Thought for the Day No. 8: The End of the World

The world will perish in fire. Fire is essentially good; it used to be one of the four basic forms of matter. But man cannot survive pure fire. It is a high kind of reality that destroys everything impure. In that, it is like the face of God. Indeed, perhaps the end of the world will occur when God turns and faces it.

Belloc Wednesday - Wisdom in the Old Roads

From Hilaire Belloc's The Old Road (Philadelphia: J.B. Libbencott Company, 1905), p. 3.

There are primal things which move us....Of these primal things, the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made.

It is easy to re-create in oneself to-day a sense of what the Road means to living things on land: it is easy to do it even in this crowded country. Walk, for instance, on the neglected Pennines along the watershed of England, from Malham Tarn, say, to Ribblehead, or from Kirkby Stephen up along the crest to Crossfell and so to Alston, and you will learn at once what follows on an untouched soil from the absence of a track - of a guide. One ravine out of the many radiating from a summit will lead to the one valley you seek; take another stream and you are condemned at last to traverse mountains to repair the error. In a fog or at night, if one has not such a path, there is nothing to help one but the lay of the snow or the trend of the vegetation under the last gale. In climbing, the summit is nearly always hidden, and nothing but a track will save you from false journeys. In descent it alone will save you a precipice or an unfordable stream. It knows upon which side an obstacle can be passed, where there is firm land in a morass, and where there is the best going; sand or rock - dry soil. It will find what nothing but long experiment can find for an individual traveller, the precise point in a saddle or neck where approach is easiest from either side, and everywhere the Road, especially the very early Road, is wiser than it seems to be. It reminds one of those old farmers who do not read, and whom we think at first unreasoning in their curious and devious ways, but whom if we watch closely, we shall find doing all their work just in that way which infinite time has taught the country-side.

The Heroic and the Mundane

Jailor: You understand my position, sir, there's nothing I can do; I'm a plain, simple man and just want to keep out of trouble.
from Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons.

μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ.
βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.
Homer, Odyssey, 11.488-491.

Let me hear no smooth talk
Of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils.
Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand
for some poor country man, on iron rations,
than lord it over all the exhausted dead.
Homer, Odyssey, trans. Fitzgerald, 11.577-581.

'For little price,' he said, 'do Elven-kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft. But if this be your will, Thingol, I will perform it. And when we meet again my hand shall hold a Silmaril from the Iron Crown; for you have not looked the last upon Beren son of Barahir....
Then Beren and Lúthien went through the Gate, and down the labyrinthine stairs; and together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men. For they came to the seat of Morgoth in his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment.
from J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion.

Of all the themes chosen by the poets, none has endured so long as the tale of the heroic. It is in the earliest epics, earlier even than the Odyssey. It is a greater theme than romance, though romance, ordinarily a lyric condition, occasionally rises to it. Did a man know every language every spoken, and had he read every work ever written, were he to find and record only the smallest part of only the most profound writing upon the heroic, he should have to sit in his high-tech library for months.

There is something in the hero of song and music. It is in the music of his laugh which disdains an enemy. It is in tears as tragedy inevitably strikes, and more than once in the same place. It is in the murmur and thanks of the poor in spirit who look on and suffer. It is in the deep chorus of the sea which carries him from his home, and washes him back upon it. It is in tender words for his lover, O three graces in one, my Beauty, Joy, and Plenty. It is in the glad tidings of victory, and it is in the dull silence of defeat. And this is why the earliest poets chose to sing their stories in song, for they heard this music, which is the trilling echo of divinity, the shadow of Glory.

And yet the poet finishes the song, and the hero must die, after all of his sufferings, and sometimes in the midst of them, and what must be done after it is finished? Even Beren the Befriended died in battle, but was brought back in resurrected body only at the strange mercy of the gods. And the gods were moved by the lamentation of Lúthien daughter of Melian, who miraculously found the thread of song to tell her sorrow in some wayward weft of the eternal fabric lost long ago, so that no woman is ever likely to repeat her deed.

A man may only bear so much divinity before it kills him. Prospero abdicates his power that he might return to Italy with his newly-wedded daughter and son. The mundane has its place, in which the crowds share, and in which the hero must share if he is to live well. For heroism always depends upon extraordinary grace. Homer knew this, and that is why his heroes have the blood of gods in their veins, why gods smith their armour, why gods advise and protect them. But there is an ordinary grace for the ordinary existence - for marriage, for labour with the hands until evening, for quiet and a simple gravestone. If a man is to leave this ordinary existence, he must be called. There is grace appointed for such times. But the man who leaves without a call presumes upon God's extraordinary grace. He commits sacrilege. To avoid this, the hero must study when it is fitting to subdue and to suffer, and when it is fitting to walk away.

Richard Wagner's Ring cycle idolizes the most pernicious form of modern heroism- the heroic romance. Here is Brunnhilde in the early part of the Götterdämmerung, speaking of the ring, now a love-token from Siegfried, to her Valkyrie sister Waltraute:

Ha! know'st thou what 'tis to me?
How canst thou grasp it, loveless maid!
More than Vahalla's rapture,
more than the fame of gods is this my ring:
one glance at its lustrous gold,
one flash of its holy fire
more is to me e'en than all the heaven's aye-enduring delight.
For blissfully there shineth the love of Siegfried.
Love of Siegfried!
O might but its rapture be told thee!
that lives in the ring.
Go hence to the holy council of gods!
And of my ring tell o'er to them my words:
(rather more slowly) from love I never will turn,
of love they never shall rob me,
though into ruins
Valhalla's splendor should fall!

To the credit of Wagner's genius, Brunnhilde indeed sees the ruin of Valhalla. The love she snatched with Siegfried from out of the ordinary life, without marriage, communal covenant, or obedience, can only find consummation in life through consumption in a fiery death. Having forsaken the gods, the lovers must play their own sacrificial lambs in order to atone for their sacrilege.

That death is no death proper for men, and moreover it is quite ridiculous when we jump out of myth and into the present. Practically speaking, whatever the commercials suggest, there is only a small need for heroism. These days, if it is possible at all, to be heroic is to suffer deeply with stubborn charity, and who goes looking for that? Perhaps only Christians and event-coordinators, and anyway it will come to them unhoped for in its due time. But still the best of life is to be had in the mundane, ordinary existence: "Territory, status, and love, sing all the birds, are what matter: ... a place I may go both in and out of."

Of course ordinary men and women must have fun and adventure too: there is a place for theatre and the make-believe epic, and that is one of the chief reasons we love the writings of G.K. Chesterton. But the really demanding sort of heroism in which Chesterton himself lived - the deadly seriousness, the fury, and the compassion that churns the gut - to hold these things in one's soul is a rare calling. Be wary of taking it up, and be ready to lay it down. (These days we have too many wannabe heroes calling themselves pundits. You can tell this by the way they contrive in themselves feelings of shock and horror, for effect. Sadly, many cases practice the art so often, they either deceive themselves into thinking that their horror is real, or they lose their capacity to feel anything else.)

Those who are summoned to heroism must remember that the dark valley of heroism is called the Terrible. It is, to put it lightly, a rather unpleasant place. It also happens to be impossibly difficult to mess and win through it. And the character of impossibility is precisely what allows for a heroic situation, for the stonewall defiance against the impossible is precisely what stamps the rare title of hero upon a man or a woman. But if it is impossible, how is it accomplished, and how is anyone called a hero? Here is the answer. Every hero's success, and every pedestal of fame, must inescapably come as a gift of God, since it is only God's Mercy which has the power, at the last moment, to turn the tables upon doom. Only divine Pity completes the impossible quest. So it must be whenever a man burning with desire attempts the indestructible to destroy or the free to possess.

