socrates. I do not mean that.
SOCRATES: Good. Then what sort of attention to the gods will piety be?
EUTHYPHRO: The sort of attention, Socrates, slaves pay to their masters.
SOCRATES: I understand; then it is a kind of service to the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Can you tell me what result the art which serves a doctor serves to
produce? Is it not health?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
e SOCRATES: And what result does the art which serves a ship-wright serve to produce?
EUTHYPHRO: A ship, of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: The result of the art which serves a builder is a house, is it not?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then tell me, my good friend: What result will the art which serves the
gods serve to produce? You must know, seeing that you say that you know more about
divine things than any other man.
EUTHYPHRO: Well, that is true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then tell me, I beg you, what is that grand result which the gods use
our services to produce?
EUTHYPHRO: There are many notable results, Socrates.
 EUTHYPHRO 19

SOCRATES: So are those, my friend, which a general produces. Yet it is easy to see 14
that the crowning result of them all is victory in war, is it not?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: And, I take it, the farmer produces many notable results; yet the prin-
cipal result of them all is that he makes the earth produce food.
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well, then, what is the principal result of the many notable results
which the gods produce?
EUTHYPHRO: I told you just now, Socrates, that accurate knowledge of all these
matters is not easily obtained. However, broadly I say this: if any man knows that his b
words and actions in prayer and sacrifice are acceptable to the gods, that is what is
pious; and it preserves the state, as it does private families. But the opposite of what
is acceptable to the gods is sacrilegious, and this it is that undermines and destroys
everything.
SOCRATES: Certainly, Euthyphro, if you had wished, you could have answered my
main question in far fewer words. But you are evidently not anxious to teach me. Just c
now, when you were on the very point of telling me what I want to know, you stopped
short. If you had gone on then, I should have learned from you clearly enough by this
time what piety is. But now I am asking you questions, and must follow wherever you
lead me; so tell me, what is it that you mean by piety and impiety? Do you not mean a
science of prayer and sacrifice?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: To sacrifice is to give to the gods, and to pray is to ask of them, is it
not?
EUTHYPHRO: It is, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then you say that piety is the science of asking of the gods and giving d
to them?
EUTHYPHRO: You understand my meaning exactly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Yes, for I am eager to share your wisdom, Euthyphro, and so I am all
attention; nothing that you say will fall to the ground. But tell me, what is this service of
the gods? You say it is to ask of them, and to give to them?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: Then, to ask rightly will be to ask of them what we stand in need of e
from them, will it not?
EUTHYPHRO: Naturally.
SOCRATES: And to give rightly will be to give back to them what they stand in
need of from us? It would not be very skillful to make a present to a man of something
that he has no need of.
EUTHYPHRO: True, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then piety, Euthyphro, will be the art of carrying on business between
gods and men?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, if you like to call it so.
SOCRATES: But I like nothing except what is true. But tell me, how are the gods
benefited by the gifts which they receive from us? What they give is plain enough. Every
good thing that we have is their gift. But how are they benefited by what we give them? 15
Have we the advantage over them in these business transactions to such an extent that we
receive from them all the good things we possess, and give them nothing in return?
EUTHYPHRO: But do you suppose, Socrates, that the gods are benefited by the gifts
which they receive from us?
 20 PLATO

SOCRATES: But what are these gifts, Euthyphro, that we give the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: What do you think but honor and praise, and, as I have said, what is
acceptable to them.
b SOCRATES: Then piety, Euthyphro, is acceptable to the gods, but it is not profitable
to them nor loved by them?
EUTHYPHRO: I think that nothing is more loved by them.
SOCRATES: Then I see that piety means that which is loved by the gods.
EUTHYPHRO: Most certainly.
SOCRATES: After that, shall you be surprised to find that your statements move
about instead of staying where you put them? Shall you accuse me of being the
Daedalus that makes them move, when you yourself are far more skillful than Daedalus
was, and make them go round in a circle? Do you not see that our statement has come
c round to where it was before? Surely you remember that we have already seen that piety
and what is pleasing to the gods are quite different things. Do you not remember?
EUTHYPHRO: I do.
SOCRATES: And now do you not see that you say that what the gods love is pious?
But does not what the gods love come to the same thing as what is pleasing to the gods?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then either our former conclusion was wrong or, if it was right, we are
wrong now.
EUTHYPHRO: So it seems.
SOCRATES: Then we must begin again and inquire what piety is. I do not mean to
d give in until I have found out. Do not regard me as unworthy; give your whole mind to
the question, and this time tell me the truth. For if anyone knows it, it is you; and you
are a Proteus whom I must not let go until you have told me. It cannot be that you would
ever have undertaken to prosecute your aged father for the murder of a laboring man
unless you had known exactly what piety and impiety are. You would have feared to risk
the anger of the gods, in case you should be doing wrong, and you would have been
e afraid of what men would say. But now I am sure that you think that you know exactly
what is pious and what is not; so tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not conceal from
me what you think.
EUTHYPHRO: Another time, then, Socrates. I am in a hurry now, and it is time for
me to be off.
SOCRATES: What are you doing, my friend! Will you go away and destroy all my
hopes of learning from you what is pious and what is not, and so of escaping Meletus?
16 I meant to explain to him that now Euthyphro has made me wise about divine things,
and that I no longer in my ignorance speak carelessly about them or introduce reforms.
And then I was going to promise him to live a better life for the future.
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN