Words for All Seasons No. 3

Accidie:
Sloth, torpor.
Etym: blogspot can't interpret the non-qwerty letters. I shall solve this problem eventually. Look it up if you like: it goes all the way back to the Greek.

"After the synne of Envye and of Ire, now wol I speken of the synne of Accidie. For Envye blyndeth the herte of a man, and Ire troubleth a man, and Accidie maketh hym hevy, thoghtful, and wraw. / Envye and Ire maken bitternesse in herte, which bitternesse is mooder of Accidie, and bynymeth [takes away from] hym the love of alle goodnesse. Thanne is Accidie the angwissh of troubled herte; and Seint Augustyn seith, "It is anoy of goodnesse and ioye of harm." / Certes, this is a dampnable synne; for it dooth wrong to Jhesu Crist, in as muche as it bynymeth the service that men oghte doon to Crist with alle diligence, as seith Salomon. / But Accidie dooth no swich diligence. He dooth alle thyng with anoy, and with wrawnesse, slaknesse, and excusacioun, and with ydelnesse, and unlust; for which the book seith, "Acursed be he that dooth the service of God necligently."...
Agayns this roten-herted synne of Accidie and Slouthe shold men exercise hemself [themselves] to doon goode werkes, and manly and vertuously cacchen corage well to doon, thynkynge that oure Lord Jhesu Crist quiteth [rewards] every good deede, be it never so lite. Usage of labour is a greet thyng, for it maketh, as seith Seint Bernard, the laborer to have stronge armes and harde synwes; and slouthe maketh hem feble and tendre. / Thanne comth drede to bigynne to werke anye goode werkes. For certes, he that is enclyned to synne, hym thynketh it is so greet an emprise for to undertake to doon werkes of goodnesse, / and casteth in his herte that the circumstaunces of goodnesse been so grevouse and so chargeaunt for to suffre, that he dar nat undertake to do werkes of goodnesse, as seith Seint Gregorie....
Agayns this horrible synne of Accidie, and the branches of the same, ther is a vertu that is called fortitudo or strengthe, that is an affeccioun thurgh which a man despiseth anoyouse thinges. / This vertu is so myghty and so vigerous that it dar withstonde myghtily and wisely kepen hymself fro perils that been wikked, and wrastle agayn the assautes of the devel. / For it enhaunceth and enforceth the soule, right as Accidie abateth it and maketh it fieble. For this fortitudo may endure by long suffraunce the travailles that been covenable [fitting/allowed]....
Eke ther been mo speciale remedies against Accidie in diverse werkes, and in consideracioun of the peynes of helle and of the joyes of hevene, and in the trust of the grace of the Holy Goost, that wole yeve hym myght to perfourne his goode entente."
Excerpts of lines 676-738 of the Parson's Tale from Geoffrey Chaucer, The Poetical Works of Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson (London: Oxford UP, [no publication date given]), pp. 296-99.

No apologies for mis-spellings.

The Heart of Conservatism

Belloc Wednesdays are back. Today I will tell you, with every reason and in all seriousness, that you will now, if you have the patience, read the most perfectly conservative outpouring of the heart there ever was, or ever is likely to be.

The preface to The Four Men: A Farrago (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1912).

My County, it has been proved in the life of every man that though his loves are human, and therefore changeable, yet in proportion as he attaches them to things unchangeable, so they mature and broaden.

On this account, Dear Sussex, are those women chiefly dear to men who, as the seasons pass, do but continue to be more and more themselves, attain balance, and abandon or forget vicissitude. And on this account, Sussex, does a man love an old house, which was his father's, and on this account does a man come to love with all his heart, that part of the earth which nourished his boyhood. For it does not change, or if it changes, it changes very little, and he finds in it the character of enduring things.

In this love he remains content until, perhaps, some sort of warning reaches him, that even his own County is approaching its doom. Then, believe me, Sussex, he is anxious in a very different way; he would, if he could, preserve his land in the flesh, and keep it there as it is, forever. But since he knows he cannot do that, "at least", he says, "I will keep her image, and that shall remain." And as a man will paint with a peculiar passion a face which he is only permitted to see for a little time, so will one passionately set down one's own horizon and one's fields before they are forgotten and have become a different thing. Therefore it is that I have put down in writing what happened to me now so many years ago, when I met first one man and then another, and we four bound ourselves together and walked through all your land, Sussex, from end to end. For many years I have not meant to write it down and have not; nor would I write it down now, or issue this book at all, Sussex, did I not know that you, who must like all created things decay, might with the rest of us be very near your ending. For I know very well in my mind that a day will come when the holy place shall perish and all the people of it and never more be what they were. But before that day comes, Sussex, may your earth cover me, and may some loud-voiced priest from Arundel, or Grinstead, or Crawley, or Storrington, but best of all from my home, have sung Do Mi Fa Sol above my bones.