Then, if all that can be done is in good faith done, whether Pity has broken the spell, or whether the quest has failed, greatness must breathe a sigh of relief: it must diminish, and go into the West (which is the old world for Home).

Silent Music

In a strange twist of events, I've moved to Indianapolis to teach a one room high-school, and I live in the basement of my employer's home. Since, on the advice of St. Thomas to his Brother John, you must "love to be in your room frequently, if you wish to be led to the wine cellar," I must make my new room lovable. How to do it, and how to unlock the door to the wine cellar? Well, I consider the chief circumstance: but for the occasional rumble of household machines, the basement of the Brill family is beautifully quiet. I figured the time was right to stop playing recorded music, a thing which has grown to dominate my various physical homes and even my mental order. I would devote my room to true spiritual silence. But alas for the flesh! I found after just a day I couldn't stand the vacancy.

So I bethought to myself, "self, wither mayest thou look for a music in concorde with the spirit of silence?" Then I remembered the plainchant of Gregory the Great which filled the monasteries of Western Europe. And indeed, after enjoying a few days of chant, testing whether I might hold to the firm principle of silence with the aid of this ancient artifact, I found that it had no addictive power, and yet it played a marvelous peace upon my soul. So I settled that chant, a capella developments of it as but no more complex than the music of Palestrina, and absolute quiet would compose the auditory architecture of my room.

In this experiment, I have discovered two curious properties of plainchant:
1) Through rooms and floors which are generally quiet, the music carries a clear and satisfactory sound much further than does other music at a similar volume. In other words, one never knows discomfort when listening to the distant sound of chant. But the distant sound of any other music drives me mad. I can't ignore it completely, but I can't piece it together either.
2) Plainchant is retiring. It hides in the background of almost any other noise.

At least two interesting conclusions follow.
1) Plainchant requires a special place, set apart for its purposes. A man may feast on the rewards of plainchant only if he cultivates his home diligently and thoughtfully.
2) Plainchant is fundamentally at odds with a world of machines.

The central function of plainchant is, of course, worship, which is the heir of the mind of God and the elder brother of philosophical contemplation. It is not clear to me whether the background playing of plainchant, however well it orders the mind in the habit of contemplation, contributes anything to a habit of worshipfulness, but it seems possible, since contemplation is so closely related to worship. And I assert the possibility that an engineered pattern of silence irrigates a place with a sanctifying grace. All men everywhere have found this. The Orient has found this, and practised it with fervour (though the Buddhists take this practice too far, and so commit both idolatry and intellectual error.) Since Christians inherit the special blessing of God, let them all the more so labour to engineer their homes and their churches with silence, let them pray that the Holy Spirit may irrigate with his grace, and let them look for aid in their labours to the singers of silent music.

And while they're at it, smash the machines.

Belloc Wednesday - Chesterton on Belloc

This is the first description of Belloc that Chesterton put to writing, which he wrote for the introduction to Hilaire Belloc: The Man and His Work by C. C. Mandell and E. Shanks, 1916.

From Masie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), p. 113.

When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us that he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more uproarious and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked into the night, and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. When I have said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not merely bons mots, I have said all that can be said in the most serious aspect about the man who has made the greatest fight for good things of all the men of my time.

We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho restaurant; his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist and French Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, which are like a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin.....

The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt for three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about the South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most of us were writing on the Speaker....

...What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door there entered with him the smell of danger.

Thought for the Day No. 7: Justice and Mercy

I think that if, at the end of my brief life (hopefully longer than Keats's), I should have contributed anything to the great body of Western political philosophy, it will have been an exposition of the following principle:

Justice for all, mercy for each.

Words for All Seasons No. 4

Latin, v.:
To interlard with Latin.

"The unlearned or foolish fantastical, that smells but of learning (such fellows as have been learned in their days), will so Latin their tongues, that the simple cannot but wonder at their talk, and think surely they speak by some revelation."
From footnote 16 of Frederic Wheelock, Latin (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963) p. xxii.

The OED definition is even better than the word itself.

True Myth

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VII: "He led me away to the palace of Irkalla, the Queen of Darkness, to the house from which none who enters ever returns, down the road from which there is no coming back. There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness."

The Gospel of Matthew, 4:16 "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned."

Thought for the Day No. 6: Walls and Ring-roads

This is the seed of a larger essay on the nature of modern cities.

In multitudinous days passed of political uncertainty, distributed political authority, and armies without air-power, cities built great walls to protect their citizens' lives and capital, and to increase the income of the local government. This act of ownership marked them off from the countryside, and so symbolised a distinct mode of life. Today our cities build ring-road highways for much the same purpose and with much the same symbolism. The fortifications of the past are grand, familiar, and local, and the men who walked them watched the land. The fortifications of the present are rarely more than brute, distant, and identical, and the people who drive along them watch only the road ahead.

Boothman Bar, one of four great gatehouses of the city of York

Belloc Wednesday - The Shotgun Approach to European History

From Belloc's Europe and the Faith, New York, The Paulist Press, 1930.
The book has a motto appended: 'sine auctoritate nulla vita'
The introductory chapter is entitled 'The Catholic Conscience of History'
The introductory paragraph made me laugh in admiration:

"I say the Catholic "conscience" of history - I say "conscience" - that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower - I do not say "The Catholic Aspect of History." This talk of "aspects" is modern and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it. I will rather do homage to truth and say that there is no such thing as a Catholic "aspect" of European history. There is a Protestant aspect, a Jewish aspect, a Mohammedan aspect, a Japanese aspect, and so forth. For all of these look on Europe from without. The Catholic sees Europe from within. There is no more a Catholic "aspect" of European history than there is a man's "aspect" of himself.

[But I must carry on recording his bold and glorious riposte]

Sophistry does indeed pretend that there is even a man's "aspect" of himself. In nothing does false philosophy prove itself more false. For a man's way of perceiving himself (when he does so honestly and afer a cleansing examination of his mind) is in line with his Creator's, and therefore with reality: he sees from within.

Let me pursue this metaphor. Man has in him conscience, which is the voice of God. Not only des he know by this that the outer world is real, but also that his own personality is real.

When a man, although flattered by the voice of another, yet says within himself, "I am a mean fellow," he has hold of reality. When a man, though maligned of the world, says to himself of himself, "My purpose was just," he has hold of reality. He knows himself, for he is himself. A man does not know an infinite amount about himself. But the finite amount he does know is all in the map; it is all part of what is really there. What he does not know about himself would, did he know it, fit in with what he does know about himself. There are indeed "aspects" of a man for all others except these two, himself and God Who made him. These two, when they regard him, see him as he is; all other minds have their several views of him; and these indeed are "aspects," each of which is false, while all differ. But a man's view of himself is not an "aspect:" it is a comprehension.

Now then, so it is with us who are of the Faith and the great story of Europe. A Catholic as he reads that story does not grope at it from without, he understands it from within. He cannot understand it altogether because he is a finite being; but he is also that which he has to understand. The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith."

The Strange Consequences of Berkeleianism

When Decartes divorced the mind from the body, metaphysics split into two basic schools, those who thought that the evidence revealed that we could only be sure of the mind, and those who thought that the evidence revealed we could only be sure of matter. Most of what you know about the post-Cartesian history of philosophy comes from the second school. But the first school was for a long time equally dominant, the father of which was George Berkeley. He thought that 'matter', rather than 'mind' was an abstraction, since all perceptions as experienced (and therefore truly known) are mental states, not physical states. (To actual historians of philosophy, apologies for my gross simplification.)

