See other formatsGREAT
TREASURY OF
WESTERN
THOUGHT
A Compendium of
His Institutions by the
Great Thinkers in Western History
EDITED BY
MORTIMER Jj. ADLER
& CHARLES VAN DOREN
Se)
GREAT
TREASURY OF
WESTERN
THOUGHT
A Compendium of
Important Statements on Man and
His Institutions by the
Great Thinkers in Western History
EDITED BY
Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
CEs
R.R. Bowker Company
NEW YORK & LONDON, 1977
For
Elizabeth, John, Douglas, and Philip
Preface
In the field of standard reference materials—dictionaries,
encyclopedias, books of quotations, and the like—a mark of
rare distinction belongs to those that not only perform their
reference function efficiently but also serve another
important purpose as well. By this criterion the great Oxford
English Dictionary and the new Fifteenth Edition of
Encyclopaedia Britannica stand out among all other works in
the categories to which they belong. Because it is
constructed on historical principles, the Oxford English
Dictionary not only enables its user to look up the meaning,
spelling, etymology, or pronunciation of a word, but also to
descry the history of the word, amply documented by
statements and examples that exhibit the growth and
alteration of its significance. Because it is accompanied by a
systematic outline of human knowledge that serves as a
topical guide to its contents, the new Encyclopaedia
Britannica — "Britannica 3"—not only enables its user to
look up single items of information or obtain knowledge
about a single subject, but also to pursue in a systematic
fashion the sustained study of almost any field of subject
matter.
The editors believe that Great Treasury of Western
Thought will be recognized, in the category of books of
quotations, as possessing the mark of rare distinction that
makes the Oxford English Dictionary stand out among
dictionaries and the new Encyclopedia Britannica among
encyclopedias. Its alphabetical Subject and Proper Name
Index, containing upwards of 50,000 entries, enables it to
serve as an efficient reference book, in which particular
passages on particular subjects can be looked up. In
addition, its carefully constructed Author Index allows the
reader to discover whether favorite works or parts of works
by particular authors have been mined for quotation, and
where such quotations appear. At the same time, its
organization, which consists of twenty chapters, each
concerned with a set of related great ideas, totaling 127
sections, each prefaced by explanatory text, makes Great
Treasury of Western Thought a book to be read for
enjoyment and instruction as well as a reference book.
Great Treasury of Western Thought can be read with both
enjoyment and profit primarily for two reasons. One has to
do with its intellectual progenitor, as it were. The other has
to do with the criteria employed by the editors in their
choice of passages to be quoted.
When, just a quarter of a century ago, Great Books of the
Western World was published, that collection of the most
worthwhile books to be read both for pleasure and
enlightenment was accompanied by an innovation that
enabled the set to be used also as a reference work. The
Syntopicon, or topical guide to passages in the great books
wherein are discussed the fundamental ideas in the tradition
of Western thought, allowed the user to look up the whole
discussion of an idea or of one or more topics under it, as
well as to be entertained or instructed by reading the great
works contained in the set. The Syntopicon was hailed asa
reference book in the sphere of ideas comparable to a
dictionary in the sphere of words and an encyclopedia in the
sphere of facts.
The publication of Great Treasury of Western Thought is a
fitting and proper celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the publication in 1952 of Great Books of the Western
World and of its Syntopicon. Without the years of intellectual
labor and the 400,000 man-hours of reading that produced
the Syntopicon, the present work would probably not have
been possible. In fact, without the Syntopicon in existence,
both as a comprehensive chart of the great ideas in Western
thought and as a systematic guide to their discussion in the
great books, the present work might never have been
conceived; and, even if it had been conceived, it could not
have been produced with the thoroughness that the
conception deserves.
This leads us to the second reason for this book’s special
character. Other books of quotations—among them are some
notable works of recognized excellence— consist mainly of
short passages, often no more than a line or two. These
passages are often well-known or familiar; they have been
quoted again and again; they are memorable and should be
remembered, but the individual who fails to remember them
must have recourse to such books of quotations in order to
recollect and quote them. The purpose behind the desire
accurately to recall such memorable quotations is usually to
enliven the style of a speech to be delivered or an essay to
be written.
However, it is a striking and notable fact about Great
Treasury of Western Thought that many if not most of the
passages quoted in it are not either generally familiar or
readily memorable. For one thing, the quoted passages are
typically longer than those that appear in other books of
quotations, running to more than 100 words on the average.
For another thing, as many as three-quarters of the passages
selected for quotation do not appear in other current books
of quotations and may indeed never have appeared in such
books, because the principle of selection that guided the
editors was that each passage quoted should be a seminal
statement about one of the great ideas in the tradition of
Western thought. If the passage was either memorable or
familiar, so much the better; the editors insisted that each
passage had to be interesting and important in its own right;
but they also demanded that it should be significant in
relation to other passages on the same subject.
In a sense, then, the passages here assembled and
quoted from the great books are precisely those to which
reference is made in the Syntopicon; and Great Treasury of
Western Thought is therefore a concrete realization of the
Syntopicon and may satisfy those readers—not a few—who
have regretted that the Syntopicon was "only" an index and
did not contain within its pages the passages to which it
referred. In another sense the passages from the great books
that are gathered here are the very heart and soul of the
Western tradition, that small part of it that will almost
certainly survive any disaster, any holocaust, that can be
imagined in the future. All of the great books, in their
entirety, may not survive; many great works have already
been lost in the vicissitudes of human history; but the
essential things that the great books say, the irrecoverable
insights that they offer us, are more likely to endure because
they are collected here, "that he who runs may read."
Of course, not all of the passages referred to by the
Syntopicon are quoted here; many such passages are
inappropriate for a general audience (for example, technical
discourses in science or philosophy), and others are too
long. Nor, indeed, are the writers from whose works
quotations were selected limited to those appearing in Great
Books of the Western World, Almost twice as many other
writers are included, and they are drawn not only from the
literature of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, but also
from the literature of modern times. Consulting the Author
Index (pp. 1431-1449) and examining the Contents on pp.
vii-xi should enable anyone quickly to appraise the scope
and the characteristics of the present work, which will
distinguish it among all other books of quotations.
The possessor of Great Treasury of Western Thought may
still wish to resort to those other books of quotations for the
special purposes they serve—as aids to the memory or as
stylistic aids. It is not the memory of the user that this work
seeks to stimulate, but rather the user’s intellect and
imagination—the user’s understanding and intuition of the
greatest thought on the most important subjects. It is not
the reader’s style, either in speech or writing, but his mind,
that Great Treasury of Western Thought aims to enliven, and
enlighten as well in the process.
The editors of Great Treasury of Western Thought have
been reading and teaching the great books, and other works
quoted in this anthology, for many years—one of them for
more than fifty years, the other for more than thirty.
Nevertheless, they confess their own delight and fascination
at being able—for the first time—to read in appropriate
sequence (for the most part chronological) the passages that
are here collected under each of the 127 subject headings
that constitute the divisions of this book. They have found
such reading to be both highly instructive and immensely
enjoyable. They can think of nothing simpler and more
truthful to say by way of recommending this book to those
for whom they made it—as a work to read with pleasure, to
dwell on, to learn from, as well as to refer to when that need
arises. The more time that is spent with it, the more valuable
it will become, for it is, literally, a compact treasury of the
best thinking and deepest wisdom of the West. It reflects
and epitomizes the intellectual tradition on which every
cultivated person must build.
The editors wish to express their indebtedness to the
many persons who worked on this book over a period of
almost a quarter of a century. They especially wish to thank
three friends without whose help the book could not have
come to be: Marlys Allen, George Ducas, and Wayne Moquin.
Mortimer J. Adler
Charles Van Doren
Acknowledgments
The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the
permissions granted by publishers to reprint copyrighted
material in this volume. The copyright notices are listed
below, arranged alphabetically by authors’ names.
Aeschylus
"Agamemnon" and "Eumenides" (tr. by Richmond Latiimore)
in Orestia, copyright © 1953 by University of Chicago;
"Libation Bearers" (tr. by Richmond Lattimore), copyright ©
1953 by University of Chicago; "Prometheus Bound" (tr. by
David Grene), copyright © 1942 by University of Chicago;
"Seven Against Thebes" (tr. by David Grene), copyright ©
1956 by University of Chicago; "Suppliant Maidens" (tr. by
Seth G. Benardett), copyright © 1956 by University of
Chicago, all in The Complete Greek Tragedies, Vol. 1, David
Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds. Copyright © 1959 by
University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of David
Grene, Richmond Lattimore, and the University of Chicago
Press.
Ambrose, St.
Letter to Simplicianus," in Fathers of the Church, tr. by Sister
Mary Melchoir Beyenda. Copyright © 1954 by The Fathers of
the Church. Reprinted by permission of The Catholic
University of America.
Anselm, St.
Basic Writings, tr. by S. N. Deane. Copyright © 1903, 1962
by Open Court Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission of
Open Court Publishing Co.
Aquinas, St. Thomas
On Kingship, tr. by Gerald B. Phelan. Copyright © 1949 by
Mediaeval Studies of Toronto, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 4, tr. by Charles J. O’Neil.
Copyright © 1957 by Doubleday & Company. Reprinted by
permission of Doubleday &: Company, Inc.
"Summa Theologica," in Basic Writings of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Vol. 1, ed. by Anton C. Pegis. Copyright © 1945 by
Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Benziger,
Bruce and Glencoe, Inc.
Truth, Vol. 1, tr. by Robert W. Mulligan, Vol. 2, tr. by James V.
McGlynn, Vol. 3, tr. by Robert W. Schmidt. Copyright © by
Henry Regnery Co., published in 1952, 1953, 1954.
Reprinted by permission of Henry Regnery Co.
Aristotle
"Categories," "Ethics," "Generation of Animals," "History of
Animals," "Memory and Reminiscence," "Metaphysics," "On
Generation and Corruption," "On Interpretation," "On the
Gait of Animals," "On the Heavens," "On the Motion of
Animals," "On the Sophistical Refutations," "On the Soul,"
"On Youth and Old Age," "On Life and Death," "On
Breathing," "Parts of Animals," "Physics," "Poetics," "Politics,"
“Posterior Analytics," "Proohesying by Dreams," "Rhetoric,"
"Topics," all in The Oxford Translation of Aristotle, tr. and ed.
by W. D. Ross. First Edition 1928. Reprinted by permission of
the Oxford University Press, England.
Augustine, St.
Confessions, tr. by Francis J. Sheed. Copyright © 1943 by
Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York. Reprinted by permission of
Sheed and Ward, Inc.
Beauvoir, Simone de
The Second Sex, tr, and ed. by H, M. ParshJey. Copyright ©
1952 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Benedict, Ruth
Patterns of Culture. Copyright © 1934 by Ruth Benedict.
Copyright © renewed 1962 by Ruth Valentine. Reprinted by
permission of the publisher Houghton Mifflin Company and
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Bergson, Henri
Creative Evolution, tr. by Arthur Mitchell. Copyright © 1911
by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 1944 by Random
House (Modern Library edition). Reprinted by permission of
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., and Macmillan London and
Basingstoke.
Creative Mind, tr. by Mabelle L. Anderson. Copyright © 1946
by the Philosophical Library. Reprinted by permission of the
Philosophical Library, Inc.
Laughter, tr. by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Roth-well.
Copyright © by Macmillan and Co. Ltd., published in 1911.
Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Time and Free Will, tr. by F. L. Pogson. Published by George
Allen & Unwin, London; the Macmillan Company, New York.
Copyright © 1910. Reprinted by permission of Humanities
Press, Inc., and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Two Sources of Morality and Religion, tr. by R. Ashley Audra
and Cloudesley Brereton with the assistance of W. Horsfall
Carter. Copyright © 1935 by Henry Holt and Company.
Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc,,
and Macmillan London and Basingstoke.
Bernard, Claude
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, tr. by
Henry C. Greene. Copyright © 1927 by Macmillan Co.
Reprinted by permission of Thomas Y. Crowell Co., Inc.
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus
The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. by W. V. Cooper. Published
by Modern Library, New York. Copyright © 1943 by Random
House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Boswell, James
London Journal. Copyright © 1950 by Yale University.
Reprinted by permission of McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Canterbury Tales, tr. by J. U. Nicolson. Copyright © 1934 by
Covici, Friede, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1962 by Crown
Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Crown Publishers,
Inc.
Troilus and Cressida, English anew by George Philip Knapp.
Copyright © 1932 and renewed 1960 by Elizabeth Knapp.
Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle
The Break of Day, tr. by Enid McLeod. Copyright © 1961 by
Martin Seeker & Warburg, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
Croce, Benedetto
History as the Story of Liberty, tr. by Sylvia Sprigge.
Published in 1941 by W. W. Norton & Co. Reprinted by
permission of W. W, Norton & Co., Inc., and George Allen &
Unwin Ltd.
Descartes, Rene
The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. by Elizabeth S.
Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. First Edition 1911, reprinted with
corrections 1931. Reprinted by permission of the Cambridge
University Press.
Dewey, John
Democracy and Education. Copyright © 1916 by Macmillan
Company, renewed 1944 by John Dewey. Reprinted by
permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
Essays in Experimental Logic. Copyright © 1953 by Dover
Publications. Reprinted by permission of Dover Publications.
Experience and Education. Copyright © 1938 by Kappa
Delta Pi. Published by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1938,
1959. Reprinted by permission of Kappa Delta Pi. An Honor
Society in Education.
Experience and Nature. Copyright © 1925 by Open Court
Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Freedom and Culture. Copyright © 1939 by John Dewey.
Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
How We Think. Copyright © 1910 by D. C. Heath and
Company. Reprinted by permission of The Center for Dewey
Studies.
Human Nature and Conduct. Copyright © 1922 by Henry
Holt and Company. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Inc.
"Affective Thought," "Development of American
Pragmatism," "Practical Character of Reality," "Science and
Society," in Philosophy and Civilization. Copyright © 1931
by John Dewey; renewed. Reprinted by permission of G. P.
Putnam's Sons.
Reconstruction in Philosophy. Copyright © 1920 by Henry
Holt and Company. Enlarged edition copyright © 1948 by
Beacon Press. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
Dewey, John, and Tufts, James H.
Ethics. Copyright © 1908, 1932 by Henry Holt and
Company, Inc. Copyright © 1936 by John Dewey and James
H. Tufts. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc.
Dinesen, Isak [Karen Christence Dinesen,
Baroness Blixen-Finecke]
"The Roads Around Pisa," in Seven Gothic Tales. Copyright ©
1934 and renewed 1962 by Isak Dinesen. Published by
Putnam and Co. Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Random
House, Inc., and The Bodley Head.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
The Brothers Karamozov, tr. by Constance Garnett.
Published in the United States by Macmillan Publishing Co.,
Inc. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co.,
Inc., and William Heinemann Ltd.
Eckermann, Johann
Conversations with Goethe. An Everyman’s Library Edition.
Published in the United States by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. All
rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton &
Co., Inc., and J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
Einstein, Albert
“Autobiographical Notes" and "Relativity," in A/bert Einstein:
Philosopher-Scientist, Paul A. Schilpp, ed., Library of Living
Philosophers, Vol. 7. Copyright © 1949 by the Library of
Living Philosophers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Open
Court Publishing Co.
Relativity, tr. by Robert W. Lawson. Copyright © 1931 by
Peter Smith. Reprinted by permission of Peter Smith.
Eliot, Thomas Steams
"Hippopotamus," in Collected Poems 1909-1962. Copyright
© 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., copyright ©
1963,1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd.
"Dante," "The Metaphysical Poets," "Tradition and the
Individual Talent," in Selected Essays 1917-1932. Copyright
© 1932 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber &
Faber Ltd.
Euripides
"Alcestis," tr. by Rex Warner, copyright © 1955 by University
of Chicago; "Andromache," tr. by John Frederick Nims,
copyright © 1956 by University of Chicago; "Bacchae," tr. by
William Arrowsmith, copyright © 1958 by University of
Chicago; "Cyclops," tr. by William Arrowsmith, co]>yright ©
1956 by University of Chicago; "Electra," tr. by Emily
Townsend Vermeule, copyright 1956 by University of
Chicago; "Hecuba," tr. by William Arrowsmith, copyright ©
1956 by University of Chicago; "Helen," tr. by Richmond
Lattimore, copyright © 1956 by University of Chicago;
"Heracleidae," tr. by Ralph Gladstone, copyright © 1956 by
University of Chicago; "Heracles," tr. by Ralph Gladstone,
copyright © 1956 by University of Chicago; "Hippolytus," tr.
by David Grene, copyright © 1942 by University of Chicago;
"Iphigenia in Aulis," tr. by Charles R. Walker, copyright ©
1958 by University of Chicago; "lon," tr. by Ronald F. Willets,
copyright © 1958 by University of Chicago; "Orestes," tr. by
William Arrowsmith, copyright © 1958 by University of
Chicago; "Phoenician Women," tr, by Elizabeth Wyckoff,
copyright © 1958 by University of Chicago; "Rhesus," tr. by
Richmond Lattimore, copyright © 1958 by University of
Chicago; "Suppliant Women," tr. by Frank Jones, copyright ©
1958 by University of Chicago; "Trojan Women," tr. by
Richmond Lattimore, copyright © 1956 by University of
Chicago, all in The Complete Greek Tragedies, Vols. 1-5,
David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds. Copyright ©
1959 by University of Chicago, Reprinted by permission of
David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, and the University of
Chicago Press.
Freud, Sigmund
"Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," in The Basic
Writings of Sigmund Freud, tr. and ed. by A. A. Brill.
Copyright © 1938 by Random House, Inc., copyright ©
renewed 1965 by Gioia B. Bemheim and Edmund R. Brill.
Reprinted by permission of Gioia B. Bernheim and Edmund
R. Brill.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, tr. by James Strachey.
Copyright © 1961 by James Strachey. Reprinted by
permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., and The
Hogarth Press Ltd.
Civilization and Its Discontents, tr. and ed. by James
Strachey. Copyright © 1961 by James Strachey. Reprinted by
permission of W. W. Norton &: Company, Inc., and The
Hogarth Press Ltd.
"The Dynamics of Transference," paper XXVII, Vol. 2; "The
Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy," paper XXV,
Vol. 2; "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes," paper VI, Vol. 4;
"On Narcissism: An Introduction," paper Ill, Vol. 4; "The
Sexual Enlightenment of Children,” paper Ill, Vol. 2;
“Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," paper XVII, Vol.
4, all in Collected Papers Vols. 2 and 4, ed. by Ernest Jones,
M.D., authorized translation under the supervision of Joan
Riviere. Published by Basic Books, Inc., by arrangement with
The Hogarth Press Ltd. and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis,
London, copyright. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books,
Inc.
The Ego and the Id, tr. by Joan Riviere. First published 1927
by The Hogarth Press Ltd. and the Institute of Psycho-
Analysis. Reprinted by permission of The Hogarth Press Ltd.
A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, tr. by Joan
Riviere. Copyright © 1920 by Edward L. Bernays, copyright
© renewed 1948 by Joan Hoch, copyright © 1963 by Joan
Riviere. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing
Corp. and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, tr. by James
Strachey. Copyright © 1922 by the International Psycho-
Analytical Press, Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
The Interpretation of Dreams, tr. from the German and ed.
by James Strachey. Published in the United States by Basic
Books, Inc., by arrangement with George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
and The Hogarth Press Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers.
Moses and Monotheism, tr. by Katherine Jones. Copyright ©
1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and renewed 1967 by Ernest L.
Freud. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and
The Hogarth Press Ltd.
New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, tr, and ed. by
James Strachey. Copyright © 1933 by Sigmund Freud,
renewed 1961 by W. J. H. Sprott, 1964 by James Strachey.
Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, tr. by Harry
W. Chase. Published 1910 in American Journal of Psychology.
Reprinted by permission of the University of Illinois Press.
Galileo Galilei
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, tr. by Henry Crew
and Alfonso De Salvio. First published 1914 by the
Macmillan Company, reissued 1939 by the Editorial Board of
Northwestern University Studies. Reprinted by permission of
the Northtvestern University Press.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Conversations with Eckermann. See Eckermann, Johann.
Faust, tr. by George Madison Priest, Copyright © 1941, 1969
by Alfred A, Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the
publisher,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
The Philosophy of Right, tr. by T. M. Knox. Published 1942 by
Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission of the
publisher.
Homer
The Iliad, tr. by Richmond Lattimore. Copyright © 1951 by
University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of the
University of Chicago Press and Richard Lattimore.
The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fitzgerald. Copyright © 1961 by
Robert Fitzgerald. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday &
Company, Inc., and William Heinemann Ltd.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. by W. H. Gardner.
Copyright © 1948 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by
permission of the Oxford University Press.
James, William
"Letter to B. P. Blood," in Letters of William James, 2 vols.
Published by Atlantic Monthly Press, copyright © 1920 by
Henry James. Reprinted by permission of Alexander R. James.
Moral Equivalent of War, An Essay. First published by the
Association for International Conciliation (Leaflet no. 27).
Copyright © 1911 by Henry James. Reprinted by permission
of Alexander R. James.
Pragmatism. Published by Longmans, Green & Co., copyright
© 1907. Reprinted by permission of Alexander R. James.
Some Problems of Philosophy. Published by Longmans,
Green & Co., copyright © 1911 by Henry James. Reprinted
by permission of Alexander R. James.
Joyce, James
"The Dead," in Dubliners, Copyright © 1967 by the Estate of
James Joyce. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of
the Viking Press, Inc., and Jonathan Cape Ltd.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Copyright © 1964 by
the Estate of James Joyce. All rights reserved. Reprinted by
permission of the Viking Press, Inc., and Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Ulysses, Copyright © 1914, 1918 by Margaret Caroline
Anderson and renewed 1942, 1946 by Nora Joseph Hoyce.
Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc., and The
Bodley Head Ltd.
Juvenal
The Satires, tr. by Rolfe Humphries. Copyright © 1958 by
Indiana University Press. Reprinted by permission of the
Indiana University Press.
Kierkegaard, Soren
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. by David Swenson and
Walter Lowrie. Copyright © 1941 by Princeton University
Press; Princeton Paperback, 1968, for the American
Scandinavian Foundation. Selection p. 275. Reprinted by
permission of the Princeton University Press.
Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, tr. with an
Introduction and Notes by Walter Lowrie. Copyright © 1941,
1954 by Princeton University Press; Princeton Paperback,
1968. Selections pp. 130, 131 and 150, 151. Reprinted by
permission of the Princeton University Press.
Philosophical Fragments, tr. by David Swenson. New
Introduction and Commentary by Niels Thulstrup, Translation
revised and commentary tr. by Howard V. Kong. Copyright ©
1936, 1962 by Princeton University Press; Princeton
Paperback, 1967. Selections pp. 47-96. Reprinted by
permission of the Princeton University Press.
A Selection from the Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, tr. by
Alexander Dru. Published 1938 by Oxford University Press.
Reprinted by permission of the Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
Langer, Susanne K,
Mind: An Essay on Human Feelings Vol. 1. Copyright © 1967
by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted by
permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
“Letters to Samuel Clarke," in The Leibniz-Clarke
Correspondence, ed. by H. G. Alexander. Copyright © 1956
by Philosophical Library, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted
by permission of Philosophical Library, Inc.
Theodicy, tr. by E. M. Huggard. Published 1952 by Yale
University Press. Reprinted by permission of Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd.
Lenin, Vladimir Illich Ulyanov
State and Revolution. Copyright © 1932 and 1943 by
International Publishers. Reprinted by permission of
International Publishers Co., Inc.
Lucian
"The Fisher" and "Sale of Creeds," in Works of Lucian of
Samosata, Vol. 1, tr. by H. W. Fowler and F, G. Fowler.
Published 1905 by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Reprinted
by permission of the Oxford University Press.
Luther, Martin
“Commentary on Psalm 2," tr. by L. W. Spitz, Jr, and
“Commentary on Psalm 110," tr. by H. Richard Klann, in
Luther's Works, Vols. 12 and 13, ed. by Jaroslav Pelikan.
Copyright © 1955 and © 1956 by Concordia Publishing
House. Reprinted by permission of Concordia Publishing
House.
"Table Talk," ed. and tr. by Theodore C, Tappert, in Luther’s
Works, Vol. 54. Copyright © 1967 by Fortress Press,
Reprinted by permission of the Fortress Press.
"An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality as to
the Amelioration of the State of Christendom," in
Reformation Writing of Martin Luther, Vol. 1, tr. by Bertram
Lee Woolf, Published 1952, all rights reserved. Reprinted by
permission of Buttenworth Press.
"The Babylonian Captivity of the Church," tr. by A. T. W.
Steinhaueser, in Three Treatises, Copyright © 1943 by The
Muhlenberg Press. Reprinted by permission of the Fortress
Press.
Maimonides, Moses
The Preservation of Youth, tr. by Hirsch L. Gordon. Copyright
© 1958 by the Philosophical Library, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of the Philosophical Library, Inc.
Mann, Thomas
The Confessions of Felix Krull and Confidence Man, tr. by
Denver Lindley. Copyright © 1955 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Martin
Seeker and Warburg Ltd.
Death in Venice, tr. by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Copyright © 1930
and renewed 1958 by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Martin Seeker and
Warburg Ltd.
The Magic Mountain, tr. by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Copyright ©
1927, 1955 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission
of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd.
Maritain, Jacques
Art and Scholasticism and The Frontiers of Poetry, tr. by
Joseph W. Evans. Copyright © 1962 by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons
and Garnstone Press Ltd.
Degrees of Knowledge, tr. by Gerald B. Phelan. Copyright ©
1959 by Jacques Maritain. Published by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons
and Garnstone Press, Ltd.
Freedom in the Modem Worlds tr. by Richard O’Sullivan.
Copyright © 1936 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by
permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons and Garnstone Press
Ltd.
“Conquest of Freedom," in Freedom, Its Meaning, ed. by Ruth
Nanda Anshen. Copyright © 1940 by Harcourt Brace and
Company. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc.
Introduction to Philosophy, tr. by E. Watkin. Published 1937
by Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York. Reprinted by permission
of Sheed and Ward, Ltd. and Sheed and Ward, Inc.
The Rights of Man and Natural Law, tr. by Doris Anson.
Copyright © 1943 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by
permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons and Garnstone Press
Ltd.
Scholasticism and Politics, ed. by Mortimer J. Adler.
Published 1940 by Geoffrey Bles, the Centenary Press,
London. Reprinted by permission of Geoffrey Bles, Ltd.
Theonas, tr. by Francis J. Sheed. Published 1933 by Sheed
and Ward, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Sheed and Ward,
Ltd. and Sheed and Ward, Inc.
Marx, Karl
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,
tr. by Annette Jolin and Joseph O'Malley. Published 1970 by
Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of the
Cambridge University Press.
Critique of the Gotha Programme. Copyright © 1938 by
International Publishers. Reprinted by permission of
International Publishers Co., Inc.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels
The German Ideology, tr. by R. Pascal. Copyright © 1947 by
International Publishers. Reprinted by permission of
International Publishers Co., Inc.
Mead, Margaret
Coming of Age in Samoa. Copyright © 1928, 1955, 1961 by
Margaret Mead. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow
& Company, Inc.
Mill, John Stuart
Principles of Political Economy, Vols. 2 and 3 of Collected
Works of John Stuart Mill. Copyright © 1965 by University of
Toronto Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of
Toronto Press.
Montaigne, Michel de
The Complete Essays of Montaigne, tr. and ed. by Donald M.
Frame. Copyright © 1943 by Donald M. Frame, renewed
1971. Copyright © 1948, 1957, 1958 by Board of Trustees of
the Leland Stanford Junior University. Reprinted by
permission of the Stanford University Press.
Newman, John Henry
Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Copyright © 1947 by Longmans,
Green and Company. Reprinted by permission of David
McKay Company, Inc., and Longman Group Ltd.
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
Copyright © 1960 by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Doubleday & Co.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
The Birth of Tragedy, tr. by Walter Kaufmann. Copyright ©
1927 and renewed 1955 by Modern Library, Inc. Reprinted
by permission of Random House, Inc.
“Beyond Good and Evil," in The Complete Works of Friedrich
Nietzsche, Oscar Levy, general ed. (1909-1911). Copyright
© 1964 by Russell &: Russell, 1927, 1954 by Random House
(Modern Library Edition). Reprinted by permission of Russell
& Russell and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, tr. by R. J,
Hollingdale (Penguin Classics 1968). Copyright © 1968 by
R. J. Hollingdale. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books
Ltd.
Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso]
The Art of Love, tr. by Rolfe Humphries. Copyright © 1957
by Indiana University Press. Reprinted by permission of the
Indiana University Press.
Metamorphoses, tr. by Mary M. Innes (Penguin Classics
1955). Copyright © 1955 by Mary M. Innes. Reprinted by
permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Pascal, Blaise
Pensées, tr. by W, F. Trotter. An Ever} 'man’s Library Edition.
Published in the United States by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
and reprinted with the permission of E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
and J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Planck, Max
The Universe in the Light of Modem Physics, tr. by W. H.
Johnston. Published 1937 by George Allen & Unwin.
Reprinted by permission of George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Polybius
The Histories, 2 vols., tr. by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. Copyright
© 1962 by Indiana University Press. Reprinted by
permission of the Indiana University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Confessions. An Everyman’s Library Edition. Published in the
United States by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Reprinted by
permission of E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., and J. M. Dent & Sons
Ltd.
Emile, An Everyman’s Library Edition. Published 1911 by E.
P. Dutton and J. M. Dent. All rights reserved. Reprinted by
permission of E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., and J. M. Dent & Sons
Ltd.
The Social Contract and Discourses, tr. by G. D. H. Cole. An
Everyman’s Library Edition. Published in the United States
by E. PR. Dutton & Co., Inc., and reprinted with the permission
of E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., and J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Russell Bertrand
Analysis of Mind. Copyright © 1921 by George Allen Sc
Unwin Ltd. Reprinted by permission of George Allen & Unwin
Ltd.
Conquest of Happiness. Copyright © 1930 by Horace
Liveright. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing
Corp. and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
"Aims of Education," in Education and the Good Life.
Copyright © 1926 by Horace Liveright, renewed 1954 by
Bertrand Russell. Reprinted by permission of Liveright
Publishing Corp. and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. Copyright © 1948
by Bertrand Russell and Simon & Schuster. Reprinted by
permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and George Allen &
Unwin Ltd.
"Science and Tradition," in The Impact of Science on Society.
Copyright © 1951, 1952 by Bertrand Russell, Reprinted by
permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and George Allen &
Unwin Ltd.
Marriage and Morals. Copyright © 1929 by Horace Liveright;
renewed 1957 by Bertrand Russell. Reprinted by permission
of Liveright Publishing Corp. and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
My Philosophical Development. Copyright © 1959 by
Bertrand Russell. Reprinted by permission of Simon &
Schuster, Inc., and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
"A Free Man’s Worship," "Mathematics and the
Metaphysicians," "Mysticism and Logic," "The Place of
Science in a Liberal Education," "A Study of Mathematics,"
all in Mysticism and Logic. Copyright © 1963 by George
Allen & Unwin Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row,
Publishers, Inc., Barnes & Noble Books, and George Allen &
Unwin Ltd.
"On the Notion of Cause," "The Problem of Infinity," "The
Theory of Continuity," "The World of Physics," and "The
World of Sense," all in Our Knowledge of the External World.
Published 1914 by Open Court, reissued by Allen & Unwin,
1922. Reprinted by permission of Open Court Publishing
Company.
"Education," in Principles of Social Reconstruction. Copyright
© 1916 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Reprinted by
permission of George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Religion and Science. Published 1935 by Oxford University
Press. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
Sceptical Essays. Copyright © 1935 by George Allen &
Unwin Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Barnes & Noble, Inc,,
and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Unpopular Essays. Copyright © 1950 by Bertrand Russell.
Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and
George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
What | Believe. Copyright © 1925 by E. P. Dutton & Co.;
renewed 1952 by Bertrand Russell. Reprinted by permission
of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., and Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd.
Santayana, George
Character and Opinion in the United States, Copyright ©
1923 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by permission of
Charles Scribner’s Sons and Constable & Company Ltd.
Dialogues in Limbo. Published 1926 by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Copyright © 1948 by Daniel Cory. Reprinted by
permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons and Constable &
Company Ltd.
The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, Copyright © 1946 by
Charles Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles
Scribner’s Sons and Constable & Company Ltd.
The Life of Reason, Vols. 1 to 5. Copyright © 1905 by
Charles Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles
Scribner’s Sons, Constable & Company Ltd., and Mrs. Margot
Cory.
"Music," in Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George
Santayana, ed. by Logan Pearsall Smith. Published 1920 by
Constable & Company, London. Reprinted by permission of
Constable & Company Ltd.
My Host the World. Copyright © 1963 by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons
and Constable & Company Ltd.
Persons and Places. Copyright © 1944 by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons
and Constable & Company Ltd.
"Realms of Being,” "The Realm of Essence," "The Realm of
Matter," "The Realm of Truth," "The Realm of Spirit," all in
Realms of Being. Copyright © 1937, 1938 by George
Santayana; copyright © 1940, 1942 by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons
and Constable & Company Ltd.
Scepticism and Animal Faith. Copyright © 1923 by Charles
Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles
Scribner’s Sons and Constable &: Company Ltd.
The Sense of Beauty. Copyright © 1896 by Charles
Scribner’s Sons, renewed 1936. Reprinted by permission of
Charles Scribner’s Sons and Mrs. Margot Cory.
"A Long Way Round to Nirvana," in Some Turns of Thought in
Modem Philosophy. Copyright © 1933 by Cambridge
University Press. Reprinted by permission of the Cambridge
University Press.
Three Philosophical Poets. Copyright © 1910 by Harvard
University. Copyright © 1938 by George Santayana.
Reprinted by permission of the Harvard University Press.
Winds of Doctrine. Copyright © 1913 by Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons
and Constable &: Company Ltd,
Sartre, Jean-Paul
Being and Nothingness, tr. by Hazel E. Barnes. Copyright ©
1956 by the Philosophical Library Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Citadel Press, Inc.
Existentialism. Copyright © 1947 by the Philosophical
Library. Reprinted by permission of the Philosophical Library,
Inc.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
Letters to Lucilius (Epistolae Morales ad Lucilium), tr. by
Robin Campbell. Published by Penguin Classics 1969,
copyright © 1969 by Robin Campbell. Reprinted by
permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Shaw, George Bernard
“Androcles and the Lion," "Back to Methuselah," "Caesar and
Cleopatra," "Candida," "Doctor’s Dilemma," "Getting
Married," "Heartbreak House," "John Bull’s Other Island,"
"Major Barbara," "Man and Superman," "The Man of Destiny,"
"Pygmalion," "St. Joan," all in Complete Plays with Prefaces,
Vols. 1-5. Published 1963 by Dodd, Mead and Co. Copyright
© 1962 by the Public Trustee as Executor of the Estate of G.
B. Shaw. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of The
Society of Authors on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate.
Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 2 vols. Copyright © 1906,
1907 by Brentano’s, New York. Reprinted by permission of
The Society of Authors on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate.
"Capital and Wages," "Freedom and the State," "Our Lost
Honesty," "Redistribution of Income," "Socialism and
Culture," all in Road to Equality: Ten Unpublished Letters and
Essays, ed. by Louis Crompton. Copyright © 1971 by the
Trustees of the British Museum, Governors and Guardians of
the National Gallery of Ireland and The Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art. Reprinted by permission of the publisher,
Beacon Press, and The Society of Authors on behalf of the
Bernard Shaw Estate.
Sophocles
"Ajax," tr, by John Moore, copyright © 1957 by University of
Chicago; "Antigone," tr. by Elizabeth Wyckoff, copyright ©
1954 by University of Chicago; "Oedipus at Colonus," tr. by
Robert Fitzgerald, copyright © 1941 by Harcourt, Brace and
Co.; "Oedipus the King," tr. by David Grene, copyright ©
1942 by University of Chicago; "Philoctetes," tr, by David
Grene, copyright © 1957 by University of Chicago; "Women
of Trachis," tr. by Michael Jameson, copyright © 1957 by
University of Chicago, all in The Complete Greek Tragedies,
Vols. 1-5, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds.
Copyright © 1959 by University of Chicago. Reprinted by
permission of David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, and the
University of Chicago Press.
Spengler, Oswald
Decline of the West, Vol. 1, tr. by Charles Francis Atkinson.
Copyright © 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and Martin Seeker &
Warburg Ltd.
Stendhal, Marie-Henri Beyle de
On Love, tr. by H, B. V., under the direction of C. K. Scott
MoncriefF. Copyright © 1927 by Boni & Live-right, Inc.,
renewed 1954 by Liveright Publishing Corp. Reprinted by
permission of Liveright Publishing Corp.
Tawney, Richard Henry
Equality. Published 1931 by Barnes &: Noble, copyright ©
under the Berne Convention. Reprinted by permission of
George Allen & Unwin Ltd,
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Democracy in America, tr, by Henry Reeve, rev, by Francis
Bower, and ed. by Phillips Bradley. Copyright © 1945 and
renewed 1973 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Journey to America, tr. by George Lawrence, ed. by J. P.
Mayer and A. P. Kerr. Copyright © 1959 by J. P. Mayer.
Reprinted by permission of J. P. Mayer.
Tolstoy, Leo
War and Peace, tr. by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Copyright
© 1919 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission
of the Oxford University Press.
Toynbee, Arnold Joseph
Civilization on Trial. Copyright © 1948 by Oxford University
Press, Inc., renewed 1975 by Arnold Joseph Toynbee.
Reprinted by permission of the Oxford University Press.
An Historian's Approach to Religion . Copyright © 1956 by
Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission of the
Oxford University Press.
A Study of History, Vol. 1, abridged by D. C. Somervell.
Copyright © 1946 by Oxford University Press (London),
renewed 1974 by Arnold J. Toynbee and Mrs. Dorothea Grace
Somervell. Reprinted by permission of the Oxford University
Press.
Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet de
"Candide," and "Micromegas," in Candide, Zadig and
Selected Stories, tr. by Donald M. Frame. Copyright © 1961
by Donald M. Frame. Reprinted by permission of The New
American Library, Inc.
Philosophical Dictionary, tr. with an Introduction and
Glossary by Peter Gay; Preface by Andre Maurois. Copyright
© 1962 by Basic Books Publishing Co., Inc. Reprinted by
permission of Basic Books, Inc., New York.
Whitehead, Alfred North
Adventures of Ideas. Copyright © 1933 by Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1961 by Evelyn Whitehead.
Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.,
and the Cambridge University Press.
Introduction to Mathematics. Published 1948 by Oxford
University Press. Reprinted by permission of the Oxford
University Press.
"The Aims of Education" and ‘‘The Place of Classics in
Education," in The Organization of Thought, Educational and
Scientific. Published 1917 by Williams & Norgate. Reprinted
by permission of Ernest Benn Limited.
Process and Reality. Copyright © 1929 by Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1957 by Evelyn Whitehead.
Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.,
and the Cambridge University Press.
Religion in the Making. Copyright © 1926 by Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1954 by Evelyn Whitehead.
Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.,
and the Cambridge University Press.
Science and the Modem World. Copyright © 1925 by
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1953 by Evelyn
Whitehead. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing
Co., Inc., and the Cambridge University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Tractatus-Logico-Philosopkicus. Published 1921 by Harcourt
Brace and Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner & Co. Ltd.
Reprinted by permission of the Humanities Press and
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Yeats, William Butler
"Among School Children," copyright © 1928 by Macmillan,
renewed 1956 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "Crazy Jane Talks
with the Bishop," copyright © 1933 by Macmillan, renewed
1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "Down by the Salley
Gardens," copyright © 1906 by Macmillan, renewed 1934 by
William Butler Yeats; "Easter 1916," copyright © 1924 by
Macmillan, renewed 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "For
Anne Gregory," copyright © 1933 by Macmillan, renewed
1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "He Wishes for the Cloths of
Heaven," copyright © 1906 by Macmillan, renewed 1934 by
William Butler Yeats; "A Last Confession," copyright © 1933
by Macmillan, renewed 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "No
Second Troy," copyright © 1912 by Macmillan, renewed
1940 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "On Those that Hated ‘The
Playboy of the Western World,' " copyright © 1912 by
Macmillan, renewed 1940 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "A Prayer
for Old Age," copyright © 1934 by Macmillan, renewed 1962
by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "Sailing to Byzantium," copyright
© 1928 by Macmillan, renewed 1956 by Bertha Georgie
Yeats; "The Second Coming," copyright © 1924 by
Macmillan, renewed 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; "To a
Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing," copyright ©
1916 by Macmillan, renewed 1944 by Bertha Georgie Yeats;
"When You Are Old," copyright © 1906 by Macmillan,
renewed 1934 by William Butler Yeats, all in Collected
Poems of W. B. Yeats. Copyright © 1906, 1912, 1916, 1919,
1924, 1928, 1933, 1940, 1944, 1946, 1947, 1952, by the
Macmillan Company. Copyright © 1934 by W. B. Yeats.
Copyright © 1940 by Bertha Georgie Yeats, Reprinted by
permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York; M, B.
Yeats, Miss Ann Yeats and the Macmillan Co. of London and
Basingstoke; and A. P. Watt & Son Ltd.
Chapter 1
MAN
Chapter 1 is divided into nine sections: 1.1 Man in the
Universe: The Grandeur and Misery of Man; 1.2 The Human
Condition; 1.3 The Ages of Man; Young and Old; 1.4 Self-
Knowledge and Self-Love; 1.5 Honor, Reputation, and Fame
or Glory; 1.6 Human Greatness: The Hero; 1.7 Woman and
Man; 1.8 Life and Death: The Fear of Death; and 1.9 Suicide.
The consideration of man—of human nature, human life,
and the human condition—begins in this opening chapter
but it does not end here. It is inextricably connected with
almost all of the subjects treated in the chapters that follow,
where passages can be found that throw light on the nature,
powers, and propensities of man. The consideration of man’s
place in the universe recurs in Chapter 20 on Religion and in
Chapter 19 on Nature and the Cosmos; the discussion of the
human condition recurs in Chapter 9 on Ethics, Chapter 10
on Politics, Chapter 11 on Economics, and Chapter 15 on
History; the treatment of young and old and of women in
relation to men will also be found in Chapter 2 on Family and
in several sections of Chapter 3 on Lovt; certain aspects of
man’s concern with honor and reputation as well as fame
and shame will also be found in Chapter 4 on Emotion,
especially the sections dealing with desire, ambition, pride
and humility, as well as in sections of Chapter 9 on Ethics
dealing with virtue and vice; the consideration of great men
and the heroic recurs in the section of Chapter 9 that treats
courage and cowardice; and the discussion of the fear of
death and of suicide recurs in other contexts in certain
sections of Chapter 20 on Religion.
Of all the subjects to which chapters of this book are
devoted, the subject of this opening chapter—the human
species—is least in need of prefatory elucidation. In spite of
all the different and often conflicting views of human nature,
of man’s relation to the rest of the universe, and of man’s
strengths and weaknesses, everyone has the same object in
mind when using the word "man" in this general sense, and
there is almost universal agreement about the range and
significance of the questions that can be asked about it. In
these respects, man comes near to being an ideal subject of
controversy, for the differences of opinion can almost always
be brought into sharp focus. The passages assembled in this
chapter indicate and often epitomize the main lines in the
age-old and continuing controversy about man. The issues
in that controversy are as multifarious as the sections of this
chapter.
1.1 Man in the Universe
The Grandeur and Misery of Man
What man is and how he differs from everything else in the
universe are questions that call for definitions and
comparisons. Many of the texts presented in this section
formulate definitions of man or state the respects in which
man has certain unique properties or attributes that
differentiate him from everything else. The latter are, of
course, balanced by statements to the opposite effect—
statements that point out the respects in which man is
indistinguishable from other things except, perhaps, in the
degree to which he possesses properties that are commonly
Shared by all.
However man is defined, and in whatever manner he is
said to differ from or resemble other things, questions arise
concerning his relation to the m—especially his relation to
other animals, to God or the gods, and to nature as a whole.
The passages providing diverse and conflicting answers to
such questions are plentiful. Because the relation of man to
other animals, as well as the contrast between men and
other animals, is of such central interest, quotations may not
always mention animals in relation to men, or men in
relation to animals, but they are almost always taken from
contexts in which that is the subject of discussion.
Dominating the consideration of man’s place in the
universe, from antiquity on, is the view that man is at the
apex of creation or at the center of the cosmos and that
everything else is ordered to his good, subservient to his
needs, and subject to his dominion. That view becomes less
prevalent in modern times, and the reader will find a
number of quotations in which it is rejected as an illusory
conceit on man’s part.
There are other quotations that tend to support the latter
view by their emphasis on the weakness or puniness of man
—how he is a plaything of the gods, a flitting shadow on the
surface of the cosmos, a thing of the moment, here today
and gone tomorrow. Some writers express cynical delight in
depicting man as the most miserable of creatures, and enjoy
deflating his ego by satirical barbs that puncture his self-
esteem. These are, in turn, balanced by many quotations in
the opposite vein—passages that put man on a pedestal, see
him as having a tincture of the divine, or conceive his
special grandeur in terms of the place he occupies in the
cosmic scale, halfway between the beasts and the angels or
on the borderline between the material and the spiritual
worlds. Man is a connecting link between them.
1 And God said, let us make man in our image, after our
likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and os'cr every lis’ing thing
that rnoveth upon the earth.
Geneses 1:26-28
2 Then (he Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said.
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man; for | will demand of
thee, and answer thou me.
Where wast thou when 1 laid the foundations of the
earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest?
or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or
who laid the corner stone thereof;
When the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy?
Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth,
as if it had issued out of the womb?
When | made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick
darkness a swaddling band for it.
And brake up for it my decreed place, and set ban and
doors,
And said, Hitherto shall thou come, but no further: and
here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days;
and caused the dayspring to know his place;
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that
the wicked might be shaken out of it?
It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand asa
garment.
And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the
high arm shall be broken.
Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast
thou walked in the search of the depth?
Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or
hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare
If thou knowest it all.
Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for
darkness, where is the place thereof,
That thou shouldest lake it to the bound thereof, and
that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?
Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or or
because the number of thy days is great?
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or
hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,
Which 1 have reserved against the time of trouble,
against the day of battle and war?
By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the
cast wind upon the earth?
Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of
waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder;
To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on
the wilderness, wherein there is no man;
To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause
the bud of the tender herb to spring forth?
Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops
of dew?
Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary' frost
of heaven, who hath gendered it?
The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the
deep is frozen.
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Plci-a-dcs, or
loose the bands of O-ri-on?
Canst thou bring forth Marzz-a-roth in his season? or
canst thou guide Arc-tu-rus with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou
set the dominion thereof in the earth?
Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that
abundance of waters may cover thee?
Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, arid say
unto thee, Here we are?
Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath
given understanding to the heart?
Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can
stay the bottles of heaven,
When the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods
cleave fast together?
Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? or fill (he appetite
of the young lions,
When they couch in their dens, and abide in the
covert to lie in wait?
Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young
ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat.
Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock
bring forth? or c:inst thou mark when die hinds do calve?
Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? or
knowest thou the time when they bring forth?
They bow themselves, they bring forth their young
ones, they cast out their sorrows.
Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with
corn; they go forth, and return not unto them.
Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath
loosed the bands of the wild ass?
Whose house | have made the wilderness, and the
barren land his dwellings.
He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither
regardeth he the crying of the driver.
The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he
searcheth after every green thing.
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by
thy crib?
Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the
furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or
wilt thou leave thy labour to him?
Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy
seed, and gather it into thy barn?
Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or
wings and feathers unto the ostrich?
Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth
them in dust,
And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that
the wild beast may break them.
She is hardened against her young ones, as though
they were not her’s: her labour is in vain without fear;
Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither
hath he imparted to her understanding.
What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth
the horse and his rider.
Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed
his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the
glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength:
he goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither
turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear
and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage:
neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth
the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the
shouting.
Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her
wings toward the south?
Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make
her nest on high?
She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag
of the rock, and the strong place.
From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes
behold afar off.
Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the
Slain are, there is she.
Moreover the Lord answered Job, and said,
Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct
him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it.
Then Job answered the Lord, and said.
Behold, | am vile.
Job 38-40:4
3 O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou
ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou
mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
When | consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the
son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of
thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and
whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the
earth!
Psalm 8:1-9
4 As he [Zeus] watched the mourning horses the son of
Kronos pitied them, and stirred his head and spoke to his
own spirit:
‘Poor wretches, why then did we ever give you to the
lord Pelcus, a mortal man, and you yourselves are
immortal and ageless?
Only so that among unhappy men you also might be
grieved?
Since among all creatures that breathe on earth and
crawl on it there is not anywhere a thing more dismal
than man is.’
Homer, Iliad, XVII, 441
5 Odysseus. Of mortal creatures, all that breathe and move,
earth bears none frailer than mankind.
What man believes in woe to come, so long as valor
and tough knees are supplied him by the gods? But when
the gods in bliss bring miseries on, then willy-nilly,
blindly, he endures.
Our minds are as the days arc, dark or bright, blown
over by the father of gods and men.
Homer, Odyssey, XVIII, 131
6 Prometheus. Hear what troubles there were among men,
how | found them witless and gave them the use of their
wits and made them masters of their minds. | will tell you
this, not because | would blame men, but to explain the
goodwill of my gift. For men at first had eyes but saw to
no purpose; they had ears but did not hear. Like the
shapes of dreams they dragged through their long lives
and handled all things in bewilderment and confusion.
They did not know of building houses with bricks to
face the sun; they did not know how to work in wood.
They lived like swarming ants in holes in the ground, in
the sunless caves of the earth. For them there was no
secure token by which to tell winter nor the flowering
spring nor the summer with its crops; all their doings
were indeed without intelligent calculation until | showed
them the rising of the stars, and the settings, hard to
observe. And further | discovered to them numbering,
pre-eminent among subtle devices, and the combining of
letters as a means of remembering all things, the Muses’
mother, skilled in craft. It was | who first yoked beasts for
them in the yokes and made of those beasts the slaves of
trace chain and pack saddle that they might be man’s
substitute in the hardest tasks; and 1 harnessed to the
Carriage, so that they loved the rein, horses, the crowning
pride of the rich man's luxur>"'. It was | and none other
who discovered ships, the sail-driven wagons that the sea
buffets. Such were the contrivances that | discovered for
men.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 441
7 Chorus. Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger
than man.
This thing crosses the sea in the winter’s storm,
making his path through the roaring waves.
And she, (he greatest of gods, the earth— ageless she
is, and unwearied—he wears her away as the ploughs go
up and down from year to year and his mules turn up the
soil.
Gay nations of birds he snares and leads, wild beast
tribes and the salty brood of the sea, with the twisted
mesh of his nets, this clever man. He controls with craft
the beasts of the open air, walkers on hills. The horse with
his shaggy mane he holds and harnesses, yoked about
the neck, and the strong bull of the mountain.