This Blessed Plot - Introduction

The other day I picked up a bulldog book called The Abolition of Britain written by a new interest of mine, a British journalist named Peter Hitchens, who has a weekly column on the Daily Mail, and keeps the blog to which I linked updated during the week, mostly with essays responding to the critiques of his online readers. You can also find him on YouTube. He is the brother of the better known Christopher Hitchens, the most fiery funny and eloquent atheist evolutionary materialist around. Christopher recently wrote a bestselling book, "God is Not Great." Peter happens to hold opinions diametrically opposed to his brother on almost any significant political, religious, or social point you care to consider. His stated political goal is the destruction of the Tory Party. He believes that only when the Tory Party dies can the true conservative votes, presently tied up in a blind, customary loyalty to the Tories, be released to vote for a truly conservative party. I rather like him.

This particular book, published in 1999, is his attempt to explain how and why the social life of Britain, seen in a moral light, changed during the 20th century, using the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965 as the symbol of the death of the old Britain, changed in many respects, but possessing fundamentally the same spirit it had possessed since the birth of the nation-state, and the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 as the symbol of the birth of the new, anti-historical Britain. Each chapter in the book deals with a unique vector in the transformation. While I read the book, I will post on each chapter as a means of mulling over the content. Hope you enjoy.

Words for All Seasons No. 2

Barbara, n:
Logic
A term designating the first mood of the first figure of syllogisms. A syllogism in Barbara is one of which both the major and minor premisses, and the conclusion, are universal affirmatives: thus, all animals are mortal; all men are animals; {ergo} all men are mortal.
Etym: Look it up in a logic textbook. It's complex, but brilliant.

"There were two forms of Protestantism, one before and one after the reign of Mary Tudor. The first was greedy, aggressive, regardless of the lives and consciences of others; borrowing and using without stint the offensive weapons of the old Faith it had so loudly condemned; and tyrannizing with its Barbara and Celarent over the harmless weaknesses of men. The other, though not without its faults, was tender and heroic, touched with the fires and memories of Smithfield."
From the introduction to Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J.S. Brewer, p. cciii, 1875.

Pregnant Thought for the Day No. 3: English Law

Only in England will you find the existence of a troublesome law defended on the grounds that no-one enforces it.

Pipes, Fire, and Philosophy

Tonight I successfully smoked an entire bowl of my briar pipe after one lighting. This was no light accomplishment. I have been at it for two months, ever since we performed the Taming of the Shrew. Vincentio, the brisk and kindly old man whom I played, desperately needed a good prop if he was going to convince the audience of his age, and so the pipe that Raymond Spiotta had generously given me, several months before, came out of my closet. Packed full, it produces a wonderful head of smoke, but I found I had to wait to light it till just before I went on stage, because it would go out after five minutes.

Up till now, it did no different, but a few days ago a simple and obvious thought struck me: what I carried in my hand was not a smoking mess of tobacco, but a fire. If it was to burn, I had to treat it as such. So with a little practice, I've learned how to pack the bowl so as to fit the greatest amount of fuel possible while allowing for air to flow easily through it. After all, fire works off of an exothermic reaction - biomass + oxygen + Heat = smoke, hydrogen + More Heat. So I needed more oxygen. After that, I learned how to breathe in gently, not fiercely, but fairly continuously, how to guard the heat of the bowl with my cupped hand, and of the importance of cleaning the pipe to rid it of moisture. Thus success. Hurrah!

Then it occurred to me that this very practical and obvious idea was the very same thing that explains what makes the pipe a philosophical thing, a thing of beauty and of delight, and that which made A. A. Milne write, "a pipe in the mouth makes it clear that there has been no mistake--you are undoubtedly a man." When a man holds a pipe he holds FIRE in his hand. It is the secret knowledge rescued by Prometheus, it is reason symbolized, it is that which Heraclitus thought to be the ordering principle of the universe; on the sixth day of creation fire was breathed into dust and there was Adam. When a man smokes a pipe, he communes with his own mind, which is the beginning of self-reflection, and thus the beginning of knowledge. What is more, the pipe is fire clothed, knowing good and evil, and it represents man redeemed in his fallen nature: upright, and unashamed.

I shall return only grudgingly to the naked promiscuous cigar, and even more grudgingly to the dim excuse for intelligence that is the cigarette.

I have some friends, some honest friends,
And honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire,
A book that's not too new;
My bed so warm, the nights of storm
I love to listen to.

Robert W. Service - Ballads of a Bohemian

Pregnant Thought for the Day No. 2 : Godliness

It's standard wisdom that a man comes to resemble what he worships. What's to deduce from this?

If ye would be as gods, worship God.