In and since the nineteenth century tumult of scientific discovery, Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein, his ideas have been rather lost to the respectable public. But, though I don't know enough to trace their particular history, they pop up in an extraordinary place. In 30s and 40s Oxford, amongst the Inklings, no less, who were steeped in questions of parapsychology and elevated consciousness, and took oriental philosophy very seriously. Some of even C.S. Lewis' shorter stories are explorations of these psychic questions. I had always thought it strange that the most clear-thinking of the twentieth Christian apologists and poets should be fascinated with such an obviously unchristian and moreover absurd idea, but I discover just today that Anthony Flew (of There is A God) lived and studied at Oxford at the same time, had the same psychic interests, explicitly attributes his early philosophical ideas to Berkeley, and strange to say possesses precisely the same clear-thinking argumentation and prose style I find in the Inklings. It can't be a coincidence.

Edit: What matters most here is the similarity in the argumentation and prose style. I'm pretty sensitive to the feel of the prose I'm reading - the intellectual sensation, if you will - and Flew's style reminds me of nothing so much as those essays I've read by the Inklings, and not just Lewis. It could be just that Oxford intellectuals from the 30s and 40s in general wrote in that fashion. I'd have to read more widely to know. But the connection to Idealism is very interesting. If it's real, it would be worth a semi-popular book.

On The Crossing of Fords

From Belloc, The Path to Rome, (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, [year unknown]), p. 283.

Just at this 'island' my guide found a ford. And the way he found it is worth telling. He taught me the trick, and it is most useful to men who wander alone in mountains.

You take a heavy stone, how heavy you must learn to judge, for a more rapid current needs a heavier stone; but say about ten pounds. This you lob gently into mid-stream. How, it is impossible to describe, but when you do it is quite easy to see that in about four feet of water, or less, the stone splashes quite differently from the way it does in five feet or more. It is a sure test, and one much easier to acquire by practice than to write about. To teach myself this trick I practised it throughout my journey in these wilds.

A Latin Mass

After reading John Senior's Restoration of Christian Culture this morning, where he insists that only communities and persons dedicated to work, prayer, and self-sacrifice will effect the named restoration, and defends his claim through excerpts mostly of the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, I thought it would be fitting to worship this Sunday in the old way. I found a High Latin mass being celebrated in east Arlington. Until they raise enough money for a church of their own, they are borrowing the sanctuary of a Discalced Carmelite nunnery - so that was perfect, since SS. Teresa and John were the male and female reformers of the Carmelites in the 16th century.

The nunnery is off the beaten track, up a small drive on the edge of an old stretch of development along a large road that used to be a major highway into Dallas. It is absolutely serene, almost a paradise in the midst of this humid sparse climate, surrounded like a fortification by perfectly kept, tightly aligned, deepbrown wooden stakes, and guarded by a large gate with an angel perched on each white pillar. The gardens are full of statuary and sweet-smelling trees. The sanctuary is just as carefully and beautifully designed. There is nothing there of industrial life. There are modern materials, but all is put to the service of a true architecture; itself crafted better to serve the cloistered contemplative vocation of the women who spend their lives there.

The priest gave a discursive homily on the Catholic doctrines on indulgences. Some of it very strange, and I wonder whether he described it quite right, because some of it sounded as if it contradicted what little I've read in Aquinas. However, the imaginative background of the doctrines struck me as it had never done before, despite all I've supposedly learned about the body of Christ being one, and each being spiritually tied to each. There is an economy in the body of Christ, where good and evil are shared and felt between one Christian and another, not only in a general, formless sense which only has meaning in devotional rhetoric, but in a concrete sense. The disorder left on the soul by sin, even after repentance and forgiveness, calls out for redress. Scars must be healed. It is possible, according to these doctrines, that God has granted that the good work of one is effective to heal not only his own scars, but the scars of another, and that the recipient of such love is himself enabled to raise up his own prayers for the first. In the midst of this economy, the pope is able to open the storehouses of Christ's grace at his discretion, to the end that certain souls are blessed, and also that the whole community of the church is spurred to greater devotion. The church, in this light, is a spiritual princedom.

What most lifted my spirit, apart from the beautiful voices of the male choir and the people all singing the latin prayers, was the LIFE. Half the communicants must have been under the age of twenty-five, and hardly a missal in sight, they all knew the ancient words. Such life has many taproots, one of which is a sound theology of the family, a subject perhaps fitting for a future post....

Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children

Our unlikeness from our ancestors calcifies yearly, as the egg-shell hardens in the womb of the bird. The grandeur of Europe is dead, in its place is a cynical establishment that celebrates a culture of the kitsch, the unmanly, the unfeminine, an abstractive, self-reflexive, self-parodic serpent, which will devour the world before it devours itself. Those uninitiated in this new Dionysian cultural cannibalism live in the entrails of the beast, grasping for dollars with which to buy unearned and dishonorable pleasure and power. In the periodic sufferings of the economic cycle, these acolytes are allowed to despair, perhaps commit suicide, shat into the void, thereby revealing themselves to be weak, and therefore unworthy of the secret knowledge, which is that the world is a Joke without a mouth or a face, that in reality (what is reality?) it is Nothing.

Who among us can walk through the halls of Blenheim, follow the silken melodies of Vaughan Williams, feel the intellectual passion of Rodin, pray in the pews of Notre Dame, ascend the steps to the halls of Congress, study the prudence of Madison, or, closer to our own day, read the grave optimism of T.H. White, and grieve at all for what is gone? We have not the power to feel, for we are cut off from attachment by a horrible bank of garbage, moral, theological, aesthetic. We may ascend the heights of our own side, and view what remains of Western culture with a pleasant detachment, but we lack a sense of belonging.

I believe this is extremely dangerous. At this time we lack a traditional high culture. The whim may arise at any time in our cultural leadership to destroy what relics remain of the old. At those times, and until we regain a confident aesthetic based in a Christian faith, we will have no defense other than our grief to protect these things. Architecture and landscape are clearly the most obvious victims, for they require upkeep and they use valuable land, which is always in demand in this world. But the other high arts are just as much in danger, though for a more subtle, more basic cause. Critical knowledge is easily lost. Taste and judgment and appropriate enjoyment of the good, the true, and the beautiful are not developed by accident, but by purposeful education. The aim to develop such appreciation has largely disappeared from the modern university. If it disappears utterly, then Beethoven and de Tocqueville will be just as invisible as a bulldozed St. Paul's.

Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. We must carry on grieving. Teach yourselves, find teachers, to cultivate your taste for Western culture. Steep yourself in it, make the painful sacrifice of emotion necessary to take your place as PART of it. Remember your home with longing and love, so that when they come to destroy it utterly, you may tuck a memory of it away with you. Preserve it in your personal library, share it with your children. Information in books is not enough. You must learn it by heart, and cherish it as your own. Some day the modern world may forget its hatred of the past, and the children of our descendants will be allowed to play in the ruins of the old world. The monastic orders may again become significant. Even then the learning must be preserved. When the renaissance finally comes (and who knows how long that will be?), this knowledge will be valuable, and the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died will bear much fruit. This is your responsibility to your inheritance, thrown as it has been to the four winds. Gather what you can, add to it if you will from your own soul, and wait for a better day.


Piero di Cosimo - Perseus Frees Andromeda (1513)

Thought for the Day No. 5: Ambition

Tucked inside the hope of greatness is a worm of discontent, slumbering. It will wake at the dawn of fulfillment and begin to gnaw, unless it is killed. How is such a worm killed? Must the soul be sliced from the soul? Would this be a good thing?

