[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 20:51:48 -0700
Mike wrote:
Maybe to your mind, but not that of most post 500 B.C. people. Fate
means 'inevitability' to most of us non-Ancient Greek people.
This seems right. 'We were fated to meet,' seems to mean no more than that we
were destined to meet or that it was inevitable that we meet, and whatever is
true of Fate is also true of Destiny or Inevitability. Fate as an agency (in
the 21st century) has little work to do. Those old Greeks didn't speak
of Fate;
they spoke of 'the Fates,' three old crones who spun and measured the span on
one's life. There's no evidence I know of that they determined what
happened in
one's life, only its duration.
W. S. Maugham's version of an old tale:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy
provisions
and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said,
Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the
crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me
and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away
from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will
not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and
he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he
went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me
standing in the
crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my
servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I
said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad,
for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
RobertPaul
The Reed Institute
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