Language, and thought like the wind and the feelings
that make the town, he has taught himself, and shelter
against the cold, refuge from rain. He can always help
himself.
He faces no future helpless. There’s only death that he
cannot find an escape from. He has contrived refuge from
illnesses once beyond all cure.
Clever beyond all dreams the inventive craft that he
has which may drive him one time or another to well or
ill.
Sophocles, Antigone, 332
8 Chorus. Ye men who are dimly existing below, who perish
and fade as the leaf,
Pale, woebegone, shadowlike, spiritless folk, life feeble
and wingless and brief,
Frail castings in clay, who are gone in a day, like a
dream full of sorrow and sighing.
Come listen with care to the Birds of the air, the
ageless, the deathless, who flying
In the joy and the freshness of Ether, are wont to muse
upon wisdom undying.
Aristophanes, Birds, 685
9 Timaeus. Now, when all of them, both those who visibly
appear in their revolutions as well as those other gods
who are of a more retiring nature, had come into being,
the creator of the universe addressed them in these
words: "Gods, children of gods, who are my works, and of
whom | am the artificer and father, my creations are
indissoluble, if so | will. All that is bound may be undone,
but only an evil being would wish to undo that which is
harmonious and happy. Wherefore, since ye are but
creatures, ye are not altogether immortal and
indissoluble, but ye shall certainly not be dissolved, nor
be liable to the fate of death, having in my will a greater
and mightier bond than those with which ye were bound
at the time of your birth. And now listen to my
instructions:—Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be
created— without them the universe will be incomplete,
for it will not contain every’ kind of animal which it ought
to contain, if it is to be perfect. On the other hand, if they
were created by me and received life at my hands, they
would be on an equality with the gods. In order then that
they may be mortal, and that this universe may be truly
universal, do ye, according to your natures, betake
yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating the
power which was shown by me in creating you. The part
of them worthy of the name immortal, which is called
divine and is the guiding principle of those who are
willing to follow justice and you—of that divine part | will
myself sow the seed, and having made a beginning, | will
hand the work over to you. And do ye then interweave
the mortal with the immortal, and make and beget living
creatures, and give them food, and make them to grow,
and receive them again in death."
Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which
he had previously mingled the soul of the universe he
poured the remains of the elements, and mingled them in
much the same manner; they were not, however, pure as
before, but diluted to the second and third degree. And
having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls
equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a
star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he
showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to
them the laws of destiny, according to which their first
birth would be one and the same for all,—no one should
suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown
in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and
to come forth the most religious of animals; and as
human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would
hereafter be called man.
Plato, Timaeus, 41A
10 Man, he [Protagoras] says, is the measure of all things, of
the existence of things that are, and of the non-existence
of things that are not.
Plato, Theaetetus, 152A
11 Athenian Stranger. Man ... is a tame or civilized animal;
nevertheless, he requires proper instruction and a
fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the
most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently
or ill-educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.
Plato, Laws, VI, 766A
12 Of the psychic powers... some kinds of living things...
possess all, some less than all, others one only. Those we
have mentioned are the nutritive, the appetitive, the
sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking.
Plants have none but the first, the nutritive, while
another order of living things has this plus the sensory. If
any order of living things has the sensor>% it must also
have the appetitive; for appetite is the genus of which
desire, passion, and wish are the species; now all animals
have one sense at least, viz. touch.... Certain kinds of
animals possess in addition the power of locomotion, and
still another order of animate beings, that is, man and
possibly another order like man or superior to him, the
power of thinking, that is, mind.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 414a28
13 Taking the size of his body into account, man emits more
sperm than any other animal.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 523a15
14 In the great majority of animals there are traces of
psychical qualities or attitudes, which qualities are more
markedly differentiated in the case of human beings. For
just as we pointed out resemblances in the physical
organs, so in a number of animals we observe gentleness
or fierceness, mildness or cross temper, courage, or
timidity, fear or confidence, high spirit or low cunning,
and, with regard to intelligence, something equivalent to
sagacity. Some of these qualities in man, as compared
with the corresponding qualities in animals, differ only
quantitatively; that is to say, a man has more or less of
this quality, and an animal has more or less of some
other; other qualities in man are represented by
analogous and not identical qualities; for instance, just as
in man we find knowledge, wisdom, and sagacity, so in
certain animals there exists some other natural
potentiality akin to these. The truth of this statement will
be the more clearly apprehended if we have regard to the
phenomena of childhood: for in children may be observed
the traces and seeds of what will one day be settled
psychological habits, though psychologically a child
hardly differs for the time being from an animal; so that
one is quite justified in saying that, as regards man and
animals, certain psychical qualities are identical with one
another, whilst others resemble, and others are
analogous to, each other.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 588a17
15 Of all living beings with which we are acquainted man
alone partakes of the divine, or at any rate partakes of it
in a fuller measure than the rest.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 656a8
16 That man alone is affected by tickling is due firstly to the
delicacy of his skin, and secondly to his being the only
animal that laughs.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 673a7
17 Of all animals man alone stands erect, in accordance with
his god-like nature and essence. For it is the function of
the god-like to think and to be wise; and no easy task
were this under the burden of a heavy body, pressing
down from above and obstructing by its weight the
motions of the intellect and of the general sense.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 686a27
18 It is the opinion of Anaxagoras that the possession of...
hands is the cause of man being of all animals the most
intelligent. But it is more rational to suppose that his
endowment with hands is the consequence rather than
the cause of his superior intelligence. For the hands are
instruments or organs, and the invariable plan of nature
in distributing the organs is to give each to such animal
as can make use of it; nature acting in this matter as any
prudent man would do. For it is a better plan to take a
person who is already a flute-player and give him a flute,
than to take one who possesses a flute and teach him the
art of flute-playing. For nature adds that which is less to
that which is greater and more important, and not that
which is more valuable and greater to that which is less.
Seeing then that such is the better course, and seeing
also that of what is possible nature invariably brings
about the best, we must conclude that man does not owe
his superior intelligence to his hands, but his hands to his
superior intelligence. For the most intelligent of animals
is the one w’ho would put the most organs to use; and
the hand is not to be looked on as one organ but as
many; for it is, as it were, an instrument for further
instruments. This instrument, therefore,— the hand—of
all instruments the most variously serviceable, has been
given by nature to man, the animal of all animals the
most capable of acquiring the most varied handicrafts.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 687a8
19 No one would choose the whole world on condition of
being alone, since man is a political creature and one
whose nature is to live with others.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1169b18
20 That which is proper to each thing is by nature best and
most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life
according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason
more than anything else is man.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1178a5
21 While the whole life of the gods is blessed, and that of
men too in so far as some likeness of such activity
belongs to them, none of the other animals is happy,
since they in no way share in contemplation.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1178b25
22 Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when
separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all;
since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is
equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by
intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst
ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most
unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full
of lust and gluttony.
Aristotle, Politics, 1253a31
23 If nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain,
the inference must be that she has made all animals for
the sake of man.
Aristotle, Politics, 1236b20
24 Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his
advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is
the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at
first by imitation.
Aristotle, Potties, 1448b6
25 The most evident difference between man and animal is
this: the beast, in as much as it largely motivated by the
senses and with little perception of the past or future,
lives only for the present. But man, because he is
endowed with reason by which he is able to perceive
relationships, sees the causes of things, understands the
reciprocal nature of cause and effect, makes analogies,
easily surveys the whole course of his life, and makes the
necessary preparations for its conduct.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 4
26 In every inquiry about duty we must keep in mind the
natural superiority of men over cattle and other animals.
Animals deal only in sensual pleasure and are by instinct
impelled to seek it. But the mind of man is nurtured by
study and contemplation. He is always investigating or
doing something. He is captivated by the pleasures of
seeing and hearing.
Cicero, Dt Officiis, I, 30
27 Suppose he [a man] has a beautiful home and a
handsome collection of servants, a lot of land under
cultivation and a lot of money out at interest; not one of
these things can be said to be in him— they are just
things around him. Praise in him what can neither be
given nor snatched away, what is peculiarly a man’s. You
ask what that is? It is his spirit, and the perfection of his
reason in that spirit. For man is a rational animal. Man’s
ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose
for which he was born.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 41
28 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a
living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is
the Lord from heaven.
As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy:
and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are
heavenly.
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we
Shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
| Corinthians, 15:45-49
29 Man is the only animal that knows nothing, and can learn
nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor
walk nor eat, nor do anything at the prompting of nature,
but only weep.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VII, 77
30 No beast is more savage than man when possessed with
power answerable to his rage.
Plutarch, Cicero
31 God had need of irrational animals to make use of
appearances, but of us to understand the use of
appearances. It is therefore enough for them to eat and to
drink, and to sleep and to copulate, and to do all the
other things which they severally do. But for us, to whom
He has given also the intellectual faculty, these things
are not sufficient; for unless we act in a proper and
orderly manner, and conformably to the nature and
constitution of each thing, we shall never attain our true
end. For where the constitutions of living beings are
different, there also the acts and the ends are different. In
those animals, then, whose constitution is adapted only
to use, use alone is enough: but in an animal which has
also the power of understanding the use, unless there be
the due exercise of the understanding, he will never
attain his proper end. Well then God constitutes every
animal, one to be eaten, another to serve for agriculture,
another to supply cheese, and another for some like use;
for which purposes what need is there to understand
appearances and to be able to distinguish them? But God
has introduced man to be a spectator of God and of His
works; and not only a spectator of them, but an
interpreter. For this reason it is shameful for man to begin
and to end where irrational animals do, but rather he
ought to begin where they begin, and to end where
nature ends in us; and nature ends in contemplation and
understanding.
Epictetus, Discourses, |, 6
32 If a thing is difficult to be accomplished by thyself, do not
think that it is impossible for man: but if anything is
possible for man and conformable to his nature, think
that this can be attained by thyself too.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 19
33 If the gods have determined about me and about the
things which must happen to me, they have determined
well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without
forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they
have any desire towards that? For what advantage would
result to them from this or to the whole, which is the
special object of their providence? But if they have not
determined about me individually, they have certainly
determined about the whole at least, and the things
which happen by way of sequence in this general
arrangement | ought to accept with pleasure and to be
content with them. But if they determine about nothing—
which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us
neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them nor do
anything else which we do as if the gods were present
and lived with us—but if however the gods determine
about none of the things which concern us, | am able to
determine about myself, and | can inquire about that
which is useful; and that is useful to every man which is
conformable to his own constitution and nature.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 44
34 Now in every living being the upper parts—head, face—
are the most beautiful, the mid and lower members
inferior. In the Universe the middle and lower members
are human beings; above them, the Heavens and the
Gods that dwell there; these Gods with the entire circling
expanse of the heavens constitute the greater part of the
Kosmos: the earth is but a central point, and may be
considered as simply one among the stars. Yet human
wrong-doing is made a matter of wonder; we are
evidently asked to take humanity as the choice member
of the Universe, nothing wiser existent! But humanity, in
reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and
inclines now to the one order, now to the other; some
men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the
greater number stand neutral.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, 11, 8
35 Man has come into existence, a living being but not a
member of the noblest order; he occupies by choice an
intermediate rank; still, in that place in which he exists.
Providence does not allow him to be reduced to nothing;
on the contrary he is ever being led upwards by all those
varied devices which the Divine employs in its labour to
increase the dominance of moral value. The human race,
therefore, is not deprived by Providence of its rational
being; it retains its share, though necessarily limited, in
wisdom, intelligence, executive pow'-er and right doing,
the right doing, at least, of individuals to each other—and
even in wronging others people think they are doing right
and only paying what is due.
Man is, therefore, a noble creation, as perfect as the
scheme allows; a part, no doubt, in the fabric of the All,
he yet holds a lot higher than that of all the other living
things of earth,
Plotinus, Third Ennead, II, 9
36 How much human nature loves the knowledge of its
existence, and how it shrinks from being deceived, will be
sufficiently understood from this fact, that every man
prefers to grieve in a sane mind, rather than to be glad in
madness. And this grand and wonderful instinct belongs
to men alone of all animals; for, though some of them
have keener eyesight than ourselves for this world’s light,
they cannot attain to that spiritual light with which our
mind is somehow irradiated, so that we can form right
judgments of all things.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 27
37 God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he
might be a solitary, bereft of all society, but that by this
means the unity of society and the bond of concord might
be more effectually commended to him, men being
bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by
family affection. And indeed He did not even create the
woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he
created the man, but created her out of the man, that the
whole human race might derive from one man.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 21
38 Even in the body, though it dies like that of the beasts,
and is in many ways weaker than theirs, what goodness
of God, what providence of the great Creator, is apparent!
The organs of sense and the rest of the members, are not
they so placed, the appearance, and form, and stature of
the body as a whole, is it not so fashioned as to indicate
that it was made for the service of a reasonable soul? Man
has not been created stooping towards the earth, like the
irrational animals; but his bodily form, erect and looking
heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that
are above.
Augustine, City of God, XX11. 24
39 the saying that man and animals have a like beginning in
generation is true of the body. for all animals alike are
made of earth. Hut it is not true of the soul. Tor the souls
of brutes are produced by some power of the body,
whereas the human soul is produced by God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, 75, G
40 The modes of living are distinguished according to the
degrees of living things. There are some living things in
which there exists only vegetative power, as the plants.
There are others in which with the vegetative there exists
also the sensitive, but not the power of local movement;
such are immovable animals, as shellfish. There are
others which besides this have powers of local
movement, as perfect animals, which require many
things for their life, and consequently movement to seek
necessaries of life from a distance. And there are some
living things which with these have intellectual power —
namely, men.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 78, 1
41 The human intellect. . .is the lowest in the order of
intellects and the most removed from the perfection of
the Divine intellect,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 79, 2
42 Other animals are so much lower than man that they
cannot attain to the knowledge of truth, which reason
seeks. But man attains, although imperfectly, to the
knowledge of intelligible truth, which angels know.
Therefore in the angels the power of knowledge is not of
a different genus from that which is in the human reason,
but is compared to it as the perfect to the imperfect,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 79, 8
43 Horns and claws, which are the weapons of some animals,
and toughness of hide and quantity of hair or feathers,
which are the clothing of animals, are signs of an
abundance of the earthly element, which does not agree
with the equability and softness of the human
temperament. Therefore such things do not suit the
nature of man. Instead of these, he has reason and hands
whereby he can make himself arms and clothes, and
other necessaries of life, of infinite variety. And so the
hand is called by Aristotle "the organ of organs."
Moreover this was more becoming to the rational nature,
which is capable of conceiving an infinite number of
tiling so as to make for itself an infinite number of
instruments.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 91, 3
44 An upright stature was becoming to man for four reasons.
First, because the .senses are given to man, not only for
the purpose of procuring the necessaries of life for which
they are bestowed on other animals, but also for the
purpose of knowledge. Hence, whereas the other animals
take delight in the objects of the senses only as ordered
to food and sex, man alone takes pleasure in the beauty
of sensible objects for its own sake. Therefore, as the
senses are situated chiefly in the face, other animals
have the face turned to the ground, as it were for the
purpose of seeking food and procuring a livelihood; but
man has his face erect, in order that by the senses, and
chiefly by sight, which is more subtle and penetrates
further into the differences of things, he may freely
survey the sensible objects around him, both heavenly
and earthly, so as to gather intelligible truth from all
things. Secondly, for the greater freedom of the acts of
the interior powers; the brain, wherein these actions are,
in a way, performed, not being low down, but lifted up
above other parts of the body. Thirdly, because if mans
stature were prone to the ground he would need to use
his hands as fare-feet, and thus their utility for other
purposes would cease. Fourthly, because if man's stature
were prone to the ground and he used his hands as fore-
feet, he would be obliged to take hold of his food with his
mouth. Thus he would have a protruding mouth, with
thick and hard lips, and also a hard tongue, so as to keep
it from being hurt by exterior things, as we see in other
animals. Moreover, such an attitude would quite hinder
speech, which is reason's proper operation.
Nevertheless, though of erect nature, man is far above
plants. For man’s superior part, his head, is turned
towards the superior part of the world, and his inferior
part is turned towards the inferior world; and therefore he
is perfectly disposed as to the general situation of his
body. Plants have the superior part turned towards the
lower world, since their roots correspond to the mouth,
and their inferior parts towards the upper world. But
brute animals have a middle disposition, for the superior
part of the animal is that by which it takes food, and the
inferior part that by which it rids itself of the surplus.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, 91, 3
45 Man is as it were the horizon and boundary line of
Spiritual and corporeal nature, and intermediate, so to
speak, between the two, sharing in both corporeal and
Spiritual perfections.
Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter
Lombard, 111, Prologue
4G Man’s basic capacity is to have a potentiality or power
for being intellectual. And since this power can not be
completely actualized in a single man or in any of the
particular communities of men above mentioned, there
must be a multitude in mankind through whom this
whole power can be actualized; just as there must bea
multitude of created beings to manifest adequately the
whole power of prime matter, otherwise there would have
to be a power distinct from prime matter, which is
impossible.
Dante, De Monarchia, I, 3
47 Because in the intellectual order of the universe the
ascent and descent is by almost continuous steps, from
the lowest form to the highest and from the highest to
the lowest (as we see is the case in the sensible order),
and between the angelic nature, which is an intellectual
thing, and the human soul there is no intermediate step,
but the one is, as it were, continuous with the other in the
order of steps; and between the human soul and the most
perfect soul of the brute animals there is also no
intermediary, and we see many men so vile and of such
base condition as scarce to seem other than beasts; in
like manner we are to lay it down, and firmly to believe,
that there be some so noble and of so lofty condition as
to be scarce other than angels; otherwise the human
species would not be continued in either direction, which
may not be.
Dante, Convivio, III, 7
48 We have altogether a confounded, corrupt, and poisoned
nature, both in body and soul; throughout the whole of
man is nothing that is good.
Luther, Table Talk, H262
49 Panurge. Behold how nature,—having a fervent desire
after its production of plants, trees, shrubs, herbs,
sponges, and plant-animals, to eternize, and continue
them unto all succession of ages—in their several kinds
or sorts, at least, although the individuals perish—
unruinable, and in an everlasting being,—hath most
curiously armed and fenced their buds, sprouts, shoots,
and seeds, wherein the above-mentioned perpetuity
consisteth, by strengthening, covering, guarding, and
fortifying them with an admirable industry, with husks,
cases, scarfs and swads, hulls, cods, stones, films, cartels,
Shells, ears, rinds, barks, skins, ridges, and prickles,
which serve them instead of strong, fair, and natural
codpieces. As is manifestly apparent in pease, beans,
fasels, pomegranates, peaches, cottons, gourds,
pumpions, melons, corn, lemons, almonds, walnuts,
filberts, and chestnuts; as likewise in all plants, slips or
sets whatsoever, wherein it is plainly and evidently seen
that the sperm and semence is more closely veiled,
overshadowed, corroborated, and thoroughly harnessed,
than any other part, portion, or parcel of the whole.
Nature, nevertheless, did not after that manner
provide for the sempiternizing of the human race: but, on
the contrary, created man naked, tender, and frail,
without either offensive or defensive arms; and that in
the estate of innocence, in the first age of all, which was
the golden season; not as a plant, but living creature,
born for peace, not war, and brought forth into the world
with an unquestionable right and title to the plenary
fruition and enjoyment of all fruits and vegetables, as
also to a certain calm and gentle rule and dominion over
all kinds of beasts, fowls, fishes, reptiles, and insects. Yet
afterwards it happening in the time of the iron age, under
the reign of Jupiter, when, to the multiplication of
mischievous actions, wickedness and malice began to
take root and footing within the then perverted hearts of
men, that the earth began to bring forth nettles, thistles,
thorns, briars, and such other stubborn and rebellious
vegetables to the nature of man. Nor scarce was there
any animal, which by a fatal disposition did not then
revolt from him, and tacitly conspire, and covenant with
one another, to serve him no longer, nor, in case of their
ability to resist, to do him any manner of obedience, but
rather, to the uttermost of their power, to annoy him with
all the hurt and harm they could. The man, then, that he
might maintain his primitive right and prerogative, and
continue his sway and dominion over all, both vegetable
and sensitive creatures; and knowing of a truth, that he
could not be well accommodated, as he ought, without
the servitude and subjection of several animals,
bethought himself, that of necessity he must needs put
on arms, and make provision of harness against wars and
violence. By the holy Saint Babingoose, cried out
Pantagruel, you are become, since the last rain, a great
lifrelofre,—philosopher, | should say. Take notice, Sir,
quoth Panurge, when Dame Nature had prompted him to
his own arming, what part of the body it was, where, by
her inspiration, he clapped on the first harness. It was
forsooth by the double pluck of my little dog the ballock,
and good Senor Don Priapos Stabostando,—which done,
he was content, and sought no more.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 8
50 Let us then consider for the moment man alone, without
outside assistance, armed solely with his own weapons,
and deprived of divine grace and knowledge, which is his
whole honor, his strength, and the foundation of his
being. Let us see how much presence he has in this fine
array. Let him help me to understand, by the force of his
reason, on what foundations he has built these great
advantages that he thinks he has over other creatures.
Who has persuaded him that that admirable motion of
the celestial vault, the eternal light of those torches
rolling so proudly above his head, the fearful movements
of that infinite sea, were established and have lasted so
many centuries for his convenience and his service? Is it
possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as that this
miserable and puny creature, who is not even master of
himself, exposed to the attacks of all things, should call
himself master and emperor of the universe, the least
part of which it is not in his power to Know, much less to
command? And this privilege that he attributes to himself
of being the only one in this great edifice who has the
Capacity to recognize its beaut>' and its parts, the only
one who can give thanks for it to the architect and keep
an account of the receipts and expenses of the world:
who has sealed him this privilege? Let him show us his
letters patent for this great and splendid charge.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 12, Apology for Raymond
Sebond
51 Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most
vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the
same time the most arrogant. He feels and sees himself
lodged here, amid the mire and dung of the world, nailed
and riveted to the worst, the deadest, and the most
stagnant part of the universe, on the lowest story of the
house and the farthest from the vault of heaven, with the
animals of the wont condition of the three; and in his
imagination he goes planting himself above the circle of
the moon, and bringing the sky down beneath his feet, ft
is by the vanity of this same imagination that he equals
himself to God, attributes to himself divine
characteristics, picks himself out and separates himself
from the horde of other creatures, carves out their shares
to his fellows and companions the animals, and
distributes among them such portions of faculties and
powers as he sees fit. How does he know, by the force of
his intelligence, the secret internal stirrings of animals?
By what comparison between them and us does he infer
the stupidity that he attributes to them?
Montaigne. Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
52 When 1 play with my cat, who knows if | am nota
pastime to her more than she is to me?
Montaigne, Essays II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
53 Man must be constrained and forced into line inside the
barriers of this order. The poor wretch is in no position
really to step outside them; he is fettered and bound, he
is subjected to the same obligation as the other creatures
of his class, and in a very ordinary condition, without any
real and essential prerogative or preeminence. That
which he accords himself in his mind and in his fancy has
neither body nor taste. And if it is true that he alone of all
the animals has this freedom of imagination and this
unruliness in thought that represents to him what is,
what is not, what he wants, the fake and the true, it is an
advantage that is sold him very dear, and in which he has
little cause to glory’, for from it springs the principal
source of the ills that oppress him; sin, disease,
irresolution, confusion, despair.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
54 Movement belongs to the Earth as the home of the
speculative creature. For it was not fitting that man, who
was going to be the dweller in this world and its
contemplator, should reside in one place of it as ina
closed cubicle: in that way he would never have arrived
at the measurement and contemplation of the so distant
stars, unless he had been furnished with more than
human gifts; or rather since he was furnished with the
eyes which he now has and with the faculties of his mind,
it was his office to move around in this very spacious
edifice by means of the transportation of the Earth his
home and to get to know the different stations, according
as they are measurers—that is, to take a promenade—so
that he could all the more correctly view and measure the
single parts of his house.
Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Bk. IV, Il, 5
55 Hamlet. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in
reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in
-apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust?
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 315
56 /sabella. Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man.
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured.
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ti, 114
57 Lear. Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer
with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is
man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest
the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool,
the cal no perfume. Ha! here's three on 's are
sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated
man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as
thou art. Off, off, you lendings! come, unbutton here.
[ Tearing off his clothes.]
Fool. Prithee, nuncle, be contented; 'tis a naughty
night to swim in.
Shakespeare, Lear, Ill, iv, 105
58 Gloucester. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, i, 38
59 Trinculo. What have we here? a man or a fish? Dead or
alive? A fish; he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-
like smell; a kind of not-of-the newest Poor-John. A
strange fish! Were | in England now, as once | was, and
had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but
would give a piece of silver. There would this monster
make a man; any strange beast there makes a man; when
they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they
will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man!
and his fins like arms! Warm o' my troth! | do now let
loose my opinion; hold it no longer. This is no fish, but an
islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.
Shakespeare, Tempest, II, (i, 25
60 Miranda. O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
Prospero. ‘Tis new to thee.
Shakespeare, Tempest, V, |, 182
611 ama little world made cunningly Of Elements, and an
Angelike spright.
Donne, Holy Sonnet V
62 They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for
certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if
he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and
ignoble creature.
Bacon, Of Atheism
63 Man, if we look to final causes, may be regarded as the
centre of the world; insomuch that if man were taken
away from the world, the rest would seem to be all astray,
without aim or purpose, to be like a besom without a
binding, as the saying is, and to be leading to nothing.
For the whole world works together in the service of man;
and there is nothing from which he does not derive use
and fruit. The revolutions and courses of the stars serve
him both for distinction of the seasons and distribution of
the quarters of the world. The appearances of the middle
sky afford him prognostications of weather. The winds sail
his ships and work his mills and engines. Plants and
animals of all kinds are made to furnish him either with
dwelling and shelter or clothing or food or medicine, or to
lighten his labour, or to give him pleasure and comfort;
insomuch that all things seem to be going about man’s
business and not their own.
Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients: Prometheus
64 Man comes into the world naked and unarmed, as if
Nature had destined him for a social creature, and
ordained him to live under equitable laws and in peace;
as if she had desired that he should be guided by reason
rather than be driven by force; therefore did she endow
him with understanding, and furnish him with hands, that
he might himself contrive what was necessary to his
clothing and protection.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 56
65 Man is but a great mischievous baboon.
William Harvey, qu. by Aubrey, Brief Lives
66 As for the understanding or thought attributed by
Montaigne and others to brutes, | cannot hold their
opinion; not, however, because | am doubtful of the truth
of what is commonly said, that men have absolute
dominion over all the other animals; for while | allow that
there are some which are stronger than we are, and |
believe there may be some, also, which have natural
cunning capable of deceiving the most sagacious men;
yet | consider that they imitate or surpass us only in
those of our actions which are not directed by thought.
Descartes, Letter to the Marquis of Newcastle
67 | know, indeed, that brutes do many things better than
we do, but | am not surprised at it; for that, also, goes to
prove that they act by force of nature and by springs, like
a clock, which tells better what the hour is than our
judgment can inform us.
Descartes, Letter to the Marquis of Newcastle
68 The principal argument, to my mind, which may convince
us that the brutes are devoid of reason, is that, although
among those of the same species, some are more perfect
than others, as among men, which is particularly
noticeable in horses and dogs, some of which have more
capacity than others to retain what is taught them, and
although all of them make us clearly understand their
natural movements of anger, of fear, of hunger, and
others of like kind, either by the voice or by other bodily
motions, it has never yet been observed that any animal
has arrived at such a degree of perfection as to make use
of a true language; that is to say, as to be able to indicate
to us by the voice, or by other signs, anything which
could be referred to thought alone, rather than toa
movement of mere nature; for the word is the sole sign
and the only certain mark of the presence of thought
hidden and wrapped up in the body; now all men, the
most stupid and the most foolish, those even who are
deprived of the organs of speech, make use of signs,
whereas the brutes never do anything of the kind; which
may be taken for the true distinction between man and
brute.
Descartes, Letter to Henry More (1649)
69 It is yet not at all probable that all things have been
created for us in such a manner that God has had no
other end in creating them.... Such a supposition would
be certainly ridiculous and inept in reference to questions
of Physics, for we cannot doubt that an infinitude of
things exist, or did exist, though now they have ceased to
exist, which have never been beheld or comprehended
by man and which have never been of any use to him.
Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Ill, 3
70 Nature tells me | am the Image of God, as well as
Scripture: he that understands not thus much, hath not
his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the
Alphabet of man.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, II, 11
71 For, in fact, what is man in nature? A Nothing in
comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with
the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.
Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the
extremes, the end of things and their beginning are
hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he
iS equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he
was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.
What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of
the middle of things, in an eternal despair of knowing
either their beginning or their end. All things proceed
from the Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite. Who
will follow these marvellous processes? The Author of
these wonders understands them. None other can do so.
Pascal, Palsies, Il, 72
72 Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he
is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself
to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill
him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would
still be more noble than that which killed him, because he
knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe
has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 347
73 The brutes do not admire each other. A horse does not
admire his companion. Not that there is no rivalry
between them in a race, but that is of no consequence;
for, when in the stable, the heaviest and most ill-formed
does not give up his oats to another, as men would have
others do to them. Their virtue is satisfied with itself.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 401
74 What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a
monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a
prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth;
depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the
pride and refuse of the universe!
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 434
75 Let us make now Man in our image, Man
In our similitude, and let them rule
Over the Fish and Fowle of Sea and Aire,
Beast of the Field, and over all the Earth,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.
This said, he formd thee, Adam, thee O Man
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath’d
The breath of Life; in his own Image hee
Created thee, in the Image of God
Express, and thou becam’st a living Soul.
Male he created thee, but thy consort
Femal for Race; then bless’d Mankinde, and said,
Be fruitful, multiplie, and fill the Earth,
Subdue it, and throughout Dominion hold
Over Fish of the Sea, and Fowle of the Aire,
And every living thing that moves on the Earth.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VII, 519
76 The essence of man consists of certain modifications of
the attributes of God; for the Being of substance does not
pertain to the essence of man. It is therefore something
which is in God, and which without God can neither be
nor be conceived, or an affection or mode which
expresses the nature of God in a certain and
indeterminate manner.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Prop. 10, Corol.
77 A proper regard, indeed, to one’s own profit teaches us to
unite in friendship with men, and not with brutes, nor
with things whose nature is different from human nature.
It teaches us, too, that the same right which they have
over us we have over them. Indeed, since the right of any
person is limited by his virtue or power, men possess a far
greater right over brutes than brutes possess over men. |
by no means deny that brutes feel, but | do deny that on
this account it is unlawful for us to consult our own profit
by using them for our own pleasure and treating them as
is most convenient for us, inasmuch as they do not agree
in nature with us, and their affects are different from our
own.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 37, Schol. 1
78 All the different classes of beings whose union form the
universe exist in the ideas of God only as so many
ordinates of the same curve, the union of which does not
allow the placing of others between them, because that
would indicate disorder and imperfection. Men are
connected with the animals, these with the plants, and
these again with the fossils, which will be united in their
turn with bodies which the senses and the imagination
represent to us as perfectly dead and shapeless. Now
since the law of continuity demands that when the
essential determinations of a being approach those of
another so that likewise accordingly all the properties of
the first must gradually approach those of the last, it is
necessary that all the orders of natural beings form only
one chain, in which the different classes, like so many
links, connect so closely the one to the other, that it is
impossible for the senses and the imagination to fix the
precise point where any one begins or ends.
Leibniz, Letter to an Unknown Person (Oct. 16, 1707)
79 There are creatures in the world that have shapes like
ours, but are hairy, and want language and reason. There
are naturals amongst us that have perfectly our shape,
but want reason, and some of them language too. There
are creatures, as it is said... that, with language and
reason and a shape in other things agreeing with ours,
have hairy tails; others where the males have no beards,
and others where the females have. If it be asked whether
these be all men or no, all of human species? it is plain,
the question refers only to the nominal essence: for those
of them to whom the definition of the word man, or the
complex idea signified by the name, agrees, are men, and
the other not. But if the inquiry be made concerning the
supposed real essence; and whether the internal
constitution and frame of these several creatures be
specifically different, it is wholly impossible for us to
answer, no part of that going into our specific idea: only
we have reason to think, that where the faculties or
outward frame so much differs, the internal constitution
is not exactly the same. But what difference in the real
internal constitution makes a specific difference it is in
vain to inquire; whilst our measures of species be, as they
arc, only our abstract ideas, which we know; and not that
internal constitution, which makes no part of them. Shall
the difference of hair only on the skin be a mark of a
different internal specific constitution between a
Changeling and a drill, wnen they agree in shape, and
want of reason and speech? And shall not the want of
reason and speech be a sign to us of different real
constitutions and species between a changeling and a
reasonable man? And so of the rest, if we pretend that
distinction of species or sorts is fixedly established by the
real frame and secret constitutions of things.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, BK. Ill, VI,
22
80 His Majesty [the King of Brobdignag] in another
audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all |
had spoken; compared the questions he made, with the
answers | had given; then taking me into his hands, and
streaking me gently, delivered himself in these words,
which | shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them
in. "My little friend Grildrig; you have made a most
admirable panegyrick upon your country. You have
clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the
proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator. That laws
are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those
whose interest and abilities lie in perverting,
confounding, and eluding them. | observe among you
some lines of an institution, which in its orginal might
have been tolerable; but these half erased, and the rest
wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It doth not
appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is
required towards the procurement of any one station
among you; much less that men are ennobled on account
of their virtue, that priests are advanced for their piety or
learning, soldiers for their conduct or valour, judges for
their integrity, senators for the love of their country, or
counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself (continued
the king) who have spent the greatest part of your life in
travelling, | am well disposed to hope you may hitherto
have escaped many vices of your country. But, by what |
have gathered from your own relation, and the answers |
have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, |
cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives, to be the
most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature
ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Il, 6
81 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer.
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such.
Whether he thinks too little, or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl’d;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle II, |
82 Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we
have; but they have some which we have not. They have
not our hopes, but they are without our fears; they are
subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even
most of them are more attentive than we to self-
preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their
passions.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed
by invariable laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly
transgresses the laws established by God, and changes
those of his own instituting. He is left to his private
direction, though a limited being, and subject, like all
finite intelligences, to ignorance and error: even his
imperfect knowledge he loses; and as a sensible creature,
he is hurried away by a thousand impetuous passions.
Such a being might every instant forget his Creator; God
has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of
religion. Such a being is liable every moment to forget
himself; philosophy has provided against this by the laws
of morality. Formed to live in society, he might forget his
fellow-creatures; legislators have therefore by political
and civil laws confined him to his duty.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws I, 1
83 What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that
animals are machines bereft of understanding and
feeling, which perform their operations always in the
same way, which learn nothing, perfect nothing, etc.!
What! that bird which makes its nest in a semicircle
when it is attaching it to a wall, which builds itina
quarter circle when it is in an angle, and in a circle upon
a tree; that bird acts always in the same way? That
hunting-dog which you have disciplined for three months,
does it not know more at the end of this time than it knew
before your lessons? Docs the canary to which you teach
a tune repeat it at once? do you not spend a considerable
time in teaching it? have you not seen that it has made a
mistake and that it corrects itself?
Is it because | speak to you, that you judge that | have
feeling, memory, ideas? Well, | do not speak to you; you
see me going home looking disconsolate, seeking a paper
anxiously, opening the desk where | remember having
shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge that | have
experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure,
that | have memory and understanding.
Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which
has lost its master, which has sought him on every road
with sorrowful cries, which enters the house agitated,
uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, from
room to room, which at last finds in his study the master
it loves, and which shows him its joy by its cries of
delight, by its leaps, by its caresses.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Animals
84 Every animal has ideas, since it has senses; it even
combines those ideas in a certain degree; and it is only in
degree that man differs, in this respect, from the brute.
Some philosophers have even maintained that there is a
greater difference between one man and another than
between some men and some beasts. It is not, therefore,
so much the understanding that constitutes the specific
difference between the man and the brute, as the human
quality of free-agency. Nature lays her commands on
every animal, and the brute obeys her voice, Man
receives the same impulsion, but at the same lime knows
himself at liberty to acquiesce or resist: and it is
particularly in his consciousness of this liberty that the
Spirituality of his soul is displayed. For physics may
explain, in some measure, the mechanism of the senses
and the formation of ideas; but in the power of willing or
rather of choosing, and in the feeling of this power,
nothing is to be found but acts which are purely spiritual
and wholly inexplicable by the law's of mechanism.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
85 Oh, man! live your own life and you will no longer be
wretched. Keep to your appointed place in the order of
nature and nothing can tear you from it. Do not kick
against the stern law of necessity....Your freedom and
your power extend as far and no further than your natural
strength; anything more is but slavery, deceit, and
trickery.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
86 Boswell. "He [Harris] says plain things in a formal and
abstract way, to be sure: but his method is good: for to
have clear notions upon any subject, we must have
recourse to analytick arrangement." Johnson. "Sir, it is
what everybody does, whether they will or no. But
sometimes things may be made darker by definition. | see
a cow, | define her, Animal quadrupes ruminans
cornulum. But a goat ruminates, and a cow' may have no
horns. Cow is plainer." Boswell. "| think Dr. Franklin’s
definition of Man a good one—tool-making animal.’ "
Johnson. "But many a man never made a tool; and
Suppose a man without arms, he could not make a tool."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 7, 1778)
87 Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate
exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural
cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; | am
willing to give this for that. When an animal wants to
obtain something either of a man or of another animal, it
has no other means of persuasion but to gain the favour
of those whose service it requires. A puppy fawns upon its
dam, and a spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions
to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner,
when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the
same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other
means of engaging them to act according to his
inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning
attention to obtain their good will.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Motions, |, 2
88 Man and generally any rational being exists as an end in
himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by
this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they
concern himself or other rational beings, must be always
regarded at the same time as an end.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
89 Man is a being who, as belonging to the world of sense,
has wants, and so far his reason has an office which it
cannot refuse, namely, to attend to the interest of his
sensible nature, and to form practical maxims, even with
a view to the happiness of this life, and if possible even to
that of a future. But he is not so completely an animal as
to be indifferent to what reason says on its own account,
and to use it merely as an instrument for the satisfaction
of his wants as a sensible being. For the possession of
reason would not raise his worth above that of the brutes,
if it is to serve him only for the same purpose that instinct
serves in them; it would in that case be only a particular
method which nature had employed to equip man for the
same ends for which it has qualified brutes, without
qualifying him for any higher purpose.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Ft. |, |, 2
90 If we go through the whole of nature, we do not find in it,
as nature, any being capable of laying claim to the
distinction of being the final end of creation. In fact it
may even be proved a priori that what might do perhaps
as an ultimate end for nature, endowing it with any
conceivable qualities or properties we choose, could
nevertheless in its character of a natural thing never be a
final end.
Looking to the vegetable kingdom, we might at first be
induced by the boundless fertility with which it spreads
itself abroad upon almost every soil to think that it should
be regarded as a mere product of the mechanism which
nature displays in its formations in the mineral kingdom.
But a more intimate knowledge of its indescribably wise
organization precludes us from entertaining this view,
and drives us to ask; For what purpose do these forms of
life exist? Suppose we reply: For the animal kingdom,
which is thus provided with the means of sustenance, so
that it has been enabled to spread over the face of the
earth in such a manifold variety of genera. The question
again arises: For what purpose then do these herbivora
exist? The answer would be something like this: For the
carnivora, which are only able to live on what itself has
animal life. At last we get down to the question: What is
the end and purpose of these and all the preceding
natural kingdoms? For man, we say, and the multifarious
uses to which his intelligence teaches him to put all these
forms of life. He is the ultimate end of creation here upon
earth, because he is the one and only being upon it that
is able to form a conception of ends and, from an
aggregate of things purposively fashioned, to construct
by the aid of his reason a system of ends.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 82
91 There is a judgement which even the commonest
understanding finds irresistible when it reflects upon the
existence of the things in the world and the real
existence of the world itself. It is the verdict that all the
manifold forms of life, co-ordinated though they may be
with the greatest art and concatenated with the utmost
variety of final adaptations, and even the entire complex
that embraces their numerous systems, incorrectly called
worlds, would all exist for nothing, if man, or rational
beings of some sort, were not to be found in their midst.
Without man, in other words, the whole of creation would
be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final
end.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 86
92 If there is to be a final end at all, which reason must
assign a priori, then it can only be man —or any rational
being in the world— subject to moral laws. For—and this
is the verdict of everyone—if the world only consisted of
lifeless beings, or even consisted partly of living, but yet
irrational beings, the existence of such a world would
have no worth whatever, because there would exist in it
no being with the least conception of what worth is.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 87
93 Mephistopheles. Since you, O Lord, once more draw near
And ask how all is getting on, and you
Were ever well content to see me here,
You see me also midst your retinue.
Forgive, fine soeeches | can never make.
Though all the circle look on me with scorn;
Pathos from me would make your sides with laughter
Shake.
Had you not laughter long ago forsworn.
Of suns and worlds I’ve naught to say worth mention.
How men torment them claims my whole attention.
Earth’s little god retains his same old stamp and ways
And is as singular as on the first of days.
A little better would he live, poor wight.
Had you not given him that gleam of heavenly light.
He calls it Reason, only to pollute
Its use by being brutaler than any brute.
It seems to me, if you’ll allow, Your Grace,
He’s like a grasshopper, that long-legged race
That’s made to fly and flying spring
And in the grass to sing the same old thing.
If in the grass he always were reposing!
But in each filthy heap he keeps on nosing.
Goethe, Faust, Prologue in Heaven, 271
94 If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend
upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot
stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts;
they are worse, a great deal worse.
Coleridge, Table Talk (Aug. 30, 1S33)
95 Oh, man! thou feeble tenant of an hour.
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knot’s thee well must quit thee with disgust.
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame,
Byron, Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland
Dog
96 The lower animals are the truly incomprehensible, A man
cannot by imagination or conception enter into the
nature of a dog, whatever resemblance he himself might
have to it; it remains something altogether alien to him.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. |, Ill, 3
97 Man, finite when regarded for himself, is yet at the same
time the image of God and a fountain of infinity m
himself. He is the object of his own existence—has in
himself an infinite value, an eternal destiny.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, Ill, 2
98 One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of the
earth, and the animals the souls they torment.
Schopenhauer, Christian System
99 Man is at bottom a wild and terrible animal. We know him
only as what we call civilization has tamed and trained
him; hence we are alarmed by the occasional breaking
out of his true nature. But whenever the locks and chains
of law and order are cast off, and anarchy comes in, he
shouts himself for what he really is.
Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, I!
100 Aman is a god in ruin.
Emerson, Nature, VII/
101 Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he
secs. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this
gilding, exalting soul for all its pride.
Emerson, Spiritual Laws
102 Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes
itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no
lichen is so easily born; and he takes along with him and
puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and
condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert,
and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white
city m an hour, a government, a market, a place for
feasting, for conversation, and for love.
Emerson, The Conservative
103 Men may seem detestable as joint-stock companies and
nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men
may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal,
is So noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing
creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his
fellow’s should run to throw their costliest robes. That
immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves—so far
within us, that it remains intact though all the outer
character seem gone—bleeds with keenest anguish at the
undraped spectacle of a valour-ruined man. Nor can piety
itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her
upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august
dignity | treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but
that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture.
Thou shall see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or
drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all
hands, radiates without end from God Himself! The great
God absolute! The centre and circumference of all
democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
Melville, Moby Dick, XXVI
104 There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not
infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
Melville, Moby Dick, LXXXVII
105 Man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we
to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little
has been tried.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
106 We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in
proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and
sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the
worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies.
Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its
nature. | fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own;
that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day | picked
up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth
and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal
health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature
succeeded by other means than temperance and purity.
‘That in which men differ from brute beasts,’ says
Mencius, ‘is a thing very inconsiderable; the common
herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully.’
Who knows what sort of life would result if we had
attained to purity? If | knew so wise a man as could teach
me purity | would go to seek him forthwith. ‘A command
over our passions, and over the external senses of the
body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be
indispensable in the mind’s approximation to God.' Yet
the spirit can for the time pervade and control every
member and function of the body, and transmute what in
form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion.
The generative energy, which, when we are loose,
dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent
invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of
man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and
the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows
at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By
turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.
He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out
in him day by day, and the divine being established.
Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on
account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is
allied. | fear that we are such gods or demigods only as
fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures
of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our
disgrace.
Thoreau, Walden: Higher Laws
107 | think | could turn and live with animals, they’reso
placid and self-contain’d,
| stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their
Sins.
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to
God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the
mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole
earth.
Whitman, Song of Myself XXXII
108 Man in the rudest state in which he now exists is the
most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this
earth. He has spread more widely than any other highly
organised form: and all others have yielded before him.
He manifestly owes this immense superiority to his
intellectual faculties, to his social habits, which lead him
to aid and defend his fellows, and to his corporeal
structure. The supreme importance of these characters
has been proved by the final arbitrament of the battle for
life. Through his powers of intellect, articulate language
has been evolved; and on this his wonderful
advancement has mainly depended.... He has invented
and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, etc., with
which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and
otherwise obtains food. He has made rafts or canoes for
fishing or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He
has discovered the art of making fire, by which hard and
stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous
roots or herbs innocuous. This discovery of fire, probably
the greatest ever made by man, excepting language,
dates from before the dawn of history. These several
inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become
sO preeminent, are the direct results of the development
of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity,
imagination, and reason.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 2
109 Most of the more complex emotions are common to the
higher animals and ourselves. Every one has seen how
jealous a dog is of his master’s affection, if lavished on
any other creature; and | have observed the same fact
with monkeys. This shews that animals not only love, but
have desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel
emulation. They love approbation or praise; and a dog
carrying a basket for his master exhibits in a high degree
self-complacency or pride. There can, | think, be no doubt
that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear, and
something very like modesty when begging too often for
food. A great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and
this may be called magnanimity. Several observers have
stated that monkeys certainly dislike being laughed at;
and they sometimes invent imaginary offences.... Dogs
shew what may be fairly called a sense of humour, as
distinct from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such
object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away fora
Short distance; and then squatting down with it on the
ground close before him, will wait until his master comes
quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and
rush away in triumph, repeating the same manoeuvre,
and evidently enjoying the practical joke.
Darwin, Descent of Man, |, 3
110 There can be no doubt that the difference between the
mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is
immense. An anthropomorphous ape, if he could take a
dispassionate view of his own case, would admit that
though he could form an artful plan to plunder a garden
—though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking
open nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into
a tool was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would
admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical
reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on
God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes,
however, would probably declare that they could and did
admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of their
partners in marriage. They would admit, that though they
could make other apes understand by cries some of their
perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing
definite ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their
minds. They might insist that they were ready to aid their
fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their
lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but
they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested
love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of
man, was quite beyond their comprehension.
Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and
the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of
degree and not of kind.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 4
111 The great break in the organic chain between man and
his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any
extinct or living species, has often been advanced asa
grave objection to the belief that man is descended from
some lower form; but this objection will not appear of
much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe
in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur
in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and
defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the
orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the
other Lemurida:—between the elephant, and in a more
striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or
Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks
depend merely on the number of related forms which
have become extinct. At some future period, not very
distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of
man vyrill almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the
Savage races throughout the world. At the same time the
anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has
remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break
between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for
it will intervene between man in amore civilised state, as
we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as
low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or
Australian and the gorilla.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 6
112 Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having
risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very
summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having
thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed
there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the
distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes
or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits
us to discover it; and | have given the evidence to the
best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it
seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with
sympathy which feels for the most debased, with
benevolence which extends not only to other men but to
the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect
which has penetrated into the movements and
constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted
powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible
stamp of his lowly origin.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
113 The question of questions for mankind—the problem
which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting
than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which
man occupies in nature and of his relations to the
universe of things. Whence our race has come; what are
the limits of our power over nature, and of nature’s power
over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems
which present themselves anew and with undiminished
interest to every man born into the world.
T. H. Huxley, Relations of Man to the Lower Animals
114 Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be
lessened by the knowledge that man is, in substance and
in structure, one with the brutes; for, he alone possesses
the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational
speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence,
he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience
which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every
individual life in other animals; so that, now, he stands
raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of
his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser
nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the
infinite source of truth.
T. H. Huxley, Relations of Man to the Lower Animals
115 Man is in the most literal sense of the word a zoon
politikon, not only a social animal, but an animal which
can develop into an individual only in society.
Marx, Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy,
Appendix, 1
116 Human nature is not a machine to be built after a
model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it,
but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on
all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces
which make it a living thing.
Mill, On Liberty, III
117 O man, strange composite of Heaven and earth!
Majesty dwarf’d to baseness! fragrant flower Running
to poisonous seed! and seeming worth Cloaking
corruption! weakness mastering power!
Newman, The Dream of Gerontius
118 A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the
child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to
sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the
chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance
of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen
from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to
gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life
of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen
dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it
exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the
bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil
fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the
bee’s existence. Another, observing the migration of
plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may
say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the
ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first,
the second, or any of the processes the human mind can
discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the
discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes
that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of
the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with
the purpose of historic characters and nations.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, IV
119 To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the
law of inevitability, we must imagine him all alone,
beyond space, beyond time, and free from dependence
on cause.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, X
120 Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilon's New Calendar, XXVII
121 Tm quite sure that... | have no race prejudices, and |
think | have no color prejudices nor creed prejudices.
Indeed, | Know it. | can stand any society. All | care to
know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for
me; he can’t be any worse.
Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews
122 Man is absolutely not the crown of creation: every
creature stands beside him at the same stage of
perfection.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XIV
123 Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the
Superman—a rope over an abyss.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue, 4
124 The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath
diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called
"man."
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, II, 40
125 Man is born with a tendency to do more things than he
has ready-made arrangements for in his nerve-centres.
Most of the performances of other animals are automatic.
But in him the number of them is so enormous, that most
of them must be the fruit of painful study. If practice did
not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of
nervous and muscular energy, he would therefore be ina
sorry plight.
William James, Psychology, IV
126 The whole story of our dealings with the lower wild
animals is the history of our taking advantage of the way
in which they judge of everything by its mere label, as it
were, so as to ensnare or kill them. Nature, in them, has
left matters in this rough way, and made them act a/ways
in the manner which would be oftenest right. There are
more worms unattached to hooks than impaled upon
them; therefore, on the whole, says Nature to her fishy
children, bite at every worm and take your chances. But
as her children get higher, and their lives more precious,
she reduces the risks. Since what seems to be the same
object may be now a genuine food and now a bait; since
in gregarious species each individual may prove to be
either the friend or the rival, according to the
circumstances, of another; since any entirely unknown
object may be fraught with weal or woe, Nature implants
contrary impulses to act on many classes of things, and
leaves it to slight alterations in the conditions of the
individual case to decide which impulse shall carry the
day. Thus, greediness and suspicion, curiosity and
timidity, coyness and desire, bashfulness and vanity,
sociability and pugnacity, seem to shoot over into each
other as quickly, and to remain in as unstable
equilibrium, in the higher birds and mammals as in man.