A Snippet of Praise

From The Death of Christian Culture (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1978), p. 164, by John Senior - the heir of Mark Van Doren, co-founder of the University of Kansas Integrated Humanities Program, and professor to David Whalen:

"Christopher Dawson, who tried to prove that medieval Christianity was responsible for the whole idea of progress, achieved an academic respectability denied to the cantankerous old Romantic, anti-Modern, and greater historian, Belloc."

The Future of U.S. Politics - An Irresponsible Prediction

The greatest political danger the United States republic will face in the coming decades is an alliance of libertarian economic and ethical logic (a means) with a progressive utopian vision of pleasure for all (an ends). The crowds loved President Obama's rhetoric - he talked about peace and harmony and well-being - but now they see what that costs, they don't like him. If the Democrats are smart, they'll scrap state socialism just like Tony Blair scrapped state collectivism. Who really cares about the poor, after all? Well, the poor care about the poor, and they have a vote in hand. So to keep their vote, what will be offered them in compensation for inequality of wealth and success? Equality of pleasure. Make pleasure the new dollar. Since the poor can produce sex just as well as the rich, give them sexual unrestraint, and everyone will be wealthy. The middle-class will have their money, and the rich will have their orgies. Everyone will be happy. High-five to J.S. Mill.

To this end, watch for signs in public education that children are being taught more and more about fulfilling their desire for pleasure, especially for sexual pleasure, and especially at the expense of the desire for public honor in the role of citizen or statesman. They will be taught to trade their rights as a citizen for their rights as a hormone factory.

Also watch for euthanasia defended on slighter and slighter grounds, so that a man who is merely chronically angry or depressed is given the option to kill himself. That will have the excellent effect, among other excellent effects, of staving off political dissent.

How should a virtuous person respond to all this? Invest in morphine production. You'll make a killing.

The Odd People

Belloc praises a non-religious people:
from "The Odd People", On Something, (London: Meuthen and Co., 1910), pp. 97-99.

"I should add that the Monomotapans have no religion; but the tolerance of their Constitution is nowhere better shown than in this particular, for though they themselves regard religion as ridiculous, they will permit its exercise within the State, and even occasionally give high office and emoluments to those who practise it.

We have, indeed, much to learn in this matter of religion from the race whose habits I have discovered and here describe. Nothing, perhaps, has done more to warp our own story than the hide-bound prejudice that a doctrine could not be both false and true at the same time, and the unreasoning certitude, inherited from the bad old days of clerical tyranny, that a thing either was or was not.

No such narrowness troubles the Monomotapan. He will prefer - and very wisely prefer - an opinion that renders him comfortable to one that in any way interferes with his appetites; and if two such opinions contradict each other, he will not fall into a silly casuistry which would attempt to reconcile them: he will quietly accept both, and serve the Higher Purpose with a contended mind.

It is on this account that I have said that the Monomotapans regard religion as ridiculous. For true religion, indeed (as they phrase it), they have the highest reverence; and true religion consists in following the inclinations of an honest man, that is, oneself: but "religion in the sense of fixed doctrine," as one of their priests explained to me, "is abhorrent to our free commonwealth." Thus such hair-splitting questions as whether God really exists or no, whether it be wrong to kill or to steal, whether we owe any duties to the State, and, if so, what duties, are treated by the honest Monomotapans with the contempt they deserve: they abandon such speculation for the worthy task of enjoying, each man, what his fortune permits him to enjoy.

But, as I have said above, they do not persecute the small minority living in their midst who cling with the tenacity of all starved minds to their fixed ideas; and if a man who professes certitude upon doctrinal matters is useful in other ways, they are very far from refusing his services to the State. I have known more than one, for instance, of this old-fashioned and bigoted lot who, when he offered a sum of money in order to be admitted to the Senate of Monomotapa, found it accepted as readily and cheerfully as though it has been offered by one of the broadest principles and the most liberal mind.

Let no one be surprised that I have spoken of their priests, for though the Monomotapans regard religion with due contempt, it does not follow that they will take away the livelihood of a very honest class of people who in an older and barbaric state of affairs were employed to maintain the structure of what was then a public worship. The priesthood, therefore, is very justly and properly retained by the Monomotapans, subject only to a few simple duties and to a sacred intonation of voice very distressing to those not accustomed to it. If I am asked in what occupation they are employed, I answer, the wealthier of them in such sports and futilities as attract the wealthy, and the less wealthy in such futilities and sports as the less wealthy customarily enjoy. Nor is it a rigid law among them that the sons of priests should be priests, but only the custom - so far, at least, as I have been able to discover."

Thought for the Day No. 4: Dialogue in England

The average Englishman or woman exhibits a terrible indifference to common sense moral philosophy, which indifference often runs over into contempt. I wonder whether this is partly a consequence of the schools and universities for too long taking the analytic tradition dogmatically. For contrary to the established analytic procedure, common sense moral philosophy operates in both the deductive and inductive directions at once.

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.

On Watching the Sunrise at 41.93°N 84.62°W

The funeral home has a roof, by a happy accident of design, fit perfectly for watching the sunrise. Not only is it mostly flat, allowing me to sit in a chair facing the east, but the highest ridge also has a small platform which one may comfortably sit upon, with legs resting easily on the gentle slope of the asphalt shingles.

The black night turns a velvet indigo at about 6:00 am. If I were an emperor I'd have my robes dyed in that glorious note and give the purple cloak to a lucky beggar. The colour seeps across the sky a bit like flowing wax. It tends to loose its lustre once it travels a quarter way down the sky, as if it dried out, or dried up. Only on the eastern horizon the molten colour is warmed by the invisible fire.

The terrestrial objects lose the mystery with which the night temporarily mantled them, but curiously, the aspect of the whole gains in proportion, for the blue morning light is, if not the most beautiful, and least the most wholesome. By the end, the colour of the sky is what is called sky blue, that light pastel which glows in the eyes of a few blessed individuals.

The sunrise is best watched in snapshots. I had a candle and a book with me, and every so often looked up to see a new palette or the moon having appear from behind the cloud banks. This way one appreciates each phase with sharp pleasure, otherwise the experience is a bit like watching paint dry.

For the most significant fact of a sunrise is what an ungodly time it takes. Out of the precious twenty-four hours in a day, a sunrise takes a good hour-and-a-half at least. The Farmer's Almanac claims that sunrise in Hillsdale was at 7:36 am, but that only indicates when the sun crossed the threshold of the horizon. It lit up the Great Lakes Plains well before then. On top of that, even from my excellent vantage, I had no change of a glimpse of the sun until it was well above the horizon, owing first to the hills and trees in the distance, and then to the vast swathe of altocumulus that looked very pretty but absorbed all the rays. And by the time the sun actually appeared above the clouds, it had lost nearly all its morning grandeur. It was just your run-of-the-mill Platonic form of the Good.

Sunsets, by comparison, are very short affairs, overflowing with gold and garnets, where the sun is extinguished in the space of a few short minutes. In this the sun bears a resemblance to many growing things - Empires, universities, people, trees, shops, anything you like, which are knit with the threads of fate so slowly, yet in their decay, crumble at a single fierce blow.

So was it worth it? Absolutely not. Maybe on a Carolina beach, with a driftwood fire, sizzling bacon, and a couple friends. But in Hillsdale, after an hour and a half the cold had made me so numb that all I could think about was wrapping up in my duvet.

Words for All Seasons - Introduction

At some point in the rose-tinted future, my website will be handsome. It will also have tabs at the top to allow you to navigate between the sorts of things I write. For now, I must make do with this highly inefficient system of entries in series (rather than in parallel), so please accept my apologies.

