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.

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.

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