They are all impulses, congenital, blind at first, and
productive of motor reactions of a rigorously determinate
sort. Each one of them, then, Is an instinct, as instincts
are commonly defined. But they contradict each other —
"experience" in each particular opportunity of application
usually deciding the issue. The animal that exhibits them
loses the 'instinctive' demeanor and appears to lead a life
of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life; not,
however, because he has no instincts—rather because he
has so many that they block each other's path.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
127 In many respects man is the most ruthlessly ferocious of
beasts. As with all gregarious animals, "two souls," as
Faust says, "dwell within his breast," the one of sociability
and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to
his mates. Though in a general way he cannot live
without them, yet, as regards certain individuals, it often
falls out that he cannot live with them either. Constrained
to be a member of a tribe, he still has a right to decide, as
far as in him lies, of which other members the tribe shall
consist. Killing off a few obnoxious ones may often better
the chances of those that remain. And killing off a
neighboring tribe from whom no good thing comes, but
only competition, may materially better the lot of the
whole tribe. Hence the gory cradle, the be/ilum omnium
contra omnes, in which our race was reared; hence the
fickleness of human ties, the ease with which the foe of
yesterday becomes the ally of today, the friend of to-day
the enemy of to-morrow; hence the fact that we, the
lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one
scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more
pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with
us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the
smouldering and sinister traits of character by means of
which they lived through so many massacres, harming
others, but themselves unharmed.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
128 Man is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of
prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically
on its own species,
William James, Remarks at the Peace Banquet (Oct. 7,
1904)
129 The rich are instinctively crying "Let us eat and drink;
for tomorrow we die," and the poor, "How long, O Lord,
how long?" But the pitiless reply still is that God helps
those who help themselves. This does not mean that if
Man cannot find the remedy no remedy will be found. The
power that produced Man when the monkey was not up
to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if
Man does not come up to the mark. What it means is that
if Man is to be saved, Man must save himself. There
seems no compelling reason why he should be saved. He
is by no means an ideal creature. At his present best
many of his ways are so unpleasant that they are
unmentionable in polite society, and so painful that he is
compelled to pretend that pain is often a good. Nature
holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or
fall by its results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try
another experiment.
Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Pref.
130 Man differs from the lower animals because he
preserves his past experiences. What happened in the
past is lived again in memory. About what goes on today
hangs a cloud of thoughts concerning similar things
undergone in bygone days. With the animals, an
experience perishes as it happens, and each new doing or
suffering stands alone. But man lives in a world where
each occurrence is charged with echoes and
reminiscences of what has gone before, where each event
is a reminder of other things. Hence he lives not, like the
beasts of the field, in a world of merely physical things
but in a world of signs and symbols. A stone is not merely
hard, a thing into which one bumps; but it is a monument
of a deceased ancestor. A flame is not merely something
which warms or bums, but is a symbol of the enduring life
of the household, of the abiding source of cheer,
nourishment and shelter to which man returns from his
casual wanderings. Instead of being a quick fork of fire
which may sting and hurt, it is the hearth at which one
worships and for which one fights. And all this which
marks the difference between bestiality and humanity,
between culture and merely physical nature, is because
man remembers, preserving and recording his
experiences.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, |
131 When a philosopher explains to us that it is reason,
present in each of us, which constitutes the dignity of
man ... we must take care to know what we mean. That
reason is the distinguishing mark of man no one will
deny. That it is a thing of superior value, in the sense in
which a fine work of art is indeed valuable, will also be
granted. But we must explain how it is that its orders are
absolute and why they are obeyed. Reason can only put
forward reasons, which we are apparently always at
liberty to counter with other reasons. Let us not then
merely assert that reason, present in each of us, compels
our respect and commands our obedience by virtue of its
paramount value. We must add that there are, behind
reason, the men who have made mankind divine, and
who have thus stamped a divine character on reason,
which is the essential attribute of man. It is these men
who draw us towards an ideal society, while we yield to
the pressure of the real one.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, |
132 What is meant here by saying that existence precedes
essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up,
appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines
himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is
indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only
afterward will he be something, and he himself will have
made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature,
since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what
he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he
wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.
Sartre, Existentialism
1.2 The Human Condition
This section contains many quotations that express general
views of human life. The operative word here is "general."
We have tried to exclude anything that does not comment
on the state of man in general terms, that does not offer
general recommendations or prescriptions for the conduct of
life, or that does not deal generally with what might be
called "the phenomenon of man."
The general descriptions of that phenomenon include
portrayals of human nature in terms of its distinctive traits,
discussions of the range of human abilities or capacities,
comments on man’s propensities and proclivities, and
enumerations of human traits.
The quotations assembled here are not exclusively
descriptive of mans condition.
Some evaluate it, varying from self-pity at one extreme to
self-satisfaction at the other. Still another line of passages
raises general questions about the difficulties of living like a
human being; these are accompanied by quotations that
offer counsel or guidance for facing up to the trials and
tribulations of human life.
Some of the statements collected here might have been
placed in the preceding section, dealing with the grandeur
and misery of man, and some in Section 1.8 on Life AND
Death: The Fear of Death. They are here because the terms
in which they are stated are identical with terms that are
central to quotations that belong here and nowhere else.
1 Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of
trouble.
He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he
fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
Job 14:1-2
2 Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my
days, what it is; that | may know how frail | am.
Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth;
and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man
at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah.
Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they
are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and
knoweth not who shall gather them...
When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity,
thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth:
surely every man is vanity.
Psalm 39:4-11
3 Apollo. \Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and
now flourish and grow warm
with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then
again
fade away and are dead.
Homer, Iliad, XXI, 463
4 Odysseus. The cruel belly, can you hide its ache? How
many bitter days it brings! Long ships with good stout
planks athwart—would fighters rig them to ride the
barren sea, except for hunger?
Homer, Odyssey, XVII, 287
5 Oh! would that Nature had denied me birth
Midst this fifth race, this iron age of earth;
That long before within the grave | lay.
Or long hereafter could behold the day!
Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs oppress’d.
Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest:
Still do the gods a weight of care bestow.
Though still some good is mingled with the woe.
Jove on this race of many-languaged man
Speeds the swift ruin, which but slow began;
For scarcely spring they to the light of day,
E’er age untimely strews their temples gray.
No fathers in the sons their features trace;
The sons reflect no more the father’s face:
The most with kindness greets his guest no more;
And friends and brethren love not as of yore.
Reckless of Heaven’s revenge, the sons behold
The hoary parents wax to swiftly old.
And impious point the keen dishonouring tongue,
With hard reproofs, and bitter mockeries hung;
Nor grateful in declining age repay
The nurturing fondness of their better day.
Now man’s right hand is law; for spoil they wait,
And lay their mutual cities desolate.
Unhonour’d he, by whom his oath is fear’d,
Nor are the good beloved, the just revered.
With favour graced, the evil doer stands.
Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands;
With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man.
And stamps with perjury what hate began.
Lo! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing’d with lies,
Scattering calumnious rumours as she flies,
The steps of miserable men pursue.
With haggard aspect, blasting to the view:
Till those fair forms, in snowy raiment bright,
Quit the broad earth, and heavenward soar from sight:
Justice and Modesty, from mortals driven,
Rise to th’ immortal family of heaven:
Dread sorrow's to forsaken man remain;
No cure of ills; no remedy of pain.
Hesiod, Works and Days
6 Cassandra. Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes
well
a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a
wet sponge wipes all the picture out;
and that is far the most unhappy thing of all.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1327
7 Amasis. My wish for myself and for those whom | love is to
be now successful, and now' to meet with a check; thus
passing through life amid alternate good and ill, rather
than with perpetual good fortune. For never yet did | hear
tell of anyone succeeding in all his undertakings, who did
not meet with calamity at last, and come to utter ruin.
Herodotus, History, Ill, 40
8 When a child is born [to the Trausi] all its kindred sit round
about it in a circle and weep for the woes it will have to
undergo now that it is come into the world, making
mention of every ill that falls to the lot of humankind;
when, on the other hand, a man has died, they bury him
with laughter and rejoicings, and say that now he is free
from a host of sufferings, and enjoys the completest
happiness.
Herodotus, History, V, 4
9 And now, as he looked and saw the whole Hellespont
covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and
every plain about Abydos as full as possible of men,
Xerxes congratulated himself on his good fortune; but
after a little while he wept.
Then Artabanus, the king’s uncle (the same who at the
first so freely spake his mind to the king, and advised him
not to lead his army against Greece), when he heard that
Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said:—
"How different, sire, is what thou art now doing, from
what thou didst a little while ago!
Then thou didst congratulate thyself; and now,
behold! thou weepest."
“There came upon me," replied he, "a sudden pity,
when | thought of the shortness of man’s life, and
considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not
one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by."
Herodotus, History, VII, 45-46
10 Chorus. Not to be born surpasses thought and speech.
The second best is to have seen the light
And then to go back quickly whence we came.
The feathery follies of his youth once over.
What trouble is beyond the range of man?
What heavy burden will he not endure?
Jealousy, faction, quarreling, and battle—
The bloodiness of war, the grief of war.
And in the end he comes to strengthless age,
Abhorred by all men, without company. Unfriended in
that uttermost twilight
Where he must live with every bitter thing.
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1224
11 Orestes. Alas,
we look for good on earth and cannot recognize it
when met, since all our human heritage runs mongrel.
At times | have seen descendants of the noblest family
grow worthless though the cowards had courageous
sons;
inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives
while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving
bodies.
How then can man distinguish man, what test can he
use?
the test of wealth? that measure means poverty of
mind;
of poverty? the pauper owns one thing, the sickness
of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil;
by nerve in war? yet who, when a spear is cast across
his face, will stand to witness his companion’s
courage?
We can only toss our judgments random on the wind.
Euripides, Electra, 367
12 Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold
your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and
no one will interfere with you? Now | have great difficulty
in making you [men of Athens] understand my answer to
this. For if | tell you that to do as you say would be a
disobedience to the God, and therefore that | cannot hold
my tongue, you will not believe that | am serious; and if |
say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of
those other things about which you hear me examining
myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and that
the unexamined life is not worth living, you are still less
likely to believe me. Yet | say what is true, although a
thing of which it is hard for me to persuade you.
Plato, Apology, 37B
13 Socrates. And now, | said, let me show in a figure how far
our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:—Behold!
human beings living in an underground den, which has a
mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the
den; here they have been from their childhood, and have
their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move,
and can only see before them, being prevented by the
chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind
them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire
and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you
[Glaucon] will see, if you look, a low wall built along the
way, like the screen which marionette players have in
front of them, over which they show the puppets.
| see.
And do you see, | said, men passing along the wall
carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of
animals made of wood and stone and various materials,
which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking,
others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are
strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, | replied; and they see only their own
shadows, the shadows of one another, which the fire
throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the
shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like
manner they would only see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another,
would they not suppose that they were naming what was
actually before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo
which came from the other side, would they not be sure
to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice
which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, | said, the truth would be literally nothing but
the shadows of the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow
if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error.
At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled
suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk
and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the
glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the
realities of which in his former state he had seen the
shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him,
that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now,
when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is
turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer
vision—what will be his reply? And you may further
imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as
they pass and requiring him to name them—will he not
be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which
he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now
shown to him?
Far truer.
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will
he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn
away to take refuge in the objects of vision which he can
see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer
than the things which are now being shown to him?
True, he said.
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged
up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is
forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not
likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches
the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able
to see anything at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the
upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next
the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and
then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the
light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven;
and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than
the sun or the light of the sun by day?
Certainly.
Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere
reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his
own proper place, and not in another; and he will
contemplate him as he is.
Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives
the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that
is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of
all things which he and his fellows have been
accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then
reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the
wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not
suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change,
and pity them?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours
among themselves on those who were quickest to
observe the passing shadows and to remark which of
them went before, and which followed after, and which
were together; and who were therefore best able to draw
conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would
care for such honours and glories, or envy the possessors
of them? Would he not say with Homer,
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to
endure anything, rather than think as they do and live
after their manner?
Yes, he said, | think that he would rather suffer
anything than entertain these false notions and live in
this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, | said, such an one coming
suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old
situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of
darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in
measuring the shadow's with the prisoners who had
never moved out of the den, while his sight was still
weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the
time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of
sight might be very considerable), would he not be
ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and
down he came without his eyes; and that it was better
not even to think of ascending; and if anyone tried to
loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only
catch the offender, and they would put him to Death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, | said, you may now append, dear
Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is
the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you
will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey
upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual
world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, |
have expressed—whether rightly or wrongly God knows.
But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world
of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is
seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred
to be the universal author of all things beautiful and
right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible
world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in
the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he
who would act rationally either in public or private life
must have his eye fixed.
| agree, he said, as far as | am able to understand you.
Moreover, | said, you must not wonder that those who
attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to
human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the
upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of
theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Plato, Republic, Vil, 514A
14 It is sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble its
waters, to behold from land another’s deep distress; not
that it is a pleasure and delight that any should be
afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils
you are yourself exempt. It is sweet also to look upon the
mighty struggles of war arrayed along the plains without
Sharing yourself in the danger. But nothing is more
welcome that to hold the lofty and serene positions well
fortified by the learning of the wise, from which you may
look down upon others and see them wandering all
abroad and going astray in their search for the path of
life, see the contest among them of intellect, the rivalry
of birth, the striving night and day with surpassing effort
to struggle up to the summit of power and be masters of
the world.
O miserable minds of menl O blinded breasts! in what
darkness of life and in how great dangers is passed this
term of life whatever its duration!
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
15 The man who is sick of home often issues forth from his
large mansion, and as suddenly comes back to it, finding
as he does that he is no better off abroad. He races to his
country-house, driving his Jennets in headlong haste, as if
hurrying to bring help to a house on fire: he yawns the
moment he has reached the door of his house, or sinks
heavily into sleep and seeks forgetfulness, or even in
haste goes back again to town. In this way each man flies
from himself (but self from whom, as you may be sure Is
commonly the case, he cannot escape, clings to him in
his own despite).
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
16 O mortals, blind in fate, who never know To bear high
fortune, or endure the low!
Virgil, Aeneid, X
17 He [Aemilius Paulus] began to discourse of fortune and
human affairs. "Is it meet," said he, "for him that knows
he is but man, in his greatest prosperity to pride himself,
and be exalted at the conquest of a city, nation, or
kingdom, and not, rather, well to weigh this change of
fortune, in which all warriors may see an example of their
common frailty, and learn a lesson that there is nothing
durable or constant? For what time can men select to
think themselves secure, when that of victory itself forces
us more than any to dread our own fortune? And a very
little consideration on the law of things, and how all are
hurried round, and each man’s station changed, will
introduce sadness in the midst of the greatest joy."
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus
18 Nothing is more intractable than man when in felicity,
nor anything more docile, when he has been reduced and
humbled by fortune.
Plutarch, Lucullus
19 Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give
them the appearance of a certain greatness and
stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon
the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises
itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster
and ill fortune.
Plutarch, Eumenes
20 Know you not that in the course of a long time many and
various kinds of things must happen; that a fever shall
overpower one, a robber another, and a third a tyrant?
Such is the condition of things around us, such are those
who live with us in the world: cold and heat, and
unsuitable ways of living, and journeys by land, and
voyages by sea, and winds, and various circumstances
which surround us, destroy one man, and banish another,
and throw one upon an embassy and another into an
army. Sit down, then, in a flutter at all these things,
lamenting, unhappy, unfortunate, dependent on another,
and dependent not on one or two, but on ten thousands
upon ten thousands.
Epictetus, Discourses, III, 24
21 Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in
a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of
the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a
whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid
of judgement. And, to say all in a word, everything which
belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the
soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a
stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Il, 17
22 To have contemplated human life for forty years is the
same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.
For what more wilt thou see?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 49
23 The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the
dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and
firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 61
24 Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and
sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle
as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied
incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and
lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not
the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic
man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on
this world stage which men have dotted with stages of
their own constructing. All this is the doing of man
knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, Il, 15
25 Another of the king’s chief men... presently added; "The
present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison
of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift
flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at
supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers,
and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and
snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, | say, flying in at one
door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within,
is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of
fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight,
into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this
life of man appears for a short space, but of what went
before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant."
Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Il, 13
26 O wretched lot of man, when he hath lost that for which
he was made! O hard and terrible fate! Alas, what has he
lost, and what has he found? What has departed, and
what remains? He has lost the blessedness for which he
was made, and has found the misery for which he was not
made. That has departed without which nothing is happy,
and that remains which, in itself, is only miserable. Man
once did eat the bread of angels, for which he hungers
now; he eateth now the bread of sorrows, of which he
knew not then. Alas! for the mourning of all mankind, for
the universal lamentation of the sons of Hades! He
choked with satiety, we sigh with hunger. He abounded,
we beg. He possessed in happiness, and miserably
forsook his possession; we suffer want in unhappiness
and feel a miserable longing, and alas! we remain empty.
Why did he not keep for us, when he could so easily,
that whose lack we should feel so heavily? Why did he
shut us away from the light, and cover us over with
darkness? With what purpose did he rob us of life, and
inflict death upon us? Wretches that we are, whence have
we been driven out; whither are we driven on? Whence
hurled? Whither consigned to ruin? From a native country
into exile, from the vision of God into our present
blindness, from the joy of immortality into the bitterness
and horror of death. Miserable exchange of how great a
good, for how great an evil! Heavy loss, heavy grief heavy
all our fate!
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, |
27 Man’s nature may be looked at in two ways: first, in its
integrity, as it was in our first parent before sin; secondly,
as it is corrupted in us after the sin of our first parent.
Now in both states human nature needs the help of God
as First Mover to do or will any good whatsoever.... But in
the state of integrity of nature, as regards the sufficiency
of the operative power, man by his natural endowments
could will and do the good proportionate to his nature,
such as the good of acquired virtue, but not surpassing
good, as the good of infused virtue. But in the state of
corrupt nature, man falls short even of what he could do
by his nature, so that he is unable to fulfil it by his own
natural powers. Yet because human nature is not
altogether corrupted by sin, so as to be shorn of every
natural good, even in the state of corrupted nature it can,
by virtue of its natural endowments, work some particular
good, as to build dwellings, plant vineyards, and the like;
yet it cannot do all the good natural to it, so as to fall
short in nothing, just as a sick man can of himself make
some movements, yet he cannot be perfectly moved with
the movements of one in health, unless by the help of
medicine he be cured.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |—11, 109, 2
28 Cacciaguida. Thou shalt abandon everything beloved
most dearly; this is the arrow which the bow of exile shall
first shoot.
Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste another's
bread, and how hard the path to descend and mount
upon another’s stair.
Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 55
29 He will be successful who directs his actions according to
the spirit of the times, and ... he whose actions do not
accord with the times will not be successful. Because men
are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man
has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by
various methods; one with caution, another with haste;
one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another
by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the
goal by a different method. One can also see of two
cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and
similarly, two men by different observances are equally
successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous;
all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they
conform in their methods to the spirit of the times.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXV
30 The world is like a drunken peasant. If you lift him into
the saddle on one side, he will fall off on the other side.
One can’t help him, no matter how one tries. He wants to
be the devil’s.
Luther, Table Talk, 630
31 Those who accuse men of always gaping after future
things, and teach us to lay hold of present goods and
settle ourselves in them, since we have no grip on what is
to come (indeed a good deal less than we have on what is
past), put their finger on the commonest of human errors
—if they dare to call an error something to which Nature
herself leads us in serving the continuation of her work,
and which, more zealous for our action than for our
knowledge, she imprints in us like many other false
notions. We are never at home, we are always beyond.
Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal
from us the feeling and consideration of what is, to busy
us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 3, Our Feelings Reach Out
32 It is pleasanter to laugh than to weep,... because it is
more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other;
and it seems to me that we can never be despised as
much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled
with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we
laugh at we consider worthless. | do not think there is as
much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as
stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are
not as wretched as we are worthless.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 50, Of Democritus and Heraclitus
33 We have as our Share inconstancy, irresolution,
uncertainty, grief, superstition, worry over things to
come, even after our life, ambition, avarice, jealousy,
envy, unruly, frantic, and untamable appetites, war,
falsehood, disloyalty, detraction, and curiosity. Indeed we
have strangely overpaid for this fine reason that we glory
in, and this capacity to judge and know, if we have
bought it at the price of this infinite number of passions
to which we are incessantly a prey.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
34 Alas, poor man! You have enough necessary ills without
increasing them by your invention, and you are miserable
enough by nature without being so by art. You have real
and essential deformities enough without forging
imaginary ones.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
35 We are great fools. "He has spent his life in idleness," we
say; "| have done nothing today." What, have you not
lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most
illustrious of your occupations. "If | had been placed ina
position to manage great affairs, | would have shown
what | could do." Have you been able to think out and
manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of
all. To show and exploit her resources Nature has no need
of fortune; she shows herself equally on all levels and
behind a curtain as well as without one. To compose our
character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win,
not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our
conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live
appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building,
are only little appendages and props, at most.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
36 What man that sees the ever-whirling wheele
Of Change, the which all mortall things doth sway.
But that therby doth find, and plainly feele,
How Mutability in them doth play Her cruell sports, to
many mens decay?
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Bk. VII, VI, 1
37 Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to day, to be put back to morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To have thy Princes grace, yet want her Peeres;
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres;
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires;
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend |
Spenser, Complaints: Motlier Hubberds Tale, 895
38 King Henry. O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as | do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point.
Thereby to see the minutes how they run.
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times:
So many hours must | tend my flock;
So many hours must | take my rest;
So many hours must | contemplate;
So many hours must | sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will can;
So many years ere | shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass’d over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Shakespeare, Ill Henry VI, Il, v, 21
39 Puch. Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, III, ti, 115
40 Lewis. There’s nothing in this world can make me joy:
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
Shakespeare, King John, Ill, iv, 107
41 Gratiano. You look not well, Signior Antonio;
You have too much respect upon the world:
They lose it that do buy it with much care:
Believe me, you are marvellously changed.
Antonio. | hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a Sad one.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, |, 73
42 Brutus. There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV, iii, 218
43 Duke. Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
Jaques. All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Il, vii, 136
44 Macbeth. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, v, 19
45 3rd Fisherman. Master, | marvel how the fishes live in the
Sea.
Ist Fisherman. Why, as men do a-land; the great ones
eat up the little ones. | can compare our rich misers to
nothing so fitly as to a whale; a' plays and tumbles,
driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them
all at a mouthful. Such whales have | heard on o’ the
land, who never leave gaping till they’ve swallowed the
whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all....
Pericles. [Aside] How from the finny subject of the sea
These fishers tell the infirmities of men;
And from their watery empire recollect
All that may men approve or men detect!
Shakespeare, Pericles, II, 1, 30
46 Prospero. Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As | foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, that great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Shakespeare, Tempest, IV, i, 148
47 Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth.
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
Shakespeare, Sonnet LX
48 Ah, but says Sancho, your strolling Emperor’s Crowns and
Sceptres are not of pure Gold, but Tinsel and Copper. |
grant it, said Don Quixote; nor is it fit the Decorations of
the Stage should be real, but rather Imitations, and the
Resemblance of Realities, as the Plays themselves must
be; which, by the way, | wou’d have you love and esteem,
Sancho, and consequently those that write, and also
those that act ’em; for they are all instrumental to the
Good of the Commonwealth, and set before our Eyes
those Looking-glasses that reflect a lively Representation
of human Life; nothing being able to give us a more just
Idea of Nature, and what we are or ought to be, than
Comedians and Comedies. Prithee tell me, Hast thou
never seen a Play acted, where Kings, Emperors, Prelates,
Knights, Ladies, and other Characters, are introduced on
the Stage? One acts a Ruffian, another a Soldier; this Man
a Cheat, and that a Merchant; one plays a designing Fool,
and another a foolish Lover: But the Play done, and the
Actors undress’d, they are all equal, and as they were
before. All this | have seen, quoth Sancho. Just such a
Comedy, said Don Quixote is acted on the great Stage of
the World, where some play the Emperors, others the
Prelates, and, in short, all the Parts that can be brought
into a Dramatick Piece; till Death, which is the
Catastrophe and End of the Action, strips the Actors of all
their Marks of Distinction, and levels their Quality in the
Grave. A rare Comparison, quoth Sancho, though not so
new, but that | have heard it over and over. Just such
another is that of a Game at Chess, where while the Play
lasts, every Piece has its particular Office; but when the
Game’s over, they are all mingl’d and huddled together,
and clapp’d into a Bag, just as when Life’s ended we are
laid up in the Grave. Truly, Sancho, said Don thy
Simplicity lessens, and thy Sense improves every Day.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 12
49 If aman meditate much upon the universal frame of
nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of
souls except) will not seem much other than an anthill,
whereas some ants carry corn, and some carry their
young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little
heap of dust.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, VIII, 1
50 Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war,
where every man is enemy to every man, the same is
consequent to the time wherein men live without other
security than what their own strength and their own
invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition
there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is
uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no
navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be
imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as
require much force; no knowledge of the face of the
earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society;
and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of
violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 13
51 For the laws of nature, ns justice, equity, modesty, mercy,
and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of
themselves, without the terror of some power to cause
them to be observed, are contrary to our natural
passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and
the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words
and of no strength to secure a man at all. Therefore,
notwithstanding the la%vs of nature (which every one
hath then kept, when he has the will to keep them, when
he can do it safely), if there be no power erected, or not
great enough for our security, every man will and may
lawfully rely on his owm strength and art for caution
against all other men. And in all places, where men have
lived by small families, to rob and spoil one another has
been a trade, and so far from being reputed against the
law of nature that the greater spoils they gained, the
greater was their honour; and men observed no other
laws therein but the laws of honour; that is, to abstain
from cruelty, leaving to men their lives and instruments
of husbandry. And as small families did then; so now do
cities and kingdoms, which are but greater families (for
their own security), enlarge their dominions upon all
pretences of danger, and fear of invasion, or assistance
that may be given to invaders; endeavour as much as
they can to subdue or weaken their neighbours by open
force, and secret arts, for want of other caution, justly;
and are remembered for it in after ages with honour.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 17
52 For the World, | count it not an Inn, but an Hospital; and a
place not to live, but to die in.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Il, 11
53 When | have occasionally set myself to consider the
different distractions of men, the pains and perils to
which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence
arise SO many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad
ventures, etc., | have discovered that all the unhappiness
of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay
quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to
live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home,
would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A
commission in the army would not be bought so dearly,
but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the
town; and men only seek conversation and entering
games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at
home.
But, on further consideration, when, after finding the
cause of all our ills, 1 have sought to discover the reason
of it, | have found that there is one very real reason,
namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal
condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when
we think of it closely.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 139
54 Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all
condemned to death, where some are killed each day in
the sight of the others, and those who remain see their
own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn,
looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is
an image of the condition of men.
Pascal, Pensées, Ill, 199
55 The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the
play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head,
and that is the end forever.
Pascal, Pensées, I/I|, 210
56 As | walked through the wilderness of this world, | lighted
on a certain place where was a Den, and | laid me down in
that place to sleep; and, as | slept, | dreamed a dream. |
dreamed, and behold | saw a man clothed with rags,
standing in a certain place, with his face from his own
house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his
back. ... | looked and saw him open the book and read
therein; and, as he read, he wept, and trembled; and not
being able longer to contain, he brake out with a
lamentable cry, saying, "What shall | do?"...
Now | saw, upon a time, when he was walking in the
fields, that he was (as he was wont) reading in this book,
and greatly distressed in his mind; and as he read, he
burst out, as he had done before, crying, "What shall | do
to be saved?"
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, |
57 Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law,
Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier play-thing gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage;
And beads and pray’r-books are the toys of age:
Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tir’d he sleeps, and Life’s poor play is o’er!
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 275
58 It is universally acknowledged that there is a great
uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and
ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its
principles and operations. The same motives always
produce the same actions: The same events follow from
the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity,
friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions,
mixed in various degrees, and distributed through
society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and
still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises,
which have ever been observed among mankind.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 65
59 We are placed in this world, as in a great theatre, where
the true springs and causes of every event are entirely
concealed from us; nor have we either sufficient wisdom
to foresee, or power to prevent, those ills with which we
are continually threatened. We hang in perpetual
suspense between life and death, health and sickness,
plenty and want, which are distributed amongst the
human species by secret and unknown causes, whose
operation is oft unexpected, and always unaccountable.
Hume, Natural History of Religion, III
60 1 live in a constant endeavour to fence against the
infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth;
being firmly persuaded that ever>' time a man smiles,—
but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to
this Fragment of Life.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Dedication
61 What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side reside?
—from sorrow to sorrow?—to button up one cause of
vexation—and unbutton another?
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, IV, 31
62 "Do you believe," said Candide, "that mankind have
always been cutting one another’s throats; that they were
always liars, knaves, treacherous and ungrateful; always
thieves, sharpers, highwaymen, lazy, envious and
gluttons; always drunkards, misers, ambitious and blood-
thirsty; always backbiters, debauchees, fanatics,
hypocrites and fools?" "Do you not believe," said Martin,
"that hawks have always preyed upon pigeons, when
they could light upon them?"
Voltaire, Candide, XXI
63
64
"| [The Old Woman] want to know which is the worst;—to
be ravished an hundred times by negro pirates, to run the
gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and
hanged, to be dissected, to row in the galleys; in a word,
to have suffered all the miseries we have undergone, or
to stay here, without doing anything?" "That is a great
question," said Candide.
Voltaire, Candide, XXX
"Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the
only way to render life supportable."
All their little society entered into this laudable
design, according to their different abilities. Their little
piece of ground produced a plentiful crop. Cunegonde
was indeed very homely, but she became an excellent
pastry cook. Paquetta worked at embroidery and the old
woman took care of the linen. There was no idle person in
the company, not excepting even Girofflee; he made a
very good carpenter, and became a very honest man.
As to Pangloss, he evidently had a lurking
consciousness that his theory required unceasing
exertions, and all his ingenuity, to"sustain it. Yet he stuck
to it to the last; his thinking and talking faculties could
hardly be diverted from it for a moment. He seized every
occasion to say to Candide, "All the events in this best of
possible worlds are admirably connected. H a single link
in the great chain were omitted, the harmony of the
entire universe would be destroyed. If you had not been
expelled from that beautiful castle, with those cruel kicks,
for your love to Miss Cunegonde; if you had not been
imprisoned by the inquisition; if you had not travelled
over a great portion of America on foot; if you had not
plunged your sword through the baron; if you had not
lost all the sheep you brought from that fine country’,
Eldorado, together with the riches with which they were
laden, you would not be here to-day, eating preserved
citrons, and pistachio nuts."
"That’s very' well said, and may all be true," said
Candide; "but let’s cultivate our garden."
Voltaire, Candide, XXX
65 It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in
which he is within his mother’s womb, and the pure
animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the
state when the maturity of the reason begins to appear. It
has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his
structure. It would need eternity to learn something
about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: General Reflection on
Man
66 "They are surely happy," said the prince, "who have all
these conveniencies, of which | envy none so much as the
facility with which separated friends interchange their
thoughts,"
“The Europeans," answered Imlac, "are less unhappy
than we, but they are not happy. Human life is
everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and
little to be enjoyed."
Johnson, Rasselas, XI
67 Johnson. We would all be idle if we could.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 3, 1776)
68 For though management and persuasion are always the
easiest and the safest instruments of governments, as
force and violence are the worst and the most dangerous,
yet such, it seems, is the natural insolence of man that he
almost always disdains to use the good instrument,
except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
69 There are two very natural propensities which we may
distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions,
the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is
refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of
social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to
economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of
the greatest part of the happiness of private life. The love
of action is a principle of a much stronger and move
doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition, and
to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of
propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of
every' virtue, and, if those virtues are accompanied with
equal abilities, a family, a state, or an empire may be
indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted
courage of a single man. To the love of pleasure we may
therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of
action we may attribute most of the useful and
respectable, qualifications. The character in which both
the one and the other should be united and harmonised
would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human
nature.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
70 In the fall and the sack of great cities an historian is
condemned to repeat the talc of uniform calamity: the
same effects must be produced by the same passions;
and when those passions may be indulged without
control, small, alas! is the difference between civilised
and savage man.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LXVIII
71 1 think | may fairly make two postulata.
First, that food is necessary to the existence of man.
Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is
necessary and will remain nearly in its present state.
These two laws, ever since we have had any
knowledge of mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of
our nature, and, as we have not hitherto seen any
alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that
they will ever cease to be what they now are without an
immediate act of power in that Being who first arranged
the system of the universe, and for the advantage of his
creatures, still executes, according to fixed laws, all its
various operations...
Assuming then, my postulata is granted, | say that the
power of population is indefinitely grater than the power
in the earth to produce substinance for man.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a
geometrical ration. A slight acquaintance with numbers
will show the immensity of the first power in comparison
of the second.
By the law of our nature which makes food necessary
to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal
powers must be kept equal.
This implies a strong and constantly operating check
on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This
difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be
severely felt by a large portion of mankind.
Trough the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature
has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most
profuse and liberal hand. She has been comparatively
Sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to
rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot
of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in,
would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few
thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all-pervading
law of nature , restrains them within the prescribed
bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink
under the great restrictive law. And the race of man
cannot, by any efforts or reason, escape from it. Among
plants and animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness,
and premature death; among mankind, misery and vice.
The former, misery, is an absolutely necessary
consequence of it. Vice is a highly probable consequence,
and we therefore see it abundantly prevail, but it ought
not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely necessary
consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all
temptations of evil.
The natural inequality of the two powers of population
and or production in the earth and that great law of our
nature which must constantly keep their effects equal
from the great difficulty that to me appears
insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
All other arguments are of slight and subordinate
consideration in comparison to this. | see no way by
which man can escape from weight of this law, which
pervades all animated nature. No fancied equality, no
agrarian regulations in the utmost extent, could remove
the pressure of it even for a single century. And it
appears, therefore, to be decisive against the possible
existence of a society all the members of which should
live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure, and feel
no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence for
themselves and families.
Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is
conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of
mankind
Malthus, Population, |
72 Oswald. Action is transitory - a step, a blow
The motion of a muscle - this way or that -
‘Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.
Wordsworth, The Borderers, III, 405
73 Mr. Bennet. For what do we live, but to make sport for our
neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, LVI
74 Demogorgon. To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, not falter, nor repent;
This, like the glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
Shelly, Prometheus Unbound, IV, 570
75 Human life must be some kind of mistake.
Schopenhauer, Vanity of Existence
76 If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and,
in particular, the generations of men as they live their
little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in
rapid succession; if we turn from this , and look at life in
its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how
ridiculous it all seems! It is like a drop of water seen
trough a microscope, a single drop teeming with
infusoria, or speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the
naked eye. How we laugh as they bustle about so
eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space!
And whether here, or in the little soan of human life, this
terrible activity produces a cosmic effect.
Schopenhauer, Vanity of Existence
77 Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to haunt him:
one age he is hagridden, bewitched; the next,
priestridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. And now
the Genius of Mechanism smothers him worse than any
Nightmare did; till the Soul in nigh chocked out of him,
and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains.
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Ill, 3
78 Like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge
from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished
Earth; then plunge again into the Inane
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Ill, 8
79 In the hour of death the only adequate consolation is that
one has not evaded life, but has endured it. What a man
Shall accomplish or not accomplish, does not lie in his
power to decide; he is not the One who will guide the
world; he has only to obey. Everyone has, therefore, first
and foremost (instead of asking which place is most
comfortable for him, which connection is the most
advantageous to him), to assure himself on the question
of where Providence can use him, if it so pleases
Providence. The point consists precisely in loving his
neighbor, or, what is essentially the same thing, in living
equally for every man. Every other point of view is a
contentious one, however advantageous and comfortable
and apparently significant this position may be.
Providence cannot use one who has placed himself there,
for he is plainly in rebellion against Providence. But he
who duly took that overlooked, that despised and
disdained place, without insisting on his earthly rights,
without attaching himself to just one single man,
essentially existing equally for all men, he will, even
though he apparently achieves nothing, even if he
becomes exposed to the derision of the poor, or to the
ridicule of his superiors, or to both insult and ridicule, yet
in the hour of death, he will confidently dare say to his
soul: "| have done my best; whether | have accomplished
anything, | do not know; whether | have helped anyone, |
do not know; but that | have lived for them, that | do
know, | know it from the fact that they insulted me. And
this is my consolation, that | shall not have to take the
secret with me to the grave, that |, in order to have good
and undisturbed and comfortable days in life, have
denied my kinship to other men, kinship with the poor, in
order to live in aristocratic seclusion, or with the
distinguished, in order to live in secret obscurity,"
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, I, 2C
80 Life is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and
chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and
dangerous front.
Emerson, Heroism
81 Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life.
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes.
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood.
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Tennyson, In Memoriam, CVI
82 There are certain queer times and occasions in this
strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this
whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit
thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects
that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth
while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and
beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and
invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent
digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for
small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden
disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself,
seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly
punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and
unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood |
am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of
extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his
earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed
to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of
the general joke.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLIX
83 Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded
creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most
part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints
of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty
of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty
embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider,
once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all
whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on
eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle,
and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and
the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to
something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there
lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but
encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life.
God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst
never return!
Melville, Moby Dick, LVIII
84 All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with
halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in
the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realise the
silent, subtle, everpresent perils of life.
Melville, Moby Dick, LX
85 Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us
that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies
we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon
clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a
superfluous and evitable 'wretchedness. Our life is
frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need
to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he
may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity! | say, let your affairs be as two or
three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a
million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on
your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of
civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and
quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed
for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go
to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead
reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who
succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Thoreau, Walden: Where | Lived, and What | Lived For
86 Why | left the woods? | do not think that | can tell..
Perhaps it is none of my business, even if it is yours...
There was a little stagnation, it may be. About two o’clock
in the afternoon the world’s axle creaked as if it needed
greasing... Perhaps if | lived there much longer, | might
live there forever. One would think twice before he
accepted heaven on such terms. A ticket to Heaven must
include tickets to Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell.
Thoreau, Journal {1851)
87 We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illuminated Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checkerboard of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slap.
And one by one back in the Closet lap.
FitzGerald, Rubdiyat, LXVIII-LXIX
88 Ah, Love! could you and | with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry’ Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!
FitzGerald, Rubdiyat, XCIX
89 It is a very plain and elementary’ truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more
or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend
upon our knowing something of the rules of a game.. .. It
is agame which has been played for untold ages, every’
man and woman of us being one of the two players in a
game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the
pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of
the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player
on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his
play is not fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our
cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the
smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays
well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of
overflowing generosity with which the strong shoe’s
delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated
—without haste, but without remorse.
T. H. Huxley, A Liberal Education
90 There are three material things, not only useful, but
essential to life. No one "Knows how to live" till he has got
them.
These are pure air, water, and earth.
There are three immaterial things, not only useful, but
essential to life. No one knows how to live till he has got
them also.
These are admiration, hope, and love.
Admiration—the power of discerning and taking
delight in what is beautiful in visible form and lovely in
human character; and, necessarily, striving to produce
what is beautiful in form and to become what is lovely in
character.
Hope—the recognition, by true foresight, of better
things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or
others; necessarily issuing in the straightforward and
undisappointable effort to advance, according to our
proper power, the gaining of them.
Love—both of family and neighbour, faithful and
satisfied.
Ruskin, An Idealist's Arraignment of the Age
91 Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Arnold, Dover Beach
92 As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much
more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we
ourselves are, too.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, |, 1
93 Tom Sawyer. There’s plenty of boys that will come
hankering and gruvvelling around when you’ve got an
apple, and beg the core off you; but when they've got
one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you
give them a core one time, they make a mouth at you
and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain’t-a-going
to be no core.
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, |
94 Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad
falseness in those who will beyond their power.
Especially when they will great things! For they
awaken distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners
and stageplayers;—
—Until at last they are false towards themselves,
squint-eyed, whited cankers, glossed over with strong
words, parade virtues and brilliant false deeds.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, IV, 73
95 If my reader can succeed in abstracting from all
conceptual interpretation and lapse back into his
immediate sensible life at this very moment, he will find
it to be what someone has called a big blooming buzzing
confusion, as free from contradiction in its ‘much-at-
onceness' as it is all alive and evidently there.
William James, Some Problems of Philosophy, IV
96 Who can decide offhand which is absolutely better, to
live or to understand life? We must do both alternately,
and aman can no more limit himself to either than a pair
of scissors can cut with a single one of its blades.
William James, Some Problems of Philosophy, IV
97 Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love,
who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but ...
a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be
reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. The
result is that their neighbour is to them not only a
possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to
them to gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his
capacity for work without recompense, to use him
sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to
humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him.
Homo homini lupus; who has the courage to dispute it in
the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history?
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, V
98 Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is
given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors,
between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.
When forced to recognize that the extremes cannot be
acted upon, it is still inclined to hold that they are all
right in theory but that when it comes to practical
matters circumstances compel us to compromise.
Dewey, Experience and Education, |
99 Happiness Is the only sanction of life; where happiness
fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable
experiment.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 10
100 That life is worth living is the most necessary of
assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most
impossible of conclusions.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 10
101 Between the laughing and the weeping philosopher
there is no opposition: the same facts that make one
laugh make one weep. No whole-hearted man, no sane
art, can be limited to either mood.
Santayana, Persons and Places, X
102 Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to
live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honour
is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit
with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.
Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, |
1.3 The Ages of Man
YOUNG AND OLD
The quotations assembled here fall into two groups; on the
one hand, statements about the general course of human
life from birth to death—its various stages or periods and its
developmental pattern; on the other hand, considerations of
the differences between youth and age—the advantages
and disadvantages of each, as well as the contrasts and
conflicts between them.
Different writers enumerate and characterize the stages
of human life differently, but they all appear to agree about
the general pattern of human development—its cycle of
growth and decline. Each of the main periods of human life
has its defenders and its detractors—those who praise the
innocence, exuberance, and joy of infancy and childhood
and those who condemn the savagery and self-indulgence of
the young; those who admire the full-bloom of human
maturity, the calm of old age, the wisdom gained with years;
and those who paint the opposite picture of crotchety and
crabbed inflexibility in the aged, verging on the frailties and
ineptitudes of the senile. A few quotations express the view
that the best of human life lies in the middle years between
youth and age.
Quotations on other aspects of the varying relationships
between the young and the old will be found in Section 2.2
on Parents and Children.
1 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend
our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are three-score years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet
is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off,
and we fly away.
Psalm 90:9-10
2 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart
cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways
of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know
thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment.
Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away
evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.
Ecclesiastes 11:9-10
3 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while
the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when
thou shall say, | have no pleasure in them;
While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars,
be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
In the day when the keepers of the house shall
tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and
the grinders cease because they are few, and those that
look out of the windows be darkened.
And the doors shall be shut in ,the streets, when the
sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the
voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be
brought low;
Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high,
and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall
flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and
desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home,
and the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl
be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the
wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and
the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:1—7
4 Priam. For a young man all is decorous when he is cut
down in battle and torn with the sharp bronze, and lies
there
dead, and though dead still all that shows about him is
beautiful;
but when an old man is dead and down, and the dogs
mutilate
the grey head and the grey beard and the parts that are
secret,
this, for all sad mortality, is the sight most pitiful.
Homer, Iliad, XXII, 71
5 Penelope. Men grow old soon in hardship.
Homer, Odyssey, XIX, 361
6 Odysseus.
"My strange one,
must you again, and even now,
urge me to talk? Here is a plodding tale;
no charm in it, no relish in the telling.
Teiresias told me | must take an oar
and trudge the mainland, going from town to town,
until | discover men who have never known
the salt blue sea, nor flavor of salt meat—
strangers to painted prows, to watercraft
and oars like wings, dipping across the water.
The moment of revelation he foretold
was this, for you may share the prophecy:
some traveller falling in with me will say:
‘A winnowing fan, that on your shoulder, sir?’
There | must plant my oar, on the very spot,
with burnt offerings to Poseidon of the Waters:
a ram, a bull, a great buck boar. Thereafter
when | come home again, | am to slay
full hekatombs to the gods who own broad heaven,
one by one.
Then death will drift upon me
from seaward, mild as air, mild as your hand,
in my well-tended weariness of age,
contented folk around me on our island.
He said all this must come."
Penelope said:
"If by the gods' grace age at least is kind, we have
that promise—trials will end in peace."
Homer, Odyssey, XXIII, 264
7 Chorus. Since the young vigor that urges
inward to the heart
is frail as age, no warcraft yet perfect,
while beyond age, leaf
withered, man goes three footed
no stronger than a child is,
a dream that falters in daylight.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 76
8 Chorus.
Though he has watched a decent age pass by.
A man will sometimes still desire the world.
| swear | see no wisdom in that man.
The endless hours pile up a drift of pain
More unrelieved each day; and as for pleasure,
When he is sunken in excessive age,
You will not see his pleasure anywhere.
The last attendant is the same for all,
Old men and young alike, as in its season
Man's heritage of underworld appears:
There being then no epithalamion.
No music and no dance. Death is the finish.
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1211
9 Chorus.
The feathery follies of his youth once over,
What trouble is beyond the range of man?
What heavy burden will he not endure?
Jealousy, faction, quarreling, and battle—
The bloodiness of war, the grief of war.
And in the end he comes to strengthless age,
Abhorred by all men, without company,
Unfriended in that uttermost twilight
Where he must live with every bitter thing.
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1230
10 Dei/anira. | see her youth is coming to full bloom while
mine is fading. The eyes of men love to pluck the
blossoms; from the faded flowers they turn away.
Sophocles, Women of Trachis, 547
11 Growing bodies have the most innate heat; they
therefore require the most food, for otherwise their bodies
are wasted. In old persons the heat is feeble, and
therefore they require little fuel, as it were, to the flame,
for it would be extinguished by much. On this account,
also, fevers in old persons are not equally acute, because
their bodies are cold.
Hippocrates, Aphorisms, |, 14
12 Old people, on the whole, have fewer complaints than
young; but those chronic diseases which do befall them
generally never leave them.
Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 11, 39
13 | [Socrates] replied: There is nothing which for my part |
like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for
| regard them as travellers who have gone a journey
which | too may have to go, and of whom | ought to
enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged
and difficult. And this is a question which | should like to
ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets
call the "threshold of old age"—Is life harder towards the
end, or what report do you give of it?
| will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling
is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a
feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the
tale of my acquaintance commonly is—I cannot eat, |
cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled
away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone,
and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights
which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell
you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause.
But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame
that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the
cause, | too being old, and every other old man, would
have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience,
nor that of others whom | have known. How well |
remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to
the question. How does love suit with age, Sophocles—
are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most
gladly have | escaped the thing of which you speak; | feel
as if | had escaped from a mad and furious master. His
words have often occurred to my mind since, and they
seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered
them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and
freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as
Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one
mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that
these regrets, and also the complaints about relations,
are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old
age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a
calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of
age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth
and age are equally a burden.
Plato, Republic, |, 328B
14 Socrates. In youth good men often appear to be simple,
and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because
they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 409A
15 Athenian Stranger. Where old men have no shame, there
young men will most certainly be devoid of reverence.
The best way of training the young is to train yourself at
the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always
carrying out your own admonitions in practice.
Plato, Laws V, 729A
16 A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on
political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions
that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and
are about these; and further, since he tends to follow his
passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because
the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it
makes no difference whether he is young in years or
youthful in character; The defect does not depend on
time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive
object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the
incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who
desire and act in accordance with a rational principle
knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1095a2
17 The friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure;
for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue
above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is
immediately before them.... This is why they quickly
become friends and quickly cease to be so; their
friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant,
and such pleasure alters quickly. Young people are
amorous too; for the greater part of the friendship of love
depends on emotion and aims at pleasure; this is why
they fall in love and quickly fall out of love, changing
often within a single day. But these people do wish to
spend their days and lives together; for it is thus that
they attain the purpose of their friendship.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1156a32
18 Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify
them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the
sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they
show absence of self-control. They are changeable and
fickle in their desires, which are violent while they last,
but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep-
rooted, and are like sick people’s attacks of hunger and
thirst. They are hot-tempered, and quick-tempered, and
apt to give way to their anger; bad temper often gets the
better of them, for owing to their love of honour they
cannot bear being slighted, and are indignant if they
imagine themselves unfairly treated. While they love
honour, they love victory still more; for youth is eager for
superiority over others, and victory is one form of this.
They love both more than they love money, which indeed
they love very little, not having yet learnt what it means
to be without it... They look at the good side rather than
the bad, not having yet witnessed many instances of
wickedness. They trust others readily, because they have
not yet often been cheated. They are sanguine; nature
warms their blood as though with excess of wine; and
besides that, they have as yet met with few
disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in
memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the
future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future
before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of
one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can
only look forward. They are easily cheated, owing to the
Sanguine disposition just mentioned. Their hot tempers
and hopeful dispositions make them more courageous
than older men are; the hot temper prevents fear, and
the hopeful disposition creates confidence; we cannot
feel fear so long as we are feeling angry, and any
expectation of good makes us confident. They are shy,
accepting the rules of society in which they have been
trained, and not yet believing in any other standard of
honour. They have exalted notions, because they have
not yet been humbled by life or learnt its necessary
limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes
them think themselves equal to great things—and that
means having exalted notions. They w'ould always rather
do noble deeds than useful ones; their lives are regulated
more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas
reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral
goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are
fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than
older men are, because they like spending their days in
the company of others, and have not yet come to value
either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to
themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of
doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey
Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too
much and hate too much, and the same thing with
everything else. They think they know everything, and
are always quite sure about it; this, in fact, is why they
overdo everything. If they do wrong to others, it is
because they mean to insult them, not to do them actual
harm. They are ready to pity others, because they think
every one an honest man, or anyhow better than he is:
they judge their neighbour by their own harmless
natures, and so cannot think he deserves to be treated in
that way. They are fond of fun and therefore witty, wit
being well-bred insolence.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1389a3
19 Elderly Men... have lived many years; they have often
been taken in, and often made mistakes; and life on the
whole is a bad business. The result is that they are sure
about nothing and under-do everything. They 'think' but
they never ‘know’; and because of their hesitation they
always add a ‘possibly’ or a ‘perhaps’, putting everything
this way and nothing positively. They are cynical; that is,
they tend to put the worse construction on everything.
