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Cult of 'natural sounds'. What does it indicate that our culture is not merely tolerant of expressions of pain, of tears, complaints, reproaches, gestures of rage or of humiliation, but approves of them and counts them among the nobler inescapables? while the spirit of the philosophy of antiquity looked upon them with contempt and absolutely declined to regard them as necessary. Recall, for instance, how Plato not one of the most inhuman philosophers, that is to say speaks of the Philoctetes69 of the tragic stage. Is our modern culture perhaps lacking in 'philosophy'? Would those philosophers of antiquity perhaps regard us one and all as belonging to the 'rabble'?
69. Philoctetes: the central character of the Sophoclean tragedy of the same name. Philoctetes, in an expedition that sailed against Troy, was bitten by a snake. His cries of anguish and the abominable stench of the wound caused such misfortune among the crew that they, upon Odysseus' orders, marooned him on the deserted island of Lemnos, where he lived in agony for ten years, alone and crippled.