My next trick is for lovers of the English language, where I brush the dust off of those old and pretty words which civilization forgot. Many beautiful people do just this, but, while like good librarians they catalogue the titles, they often forget to open the covers, to read, and to smell the pages fragrant with decomposition - rosin from the ink, vanillin and alchohols from the wood pulp. The soul of words is their historical meaning, and for this we must have context. The words here will come with the sentences where I found them, and their (historical) definitions and etymologies as given in the OED.

Collins, n.:
A letter of thanks for entertainment or hospitality, sent by a departed guest; a ‘bread-and-butter’ letter.
Etym: The name of a character, William Collins, in Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice (ch. xxii)!
"When he left, his thanks were never formal; delicacy, humour and affection, often adorned with a sketch or a poem, turned the briefest note into a treasured literary possession. He was certainly the greatest writer of Collinses in English social history."
R. Speaight (1957) p.513 Hilaire Belloc

Universal Literacy

Since the earliest times, literacy was the mark of education; it was the prized possession of jurists, legislators, priests, and generals, no doubt for its enormous practical value, but also, surely for its intrinsic beauty and power. For what other reason do hieroglyphics in their thousands graffiti the walls of the Egyptian palaces? As wealth increases, so education envelops a larger proportion of the population, so alphabets develop partly to simplify the problems of teaching language, so that around the Mediterranean, noun-pictures become syllabic pictures, and finally abstract letters, whereas in China the Mandarin alphabet has been horribly complex up until very recently, when a concerted effort is being made to simplify it. A body of higher knowledge preserves civilization, but literacy is at the root, and taught from the earliest age.

In the last three centuries we have reached the logical conclusion of this historical process (and be quiet, I'm not a Whig), where everyone can read and most can write. Now obviously not everyone can, but this is a fault of inefficiencies and philosophical stupidities in the present pedagogical system rather than inherent limitations in the possibility of universal literacy.

Now the democratic system of government depends upon universal literacy. Over the course of the 19th century the Liberal and Tory parties of England debated the wisdom of extending the franchise. It was a chief complaint of the Tories that Englishman without an education couldn't be expected to participate in government, and it was a chief effort of the Liberal party to give everyone that education, precisely as a rebuttal to the Tory objection, so that in 1866 Gladstone could accuse Parliament of foolishness and senselessness to withhold political power from the working classes, as since 1832, they had increasingly become fit for the exercise of it. Likewise the American founders held universal education to be a necessary defence of sensible government. The early frontier schools didn't teach much, but they taught as much as was needed to read the papers and consider the merits of an argument. The middle class, especially, was trained to read very deeply. Almost every independent household before the revolution had at least a Bible and either a work of history or law written by an Englishman.

This isn't the place to assess the reasons for the link between universal education and democracy, and the most basic reasons should be obvious to the educated person. What I want to consider, briefly, is the danger to democracy when universal literacy begins to decay, as it is doing today: when the system is in place, but repeated attempts to reform it fail; when a growing percentage of citizens no longer claim to be able to read and write; and when those who can make abominably poor use of it. Consider the rise of the paperback bestseller. An elderly fellow who works at the funeral home, a '63 graduate of Hillsdale, used to be an English highschool teacher. He told me today that when he gets Imprimis he immediately throws it into the trashcan, not because he thinks its rubbish (and there's something of an argument there), but because he just doesn't read that stuff. He went by the library today to pick up several volumes of mysteries to entertain himself during the hours he works here, and because recently, apparently, T.V. isn't so good. Many people I know and you know do the same thing.

Here is the problem, as an deductive argument.
Major premise: Democracy depends, and has always depended, among other things, on universal education.
Minor premise: Schools have always taught, and continue to teach, literacy.
Minor premise: Literacy used to stand for, but longer stands for, an education.
Conclusion: Our country is no longer a stable democracy.

"The glories of the past are destroyed, they are no longer understood, and language is forgotten. Letters, you have gone down in a cataract from depth of folly to further depth, from obscenity to obscenity, until you have reached the inane. For whom should any man now write? What ears remain to hear?"
Hilaire Belloc - The New Keepsake (1931)

Pregnant Thought for the Day No.1: Tension and Balance

Tension is the sensation an open system endures while outside forces compete to govern it.
Balance is the composition of any system conceived, with reason, as a unity.

Tension is to balance as the material and efficient causes are to the formal and final, and as physics is to metaphysics. By implication, some things are in tension, but everything is in balance.

Roberto Bolle

Women

No one really knows the truth about them, so in a way they're like black holes or gnomes. However, I happen to have a small, tidy corner on the covered market of knowledge, and this post is a special display, sought for across oceans, inquired into on dark nights with fey friends, even wrested from the secret vault of wisdom.

Naturally, they'll deny all of it. But one would expect that, since they've always been skilled in the art of deception, which is the greatest weapon of war, and of course they're always ready to wage war.

It has to do with love, which is the old-fashioned word for 'relationships,' and with the perennial insoluble questions, do I love him? do I not love him?

But prior to the questions of love, there is a metaphysical event which transpires deep in a woman’s heart of hearts, a very sacred place where even she herself is not allowed but once a year, dressed in pure white linen, with bare feet, dripping in blood. (I wonder whether there may not be some fitting element of self-worship for woman, having to do with being the representative of Beauty on this mortal earth.) This temple is the seat of the will, and whenever she meets a man, a fundamental act of the will inclines her towards or away from the idea of love with him, whether she be conscious of it or no.

Absent this primitive allegiance of the will, she is incapable of falling in love with him, though he be the most admirable sort of person, and it's here she's sometimes forced to reply to suitors, "I don't know why, I'm just not interested." Yet from time to time the strength of his personality, the honour of his career, or the piety of his religion may work their effects upon her imagination, and he may eventually change her will.

Yet as long as she has a positive inclination, some far more important condition must be satisfied. It is difficult to tell what it is, since she may contentedly date a man for many months before realizing it herself. She must respect him for the greatness of his soul.

Greatness of soul is a tricky thing to understand, though everyone has a sense of it. Naming the thing sometimes provokes hostility - it appears to contradict the Christian virtue of humility. For the essence of greatness of soul is ambition. He (or she) loves glory. To be precise, greatness of soul is the habitual striving to do great and honourable deeds, together with the self-respect to seek deserved praise. After a few minutes in the presence of these people, we are aware of their power and might, we are often overcome with loyalty. Dr.Blackstock (Hillsdale College’s Provost) has a term for these people: princes of men. It is the secular equivalent of sainthood - though they likewise owe their excellence to grace, only through different channels.

They aim for high things, and they do not succumb to trouble. They write mellifluous poetry, they train up their children, they build sturdy houses, they make passionate love, they lay down their lives for their brother, heads turn when they enter a room, and under their rule regimes enjoy a golden age.

They are secure in themselves; they don’t cry for the attention that lesser people demand under lesser stress. They are content with their lot even though they be despised. They make sure never to stay in another man's debt. They believe in destiny, but they don't believe in inevitability.

When they fall in love, they are not gripped for long by stupor, and when they gain the affection of their beloved, they do not relax into a passive happiness, for they have enough common sense to know that she is not the beatific vision; not at all: they invite their love to be co-creator of the world they are making.

A woman can respect a man with such a soul, and, here is a hard thing: she probably won't be happy otherwise. Traditional aristocracies hate to marry down; this is the moral equivalent of marrying down. Still, you say, this doesn't explain why so many couples fall and stay in love, for few enough men and few enough women are capable of great deeds! Well, don't think of this in binary: there are grades, there are measures, there are backwaters and outliers. The postman may be further along than the speechwriter, and whatnot.

Yet through all the delightful complexity of it, the quality of greatness shines through the outward appearance, and a woman is able to recognize it, both in herself, and in her man. And when she sees a greater soul in a man than she sees in herself, she can fundamentally respect him.

