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Gordian, Valerian, Anastasius, and Justinian were octogenarians, Tiberius was eighty-eight at his death, and Augustus Caesar was eighty-six. Frederick the Great, in spite of his turbulent life, attained a rare age for a king, seventy-six. William I seems to be the only other exception. Of 300 Popes who may be counted, no more than five attained the age of eighty.
The numerous claims which he had to enforce had only been passed in part, and the Moorish authorities seemed inclined to dispute the others stoutly. At last, at a private conference with the Wazeer el Kiddáb, the Ambassador broached a proposal to cut the Gordian knot.
But it is most dangerous in the greatest minds, and in the highest places; and only to be kept off by them, as by us, each in our place, by honest self-examination, diligent prayer, and the grace of God which comes thereby. Once or twice in the world's history a great ruler, like Charles the Fifth, cuts the Gordian knot, and escapes into a convent: but how few can or ought to do that?
Descartes met the argument of the necessitarian, not by exposing its fallacy, but by repelling the conclusion of it on extraneous grounds. “This was to cut the Gordian knot,” says Leibnitz, who was himself a necessitarian, “and to reply to the conclusion of one argument, not by resolving it, but by opposing to it a contrary argument; which is not conformed to the laws of philosophical controversy.” The reply of Leibnitz to Bayle is clearly open to the same objection.
If the younger Gordian collected together bears, elks, zebras, ostriches, boars, and wild horses, he was an imitator only of the spectacles of Carus, in which the rarity of the animals was as much considered as their fierceness.
When the preliminary survey was being made, Nicholas I. learned that the officers entrusted with the task and the Minister of Ways and Roads in the number were being influenced more by personal than technical considerations, and he determined to cut the Gordian knot in true Imperial style.
Battle, with the sword, has cut many a Gordian knot in twain which all the wit of East and West, of Northern and Border statesmen could not untie." "The Scholar" was delivered before two Societies at the University of Virginia so late as the year 1876. If I must select any of its wise words, I will choose the questions which he has himself italicized to show his sense of their importance:
Have we not read of Serenus Sammonicus, the master of many languages, who bequeathed 62,000 volumes to the younger Gordian? Truly that was a fine inheritance, enough to sustain many souls or to oppress one to death, as all will agree.
The problem of Creation and its Creator is more complex than appears at first sight; but the Vedanta has certainly simplified it half way, by cutting the Gordian knot and leaving out Creation altogether. There is only Brahma, and the rest of us merely imagine that we are, it is wonderful how the human mind should have found room for such a thought.
I had the editorial page opened and inserted at the top of the leading column a double-leaded paragraph announcing that the agony was over that the Gordian knot was cut that Alexander Dimitry had been selected as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Central American States. It proved a veritable sensation as well as a notable scoop.
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