“As the centuries pass, I hold dominion over an ever-increasing proportion of humanity. Throughout the so-called advanced countries, I control the lives of the people down to the finest details. In one of the oldest of these countries, I have reduced the people to an ultimate paralysis, a paralysis in which no decisions can be taken, a paralysis in which nothing happens except endless and futile argument, utterly without point or urgency. In this last stage, I reduce all humankind to an intellectual senility in which they even become incapable of responding to the most elementary facts.
“A remarkable aspect of my power is that my victims never regard themselves as victims. The more I reduce them to a state of complete inanition, the happier they become. Astonishingly, I do not even write my own laws or my own statutes. I allow humans to pack into my massive chest anything that should take their fancy. This explains why I am quite largely stuffed with rubbish. I contain outrageous logical contradictions. Far from hindering me, this even helps my purposes, for humans torture themselves over the contradictions, not by a genuine removal of logical difficulties, mark you, but by setting up elaborate pretenses that no such contradictions exist. These pretenses greatly assist me in inducing mental collapse in otherwise quite rational and healthy people. I cause mental agony on a vast scale, far more effectively and acutely than the whips, chains, and branding irons employed by the remaining gentleman on my right.
“Absurd talk, you might be disposed to think. Absurd, indeed, but true, utterly true. Why, you may wonder, do they not destroy me, these foolish humans, why not burn me, disintegrate me—eh? Here’s the rub, they cannot do so. I cannot be eliminated, because no human organization can succeed without me. Particularly, no army can fight without me. An army without regulations is but a rabble. Now suppose some section of humankind sought to manage without me. It would have no army, save a mere rabble. It would be overwhelmed by the armies of those humankind who pay allegiance to us. It would be wiped from the face of the earth.”
Hermes shifted uneasily. A dread of this gilt-faced creature was beginning to grow within him. There was a curious conviction in the flat, unemotional voice, so sharply in contrast to the other contenders. Aphrodite was feeling it, too. Her face was a chalky-white, for no doubt the thought of a night’s frolic with this appalling thing was beginning to prey on her mind. The creature went relentlessly on. “Let me pass next to an exposure of the weaknesses in the arguments put forward by others who spoke before me. Throughout his former career, the gentleman of the many faces—whom you so rightly converted to a puff of sulfurous smoke—failed in everything he attempted. He failed precisely because he could never bring himself to accept the need for rules and regulations. Had the gentleman ever been able to organize himself, to draw up a rigid and extensive code of sinning, there is no telling to what heights he might have climbed. By nature, if I may be permitted the term, the gentleman was anti-everything, anti-rule, anti-law, which, by the way, is why he smelled so very badly in his final moments.
“The gentleman of the large beard and overpowering voice presents us with a more complex problem. You must understand, my dear young lady, that this gentleman in his time enjoyed a considerable vogue in the world. Many indeed will be distressed to discover him converted so adroitly to a whiff of incense. His passing will leave regrets.”
The gilt rule-book paused for a moment, a dramatic pause, “Now what, we must ask ourselves, lay at the bottom of this vogue? The fact, no more no less, than that the gentleman in question employed my services from the beginning of his career. My services seemed attractive to the gentleman exactly because of my policy of allowing everyone to write his, or her, own laws and commandments. Permit me to read a specimen of the laws written by the bearded gentleman.”
Fascinated, Hermes watched as the creature slipped a scroll of parchment out from its belly. Screwing up the gilt face, almost as if it were adjusting a pair of spectacles, the creature intoned in a weird singsong falsetto, “The woman who lieth carnally shall be scourged with rods. The man who lieth carnally shall make offering of a ram to the priest, for his sin is grievous.”
The creature proceeded to pull sheaf after sheaf of scrolls from its chest and guts, tossing them with a contemptuous gesture high into the air.
“A wonderful relief, I might say, to be freed from all this ill-mannered rubbish. Still, it bears directly on my point. The former patriarchal gentleman made great play with his rules, regulations, laws, covenants, and commandments. It was just this mass of restrictive rules that gave him an uncanny influence over certain segments of humanity. Yet the power was mine, really. Behind the scenes it was I who manipulated the strings on which the gentleman and his followers used formerly to dance.”
“Have you finished?” Aphrodite asked wearily.
The creature seemed to smirk. “I have reached the end of my case, a case so clear, so decisive, that your judgment, my dear young lady, is now but a trivial formality. However, before leaving the floor I wish to offer serious advice to you and to your friends.
“Ask yourselves why in the last score of centuries you have been so strangely in eclipse. The hirsute gentleman, the gentleman of the many faces—I take them together, for the two were really in conspiracy, a point which I imagine escaped you—exercised a greater influence than all your many exceedingly quick-witted friends have been able to do. Your most remarkable discoveries in the technological field have brought a measure of recovery in recent years, it is true, but the weakness remains. Unless the weakness be removed, I fear we shall have a relapse on our hands. The urgent need is to appreciate the need for me, the need for an enormous complex of restrictive rules and regulations—what you may eat, when you may eat it, what you may drink, when you may drink it, when you must breathe in, when you must breathe out, regulations and laws for everything. If the patient is to be fully restored to health, this is the way it must be. There must be none of the old free and easy habits.”
So saying, the strange creature with the gilt face resumed its seat. Hermes drew in a deep breath. In his view, there couldn’t be any doubt about it. By rights the creature had won. He didn’t expect Aphrodite to see it that way, not when her eyes were so set on the Ares-like piece of pork. She’d leave him to dispose of the gilt windbag. By rights he ought to give the thing an honorable discharge. With something of a shock, Hermes realized, this wasn’t at all what he’d really do—his finger was already itching to press the incendiary button. He’d burn up every last rule, every last regulation, every last little scrap of parchment, every last little particle of gilt.
Aphrodite stood. She made her announcement in a curiously flat voice. “My judgment is in favor of the gentleman or the right. To him I award the prize of a night’s frolic.” Turning to Hermes she added, “Return the gentleman on the left to his particular niche, wherever that should be.”