Just so, a man can only fundamentally respect a woman who is greater than he, and probably won't be happy otherwise. But it turns out that though a couple each think of the other as higher than him or herself, that this is the operation of humility; really, they are equal. Consult your own experience. Do you not find that you have a similar degree of respect for each person in a happy couple? And do you not find that amongst couples that break apart, that you often had a much higher regard for one of them than the other?

And here I will tread cautiously, because it is in the power of these words to wound, so you must read them with salt and with caution of your own, but I have also seen that, in relationships between serious, honourable people, the woman is much more likely to break off the relationship than the man, and this may be because women generally are of greater worth then men. So that a great woman often finds that she does not recognize in her man a true equality of soul. Tragically, she cannot fundamentally respect him, and so, with him, she cannot be happy. (N.B. She never tells him so. Thus for the second time a man hears the dismal dismissal, "I don't know why, I'm just not interested.")

I'm far from explaining all love, its entwinings and unwindings, in this way. I merely explain what I believe to be a very important part of it. Take it or leave it.

Give me women, wine, and snuff,
Until I cry out, "Hold, enough!"
You may do so sans objection,
'Till the day of resurrection.
For, bless my beard, they aye shall be,
My beloved trinity.
~John Keats

Tests, Tests, Tests

If you are a highschool or college student, when was the last time you took an academic test? Probably last week. And what are you doing now? Probably reviewing for a test. If you are a highschool or college professor, what are you doing now? Probably preparing or marking a test. I will tell you outright, I think this near-ubiquitous pedagogic crutch a feeble procedure and a misuse of time.

What is it that a highschool aims to teach? It is no revolutionary thing to say that it aims to train up strong, active minds which take delight in truth and beauty, and in the process introduce them to some of the most important ideas, names, languages, and literature that nourish our cultural discourse. Young minds may be brilliant or may be dumb, but nearly all of them are capable of forming some attachment, some love, to a science, to a period of history, or to an author. This sort of intellectual desire ought to be encouraged wherever it is found, and allowed to flourish. Some day it may become a real academic excellence; perhaps it may lead to related studies; more than likely the pure experience of intellectual love will prepare the student to throw the weight of his mature mind into an honourable and serious labour, political or academic (and I mean political in the largest sense of the word).

How does the well-meaning test assist this purpose? Generally speaking, it forces a student to review the material he has copied down from the lectures and his textbook; in college, it even forces him to think independently on the meaning and significance of the material. Without a test, without the incentive of a good grade and the embarrassment of a bad one, most students wouldn't give a second thought to the material. Even the best of them must be led gently but firmly towards knowledge.

Yet precisely what command of knowledge does a test demand? To be specific, memorized facts and regurgitated analysis. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with regurgitated material. Were it not for regurgitated food, in fact, the worldwide bird population would have died off shortly after the fifth day of creation, for lack of means to feed the chicks. However, it is an essential point of regurgitation that the food doesn't stay in the belly of the parent, but is cast into the gullet of the chick, or in our case, the pages of the bluebook. Regurgitated information does not nourish the mind. Information from one science does not shape the information of another. All is kept tightly preserved in boxes of the memory labeled 'upcoming exam'.

The existence of mid-terms in college is hard enough. At the Academy, the highschool history students take an exam almost once every two weeks. These are usually preceded by a review day, where the professor quizzes the students and fields their questions. The year is split into three terms, such that in each term, the children take several miniature tests and a comprehensive exam at the end. The effect on most of these students I conceive to be a tendency to forget what was learned in all previous terms but the present, and I observe the same in college, that very few remember what they studied so hard for in previous semesters. The best of them perhaps remember in the spring what they learned in the fall.

Now, this is not in itself problematic. Isn't the aim of education not a memory for facts (and here I included regurgitated analysis in my definition of 'fact'), but appreciation of principles, and a delight in knowledge? Yes indeed, but facts are a means to that knowledge. Constant testing constantly empties out those facts and restarts the new term with new facts, so that no comprehensive idea is built up. Any enlargement of the mind is accidental and infrequent.

I suggest we learn a lesson from England, and administrate highschool tests far less often, perhaps once a year, for several reasons:
1) The difficulty of holding in the memory such a vast volume of facts forces the student to develop a facility for ordering his acquired facts according to principles, for using parts of other studies to reinforce his memory of this one, and in general to cultivate precisely what we wish for.
2) The allegiance to GPA as a measure of intellectual success, and consequent cutting of corners and the habit of studying to the exam, diminishes, as does the opposite tendency to become inoculated against its authority. Believe me, the frightful difficulty of a once-yearly exam creates near awe about it.
3) It frees up immense amounts of time both in class and out for both teacher and student, to get on with the business of learning. It doesn't at all preclude the potential to review past material from time to time, and even to take informal tests. In fact, a wise teacher will do so. But the mood of the review changes, from being servile to being liberal. I think this is the real meaning behind the contemporary concern that kids become 'stressed' and 'over-worried' at having to take so many exams.

In the meantime, kids can be tested in far more fruitful ways. There should be frequent competitions for prose and poetry memorization, for written essays, for artistic creativity, just as there already are in sports. Achievement shouldn't be mechanized and economized into a number or a letter. It should be honoured as a particular and glorious production of a thriving mind, just as it truly is in the adult world. There is very little competition in exams, because they are by nature private. But competitions of production are by nature public. And kids - especially the boys - are far more inspired by public honour than they are by private self-respect.

There are several counter-arguments that I haven't the time or space to recite or refute. I would also like to stress that nothing is further from my mind than lampooning the wisdom and the deliberate thoughtfulness of schools and professors who do administrate frequent exams. However, I state the general case as seems to me to complement a complete pedagogy, and I'd like you, my sweet reader, to comment on this and debate with me and the other readers. I know much of what I blog is obscure, but I've no doubt you have at least briefly thought about this particular issue before, it being so near to your heart, as it were.

Kyrgyzstan (yes, one of those)

The US lacks decent supply routes into Afghanistan (it's landlocked, remember); meanwhile, President Obama has already begun to order many more troops moved into the region, which is still suffering heavily from Taliban attacks. One route goes through the Khyber Pass from Pakistan, but in recent months Pakistan has become more tolerant of the Taliban organization which has set up in the northwestern villages, so that route is coming under heavy attack. The only major airbase supply route is in the northern country of Kyrgyzstan, called Manas (after a legendary national hero who united the tribes against the Mongol hordes),

It appears that the Russians offered the Kyrgyzstanis a $2.15 billion package earlier this year to kick the Americans out of Manas airbase. No doubt they will use this as leverage in negotiations against the missile shield in Eastern Europe. At the same time, it seems that Mr. Obama, in a formerly secret letter to President Medvedev, has offered to give up the missile shield in return for Russia abandoning its nuclear financial and technological aid to Iran.

This seems the height of folly. It swaps a temporary setback for Iran (which will continue to press forward in nuclear technology with or without Russia's help) in return for a permanent setback for the US (which will leave Europe undefended from long-term future Iranian attacks, Russian attacks, or anyone else's attacks). In consequence it shows Russia that underhanded power-politics works, that the US is weak and irresolute, and perhaps most importantly of all, it injures the trust that we have earned in Eastern Europe, which depends upon us to keep the Russians in check; when we show our ignorance of Russian diplomatic methods and the absence of backbone, they will begin to transfer their trust to the EU. NATO itself may be threatened (I know that already France and Germany are in major disagreement with the US about policy, for instance over inducting Georgia into the alliance system).