Further, their experience makes them distrustful and
therefore suspicious of evil. Consequently they neither
love warmly nor hate bitterly, but... love as though they
will some day hate and hate as though they will some
day love. They are small-minded, because they have
been humbled by life: their desires are set upon nothing
more exalted or unusual than what will help them to keep
alive. They are not generous, because money is one of
the things they must have, and at the same lime their
experience has taught them how hard it is to get and how
easy to lose. They are cowardly, and are always
anticipating danger; unlike that of the young, who are
warm-blooded, their temperament is chilly; old age has
paved the way for cowardice; fear is, in fact, a form of
chill. They love life; and all the more when their last day
has come... . They are too fond of themselves; this is one
form that small-mindedness takes. Because of this, they
guide their lives too much by considerations of what is
useful and too little by what is noble—for the useful is
what is good for oneself, and the noble what is good
absolutely. They are not shy, but shameless rather; caring
less for what is noble than for what is useful, they feel
contempt for what people may think of them. They lack
confidence in the future; partly through experience—for
most things go wrong, or anyhow turn out worse than one
expects; and partly because of their cowardice. They live
by memory rather than by hope; for what is left to them
of life is but little as compared with the long past; and
hope is of the future, memory of the past. This, again, is
the cause of their loquacity; they are continually talking
of the past, because they enjoy remembering it. Their fits
of anger are sudden but feeble. Their sensual passions
have either altogether gone or have lost their vigour:
consequently they do not feel their passions much, and
their actions are inspired less by what they do feel than
by the love of gain. Hence men at this time of life are
often supposed to have a self-controlled character; the
fact is that their passions have slackened, and they are
Slaves to the love of gain. They guide their lives by
reasoning more than by moral feeling; reasoning being
directed to utility and moral feeling to moral goodness. If
they wrong others, they mean to injure them, not to
insult them. Old men may feel pity, as well as young
men, but not for the same reason. Young men feel it out
of kindness; old men out of weakness, imagining that
anything that befalls any one else might easily happen to
them... , Hence they are querulous, and not dissposed to
jesting or laughter — the love of laughter being; the very
opposite of querulousness.
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389b13
20 As for Men in their Prime, clearly we shall find that they
have a character between that of the young and that o!
the old, free from the extremes of either. They have
neither that excess of confidence which amounts to
rashness, nor too much timidity, but the right amount of
each. They neither trust everybody nor distrust
everybody, but judge people correctly. Their lives will be
guided not by the sole consideration either of what is
noble or of what is useful, but by both; neither by
parsimony nor by prodigality, but by what is fit and
proper. So, too, in regard to anger and desire; they will be
brave as well as temperate, and temperate as well as
brave; these virtues are divided between the young and
the old; the young are brave but intemperate, the old
temperate but cowardly. To put it generally, all the
valuable qualities that youth and age divide between
them are united in the prime of life, while all their
excesses or defects are replaced by moderation and
fitness. The body is in its prime from thirty to five-and-
thirty; the mind about forty-nine.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1390a28
21 Cato. The great affairs of life are not performed by
physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but
by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these
old age is not only not deprived, but, as a rule, has them
in a greater degree.
Cicero, Old Age, VI
22 Cato. The course of life is fixed, and nature admits of its
being run but in one way, and only once; and to each
part of our life there is something specially seasonable;
so that the feebleness of children, as well as the high
Spirit of youth, the soberness of maturer years, and the
ripe wisdom of old age—all have a certain natural
advantage which should be secured in its proper season.
Cicero, Old Age, X
23 Cato. The fact is that old age is respectable just as long
as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not
enslaved to any one. For as | admire a young man who
has something of the old man in him, so do! an old one
who has something of a young man. The man who aims
at this may possibly become old in body—in mind he
never will.
Cicero, Old Age, XI
24 "Perhaps you may of Priam’s fate enquire.
He, when he saw his regal town on fire.
His ruin’d palace, and his ent’ring foes,
On ev'ry side inevitable woes.
In arms, disus’d, invests his limbs, decay’d.
Like them, with age; a late and useless aid.
His feeble shoulders scarce the weight sustain;
Loaded, not arm’d, he creeps along with pain.
Despairing of success, ambitious to be slain!
Uncover’d but by heav’n, there stood in view
An altar; near the hearth a laurel grew.
Dodder’d with age, whose boughs encompass round
The household gods, and shade the holy ground.
Here Hecuba, with all her helpless train
Of dames, for shelter sought, but sought in vain.
Driv’n like a flock of doves along the sky,
Their images they hug, and to their altars fly.
The Queen, when she beheld her trembling lord,
And hanging by his side a heavy sword,
‘What rage,’ she cried, ‘has seiz’d my husband’s mind?
What arms are these, and to what use design’d?
These times want other aids! Were Hector here,
Ev’n Hector now in vain, like Priam, would appear.
With us, one common shelter thou shalt find.
Or in one common fate with us be join’d.'
She said, and with a last salute embrac’d
The poor old man, and by the laurel plac’d.
Virgil, Aeneid, II
25 We should cherish old age and enjoy it. It is full of
pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit tastes most
delicious just when its season is ending. The charms of
youth are at their greatest at the time of its passing. It is
the final glass which pleases the inveterate drinker, the
one that sets the crowning touch on his intoxication and
sends him off into oblivion. Every pleasure defers till its
last its greatest delights. The time of life which offers the
greatest delight is the age that sees the downward
movement—not the steep decline—already begun; and in
my opinion even the age that stands on the brink has
pleasures of its own—or else the very fact of not
experiencing the want of any pleasures takes their place.
How nice it is to have outworn one’s desires and left them
behind!
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 12
26 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying.
Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in
the midst of them,
And said, Verily | say unto you. Except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little
child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my
name receiveth me.
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the
depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:1-6
27 Verily, verily, | say unto thee, When thou wast young,
thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest:
but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy
hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee
whither thou wouldest not.
John 21:18
28 How are you desirous at the same time to live to old age,
and at the same time not to see the death of any person
whom you love?
Epictetus, Discourses, I/l, 24
29 The innocence of children is in the helplessness of their
bodies rather than any quality in their minds. | have
myself seen a small baby jealous; it was too young to
speak, but it was livid with anger as it watched another
infant at the breast.
There is nothing unusual in this. Mothers and nurses
will tell you that they have their own way of curing these
fits of jealousy. But at any rate it is an odd kind of
innocence when a baby cannot bear that another—in
great need, since upon that one food his very life
depends—should share the milk that flows in such
abundance. These childish tempers are borne with
lightly, not because they are not faults, or only small
faults; but because they will pass with the years. This is
clearly so: for though we bear with them now, the same
things would not be tolerated in an older person.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 7
30 Lord, | do not remember living this age of my infancy; |
must take the word of others about it and can only
conjecture how | spent it—even if with a fair amount of
certainty—from watching others now in the same stage. |
am loth, indeed, to count it as part of the life | live in this
world. For it is buried in the darkness of the forgotten as
completely as the period earlier still that | soent in my
mother’s womb.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 7
31 Such is God’s mercy towards the vessels of mercy' which
He has prepared for glory that even the first age of man,
that is, infancy, which submits without any resistance to
the flesh, and which has not yet understanding enough
to undertake this warfare, and therefore yields to almost
every' vicious pleasure (because though this age has the
power of speech, and may therefore seem to have passed
infancy, the mind is still too weak to comprehend the
commandment), yet if either of these ages has received
the sacraments of the Mediator, then, although the
present life be immediately brought to an end, the child
having been translated from the power of darkness to the
kingdom of Christ, shall not only be saved from eternal
punishments, but shall not even suffer purgatorial
torments after death. For spiritual regeneration of itself
suffices to prevent any evil consequences resulting after
death from the connection with death which carnal
generation forms. But when we reach that age which can
now comprehend the commandment, and submit to the
dominion of law, we must declare war upon vices and
wage this war keenly. lest we be landed in damnable sins.
And if Wees have not gathered strength, by habitual
victory they are more easily overcome and subdued; but
if they have been used to conquer and rule, if is only with
difficulty and labour they are mastered.
Augustine, of God, XXI, 16
32 Few indeed are they who are so happy as to have passed
their youth without committing any damnable sins, either
by dissolute or violent conduct, or by following some
godless and unlawful opinions.
Augustine, City of God, XXI, 16
33 Youth is a cause of hope for three reasons.... And these
three reasons may be gathered from the three conditions
of the good which is the object of hope—namely, that it is
future, arduous and possible.... For youth has much of the
future before it, and little of the past; and therefore since
memory' is of the past, and hope of the future, it has little
to remember and lives very much in hope. Again, youths,
on account of the heat of their nature, are full of spirit, so
that their heart expands, and it is owing to the heart
being expanded that one tends to that which is arduous;
therefore youths are spirited and hopeful. Likewise they
who have not suffered defeat, nor had experience of
obstacles to their efforts, are prone to count a thing
possible to them. Therefore youths, through inexperience
of obstacles and of their own shortcomings, easily count a
thing possible, and consequently are of good hope.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 40, 6
34 Human life is divided into four ages. The first is called
adolescence, that is, the ‘increasing’ of life. The second is
called ‘manhood,’ that is to say, the age of achievement,
which may give perfection, and in this sense it is itself
called perfect, because none can give aught save what
he hath. The third is called old age. The fourth is called
decrepitude...
As to the first, no one hesitates, but every sage agrees
that it lasts up to the twenty-fifth year; and because up to
that time our soul is chiefly intent on conferring growth
and beauty on the body, whence many and great
changes take place in the person, the rational part
cannot come to perfect discretion; wherefore Reason lays
down that before this age there are certain things a man
may not do without a guardian of full age.
As for the second, which is truly the summit of our life,
(here is great diversity concerning the period to be taken;
but passing over what philosophers and physicians have
written about it, and having recourse to my own
argumentation, | say that in the majority (on whom every'
judgment about a natural phenomenon may and should
be based) this age lasts twenty years. And the argument
which gives me this is that, if the apex of our arch is at
thirty-five, the age under discussion should have as long
a period of descent as it has of ascent; and this rising and
descending may be likened to the sustained height of the
arch wherein but slight bending is to be discerned. We
have it, then, that the prime of life is completed at the
forty-fifth year.
And as adolescence lasts twenty-five years, mounting
up to the prime of life, so the descent, that is, age, isa
like period, succeeding to the prime of life; and so age
ends at the seventieth year.
But inasmuch as adolescence (taking it as we have
done above) does not begin at the beginning of life, but
some eight months after, and inasmuch as our nature is
eager to rise and hangs back from descending (because
the natural heat is reduced and has small power, and the
humid is thickened, not in quantity but in quality, and so
is less easily evaporated and consumed) it comes to pass
that beyond old age there remains perhaps to the
amount of ten years of our life, or a little more or a little
less. And this period is called decrepitude. Whence we
have it of Plato—whom (both in the strength of his own
nature, and because of the physiognomiscope which
Socrates cast for him when first he saw him) we may
believe to have had the most excellent nature—that he
lived eighty-one years, as testifies Tully in that Of Old
Age. And | believe that if Christ had not been crucified
and had lived out the space which his life had power to
cover according to its nature, he would have been
changed at the eighty-first year from mortal body to
eternal.
Dante, Convivio, IV, 24
35 Pandar, Remember time is wasting every hour
Some share of all the beauty now we see,
And thus, ere age Shall all they charms devour,
Go love, for old, none will have aught of thee!
This saying may a lesson to you be,
‘It might have been,’ said Beauty, beauty past.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Il, 57
36 For true it is, age has great advantage;
Experience and wisdom come with age;
Men may the old out-run, but not out-wit.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Knight’s Tale
37 But! am old; | will nut play, for age;
Grass time is done, my fodder is rummage.
This white top advertises my old years,
My heart, too, is as mouldy as my hairs,
Unless | fare like medlar, all perverse.
For that fruit’s never ripe until it’s worse,
And falls among the refuse or in straw.
We ancient men, | fear, obey this law:
Until we’re rotten we cannot be ripe;
We dance, indeed, the while the world will pipe.
Desire sticks in our nature like a nail
To have, if hoary head, a verdant tail,
As has the leek; for though our strength be gone.
Our wish is yet for folly till life's done.
For when we may not act, then will we speak;
Yet in our ashes is there fire to reek
Four embers have we, which | shall confess:
Boasting and lying, anger, covetousness;
These four remaining sparks belong to eld.
Our ancient limbs may well be hard to wield.
But lust will never fail us, that is truth.
And yet | have had always a colt’s tooth.
As many years as now are past and done
Since first my tap of life began to run.
For certainly, when | was born, | know
Death turned my tap of life and let it flow;
And ever since that day the tap has run
Till nearly empty now is all the tun.
The stream of life now drips upon the chime;
The silly tongue may well ring out the time
Of wretchedness that passed so long before;
For oldsters, save for dotage, there’s no more.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Reeve’s Prologue
38 But Lord Christ! When | do remember me
Upon my youth and on my jollity,
It tickles me about my heart’s deep root.
To this day does my heart sing in salute
That | have had my world in my own time.
But age, alas! that poisons every prime,
Has taken away my beauty and my pith;
Let go, farewell, the devil go therewith!
The flour is gone, there is no more to tell,
The bran, as best | may, must | now sell;
But yet to be right merry I’Il try.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Prologue
39 And though your time of green youth flower as yet.
Age creeps in always, silent as a stone;
Death threatens every age, nor will forget
For any state, and there escapes him none:
And just as surely as we know, each one,
That we shall die, uncertain are we all
What day it is when death shall on us fall.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Clerk’s Tale
40 Young fellows are tempted by girls, men who are thirty
years old are tempted by gold, when they are forty years
old they are tempted by honor and glory% and those who
are sixty years old say to themselves, ‘What a pious man |
have become!’
Luther, Table Talke, 1601
41 Youth is impertinent. So we see lawyers who in their first
year are masters of all law’s, in their second year are
Justinians, in their third year are licentiates, in their
fourth year give formal opinions, and in their fifth year
finally become trembling students. This is the way a boy
acts in a bowling alley. First he expects to strike twelve
pins, then nine, then six, then three, and at last he’s
satisified with one, and probably misses the alley at that.
It would be a good thing if young people were wise and
old people were strong, but God has arranged things
better.
Luther, Table Talk, 4091
42 Gargantua, from three years upwards unto five, was
brought up and instructed in all convenient discipline, by
the commandment of his father; and spent that time like
the other little children of the country, that is, in drinking,
eating, and sleeping: in eating, sleeping, and drinking:
and in sleeping, drinking, and eating. Still he wallowed
and rolled himself up and down in the mire and dirt: he
blurred and sullied his nose with filth; he blotted and
smutched his face with any kind of scurvy and stuff; he
trod down his shoes in the heel; at the flies he did often
times yawm, and ran very heartily after the butterflies,
the empire whereof belonged to his father.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, 11
43 It is possible that in those who employ their time well,
knowledge and experience grow with living; but vivacity,
quickness, firmness, and other qualities much more our
own, more important and essential, wither and
languish.... Sometimes it is the body that first surrenders
to age, sometimes, too, it is the mind; and | have seen
enough whose brains were enfeebled before their
stomach and legs; and inasmuch as this is a malady
hardly perceptible to the sufferer and obscure in its
symptoms, it is all the more dangerous. For the time, |
complain of the laws, not that they leave us at work too
long, but that they set us to work too late. It seems to me
that considering the frailty of our life and how many
ordinary natural reefs it is exposed to, we should not allot
SO great a part of it to birth, idleness, and apprenticeship.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 57, Of Age
44 This fault of not being able to recognize oneself early and
not feeling the impotence and extreme alteration that
age naturally brings to both body and soul, and in my
opinion equally, unless the soul receives more than half
of it, has ruined the reputation of most of the world’s
great men.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
45 Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our
faces; and we never, or rarely, see a soul that in growing
old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows
and dwindles in his entirety.
Montaigne, Essays, III, 2, Of Repentance
46 The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay:—
Ah! see, who so fayre thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day;
Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe foorth with bashful modestee,
That fairer seemes, the lesse ye see her may;
Lo! see soone after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Lo! see soone after, how she fades and falls away.
So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth florish after first decay,
That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre
Of many a lady, and many a paramowre:
Gather therefore the rose, whitest yet is prime.
For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:
Gather the rose of love, whilest yet is time,
Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime.
Spenser, Faerie Queen, Bk. II, XII, 74-75
47 Chief Justice. Do you set down your name in the scroll of
youth, that are written down old with all the characters of
age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow
cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing
belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your
chin double? your wit single? and every part about you
blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself
young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
Falstaff My lord, | was born about three of the clock in
the afternoon, with a white head and something a round
belly. For my voice, | have lost it with halloing and singing
of anthems. To approve my youth further, | will not: the
truth is, |am only old in judgement and understanding;
and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let
him lend me the money, and have at him!
Shakespeare, II Henry IV, I, ti, 201
48 Shallow. O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all
night in the windmill in Saint George's field?
Falstaff No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more
of that.
Shal. Ha! 'twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork
alive?
Fal. She lives, Master Shallow.
Shal. She never could away with me.
Fal. Never, never; she would always say she could not
abide Master Shallow.
Shal. By the mass, | could anger her to the heart. She
was then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?
Fal. Old, old. Master Shallow.
Shal. Nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be
old; certain she’s old; and had Robin Nightwork by old
Nightwork before | came to Clement’s Inn.
Silence. That's fifty five year ago.
Shal. Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that
that this knight and | have seen! Ha, Sir John, said | well?
Fal. We have heard the chimes at midnight. Master
Shallow.
Shal. That we have, that we have, that we have; in
faith, Sir John, we have: our watchword was "Hem, boys!"
Come, let’s to dinner; come, let’s to dinner: Jesus, the
days that we have seen! Come, come.
Shakespeare, II Henry IV, Ill, ti, 206
49 Falstaff. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this
vice of lying!
Shakespeare, Il Henry IV, Ill, 11, 325
50 King. | know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
Shakespeare, Il Henry IV, V, v, 51
51 Jaques.
All the world’s a stage.
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And the man in his time plays many parts.
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover.
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier.
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut.
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side.
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all.
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,
Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vii, 139
52 Clown. What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, ii, 48
53 Polonius. What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet. Words, words, words.
Pol. What is the matter, my lord?
Ham. Between who?
Pol. | mean, the matter that you read, my lord. Ham.
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old
men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their
eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that
they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak
hams.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ti, 193
54 Hamlet.
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 82
55 Regan.
O, sir, you are old;
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine. You should be ruled and led
By some discretion that discerns your state
Better than you yourself. Therefore, | pray you
That to our sister you do make return;
Say you have wrong’d her, sir.
Lear.
Ask her forgiveness?
Do you but mark how this becomes the house;
“Dear daughter, | confess that | am old;
Kneeling.
Age is unnecessary. On my knees | beg
That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food."
Reg. Good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks.
Shakespeare, Lear, Il, iv, 148
56 Macbeth. | have lived long enough; my way of life
Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
| must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, tii, 22
57 Cleopatra.
My salad days.
When | was green in judgement, cold in blood,
To say as | said then!
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I, v, 73
58 Hermione. Come, I'll question you
Of my Lord’s tricks and yours when you were boys.
You were pretty lordings then?
Polixenes. We were, fair Queen,
Two lads that thought there was no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal.
Her. Was not my lord
The verier wag o’ the two?
Pol. We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ the sun,
And bleat the one at the other. What we changed
Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d
That any did. Had we pursued that life,
And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d
With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven
Boldly, "Not guilty."
Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, I, ‘i, 60
59 Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
So thou through windows of thine age shah see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
Shakespeare, Sonnet II/
60 When | consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment.
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When | perceive that men as plants increase.
Cheered and check’d even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XV
61 That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare
ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
Shakespeare, Sonnet LXXIII
62 To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye | eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CIV
63 When my love swears that she is made of truth
| do believe her, though | know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply | credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not | that | am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXXVIII
64 Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer mom, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is
nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and age is tame.
Age, | do abhor thee; youth, | do adore thee.
Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim, XII
65 Come, my Celia, let us prove.
While we can, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever;
He at length our good will sever.
Jonson, Come, My Celia
66 Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for
execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects
than for settled business. For the experience of age, in
things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them;
but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young
men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men
amount but to this, that more might have been done, or
sooner. Young men, in the conduct and manage of
actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than
they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of
the means and degrees; pursue some few principles
which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to
innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use
extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all
errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an
unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age
object too much, consult too long, adventure too little,
repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the
full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of
SUCCESS.
Bacon, Of Youth and Age
67 Alonso of Arragon was wont to say, in commendation of
age, That age appeared to be best in four things: Old
wood best to bum; old wine to drink; old friends to trust;
and old authors to read.
Bacon, Apophthegms, LXXV
68 The proportion of the body to the extremities in children
after their birth continues excessive until they begin to
stand and run. Infants, therefore, resemble dwarfs in the
beginning, and they creep about like quadrupeds,
attempting progressive motion with the assistance of all
their extremities; but they cannot stand erect until the
length of the leg and thigh together exceeds the length
of the rest of the body. And so it happens, that when they
first attempt to walk, they move with the body prone, like
the quadruped, and can scarcely rise so erect as the
common dunghill foul.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 56
69 Age doth not rectifie, but incurvate our natures, turning
bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases)
brings on incurable vices; for every day as we grow
weaker in age, we grow stronger in sin; and the number
of our days doth make but our sins innumerable. The
Same vice committed at sixteen, is not the same, though
it agree in all other circumstances, at forty, but swells
and doubles from the circumstances of our ages, wherein,
besides the constant and inexcusable habit of
transgressing, the maturity of our judgement cuts off
pretence unto excuse or pardon: every sin the oftner it is
committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil; as
it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness;
for as they proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in
Arithmetick, the last stands for more than all that went
before it. And though | think no man can live well once,
but he that could live twice, yet for my own part | would
not live over my hours past, or begin again the thred of
my days: not upon Cicero's ground, because | have lived
them well, but for fear | should live them worse.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 42
70 Confound not the distinctions of thy Life which Nature
hath divided: that is. Youth, Adolescence, Manhood, and
old Age, nor in these divided Periods, wherein thou art in
a manner Four, conceive thyself but One. Let every
division be happy in its proper Virtues, nor one Vice run
through all. Let each distinction have its salutary
transition, and critically deliver thee from the
imperfections of the former, so ordering the whole, that
Prudence and Virtue may have the largest section. Do as
a Child but when thou art a Child, and ride not on a Reed
at twenty. He who hath not taken leave of the follies of his
Youth, and in his maturer state scarce got out of that
division, disproportionately divideth his Days, crowds up
the latter part of his Life, and leaves too narrow a corner
for the Age of Wisdom.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, III, 8
71 How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentith yeer!
My hasting dayes flie on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That | to
manhood am arriv’d so near,
And inward ripenes doth much less appear.
That som more timely-happy spirits indu’th.
Milton, How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth
72 This is old age; but then thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To withered weak & gray; thy Senses then
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgoe,
To what thou hast, and for the Aire of youth
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reigne
A melancholly damp of cold and dry
To waigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The Balme of Life.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XI, 535
73 The childhood shews the man,
As morning shews the day.
Milton, Paradise Regained, IV, 220
74 Dollabella. Men are but children of a larger growth;
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain.
Dryden. All for Love, IV, 43
75 Mirabell. An old woman’s appetite is depraved like that of
a girl— ‘tis the greensickness of a second childhood; and
like the faint offer of a latter spring, serves but to usher in
the fall and withers in an affected bloom.
Congreve, Way of the World, II, iv
76 He [the interpreter] gave me a particular account of the
Struldbruggs among them. He said they commonly acted
like mortals, until about thirty years old, after which by
degrees they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing
in both until they came to fourscore. This he learned from
their own confession; for otherwise, there not being
above two or three of that species born in an age, they
were too few to form a general observation by. When they
came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity
of living in this country, they had not only all the follies
and infirmities of other old men, but many more which
arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They
were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose,
vain, talkative; but uncapable of friendship, and dead to
all natural affection, which never descended below their
grand-children. Envy and impotent desires, are their
prevailing passions. But those objects against which their
envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the
younger sort, and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on
the former, they find themselves cut off from all
possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral,
they lament and repine that others are gone to a harbour
of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to
arrive. They have no remembrance of any thing but what
they learned and observed in their youth and middle age,
and even that is very imperfect: and for the truth or
particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common
traditions, than upon their best recollections. The least
miserable among them, appear to be those who turn to
dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with
more pity and assistance, because they want many bad
qualities which abound in others.
If a Struldbrugg happen to marry one of his own kind,
the marriage is dissolved of course by the courtesy of the
kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be
fourscore. For the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence,
that those who are condemned without any fault of their
own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not
have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.
As soon as they have compleated the term of eighty
years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs
immediately succeed to their estates, only a small
pittance is reserved for their support, and the poor ones
are maintained at the publick charge. After that period,
they are held incapable of any employment of trust or
profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither
are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil
or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and
bounds.
At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at
that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink what
ever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases
they were subject to, still continue without encreasing or
diminishing. In talking, they forget the common
appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of
those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the
Same reason, they never can amuse themselves with
reading, because their memory will not serve to carry
them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and
by this defect, they are deprived of the only
entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.
The language of this country being always upon the
flux, the Struldbruggs of one age, do not understand
those of another; neither are they able after two hundred
years, to hold any conversation (farther than by a few
general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and
thus they lye under the disadvantage of living like
foreigners in their own country.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Ill, 10
77 They [the Yahoos] are prodigiously nimble from their
infancy; however, | once caught a young male of three
years old, and endeavoured by all marks of tenderness to
make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling, and
scratching, and biting with such violence, that | was
forced to let it go; and it was high time, for a whole troop
of old ones came about us at the noise; but finding the
cub was Safe, (for away it ran) and my sorrel nag being
by, they durst not venture near us. | observed the young
animal’s flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was
somewhat between a weasel and s.fox, but much more
disagreeable. | forgot another circumstance, (and perhaps
| might have the readers pardon, if it were wholly
omitted) that while | held the odious vermin in my hands,
it voided its filthy excrements of a yellow liquid
substance, all over my deaths; but by good fortune there
was a small brook hard by, where | washed myself as
clean as | could; although | durst not come into my
master’s presence, until | was sufficiently aired.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 8
78 Invention is the Talent of Youth, and Judgment of Age; so
that our Judgment grows harder to please, when we have
fewer Things to offer it: This goes through the whole
Commerce of Life. When we are old, our Friends find it
difficult to please us, and are less concern’d whether we
be pleas’d or no.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
79 No wise Man ever wished to be younger.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
80 Every Man desires to live long; but no Man would be old.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
81 Man has other enemies more formidable, against which
he is not provided with such means of defence: these are
the natural infirmities of infancy, old age, and illness of
every kind, melancholy proofs of our weakness, of which
the two first are common to all animals, and the last
belongs chiefly to man in a state of society. With regard
to infancy, it is observable that the mother, carrying her
child always with her, can nurse it with much greater
case than the females of many other animals, which are
forced to be perpetually going and coming, with great
fatigue, one way to find subsistence, and another to
suckle or feed their young. It is true that if the woman
happens to perish, the infant is in great danger of
perishing with her; but this risk is common to many other
species of animals, whose young take a long time before
they are able to provide for themselves. And if our
infancy is longer than theirs, our lives are longer in
proportion; so that all things are in this respect fairly
equal; though there are other rules to be considered
regarding the duration of the first period of life, and the
number of young, which do not affect the present
subject. In old age, when men are less active and perspire
little, the need for food diminishes with the ability to
provide it. As the savage state also protects them from
gout and rheumatism, and old age is, of all ills, that which
human aid can least alleviate, they cease to be, without
others perceiving that they are no more, and almost
without perceiving it themselves.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
82 Fix your eyes on nature, follow the path traced by her.
She keeps children at work, she hardens them by all
kinds of difficulties, she soon teaches them the meaning
of pain and grief. They cut their teeth and are feverish,
Sharp colics bring on convulsions, they are choked by fits
of coughing and tormented by worms, evil humours
corrupt the blood, germs of various kinds ferment in it,
causing dangerous eruptions. Sickness and danger play
the chief part in infancy. One half of the children who are
born die before their eighth year. The child who has
overcome hardships has gained strength, and as soon as
he can use his life he holds it more securely.
This is nature’s law; why contradict it? Do you not see
that in your efforts to improve upon her handiwork you
are destroying it; her cares are wasted? To do from
without what she does within is according to you to
increase the danger twofold. On the contrary, it is the
way to avert it; experience shows that children delicately
nurtured are more likely to die. Provided we do not
overdo it, there is less risk in using their strength than in
Sparing it. Accustom them therefore to the hardships they
will have to face; train them to endure extremes of
temperature, climate, and condition, hunger, thirst, and
weariness. Dip them in the waters of Styx. Before bodily
habits become fixed you may teach what habits you will
without any risk, but once habits are established any
change is fraught with peril. A child will bear changes
which a man cannot bear, the muscles of the one are soft
and flexible, they take whatever direction you give them
without any effort; the muscles of the grown man are
harder and they only change their accustomed mode of
action when subjected to violence. So we can make a
child strong without risking his life or health, and even if
there were some risk, it should not be taken into
consideration. Since human life is full of dangers, can we
do better than face them at a time when they can do the
least harm?
Rousseau, Emile, |
83 The new-born infant cries, his early days are spent in
crying. He is alternately petted and shaken by way of
soothing him; sometimes he is threatened, sometimes
beaten, to keep him quiet. We do what he wants or we
make him do what we want, we submit to his whims or
subject him to our own. There is no middle course; he
must rule or obey.
Rousseau, Emile, |
84 Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the
world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising
generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of
former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety
of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age
which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has
broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the
boundaries of civility and reverence.
Johnson, Rambler No. 50
85 He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and
decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall
one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he
has once been young.
Johnson, Rambler No. 50
86 To youth ... it should be carefully inculcated, that to enter
the road of life without caution or reserve, in expectation
of general fidelity and justice, is to launch on the wide
ocean without the instruments of steerage, and to hope
that every wind will be prosperous and that every coast
will afford a harbour.
Johnson, Rambler No. 175
87 Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his
experiments upon life. "Youth, cried he, is the time of
gladness: | will join myself to the young men, whose only
business is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all
spent in a succession of enjoyments."
To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few
days brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth
was without images, their laughter without motive: their
pleasures were gross and sensual, in which the mind had
no part; their conduct was at once wild and mean; they
laughed at order and at law’, but the frown of power
dejected, and the eye of wisdom abashed them.
Johnson, Rasselas, XVII
88 The old man trusts wholly to slow' contrivance and
gradual progression: the youth expects to force his way
by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays
regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue. The old
man defies prudence; the youth commits himself to
magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends
no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts
with openness and candour: but his father, having
suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and
too often allured to practice it. Age looks with anger on
the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the
scrupulosity of age.
Johnson, Rasselas, XXVI
89 There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even
in advanced age, as the supposition that we have still the
power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Johnson, Miscellanies, II
90 Johnson. Sir, | love the acquaintance of young people;
because, in the first place, | don’t like to think myself
growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances
must last longest, if they do last; and then. Sir, young
men have more virtue than old men; they have more
generous sentiments in every respect. | love the young
dogs of this age: they have more wit and humour and
knowledge of life than we had; but then the dogs are not
so good scholars. Sir, in my early years | read very hard. It
is a sad reflection, but a true one, that | knew almost as
much at eighteen as | do now. My judgement, to be sure,
was not so good; but | had all the facts, | remember very
well, when | was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me,
‘Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a
stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you
will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome
task.’
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 21, 1763)
91 Goldsmith. "| think, Mr. Johnson, you don’t go near the
theatres now. You give yourself no more concern about a
new play, than if you had never had any thing to do with
the stage." Johnson. "Why, Sir, our tastes greatly alter.
The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old
man does not care for the young man’s whore."
Goldsmith. "Nay, Sir, but your Muse was not a whore."
Johnson. "Sir, | do not think she was. But as we advance
in the journey of life, we drop some of the things which
have pleased us; whether it be that we are fatigued and
don’t choose to carry so many things any farther, or that
we find other things which we like better." Boswell/. "But,
Sir, why don’t you give us something in some other way?"
Goldsmith. "Ay, Sir, we have a claim upon you," Johnson.
"No, Sir, 1am not obliged to do any more. No man is
obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part
of his life to himself. If a soldier has fought a good many
Campaigns, he is not to be blamed if he retires to case
and tranquillity. A physician, who has practised long ina
great city, may be excused if he retires to a small town,
and takes less practice. Now, Sir, the good | can do by my
conversation bears the same proportion to the good | can
do by my writings, that the practice of a physician,
retired to a small town, does to his practice in a great
city." Boswe// "But | wonder. Sir, you have not more
pleasure in writing than in not writing." Johnson. "Sir, you
may wonder."
Boswell, Lift of Johnson (1766)
92 John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow' was brent;
But now your brow' is held, John,
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.
Burns,John Anderson, My Jo
93 The constitution of New York, to avoid investigations that
must for ever be vague and dangerous, has taken a
particular age as the criterion of inability, No man can be
a judge beyond sixty. | believe there are few at present
W’'ho do not disapprove of this provision. There is no
station, in relation to which it is less proper than to that
of a judge. The deliberating and comparing faculties
generally preserve their strength much beyond that
period in men who survive it; and when, in addition to
this circumstance, we consider how few there are who
outlive the season of intellectual vigour, and how
improbable it is that any considerable portion of the
bench, whether more or less numerous, should be in such
a situation at the same time, we shall be ready to
conclude that limitations of this sort have little to
recommend them. In a republic, where fortunes are not
affluent and pensions not expedient, the dismission of
men from stations in which they have served their
country long and usefully, on which they depend for
subsistence, and from which it will be too late to resort to
any other occupation for a livelihood, ought to have some
better apology to humanity than is to be found in the
imaginary danger of a Superannuated bench.
Hamilton, Federalist 79
94 We are moved in the presence of childhood, but it is not
because from the height of our strength and of our
perfection we drop a look of pity on it; it is, on the
contrary, because from the depths of our impotence, of
which the feeling is inseparable from that of the real and
determinate state to which we have arrived, we raise our
eyes to the child’s determinableness and pure innocence.
The feeling we then experience is too evidently mingled
with sadness for us to mistake its source. In the child all is
disposition and destination; in us all is in the state of a
completed, finished thing, and the completion always
remains infinitely below the destination. It follows that
the child is to us like a representation of the ideal; not,
indeed, of the ideal as we have realized it, but such as
our destination admitted; and, consequently, it is not at
all the idea of its indigence, of its hindrances, that makes
us experience emotion in the child’s presence; it is, on
the contrary, the idea of its pure and free force, of the
integrity, the infinity of its being. This is the reason why,
in the sight of every moral and sensible man, the child
will always be a sacred thing; | mean an object which, by
the grandeur of an idea, reduces to nothingness all
grandeur realized by experience; an object which, in
spite of all it may lose in the judgment of the
understanding, regains largely the advantage before the
judgment of reason.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
95 Faust. |'ll feel, whatever my attire.
The pain of life, earth’s narrow way.
| am too old to be content with play,
Too young to be without desire.
What can the world afford me now?
Thou shalt renounce! Renounce shalt thou!
That is the never-ending song
Which in the ears of all is ringing,
Which always, through our whole life long.
Hour after hour is hoarsely singing.
Goethe, Faust |, 1544
96 Mephistopheles. |f, unadulterate, one says to youth What
does not please the callow brook—the truth!
And later after many a tide
They learn it painfully on their own hide,
Each fancies then it came from his own head;
“The Master was a fool!" is what is said.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 2, 6744
97 Bachelor of Arts.
This is youth’s noblest message and most fit!
The world was not till | created it.
"Twas | that led the sun up from the sea;
The moon began its changeful course with me.
The day put on rich garments, me to meet;
The earth grew green and blossomed, me to greet.
At my behest in that primeval night
The stars unveiled their splendour to my sight.
Who, if not |, your own deliverance wrought
From fetters of Philistine, cramping thought?
l,as my spirit bids me, with delight
| follow onward mine own inner light.
Swift | proceed with mine own raptured mind.
Glory before me, darkness far behind.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 2, 6793
98 — A Simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath.
And feels its life in every limb.
What should it know of death?
Wordsworth, We Are Seven
99 My heart leaps up when | behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now | am aman;
So be it when | shall grow old.
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And | could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety,
Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up When | Behold
100 There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, ‘tis out again!
When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest.
Oft have | seen it muffled up from harm.
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.
But lately, one rough day, this Flower | passed
And recognised it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.
| stopped and said with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold;
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.
"The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;
Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue."
And, in my spleen, | smiled that it was grey.
Wordsworth, The Small Celandine
101 There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er | may,
By night or day,
The things which | have seen | now can see no more.
Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, |
102 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our lifers Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness.
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows.
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away.
And fade into the light of common day.
Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, V
103 And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts | feel your might;
| only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
| love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when | tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live.
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, X1
104 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
But to be young was very Heaven!
Wordsworth, The Prelude, XI, 108
105 What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life’s page,
And be alone on earth, as | am now.
Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, II, 98
106 ‘Tis true, your budding Miss is very charming,
But shy and awkward at first coming out,
So much alarm’d that she is quite alarming,
All Giggle, Blush; half Pertness and half Pout;
And glancing at Mamma, for fear there’s harm in
What you, she, it, or they, may be about.
The Nursery still lisps out in all they utter—
Besides, they always smell of bread and butter.
Byron, Beppo, XXXIX
107 Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.
Byron, Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence
and Pisa
108 Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is
always discontented. The tolerance of age is the result of
the ripeness of a judgment which, not merely as the
result of indifferance, is satisfied even with what is
inferior, but, more deeply taught by the grave experience
of life, has been led to perceive the substantial, solid
worth of the object in question. The insight then to which
—in contradistinction from those ideals—philosophy is to
lead us, is, that the real world is as it ought to be, that the
truly good, the universal divine reason, is not a mere
abstraction, but a vital principle capable of realizing
itself.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
109 Among the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at
home, for we are in the region of spirit; and though the
origin of the nation, as also its philological peculiarities,
may be traced farther—even to India—the proper
emergence, the true palingenesis of spirit must be looked
for in Greece first. At an earlier stage | compared the
Greek world with the period of adolescence; not, indeed,
in that sense, that youth bears within it a serious,
anticipative destiny, and consequently by the very
conditions of its culture urges towards an ulterior aim—
presenting thus an inherently incomplete and immature
form, and being then most defective when it would deem
itself perfect—but in that sense, that youth does not yet
present the activity of work, does not yet exert itself fora
definite intelligent aim, but rather exhibits a concrete
freshness of the soul's life. It appears in the sensuous,
actual world, as incarnate spirit and spiritualized sense—
in a unity which owed its origin to spirit. Greece presents
to us the cheerful aspect of youthful freshness, or
Spiritual vitality. It is here first that advancing spirit
makes itself the content of its volition and its knowledge;
but in such a way that state, family, law, religion, are at
the same time objects aimed at by individuality, while
the latter is individuality only in virtue of those aims. The
man, on the other hand, devotes his life to labor for an
objective aim; which he pursues consistently, even at the
cost of his individuality.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Il, Introduction
110 He who lives to see two or three generations is like a
man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair,
and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in
succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once;
and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to
deceive their effect is gone.
Schopenhauer, Sufferings of the World
111 A man’s life begins with the illusion that a long, long
time and a whole world lie before him, and he begins with
the foolish conceit that he has plenty of time for all his
many claims. The poet is the eloquent, inspired advocate
of this foolish but beautiful conceit. But when in the
infinite transformation a man discovers the eternal so
near to life that there is not a single one of its claims, not
a single one of its evasions, not a single one of its
excuses, not a single one of its moments at a distance
from what he must do at this very moment, this very
second, this very instant: then he is in the way of
becoming a Christian. The sign of childishness is to say:
“Me wants, me — me"; the sign of youth is to say: "I"—
and "I"—and "I"; the sign of maturity and the introduction
to the eternal is to will to understand that this "I" signifies
nothing if it does not become the "thou" to whom eternity
unceasingly speaks, and says; "Thou shall, thou shalt,
thou shah." The youth wishes to be the only "I" in the
whole world; maturity consists in understanding this
"thou" for itself, even if it is not said to any other single
man. Thou shalt, thou shalt love thy neighbor. O my
hearer, it is not you to whom | speak; it is to me, to whom
eternity says: "Thou shalt."
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, I, 2C
112 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the
face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes!
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment
because our arithmetic has computed the strength and
means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered; and
when we look m their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy
conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe
commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle
and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and
manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and
made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be
put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has
no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark!
in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and
emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his
contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to
make us seniors very unnecessary.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
113 A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the playhouse;
independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on
such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences
them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys,
as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He
cumbers himself never about consequences, about
interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You
must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as
it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as
he has once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed
person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of
hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his
account.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
114 It is time to be old,
To take in sail:
The gods of bounds.
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: "No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent."
Emerson, Terminus
115 My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,—you and | are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
"Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until | die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson, Ulysses
116 Practically, the old have no very important advice to
give the young, their own experience has been so partial,
and their lives have been such miserable failures, for
private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that
they have some faith left which belies that experience,
and they are only less young than they were. | have lived
some thiry years on this planet, and | have yet to hear
the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from
my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably
cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an
experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does
not avail me that they have tried it.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
117 The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge
to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the
earth, and at length the middleaged man concludes to
build a wood-shed with them.
Thoreau, Journal (July 14, 1852)
118 How earthy old people become—mouldy as the grave!
Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of
immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and
mole crickets.
Thoreau, Journal (Aug. 16, 1853)
119 Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty
breadth of the universe.
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom
of death.
Whitman, Song of the Open Road, XI!
120 Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first wets made;
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole 1 planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra
121 He (Alyosha] was to some extent a youth of our last
epoch—that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth,
seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it
at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for
immediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life
itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to
understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the
easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance,
five or six years of their seething youth to hard and
tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of
serving the truth and the cause they have set before
them as their goal—such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the
strength of many of them.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, |, 5
122 Prince Vasili seized Pierre’s hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying
with me a whole month and this is the first lime | have
seen him in society. Nothing is so necessary for a young
man as the society of clever women."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, I, 4
123 Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning
and had not once had time to think of what lay before
her.
In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the
swaying carriage, she for the first time vividly imagined
what was in store for her there at the ball, in those
brightly lighted rooms—with music, flowers, dances, the
Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of Petersburg.
The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it
would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill
darkness and closeness of the carriage. She understood
all that awaited her only when, after stepping over the
red baize at the entrace, she entered the hall, took off her
fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in front of her mother,
mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between the
flowers. Only then did she remember how she must
behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic air she
considered indispensable for a girl on such an occasion.
But, fortunately for her, she felt her eyes growing misty,
she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the
minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She could
not assume that pose, which would have made her
ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from
excitement and trying with all her might to conceal it.
And this was the very attitude that became her best.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, VI, 15
124 Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be
a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson's Calendar, VIII
125 The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older
— that is, the days, the months, and the years do so;
whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and
seconds to all appearance remain about the same.... In
youth we may-have an absolutely new experience,
subjective or objective, every hour of the day.
Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our
recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in
rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate,
multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing
year converts some of this experience into automatic
routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the
weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to
contentless units, and the years grow hollow and
collapse.
William James, Psychology, XV
126 With the child, life is all play and fairy-tales and
learning the external properties of "things"; with the
youth, it is bodily exercises of a more systematic sort,
novels of the real world, boon-fellowship and song,
friendship and love, nature, travel and adventure, science
and philosophy; with the man, ambition and policy,
acquisitiveness, responsibility to others, and the selfish
zest of the battle of life. If a boy grows up alone at the
age of games and sports, and learns neither to play ball,
nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor fish, nor shoot,
probably he will be sedentary to the end of his days; and,
though the best of opportunities be afforded him for
learning these things later, it is a hundred to one but he
will pass them by and shrink back from the effort of
taking those necessary first steps the prospect of which,
at an earlier age, would have filled him with eager
delight. The sexual passion expires after a protracted
reign; but it is well known that its peculiar manifestation
in a given individual depend almost entirely on the habits
he may form during the ezirly period of its activity.
Exposure to bad company then makes him a loose liver
all his days; chastity kept at first makes the same easy
later on.
William James, Psychology, XXTV
127 Men do not live long enough: they are, for all the
purposes of high civilization, mere children when they
die; and our Prime Ministers, though rated as mature,
divide their time between the golf course and the
Treasury Bench in parliament. Presumably, however, the
Same power that made this mistake can remedy it. If on
opportunist grounds Man now fixes the term of his life at
three score and ten years, he can equally fix it as three
hundred, or three thousand, or even at the genuine
Circumstantial Selection limit, which would be until a
sooner-or-later-inevitable fatal accident makes an end of
the individual. All that is necessary to make him extend
his present span is that tremendous catastrophes such as
the late war shall convince him of the necessity of at
least outliving his taste for golf and cigars if the race is to
be saved. This is not fantastic speculation: it is deductive
biology, if there is such a science as biology. Here, then,
is a stone that we have left unturned, and that may be
worth turning. To make the suggestion more entertaining
than it would be to most people in the form of a biological
treatise, | have written Back to Methuselah as a
contribution to the modern Bible.
Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Pref.
128 Conrad. We're not blaming you: you hadn’t lived long
enough. No more had we. Cant you see that three-score-
and-ten, though it may be long enough for a very crude
sort of village life, isnt long enough for a complicated
civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine
attempts at civilization made by people exactly like us;
and every one of them failed just as ours is failing. They
failed because the citizens and statesmen died of old age
or over-eating before they had grown out of schoolboy
games and savage sports and cigars and champagne.
The signs of the end are always the same: Democracy,
Socialism, and Votes for Women, We shall go to smash
within the lifetime of men now living unless we recognize
that we must live longer.
Shaw, Back to Methuselah, I!
129 The Maiden. Clothes are a nuisance. | think | shall do
without them some day, as you ancients do.
The Ancient. Signs of maturity. Soon you will give up
all these toys and games and sweets.
The Youth. What! And be as miserable as you?
The Ancient. Infant: one moment of the ecstasy of life
as we live it would strike you dead.
Shaw, Back to Methuselah, V
130 Is there an infantile sexuality? you will ask. Is childhood
not rather that period of life which is distinguished by the
lack of the sexual impulse? No, gentlemen, it is not at all
true that the sexual impulse enters into the child at
puberty, as the devils in the gospel entered into the
swine. The child has his sexual impulses and activities
from the beginning, he brings them with him into the
world, and from these the so-called normal sexuality of
adults emerges by a significant development through
manifold stages. It is not very difficult to observe the
expressions of this childish sexual activity; it needs
rather a certain art to overlook them or to fail to interpret
them.
Freud, Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, 1V
131 To be sure, if it is the purpose of educators to stifle the
child’s power of independent thought as early as
possible, in order to produce that "good behaviour" which
is so highly prized, they cannot do better than deceive
children in sexual matters and intimidate them by
religious means. The stronger characters will, it is true,
withstand these influences; they will become rebels
against the authority of their parents and later against
every other form of authority. When children do not
receive the explanations for which they turn to their
elders, they go on tormenting themselves in secret with
the problem, and produce attempts at solution in which
the truth they have guessed is mixed up in the most
extraordinary way with grotesque inventions; or else they
whisper confidences to each other which, because of the
sense of guilt in the youthful inquirers, stamp everything
sexual as horrible and disgusting.
Freud, Sexual Enlightenment of Children
132 This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is
unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it
later, and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-
phantasy of the childhood of the individual. This is why in
paradise men are naked and unashamed, until the
moment arrives when shame and fear awaken; expulsion
follows, and sexual life and cultural development begin.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, V, D
133 If the infant could express itself, it would undoubtedly
acknowledge that the act of sucking at its mother’s
breast is far and away the most important thing in life. It
would not be wrong in this, for by this act it gratifies at
the same moment the two greatest needs in life. Then we
learn from psycho-analysis, not without astonishment,
how much of the mental significance of this act is
retained throughout life. Sucking for nourishment
becomes the point of departure from which the whole
sexual life develops, the unattainable prototype of every
later sexual satisfaction, to which in times of need
phantasy often enough reverts. The desire to suck
includes within it the desire for the mother’s breast,
which is therefore the first object of sexual desire; |
cannot convey to you any adequate idea of the
importance of this first object in determining every later
object adopted, of the profound influence it exerts,
through transformation and substitution, upon the most
distant fields of mental life,
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XX
134 In the act of birth there is a real danger to life. We know
what this means objectively; but what it means ina
psychological sense we have no idea. The danger of birth
has yet no mental content for the subject. One cannot
possibly suppose that the foetus has any sort of
knowledge that its life is in danger of being destroyed. It
can only be aware of some vast upheavel in the economy
of its narcissistic libido. Very large quantities of excitation
crowd in upon it, giving rise to new sensations of
unpleasure, and many organs acquire an increased
cathexis, thus foreshadowing the object-cathexis which
will soon set in.
Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, VIII
135 God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;
From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am | that | should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?
1 pray—for fashion’s word is out
And prayer comes round again—
That | may seem, though | die old,
A foolish, passionate man.
Yeats, A Prayer for Old Age
136 That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore | have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
137 Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit
dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is
incapable; precisely the balance and wisdom that comes
from long perspectives and broad foundations.
Santayana, My Host the World, I!
138 Never have | enjoyed youth so thoroughly as | have in
my old age. ... | have drunk the pleasure of life more pure,
more joyful, than it ever was when mingled with all the
hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living.
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit.
And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the
quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in
the turmoil of adventure.
Santayana, My Host the World, I!
139 | at least have found that old age is the time for
happiness, even for enjoying in retrospect the years of
youth that were so distracted in their day; and | seem to
detect a certain sardonic defiance, a sort of pride, in the
whining old beggars that look so wretched as they stretch
out a trembling hand for a penny. They are not dead yet;
they can hold together in spite of everything; and they
are not deceived about you, you well-dressed young
person. Your new shoes pinch you, and you are secretly
racked by hopeless desires.
Santayana, Persons and Places, II
140 The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the
old man who will not laugh is a fool.
Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo, III
1.4 Self-Knowledge and Self-Love
The fact that man is a self-conscious or self-regarding animal
underlines the two main themes treated in this section. One
is the injunction first uttered by one of the seven wise men
of Greece- "Know thyself!" That commandment gets
repeated in one form or another century after century, as a
counsel of perfection or as the key to wisdom. Clearly, the
task to be performed is not an easy one, since by implication
it is one that few men discharge adequately.
Illusion and self-deception stand int he way of an honest,
penetrating, and fearless self-appraisal. Though it would
appear that we have access to the innermost core of our
individual being, and that there is nothing in the world with
which we are on the more intimate terms than our own self,
the self remains an elusive object of knowledge and
understanding. Different reasons for this are given or
suggested by different writers; and they also recommend
different ways to overcome obstacles. For all these
differences, the basic insight about the desirability and the
difficulty of self-knowledge remain very much the same from
Socrates and the Roman Stoics and Emerson, and the the
psychoanalysts and existentialists in our own day.
