The Hero 49
warriors, to the Mongol horse men, to the Samurai, and to the
fi ghters in pre- Columbian Mexico and Central Ame rica, the Inca
and the Aztec. The nobleman fi ghting from his chariot in Confu-
cian China is a cousin of Achilles. The Sioux warrior, the Maori,
and the Zulu would have no trou ble comprehending the vision of
the Homeric poem. One is tempted to think that there is something
intrinsic to human beings that loves courage and beauty and that
can only turn away from that love with great eff ort.
But now both of the ideals of The Iliad— Hector’s and Achilles’—
are fading from us. Self has no time for them. Now one wishes
to live as long as possi ble and as well as possi ble, which is to say as
richly and securely as one can. One wants to be diverted and enter-
tained. One wishes above all to be happy. (Warriors do not care very
much for happiness— they care for glory.) One has one’s pleasures for
the day and pleasures for the night, but health is always paramount.
Health and wealth used to be means to an end. Health let the war-
rior enter the battle at the peak of his powers. Wealth made certain
that he was well armed and provisioned. To have the material ne-
cessities of life and to possess physical well- being put one in a posi-
tion to do remarkable deeds. Now health and wealth have become
ends in themselves. One lives to amass trea sure. One lives— what
does one live for? One lives to go on comfortably living. The idea
of consecrating oneself to some great task is now patently absurd
to many. The goals of the Self are not in themselves ridiculous. One
must sustain life, at least for a while. One must eat. But when the
Self ’s priorities become the only priorities known to men and women
we risk growing absurd. We invest the acts of staying alive and
staying healthy, of eating good food and getting the right kind of ex-
ercise, with a level of meaning they will not sustain. One wants to
live forever! What for— what will the goal of such a life be? The goal
of living forever is exactly that—to live forever. But what is worth
doing in such a life no one any longer can tell you. “One still works,”