Considering this background, it seems that leaving the airbase just as we are doing is part of the same weakness of will and blinkered foreign policy focusing exclusively on the immediate problems in Iran and Afghanistan.

Now, it may be IN FACT that allowing Russia to exercise dominance of Central Asia is the most prudent policy, because it may satisfy its imperial ambitions in the medium-term, thus keeping pressure off of Eastern Europe. Also, China is interested in expanding its power, and may clash with Russia (both nations apparently have been conducting joint wargames with the Asian countries, including special-forces operations). But this outlet for Russian ambition would be made terribly dangerous if China and Russia were to form an Asian alliance. Someone should figure out the likelihood of this event.

But I think it more prudent, as a rule of course, to show Russia that they cannot exert control over this region, or anyother, most especially with such obvious ploys like the one over Manas, in which absolutely no Russian interest is served except that America is hurt. In fact, Russia is hurt by it also. When a militaristic state can only afford an (openly acknowledged) military budget of $50 billion, $2.15 billion as a diplomatic bribe hurts a lot. If they end up paying it, but their purpose is nevertheless totally defeated, they lose money and face. That ought to be our goal.

This is far and away the best analytic article (and short, too) that I have found on Manas, and asserts the Americans can find cheaper supply routes elsewhere. But we should not only find cheaper supply routes. We should secure so many of them that we show Russia to be impotent in regards to our foreign policy.

Though the article gives the right solution, it glosses over the central problem: Manas is not about supply routes, but about politics with Russia. I think the best analogy is to think of Russia building a blockade in our path. If we can blow up the blockade, great. If we can go around it more cheaply, and come out stronger than ever, better.

Arthur Hughes

Quite by accident, I stumbled yesterday across a painter who immediately won my admiration. You will, of course, recognize his school:


Ah yes, the pre-Raphaelites, famous for their heady symbolism, their hyper-realism, their wives and the mistresses they raised from poverty, their Edenic reds and golds, large chins (not Edenic), and a faerie medievalism. Yet this man, Arthur Hughes, does not appear in the typical list of pre-Raphaelites. He was one of the outside converts to the cause of Rosseti, Holman Hunt, Millais and the brotherhood, eventually becoming friends with many of them, helping them paint the Oxford Union Debating Hall in 1857. Though he acquired patrons and friends in the 50s, he made his career later, being a popular illustrator for Tennyson, George MacDonald, Christina Rossetti, and Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days (a marvellous yarn).

You should look for his works online, they are plentiful. I only bring him to your attention for four reasons which cause him to stand out from his contemporaries. First, he paints just enough outline and contrast to cause the people and objects in his paintings stand out in all their individuated glory (as Holman Hunt in particular likes to do), while yet blending into the whole as if they were naturally situate, not contrived. I'm no art critic, but I think it may be because he uses a limited palate, so that all the objects in the painting are similar enough in tone and colour that they come to resemble one another. Second, I love his electric greens and purples. Third better than any the pre-Raphaelites I know, he recreates that quaint, cultivated, but slightly wild light which is the glory of the English summer (though only John Constable has made a truly compendious study of it). Fourth, he has a great deal of fun with medieval-style tryptiches and panels. In a word, he's more homely than the rest of them.

Revision of Judgment on Stimulus Bill

I asked my Constitutional History professor, Dr. Moreno, about the likelihood of the cabinet government I discussed three posts ago, as indicated by the progress of the late stimulus bill.

Really, the British custom of calling a Bill what the state is considering, and calling an Act what the state had made law, is far preferable to this American indistinction.

He told me of facts of which I had no knowledge, and which turns my thesis on its head. President Obama had very little to do with the construction of the bill. Essentially he delegated the business to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who promptly began the business of restoring the balance of corrupt investment, which has for so long weighed in the Republican's favor, back to the districts of Democratic congressmen. Many commentators are saying that Mr. Obama's actions in fact demonstrate weakness rather than strength. He's letting supervisory power slip from the executive back to Congress. It is also said that it's a sign of his inexperience.

On Sacramental Things

from On Something (London: Methuen & Co., 1910)

This one's for Davey.

"It is good for a man's soul to sit down in the silence by himself and to think of those things which happen by some accident to be in communion with the whole world. If he has not the faculty of remembering these things in their order and of calling them up one after another in his mind, then let him write them down as they come to him upon a piece of paper. They will comfort him; they will prove a sort of solace against the expectation of the end. To consider such things is a sacramental occupation. And yet the more I think of them the less I can quite understand in what elements their power consists.
A woman smiling at a little child, not knowing that others see her, and holding out her hands towards it, and in one of her hands flowers; an old man, lean and active, with an eager face, walking at dusk upon a warm and windy evening westward towards a clear sunset below dark and flying clouds; a group of soldiers, seen suddenly in manoeuvres, each man intent upon his business, all working at the wonderful trade, taking their places with exactitude and order and yet with elasticity; a deep strong tide running back to the sea, going noiselessly and flat and black and smooth, and heavy with purpose under and old wall; the sea smell of a Channel seaport town; a ship coming up at one out of the whole sea when one is in a little boat and is waiting for her, coming up at one with her great sails merry and every one doing its work, with the life of the wind in her, and a balance rhythm, and give in all that she does which marries her to the sea - whether it be a fore and aft rig and one sees only great lines of the white, or a square rig and one sees what is commonly and well called a leaning tower of canvas, or that primal rig, the triangular sail, that cuts through the airs of the world and clove a way for the first adventures, whatever its rig, a ship so approaching an awaiting boat from which we watch her is one of the things I mean.
I would that the taste of my time time permitted a lengthy list of such things: they are pleasant to remember! They do so nourish the mind! A glance of sudden comprehension mixed with mercy and humour from the face of a lover or a friend; the noise of wheels when the guns are going by; the clatter-clank-clank of the pieces and the shouted halt at the the head of the column; the noise of many horses, the metallic but united an harmonious clamour of all those ironed hoofs, rapidly occupying the highway; chief and most persistent memory, a great hill when the morning strikes it and one sees it up before one round the turning of a rock after the long passes and despairs of the night.
...
Hope is the the word which gathers the origins of those things together, and hope is the seed of what they mean, but that new light and its new quality is more than hope. Livelihood is come back with the sunrise, and the fixed certitude of the soul; number and measure and comprehension have returned, and a just appreciation of all reality is the gift of the new day. Glory (which if men would only know it, lies behind all true certitude) illumines and enlivens the seen world, and the living light makes of the true thing now revealed something more than truth absolute; they appear as truth acting and creative."

Praise Song for Hillsdale Academy

This morning I attended the opening ceremony for Hillsdale Academy lower school, where I am apprenticing this term. The order is as follows:

Pledge of Allegiance
Singing of "Simple Gifts"
Welcome by the Headmaster
Poetry recitation by a student
Announcement of sporting achievements (if any)
Other announcements. Today the headmaster (Dr. Calvert), along with his head-of-years, handed out certificates to all those students who had perfect attendance for their first 100 days at the Academy.
Headmaster's exhortation and dismissal.

I was forcefully struck by the power of this daily rite, and especially by the constant inspirational public acknowledgment of student success. In England there is next to NO celebration of success. In (equivalent of) 8th grade, I wrote a poem which my English teacher very much liked, and considered entering into an upcoming anthology of student poetry. However, it was decided that my poem wouldn't be entered, since no other students in MY year had suitable work. My sixth form (last two years of high-school) didn't even have a graduation ceremony. The students at the Academy, for this reason among others, are unusually excellent as I have seen personally.

I would merely criticize the constant grading and exams. I wish rather that we would copy the grammar-school custom of holding competitions and offering prizes and glory throughout the school year, in all sorts of subjects. This generally encourages hard work even in that most difficult demographic, the bored boys - study the youth of Winston Churchill.