According to many of the passages quoted in Chapter 3
on Love, the proper objects of love are God, other human
beings, one's country, and such ideals as truth, beauty, and
goodness. Yet one of the most famous of all statements
about love - the Christian precepts of charity - commands us,
first, to love God, and second, to love our neighbor as our
self. And the same injunction is implied in Aristotle's
conception of the ideal friend, the proper beloved, as an
alter ego - another self. Self-love is in a sense the basis of
true love of another.
Self-love, then, far from being castigated as a
misdirection of the benevolent impulse, is conceived as
inseparable from benevolence toward others. There are
other terms for what is being discussed here - "self-esteem",
"self-respect", "amour propre", and even "pride", when that
term is used to signify a well-founded and well-deserved
approval of one's self. Yet the fact that pride is also
condemned as an overestimation of one's worth suggests
that self-love can become so excessive or perverted that it
excludes or subordinates all other loves. Whereas the
passages dealing with the first theme in this section - self-
knowledge - tend to be of the same tenor, the passages
dealing with the second - self-love - are often ambivalent.
1 Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a
stranger, and not thine own lips.
Proverbs 27:2
2 The gods help him who helps himself.
Euripides, Fragment
3 Critias. Self-knowledge would certainly be maintained by
me to be the very essence of knowledge, and in this |
agree with him who dedicated the inscription, "Know
thyself!" at Delphi.
Plato, Charmides, 164B
4 Socrates. The wise or temperate man, and he only, will
know himself.
Plato, Charmides, 167A
5 Athenian Stranger. The excessive love of self is in reality
the source to each man of all offences.... Wherefore let
every man avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to
follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false
shame to stand in the way.
Plato, Laws, V, 731B
6 Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own
specific traits of character. He must also regulate them
adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits
might suit him better. The more definitely his own a
man’s character is, the better it fits him.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 31
7 Every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own
interest. Whatever then appears to it an impediment to
this interest, whether this be a brother, or a father, ora
child, or beloved, or lover, it hates, spurns, curses; for its
nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest; this
is father, and brother and kinsman, and country, and
God....
If aman put in the same place his interest, sanctity,
goodness, and country, and parents, and friends, all
these are secured: but if he puts in one place his interest,
in another his friends, and his country and his kinsmen
and justice itself, all these give way being borne down by
the weight of interest.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 22
8 How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see
what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only to
what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 18
9 Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever
bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 59
10 | have often wondered how it is that every man loves
himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less
value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion
of others.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XII, 4
11 Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find
yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue
that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he
smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other
purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do
you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that
is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to
make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling
your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the
godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect
goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
Plotinus, First Ennead, VI, 9
12 Man is a great deep, Lord. You number his very hairs and
they are not lost in Your sight: but the hairs of his head
are easier to number than his affections and the
movements of his heart.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 14
13 If |am deceived, | am. For he who i:?not, cannot be
deceived; and if | am deceived, by this same token | am.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 26
14 For the most part, the human mind cannot attain to self-
knowledge otherwise than by making trial of its powers
through temptation, by some kind of experimental and
not merely verbal self-interrogation.
Augustine, City of God, XVI, 32
15 It is a very ordinary and common thing amongst men to
conceive, foresee, know, and presage the misfortune, bad
luck, or disaster of another; but to have the
understanding, providence, knowledge, and prediction of
a man’s own mishap, iS very scarce, and rare to be found
any where.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 15
16 If, as who study ourselves have learned to do, each man
who hears a true statement immediately considered how
it properly pertains to him, each man would find that it is
not so much a good saying as a good whiplash to the
ordinary stupidity of his Judgment.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 23, Of Custom
17 This capacity for sifting truth, whatever it may amount to
in me, and this free will not to enslave my belief easily, |
owe principally to myself. For the firmest and most
general ideas | have are those which, in a manner of
speaking, were born with me. They are natural and all
mine. | produced them crude and simple, with a
conception bold and strong, but a little confused and
imperfect, Since then | have established and fortified
them by the authority of others and the sound arguments
of the ancients, with whom | found my judgment in
agreement. These men have given me a firmer grip on
my ideas and a more complete enjoyment and possession
of them.
Montaigne, Essays, U, 17, Of Presumption
18 It is a rare life that remains well ordered even in private.
Any man can play his pan in the side show and represent
a worthy man on the boards; but to be disciplined within.
in his own bosom, where all is permissible, where all is
concealed— that's the point.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 2, Of Repentance
19 It was a paradoxical command that was given us of old by
that god at Delphi: "Look into yourself, Know yourself,
keep to yourself; bring back your mind and your will,
which are spending themselves elsewhere, into
themselves; you are running out, you are scattering
yourself; concentrate yourself, resist yourself; you are
being betrayed, dispersed, and stolen away from yourself.
Do you not see that this world keeps its sight all
concentrated inward and its eyes open to contemplate
itself? It is always vanity for you, within and without; but
it is less vanity when it is less extensive. Except for you,
O man," said that god, "each thing studies itself first,
and, according to its needs, has limits to its labors and
desires. There is not a single thing as empty and needy
as you, who embrace the universe: you are the
investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without
jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce."
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
20 It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know
how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other
conditions because we do not understand the use of our
own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know
what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on
Stills, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And
on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only
on our own rump.
Montaigne, Essays, 111. 13, Of Experience
21 Potonius. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it
must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ili, 78
22 lago. O villainous! | have looked upon the world for four
times seven years; and since | could distinguish betwixt a
benefit and an injury, | never found a man that knew how
to love himself.
Shakespeare, Othello, |, lit, 312
23 It hath been well said that the arch-flatterer, with whom
all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.
Bacon, Of Love
24 For along time | had remarked that it is sometimes
requisite in common life to follow opinions which one
knows to be most uncertain, exactly as though they were
indisputable, as has been said above. But because in this
ease | wished to give myself entirely to the search after
Truth, | thought that it was necessary for me to take an
apparently opposite course, and to reject as absolutely
false everything as to which | could imagine the least
ground of doubt, in order to see if afterwards there
remained anything in my belief that was entirely certain.
Thus, because our senses sometimes deceive us, | wished
to suppose that nothing is just as they cause us to
imagine it to be; and because there are men who deceive
themselves in their reasoning and fall into paralogisms,
even concerning the simplest matters of geometry, and
judging that | was as subject to error as was any other, |
rejected as false all the reasons formerly accepted by me
as demonstrations. And since all the same thoughts and
conceptions which we have while awake may also come
to us in sleep, without any of them lacing at that time
true, | resolved to assume that everything that ever
entered into my mind was no more true than the illusions
of my dreams. But immediately af-icnvards | noticed that
whilst | thus wished to think all things false, it was
absolutely essential that the "I" who thought this should
be somewhat, and remarking that this truth "I think,
therefore | am" was so certain and so assured that all the
most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the
sceptics were incapable of shaking it, 1 came to the
conclusion that 1 could receive it without scruple as the
first principle of the Philosophy.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, IV
25 Whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he
doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc.,
and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know
what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon
the like occasions. | say the similitude of passions, which
are the .same in all men,—desire, fear, hope, etc.; not the
similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the
things desired, feared, hoped, etc.; for these the
constitution individual, and particular education, do so
vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our
knowledge, that the characters of man’s heart, blotted
and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying,
counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only
to him that searcheth hearts. And though by men’s
actions we do discover their design sometimes; yet to do
it without comparing them with our own, and
distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may
come to be altered, is to decipher without a key, and be
for the most part deceived, by too much trust or by too
much diffidence, as he that reads is himself a good or evil
man.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Intro.
26 One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover
truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is
nothing better.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 66
27 Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for
he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the
mind is, and least of all how a body should be united toa
mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet
it is his very being.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 72
28 The nature of self-love and of this human Ego is to love
self only and consider self only. But what will man do? He
cannot prevent this object that he loves from being full of
faults and wants. He wants to be great, and he sees
himself small. He wants to be happy, and he sees himself
miserable. He wants to be perfect, and he sees himself
full of imperfections. He wants to be the object of love
and esteem among men, and he sees that his faults merit
only their hatred and contempt. This embarrassment in
which he finds himself produces in him the most
unrighteous and criminal passion that can be imagined;
for he conceives a mortal enmity against that truth which
reproves him and which convinces him of his faults. He
would annihilate it, but, unable to destroy it in its
essence, he destroys it as far as possible in his own
knowledge and in that of others; that is to say, he
devotes all his attention to hiding his faults both from
others and from himself, and he cannot endure either
that others should point them out to him, or that they
should see them.
Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still
greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to
recognise them, since that is to add the further fault of a
voluntary illusion.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 100
29 If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition,
lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed
blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance,
what can we say of a man...?
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 450
30 Since reason demands nothing which is opposed to
nature, it demands, therefore, that every person should
love himself, should seek his own profit,— what is truly
profitable to him,—should desire everything that really
leads man to greater perfection, and absolutely that
every one should endeavour, as far as in him lies, to
preserve his own being. This is all true as necessarily as
that the whole is greater than its part.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 18, Schol.
31 We must consider what person stands for;—which, |
think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and
reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same
thinking thing, in different times and places; which it
does only by that consciousness which is inseparable
from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it
being impossible for any one to perceive without
perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear,
smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that
we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations
and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that
which he calls self.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XXVII, 9
32 Suppose | wholly lose the memory of some parts of my
life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that
perhaps | shall never be conscious of them again; yet am
| not the same person that did those actions, had those
thoughts that | once was conscious of, though | have now
forgot them? To which | answer, that we must here take
notice what the word | is applied to; which, in this case, is
the man only. And the same man being presumed to be
the same person, | is easily here supposed to stand also
for the same person. But if it be possible for the same
man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at
different times, it is past doubt the same man would at
different times make different persons; which, we see, is
the sense of mankind in the solemnest declaration of
their opinions, human laws not punishing the mad man
for the sober man’s actions, nor the sober man for what
the mad man did,—thereby making them two persons;
which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in
English when we say such an one is "not himself," or is
"beside himself"; in which phrases it is insinuated, as if
those who now, or at least first used them, thought that
self was changed; the self-same person was no longer in
that man.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXVII,
20
33 Self-esteem is the instrument of our conservation; it
resembles the instrument of the perpetuity of the
Species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us
pleasure, and it has to be hidden.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Self-Esteem
34 Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are
centred on self; all our instincts are at first directed to our
own preservation and our own welfare. Thus the first
notion of justice springs not from what we owe to others,
but from what is due to us.
Rousseau, Emile, 11
35 Johnson. A man should be careful never to tell tales of
himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused
and laugh at the time, but they will be remembered, and
brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 14, 1776)
36 Johnson. All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is
in order to shew how much he can spare. It has all the
invidiousness of self-praise, and all the reproach of
falsehood.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 25, 1778)
37 Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his
brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their
benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he
can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them
that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he
requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of
any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which | want,
and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning
of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we
obtain from one another the far greater part of those
good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the
benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that
we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own
interest. we address ourselves, not to their humanity but
to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own
necessities but of their advantages.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1, 2
38 It is absolutely impossible to make out by experience
with complete certainty a single ease in which the maxim
of an action, however right in itself, rested simply on
moral grounds and on the conception of duty. Sometimes
it happens that with the sharpest self-examination we can
find nothing beside the moral principle of duly which
could have been powerful enough to move us to this or
that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from
this infer with certainty that it was not really some secret
impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty,
that was the actual determining cause of the will. we like
them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a
more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even
by the strictest examination, get completely behind the
secret springs of action.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, 11
39 Men often oppose a thing, merely because they have had
no agency in planning it, or because it may have been
planned by those whom they dislike. But if they have
been consulted, and have happened to disapprove,
opposition then becomes, in their estimation, an
indispensable duty of self-love, They seem to think
themselves bound in honour, and by all the motives of
personal infallibility, to defeat the success of what has
been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments. Men of
upright, benevolent tempers have too many
opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what
desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried,
and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed
to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of
individuals who have credit enough to make their
passions and their caprices interesting to mankind.
Hamilton, Federalist 70
40 Countess Tersky. Every individual character is in the right
that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction
is the only wrong.
Schiller, Wallenstein's Death, |
41 Why is it that, in spite of all the mirrors in the world, no
one really knows what he looks like?
Schopenhauer, Further Psychological Observations
42 Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its
natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that
impossible Precept, Know thyself; till it lie translated into
this partially possible one, Know what thou const work at.
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 11, 7
43 What | really lack is to be clear in my mind what / am to
do, not what | am to know, except in so far as a certain
understanding must precede every action, The thing is to
understand myself, to .see what God really wishes me to
do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find
the idea for which | can live and die. What would be the
use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working
through all the systems of philosophy and of being able,
if required, to review them all and show up the
inconsistencies within each system;—what good would it
do me to be able to develop a theory’ of the state and
combine all the details into a single whole, and so
construct a world in which | did not live, but only held up
to the view of others;—what good would it do me to be
able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no
deeper significance for me and for my life; —what good
would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked,
not caring whether | recognised her or not, and producing
in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? |
certainly do not deny that | still recognise an imperative
of understanding and that through it one can work upon
men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is
what | now recognise as the most important thing. That is
what my soul longs after, as the African desert thirsts for
water.
Kierkegaard, Journals (Aug. |, 1835)
44 When a man has gone astray to the point of perdition
and is about to sink, his last speech, the sign is: ‘and yet
something better in me is being lost’. It is like the
bubbles rising to the surface from a drowning man; that
is the sign—then he sinks. Just as self-isolation can bea
man's downfall, because he will not reveal what is
hidden, in the same way to pronounce those words spells
destruction. For that declaration expresses the fact that
he has become so objective to himself that he can talk of
his own destruction as of something settled, which can
now be of psychological interest to a third person. The
hope that there was something better in him, which
should have been used in silence to work for his
salvation, that hope is made public and used as an
ingredient in the funeral oration he pronounces upon
himself.
Kierkegaard, Journals (1846)
45 To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true
for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is
genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the
universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the
outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by
the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice
of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to
Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books
and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they
thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that
gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within,
more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.
Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is
his. In every work of genius we recognize our own
rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain
alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more
affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide
by our spontaneous impression with good-humored
inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on
the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and
felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with
shame our own opinion from another.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
46 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
47 What | must do is all that concerns me, not what the
people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in
intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction
between greatness and meanness. It is the harder
because you will always find those who think they know
what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the
world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in
solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he
who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect
sweetness the independence of solitude.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
48 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our
consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our
orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint
them.
But why should you keep your head over your
shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory,
lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or
that public place? Suppose you should contradict
yourself; what then?
Emerson, Self-Reliance
49 Among those points of self-education which take up the
form of mental discipline, there is one of great
importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because
it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our
vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to
deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the
necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible
for any one who has not been constrained, by the course
of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual
self-correction to be aware of the amount of error in
relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force
of the temptation which urges us to seek for such
evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires,
and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully
great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active
promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-
abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the
thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with,
we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the
very reverse is required by every dictate of common
sense.
Faraday, Observations on Mental Education
50 1 would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself
than be crowded on a velvet cushion. | would rather ride
on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to
heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe
a malaria all the way.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
511 never dreamed of any enormity greater than | have
committed. | never knew, and never shall know, a worse
man than myself.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
52 | only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to
speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a
certain doubleness by which | can stand as remote from
myself as from another. However intense my experience, |
am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of
me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator,
sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is
no more | than it is you.
Thoreau, Walden: Solitude
53 1 celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Whitman, Song of Myself, |
54 Do | contradict myself?
Very well then | contradict myself,
(1 am large, | contain multitudes.)
Whitman, Song of Myself LI
55 It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is
individual in themselves, but by cultivating it, and calling
it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and
interests of others, that human beings become a noble
and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works
partake the character of those who do them, by the same
process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and
animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high
thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the
tie which binds every individual to the race, by making
the race infinitely better worth belonging to.
Mill, On Liberty, III
56 Because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make
eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break
through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where
strength of character has abounded; and the amount of
eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional
to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral
courage it contained. That so few now dare to be
eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
Mill, On Liberty, III
57 We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world
as an udder to feed our supreme selves: Dorothea had
early begun to emerge from that stupidity, but yet it had
been easier to her to imagine how she would devote
herself to Mr Casaubon, and become wise and strong in
his strength and wisdom, than to conceive with that
distinctness which is no longer reflection but feeling—an
idea wrought back to the directness of sense, like the
solidity of objects—that he had an equivalent centre of
self, whence the lights and shadows must always fall with
a certain difference.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, II, 21
58 An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can
dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the
serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little
fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel
made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and
multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now
against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and
lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a
fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is
demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere
impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the
flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light
falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things
are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is
the egoism of any person now absent.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, III, 27
59 She [Mary Garth] sat to-night revolving, as she was wont,
the scenes of the day, her lips often curling with
amusement at the oddities to which her fancy added
fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their
illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking
their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were
transparent, making themselves exceptions to
everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a
lamp they alone were rosy.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, III, 33
60 Consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart
from and independent of reason. Through his reason man
observes himself, but only through consciousness does
he know himself.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, VIII
61 We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves:
this has its own good reason. We have never searched for
ourselves—how should it then come to pass, that we
should ever find ourselves?
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, Preface, 1
62 The most spiritual human beings, as the strongest, find
their happiness where others would find their
destruction: in the labyrinth, in severity towards
themselves and others, in attempting; their joy lies in
self-constraint: with them asceticism becomes nature,
need, instinct.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LVII
63 | am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one
of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. Not
that | would not, if | could, be both handsome and fat and
well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a
year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a
philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and
African explorer, as well as a "tone-poet" and saint. But
the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire’s work
would run counter to the saint’s; the bon-vivant and the
philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher
and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same
tenement of clay. Such different characters may
conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible toa
man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must
more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest,
strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and
pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other
selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this
self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real
triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them,... Our
thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of a
kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one
of many possible selves or characters, and forthwith
reckons it no shame to fail in any of those not adopted
expressly as its own.
William James, Psychology, X
64 The consciousness of Self involves a stream of thought,
each part of which as "I" can 1) remember those which
went before, and know the things they knew; and 2)
emphasize and care paramountly for certain ones among
them as "me," and appropriate to these the rest. The
nucleus of the "me" is always the bodily existence felt to
be present at the time. Whatever remembered-past-
feelings resemble this present feeling are deemed to
belong to the same me with it. Whatever other things are
perceived to be associated with this feeling are deemed
to form part of that me’s experience, and of them certain
ones (which fluctuate more or less) are reckoned to be
themselves constituents of the me in a larger sense,—
such are the clothes, the material possessions, the
friends, the honors and esteem which the person receives
or may receive. This me is an empirical aggregate of
things objectively known. The | which knows them cannot
itself be an aggregate; neither for psychological purposes
need it be considered to be an unchanging metaphysical
entity like the Soul, or a principle like the pure Ego,
viewed as "out of time." It is a Thought, at each moment
different from that of the last moment, but appropriative
of the latter, together with all that the latter called its
own. All the experiential facts find their place in this
description, unencumbered with any hypothesis save
that of the existence of passing thoughts or states of
mind. The same brain may subserve many conscious
selves, either alternate or coexisting; but by what
modifications in its action, or whether ultra-cerebral
conditions may intervene, are questions which cannot
now be answered.
William James, Psychology, X
65 The blindness in human beings ... is the blindness with
which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of
creatures and people different from ourselves.
We are practical beings, each of us with limited
functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel
intensely the importance of his own duties and the
significance of the situations that call these forth. But
this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy
with which we vainly look to others. The others are too
much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an
interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our
opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien
lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they
presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of
other persons' conditions or ideals.
William James, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings
66 A return from the over-estimation of the property of
consciousness is the indispensable preliminary to any
genuine insight into the course of psychic events.., The
unconscious must be accepted as the general basis of the
ps)’chic life. The unconscious is the larger circle which
includes the smaller circle of the conscious; everything
conscious has a preliminary unconscious stage, whereas
the unconscious can stop at this stage, and yet claim to
be considered a full psychic function. The unconscious is
the true psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as
much unknown to us as the reality of the external world,
and it is just as imperfectly communicated to us by the
data of consciousness as is the external world by the
reports of our sense-organs.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VII, F
67 We must say that all the acts and manifestations which |
notice in myself and do not know how to link up with the
rest of my mental life must be judged as if they belonged
to someone else and are to be explained by the mental
life ascribed to that person. Further, experience shows
that we understand very well how to interpret in others
(i.e., how to fit into their mental context) those same acts
which we refuse to acknowledge as mentally conditioned
in ourselves. Some special hindrance evidently deflects
our investigations from ourselves and interferes with our
obtaining true knowledge of ourselves.
Freud, The Unconscious, |
68 Many good words get spoiled when the word self is
prefixed to them: Words like pity, confidence, sacrifice,
control, love. The reason is not far to seek. The word self
infects them “%sith a fixed introversion and isolation. It
implies that the act of love or trust or control is turned
back upon a self which already is in full existence and in
whose behalf the act operates. Pity fulfils and creates a
self when it is directed outward, opening the mind to new
contacts and receptions. Pity for self withdraws the mind
back into itself, rendering its subject unable to learn from
the buffetings of fortune. Sacrifice may enlarge a self by
bringing about surrender of acquired possessions to
requirements of new growth. Self-sacrifice means a self-
maiming which asks for compensatory pay in some later
possession or indulgence. Confidence as an outgoing act
is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life,
trusting them to bring instruction and support to a
developing self. Confidence which terminates in the self
means a smug complacency that renders a person obtuse
to instruction by events. Control means a command of
resources that enlarges the self; self-control denotes a
self which is contracting, concentrating itself upon its
own achievements, hugging them tight, and thereby
estopping the growth that comes when the self is
generously released; a self-conscious moral athleticism
that ends in a disproportionate enlargement of some
organ.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Il, 5
69 "Never shall a young man.
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-colored
Ramparts at your ear.
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."
"But | can get a hair-dye
And set such color there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair."
"| heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear.
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."
Yeats, For Anne Gregory
70 The philosophies of Descartes and Kant’ to the contrary,
through the | think we reach our own self in the presence
of others, and the others are just as real to us as our own
self. Thus, the man who becomes aware of himself
through the cogito also perceives all others, and he
perceives them as the condition of his own existence. He
realizes that he can not be anything (in the sense that we
say that someone is witty or nasty or jealous) unless
others recognize it as such. In order to get any truth
about myself, | must have contact with another person.
The other is indispensable to my own existence, as well
as to my knowledge about myself. This being so, in
discovering my inner being | discover the other person at
the same time, like a freedom placed in front of me which
thinks and wills only for or against me. Hence, let us at
once announce the discovery of a world which we shall
call inter-subjectivity; this is the world in which man
decides what he is and what others are.
Sartre, Existentialism
1.5 Honor, Reputation, and Fame or
Glory
That the individual man should seek to know himself for
what he really is and should esteem himself for his true
worth make inevitable his desire to be known and esteemed
by others according to his merits. Honor is the name that the
ancients gave to the good that satisfies this natural desire;
and they prized it highly among the goods that a virtuous
man should seek—higher than wealth or sensual pleasure.
The Greek and Roman writers quoted here stress the relation
of honor to virtue or merit. They are, therefore, concerned
with justice in the distribution or award of honors and with
the distinction between true honor and its counterfeits, the
latter being undeserved.
Modern writers, in contrast, tend to substitute reputation
for honor; though when they distinguish between a well-
deserved reputation and one that is meretricious, they, too,
are drawing a line that parallels the one that the ancients
drew between honor and its counterfeits. Whether the term
used is "honor" or "reputation," both ancient and modern
writers also tend to agree that being well regarded or
praised by others has little worth when those others are
foolish or vicious, and so are not worthy enough to set store
by their opinion. It is sometimes questioned whether one
should care at all about the opinion of others; God alone is
the judge of one’s ultimate worth, and virtue is its own
reward.
Three other terms were operative in the selection of the
passages to be quoted here. One is shame, which is partly a
synonym for dishonor or disgrace, and partly the name for
the emotion or sentiment an individual experiences when he
is aware of deficiencies in himself that stand in the way of
his being justly honored. The other two terms are fame and
glory which are sometimes synonyms for reputation or at
least for renown, but never synonyms for honor. Honor,
properly conceived, or even a good reputation in the eyes of
those whose judgment is worth heeding, cannot be pursued
to the detriment of one’s moral character; not so fame, for it
belongs to the triad of things—money, fame, and power—
that tempt men to those excesses of appetite which
moralists condemn as lust and inordinate ambition. The
price that one must pay for fame and glory is sometimes too
high. Nevertheless, it is also recognized that fame and glory
can be well deserved; and when not pursued they need not
be gained at the expense of virtue.
These matters overlap the discussion of envy, and also of
pride and humility, in Chapter 4 on Emotion. They also have
relation to the consideration of virtue and vice in Chapter 9
on Ethics.
1 Hektor.
| would feel deep shame
before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing
garments,
if like a coward | were to shrink aside from the
fighting;
and the spirit will not let me, since | have learned to
be valiant
and to fight always among the foremost ranks of tire
Trojans,
winning for my own self great glory, and for my father.
Homer, Iliad, Vl, 441
2 Achilles. Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the
same if he fights hard.
We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the
weaklings.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has
done much.
Homer, Iliad, IX, 318
3 Hektor. Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle,
would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,
so neither would | myself go on fighting in the
foremost
nor would | urge you into the fighting where men win
glory.
But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close
about us
in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape
them,
let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to
others.
Homer, Iliad, XII. 322
4 Andromache. Repute! repute! repute! how you've
ballooned
Thousands of good-for-nothings to celebrity!
Men whose glory is come by honestly
Have all my admiration. But impostors
Deserve none; luck and humbug’s all they are.
Euripides, Andromache, 319
5 Peleus. When the public sets a war memorial
up Do those who really sweated get the credit?
Oh no! Some general wangles the prestige! —
Who, brandishing his one spear among thousands,
Did one man’s work, but gets a world of praise.
Euripides, Andromache, 694
6 It is only the love of honour that never grows old;
and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it,
that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 11, 44
7 The Athenians. In too many cases the very men that have
their eyes perfectly open to what they are rushing into,
let the thing called disgrace, by the mere influence of a
seductive name, lead them on to a point at which they
become so enslaved by the phrase as in fact to fall
wilfully into hopeless disaster, and incur disgrace more
disgraceful as the companion of error, than when it
comes as the result of misfortune.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, V, 111
8 Phaedrus. The principle which ought to be the guide of
men who would nobly live - that principle, | say, neither
kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is
able to implant so well as love. Of what am | speaking? Of
the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither
statess nor individuals ever do any good or great work.
Plato, Symposium, 178B
9 Pausanias. There is a dishonour in being overcome by the
love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether
a man is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or,
having experienced the benefits of money and political
corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of
them. For none of these things are of a permanent or
lasting nature; not to mention that no generous
friendship ever sprang from them.
Plato, Symposium, 184A
10 Diotima. "Marvel not then at the love which all men have
of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is
for the sake of immortality."
| was astonished at her words, and said: "Is this really
true, O thou wise Diotima?" And she answered with all
the authority of an accomplished sophist: "Of that,
Socrates, you may be assured; - think only of the
ambition of men, and you willwonder at the
senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how
they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame.
They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would
have run for their children, and to spend money and
undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of
leaving behind them a mane which shall be eternal."
Plato, Symposium, 208A
11 Socrates. He who at every age, as boy and youth and in
mature life, has come out of the trial victorious and pure,
Shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of the State; he
Shall be honoured in life and death, and shall receive
sepulture and other memorials of honour, the greatest
that we have to give. But him who fails, we must reject. |
am inclined to think that this is the sort of way in which
our rulers and guardians should be chosen and
appointed.
Plato, Replubic, Ill, 413B
12 Athenian Stranger. A Statewhich would be safe and
happy, as far as the nature of man allows, must and
ought to distribute honour and dishonour in the right
way. And the right way is to place the goods of the soul
first and highest in the scale, always assuming
temperance to be the condition of them; and to assign
the second place to the goods of the body; and the third
place to money and property. And if any legislator or
state departs from this rule by giving money the place of
honour, or in any way preferring that which is really last,
may we not say, that he or the state is doing and unholy
and unpatriotic thing?
Plato, Laws, Ill, 697A
13 Athenian Stranger. Worthy of honour is he who does no
injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only
does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing
any; the first may count as one man, the second is worth
many men.
Plato, Laws, V, 730B
14 Athenian Stranger. The generality of cities are quite right
in exhorting us to value a good reputation in teh world,
for there is no truth greater and more important than this
- that he who is really good (I am speaking of the man
who would be perfect) seeks for reputation with, but not
without, the reality of goodness.
Plato, Laws, XII, 950A
15 With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is the
proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of ‘empty
vanity', and the deficiency is undue humility.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1107b21
16 It is chiefly with honours and dishonours, then, that the
proud man is concerned; and at honours that are great
and conferred by good men he will be moderately
pleased, thinking that he is coming by his own or even
less than his own; for there can be no honour that is
worthy of perfect virtue, yet he will at any rate accept it
since they have nothing greater to bestow on him; but
honour from casual people and on trifling grounds he will
utterly despise, since it is not this that he deserves, and
dishonour too, since in his case it cannot be just. In the
first place, then, as has been said, the proud man is
concerned with honours; yet he will also bear himself
with moderation towards wealth and power and all good
or evil fortune, whatever may befall him, and will be
neither over-joyed by good fortune nor over-pained by
evil. For not even towards honour does he bear himself as
if it were a very great thing. Power and wealth are
desirable for the sake of honour (at least those who have
them wish to get honour by means of them); and for him
to whom even honour is a little thing the others must be
So too.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1124a4
17 Shame should not be described as a virtue; for it is more
like a feeling than a state of character. It is defined, at
any rate, as a kind of fear of dishonour, and produces an
effect similar to that produced by fear of danger; for
people who feel disgraced blush, and those who fear
death turn pale. Both, therefore, seem to be in a sense
bodily conditions, which is thought to be characteristic of
feeling rather than a state of character.
The feeling is not becoming to every age, but only to
youth. For we think young people should be prone to the
feeling of shame because they live by feeling and
therefore commit many errors, but are restrained by
shame; and we praise young people who are prone to this
feeling, but an older person no one would praise for being
prone to the sense of disgrace, since we think he should
not do anything that need cause this sense. For the sense
of disgrace is not even characteristic of a good man,
since it is consequent on bad actions (for such actions
should not be done; and if some actions are disgraceful in
very truth and others only according to common opinion,
this makes no difference; for neither class of actions
should be done, so that no disgrace should be felt); and it
iS a mark of a bad man even to be such as to do any
disgraceful action. To be so constituted as to feel
disgraced if one does such an action, and for this reason
to think oneself good, is absurd; for it is for voluntary
actions that shame is felt, and the good man will never
voluntarily do bad actions. But shame may be said to be
conditionally a good thing; 1 / a good man does such
actions, he will feel disgraced; but the virtues are not
subject to such a qualification. And if shamelessness—not
to be ashamed of doing base actions—is bad, that does
not make it good to be ashamed of doing such actions.
Aristotle, Ethics 1128b10
18 Those who desire honour from good men, and men who
know, are aiming at confirming their own opinion of
themselves; they delight in honour, therefore, because
they believe in their own goodness on the strength of the
judgement of those who speak about them.
Aristotle, Ethic, 1159a22
19 Fame means being respected by everybody, or having
some quality that is desired by all men, or by most, or by
the good, or by the wise.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1361a25
20 Since shame is a mental picture of disgrace, in which we
shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its
consequences, and we only care what opinion is held of
us because of the people who form that opinion, it follows
that the people before whom we feel shame are those
whose opinion of us matters to us. Such persons are:
those who admire us, those whom we admire, those by
whom we wish to be admired, those with whom we are
competing, and those whose opinion of us we respect. We
admire those, and wish those to admire us, who possess
any good thing that is highly esteemed; or from whom we
are very anxious to get something that they are able to
give uS—as a lover feels. We compete with our equals. We
respect, as true, the views of sensible people, such as our
elders and those who have been well educated. And we
feel more shame about a thing if it is done openly, before
all men's eyes. Hence the proverb, ‘shame dwells in the
eyes.' For this reason we feel most shame before those
who will always be with us and those who notice what we
do, since in both cases eyes are upon us.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1384a23
21 Time as it goes round changes the seasons of things.
That which was in esteem, falls at length into utter
disrepute; and then another thing mounts up and issues
out of its degraded state and every day is more and more
coveted and blossoms forth high in honour when
discovered and is in marvellous repute with men.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
22 No list of successes can bestow so much happiness as
their diminution will cause annoyance.
Cicero, Disputations, |, 46
23 True fame has real substance and is precisely fashioned.
It is not something ephemeral. It is, rather, the
unanimous opinion of good men and the verdict of honest
judges on an issue of outstanding merit. It is the echo of
virtue’s voice. Because fame is concerned with duties
rightly done, good men do not disdain it. False fame,
which tries to pass itself off as the true, is headstrong and
thoughtless, It is compounded of faults and errors and
seeks only public acclaim. By its counterfeit nature, it
tarnishes the luster of real honor.
Cicero, Disputations, III, 2
24 Whom does false honour delight, or lying calumny terrify,
except the vicious and sickly-minded?
Horace, Epistles, |, 16
25 What utter foolishness it is to be afraid that those who
have a bad name can rob you of a good one.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 91
26 A prophet is not without honour, save in his o\%ti
country, and in his own house.
Matthew 13:57
27 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for
so did their fathers to the false prophets.
Luke 6:26
28 It is the fortune of all good men that their virtue rises in
glory after their deaths, and that the envy which evil men
conceive against them never outlives them long.
Plutarch, Numa Pompilius
29 It may be observed, in general, that when young men
arrive early at fame and repute, if they are of a nature but
slightly touched with emulation, this early attainment is
apt to extinguish their thirst and satiate their small
appetite; whereas the first distinctions of more solid and
weighty characters do but stimulate and quicken them
and take them away like a wind in the pursuit of honour;
they look upon these marks and testimonies to their
virtue not as a recompense received for what they have
already done, but as a pledge given by themselves of
what they will perform hereafter, ashamed now to forsake
or underlive the credit they have won, or, rather, not to
exceed and obscure all that is gone before by the lustre
of their following actions.
Plutarch, Coriolanus
30 He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to
think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being
refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening
appetite to have it.
Plutarch, Alcibiades and Coriolanus Compared
31 There is something higher and greater in the admiration
rendered by enemies to the virtue that had been their
own obstacle, than in the grateful acknowledgments of
friends. Since, in the one case, it is virtue alone that
challenges itself the honour; while, in the other, it may be
rather men’s personal profit and advantage that is the
real origin of what they do.
Plutarch, Marcdlus and Pdopidas Compared
32 Lysander’s father is said to have been Aristoclitus, who
was not indeed of the royal family but yet of the stock of
the Heraclides. He was brought up in poverty, and
showed himself obedient and conformable, as ever any
one did, to the customs of his country; of a manly spirit,
also, and superior to all pleasures, excepting only that
which their good actions bring to those who are honoured
and successful; and it is accounted no base thing in
Sparta for their young men to be overcome with this kind
of pleasure. For they are desirous, from the very first, to
have their youth susceptible to good and bad repute, to
feel pain at disgrace, and exultation at being
commended; and any one who is insensible and
unaffected in these respects is thought poor-spirited and
of no capacity for virtue.
Plutarch, Lysander
33 The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no
need at all of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases
his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him,
A young man... may be permitted, while yet eager for
distinction, to pride himself a little in his good deeds;
for... his virtues, which are yet tender and, as it were, in
the blade, cherished and supported by praises, grow
stronger, and take the deeper root. But when this passion
is exorbitant, it is dangerous in all men, and in those who
govern a commonwealth, utterly destructive. For in the
possession of large power and authority, it transports
men to a degree of madness; so that now they no more
think what is good, glorious, but will have those actions
only esteemed good that are glorious.
Plutarch, Agis
34 Returning to Rome with a great opinion of himself for
these things, a ludicrous incident befell him, as he tells
us himself. Meeting an eminent citizen in Campania,
whom he accounted his friend, he asked him what the
Romans said and thought of his actions, as if the whole
city had been filled with the glory of what he had done.
His friend asked him in reply, "Where is it you have been,
Cicero?" This for the time utterly mortified and cast him
down, to perceive that the report of his actions had sunk
into the city of Rome as into an immense ocean, without
any visible effect or result in reputation. And afterwards
considering with himself that the glory he contended for
was an infinite thing, and that there was no fixed end nor
measure in its pursuit, he abated much of his ambitious
thoughts. Nevertheless, he was always excessively
pleased with his own praise, and continued to the very
last to be passionately fond of glory; which often
interfered with the prosecution of his wisest resolutions.
Plutarch, Cicero
35 An excessive display of outward honour would seem to
be the most uncertain attestation of the real affection of a
people for any king or potentate. Such show's lose their
whole credit as tokens of affection... when we reflect that
they may equally proceed from fear. The same decrees
are voted upon the latter motive as upon the former. And
therefore judicious men do not look so much to statues,
paintings, or divine honours that are paid them, as to
their own actions and conduct, judging hence whether
they shall trust these as a genuine, or discredit them as a
forced homage. As in fact nothing is less unusual than for
a people, even while offering compliments, to be
disgusted with those who accept them greedily, or
arrogantly, or without respect to the free-will of the
givers.
Plutarch, Demetrius
36 Be a good soldier, be good to your ward, be a person of
honor.
If you are summoned to court, in a case uncertain and
doubtful.
Even though Phalaris threatens and brings up his bull
to suborn you,
Tell no lie, believe that the worst sin of all is preferring
Life to honor; don’t lose, for life’s sake, your reasons
for living.
If aman is worthy of death, he is dead, though he
banquets on oysters,
Though he bathes in a tub that reeks with the
perfumes of Cosmos.
Juvenal, Satire VIII
37 Is anyone preferred before you at an entertainment, or in
courtesies, or in confidential intercourse? If these things
are good, you ought to rejoice that he has them; and if
they are evil, do not be grieved that you have them not.
And remember that you cannot be permitted to rival
others in externals without using the same means to
obtain them. For how can he who will not haunt the door
of any man, will not attend him, will not praise him have
an equal share with him who does these things? You are
unjust, then, and unreasonable if you are unwilling to pay
the price for which these things are sold, and would have
them for nothing. For how much are lettuces sold? An
obulus, for instance. If another, then, paying an obulus,
takes the lettuces, and you, not paying it, go without
them, do not imagine that he has gained any advantage
over you. For as he has the lettuces, so you have the
obulus which you did not give. So, in the present case,
you have not been invited to such a person’s
entertainment because you have not paid him the price
for which a supper is sold. It is sold for praise; it is sold for
attendance. Give him, then, the value if it be for your
advantage. But if you would at the same time not pay the
one, and yet receive the other, you are unreasonable and
foolish. Have you nothing, then, in place of the supper?
Yes, indeed, you have—not to praise him whom you do
not like to praise; not to bear the insolence of his lackeys.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XXV
38 | [Tiberius] am mortal and limited to the functions of
humanity, content if | can adequately fill the highest
place; of this, | solemnly assure you [the Senators], and
would have posterity remember it. They will more than
sufficiently honour my memory by believing me to have
been worthy of my ancestry, watchful over your interests,
courageous in danger, fearless of enmity, when the State
required it. These sentiments of your hearts are my
temples, these my most glorious and abiding
monuments. Those built of stone are despised as mere
tombs, if the judgment of posterity passes into hatred.
And therefore this is my prayer to our allies, our citizens,
and to heaven itself; to the last, that, to my life’s close, it
grant me a tranquil mind, which can discern alike human
and divine claims; to the first, that, when | die, they
honour my career and the reputation of my name with
praise and kindly remembrance.
Tacitus, Annals, IV, 38
39 The desire of glory is the last infirmity cast off even by
the wise.
Tacitus, Histories, lV, 6
40 Perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment
thee.—See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at
the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and
the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and
want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise,
and the narrowness of the space within which it is
circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is
a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling,
and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are
they who will praise thee.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 3
41 Consider... the life lived by others in olden time, and the
life of those who will live after thee, and the life now lived
among barbarous nations, and how many know not even
thy name, and how many will soon forget it, and how they
who perhaps now are praising thee will very soon blame
thee, and that neither a posthumous name is of any
value, nor reputation, nor anything else.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IX, 30
42 A man seeking the fame of eloguence—before a judge
who is also a man, with a multitude of men standing
about—inveighs against his adversary with inhuman
hatred. Such a man will be most vigilantly on guard lest
by a slip of the tongue he drop an ‘h’ and murder the
word "human": yet worries not at all that by the fury of
his mind he may murder a real human.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 18
43 Here, then, O God, is the memory still vivid in my mind. |
would not have committed that theft alone: my pleasure
in it was not what | stole but that | stole: yet | would not
have enjoyed doing it, | would not have done it, alone. O
friendship unfriendly, unanalysable attraction for the
mind, greediness to do damage for the mere sport and
jest of it, desire for another’s loss with no gain to oneself
or vengeance to be satisfied! Someone cries "Come on,
let’s do it"—and we would be ashamed to be ashamed!
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 9
44 Love of praise tempts me even when | reprove it in
myself, indeed in the very fact that | do reprove it; a man
often glories the more vainly for his very contempt of
vainglory; for which reason he does not really glory in his
contempt of glory; in that he glories in it, he does not
contemn it.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 38
45 Let the desire of glory be surpassed by the love of
righteousness, so that, if there be seen anywhere "lying
neglected things which are generally discredited," if they
are good, if they are right, even the love of human praise
may blush and yield to the love of truth. For so hostile is
this vice to pious faith, if the love of glory be greater in
the heart than the fear or love of God, that the Lord said,
“How can ye believe, who look for glory from one another,
and do not seek the glory which is from God alone?"
Augustine, City of God, V, 14
46 | do not see what it makes for the safety, good morals,
and certainly not for the dignity, of men, that some have
conquered and others have been conquered, except that
it yields them that most insane pomp of human glory, in
which "they have received their reward" who burned with
excessive desire of it and carried on most eager wars.
Augustine, City of God, V, 17
47 Whosoever, without possessing that desire of glory which
makes one fear to displease those who judge his conduct,
desires domination and power, very often seeks to obtain
what he loves by most open crimes. Therefore he who
desires glory presses on to obtain it either by the true
way, or certainly by deceit and artifice, wishing to appear
good when he is not. Therefore to him who possesses
virtues it is a great virtue to despise glory; for contempt
of it is seen by God, but is not manifest to human
judgment.
Augustine, City of God, V, 19
48 Many men have got a great name from the false opinions
of the crowd. And what could be baser than such a thing?
For those who are falsely praised, must blush to hear
their praises. And if they are justly won by merits, what
can they add to the pleasure of a wise man’s conscience?
For he measures his happiness not by popular talk, but
by the truth of his conscience.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, III
49 It is impossible for happiness to consist in honour. For
honour is given to a man on account of some excellence
in him, and consequently it is a sign and testimony of the
excellence that is in the person honoured. Now a man’s
excellence is in proportion to his happiness, which is
man’s perfect good; and to its parts, that is those goods
by which he has a certain share of happiness. And
therefore honour can result from happiness, but
happiness cannot principally consist therein.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 2, 2
50 Honour is not that reward of virtue, for which the virtuous
work, but they receive honour from men by way of
reward, as from those who have nothing greater to offer.
But virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the
virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honour, it
would no longer be virtue, but ambition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 2, 2
51 0 empty glory of human powers! How short the time its
green endures upon the top, if it be not overtaken by
rude ages!
Cimabue thought to hold the field in painting, and
now Giotto hath the cry, so that the fame of the other is
obscured.
Even so one Guido hath taken from the other the glory
of our tongue; and perchance one is born who shall chase
both from the nest.
Earthly fame is naught but a breath of wind, which
now cometh hence and now thence, and changes name
because it changes direction.
What greater fame shalt thou have, if thou strip thee
of thy flesh when old, than if thou hadst died ere thou
wert done with pap and chink,
before a thousand years are passed? which is shorter
Space to eternity than the twinkling of an eye to the
circle which slowest is turned in heaven.
Dante, Purgatorio, XI, 91
52 Duke Theseus. And gladder ought a friend be of his death
When, in much honour, he yields up his breath,
Than when his name’s grown feeble with old age;
For all forgotten, then, is his courage.
Hence it is best for all of noble name
To die when at the summit of their fame.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Knight’s Tale
53 It is unnecessary for a prince to have all... good
qualities... but it is very necessary to appear to have
them. And | shall dare to say this also, that to have them
and always to observe them is injurious, and that to
appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful,
faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with
a mind so framed that should you require not to be so,
you may be able and know how to change to the
opposite.
And you have to understand this, that a prince,
especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for
which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to
maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship,
humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him
to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the
winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as | have said
above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing
so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he
never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete
with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear
to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful,
faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing
more necessary to appear to have than this last quality,
inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than
by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you,
to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what
you appear to be, few really Know what you are, and
those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of
the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend
them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of
princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges
by the result.
Machiavelli, Prince, XVIII
54 The role of true victory is in fighting, not in coming off
safely; and the honor of valor consists in combating, not
in beating.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 31, Of Cannibals
55 Of all the illusions in the world, the most universally
received is the concern for reputation and glory, which
we espouse even to the point of giving up riches, rest,
life, and health, which are effectual and substantial
goods, to follow that vain phantom and mere sound that
has neither body nor substance.... And of the irrational
humors of men, it seems that even the philosophers get
rid of this one later and more reluctantly than any other.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 41, Not Communicating One’s
Glory
56 We lend our goods and our lives to the need of our
friends; but to communicate one’s honor and endow
another with one’s glory, that is hardly ever seen.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 41, Not Communicating One’s
Glory
57 God, who is himself all fullness and the acme of all
perfection, cannot grow and increase within; but his
name may grow and increase by the blessing and praise
we give to his external works. Which praise, since we
cannot incorporate it in him, inasmuch as he can have no
accession of good, we attribute to his name, which is the
part outside him that is nearest him. That is why it is to
God alone that glory and honor belong. And there is
nothing so remote from reason as for us to go in quest of
it for ourselves; for since we are indigent and necessitous
within, since our essence is imperfect and continually in
need of betterment, it is this betterment that we should
work for.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 16, Of Glory
58 We care more that people should speak of us than how
they speak of us; and it is enough for us that our name
should be current in men’s mouths, no matter in what
way it may be current. It seems that to be known is to
have one’s life and duration somehow in the keeping of
others.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 16, Of Glory
59 It might perhaps be excusable for a painter or another
artisan, or even for a rhetorician or a grammarian, to toil
to acquire a name by his works; but the actions of virtue
are too noble in themselves to seek any other reward
than from their own worth, and especially to seek it in the
vanity of human judgments.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 16, Of Glory
60 Those who judge and touch us inwardly make little
account of the brilliance of our public acts, and see that
these are only thin streams and jets of water spurting
from a bottom other%vise muddy and thick; so likewise
those who judge us by this brave outward appearance
draw similar conclusions about our inner constitution,
and cannot associate common faculties, just like their
own, with these other faculties that astonish them and
are so far beyond their scope.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 2, Of Repentance
61 Whatever it is, whether art or nature, that imprints in us
this disposition to live with reference to others, it does us
much more harm than good. We defraud ourselves of our
own advantages to make appearances conform with
public opinion. We do not care so much what we are in
ourselves and in reality as what we are in the public
mind. Even the joys of the mind, and wisdom, appear
fruitless to us, if they are enjoyed by ourselves alone, if
they do not shine forth to the sight and approbation of
others.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
62 Joan La Pucelle. Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
Shakespeare, | Henry VI, I, ti, 133
63 Mowbray. The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation: that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
Shakespeare, Richard II, |, |, 177
64 Prince of Arragon. O, that estates, degrees, and offices
Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover that stand bare!
How many be commanded that command!
How much low peasantry would then be glean’d
From the true seed of honour! and how much honour
Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times
To be new-varnish’d!
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, II, ix, 41
65 Falstaff. | would to God thou and | knew where a
commodity of good names were to be bought.
Shakespeare, 7 Henry IV, I, ti, 91
66 Hotspur. By heaven, me thinks it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright Honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned Honour by the locks;
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.
Shakespeare, 7 Henry IV, I, tii, 201
67 Falstaff. Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour
prick me off when | come on? how then? Can honour set
to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a
wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no.
What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour?
what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he
hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But
will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will
not suffer it. Therefore Til none of it Honour is a mere
scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, V, 1, 130
68 Hamlet. Oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth—wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin—
By the overgrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o’er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men.
Carrying, | say, the stamp of one defect.
Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star—
Their virtues else—be they as pure as grace.
As infinite as man may undergo—
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, iv, 23
69 Hamlet. Be thou as chaste as ice, aS pure as snow, thou
Shall not escape calumny.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Ill, 1, 139
70 Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord.
Keeps honour bright; to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path;
For Emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue. If you give way.
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright.
Like to an enter’d tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank.
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’er-run and trampled on. Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand.
And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly.
Grasps in the comer. Welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service.
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating Time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past.
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.
The present eye praises the present object.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, tii, 145
71 Cassio. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, | have lost
the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.
My reputation, lago, my reputation!
lago. AS | aman honest man, | thought you had
received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that
than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false
imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without
deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you
repute yourself such a loser.
Shakespeare, Othello, II, tii, 262
72 lago. Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something,
nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name;
Robs me of that which not enriches him;
And makes me poor indeed.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 155
73 Lady Macbeth. Yet do | fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly.
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false.
And yet wouldst wrongly win.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, v, 17
74 Volumnia. 1 pray you, daughter, sing; or express yourself
in a more comfortable sort. If my son were my husband, |
75
should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won
honour than in the embracements of his bed where he
would show most love. When yet he was but tender-
bodied and the only son of my womb, when youth with
comeliness plucked all gaze his way, when for a day of
kings' entreaties a mother should not sell him an hour
from her beholding, I, considering how honour would
become such a person, that it was no better than picture-
like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir, was
pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find
fame. To a cruel war! sent him; from whence he returned,
his brow’s bound with oak. | tell thee, daughter, | sorang
not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than
now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, I, iii, 1
Wolsey. Let’s dry our eyes; and thus far hear me,
Cromwell;
And, when | am forgotten, as | shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of, say, | taught thee,
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory.
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in;
A sure and Safe one, though thy master miss’d it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin’d me.
Cromwell, | charge thee, fling away ambition.
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then.
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
Love thyself last. Cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.
To silence envious tongues. Be Just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s,
Thy God's, and truth’s; then if thou fall’st, O Cromwell,
Thou fall’st a blessed martyr!
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Ill, it, 431
76 Griffith. Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, IV, ti, 46
77 | would have thee to know', that those Wounds that are
given with the Instruments and Tools which a Man
happens to have in his Hand, do not really disgrace the
Person struck. We read it expresly in the Laws of Duels,
That if a Shoemaker strikes another Man with his Last
which he held in his Hand, tho' it be of Wood, as a Cudgel
is, yet the Party who was struck with it shall not be said to
have been cudgell'd. | tell thee this, that thou may’st not
think we are in the least dishonour’d, tho’ we have been
horribly beaten in this Rencounter; for the Weapons
which those Men us’d were but the Instruments of their
Profession, and not one of ’em, as | very well remember,
had either Tuck, or Sword, or Dagger. They gave me no
Leisure, quoth Sancho, to examine things so narrowly; for
| had no sooner laid my Hand on my Cutlass, but they
cross’d my Shoulders with such a wooden Blessing, as
settl’d me on the Ground without Sense or Motion, where
you see me lie, and where | don’t trouble my Head
whether it be a Disgrace to be mawl’d with Cudgels or
with Packstaves: Let ’em be what they will, | am only
vex’d to feel them so heavy on my Shoulders, where | am
afraid they are imprinted as deep as they are in my Mind.
For all this, reply’d Don Quixote, | must inform thee,
Friend Sancho, that there is no Remembrance which Time
will not deface, nor no Pain to which Death will not put a
Period. Thank you for nothing, quoth Sancho! What worse
can befal us, than to have only Death to trust to? Were
our Affliction to be cur’d with a Plaister or two, a Man
might have some Patience; but, for ought | see, all the
Salves in an Hospital won’t set us on our best Legs again.
Come, no more of this, cry’d Don Quixote; take Courage,
and make a Virtue of Necessity; for ’tis what | am resolv’d
to do.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 15
78 Don Quixote. | pray thee tell me now' what does the Town
say of me? What do the Neighbours, what do the People
think of me? What say the Gentry, and the better Sort?
How' do the Knights discourse of my Valour, my high
Feats of Arms, and my courteous Behaviour? What
Thoughts do they entertain of my Design, to raise from
the Grave of Oblivion the Order of Knight-Errantry, and
restore it to the World? In short, tell me freely and
sincerely whatever thou hast heard; neither enlarg’d with
flattering Commendations, nor lessen’d by any Omission
of my Dispraise; for ‘tis the Duty of faithful Servants to
lay Truth before their Masters in its honourable
Nakedness.... Why then, quoth Sancho, first and foremost
you are to know, that the common People take you for a
downright Mad-man, and me for one that has not much
Guts in his Brains.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 2
79 Don Quixote. There are two Paths to Dignity and Wealth;
Arts and Arms. Arms | have chosen, and the Influence of
the Planet Mars that presided at my Nativity, led me to
that adventurous Road. So that all your Attempts to
Shake my Resolution are in vain: for in spite of all
Mankind, | will pursue what Heaven has fated, Fortune
ordain’d, what Reason requires, and (which is more) what
my Inclination demands. | am sensible of the many
Troubles and Dangers that attend the Prosecution of
Knight-Errantry, but | also Know what infinite Honours
and Rewards are the Consequences of the Performance.
The Path of Virtue is narrow, and the Way of Vice easy
and open; but their Ends and Resting-places are very
different. The latter is a broad Road indeed, and downhill
all the way, but Death and Contempt are always met at
the End of the Journey; whereas the former leads to Glory
and Life, not a Life that soon must have an End, but an
immortal Being,
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 6
80 Don Quixote. | tell thee, Sancho, this Desire of Honour is
a strange bewitching thing. What dost thou think made
Horatius, arm’d at all Points, plunge headlong from the
Bridge into the rapid Tyber? What prompted Curtius to
leap into the profound flaming Gulph? What made Mutius
burn his Hand? What forc’d Caesar over the Rubicon,
spite of all the Omens that dissuaded his Passage? And to
instance a more modem Example, what made the
undaunted Spaniards sink their Ships, when under the
most courteous Cortez, but that scorning the stale
Honour of this so often conquer’d World, they sought a
Maiden Glory’ in a new Scene of Victory'? These and a
Multiplicity of other great Actions, are outing to the
immediate Thirst and Desire of Fame, which Mortals
expect as the proper Price and immortal Recompence of
their great Actions. But we that are Christian Catholick
Knights-Errant must fix our Hopes upon a higher Reward,
plac’d in the Eternal and Celestial Regions, where we may
expect a permanent Honour and compleat Happiness; not
like the Vanity of Fame, which at best is but the Shadow
of great Actions, and must necessarily vanish, when
destructive Time has cat away the Substance which it
follow’d. So, my Sancho, since we expect a Christian
Reward, we must suit our Actions to the Rules of
Christianity. In Giants we must kill Pride and Arrogance:
But our greatest Foes, and whom we must chiefly combat,
are within. Envy we must overcome by Generosity and
Nobleness of Soul; Anger, by a repos’d and easy' Mind;
Riot and Drowsiness, by Vigilance and Temperance;
Lasciviousness, by our inviolable Fidelity to those who are
Mistresses of our Thoughts; and Sloth, by our
indefatigable Peregrinations through the Universe, to
seek Occasions of Military’, as well as Christian Honours.
This, Sancho, is the Road to lasting Fame, and a good and
honourable Renown.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 8
81 When he [the Gentleman in Green] look’d on Don
Quixote, he thought he had never beheld before such a
strange appearance of a Man. He could not but admire at
the Lankness of his Horse; he consider’d then the Long-
back'd, Rawbon’d Thing that bestrid him; His wan,
meagre Face, his Air, his Gravity, his Arms and Equipage;
such a Figure, as perhaps had not been seen in that
Country' time our of mind. Don Quixote observed how
intent the travelling Gentleman had been in surveying
him, and reading his Desire in his Surprize, as he was the
very Pink of Courtesy and fond of pleasing every one,
without staying till he should question him, he thought fit
to prevent him. Sir, said he, that you are surpriz’d at this
Figure of mine, which appears so new and exotick, | do
not wonder in the least; but your Admiration will cease
when | have inform’d you, that | am one of those Knights
who go in quest of Adventures, | have left my Country,
Mortgaged my Estate, quitted my Pleasures, and thrown
myself into the Arms of Fortune. My design was to give a
new Life to Knight-Errantry, that so long has been lost to
the World; and thus, after infinite Toils and Hardships;
sometimes stumbling, sometimes falling; casting myself
headlong in one place, and rising again in another, | have
compass’d a great part of my Desire, relieving Widow’s,
protecting Damsels, assisting Marry’d Women and
Orphans, the proper and natural Office of Knights-Errant;
and so by many Valorous and Christian-like
Atchievements, | have merited the Honour of the Press in
almost all the Nations of the World, Thirty thousand
Volumes of my History have been printed already, and
thirty thousand Millions more are like to be printed, if
Heaven prevent not. In short, to sum up all in one Word,
know', | am Don Quixote de la Mancha, otherwise call’d.
The Knight of the Woful Figure; | own it lessens the value
of Praise to be the Publisher of its own self; yet ’tis what |
am sometimes forc’d to, when there is none present to do
me Justice. And now, good Sir, no longer let this Steed,
this Lance, this Shield, this Armour, nor this Squire, nor
the Paleness of my Looks, nor my exhausted Body, move
your Admiration, since you know who | am, and the
Profession | follow.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 16
82 Ambition is like choler; which is an humour that maketh
men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be
not stopped. But if it be stopped, and cannot have his
way, it becometh adust, and thereby malign and
venomous. So ambitious men, if they find the way open
for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy
than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires,
they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and
matters with an evil eye.
Bacon, Of Ambition
83 Certainly, great persons had need to borrow other men’s
opinions, to think themselves happy; for if they judge by
their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think
with themselves what other men think of them, and that
other men would fain be as they arc, then thc>’ are
happy as it were by report, when perhaps they find the
contrary' within.
Bacon, Of Great Place
84 Honour is, or should be, the place of virtue; and as in
nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in
their place; so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority
settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding
stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man’s
self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when
he is placed.
Bacon, Of Great Place
85 Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and
swoln, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Bacon, Of Praise
86 A man is an ill husband of his honour, that entreth into
any action, the failing wherein may disgrace him more
than the carrying of it through can honour him.
Bacon, Of Honour and Reputation
87 Although | do not care immoderately for glory, or, if | dare
say so, although | even hate it, inasmuch as | judge it to
be antagonistic to the repose which | esteem above all
other things, at the same time | never tried to conceal my
actions as though they were crimes, nor have | used
many precautions against being known, partly because |
should have thought it damaging to myself, and partly
because it would have given me a sort of disquietude
which would again have militated against the perfect
repose of spirit which | seek. And forasmuch as having in
this way always held myself in a condition of indifference
as regards whether | was known or was not known, | have
not yet been able to prevent myself from acquiring some
sort of reputation, | thought that | should do my best at
least to prevent myself from acquiring an evil reputation,
Descartes, Discourse on Method, VI
88 Grief for the discovery of some defect of ability is shame,
or the passion that discovereth itself in blushing, and
consisteth in the apprehension of something
dishonourable; and in young men is a sign of the love of
good reputation, and commendable: in old men itis a
sign of the same; but because it comes too late, not
commendable.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 6
89 Let a man, as most men do, rate themselves at the
highest value they can, yet their true value is no more
than it is esteemed by others.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 10
90 The manifestation of the value we set on one another is
that which is commonly called honouring and
dishonouring. To value a man at a high rate is to honour
him; at a low rate is to dishonour him. But high and low,
in this case, is to be understood by comparison to the
rate that each man setteth on himself.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 10
91 We do not content ourselves with the life we have in
ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an
imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose
we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn
and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the
real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or
truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so 2 is to
attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We
would rather separate them from ourselves to join them
to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to
acquire the reputation of being brave.. ,. We are so
presumptuous that we would wish to be known by all the
world, even by people who shall come after, when we
Shall be no more; and we are so vain that the esteem of
five or six neighbours delights and contents us.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 147-148
92 Have you never seen people who, in order to complain of
the little fuss you make about them, parade before you
the example of great men who esteem them? In answer |
reply to them, "Show me the merit whereby you have
charmed these persons, and | also will esteem you."
Pascal, Pensées, V, 333
93 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of Noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes;
But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th’abhorred shears.
And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,
Phoebus repli’d, and touch’d my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th’world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfet witnes of all judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav’n expect thy meed,
Milton, Lycidas, 70
94 | might relate of thousands, and thir names
Eternize here on Earth; but those elect
Angels contented with thir fame in Heav’n
Seek not the praise of men; the other sort
In might though wondrous and in Acts of Warr,
Nor of Renown less eager, yet by doome
Canceld from Heav’n and sacred memorie,
Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell.
For strength from Truth divided and from Just,
Illaudable, naught merits but dispraise
And ignominie, yet to glorie aspires
Vain glorious, and through infamie seeks fame;
Therfore Eternal silence be thir doome.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 373
95 O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give eare
To that false Worm, of whomsoever taught
To counterfet Mans voice, true in our Fall,
False in our promis’d Rising; since our Eyes
Op’nd we find indeed, and find we know
Both Good and Evil, Good lost, and Evil got,
Bad Fruit of Knowledge, if this be to know,
Which leaves us naked thus, of Honour void,
Of Innocence, of Faith, of Puritie,
Our wonted Ornaments now soild and staind,
And in our Faces evident the signes
Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store;
Even shame, the last of evils; of the first
Be sure then. How shall | behold the face
Henceforth of God or Angel, earst with joy
And rapture so oft beheld? those heavenly shapes
Will dazle now this earthly, with thir blaze
Insufferable bright, O might | here
In solitude live savage, in some glade
Obscur’d, where highest Woods impenetrable
To Starr or Sun-light, soread thir umbrage broad.
And brown as Evening: Cover me ye Pines,
Ye Cedars,with innumerable boughs;
Hide me, where | may never see them more.
But let us now, as in bad plight, devise
What best may for the present serve to hide
The Parts of each from other, that seem most
To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen.
Some Tree whose broad smooth Leaves together sowd.
And girded on our loyns, may cover round
Those middle parts, that this new commer, Shame,
There sit not, and reproach us as unclean.
So counsel’d hee, and both together went
Into the thickest Wood, there soon they chose The
Figtree. -..
Those
They gatherd, broad as Amazonian Targe,
And with what skill they had, together sowd.
To gird thir waste, vain Covering if to hide
Thir guilt and dreaded shame; O how unlike
To that first naked Glorie.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 1067
96 What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument....
And so Sepulcher’d in such pomp dost lie.
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
Milton, On Shakespear
97 The more a man imagines that he is praised by other
men, the more is this joy strengthened; for the more a
man imagines that he is praised by others, the more does
he imagine that he affects others with joy accompanied
by the idea of himself as a cause, and therefore he is
affected with greater joy accompanied with the idea of
himself.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 53, Corol.
98 What is called vainglory is self-satisfaction, nourished by
nothing but the good opinion of the multitude, so that
when that is withdrawn, the satisfaction, that is to say,
the chief good which every one loves, ceases. For this
reason those who glory in the good opinion of the
multitude anxiously and with daily care strive, labour,
and struggle to preserve their fame. For the multitude is
changeable and fickle, so that fame, if it be not
preserved, soon passes away. As every one, moreover, is
desirous to catch the praises of the people, one person
will readily destroy the fame of another; and,
consequently, as the object of contention is what is
commonly thought to be the highest good, a great desire
arises on the part of every one to keep down his fellows
by every possible means, and he who at last comes off
conqueror boasts more because he has injured another
person than because he has profited himself. This glory of
self-satisfaction, therefore, is indeed vain, for it is really
no glory.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 58, Schol.
99 Shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good,
in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly is
present in the man who is possessed with shame, just as
pain is called good in so far as it shows that the injured
part has not yet putrefied. A man, therefore, who is
ashamed of what he has done, although he is sorrowful, is
nevertheless more perfect than the shameless man who
has no desire of living uprightly.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 58, Schol.
100 Since nothing can be more natural than to encourage
with esteem and reputation that wherein every one finds
his advantage, and to blame and discountenance the
contrary; it is no wonder that esteem and discredit, virtue
and vice, should, in a great measure, everywhere
correspond with the unchangeable rule of right and
wrong, which the law of God hath established; there
being nothing that so directly and visibly secures and
advances the general good of mankind in this world, as
obedience to the laws he has set them, and nothing that
breeds such mischiefs and confusion, as the neglect of
them. And therefore men, without renouncing all sense
and reason, and their own interest, which they are so
constantly true to, could not generally mistake, in placing
their commendation and blame on that side that really
deserved it not. Nay, even those men whose practice was
otherwise, failed not to give their approbation right, few
being depraved to that degree as not to condemn, at
least in others, the faults they themselves were guilty of.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXVIII,
11
101 Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest
Offices; so Climbing is performed in the same Posture
with Creeping.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
102 And now, having grasped his new-purchased sword in
his hand, he [Tom Jones] was going to issue forth, when
the thought of what he was about to undertake laid
suddenly hold of him, and he began to reflect that in a
few minutes he might possibly deprive a human being of
life, or might lose his own. "Very well," said he, "and in
what cause do | venture my life? Why, in that of my
honour. And who is this human being? A rascal who hath
injured and insulted me without provocation. But is not
revenge forbidden by Heaven? Yes, but it is enjoined by
the world. Well, but shall | obey the world in opposition to
the express commands of Heaven? Shall | incur the
Divine displeasure rather than be called— ha—coward—
scoundrel?— I'll think no more; | am resolved, and must
fight him."
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 14
103 Mrs. Fitzpatrick. | made no doubt that his [Mr.
Fitzpatrick’s] designs were strictly honourable, as the
phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of
Marriage.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XI, 4
104 Honour sets all the parts of the body politic in motion,
and by its very action connects them; thus each
individual advances the public good, while he only thinks
of promoting his own interest.
True it is that, philosophically speaking, it is a false
honour which moves all the parts of the government; but
even this false honour is as useful to the public as true
honour could possible be to private persons.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Ill, 7
105 Honour... has its supreme laws, to which education is
obliged to conform. The chief of these are that we are
permitted to set a value upon our fortune, but are
absolutely forbidden to set any upon our lives.
The second is that, when we are raised to a post or
preferment, we should never do or permit anything which
may seem to imply that we look upon ourselves as
inferior to the rank we hold.
The third is that those things which honour forbids are
more rigorously forbidden, when the laws do not concur
in the prohibition; and those it commands are more
strongly insisted upon, when they happen not to be
commanded by law.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, IV, 2
106 The savage lives within himself, while social man lives
constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in
the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the
consciousness of his own existence merely from the
judgment of others concerning him.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
107 Most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of
virtue than of importance.
Johnson, Rambler No, 13
108 It is...of the utmost importance that those who have any
intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life and
acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept
away by time among the refuse of fame should add to
their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in
their purposes, acquire the art of sapping what they
cannot batter, and the habit of vanquishing obstinate
resistance by obstinate attacks.
Johnson, Rambler No, 43
109 That praises are without reason lavished on the dead,
and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to
antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by
those who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for
eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those who,
being forced by disappointment upon consolatory
expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the
present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the
regard which IS yet denied by envy will be at last
bestowed by time.
Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
110 Honour makes a great part of the reward of all
honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, ail
things considered, they are generally under-
recompensed.... Disgrace has the contrary effect. The
trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but
it is in most places more profitable than the greater part
of common trades. The most detestable of all
employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion
to the quantity of work done, better paid than any
common trade whatever.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 10
111 As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more
liberal applause on their destroyers than on their
benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the
vice of the most exalted characters.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, |
112 Our estimate of personal merit is relative to the
common faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of
genius or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are
measured not so much by their real elevation as by the
height to which they ascend above the level of their age
or country; and the same stature which in a people of
giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in
a race of pigmies.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLII
113 The road to eminence and power, from obscure
condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too
much of course- If rare merit be the rarest of all rare
things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation.
The temple of honour ought to be seated on an
eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be
remembered too, that virtue is never tried but by some
difficulty and some struggle.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
114 Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more
justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and
cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.
Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace, III
115 Respect applies always to persons only—not to things.
The latter may arouse inclination, and if they are animals
(for example, horses, dogs, etc.), even love or fear, like
the sea, a volcano, a beast of prey; but never respect.
Something that comes nearer to this feeling is
admiration, and this, as an affection, astonishment, can
apply to things also, for example, lofty mountains, the
magnitude, number, and distance of the heavenly bodies,
the strength and swiftness of many animals, etc. But all
this is not respect. A man also may be an object to me of
love, fear, or admiration, even to astonishment, and yet
not be an object of respect. His jocose humour, his
courage and strength, his power from the rank he has
amongst others, may inspire me with sentiments of this
kind, but still inner respect for him is wanting. Fontenelle
says, "| bow before a great man, but my mind does not
bow." | would add, before an humble plain man, in whom |
perceive uprightness of character in a higher degree than
| am conscious of in myself, my mind bows whether |
choose it or not, and though | bear my head never so
high that he may not forget my superior rank. Why is
this? Because his example exhibits to me a law that
humbles my self-conceit when | compare it with my
conduct.... Respect is a tribute which we cannot refuse to
merit, whether we will or not; we may indeed outwardly
withhold it, but we cannot help feeling it inwardly.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
116 Men can never acquire respect by benevolence alone,
though they may gain love, so that the greatest
beneficence only procures them honour when it is
regulated by worthiness.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, 11, 2
117 If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what
they really mean is that existence and well-being are as
nothing compared with other people’s opinions. Of
course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating
the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion
others have of us, in indispensable if we are to make any
progress in the world.
Schopenhauer, Position, |
118 Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the
attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people
regard him with favor; because it means that everyone
joins to give him help and protection, which is an
infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than
anything he can do himself.
Schopenhauer, Position, 1V
119 The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that
moral character is unalterable: a single bad action
implies that future actions of the same kind will, under
similar circumstances, also be bad.
Schopenhauer, Position, 1V
120 Fame is something which must be won; honor, only
something which must not be lost. The absence of fame is
obscurity, which is only a negative; but loss of honor is
shame, which is a positive quality.
Schopenhauer, Position, 1V
121 Honor is concerned merely with such qualities as
everyone may be expected to show under similar
circumstances; fame only of those which cannot be
required of any man. Honor is of qualities which everyone
has a right to attribute to himself; fame only of those
which should be left to others to attribute. Whilst our
honor extends as far as people have knowledge of us;
fame runs in advance, and makes us known wherever it
finds its way. Everyone can make a claim to honor; very
few to fame, as being attainable only in virtue of
extraordinary achievements.
Schopenhauer, Position, V
122 Examine the man who lives in misery because he does
not shine above other men; who goes about producing
himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims;
struggling to force everybody, as it were begging
everybody for God’s sake, to acknowledge him a great
man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature
is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A
great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for
the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. |
advise you to keep-out of his way. He cannot walk on
quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him,
write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the
emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is
nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would
find something in him. In good truth, | believe no great
man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and
real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever
much tormented in this way.
Carlyle, The Hero as King
123 | trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a
man has good corn, or woods, or boards, or pigs to sell, or
can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church
organs than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-
beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
Emerson, Journal (Feb, 1855)
124 The nature and strength of the feelings which we call
regret, shame, repentance or remorse, depend apparently
not only on the strength of the violated instinct, but
partly on the strength of the temptation, and often still
more on the judgment of our fellows. How far each man
values the appreciation of others, depends on the
strength of his innate or acquired feeling of sympathy;
and on his own capacity for reasoning out the remote
consequences of his acts. Another element is most
important, although not necessary, the reverence or fear
of the Gods, or Spirits believed in by each man: and this
applies especially in cases of remorse.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 4
125 To do good unto others—to do unto others as ye would
they should do unto you—is the foundation-stone of
morality. It is, therefore, hardly possible to exaggerate the
importance during rude times of the love of praise and
the dread of blame. A man who was not impelled by any
deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good
of others, yet was roused to such actions by a sense of
glory, would by his example excite the same wish for
glory in other men, and would strengthen by exercise the
noble feeling of admiration.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 5
126 He [Mitya] felt unbearably awkward. All were clothed,
while he was naked, and strange to say, when he was
undressed he felt somehow guilty in their presence, and
was almost ready to believe himself that he was inferior
to them, and that now they had a perfect right to despise
him.
"When all are undressed, one is somehow not
ashamed, but when one’s the only one undressed and
everybody is looking, it’s degrading," he kept repeating
to himself, again and again. "It’s like a dream; I’ve
sometimes dreamed of being in such degrading
positions."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. l/l, 1X, 6
127 A man's Social Self is the recognition which he gets
from his mates. We are not only gregarious animals, liking
to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate
propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed
favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment
could be devised, were such a thing physically possible,
than that one should be turned loose in society and
remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof.
If no one turned round when we entered, answered when
we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we
met "cut us dead," and acted as if we were non-existing
things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere
long well up in us, from which the cruellest bodily
tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel
that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk
to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all.
William James, Psychology, X
128 Hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more
than one really inflexible point of honor.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
129 Tanner, We live in an atmosphere of shame. we are
ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of
ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents,
of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are
ashamed of our naked skins.... We are ashamed to walk,
ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a
hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of
keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener
instead of a coachman and footman. The more things a
man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Shaw, Man and Superman, |
130 The highest form of vanity is love of fame. It is a passion
easy to deride but hard to understand, and in men who
live at all by imagination almost impossible to eradicate.
The good opinion of posterity can have no possible effect
on our fortunes, and the practical value which reputation
may temporarily have is quite absent in posthumous
fame. The direct object of this passion—that a name
should survive in men’s mouths to which no adequate
idea of its original can be attached— seems a thin and
fantastic satisfaction, especially when we consider how
little we should probably sympathise with the creatures
that are to remember us.... Yet, beneath this desire for
nominal longevity, apparently so inane, there may lurk
an ideal ambition of which the ancients cannot have
been unconscious when they' set so high a value on
fame. They often identified fame with immortality, a
subject on which they had far more rational sentiments
than have since prevailed.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 6
1.6 Human Greatness
THE HERO
There is necessarily some overlapping and there is certainly
a connection between matters covered in the preceding
section and in this one. Great men are usually men who
have won fame and glory for themselves; heroes are usually
men who have been honored as such. What distinguishes
the subjects of the two sections is the fact that here we are
concerned with the attributes or characteristics that elevate
a man above the commonplace, that make him outstanding
among men, whether or not he is renowned and honored for
his greatness. That a man has genius remains the case even
if no tribute is paid by others to his extraordinary gifts.
The passages on greatness in men and women fall into
two groups: on the one hand, statements about what human
greatness consists in; on the other, examples of human
greatness. Tlierc would be many more of the latter were it
not for the fact that many of the examples have been
quoted elsewhere: examples of greatness in women in
Section 1.7; examples of great poets in Section 16.3;
examples of great military commanders in Section 14.2, and
so on.
In addition, there are quotations that discuss the
phenomenon of human genius and that describe heroes and
heroic deeds or achievements. The ancients magnify the
hero and the heroic more than modern writers do. The
controversy about the role of the great man in history' is
characteristically a modern one; and on this issue the reader
will find the affirmations of Carlyle and Emerson opposed by
the denials of Tolstoy.
1 Artabanus. Seest thou how God with his lightning smites
always the bigger animals, and will not suffer them to
w'ax insolent, while those of a lesser bulk chafe him not?
How likewise his bolts fall ever on the highest houses and
the tallest trees? So plainly does He love to bring down
everything that exalts itself. Thus ofttimes a mighty host
is discomfited by a few men, when God in his jealousy
sends fear or storm from heaven, and they perish ina
way unworthy of them. For God allows no one to have
high thoughts but Himself.
Herodotus, History, VII, 10
2 Now there arose [at Thermopylae] a fierce struggle
between the Persians and the Lacedaemonians over the
body of Leonidas, in which the Greeks four times drove
back the enemy, and at last by their great bravery
succeeded in bearing off the body. This combat was
scarcely ended when the Persians with Ephialtes
approached; and the Greeks, informed that they drew
nigh, made a change in the manner of their fighting.
Drawing back into the narrowest part of the pass, and
retreating even behind the cross wall, they posted
themselves upon a hillock, where they stood all drawn up
together in one close body, except only the Thebans. The
hillock whereof | speak is at the entrance of the straits,
where the stone lion stands which was set up in honour of
Leonidas. Here they defended themselves to the last,
such as still had swords using them, and the others
resisting with their hands and teeth; till the barbarians,
who in part had pulled down the wall and attacked them
in front, in part had gone round and now encircled them
upon every side, overwhelmed and buried the remnant
which was left beneath showers of missile weapons....
The slain were buried where they fell; and in their
honour, nor less in honour of those who died before
Leonidas sent the allies away, an inscription was set up,
which said:—
Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land
Against three hundred myriads bravely stand.
This was in honour of all. Another was for the Spartans
alone:—
Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell.
Herodotus, History, Vil, 225
3 The Nurse. Strange are the tempers of princes, and maybe
because they seldom have to obey, and mostly lord it
over others, change they their moods with difficulty. Tis
better then to have been trained to live on equal terms.
Be it mine to reach old age, not in proud pomp, but in
security! ... Greatness that doth o’erreach itself, brings no
blessing to mortal men; but pays a penalty of greater ruin
whenever fortune is wroth with a family.
Euripides, Medea, 119
4 Medea. Whoso is wise in his generation ought never to
have his children taught to be too clever; for besides the
reputation they get for idleness, they purchase bitter
odium from the citizens. For if thou shouldst import new
learning amongst dullards., thou will be thought a useless
trifler, void of knowledge; while if thy fame in the city
o'ertops that of the pretenders to cunning knowledge,
thou wilt win their dislike.
Euripides, Medea, 294
5 Pericles. So died these men as became Athenians. You,
their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a
resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may
have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas
derived only from words of the advantages which are
bound up with the defence of your country’, though these
would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an
audience so alive to them as the present, you must
yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your
eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your
hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon
you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of
duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action that men
were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure
in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive
their country’ of their valour, but they laid it at her feet
as the most glorious contribution that they could offer.
For this offering of their lives made in common by them
all they each of them individually received that renown
which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much
that in which their bones have been deprosited, but that
noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be
eternally remembered upon every occasion on which
deed or story’ shall call for its commemoration. For heroes
have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from
their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it,
there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with
no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.
These take as your model and, judging happiness to
be the fruit of freedom and freedom of va!our» never
decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that
would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have
nothing to hope for: it is rathet they to whom continued
life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a
fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its
consequences, And surely, to a man of spirit, the
degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more
grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the
midst of his strength and patriotism!
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Il, 43
6 Alcibiades. Many are the marvels which | might narrate in
praise of Socrates; most of his ways might perhaps be
paralleled in another man, but his absolute unlikeness to
any human being that is or ever has been is perfectly
astonishing. You may imagine Brasidas and others to
have been like Achilles; or you may imagine Nestor and
Antenor to have been like Pericles; and the same may be
said of other famous men, but of this strange being you
will never be able to find any likeness, however remote,
either among men who now are or who ever have been—
other than that which | have already suggested of Silenus
and the satyrs; and they represent in a figure not only
himself, but his words. For, although | forgot to mention
this to you before, his words are like the images of
Silenus which open; they are ridiculous when you first
hear them; he clothes himself in language that is like the
Skin of the wanton satyr—for his talk is of pack-asses and
smiths and cobblers and curriers, and he is always
repeating the same things in the same words, so that any
ignorant or inexperienced person might feel disposed to
laugh at him; but he who opens the bust and secs what is
within wall find that they are the only words which have a
meaning in them, and also the most divine, abounding in
fair images of virtue, and of the widest comprehension, or
rather extending to the whole duty of a good and
honourable man.
Plato, Symposiurn, 221A
7 Socrates. When a man dies gloriously in war shall we not
say, in the first place, that he is of the golden race?
Glaucon. To be sure.
Nay, have we not the authority of Hesiod for affirming
that when they are dead
They are holy angels upon the earth, authors of good,
averters of evil, the guardians of speech-gifted men?
Yes; and we accept his authority.
We must learn of the god how we are to order the
sepulture of divine and heroic personages, and what is to
be their special distinction; and we must do as he bids?
By all means.
And in ages to come we will reverence them and kneel
before their sepulchres as at the graves of hearos. And
not only they but any who are deemed pre-eminently
good, whether they die from age, or in any other way,
Shall be admitted to the same honours.
Plato, Republic, V 468B
8 It is possible to fail in many ways... while to succeed is
possible only in one way (for which reason also one is
easy and the other difficult - to miss the mark easy, to hit
it difficult).
Aristotle, Ethic, 11066528
9 It is to be expected that a farmer will busy himself sowing
trees, no fruit of which his eyes will ever see, and a great
man will not likewise sow the seeds of laws, institutions,
and public policy?
Cicero, Disputations, |, 14
10 The altogether courageous and great spirit has, above all,
two characteristics. First, he is indifferent to outward
circumstances. Such a person is convinced that nothing
but moral goodness and propriety are worth admiring and
striving for. He knows he ought not be subject to any
person, passion, or accident of fortune. His second
characteristic is that when his soul has been disciplined
in this way, he should do things that are not only great
and highly useful, but also deeds that are arduous,
laborious and fraught with danger to life and to those
things that make life worthwhile.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 20
11 Success comes to the ordinary individual, even to
ordinary ability. But triumph over the disasters and fears
of mortal life is only granted to great men. Certainly to be
always content and to pass through life without a qualm
is to be ignorant of half of nature. You may be a great
man, but if Fortune gives you no chance to demonstrate
your merit, how am |! to know your greatness? If a man is
to know himself, he must be tested. No one knows what
he can accomplish except by trying. Some men have
given themselves over voluntarily to sluggish Fortune
and have looked for some chance to proclaim abroad
their merit when it was to sink into oblivion.
Seneca, On Providence, IV
12 Aristotle. No great genius has ever existed without some
tough of madness.
Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, XVII
13 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul?
Matthew 16:26
14 In his journey [to Spain] as he was crossing the Alps, and
passing by a small village of the barbarians with but few
inhabitants, and those wretchedly poor, his companions
asked the question among themselves by way of
mockery, if there were any canvassing for offices there,
any contention which should be uppermost, or feuds of
great men one against another. To which Caesar made
answer seriously, "For my part, | had rather be the first
man among these fellows, than the second man in
Rome."
Plutarch, Caesar
15 Caesar was born to do great things, and had a passion
after honour, and the many noble exploits he had done
did not now serve as an inducement to him to sit still and
reap the fruit of his past labours, but were incentives and
encouragements to go on, and raised in him ideas of still
greater actions, and a desire of new glory, as if the
present were all spent. It was in fact a sort of emulous
struggle with himself, as it had been with another, how
he might outdo his past actions by his future.
Plutarch, Caesar
16 Caesar was not of so slight or weak a temper as to suffer
himself to be carried away by the indignation of the
moment, into a civil war with his country, upon the sight
of Antony and Cassius seekeng refuge in his camp
meanly dressed and in a hired carriage, without ever
having thought of it or taken any such resolution long
before. This was to him, who wanted a pretence of
declaring war, a fair and plausible occasion; but the true
motive that led him was the same that formerly led
Alexander and Cyrus against all mankind, the
unquenchable thirst of empire, and the distracted
ambition of being the greatest man in the world, which
was impracticable for him, unless Pompey were put down.
Plutarch, Antony
17 Nothing great... is produced suddenly, since not even the
grape or fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, |
will answer to you that it requires time: let it flower first,
then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is, then, the fruit of a
fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and
would you possess the fruit of man's mind in so short a
time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if | tell you.
Epictetus, Discourses, |, 15
18 Many have... perished, even good men, despising slow
and safe success and hurrying on even at the cost of ruin
to premature greatness.
Tacitus, Annals, lil, 66
19 A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by
great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme,
so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will
savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who,
designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far
distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of
their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark,
not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a
height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit
the mark they wish to reach.
Machiavelli, Prince, VI
20 It was necessary ... to Moses that he should find the
people of Israel in Eg>'pt enslaved and oppressed by the
Egyptians, in order that they should be disposed to follow
him so as to be delivered out of bondage. It was
necessary' that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and
that he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he
should become King of Rome and founder of the
fatherland. It was necessary’ titat Cyrus should find the
Persians discontented with the government of the Medes,
and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long
peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability had he
not found the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities,
therefore, made those men fortunate, and their high
ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity
whereby their country was ennobled and made famous,
Machiavelli, Prince, VI
21 Without doubt princes become great when they
overcome the difficulties and obstacles by which they are
confronted, and therefore fortune, especially when she
desires to make a new prince great, who has a greater
necessity to earn renown than an hereditary one, causes
enemies to arise and form designs against him, in order
that he may have the opportunity of overcoming them,
and by them to mount higher, as by a ladder which his
enemies have raised.
Machiavelli, Prince, XX
22 Pantagruel. As a torch or candle, as long as it hath life
enough and is lighted, shines round al>out, disperses its
light, delights those that are near it, yields them its
scr\’ice and dearness, and never causes any pain or
displeasure; but as soon as it is extinguished, its smoke
and evaporation infect the air, offend the by-standers,
and are noisome to all: so, as long as those noble and
renowned souls inhabit their bodies, peace, profit,
pleasure, and honour never leave the places where they
abide; but as soon as they leave them, both the continent
and adjacent islands are annoyed with great commotions;
in the air fogs, darkness, thunder, hail; tremblings,
pulsations, agitations of the earth; storms and hurricanes
at sea; together with sad complaints amongst the people,
broaching of religions, changes in governments, and
ruins of commonwealths.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, IV, 26
23 Popular opinion is wrong: it is much easier to go along
the sides, where the outer edge serves as a limit anda
guide, than by The middle way, wide and open, and to go
by art than by nature; but it is also much less noble and
less commendable. Greatness of soul is not so much
pressing upward and forward as knowing how to set
oneself in order and circumscribe oneself. It regards as
great whatever is adequate, and shows its deviation by
liking moderate things better than eminent ones. There is
nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man
well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the
knowledge of how' to live this life well and naturally; and
the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our
being.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
24 Thomalin. And he that strives to touch the starres
Oft stombles at a strawe.
Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender (July)
25 Marullus. O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many atime and oft
Have you climbed up to walls and battlements.
To lowers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The live-long day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
And when you saw Ins chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees.
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I, |, 41
26 Cassius. |, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did | the tired Caesar. And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body.
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, |, ti, 112
27 Cassius. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves....
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that "Caesar"?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood.
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, |, ti, 135
28 Brutus. Tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back.
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II, i, 21
29 Mark Antony. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come | to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, ‘faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
| thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Ill, if, 82
30 Mark Antony. This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, V, v, 68
31 Olivia. Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great,
some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust
upon ‘em.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Il, v, 156
32 Hamlet. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake,
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, iv, 53
33 Cleopatra. | dream’d there was an Emperor Antony....
His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear’d arm
Crested the world; his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ‘twas
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like; they show’d his back above
The element they lived in. In his livelry
Walk’d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp’d from his pocket.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V, ti, 75
34 Wolsey. | have touch’d the highest point of all my
greatness;
And, from that full meridian of my glory,
| haste now to my setting. | shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening.
And no man see me more.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Ill, ii, 223
35 Wolsey. Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as | do. | have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders.
This many summers in a Sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride
At length broke under me and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, | hate ye.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III, ii, 352
36 It will, perhaps, be as well to distinguish three species
and degrees of ambition. First, that of men who are
anxious to enlarge their own power in their country,
which is a vulgar and degenerate kind; next, that of men
who strive to enlarge the power and empire of their
country over mankind, which is more dignified but not
less covetous; but if one were to endeavor to renew and
enlarge the power and empire of mankind in general over
the universe, such ambition (if it may be so termed) is
both more sound and more noble than the other two.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 129
37 Men in great places are thrice servants: servants of the
sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of
business. So as they have no freedom, neither in their
persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a
strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty; or to
seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s
self.
Bacon, Of Great Place
38 If a true survey be taken of counsellors and statesmen,
there may be found (though rarely) those which can
make a small state great, and yet cannot fiddle: as, on
the other side, there will be found a great many that can
fiddle very cunningly, but yet are so far from being able
to make a small state great, as their gift lieth the other
way; to bring a great and flourishing estate to ruin and
decay.
Bacon, Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
39 The greatest baseness of man is the pursuit of glory. But
it is also the greatest mark of his excellence; for whatever
possessions he may have on earth, whatever health and
essential comfort, he is not satisfied if he has not the
esteem of men. He values human reason so highly that,
whatever advantages he may have on earth, he is not
content if he is not also ranked highly in the judgement
of man. This is the finest position in the world. Nothing
can turn him from that desire, which is the most indelible
quality of man’s heart.
And those who must despise men, and put them on a
level with the brutes, yet wish to be admired and
believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own
feelings; their nature, which is stronger than all,
convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly
than reason convinces them of their baseness.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 404
40 All the glory of greatness has no lustre for people who are
in search of understanding.
The greatness of clever men is invisible to kings, to
the rich, to chiefs, and to all the worldly great.
The greatness of wisdom, which is nothing if not of
God, is invisible to the carnal-minded and to the clever.
These are three orders differing in kind.
Great geniuses have their power, their glory, their
greatness, their victory their lustre, and have no need of
worldly greatness, with which they are not in keeping.
They are seen, not by the eye, but by the mind; this is
sufficient.
The saints have their power, their glory, their victory,
their lustre, and need no worldly or intellectual greatness,
with which they have no affinity; for these neither add
anything to them, nor take away anything from them.
They are seen of God and the angels, and not of the
body, nor of the curious mind. God is enough for them.
Archimedes, apart from his rank, would have the same
veneration. He fought no battles for the eyes to feast
upon; but he has given his discoveries to all men. Oh!
how brilliant he was to the mind!
Pascal, Pensées, XII, 793
41 Satan. What matter where, if | be still the same,
And what | should be, all but less than hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 256
42 One man, choosing a proper juncture, leaps into a gulf,
thence proceeds a hero, and is called the saviour of his
country: another achieves the same enterprise, but,
unluckily timing it, has left the brand of madness fixed as
a reproach upon his memory.
Swift, Tale of a Tub, 1X
43 When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know
him by this Sign, that the Dunces are all in confederacy
against him.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
44 Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that Man is great indeed.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle lV, 233
45 Through a fatality inseparable from human nature,
moderation in great men Is very rare; and as it is always
much easier to push on force in the direction in which it
moves than to stop its movement, so in the superior class
of the people, it is less difficult, perhaps, to find men
extremely virtuous, than extremely prudent.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVIII, 41
46 There have been men indeed splendidly wicked, whose
endowments threw a brightness on their crimes, and
whom scarce any villainy’ made perfectly detestable,
because they never could be wholly divested of their
excellencies; but such have been in all ages the great
corrupters of the world, and their resemblance ought no
more to be preserved, than the art of murdering without
pain.
Johnson, Rambler No. 4
47 The errors and follies of a great genius are seldom
without some radiations of understanding, by which
meaner minds may be enlightened.
Johnson, Rambler No, 29
48 The wit, the hero, the philosopher, whom their tempers or
their fortunes have hindered from intimate relations, die
without any other effect than that of adding a new topic
to the conversation of the day.
Johnson, Rambler No. 78
49 | said, | considered distinction of rank to be of so much
importance in civilized society, that if | were asked on the
Same day to dine with the first Duke in England, and with
the first man in Britain for genius, | should hesitate which
to prefer. Johnson. "To be sure, if you were to dine only
once, and it were never to be known where you dined,
you would choose rather to dine with the first man for
genius; but to gain most respect, you should dine with
the first Duke in England. For nine people in ten that you
meet with, would have a higher opinion of you for having
dined with a Duke; and the great genius himself would
receive you better, because you had been with the great
Duke."
Boswell, Lift of Johnson (July 20, 1763)
50 True great genius is always accompanied with good
sense.
Boswell, London Journal (Dec. 17, 1762)
51 Every British name is effaced by the illustrious name of
Arthur, the hereditary prince of the Silures, in South
Wales, and the elective king or general of the nation.
According to the most rational account, he defeated, in
twelve successive battles, the Angles of the North and
the Saxons of the West; but the declining age of the hero
was embittered by popular ingratitude and domestic
misfortunes. The events of his life are less interesting
than the singular revolutions of his fame.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVIII
52 The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and
sometimes deserved, but Charlemagne is the only prince
in whose favour the title has been indissolubly blended
with the name.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLIX
53 | want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one.
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
the age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.
Byron, Don Juan, I, 1
54 Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be
any heroes. 7'hcy come on the scene only in uncivilized
conditions. Their aim is right, necessary, and political,
and this they pursue as their own affair. the heroes who
founded states, introduced marriage and agriculture, did
not do this as their recognized right, and their conduct
Still has the appearance of being their particular will. But
as the higher right of the Idea against nature, this heroic
coercion is a rightful coercion. Mere goodness can
achieve little against the power of nature,
Hegel, Philosophy of Rtght, Additions, Par. 93
55 Caesar was contending for the maintenance of his
position, honor, and safety; and, since the power of his
opponents included the sovereignty over the provinces of
the Roman Empire, his victory secured for him the
conquest of that entire empire; and he thus became,
though leaving the form of the constitution, the autocrat
of the state. That which secured for him the execution of
a design, which in the first instance was of negative
import, the autocracy of Rome, was, however, at the same
lime an independently necessary feature in the history of
Rome and of the world. It was not, then, his private gain
merely, but an unconscious impulse that occasioned the
accomplishment of that for which the time was ripe. Such
are all great historical men—whose own particular aims
involve those large issues which are the will of the world-
spirit. They may be called heroes, inasmuch as they have
derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the
calm, regular course of things, sanctioned by the existing
order; but from a concealed fount—one which has not
attained to phenomenal, present existence—from that
inner spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which,
impinging on the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in
pieces, because it is another kernel than that which
belonged to the shell in question. They are men,
therefore, who appear to draw the impulse of their life
from themselves; and whose deeds have produced a
condition of things and a complex of historical relations
which appear to be only their interest, and their work.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
56 World-historical men, the heroes of an epoch, must... be
recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their
words are the best of that time. Great men have formed
purposes to satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever
prudent designs and counsels they might have learned
from others would be the more limited and inconsistent
features in their career; for it was they who best
understood affairs; from whom others learned, and
approved, or at least acquiesced in their policy. For that
spirit which had taken this fresh step in history is the
inmost soul of all individuals; but in a state of
unconsciousness which the great men in question
aroused. Their fellows, therefore, follow these soul-
leaders; for they feel the irresistible power of their own
inner spirit thus embodied. If we go on to cast a look at
the fate of these world-historical persons, whose vocation
it was to be the agents of the world-spirit, we shall find it
to have been no happy one. They attained no calm
enjoyment; their whole life was labor and trouble; their
whole nature was nought else but their master-passion.
When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls
from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are
murdered, like Caesar; transported to St. Helena, like
Napoleon. This fearful consolation—that historical men
have not enjoyed what is called happiness, and of which
only private life (and this may be passed under very
various external circumstances) is capable— this
consolation those may draw from history, who stand in
need of it; and it is craved by envy— vexed at what is
great and transcendent—striving, therefore, to depreciate
it, and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has
been demonstrated ad nauseam that princes are
generally unhappy on their thrones; in consideration of
which the possession of a throne is tolerated, and men
acquiesce in the fact that not themselves but the
personages in question are its occupants. The free man,
we may observe, is not envious, but gladly recognizes
what is great and exalted, and rejoices that it exists.
It is in the light of those common elements which
constitute the interest and therefore the passions of
individuals, that these historical men are to be regarded.
They are great men, because they willed and
accomplished something great; not a mere fancy, a mere
intention, but that which met the case and fell in with the
needs of the age...
A world-historical individual is not so unwise as to
indulge a variety of wishes to divide his regards. He is
devoted to the one aim, regardless of all else. It is even
possible that such men may treat other great, even
sacred interests, inconsiderately; conduct which is indeed
obnoxious to moral reprehension. But so mighty a form
must trample down many an innocent flower, crush to
pieces many an object in its path.
Hegel, Philosophy of History Introduction, 3
57 No difference of rank, position, or birth, is so great as the
gulf that separates the countless millions who use their
head only in the service of their belly, in other words,
look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very
few and rare persons who have the courage to say; No! it
is too good for that; my head shall be active only in its
own service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and
varied spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in
some form, whether as art or as literature, that may
answer to my character as an individual.
Schopenhauer, Genius
58 Compared with the short span of time they live, men of
great intellect are like huge buildings, standing ona
small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be
seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous
reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while
he lives. But when a century has pcissed, the world
recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Schopenhauer, Reputation
59 Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the
intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he
loses all patience he crushes both them and himself. Or
he is like Gulliver at Liliput, overwhelmed by an
enormous number of little men.
Schopenhauer, A Few Parables
60 It is natural for great minds—the true teachers of
humanity—to care little about the constant company of
others; just as little as the schoolmaster cares for joining
in the gambols of the noisy crowd of boys which surround
him. The mission of these great minds is to guide
mankind over the sea of error to the haven of truth—to
draw it forth from the dark abysses of a barbarous
vulgarity up into the light of culture and refinement. Men
of great intellect live in the world without really
belonging to it; and so, from their earliest years, they feel
that there is a perceptible difference between them and
other people. But it is only gradually, with the lapse of
years, that they come to a clear understanding of their
position. Their intellectual isolation is then reinforced by
actual seclusion in their manner of life; they let no one
approach who is not in some degree emancipated from
the prevailing vulgarity.
Schopenhauer, Our Relation to Ourselves
61 Faith is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual
Hero. And what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath
of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship,
submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is
founded on Hero-worship.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
62 Show our critics a great man, a Luther for example, they
begin to what they call ‘account’ for him; not to worship
him, but take the dimensions of him,—and bring him out
to be a little kind of man!
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
63 In all epochs of the world’s history, we shall find the
Great Man to have been the indispensable saviour of his
epoch;—the lightning, without which the fuel never
would have burnt. The History of the World... was the
Biography of Great Men.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
64 To me... ‘Hero-worship’ becomes a fact inexpressibly
precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at
present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the
management of the world. Had all traditions,
arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted,
sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes
being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence
Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through
smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-
rushing and conflagration.
Carlyle, The Hero as King
65 Every true man is a Cause, a country, and an age;
requires infinite soaces and numbers and time fully to
accomplish his design; and posterity seem to follow his
steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for
ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and
millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he
is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An
institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
66 The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances
can shake his will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily
he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms
and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is
somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is
somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to Know that other
souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the
extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless we must
profoundly revere it. There is somewhat in great actions
which does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels
and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and
although a different breeding, different religion and
greater intellectual activity would have modified or even
reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that thing
he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the
censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the
unschooled man that he finds a quality in him that is
negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of
hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and
more excellent than all actual and all possible
antagonists.
Emerson, Heroism
67 We have seen many counterfeits, but we are born
believers in great men.
Emerson, Character
68 Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works
which serve our pot and bag alone.
Emerson, Civilization
69 It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws
are. His greatness will shine and accomplish itself unto
the end, whether they second him or not. If he have
earned his bread by drudgery, and in the narrow and
crooked ways which were all an evil law had left him, he
will make it at least honorable by his expenditure. Of the
past he will take no heed; for its wrongs he will not hold
himself responsible: he will say, All the meanness of my
progenitors shall not bereave me of the power to make
this hour and company fair and fortunate. Whatsoever
streams of power and commodity flow to me, shall of me
acquire healing virtue, and become fountains of safety.
Cannot | too descend a Redeemer into nature?
Whosoever hereafter shall name my name, shall not
record a malefactor but a benefactor in the earth.
Emerson, The Conservative
70 Be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can
never assume the practical, available supremacy over
other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts
and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less
paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true
princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and
leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those
men who become famous more through their infinite
inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine
Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the
dead level of the mass.
Melville, Moby Dick, XXXIII
71 The initiation of all wise or noble things comes and must
come from individuals; generally at first from some one
individual. The honour and glory of the average man is
that he is capable of following that initiative; that he can
respond internally to wise and noble things, and be led to
them with his eyes open. | am not countenancing the sort
of "hero-worship" which applauds the strong man of
genius for forcibly seizing on the government of the world
and making it do his bidding in spite of itself. All he can
claim is, freedom to point out the way. The power of
compelling others into it is not only inconsistent with the
freedom and development of all the rest, but corrupting
to the strong man himself. It does seem, however, that
when the opinions of masses of merely average men are
everywhere become or becoming the dominant power,
the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would
be the more and more pronounced individuality of those
who stand on the higher eminences of thought. It is in
these circumstances most especially, that exceptional
individuals, instead of being deterred, should be
encouraged in acting differently from the mass. In other
times there was no advantage in their doing so, unless
they acted not only differently but better. In this age, the
mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to
bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.