Danger - But Small Cheese, Really

The formulation of the new stimulus package (which is certifying expenditure as far as 2019, when I suppose the assumption, goes, that we will still be in crisis, and still be in need of stimulus) demonstrates a peculiar danger to a custom of our government that, until now, has been, though corrupt and senile, still largely following the forms of the Constitution, if not its spirit. That is that money bills always originate in the House, and that the 'pork' associated with them is added by particular representatives.

Now of this new bill, near $900 billion fat, President Obama claims that none of it is pork. What does that mean? It means that no representatives are personally inserting money clauses into the document. It also means that Mr. Obama's cabinet, and their retainers, are in control of it. Given the vast number of particular benefits the bill actually dispenses, what does this imply? It implies that a relationship is growing between the presidential cabinet and lobbyists that is bypassing Congressional control.

Now I've no doubt that plenty of Congressmen are using lobbyists to get roads for their districts, but I've no doubt that private business are as well, and this time they aren't going through the Congressmen.

We conclude two important things from this little analysis:
1) Congress's hold on the budget is weakened dramatically by this precedent.
2) Executive authority is dramatically strengthened.

(The position of the lobbyists and everyone else appears to be unchanged)

Incidentally, independent money bills are being started in the Senate as well, although this is a direct violation of an express command of the Constitution that bills can only begin in the House. At this time there are actually TWO stimulus bills in Congress - one in each house. The idea is that they will compromise over a final result. Now whether or not anyone is plotting this, doesn't matter, the consequence remains: Congress is being divided against itself in regards to money. In the long run, this is the perfect opportunity for a non-partisan body, one which truly understands the people, one which stands above the corruption, etc. etc. to engineer the compromises, be the guiding light of the whole thing.

This is the exact path to cabinet government.

Don't Assume Anything

Well, it's not my habit to show these off. I'm justifying this as a curiosity of English bureaucracy, where everything has a place even when there's nothing there.

Death

From the DrudgeReport:

PELOSI SAYS BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMY
Sun Jan 25 2009 22:13:43 ET

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic "stimulus" package, claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, "Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom," seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury.

The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC's THIS WEEK.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

There are so many things hideous about this statement I couldn't discuss them all without consuming your entire lunch-break, but let me list just the some of the worst:

An utter lack of moral sense (call it conscience). All right, she wants the best interest of the state, but the best interest of the state is evil, and thus not at all best, if built upon the slaughter of innocents.

It's premeditated.

It's shameless. They've dropped all pretense for concern for the woman's welfare.

They're all godless Philistines, damn them.

I'm sure there's some great sentence somewhere in Western literature on this point: once a culture treats its children as liabilities, it is doomed to die. Children are the promise of someone to carry on our work of today into the future, and the hope of greatness surpassing what we accomplished. A woman commits suicide on part of her soul when she allows her child to be killed, and a culture commits suicide when it AIMS at killing its children.

Consequent on the last point: its the last stage of the decay of political imagination. It's like the author who can't figure out what to do with the protagonist, so kills him off. There ARE problems with a booming population, but there are GOOD ways to deal with it, and even to channel to unsurpassed heights the latent energy and power of that most marvelous creation, impossible to manufacture, the human being.

And further: when the Speaker of the House treats citizens as items in a pocket book, you know that 1) she's hopelessly out of touch, and 2) that she hasn't read Dickens. Do we really want such a person governing our country?

A Gentleman and a Gamester

Hilaire Belloc had several selves, even several poetic selves. Some have expressed irritation at the clear pleasure with which he kills off the bad children of his cautionary tale, though for my own part I think their fates largely to be just; consider that of Henry King:

The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly Knots inside.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease.

"Henry will very soon be dead.''
His Parents stood about his Bed
Lamenting his Untimely Death,
When Henry, with his Latest Breath,

Cried, "Oh, my Friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires...''
With that, the Wretched Child expires.

He also had a violent exuberant democratic self:

On Two Ministers of State

Lump says that Caliban's of gutter breed,
And Caliban says Lump's a fool indeed,
And Caliban and Lump and I are all agreed.

The Pacifist

Pale Ebenzer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

And a courteous chivalric self:

A Trinity

Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet.

Juliet

How did the party go in Portman Square?
I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.

And how did Lady Gaster's party go?
Juliet was next me and I do not know.

And many more which I will introduce in the future.

Everything Seems to Aim at Some Good (Part 1 - Anime)

I've been watching an anime called Full Metal Alchemist. I highly recommend it - you can find the episodes on youtube.

The combat resolves itself in a way that is mostly alien to our Western imagination. (FMA is somewhat westernized, but I'm going to treat the eastern elements.) Our villains are rarely attracted to the good side. In this anime (and in other Japanese anime films that I've seen) the villains may join the good side at any time, but the switch is not caused by a crisis of conscience. Rather, they realize that their best interest lies in allying themselves with the hero.

From the start, the villains have their own ends and ambitions, only vaguely related to either their master's plans or those of the hero. Thus they make far more interesting -human- villains, who can sustain hours of dialogue and development. They generally have some secret which is the cause of their ambition, and if the hero can discover it, he can use it to persuade them to join him, not because they'll believe in the right, but because with him, they can get what they want. The only villains completely invulnerable to his persuasion are (logically) the ones who are dedicated to the ruination of the project he has at hand.

The villains may even tag along and help the hero accomplish his mission, as long they will have a chance to kill him afterwards. It seems that even the 'boss' villain can be persuaded to change, and the storyline can randomly end with the hero and the ultimate evil just agreeing to stop fighting.

It has some similarity to the Platonic idea that knowledge is equivalent to virtue - when you know enough, you choose rightly. But a person can be unprepared for too much knowledge, because knowledge forces you to choose, and a person is not always prepared to make a difficult choice. Thus masters often hide things from their pupils. The sublime greatness of the pupil usually appears when he makes the right choice in the face of unforeseen knowledge.

An ethical comparison of the characters looks something like this:

Chaos

c) Desiring some good, but have forgotten the Way
b) Desiring some good
a) Desiring some good, and with an inkling of the Way

The Way

Characters develop in either direction, perhaps change direction, through the course of the story. The conflict is between combinations of all three types. Sometimes two characters dedicated to the Way end up fighting, both for the right reasons. This way, there is a possibility of a beautiful fight, and beautiful death; and from the possibility of the beautiful death you get the warrior, whose life is dedicated to war, for the sake of the beauty of war. This is the most alien notion of these anime - the locality of the good. Good can come into conflict with other good. (Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, has the Christian solution - ''There may be shrines and shrines on any land, and sanctities of many kinds. For you will notice, Grizzlebeard, or rather you should have noticed already, having lived so long, that good things do not jostle.") Though the Japanese do have some notion of universal peace - I think this may be the promise of the Emperor of Japan.

The combat makes sense given Aristotle's ancient claim, in the Nicomachean Ethics, that all things aim at some good. All these characters do aim at some good - and it's not only some perceived good, but some real good.

Nevertheless, the greatest of the characters choose the best of the real goods, and on a rare occasion, they choose to live in the Way, which is to live according to no individual good, to have silence and absence of volition in the centre of being, and therefore to be able to honor every individual good as it deserves, and never to be swayed by the selfish interest. I've an idea that for the Buddhist, individuality is imperfect. And that's as much Eastern philosophy as I shall attempt.

Shrike - Miyamoto Musashi (17th century Japanese swordsman, painter, and philosopher)
"The Way of the warrior does not include other Ways...but if you know the Way broadly you will see it in everything"