Mill, On Liberty, III
72 Great men are never the promoters of absolute and
immutable truths. Each great man belongs to his time
and can come only at his proper moment, in the sense
that there is a necessary and ordered sequence in the
appearance of scientific discoveries, Great men may be
compared to torches shining at long intervals, to guide
the advance of science. They light up their time, either
by discovering unexpected and fertile phenomena which
open up new paths and reveal unknown horizons, or by
generalizing acquired scientific facts and disclosing
truths which their predecessors had not perceived. If
each great man makes the science which he vitalizes
take a long step forward, he never presumes to fix its
final boundaries, and he is necessarily destined to be
outdistanced and left behind by the progress of
successive generations. Great men have been compared
to giants upon whose shoulders pygmies have climbed,
who nevertheless see further than they. This simply
means that science makes progress subsequently to the
appearance of great men, and precisely because of their
influence. The result is that their successors know many
more scientific facts than the great men themselves had
in their day. But a great man is, none the less, still a great
man, that is to say,—a giant.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, I, 2
73 Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their
completeness, but the desire to find those causes is
implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the
multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of
which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he
snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems
to him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In
historical events (where the actions of men are the
subject of observation) the first and most primitive
approximation to present itself was the will of the gods
and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most
prominent position—the heroes of history. But we need
only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—
which lies in the activity of the general mass of men who
take part in it—to be convinced that the will of the
historic hero does not control the actions of the mass but
is itself continually controlled.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIII, 1
74 When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads
of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are
clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even
just, the historians produce a saving conception of
"greatness." "Greatness," it seems, excludes the
standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man
nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great"
man can be blamed.
"C'est grand!" say the historians, and there no longer
exists either good or evil but only "grand" and "not
grand" Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the
characteristic, in their conception, of some special
animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in
a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not
merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he
had brought there, feels que c'est grand, and his soul is
tranquil.
"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au
ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas," said he. And the whole world
for fifty years has been repeating; "Sublime! Grand!
Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un
pas.
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is
merely to admit one’s own nothingness and
immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by
Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And
there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and
truth are absent.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIV, 18
75 To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own
conception of greatness.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XV, 5
76 | sought great human beings, | never found anything but
the apes of their ideal.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Maxims and Arrows
77 Great men, like great epochs, are explosive material in
whom tremendous energy has been accumulated; their
prerequisite has always been, historically and
physiologically, that a protracted assembling,
accumulating, economizing and preserving has preceded
them—that there has been no explosion for a long time.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
78 Great human beings are necessary, the epoch in which
they appear is accidental; that they almost always
become master of their epoch is only because they are
stronger, because they are older, because a longer
assembling of force has preceded them.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
79 The genius—in his works, in his deeds—is necessarily a
prodigal: his greatness lies in the fact that he expends
himself
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
80 The huge world that girdles us about puts all sorts of
questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. Some of
the tests we meet by actions that are easy, and some of
the questions we answer in articulately formulated words.
But the deepest question that is ever asked admits of no
reply but the dumb turning of the will and tightening of
our heart strings as we say, "Yes i will even have it so!"
When a dreadful object is presented, or when life as a
whole turns up its dark abysses to our view, then the
worthless ones among us lose their hold on the situation
altogether, and either escape from its difficulties by
averting their attention, or if they cannot do that,
collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear.
The effort required for facing and consenting to such
objects is beyond their power to make. But the heroic
mind does differently. To it, too, the objects are sinister
and dreadful, unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for
things. But it can face them if necessary, without fur that
losing its hold upon the rest of life. The world thus finds
in the heroic man its worthy match and mate; and the
effort which he is able to put forth to hold himself erect
and keep his heart unshaken is the direct measure of his
worth and function in the game of human life. He can
stand this Universe. He can meet it and keep up his faith
in it in presence of those same features which lay his
weaker brethren low. He can still find a zest in it, not by
‘ostrich-like forgetfulness’ but by pure inward willingness
to face the world with those deterrent objects there. And
hereby he makes himself one of the masters and the lords
of life. He must be counted with henceforth; he forms a
part of human destiny.
William James. Psychology, XXVI
81 In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We
tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in
any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s
frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death,
and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he
has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever. Inferior to
ourselves in this or that way, if yet we cling to life, and he
is able ‘to fling it away like a flower’ as caring nothing for
it, we account him in the deepest way our born superior.
Each of us in his own person feels that a high-hearted
indifference to life would expiate all his shortcomings
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XIV-XV
82 It is not... easy for mental giants who neither hate nor
intend to injure their fellows to realize that nevertheless
their fellows hate mental giants and would like to destroy
them, not only enviously because the juxtaposition of a
superior wounds their vanity, but quite humbly and
honestly because it frightens them. Fear will drive men to
any extreme; and the fear inspired by a superior being is
a mystery which cannot be reasoned away.
Shaw, Saint Joan, Pref.
83 Men do not always take their great thinkers seriously,
even when they profess most to admire them.
Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, IV
84 The first epic poet... invented the heroic myth. Tire hero
was aman who by himself had slain the father—the
father who still appeared in the myth as a totemistic
monster. Just as the father had been the boy’s first ideal,
so in the hero who aspires to the father’s place the poet
now created the first ego ideal.
Freud, roup Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, XII
85 It is indeed too sad that in life it should be as it is in
chess, when one false move may lose us the game, but
with the difference that we can have no second game, no
return-march. In the realm of fiction we discover that
plurality of lives for which we crave. We die in the person
of a given hero, yet we survive him, and are ready to die
again with the next hero just as safely.
Freud. Thoughts on War and Death, I!
1.7 Woman and Man
Woman is the subject of this section: the quotations
collected here are either statements about the
characteristics of the female gender or statements about the
relation of females to males. The reader, aware of the current
movement for the liberation of women, must take
cognizance of the fact that almost all the statements about
women here quoted, including those that describe the
extraordinary women of history and fiction, were written by
men; and also the fact that almost all the statements that
compare men and women are uncomplimentary to women or
deprecatory of their endowments. What interpretation one
puts upon these facts will depend on the position that the
reader takes in the present controversy about the genders.
Among the ancient writers, two kinds of men (almost all
of the authors being male) are represented. First, there are
those who seem to have viewed women with more or less
contempt, considering them as misbegotten males or as
biological mistakes, or even relegating them to a quasi-
human status, a little higher than the animals, perhaps, but
not in the same class as men. Second, there are those who,
not disputing the contention that women are essentially
inferior to men, nevertheless give the impression of having
tried harder to understand them, of having attempted to
identify and evaluate the unique contributions of females to
human society, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristotle belong
in the former group; Homer, Euripides, and Plato belong in
the latter. Aristotle is practically unremitting in his
contemptuous attitude toward the "weaker" sex. Plato, on
the other hand, is almost unique in the ancient world in his
view that women should share the same educational
opportunities as men and that they should share in the rule
of an ideal commonwealth. But it is nevertheless a
misreading of Plato to hold, as some commentators do, that
he considered men and women to be equals. The quotations
from his works that are here assembled make that
abundantly clear.
Among the more recent writers, Montaigne may be
aligned with those who are adamant in their belief in
woman’s inferiority, while Shakespeare clearly belongs with
those who see and appreciate the richness and human
variety of the life and character of women. But it is not until
the reader comes to the passages quoted from John Stuart
Mill in the latter half of the nineteenth century that he finds
a clear advocate for the social, economic, and political
equality of women and men. After Mill there are others, of
course; but the older views nevertheless continue to be
expressed by writers right up to our own time. It is only
recently that the tide has turned.
The one-sidedness of the quotations is strictly in function
of the ages in which they were written. If this book were to
be revised and brought up to date a hundred years from
now, this obvious defect would most certainly be remedied.
It should be noted that women as mothers are treated in
quotations appearing in Section 2.2 on Parents and Children.
1 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should
be alone; | will make him an help meet for him... .
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and
dosed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man,
made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she
was taken out of Man.
Genesis 2:18-23
2 And she said unto him. How canst thou say, | love thee,
when thine heart is not with me? thou hast mocked me
these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great
strength lieth.
And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with
her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed
unto death;
That he told her all his heart, and said unto her, There
hath not come a razor upon mine head; for | have been a
Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb: if | be
Shaven, then my strength will go from me, and | shall
become weak, and be like any other man.
And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his
heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines,
saying. Come up this once, for he hath shewed me all his
heart. Then the lords of The Philistines came up unto her,
and brought money in their hand.
And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she
called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the
seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and
his strength went from him.
And she said. The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.
And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, | will go out as at
other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not
that The Lord was departed from him.
But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and
brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of
brass; and he did grind in the prison house.
Judges 16:15-21
3 And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it;
and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked
out at a window.
And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri
peace, who slew his master?
And he lifted up his face to the window, and said. Who
is on my side? who? And there looked out to him two or
three eunuchs.
And he said. Throw her down. So they threw her down:
and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on
the horses: and he trode her under foot.
And when he was come in, he did cat and drink, and
said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for
she is a king’s daughter.
And they went to bury her: but they found no more of
her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her
hands.
Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he
said. This is the word of the Lord, which he spake by his
servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying. In the portion of
Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel:
And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the
face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they
Shall not say. This is Jezebel.
Il Kings 9:30-37
4 It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a
brawling woman in a wide house.
Proverbs 21:9
5 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
rubies.
Proverbs 31:10
6 Ghost of Agamemnon. "There is no being more fell, more
bestial than a wife in such an action, and what an action
that one planned! The murder of her husband and her
lord. Great god, | thought my children and my slaves at
least would give me welcome. But that woman, plotting a
thing so low, defiled herself and all her sex, all women yet
to come, even those few who may be virtuous,"
He paused then, and | (Odysseus] answered:
"Foul and dreadful. That was the way that Zeus who
views the wide world vented his hatred on the sons of
Atreus— intrigues of women, even from the start.
Myriads
died by Helen’s fault, and Klytaimnestra plotted against
you half the world away."
And he at once said:
"Let it be a warning even to you. Indulge a woman never,
and never tell her all you know. Some things a man may
tell, some he should cover up."
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 425
7 Then said the Lady Kirke:
"So: all those trials are over.
Listen with care to this, now, and a god will arm your
mind. Square in your ship’s path are Seirenes, crying
beauty to bewitch men coasting by; woe to the innocent
who hears that sound! He will not see his lady nor his
children in joy, crowding about him, home from sea; the
Seirenes will sing his mind away on their sweet meadow
lolling. There are bones of dead men rotting in a pile
beside them and flayed skins shrivel around the spot.
Steer wide;
keep well to seaward; plug your oarsmen’s ears with
beeswax kneaded soft; none of the rest should hear that
song.
But if you wish to listen, let the men tie you in the
lugger, hand and foot, back to the mast, lashed to the
mast, So you may hear those harpies’ thrilling voices;
shout as you will, begging to be untied, your crew’ must
only twist more line around you and keep their stroke up,
till the singers fade."
Homer, Odyssey, XII, 36
8 Penelope. Do not rage at me, Odysseus!
No one ever matched your caution! Think what
difficulty the gods gave: they denied us life together in
our prime and flowering years, kept us from crossing into
age together. Forgive me, don’t be angry. | could not
Welcome you with love on sight! | armed myself long ago
against the frauds of men, impostors who might come—
and all those many whose underhanded ways bring evil
on! Helen of Argos, daughter of Zeus and Leda, would she
have joined the stranger, lain with him, if she had known
her destiny? known the Akhaians in arms would bring her
back to her own country? Surely a goddess moved her to
adultery, her blood unchilled by war and evil coming, the
years, the desolation; ours, too.
But here and now, what sign could be so clear as this
of our own bed? No other man has ever laid eyes on it—
only my own slave, Aktoris, that my father sent with me
as a gift—she kept our door. You make my stiff heart know
that | am yours.
Homer, Odyssey, XXIII, 208
9 Chorus. It is like a woman indeed to take the rapture
before the fact has shown for true.
They believe too easily, are too quick to shift from
ground to ground; and swift indeed the rumor voiced by a
woman dies again.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 483
10 Eteocles. Neither in evils nor in fair good luck may | share
a dwelling with the tribe of women! When she’s
triumphant, hers a confidence past converse with
another, when afraid an evil greater both for home and
city.
Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 186
11 As for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say,
of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried
off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for
such women, since it is plain that without their own
consent they would never be forced away.
Herodotus, History, I, 4
12 The two camps were then joined in one, the Scythians
living with the Amazons as their wives; and the men were
unable to learn the tongue of the women, but the women
soon caught up the tongue of the men. When they could
thus under-stand one another, The Scyths addressed the
Amazons in these words — "We have parents, and
properties, let us therefore give up this mode of life, and
return to our nation, and live with them. You shall be our
wives there no less than here, and we promise you to
have no others." But the Amazons said — "We could not
live with your women—our customs are quite different
from theirs. To draw the bow, to hurl the javelin, to
bestride the horse, these are our arts—of womanly
employments we know nothing. Your women, on the
contrary, do none of these things; but stay at home in
their waggons, engaged in womanish tasks, and never go
out to hunt, or to do anything. We should never agree
together. But if you truly wish to keep us as your wives,
and would conduct yourselves with strict justice towards
us, go you home to your parents, bid them give you your
inheritance, and then come back to us, and let us and
you live together by ourselves."
The youths approved of the advice, and followed it.
Herodotus,IV, //4-115
13 Tecmessa. He [Ajax] answered briefly in a well-worn
phrase,
"Woman, a woman’s decency is silence."
Sophocles, Ajax, 292
14 Deilanira.
The young thing grows in her own places; the heat of
the sun-god does not confound her, nor does the rain, nor
any wind.
Pleasurably she enjoys an untroubled life until the
time she is no longer called a maiden but woman, and
takes her share of worry in the night, fearful for her
husband or for her children.
Sophocles, Women of Trachis, 144
15 Medea. Of all things that have life and sense we women
are the most hapless creatures; first must we buy a
husband at an exorbitant price, and o’er ourselves a
tyrant set which is an evil worse than the first; and herein
lies the most important issue, whether our choice be
good or bad. For divorce is discreditable to women, nor
can we disown our lords. Next must the wife, coming as
she does to ways and customs new, since she hath not
learnt the lesson in her home, have a diviner’s eye to see
how best to treat the partner of her life. If haply we
perform these tasks with thoroughness and tact, and the
husband live with us, without resenting the yoke, our life
is a happy one; if not, ‘twere best to die. But when a man
is vexed with what he finds indoors, he goeth forth and
rids his soul of its disgust, betaking him to some friend or
comrade of like age; whilst we must needs regard his
single self. And yet they say we live secure at home,
while they are at the wars, with their sorry reasoning, for |
would gladly take my stand in battle array three times
o’er, than once give birth.
Euripides, Medea, 230
16 Though a woman be timorous enough in all else, and as
regards courage, a coward at the mere sight of steel, yet
in the moment she finds her honour wronged, no heart is
filled with deadlier thoughts than hers.
Euripides, Medea, 263
17 We women, though by nature little apt for virtuous
deeds, are most expert to fashion any mischief.
Euripides, Medea, 408
18 Jason. You women have such strange ideas, that you
think all is well so long as your married life runs smooth;
but if some mischance occur to ruffle your love, all that
was good and lovely erst you reckon as your foes. Yea,
men should have begotten children from some other
source, no female race existing; thus would no evil ever
have fallen on mankind.
Euripides, Medea, 569
19 Hippolytus. Women! This coin which men find
counterfeit!
Why, why, Lord Zeus, did you put them in the world, in
the light of the sun? If you were so determined to breed
the race of man, the source of it should not have been
women. Men might have dedicated in your own temples
images of gold, silver, or weight of bronze, and thus have
bought the seed of progeny, ... to each been given his
worth in sons according to the assessment of his gift’s
value. So we might have lived in houses free of the taint
of women’s presence. But now, to bring this plague into
our homes we drain the fortunes of our homes. In this we
have a proof how great a curse is woman.
For the father who begets her, rears her up, must add
a dowry gift to pack her off to another’s house and thus
be rid of the load. And he again that takes the cursed
creature rejoices and enriches his heart’s jewel with dear
adornment, beauty heaped on vileness. With lovely
clothes the poor wretch tricks her out spending the
wealth that underprops his house. That husband has the
easiest life whose wife is a mere nothingness, a simple
fool, uselessly sitting by the fireside.
| hate a clever woman—God forbid that | should ever
have a wife at home with more than woman’s wits! Lust
breeds mischief in the clever ones. The limits of their
minds deny the stupid lecherous delights.
We should not suffer servants to approach them, but
give them as companions voiceless beasts, dumb,... but
with teeth, that they might not converse, and hear
another voice in answer,
Euripides, Hippolytus, 616
20 Iphigenia. A man’s loss from his family is felt, while a
woman ’s is of little moment.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1005
21 Andromache. Nature tempers The souls of women so they
find a pleasure. In voicing their afflictions as they come.
Euripides, Andromache, 93
22 Andromache. They say one night of love suffices to
dissolve a woman’s aversion to share the bed of any man.
| hate and loathe that woman who casts away the once
beloved, and takes another in her arms of love. Even the
young mare torn from her running mate and teamed with
another will not easily wear the yoke.
Euripides, Trojan Women, 665
23 Lysistra. \'ll tell you now: 'tis meet ye all should know.
O ladies! sisters! if we really mean
To make the men make Peace, there’s but one way,
We must abstain—
Myrrhina. Well! tell us.
Ly. Will ye do it?
My. Do it? ay, surely, though it cost our lives.
Ly. We must abstain—each—from the joys of Love.
How! what! why turn away? where are ye going? What
makes you pout your lips, and shake your heads?
What brings this falling tear, that changing colour?
Will ye, or will ye not? What mean ye, eh?
My. \'ll never do it. Let the war go on.
Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 118
24 Lysistra. For if we women will but sit at home. Powdered
and trimmed, clad in our daintiest lawn,
Employing all our charms, and all our arts To win
men’s love, and when we’ve won it, then Repel them,
firmly, till they end the war.
We’ll soon get Peace again, be sure of that.
Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 149
25 Pericles. \f | must say anything on the subject of female
excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood,
it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will
be your glory in not falling short of your natural
character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of
among the men, whether for good or for bad.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Il, 45
26 You are quite right, he (Glaucon] replied, in maintaining
the general inferiority of the female sex: although many
women are in many things superior to many men, yet on
the whole what you Say is true.
And if so, my friend, | [Socrates] said, there is no
special faculty of administration in a state which a
woman has because she is a woman, or which a man has
by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike
diffused in both; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits
of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a
man.
Plato, Republic, V, 455B
27 You agree then, | [Socrates] said, that men and women
are to have a common way of life such as we have
described—common education, common children; and
they are to watch over the citizens in common whether
abiding in the city or going out to war; they are to keep
watch together, and to hunt together like dogs; and
always and in all things, as far as they are able, women
are to share with the men? And in so doing they will do
what is best, and will not violate, but preserve the natural
relation of the sexes.
Plato, Republic, V, 466B
28 Girls of this age [i.e., puberty) have much need of
surveillance. For then in particular they feel a natural
impulse to make usage of the sexual faculties that are
developing in them; so that unless they guard against
any further impulse beyond that inevitable one which
their bodily development of itself supplies, even in the
case of those who abstain altogether from passionate
indulgence, they contract habits which are apt to
continue into later life. For girls who give way to
wantonness grow more and more wanton; and the same
is true of boys, unless they be safeguarded from one
temptation and another.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 581a12
29 In all genera in which the distinction of male and female
is found, Nature makes a similar differentiation in the
mental characteristics of the two sexes. This
differentiation is the most obvious in the case of human
kind and in that of the larger animals and the viviparous
quadrupeds. In the case of these latter the female is
softer in character, is the sooner tamed, admits more
readily of caressing, is more apt in the way of learning;
as, for instance, in the Laconian breed of dogs the female
is cleverer than the male....
In all cases, excepting those of the bear and leopard,
the female is Jess spirited than the male; in regard to the
two exceptional cases, the superiority in courage rests
with the female. With all other animals the female is
softer in disposition than the male, is more mischievous,
less simple, more impulsive, and more attentive to the
nurture of the young; the male, on the other hand, is
more spirited than the female, more savage, more simple
and less cunning. The traces of these differentiated
characteristics are more or less visible everywhere, but
they are especially visible where character is the more
developed, and most of all in man.
The fact is, the nature of man is the most rounded off
and complete, and consequently in man the qualities or
capacities above referred to are found in their perfection.
Hence woman is more compassionate than man, more
easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous,
more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike. She is,
furthermore, more prone to despondency and less
hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self-respect,
more false of soeech, more deceptive, and of more
retentive memory. She is also more wakeful, more
shrinking, more difficult to rouse to action, and requires a
smaller quantity of nutriment.
As was previously stated, the male is more courageous
than the female, and more sympathetic in the way of
standing by to help. Even in the case of molluscs, when
the cuttle-fish is struck with the trident the male stands
by to help the female; but when the male is struck the
female runs away.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 608a22
30 As the first efficient or moving cause, to which belong the
definition and the form, is better and more divine in its
nature than the material on which it works, it is better
that the superior principle whould be separated from the
inferior. Therefore, wherever it is possible and so far as it
is possible, the male is separated from the female. For the
first principle of the movement, or efficient cause,
whereby that which comes into being is male, is better
and more divine than the material whereby it is female.
The male, however, comes together and mingles with the
female for the work of generation, because this is
common to both.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 732a3
31 The female is, as it were, a mutilated male.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 737a28
32 Females are weaker and colder in nature, and we must
look upon the female character as being a sort of natural
deficiency.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 775a15
33 What difference does it make whether women rule, or the
rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.
Aristotle, Politics, 1269b33
34 Mercury. Woman's a various and a changeful thing.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
35 Resistless thro’ the war Camilla rode,
In danger unappall’d, and pleas’d with blood.
One side was bare for her exerted breast;
One shoulder with her painted quiver press’d.
Now from afar her fatal jav’lins play;
Now with her ax’s edge she hews her way:
Diana’s arms upon her shoulder sound;
And when, too closely press’d, she quits the ground,
From her bent bow she sends a backward wound.
Her maids, in martial pomp, on either side,
Larina, Tulla, fierce Tarpeia, ride:
Italians all; in peace, their queen’s delight;
In war, the bold companions of die fight.
So march’d the Tracian Amazons of old.
When Thermodon with bloody billows roll’d:
Such troops as these in shining arms were seen,
When Theseus met in fight their maiden queen:
Such to the field Penthisilca led,
From the fierce virgin when the Grecians fled;
With such, return’d triumphant from the war,
Her maids with cries attend the lofty car;
They clash with manly force their moony shields;
With female shouts resound the Phrygian fields.
Virgil, Aeneid, XI
36 The angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of
Galilee, named Nazareth,
To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph,
of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou
that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art
thou among women.
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his
Sa>'ing, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation
this should be.
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou
hast found favour with God.
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the
Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne
of his father David:
And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing | know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son
of God.
And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also
conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth
month with her, who was called barren.
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it
unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed
from her.
Luke 1:26-38
37 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the
salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and
Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:
And she spake out with a loud voice, and said. Blessed
art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy
womb.
And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord
should come to me?
For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded
in mine cars, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
And blessed is she that believed: for there shall bea
performance of those things which were told her from the
Lord.
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the low’ estate of his
handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations
Shall call me blessed.
Luke 1:41-48
38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a
certain village: and a certain woman named Martha
received him into her house.
And she had a sister called Marys which also sat at
Jesus’ feet, and heard his word.
But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and
came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my
sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that
she help me.
And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha,
thou art careful and troubled about many things;
But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that
good part, which shall not be taken away from her.
Luke 10:38-42
39 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early,
when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the
stone taken away from the sepulchre....
But Mary' stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and
as she wept, she stooped dowm, and looked into the
sepulchre.
And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the
head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus
had lain.
And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my
Lord, and | know not where they have laid him.
And when she had thus said, she turned herself back,
and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the
gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him
hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and | will take
him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and
saith unto him, Rab-bo-ni; which is to say, Master.
John 20:1-16
40 For aman indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch
as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the
glory of the man.
For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of
the man.
Neither was the man created for the woman; but the
woman for the man.
| Corinthians 11:7-9
41 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have
long hair, it is a shame unto him?
But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for
her hair is given her for a covering,
| Corinthians 11:14-15
42 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not
permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded
to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
And if they will learn anything, let them ask their
husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak
in the church.
| Corinthians 14:34-35
43 | will... that women adorn themselves in modest apparel,
with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair,
or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
But (which becometh women professing godliness)
with good works.
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But | suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp
authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being
deceived was in the transgression.
| Timothy 2:8-14
44 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own
husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may
without the word be won by the conversation of the
wives;
While they behold your chaste conversation coupled
with fear.
Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of
plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on
of apparel;
But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which
is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
For after this manner in the old time the holy women
also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in
subjection unto their own husbands:
Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose
daughters ye arc, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid
with any amazement.
Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to
knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the
weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of
life; that your prayers be not hindered.
| Peter 3:1-7
45 Women from fourteen years old are flattered by men with
the title of mistresses. Therefore, perceiving that they are
regarded only as qualified to give men pleasure, they
begin to adorn themselves, and in that to place all their
hopes. It is worth while, therefore, to try that they may
perceive themselves honored only so far as they appear
beautiful in their demeanor and modestly virtuous,
Epictetus, Enchiridion, XL
46 During this debate Severus Caecina proposed that no
magistrate who had obtained a province should be
accompanied by his \rife. He began by recounting at
length how harmoniously he had lived with his wife, who
had borne him six children, and how in his own home he
had observed what he was proposing for the public, by
having kept her in Italy, though he had himself served
forty campaigns in various provinces. "With good reason,"
he said, "had it been formerly decided that women w’ere
not to be taken among our allies or into foreign countries.
A train of women involves delays through luxury in peace
and through panic in war, and converts a Roman army on
the march into the likeness of a barbarian progress. Not
only is the sex feeble and unequal to hardship, but, when
it has liberty it is spiteful, intriguing and greedy of power.
They show themselves off among the soldiers and have
the centurions at their beck. Lately a woman had
presided at the drill of the cohorts and the evolutions of
the legions. You should yourselves bear in mind that,
whenever men are accused of extortion, most of the
charges are directed against the wives. It is to these that
the vilest of the provincials instantly attach themselves;
it is they who undertake and settle business; two persons
receive homage when they appear; there are two centres
of government, and the women's orders tire the more
despotic and intemperate. Formerly they were restrained
by the Oppian and other laws; now, loosed from every
bond, they rule our houses, our tribunals, even our
armies."
Tacitus, Annals, III, 33
47 Just as in the human soul there is one element which
takes thought and dominates, another which is subjected
to obedience, so woman has been created corporeally for
man: for though she has indeed a nature like that of man
in her mind and rational intelligence, yet by her bodily
sex she is subjected to the sex of her husband, much as
appetite, which is the source of action, must be subjected
to reason.
Augustine, Confessions, XIII, 32
48 From the words, "Till we all come to a perfect man, to the
measure of the age of the fullness of Christ," and from the
words, "Conformed to the image of the Son of God," some
conclude that women shall not rise women, but that all
Shall be men, because God made man only of earth and
woman of the man. For my part, they seem to be wiser
who make no doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there
Shall be no lust, which is now the cause of confusion. For
before they sinned, the man and the woman were naked
and were not ashamed. From those bodies, then, vice
Shall be withdrawn, while nature shall be preserved, And
the sex of woman is not a vice, but nature. It shall then
indeed be superior to carnal intercourse and child-
bearing; nevertheless the female members shall remain
adapted not to the old uses, but to a new beauty, which,
so far from provoking lust, now extinct, shall excite praise
to the wisdom and clemency of God, who both made
what was not and delivered from corruption what He
made.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 17
49 It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture
says, as a helper to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in
other works, as some say, since man can be more
efficiently helped by another man in other works, but as a
helper in the work of generation.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 92, 1
50 As regards the particular nature, woman is defective and
misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends
to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine
sex, while the production of woman comes from defect in
the active force or from some material indisposition, or
even from some external change, such as that of a south
wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes. On the
other hand, in relation to the universal nature, woman is
not misbegotten, but is included in nature’s intention as
ordered to the work of generation. Now the universal
intention of nature depends on God, Who is the universal
Author of nature. Therefore, in producing nature, God
formed not only the male but also the female.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 92. 1
51 It was right for the woman to be made from a rib of man.
First, to signify the social union of man and woman, for
the woman should neither use authority over man, and so
she was not made from his head; nor was it right for her
to be subject to man’s contempt as his slave, and so she
was not made from his feet. Secondly, for the
sacramental signification; for from the side of Christ
sleeping on the Cross the Sacraments flowed— namely,
blood and water—on which the Church was established.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |. 92, 3
52 Already were mine eyes fixed on my Lady’s countenance
again, and my mind with them, from all other intent
removed; and she smiled not, but: "Were | to smile," she
[Beatrice] began, "thou wouldst be such as was Semele,
when she turned to ashes; for my beauty, which, along
the steps of the eternal palace kindleth more, as thou
hast seen, the higher the ascent, were it not tempered, so
doth glow as that thy mortal power, at its flash, would be
like foliage that the thunder shattereth.
Dante, Paradiso, XXI, 1
53 Nine times now, since my birth, the heaven of light had
turned almost to the same point in its own gyration, when
the glorious Lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice by
many who knew not what to call her, first appeared
before my eyes. She had already been in this life so long
that in its course the starry heaven had moved toward
the region of the East one of the twelve parts of a degree;
so that at about the beginning of her ninth year she
appeared to me, and | near the end of my ninth year saw
her. She appeared to me clothed in a most noble color, a
modest and becoming crimson, and she was girt and
adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age. At
that instant, | say truly that the spirit of life, which dwells
in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to
tremble with such violence that it appeared fearfully in
the least pulses, and, trembling, said these words: Ecce
deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi [Behold a
god stronger than I, who coming shall rule over me].
Dante, Vita Nuova, I!
54 Ladies that have intelligence of Love,
| of my lady wish with you to speak;
Not that | can believe to end her praise,
But to discourse that | may case my mind.
| say that when | think upon her worth.
So sweet doth Love make himself feel to me.
That if | then should lose not hardihood.
Speaking, | should enamour all mankind.
And | wish not so loftily to soeak
As to become, through fear of failure, vile;
But of her gentle nature | will treat
In manner light compared with her desert.
Dante, Vita Nuova, XIX
55 Within her eyes my lady beareth Love,
So that whom she regards is gentle made;
All toward her turn, where’er her steps are stayed,
And whom she greets, his heart doth trembling move;
So that with face cast down, all pale to view,
For every fault of his he then doth sigh;
Anger and pride away before her fly:—
Assist me, dames, to pay her honor due.
Dante, Vita Nuova, XX]
56 After this sonnet, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in
which | saw things which made me resolve to speak no
more of this blessed one, until | could more worthily treat
of her. And to attain to this | study to the utmost of my
power, as she truly knows. So that, if it shall please Him
through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged
for some years, | hope to say of her what was never said
of any woman [i.e., as it turned out. The Divine Comedy].
And then may it please Him who is the Lord of Grace,
that my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady,
namely, of that blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks upon
the face of Him gu/ est per omnia saecula benedictus
[who is blessed forever].
Dante, Vila Nuova, XLIII
57 We women have, if | am not to lie,
In this love matter, a quaint fantasy;
Look out a thing we may not lightly have.
And after that we’ll cry all day and crave.
Forbid a thing, and that thing covet we;
Press hard upon us, then we turn and flee.
Sparingly offer we our goods, when fair;
Great crowds at market make for dearer ware,
And what’s too common brings but little price;
All this knows every woman who is wise.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Prologue
58 By God, if women had but written stories,
As have these clerks within their oratories,
They would have written of men more wickedness
Than all the race of Adam could redress.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Prologue
59 Command was given for silence in the hall.
And that the knight should tell before them all
What thing all worldly women love the best.
This knight did not stand dumb, as does a beast,
But to this question presently answered
With manly voice, so that the whole court heard:
"My liege lady, generally," said he,
"Women desire to have the sovereignty
As well upon their husband as their love,
And to have mastery their man above;
This thing you most desire, though me you kill
Do as you please, | am here at your will."
In all the court there was no wife or maid
Or widow that denied the thing he said,
But all held, he was worthy to have life.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Tale
60 The Friar. There is, indeed, no serpent so cruel,
When man treads on his tail, nor half so fell,
As woman is when she is filled with ire;
Vengeance is then the whole of her desire.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Summoner’s Tale
61 "Eh! By God’s mercy!" cried our host. Said he:
"Now such a wife! pray God keep from me!
Behold what tricks, and lo, what subtleties
In women are. For always busy as bees
Are they, us simple men thus to deceive,
And from the truth they turn aside and leave."
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Merchant’s Tale, Epilogue
62 Merchants Wife. And well you know that women naturally
Desire six things, and even so do l.
For women all would have their husbands be
Hardy, and wise, and rich, and therewith free.
Obedient to the wife, and fresh in bed.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Shioman’s Tale
63 Chanticleer. For there is truth in In principio Mulier est
hominis confusio
(Madam, the meaning of this Latin is.
Woman is man’s delight and all his bliss).
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Nun’s Priest’s Tale
64 But I’m a vulgar man, and thus say I,
There is no smallest difference, truly,
Between a wife who is of high degree,
If of her body she dishonest be,
And a poor unknown wench, other than this—
If it be true that both do what’s amiss—
The gentlewoman, in her state above,
She shall be called his lady, in their love;
And since the other’s but a poor woman,
She shall be called his wench or his leman.
And God knows very well, my own dear brother,
Men lay the one as low as lies the other.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Manciple’s Tale
65 Many good things may be perceived in a wife. First, there
is the Lord’s blessing, namely, offspring. Then there is
community of property. These are some of the pre-
eminently good things that can overwhelm a man.
Imagine what it would be like without this sex. The home,
cities, economic life, and government would virtually
disappear. Men can’t do without women. Even if it were
possible for men to beget and bear children, they still
couldn’t do without women.
Luther, Table Talk, 1658
66 A woman that is neither fair nor good, to what use serves
she? To make a nun of, said Gargantua. Yea, said the
monk, to make shirts and smocks.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, |, 52
67 Panurge. Where there is no woman, | mean, the mother of
a family, and wife in the union of a lawful wedlock, the
crazy and diseased are in danger of being ill used, and of
having much brabbling and strife about them: as by dear
experience hath been made apparent in the persons of
popes, legates, cardinals, bishops, abbots, priors, priests,
and monks: but there, assure yourself, you shall not find
me.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 9
68 Panurge. The greater part of women, whatever it be that
they see, do always represent unto their fancies, think
and imagine, that it hath some relation to the sugared
entering of the goodly ithy-phallos, and grafting in the
cleft of the overturned tree the quickset-imp of the pin of
copulation. Whatever signs, shews, or gestures we Shall
make, or whatever our behaviour, carriage or demeanour
Shall happen to be in their view and presence, they wall
interpret the whole in reference to the act of
androgynation, and the culbutizing exercise; by which
means we Shall be abusively disappointed of our designs,
in regard that she will take all our signs for nothing else
but tokens and representations of our desire to entice her
unto the lists of a Cyprian combat, or catsenconny
skirmish. Do you remember what happened at Rome two
hundred and three - score years after the foundation
thereof? A young Roman gentleman encountering by
chance at the fool of Mount Celion with a beautiful Latin
lady named Verona, who from her very cradle upwards
had alwap been deaf and dumb, very civilly asked her,
not without a chironomatic Italianising of his demand,
with various jeetigation of his fingers, and other
gesticulations, as yet customary amongst the speakers of
that country, What senators, in her descent from the top
of the hill, she had met with going up thither. For you are
to conceive, that he, knowing no more of her deafness
than dumbness, was ignorant of both. She in the
meantime, who neither heard nor understood so much as
one word of what he said, straight imagined, by all that
she could apprehend in the lively gesture of his manual
signs, that what he then required of her was, what herself
had a great mind to, even that which a young man doth
naturally desire of a woman. Then was it, that by signs,
which in all occurrences of venereal love are
incomparably more attractive, valid and efficacious than
words, she beckoned to him to come along with her to her
house; which when he had done, she drew him aside to a
privy room, and then made a most lively alluring sign
unto him, to show that the game did please her.
Whereupon, without any more advertisement, or so much
as the uttering of one word on either side, they fell to,
and bringuardised it lustily.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, III, 19
69 Rondibilis. The nature of women is set forth before our
eyes, and represented to us by the moon in divers other
things as well as in this, that they squat, skulk, constrain
their own inclinations, and, with all the cunning they can,
dissemble and play the hypocrite in the sight and
presence of their husbands; who come no sooner to be
out of the way, but that forthwith they take their
advantage, pass the time merrily, desist from all labour,
frolic it, gad abroad, lay aside their counterfeit garb, and
openly declare and manifest the interior of their
dispositions, even as the moon, when she is in
conjunction with the sun, is neither seen in the heavens,
nor on the earth, but in her opposition, when remotest
from him shineth in her greatest fulness, and wholly
appeareth in her brightest splendour whilst it is night.
Thus women are but women.
When | say womankind, | speak of a sex so frail, so
variable, so changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and
imperfect, that, in my opinion, Nature, under favour
nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which is
due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she
had traced formerly, and stray exceedingly from that
excellence of providential judgment, by the which she
had created and formed all other things, when she built,
framed, and made up the woman. And having thought
upon it a hundred and five times, | Know not what else to
determine therein, save only that in the devising,
hammering, forging, and composing of the woman, she
hath had a much tenderer regard, and by a great deal
more respectful, heed to the delightful consortship, and
sociable delectation of the man, than to the perfection
and accomplishment of the individual womanishness or
muliebrity, The divine philosopher Plato was doubtful in
what rank of living creatures to place and collocate them,
whether amongst the rational animals, by elevating them
to an upper seal in the specifical classes of humanity; Of
with the irrational, by degrading them to a lower bench
on the opposite side, of a brutal kind, and mere bestiality.
For nature hath posited in a privy, secret and intestine
place of their bodies, a sort of member, by some not
impertinently termed an animal, which is not to be found
in men. Therein sometimes are engendered certain
humours, so saltish, brackish, clammy, sharp, nipping,
tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that by their
stinging acrimony, rending nitrosity, figging itch,
wriggling mordicancy, and smarting salsitude, (for the
said member is altogether sinewy, and of a most quick
and lively feeling,) their whole body is shaken and
ebrangled their senses totally ravished and transported,
the operations of their judgment and understanding
utterly confounded, and all disordinate passions and
perturbations of the mind throughly and absolutely
allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort,
that if nature had not been so favourable unto them as to
have sprinkled their forehead with a little tincture of
bashfulness and modesty, you should see them in a so
frantic mood run mad after lechery, and hie apace up and
down with haste and lust, in quest of, and to fix some
chamber-standard in their Paphian ground, that never did
the Proetides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean Thyads deport
themselves in the time of their Bacchanalian festivals
more shamelessly, or with a so effronted and brazen-
faced impudency; because this terrible animal is knit
unto, and hath an union with all the chief and most
principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident.
Let it not here be thought strange that | should call it an
animal, seeing therein | do no otherwise than follow and
adhere to the doctrine of the academic and peripatetic
philosophers. For if a proper motion be a certain mark
and infallible token of the life and animation of the
mover, as Aristotle writeth, and that any such tiring as
moveth of itself ought to be held animated, and of a
living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason
did give it the denomination of an animal, for that he
perceived and observed in it the proper and self-stirring
motions of suffocation, precipitation, corrugation, and of
indignation, so extremely violent, that often-times by
them is taken and removed from the woman all other
sense and moving whatsoever, as if she were ina
swounding lipothymy, benumbing syncope, epileptic,
apoplectic palsy, and true resemblance of a pale-faced
death.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel Ill, 32
70 What is the use of that art of virginal shame, that sedate
coldness, that severe countenance, that profession of
ignorance of things that they know better than we who
instruct them in them, but to increase in us the desire to
conquer, to overwhelm and subdue to our appetite all
this ceremony and these obstacles? For there is not only
pleasure but also glory in driving wild and seducing that
soft sweetness and that childlike modesty, and in
reducing a proud and commanding gravity to the mercy
of our ardor.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 15, That Our Desire
71 If the wellborn ladies will take my advice, they will
content themselves -with displaying their own natural
riches. They conceal and cover up their own beauties
under foreign beauties. It is very simple-minded to put
out your own light so as to shine by a borrowed light.
They are buried and entombed under art.... The reason is
that they do not know themselves well enough. The world
has nothing more beautiful; it is for them to do honor to
the arts and to decorate decoration. What do they need
but to live beloved and honored? They possess and know
only too much for this; they need only arouse a little and
rekindle the faculties that are in them. When 1 see them
intent on rhetoric, astrology, logic, and similar drugs, so
vain and useless for their needs, | begin to fear that the
men who advise them to do this, do so as a means of
gaining authority over them under this pretext. For what
other excuse could | find for them? Enough that wathout
our help they can adjust the charm of their eyes to
gaiety, severity, or sweetness, season a "no" with
harshness, uncertainty, or encouragement, and that they
need no interpreter for the soeeches we make in courting
them. With this knowledge they hold the whip hand and
master the schoolmasters and the school.
If, however, it vexes them to yield to us in any matter
whatever, and if they want, out of curiosity, to havea
Share in book learning, poetry is an amusement suited to
their needs; it is a wanton and subtle art, in fancy dress,
wordy, all pleasure, all show, like themselves. They will
also derive various benefits from history. In philosophy,
from the part that is useful for life, they will take the
lessons that will train them to judge our humors and
characteristics, to defend themselves against our
treacheries, to control the impetuosity of their own
desires, to husband their freedom, to prolong the
pleasures of life, and to bear humanly the inconstancy of
a lover, the rudeness of a husband, and the annoyance of
years and wrinkles; and things of that sort. That is the
most | should assign to them in the matter of learning.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 3, Three Kinds of Association
72 Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of
life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch
as it is the men who have made these without them.
There is naturally strife and wrangling between them and
us: the closest communion we have with them is still
tumultuous and tempestuous.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
73 The most useful and honorable science and occupation
for a woman is the science of housekeeping. | Know some
that are miserly, very few that are good managers. This is
her ruling quality, which a man should seek out before
any oAer, as the sole dowry on which the ruin or salvation
of our households depends.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
74 Demetrius. She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd;
She is a woman, therefore may be won.
Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, II, i, 82
75 Julia. Maids, in modesty, say "no" to that
Which they would have the profferer constru "ay."
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, ti, 55
76 Romeo. What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?
Servingman. | know not, sir.
Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows show's.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For | ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, |, v, 43
77 Portia. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where | stand.
Such as | am: though for myself alone
| would not be ambitious in my wish.
To wish myself much better; yet, for you
| would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times More
rich;
That only to stand high in your account.
| might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account; but the full sum of me
Is sum of something, which, to term in gross.
Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III, it, 150
78 Balthasar. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting alt your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny,
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II, tii, 64
79 Portia. | grant |am a woman; but withal
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife:
| grant |am a woman; but withal
A woman well-reputed, Cato’s daughter.
Think you | am no stronger than my sex.
Being so father’d and so husbanded?
Tell me your counsels, | will not disclose 'em:
| have made strong proof of my constancy.
Giving myself a voluntary wound
Here, in the thigh: can | bear that with patience.
And not my husband’s secrets?
Brutus.
O ye gods, Render me worthy of this noble wife!
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Il, i, 292
80 Rosalind. Do you not know | am a woman? when | think, |
must speak.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, ti, 263
81 It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’er the green corn-field did pass
In the spring time, the only pretty ring lime.
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, V, tii, 17
82 Duke. Let still the woman take
An elder than herself; so wears she to him.
So sways she level in her husband's heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn.
Than women’s arc.
Viola. | think it well, my lord.
Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself.
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
For women are as roses, whose fair flower
Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, iv, 30
83 Duke. There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be call’d appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
But mine is all as hungry as the sea.
And can digest as much: make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that | owe Olivia.
Viola. Ay, but | know—
Duke. What dost thou know?
Vio. Too well what love women to men may owe.
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter loved a man.
As it might be, perhaps, were | a woman,
| should your lordship
Duke. And what’s her history?
Vio. A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, iv, 96
84 Hamlet. Frailty, thy name is woman!
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ti, 146
85 Hamlet. lf thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise
men know well enough what monsters you make of them.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Ill, 1, 141
86 lago. Come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors.
Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens,
Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your
beds.
Desdemona, O, fie upon thee, slanderer!
Shakespeare, Othello, II, i, 110
87 Lear. Behold yond simpering dame,
Whose face between her forks presages snow;
That minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure’s name;
The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to’t
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above;
But to the girdle do the gods inherit.
Beneath is all the fiends’;
There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit,
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie!
pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to
sweeten my imagination.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, vi, 120
88 Lear. Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha!
What is’t thou say’st. Her voice was ever soft.
Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
Shakespeare, Lear, V, tii, 271
89 Enobarbus. When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed
up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.
Agrippa. There she appeared indeed; or my reporter
devised well for her.
Eno. | will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue—
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool.
And what they undid did.
Agr. O, rare for Antony!
Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes.
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i’ the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature.
Agr. Rare Egyptian!
Eno. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper. She replied.
It should be better he became her guest;
Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,
Whom ne’er the word of "No" woman heard speak.
Being barber’d ten times o’er, goes to the feast.
And for his ordinary pays his heart
For what his eyes eat only.
Agr. Royal wench!
She made great Ceesar lay his sword to bed.
He plough’d her and she cropp’d.
Eno. | saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street;
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect perfection.
And, breathless, power breathe forth.
Mecaenas. Now Antony must leave her utterly.
Eno. Never; he will not.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, II, ti, 191
90 Caesar. Women are not
In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure
The ne’er-touch’d vestal.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Ill, xii, 29
91 Clown. You must not think | am so simple but | know the
devil himself will not eat a woman. | Know that a woman
is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. But, truly,
these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in
their women; for in every ten that they make, the devils
mar five.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V, ti, 273
92 Posthumus. |s there no way for men to be but women
Must be half-workers? We are all bastards;
And that most venerable man which |
Did call my father, was | know not where
When | was stamp’d; some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit. Yet my mother seem’d
The Dian of that time; so doth my wife
The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!
Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d
And pray’d me oft forbearance; did it with
A pudency so rosy the sweet view on’t
Might well have warm’d old Saturn; that | thought her
As chaste as unsunn’d snow. O, all the devils!
This yellow lachimo, in an hour—was’t not?—
Or less—at first?—perchance he spoke not, but,
Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one.
Cried "O!" and mounted; found no opposition
But what he look’d for should oppose and she
Should from encounter guard. Could | find out
The woman ’s part in me! For there’s no motion
That tends to vice in man, but | affirm
It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,
The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longing, slanders, mutability.
All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all; but rather, all;
For even to vice
They are not constant, but are changing still
One vice, but of a minute old, for one
Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them.
Detest them, curse them. Yet 'tis greater skill
In a true hate, to pray they have their will;
The very devils cannot plague them better.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Il, v, 1
93 Anne. By my troth and maidenhead,
| would not be a queen.
Old Lady. Beshrew me, | would,
And venture maidenhead for ’t; and so would you.
For all this spice of your hypocrisy.
You, that have so fair parts of woman on you,
Have too a woman’s heart; which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;
Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts,
Saving your mincing, the capacity
Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive,
If you might please to stretch it.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, II, tii, 24
94 Lothario. You must remember, my Friend, that the Nature
of Women is, at best, but weak and imperfect; and for
that reason we should be so far from casting Rubs in its
way, that we ought, with all imaginable Care, to remove
every Appearance that might hinder its Course to that
Perfection it wants, which is Virtue.
If you believe the Naturalists, the Ermine is a very
white little Creature; when the Hunters have found its
Haunts, they surround it almost with Dirt and Mire,
towards which the Ermine being forc’d to fly, rather than
sully its native White with Dirt, it suffers itself to be
taken, preferring its Colour to its Liberty and Life. The
virtuous Woman is our Ermine, whose Chastity is whiter
than Snow; but to preserve its Colour unsully’d, you must
observe just the contrary Method: The Addresses and
Services of an importunate Lover, are the Mire into which
you should never drive a Woman; for ’tis ten to one she
will not be able to free herself and avoid it, being but too
apt to stumble into it; and therefore That should be
always remov’d, and only the Candour and Beauty of
Virtue, and the Charms of a good Fame and Reputation
plac’d before her. A good Woman is also not unlike a
Mirrour of Crystal, which will infallibly be dimm’d and
stain’d by breathing too much upon it: She must rather
be us’d like the Reliques of Saints, ador’d but not
touch’d; or like a Garden of curious tender Flowers, that
may at a distance gratify the Eye, but are not permitted
by the Master to be trampled on or touch’d by every
Beholder.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 33
95 Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native Honour clad
In naked Majestic seemd Lords of all.
And worthie seemd, for in thir looks Divine
The image of thir glorious Maker shon,
Truth, Wisdome, Sanctitude severe and pure.
Severe, but in true filial freedom plac’t;
Whence true autoritie in men; though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemd;
For contemplation hee and valour formd,
For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,
Hee for God only, shee for God in him:
His fair large Front and Eye sublime declar’d
Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
Shee as a vail down to the slender waste
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav’d
As the Vine curies her tendrils, which impli’d
Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway,
And by her yeilded, by him best receivd,
Yeilded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 288
96 So hand in hand they passd, the lovliest pair
That ever since in loves imbraces met,
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 321
97 To whom [Adam] thus Eve with perfet beauty adornd.
My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst
Unargu’d | obey; so God ordains,
God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more
Is womans happiest knowledge and her praise.
With thee conversing | forget all time,
All seasons and thir change, all please alike.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 634
98 Who [God] stooping op’nd my left side, and took
From thence a Rib, with cordial spirits warme.
And Life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound.
But suddenly with flesh fill’d up & heal’d:
The Rib he formd and fashond with his hands;
Under his forming hands a Creature grew,
Manlike, but different sex, so lovly faire,
That what seemd fair in all the World, seemd now
Mean, or in her summd up, in her containd
And in her looks, which from that time infus’d
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her Aire inspir’d
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 465
99 Adam. When | approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in her self compleat, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say,
Seems wisest, vertuousest, discreetest, best;
All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded, Wisdom in discourse with her
Looses discount’nanc’t, and like folly shewes;
Authoritie and Reason on her waite,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness thir seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard Angelic plac’t.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 546
100 Adam. Thus it shall befall
Him who to worth in Women overtrusting
Lets her Will rule; restraint she will not brook,
And left to her self, if evil thence ensue,
Shee first his weak indulgence will accuse.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 1182
101 Son of God. Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice, or was shee made thy guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her Thou did’st resigne thy
Manhood, and the Place
Wherein God set thee above her made of thee, And for
thee, whose perfection farr excell'd
Hers in all real dignitie: Adornd
She was indeed, and lovely to attract
Thy Love, not thy Subjection, and her Gifts
Were such as under Government well seem’d,
Unseemly to beare rule, which was thy part
And person, had’st thou known thy self aright.
Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 145
102 Adam. O why did God,
Creator wise, that peopl’d highest Heav’n
With Spirits Masculine, create at last
This noveltie on Earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
With Men as Angels without Feminine,
Or find some other way to generate
Mankind? this mischief had not then befall’n,
And more that shall befall, innumerable
Disturbances on Earth through Femal snares,
And straight conjunction with this Sex.
Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 888
103 Chorus of Danites. Wisest Men
Have err’d, and by bad Women been deceiv’d;
And shall again.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 210
104 Dalila. In argument with men a woman ever
Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 903
105 Dorine. A woman always has her revenge ready.
Moliere, Tartuffe, II, ti
106 Mirabell. A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more
whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged
in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which
they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned; and
by one as well as another, for motion, not method, is their
occupation. To know this, and yet continue to be in love,
is to be made wise from the dictates of reason, and yet
persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct.
Congreve, Way of the World, II, vii
107 Mrs. Marwood. O, man, man! Woman, woman! The
devil’s an ass: If | were a painter, | would draw him like an
idiot, a driveler with a bib and bells. Man should have his
head and horns, and woman the rest of him. Poor simple
fiend!
Congreve, Way of the World, III, vil
108 In the female nurseries, the young [Lilliputian] girls of
quality are educated much like the males, only they are
dressed by orderly servants of their own sex, but always
in the presence of a professor or deputy, until they come
to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be
found, that these nurses ever presume to entertain the
girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies
practised by chamber-maids among us; they are
publickly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a
year, and banished for life to the most desolate parts of
the country. Thus, the young ladies there are as much
ashamed of being cowards and fools, as the men.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
109 Men, some to Business, some to Pleasure take;
But every Woman is at heart a Rake:
Men, some to Quiet, some to public Strife;
But every Lady would be Queen for life.
Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle Il, 215
110 "I pity your country ignorance from my heart," cries the
lady [Mrs. Western],—"Do you?" an« swered Western;
“and | pity your town learning; | had rather be anything
than a courtier, and a Presbyterian, and a Hanoverian too,
as some people, | believe, are."—"If you mean me,"
answered she, "you know | am a woman, brother; and it
signifies nothing what | am. Besides—"—"! do know you
are a woman," cries the squire, "and it’s well for thee that
art one; if hadst been a man, | promise thee | had lent
thee a flick long ago." — "Ay, there," said she, "in that
flick lies all your fancied superiority. Your bodies, and not
your brains, are stronger than ours. Believe me, it is well
for you that you are able to beat us; or, such is the
superiority of our understanding, we should make all of
you what the brave, and wise, and witty, and polite are
already—our slaves."
Fielding, Tom Jones, VI, 2
111 Mrs. Fitzpatrick. What is the reason, my dear, that we,
who have understandings equal to the wisest and
greatest of the other sex, so often make choice of the
silliest fellows for companions and favourites? it raises
my indignation to the highest pitch, to reflect on the
numbers of women of sense who have been undone by
fools.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XI, 4
112 Of civil Laws contrary to the Law of Nature....
The law passed .. , which condemned every woman,
who, having carried on a criminal commerce did not
declare it to the king before she married him, violated the
regard due to natural modesty. It is as unreasonable to
oblige a woman to make this declaration, as to oblige a
man not to attempt the defence of his own life.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVI, 3
113 There is nothing which | would recommend more
earnestly to my female readers than the study of history
as an occupation, of all others, the best suited both to
their sex and education, much more instructive than their
ordinary books of amusement, and more entertaining
than those serious compositions which are usually to be
found in their closets. Among other important truths
which they may learn from history they may be informed
of two particulars, the knowledge of which may
contribute very much to their quiet and repose: that our
sex, as well as theirs, are far from being such perfect
creatures as they are apt to imagine, and that Love is not
the only passion which governs the male world, but is
often overcome by avarice, ambition, vanity, and a
thousand other passions.
Hume, Of the Study of History
114 All womankind, continued Trim... from the highest to the
lowest, an’ please your honour, love jokes; the difficulty is
to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is
no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery
in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till
we hit the mark.
| like the comparison, said my uncle Toby, better than
the thing itself—
—Because your honour, quoth the corporal, loves
glory, more than pleasure.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, IX, 8
115 From the beginning of the world women have
complained of the fickleness that is imputed to them in
favour of the first new object which presents itself, and
whose novelty is often its only merit. Many ladies (it must
be confessed, despite the infinite respect we have for
them) have treated men as they complain they have
themselves been treated; and the story of Gioconda is
much older than Ariosto.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: New Novelties
116 | must not forget that precious half of the Republic,
which makes the happiness of the other; and whose
sweetness and prudence preserve its tranquillity and
virtue. Amiable and virtuous daughters of Geneva, it will
be always the lot of your sex to govern ours. Happy are
we, so long as your chaste influence, solely exercised
within the limits of conjugal union, is exerted only for the
glory of the State and the happiness of the public. It was
thus the female sex commanded at Sparta; and thus you
deserve to command at Geneva. What man can be such a
barbarian as to resist the voice of honour and reason,
coming from the lips of an affectionate wife? Who would
not despise the vanities of luxury, on beholding the
simple and modest attire which, from the lustre it derives
from you, seems the most favourable to beauty? It is your
task to perpetuate, by your insinuating influence and
your innocent and amiable rule, a respect for the laws of
the State, and harmony among the citizens. It is yours to
reunite divided families by happy marriages; and, above
all things, to correct, by the persuasive sweetness of your
lessons and the modest graces of your conversation,
those extravagancies which our young people pick up in
other countries, whence, instead of many useful things
by which they might profit, they bring home hardly
anything, besides a puerile air and a ridiculous manner,
acquired among loose women, but an admiration for |
know not what so-called grandeur, and paltry
recompenses for being slaves, which can never come
near the real greatness of liberty. Continue, therefore,
always to be what you are, the chaste guardians of our
morals, and the sweet security for our peace, exerting on
every occasion the privileges of the heart and of nature,
in the interests of duty and virtue.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Dedication
117 Next day, Sunday, July 31,1 told him | had been that
morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers,
where | had heard a woman preach, Johnson. "Sir, a
woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder
legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it
done at all."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 31, 1763)
118 Johnson. Where there is no education, as in savage
countries, men will have the upper hand of women.
Bodily strength, no doubt, contributes to this; but it
would be so, exclusive of that; for it is mind that always
governs. When it comes to dry understanding, man has
the better.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1776)
119 He {Johnson] observed once, at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s,
that a beggar in the street will more readily ask alms from
a man, though there should be no marks of wealth in his
appearance, than from even a well-dressed woman;
which he accounted for from the greater degree of
carefulness as to money that is to be found in women;
saying farther upon it, that the opportunities in general
that they possess of improving their condition are much
fewer than men have; and adding, as he looked round the
company, which consisted of men only,—there is not one
of us who does not think he might be richer if he would
use his endeavour.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1780)
120 In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the
stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the
state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures
of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies, however, and
especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of
chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us
to allow a singular exception; and a woman is often
acknowledged the absolute sovereign of a great
kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of
exercising the smallest employment, civil or military.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VI
121 The Germans treated their women with esteem and
confidence, consulted them on every occasion of
importance, and fondly believed that in their breasts
resided a sanctity and wisdom more than human. Some
of these interpreters of fate, such as Velleda, in the
Batavian war, governed, in the name of the deity, the
fiercest nations of Germany. The rest of the sex, without
being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free
and equal companions of soldiers; associated even by the
marriage ceremony to a life of toil, of danger, and of
glory. In their great invasions, the camps of the
barbarians were filled with a multitude of women, who
remained firm and undaunted amidst the sound of arms,
the various forms of destruction, and the honourable
wounds of their sons and husbands. Fainting armies of
Germans have more than once been driven back upon
the enemy by the generous despair of the women who
dreaded death much less than servitude. If the day was
irrecoverably lost, they well knew how to deliver
themselves and their children, with their own hands, from
an insulting victor. Heroines of such a cast may claim our
admiration; but they were most assuredly neither lovely,
nor very susceptible of love. Whilst they affected to
emulate the stem virtues of man, they must have
resigned that attractive softness in which principally
consists the charm of woman. Conscious pride taught the
German females to suppress every tender emotion that
stood in competition with honour, and the first honour of
the sex has ever been that of chastity. The sentiments
and conduct of these high-spirited matrons may, at once,
be considered as a cause, as an effect, and as a proof of
the general character of the nation. Female courage,
however it may be raised by fanaticism, or confirmed by
habit, can be only a faint and imperfect imitation of the
manly valour that distinguishes the age or country in
which it may be found.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1X
122 There’s nought but care on every han’,
In every hour that passes, O;
What signifies the life o’ man,
An’ 'twere na for the lasses, O?
Green grow the rashes, O!
Green grow the rashes, O!
The sweetest hours that e’er | spent.
Were spent amang the lasses, O!
Bums, Green Grow the Rashes
123 With regard to the other sex, nature proposes to it
simplicity of character as the supreme perfection to
which it should reach. Accordingly, the love of pleasing in
women strives after nothing so much as the appearance
of simplicity; a sufficient proof, if it were the only one,
that the greatest power of the sex reposes in this quality.
But, as the principles that prevail in the education of
women are perpetually struggling with this character, it is
as difficult for them in the moral order to reconcile this
magnificent gift of nature with the advantages of a good
education as it is difficult for men to preserve them
unchanged in the Intellectual order; and the woman who
knows how to join a Knowledge of the world to this sort of
simplicity in manners is as deserving of respect as a
scholar who joins to the strictness of scholastic rules the
freedom and originality of thought.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
124 What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
Blake, Gnomic Verses, XVII, 4
125 Mephistopheles. Girls have a great desire to know, it's
true.
If one is sleek and pious, true to ancient isms.
They think: if there he knuckles, us he'll follow too.
Goethe, Faust I, 3525
126 Leader of the Chorus. Impetuous and foolish, perfect
woman-type!
Dependent on the moment, sport of every breeze
Of good and evil fortune, neither this nor that
Can ye with calmness bear.
Goethe, Faust, 11, 3, 9127
127 In her first passion woman loves her lover.
In all the others all she loves is love,
Which grows a habit she can ne'er get over,
And fits her loosely—like an easy glove,
As you may find, whene’er you like to prove her:
One man alone at first her heart can move;
She then prefers him in the plural number.
Not finding that the additions much encumber.
Byron, Don Juan, III, 3
128 The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through
the window pane are my Children. The mighty abstract
Idea | have of Beauty in all things stifles the more divided
and minute domestic happiness—an amiable wife and
sweet Children | contemplate as a part of that Beauty, but
| must have a thousand of those beautiful particles to fill
up my heart. | feel more and more every day, as my
imagination strengthens, that | do not live in this world
alone but in a thousand worlds—No sooner am | alone
than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me,
and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a
King’s bodyguard—then ‘Tragedy with sceptred pall
comes sweeping by.’ According to my state of mind | am
with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or with Theocritus
in the Vales of Sicily. Or 1 throw my whole being into
Troilus, and repeating those lines, ‘I wander like a lost
Soul upon the stygian Banks staying for waftage,' | melt
into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that | am
content to be alone. These things, combined with the
opinion | have of the generality of women— who appear
to me as children to whom 1 would rather give a sugar
Plum than my time, form a barrier against Matrimony
which | rejoice in.
Keats, Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (e. Oct 25,
J8/S)
129 It must be noticed in connexion with sex-relations that a
girl in Surrendering her body loses her honour. With a
man, however, the ease is otherwise, because he has a
field for ethical activity outside the family. A girl is
destined in essence for the marriage tic and for that only;
it is therefore demanded of her that her love shall take
the form of marriage and that the different moments in
love shall attain their true rational relation to each other.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 164
130 Women are capable of education, but they are not made
for activities which demand a universal faculty such as
the more advanced sciences, philosophy, and certain
forms of artistic production. Women may have happy
ideas, taste, and elegance, but they can not attain to the
ideal. the difference between men and women is like that
between animals and plants. Men correspond to animals,
while women correspond to plants because their
development is more placid and the principle that
underlies it is the rather vague unity of feeling. When
women hold the helm of government, the state is at once
in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by
the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations
and opinions. Women are educated—who knows how?—
as it were by breathing in ideas, by living rather than by
acquiring knowledge. the status of manhood, on the
other hand, is attained only by the stress of thought and
much technical exertion.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 166
131 Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and
teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are
themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a
word, they are big children all their life long — a kind of
intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown
man, who is man In the strict sense of the word.
Schopenhauer, Women
132 The fundamental fault of the female character is that it
has no sense of justice. This is mainly due to the fact. .
.that women are defective in the powers of reasoning and
deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position which
Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are
dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence
their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their
ineradicable tendency to say what is not true. For as Hons
are provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and
boars with tusks, bulls with horns, and cuttle fish with its
clouds of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for
her defense and protection, with the arts of dissimulation;
and all the power which Nature has conferred upon man
in the shape of physical strength and reason, has been
bestowed upon women in this form. Hence, dissimulation
is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the
stupid as of the clever. It is as natural for them to make
use of it on every occasion as it is for those animals to
employ their means of defense when they are attacked;
they have a feeling that in doing so they are only within
their rights. Therefore a woman who is perfectly truthful
and not given to dissimulation is perhaps an
impossibility, and for this very reason they are so quick at
seeing through dissimulation in others that it is not a
wise thing to attempt it with them.
Schopenhauer, Women
133 The natural feeling between men is mere indifference,
but between women it is actual enmity. The reason of this
is that trade-jealousy —odium figulinum —which, in the
case of men does not go beyond the confines of their own
particular pursuit; but, with women, embraces the whole
sex; since they have only one kind of business. Even
when they meet in the street, women look at one another
like Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Schopenhauer, Women
134 That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by
the fact that every woman who is placed in. the unnatural
position of complete independence, immediately
attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows
herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a
lord and master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is
old, a priest,
Schopenhauer, Women
135 As for myself, | do not hesitate to avow that although
the women of the United States are confined within the
narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in
some respects one of extreme dependence, | have
nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if |
were asked, now that | am drawing to the close of this
work, in which | have spoken of so many important things
done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity
and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be
attributed, | should reply: To the superiority of their
women.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 12
136 King. Man is the hunter; woman is his game.
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase,
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
They love us for it, and we ride them down.
Tennyson, The Princess, V, 147
137 King. Man for the field and woman for the hearth;
Man for the sword, and for the needle she;
Man with the head, and woman with the heart;
Man to command, and woman to obey;
All else confusion.
Tennyson, The Princess, V, 437
138 It certainly at first appears a highly remarkable fact that
the same female butterfly should have the power of
producing at the same time three distinct female forms
and a male; and that an hermaphrodite plant should
produce from the same seed-capsule three distinct
hermaphrodite forms, bearing three different kinds of
females and three or even six different kinds of males.
Nevertheless these cases are only exaggerations of the
common fact that the female produces offspring of two
sexes which sometimes differ from each other in a
wonderful manner.
Darwin, Origin of Species, II
139 Man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic
than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain
is absolutely larger, but whether or not proportionately to
his larger body, has not, | believe, been fully ascertained.
In woman the face is rounder; the Jaws and the base of
the skull smaller; the outlines of the body rounder, in
parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in
man; but this latter character may perhaps be considered
rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character.
She comes to maturity at an earlier age than man.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 19
140 The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the
two sexes is shewn by man’s attaining to a higher
eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman—
whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination,
or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists
were made of the most eminent men and women in
poetry, painting, sculpture, music (inclusive both of
composition and performance), history, science, and
philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject,
the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also
infer, from the law of the deviation from averages, so well
illustrated by Mr, Gallon, in his work on Hereditary
Genius, that if men are capable of a decided pre-
eminence over women in many subjects, the average of
mental power in man must be above that of woman.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 19
141 To avoid enemies or to attack them with success, to
capture wild animals, and to fashion weapons, requires
the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely,
observation, reason, invention, or imagination, These
various faculties will thus have been continually put to
the test and selected during manhood; they will,
moreover, have been strengthened by use during this
same period of life. Consequently in accordance with the
principle often alluded to, we might expect that they
would at least tend to be transmitted chiefly to the male
offspring.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 19
142 It is, indeed, fortunate that the law of the equal
transmission of characters to both sexes prevails with
mammals; otherwise, it is probable that man would have
become as superior in mental endowment to woman, as
the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen.
Darwin, Descent of Af«n, III, 19
143 With few insignificant exceptions, girls have been
educated either to be drudges, or toys, beneath man; ora
sort of angels above him; the highest ideal aimed at
oscillating between Clarchen and Beatrice. The possibility
that the ideal of womanhood lies neither in the fair saint,
nor in the fair sinner; that the female type of character is
neither better nor worse than the male, but only weaker;
that women are meant neither to be men’s guides nor
their playthings, but their comrades, their fellows, and
their equals, so far as Nature puts no bar to that equality,
does not seem to have entered into the minds of those
who have had the conduct of the education of girls.
If the present system of female education stands self-
condemned, as inherently absurd; and if that which we
have just indicated is the true position of woman, what is
the first step towards a better state of things? We reply,
emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share the
senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, emotion,
of boys, and that the mind of the average girl is less
different from that of the average boy, than the mind of
one boy is from that of another; so that whatever
argument justifies a given education for all boys, justifies
its application to girls as well. So far from imposing
artificial restrictions upon the acquirement of knowledge
by women, throw every facility in their way... . Let us
have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be
none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden
hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by
reason of there being brains within. Nay, if obvious
practical difficulties can be overcome, let those women
who feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial
arena of life... . Let them, if they so please, become
merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair
field, but let them understand, as the necessary
correlative, that they are to have no favour. Let Nature
alone sit high above the lists, "rain influence and judge
the prize."
T. H. Huxley, Emancipation—Black and White
144 Mankind have long since abandoned the only premises
which will support the conclusion that women ought not
to have votes. No one now holds that women should be in
personal servitude; that they should have no thought,
wish, or occupation, but to be the domestic drudges of
husbands, fathers, or brothers. It is allowed to unmarried,
and wants but little of being conceded to married women,
to hold property, and have pecuniary and business
interests, in the same manner as men. It is considered
suitable and proper that women should think, and write,
and be teachers. As soon as these things are admitted,
the political disqualification ha,s no principle to rest on.
The whole mode of thought of the modern world is with
increasing emphasis pronouncing against the claim of
society to decide for individuals what they are and are
not fit for, and what they shall and shall not be allowed to
attempt. H the principles of modem politics and political
economy are good for anything, it is for proving that
these points can only be rightly judged of by the
individuals themselves: and that, under complete
freedom of choice, wherever there are real diversities of
aptitude, the great number will apply themselves to the
things for which they are on the average fittest, and the
exceptional course will only be taken by the exceptions.
Either the whole tendency of modern social
improvements has been wrong, or it ought to be carried
out to the total abolition of all exclusions and disabilities
which close any honest employment to a human being.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
145 All causes, social and natural, combine to make it
unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to
the power of men. They are so far in a position different
from all other subject classes, that their masters require
something more from them than actual service. Men do
not want solely the obedience of women, they want their
sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to
have, in the woman most nearly connected with them,
not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely,
but a favourite.
Mill, Subjection of Women, |
146 One thing we may be certain of—that what is contrary
to women’s nature to do, they never will be made to do
by simply giving their nature free play. The anxiety of
mankind to interfere in behalf of nature, for fear lest
nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an
altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by
nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them
from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men
who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude
them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and
bounties in favour of women; it is only asked that the
present bounties and protective duties in favour of men
should be recalled. If women have a greater natural
inclination for some things than for others, there is no
need of laws or social inculcation to make the majority of
them do the former in preference to the latter. Whatever
women’s services are most wanted for, the free play of
competition will hold out the strongest inducements to
them to undertake. And, as the words imply, they are
most wanted for the things for which they are most fit; by
the apportionment of which to them, the collective
faculties of the two sexes can be applied on the whole
with the greatest sum of valuable result.
Mill, Subjection of Woman, |
147 The less fit a man is for the possession of power— the
less likely to be allowed to exercise it over any person
with that person’s voluntary consent—the more does he
hug himself in the consciousness of the power the law
gives him, exact its legal rights to the utmost point which
custom (the custom of men like himself) will tolerate, and
take pleasure in using the power, merely to enliven the
agreeable sense of possessing it. What is more; in the
most naturally brutal and morally uneducated part of the
lower classes, the legal slavery of the woman, and
something in the merely physical subjection to their will
as an instrument, causes them to feel a sort of disrespect
and contempt towards their own wife which they do not
feel towards any other woman, or any other human being,
with whom they come in contact; and which makes her
seem to them an appropriate subject for any kind of
indignity. Let an acute observer of the signs of feeling,
who has the requisite opportunities, judge for himself
whether this is not the case: and if he finds that it is, let
him not wonder at any amount of disgust and indignation
that can be felt against institutions which lead naturally
to this depraved state of the human mind.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
148 The occupations of nine out of every ten men are
special, those of nine out of every ten women general,
embracing a multitude of details, each of which requires
very little time. Women are in the constant practice of
passing quickly from one manual, and still more from one
mental operation to another, which therefore rarely costs
them either effort or loss of time, while a man’s
occupation generally consists in working steadily fora
long time at one thing, or one very limited class of things.
But the situations are sometimes reversed, and with them
the characters. Women are not found less efficient than
men for the uniformity of factory work, or they would not
so generally be employed for it; and a man who has
cultivated the habit of turning his hand to many things,
far from being the slothful and lazy person described by
Adam Smith, is usually remarkably lively and active. It is
true, however, that change of occupation may be too
frequent even for the most versatile. Incessant variety is
even more fatiguing than perpetual sameness.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, Vill, 5
149 The same reasons which make it no longer necessary
that the poor should depend on the rich, make it equally
unnecessary that women should depend on men; and the
least which justice requires is that law and custom should
not enforce dependence (when the correlative protection
has become superfluous) by ordaining that a woman, who
does not happen to have a provision by inheritance, shall
have scarcely any means open to her of gaining a
livelihood, except as a wife and mother. Let women who
prefer that occupation, adopt it; but that there should be
no option, no other carriere possible for the great
majority of women, except in the humbler departments of
life, is a flagrant social injustice. The ideas and
institutions by which the accident of sex is made the
groundwork of an inequality of legal rights, and a forced
dissimilarity of social functions, must ere long be
recognised as the greatest hindrance to moral, social, and
even intellectual improvement.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV, VII, 3
150 You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or
hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you
would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl
into anything. She grows as a flower does,—she will
wither without sun; she \rill decay in her sheath, as a
narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; she may
fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without
help at some moments of her life; but you cannot fetter
her; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take
any.
Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, Il, 78
151 The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no
history.
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, VI, 3
152 | should like to know what is the proper function of
women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay
at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go
out.
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, VI, 6
153 She [Rosamond] spoke and wept with that gentleness
which makes such words and tears omnipotent over a
loving-hearted man. Lydgate drew his chair near to hers
and pressed her delicate head against his cheek with his
powerful tender hand. He only caressed her; he did not
say anything; for what was there to say? He could not
promise to shield her from the dreaded wretchedness, for
he could see no sure means of doing so. When he left her
to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times
harder for her than for him: he had a life away from
home, and constant appeals to his activity on behalf of
others. He wished to excuse everything in her if he could
- but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he
should think of her as if she were an animal of another
and feebler species. Nevertheless she had mastered him.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, VII, 65
154 Mitya. Try acknowledging you are in fault to a woman.
Say, ‘lam sorry, forgive me,' and a shower of reproaches
will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and
directly, she'll humble you to the dust, bring forward
things that have never happened, recall everything,
forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then
forgive you. And even the best, the best of them do it.
She'll scrape up all the scrapings and load them on your
head. They are ready to flay you alive, | tell you, every
one of them, all these angels without whom we cannot
live!
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt.IV, X1,4
155 Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the
door of the compartment he stopped short to make room
for a lady who was getting out.
With the insight of a man of the world, from one
glance at this lady's appearance Vronsky classified her as
belonging to the best society. He begged pardon, and
was getting into the carriage, but felt he must glance at
her once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on
account of the elegance and modest grace which were
apparent in her whole figure, but because in the
expression of her charming face, as she passed close by
him, there was something peculiarly caressing and soft.
As he looked round, she too turned her head. Her shining
grey eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested
with friendly attention on his face, as though she were
recognising him, and then promptly turned away to the
passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief
look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed
eagerness which played over her face, and flitted
between the brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved
her red lips. It was as though her nature were so
brimming over with something that against her will it
showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her
smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but
it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, |, 18
156 We observe an identical difference between men as a
whole and women as a whole. A young woman of twenty
reacts with intuitive promptitude and security in all the
usual circumstances in which she may be placed. Her
likes and dislikes are formed; her opinions, to a great
extent, the same that they will be through life. Her
character is, in fact, finished in its essentials. How inferior
to her is a boy of twenty in all these respects! His
character is still gelatinous, uncertain what shape to
assume, "trying it on" in every direction. Feeling his
power, yet ignorant of the manner in which he shall
express it, he is, when compared with his sister, a being
of no definite contour. But this absence of prompt
tendency in his brain to set into particular modes is the
very condition which insures that it shall ultimately
become so much more efficient than the woman's. The
very lack of preappointed trains of thought is the ground
on which general principles and heads of classification
grow up; and the masculine brain deals with new and
complex matter indirectly by means of these, in manner
which the feminine method of direct intuition, admirably
and rapidly as it performs within its limits, can vainly
hope to cope with.
William James, Psychology, XXII
157 Pickering. Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you
a man of good character where women are concerned?
Higgins. [moodily] Have you ever met a man of good
character where women are concerned?
Pick. Yes: very frequently
Hig. [ dogmatically, lifting himself on his hands to the
level of the piano, and sitting on it with a bounce] Well, |
havn't. | find that the moment | let a woman make friends
with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and
a damned nuisance. | find that the moment | let myself
make friends with a woman, | become selfish and
tyrannical. Women upset over everything. When you let
them into your life, you find taht the woman is driving at
one thing and you're driving at another.
Pick. At what, for example?
Hig. [coming off the piano restlessly] Oh, Lord knows! |
suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the
man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on
to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other
south; and the result is that both have to go east, though
they both hate the east wind.
Shaw, Pygmalion, II
158 It is not necessary to wear trousers and smoke big
cigars to live a man's life any more than it is necessary to
wear petticoats to live a woman's. There are plenty of
gowned and bodiced women in ordinary civil life who
manage their own affairs and other people's, including
those of their menfolk, and are entirely masculine in their
tastes and pursuits. There always were such women... The
exemption of women from military service is founded, not
on any natural inaptitude that men do not share, but on
the fact that communities cannot reproduce themselves
without plenty of women. Men are more largely
dispensable, and are sacrificed accordingly.
Shaw, Saint Joan, Pref.
159 Man is no longer, like Don Juan, victor in the duel of sex.
Whether he has ever really been may be doubted: at all
events the enormous superiority of Woman’s natural
position in this matter is telling with greater and greater
force,
Shaw, Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory
160 In Shakespear’s plays the woman always takes the
initiative. In his problem plays and his popular plays alike
the love interest is the interest of seeing the woman hunt
the man down. She may do it by charming him, like
Rosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; but in every case
the relation between the woman and the man is the
Same: she is the pursuer and contriver, he the pursued
and disposed of. When she is baffled, like Ophelia, she
goes mad and commits suicide; and the man goes
straight from her funeral to a fencing match. No doubt
Nature, with very young creatures, may save the woman
the trouble of scheming: Prospero knows that he has only
to throw Ferdinand and Miranda together and they will
mate like a pair of doves.... But the mature cases all
illustrate the Shakespearian law.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory
161 We laugh at the haughty American nation because it
makes the negro clean its boots and then proves the
moral and physical inferiority of the negro by the fact
that he is a shoeblack; but we ourselves throw the whole
drudgery of creation on one sex, and then imply that no
female of any womanliness or delicacy would initiate any
effort in that direction. There are no limits to male
hypocrisy in this matter.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory
162 Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s work-house.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
163 Complete object-love ... is, properly speaking,
characteristic of the man. It displays the marked sexual
over-estimation which is doubtless derived from the
Original narcissism of the child, now transferred to the
sexual object. This sexual over-estimation is the origin of
the peculiar state of being in love, a state suggestive of a
neurotic compulsion, which is thus traceable to an
impoverishment of the ego in respect of libido in favour
of the love-object, A different course is followed in the
type most frequently met with in women, which is
probably the purest and truest feminine type. With the
development of puberty, the maturing of the female
sexual organs, which up till then have been in a condition
of latency, seems to bring about an intensification of the
Original narcissism, and this is unfavourable to the
development of a true object-love with its accompanying
sexual over-estimation; there arises in the woman a
certain self-sufficiency (especially when there is a
ripening into beauty) which compensates her for the
social restrictions upon her object-choice, Strictly
speaking, such women love only themselves with an
intensity comparable to that of the man’s love for them.
Nor does their need lie in the direction of loving, but of
being loved; and that man finds favour with them who
fulfils this condition. The importance of this type of
woman for the erotic life of mankind must be recognized
as very great. Such women have the greatest fascination
for men, not only for aesthetic reasons, since as a rule
they are the most beautiful, but also because of certain
interesting psychological constellations.
Freud, On Narcissism, II
164 Throughout the ages, the problem of woman has
puzzled people of every kind.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho_Analysis,
XXX111
165 Male or female is the first differentiation that you make
when you meet another human being, and you are used
to making that distinction with absolute certainty.
Anatomical science shares your certainty in one point,
but not much more.... It points out to you that parts of the
male sexual apparatus are also to be found in the body of
the female, although in a rudimentary condition, and vice
versa. Science secs in this phenomenon an indication of
bisexuality, as though the individual were neither man
nor woman, but both at the same time, only rather more
the one than the other. It then expects you to make
yourselves familiar with the idea that the proportions in
which the masculine and the feminine mingle in an
individual are subject to quite extraordinary variations.
And even though, apart from very' rare cases, only one
kind of sexual product—ova or seminal cells—is present
in any one individual, you will go wrong if you take this
factor as being of decisive importance, and you must
conclude that what constitutes masculinity or femininity
is an unknown element which it is beyond the power of
anatomy to grasp.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXII!
166 We must not overlook one particularly constant relation
between femininity and instinctual life. The repression of
their aggressiveness, which is imposed upon women by
their constitutions and by society, favours the
development of strong masochistic impulses, which have
the effect of binding erotically the destructive tendencies
which have been turned inwards. Masochism is, then, as
they say, truly feminine. But when, as so often happens,
you meet with masochism in men, what else can you do
but say that these men display obvious feminine traits of
character?
You are now prepared for the conclusion that
psychology cannot solve the riddle of femininity. The
solution must, | think, come from somewhere else, and it
cannot come until we have learned in general how the
differentiation of living creatures into two sexes came
about. We know nothing whatever about the matter.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXII!
167 It must be admitted that women have but little sense of
justice, and this is no doubt connected with the
preponderance of envy in their mental life; for the
demands of justice are a modification of envy; they lay
down the conditions under which one is willing to part
with it,
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXII
168 Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men
and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their
reasons are always different. So that while intellectual
harmony between men and women is easily possible, its
delightful and magic quality lies precisely in the fact that
it does not arise from mutual understanding, but isa
conspiracy of alien essences and a kissing, as it were, in
the dark. As man's body differs from woman's in sex and
strength, so his mind differs from hers in quality and
function: they can co-operate but can never fuse. The
human race, in its intellectual life, is organised like the
bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied,
and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal
arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile,
omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and
abounding in intuitions without method and passions
without justice. Friendship with a woman is therefore apt
to be more or less than friendship: less, because there is
no intellectual parity; more, because (even when the
relation remains wholly dispassionate, as in respect to old
ladies) there is something mysterious and oracular about
a woman’s mind which inspires a certain instinctive
deference and puts it out of the question to judge what
she says by masculine standards. She has a land of
sibylline intuition and the right to be irrationally a
propos. There is a gallantry of the mind which pervades
all conversation with a lady, as there is a natural courtesy
toward children and mystics; but such a habit of
respectful concession, marking as it does an intellectual
alienation as profound as that which separates us from
the dumb animals, is radically incompatible with
friendship.
Santayana, Life of Reason, 11, 6
169 | do not intend, for the mere sake of correcting an
inappropriate word, to enter upon a comparative study of
the two sexes. Suffice it to say that woman is as
intelligent as man, but that she is less capable of
emotion, and that if there is any faculty or power of the
soul which seems to attain less development in woman
than in man, it is not intelligence, but sensibility. | mean
of course sensibility in the depths, not agitation at the
surface.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, |
170 God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild
mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the
beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all
kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that
would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and
flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours
springing up even out of the ditches primroses and
violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God |
wouldn't give a snap of my two fingers for all their
learning why dont they go and create something | often
asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go
and wash the cobbles off themselves first and then go
howling for the priest and they dying and why why
because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad
conscience ah yes | know them well who was the first
person in the universe before there was anybody that
made it all who ah that they dont know neither do | so
there you are they might as well try' to stop the sun from
rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we
were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in
the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day | got him to
propose to me yes first | gave him the bit of seedcake out
of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years
ago my God after that long kiss | near lost my breath yes
he said | was a flower of the mountain yes so we are
flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he
said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that
was why | liked him because | saw he understood or felt
what a woman is and I knew | could always get round him
and | gave him all the pleasure | could leading him on till
he asked me to say yes and | wouldnt answer first only
looked out over the sea and the sky | was thinking of so
many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope
and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the
Sailors playing all birds fly and | say stoop and washing
up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front
of the governors house with the thing round his white
helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls
laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the
auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the
Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of
Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucldng
outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half
asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the
shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the
bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and
those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings
asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and
Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes
a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the
wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the
night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman
going about serene with his lamp and O that awful
deepdown torrent O and the sea and the sea crimson
sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the
figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer
little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the
rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and
cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where | was a Flower of
the mountain yes when | put the rose in my hair like the
Andalusian girls used or shall | wear a red yes and how he
kissed me under the Moorish wall and | thought well as
well him as another and then | asked him with my eyes to
ask again yes and then he asked me would | yes to say
yes my mountain flower and first | put my arms around
him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my
breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad
and yes | said yes | will Yes.
Joyce, Ulysses
1.8 Life and Death
THE FEAR OF DEATH
It is often said that man alone among animals is conscious of
the inevitability of dying, a fact that undoubtedly colors his
attitude toward life, especially in advancing years. The
passages assembled here revolve around that fundamental
theme—the consciousness of death as inescapable, the
attitudes of the living toward death, the fear of dying and
the courage of those who, overcoming such fear, die well.
Exemplifying the latter, there are quotations that describe
famous death scenes in which the dying display admirable
fortitude and calm. There are also passages that describe
violent deaths—by murder or by catastrophe, such as plague
or earthquake.
Another theme that runs through this chapter is man's
contemplation of his mortality and his hopes for or visions of
another life—a life after death. But serious discussion of the
philosophical and theological problems of immortality—the
survival of the soul after the death of the body, its
reincarnation in another body, or the resurrection of its
original body—involves subtleties and technicalities that
preclude its being represented among the materials quoted
here.
Still another theme is the one first enunciated by
Socrates while awaiting his execution—that to study
philosophy is to learn to die, or at least how to prepare for
death. Montaigne affords us eloquent elaborations of this
theme, and he is accompanied by others who, in one way or
another, develop the point.
1 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for
dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Genesis 3:19
2 | have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may
live.
Deuteronomy 30:19
3 Then said his servants unto him. What thing is this that
thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child,
while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou
didst rise and eat bread.
And he said, While the child was yet alive, | fasted and
wept: for | said, Who can tell whether God will be
gracious to me, that the child may live?
But now he is dead, wherefore should | fast? can |
bring him back again? | shall go to him, but he shall not
return to me.
I! Samuel 12:21-23
4 The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be
the name of the Lord.
Job 1:21
5 Then in turn the shining son of Hippolochos [Glaukos]
answered:
‘High-hearted son of Tydeus, why ask of my
generation?
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the
live timber
burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring
returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another
dies.’
Homer, Iliad, Vl, 144
6 Achilleus. Of possessions
cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting,
and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of
horses,
but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be
lifted
nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the
teeth’s barrier.
Homer, Iliad, IX, 405
7 Achilleus. So, friend [Lykaon], you die also. Why all this
clamour about it?
Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you
are,
Do you not see what a man | am, how huge, how
splendid
and born of a great father, and the mother who bore
me immortal?
Yet even | have also my death and my strong destiny,
and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon ora
noontime
when some man in the fighting will take the life from
me also
either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the
bowstring.
Homer, Iliad, XXI, 106
8 Odysseus. | bit my lip,
rising perplexed, with longing to embrace her [Odysseus
mother’s ghost], and tried three times, putting my arms
around her,
but she went sifting through my hands, impalpable
as shadows are, and wavering like a dream.
Now this embittered all the pain | bore, and | cried in the
darkness:
‘O my mother,
will you not stay, be still, here in my arms, may we not, in
this place of Death, as well, hold one another, touch with
love, and taste salt tears’ relief, the twinge of welling
tears?
Or is this all hallucination, sent against me by the iron
queen, Persephone, to make me groan again?’
My noble mother
answered quickly:
‘O my child—alas, most sorely tried of men—great
Zeus’s daughter, Persephone, knits no illusion for you.
All mortals meet this judgment when they die. No flesh
and bone are here, none bound by sinew, since the
bright-hearted pyre consumed them down-
the white bones long exanimate — to ash; dreamlike the
soul flies, insubstantial.’
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 205
9 ‘But was there ever a man more blest by fortune than you,
Akhilleus? Can there ever be?
We ranked you with immortals in your lifetime, we
Argives did, and here your power is royal among the dead
men’s shades. Think, then,
Akhilleus:
you need not be so pained by death.’
To this
he answered swiftly:
‘Let me hear no smooth talk of death from you,
Odysseus, light of councils. Better, | say, to break sod asa
farm hand for some poor country man, on iron rations,
than lord it over all the exhausted dead.’
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 483
10 Apollo. Zeus could undo shackles, such hurt can be made
good,
and there is every kind of way to get out. But once the
dust has drained down all a man’s blood, once the man
has died, there is no raising of him up again. This is a
thing for which my father never made curative spells. All
other states, without effort of hard breath, he can
completely rearrange.
Aeschylus, Eumenides, 645
11 Orestes. No wise man | count him, who, when death
looms near, attempts to quell its terrors by piteous
laments, nor yet the man who bewails the Death-god’s
arrival, when he has no hope of rescue; for he makes two
evils out of one; he lets himself be called a fool and all
the same he dies; he should let his fortune be.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 484
12 Hecuba. You may go now, and hide the dead in his poor
tomb;
he has those flowers that are the right of the underworld.
| think it makes small difference to the dead, if they
are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty
glorification left for those who live.
Euripides, Trojan Women, 1246
13 Socrates. Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men
of Athens, if | who, when | was ordered by the generals
whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and
Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me,
like any other man, facing death—if now, when, as |
conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the
philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other
men, | were to desert my post through fear of death, or
any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and | might
justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of
the gods, if | disobeyed the oracle because | was afraid of
death, fancying that | was wise when | was not wise. For
the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and
not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the
unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men
in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not
be the greatest good.
Plato, Apology, 28B
14 Socrates. The difficulty ... is not to avoid death, but to
avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Plato, Apology, 39A
15 Socrates. There is a change and migration of the soul
from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there
iS NO consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who
is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an
unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night
in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and
were to compare with this the other days and nights of
his life, and then were to tell us how many days and
nights he had passed in the course of his life better and
more pleasantly than this one, | think that any man, | will
not say a private man, but even the great king will not
find many such days or nights, when compared with the
others. Now if death be of such a nature, | say that to die
iS gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if
death is the Journey to another place, and there, as men
say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and
Judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the
pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from
the professors of Justice in this world, and finds the true
Judges who are said to give Judgment there, Minos and
Rhadamanthus and Aecus and Triptolemus, and other
Kins of God who were righteous in their own life, that
pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man
give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and
Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again
and again. | myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in
there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax
the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has
suffered death through an unjust Judgment; and there
will be no small pleasure, as | think, in comparing my own
sufferings with theirs. Above all, | shall then be able to
continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in
this world, so also in the next; and | shall find out who is
wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What
would not a man give, O Judges, to be able to examine
the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or
Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too!
What infinite delight would there be in conversing with
them and asking them questions! In another world they
do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly
not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be
immortal, if what is said is true.
Wherefore, O Judges, be of good cheer about death,
and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen toa
good man, either in life or after death.
Plato, Apology, 40B
16 Socrates. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go
our ways—lI to die, and you to live. Which is better God
only knows.
Plato, Apology, 42B
17 Socrates. It has been proved to us by experience that if
we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be
quit of the body—the soul in herself must behold things
in themselves: and then we shall attain the wisdom which
we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers; not
while we live, but after death; for if while in company
with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one
of two things follows—either knowledge is not to be
attained at all, or, if at all, after death. For then, and not
till then, the soul will from the body and exist in herself
alone. In this present life, | reckon that we make the
nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least
possible intercourse or communion with the body, and
are not surfeited with the bodily nature, but keep
ourselves pure until the hour when God himself is
pleased to release us. And thus having got rid of the
foolishness of the body we shall be pure and hold
converse with the pure and know of ourselves the clear
light everywhere, which is no other than the light of
truth. For the impure are not permitted to approach the
pure. These are the sort of words, Simmias, which the
true lovers of Knowledge cannot help saying to one
another, and thinking. You would agree would agree;
would you not?
Simmias. Undoubtedly, Socrates
But, O my friend, if this be true, there is great reason
to hope that, going whither | go, when | have come to the
end of my journey | shall attain that which has been the
pursuit of my life. And therefore | go on my way rejoicing,
and not! only, but every other man who believes that his
mind has been made ready and that he is in a manner
purified.
Certainly, replied Simmias.
And what is purification but the separation of soul
from the body, as | was saving before; the habit of the
soul gathering and collecting herself into herself from all
sides out of the body; the dwelling in her own place
alone, as in another life, so also in this, as far as she can;
-the release of the soul from the chains of the body?
Very true, he said.
And this separation and release of the soul from the
body is termed death?
To be sure, he said.
And the true philosophers, and they only, are ever
seeking to release the soul. Is not the separation and
release of the soul from the body their especial study?
That is true.
And. as | was Saying at first, there would be a
ridiculous contradiction in men studying to live as nearly
as they can in a state of death, and yet repining when it
comes upon them.
Clearly.
And the true philosophers. Simmias, are always
occupied in the practice of dying, wherefore also to them
least of all men is death terrible.
Plato, Phaedo, 66B
18 Crito made a sign to the servant, who was standing by;
and he went out, and having been absent for some time,
returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison.
Socrates said. You, my good friend, who are experienced
in these matters, shall give me directions how | am to
proceed. The man answered: You have only to walk about
until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the
poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to
Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner,
without the least fear or change of colour or feature,
looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his
manner was, took the cup and said: What do you say
about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May l,
or not? The man answered: We only prepare, Socrates,
just so much as we deem enough. | understand, he said:
but | may and must ask the gods to prosper my journey
from this to the other world—even so and so be it
according to my prayer. Then raising the cup to his lips,
quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And
hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow;
but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he
had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and
in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that |
covered my face and wept, not for him, but at the
thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a
friend. Nor was | the first; for Crito, when he found himself
unable to restrain his tears, had got up, and | followed;
and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping
all the time, broke out in a loud and passionate cry which
made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his
calmness: What is this strange outcry? he said. | sent
away the women mainly in order that they might not
misbehave in this way, for | have been told that a man
should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience.
When we heard his words we were ashamed, and
refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said,
his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back,
according to the directions, and the man who gave him
the poison now and then looked at his feel and legs; and
after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he
could feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so
upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold
and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the
poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was
beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he
uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and
said—they were his last words—he said: Crito, |owea
cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else?
There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or
two a movement was heard, and the attendants
uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his
eyes and mouth.
Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend;
concerning whom | may truly say, that of all the men of
his time whom | have known, he was the wisest and
justest and best.
Plato, Phaedo, 117A
19 Cephalus. When a man thinks himself to be near death,
fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had
before; the tales of a world below and the punishment
which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a
laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the
thought that they may be true: either from the weakness
of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other
place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions
and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to
reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others.
And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is
great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep
for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him
who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope ... is the kind
nurse of his age.
Plato, Republic, |, 3SOB
20 As for his [Socrates’] claim that he was forewarned by
"the deity" what he ought to do and what not to do, some
may think that it must have been a delusion because he
was condemned to death. But they should remember two
facts. First, he had already reached such an age that, had
he not died then, death must have come to him soon
after. Secondly, he escaped the most irksome stage of life
and the inevitable diminution of mental powers, and
instead won glory by the moral strength revealed in the
wonderful honesty and frankness and probity of his
defence, and in the equanimity and manliness with which
he bore the sentence of death.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, 8
21 Now death is the most terrible of all things; for it is the
end, and nothing is thought to be any longer either good
or bad for the dead.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1115a27
22 Death and wounds will be painful to the brave man and
against his will, but he will face them because it is noble
to do so or because it is base not to do so. And the more
he is possessed of virtue in its entirety and the happier
he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death;
for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is
knowingly losing the greatest goods, and this is painful.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1117b7
23 Now life is defined in the case of animals by the power of
perception, in that of man by the power of perception or
thought; and a power is defined by reference to the
corresponding activity, which is the essential thing;
therefore life seems to be essentially the act of perceiving
or thinking. And life is among the things that are good
and pleasant in themselves.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1170a16
24 Avarice... and blind lust of honours which constrain
unhappy men to overstep the bounds of right and
sometimes as partners and agents of crimes to strive
night and day with surpassing effort to struggle up to the
summit of power—these sores of life are in no small
measure fostered by the dread of death. For foul scorn
and pinching want in every case are seen to be far
removed from a life of pleasure and security and to bea
loitering so to say before the gates of death. And while
men driven on by an unreal dread wish to escape far
away from these and keep them far from them, they
amass wealth by civil bloodshed and greedily double
their riches piling up murder on murder; cruelly triumph
in the sad death of a brother and hate and fear the tables
of kinsfolk. Often likewise from the same fear envy causes
them to pine: they make moan that before their very eyes
he is powerful, he attracts attention, who walks arrayed in
gorgeous dignity, while they are wallowing in darkness
and dirt. Some wear themselves to death for the sake of
statues and a name. And often to such a degree through
dread of death does hate of life and of the sight of
daylight seize upon mortals, that they commit self-
murder with a sorrowing heart, quite forgetting that this
fear is the source of their cares, this fear which urges men
to ev'ery sin, prompts this one to put all shame to rout,
another to burst asunder the bonds of friendship, and in
fine to overturn duty from its very base, since often ere
now men have betrayed country and dear parents in
seeking to shun the Acherusian quarters. For even as
children are flurried and dread all things in the thick
darkness, thus we in the daylight (ear at times things not
a whit more to be dreaded than what children shudder at
in the dark and fancy sure to be. This terror therefore and
darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the
sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and
law of nature.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
25
26
When the body has died, we must admit that the soul has
perished, wrenched away throughout the body. To link
forsooth a mortal thing with an everlasting and suppose
that they can have sense in common and can be
reciprocally acted upon, is sheer folly; for what can be
conceived more incongruous, more discordant and
inconsistent with itself, than a thing which is mortal,
linked with an immortal and everlasting thing, trying in
such union to weather furious storms.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
“Now no more shall thy house admit thee with glad
welcome, nor a most virtuous wife and sweet children run
to be the first to snatch kisses and touch thy heart with a
silent joy. No more mayst thou be prosperous in thy
doings, a safeguard to thine own. One disastrous day has
taken from thee luckless man in luckless wise all the
many prizes of life." This do men say; but add not thereto
“and now no longer does any craving for these things
beset thee withal." For if they could rightly perceive this
in thought and follow up the thought in words, they
would release themselves from great distress and
apprehension of mind. "Thou, even as now thou art, sunk
in the sleep of death, shall continue so to be all time to
come, freed from all distressful pains; but we with a
sorrow that would not be sated wept for thee, when close
by thou didst turn to an ashen hue on thy appalling
funeral pile, and no length of days shall pluck from our
hearts our ever-during grief." This question therefore
should be asked of this .speaker, what there U in it so
passing bitter, if it come in the end to sleep and rest, that
any one should pine in never-ending sorrow.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
27 Once more what evil lust of life is this which constrains us
with such force to be so mightily troubled in doubts and
dangers? A sure term of life is fixed for mortals, and death
cannot be shunned, but meet it we must. Moreover we
are ever engaged, ever involved in the .same pursuits,
and no new pleasure is struck out by living on; but whilst
what we crave is wanting, it seems to transcend all the
rest; then, when it has been gotten, we crave something
else, and c\’cr does the same thirst of life possess us, as
we gape for it open-mouthed. Quite doubtful it is what
fortune the future will carry with it or what chance will
bring us or what end is at hand. Nor by prolonging life do
we take one tittle from the lime past in death nor can we
fret anything away, whereby we may haply be a less long
time in the condition of the dead. Therefore you may
complete as many generations as you please during your
life; none the less however will that everlasting death
await you; and for no less long a time will he be no more
in being, who beginning with to-day has ended his life,
than the man who has died many months and years ago.
Lucretius, Nature of II
28 The philosopher's whole life is a preparation for death.
Cicero, Disputations, |, 30
29 Let us gel rid of such old wives' tales as the one that tells
us it is tragic to die before one's lime. What "time" is that,
| would like to Know? Nature is the one who has granted
us the loan of our lives, without setting any schedule for
repayment. What has one to complain of if she calls in
the loan when she will?
Cicero, Disputations, |, 39
30 What a poor dotard must he be who has not learnt in the
course of so long a life that death is not a thing to be
feared? Death, that is either to be totally disregarded, if it
entirely extinguishes the soul, or is even to be desired, if
it brings him where he is to exist forever. A third
alternative, at any rate, cannot possibly be discovered.
Why then should | be afraid if | am destined either not to
be miserable after death or even to be happy? After all, w
ho is such a fool as to feel certain—however young he
may be—that he will !>c alive in the evening? Nay, that
lime of life has many more chances of death than ours.
Young men more easily contract diseases; their illnesses
are more serious; their treatment has to be more severe.
Accordingly, only a few arrive at old age. H that were not
So, life would be conducted better and more wisely; for it
is in old men that thought, reason, and prudence are to
be found; and if there had been no old men, states would
never have existed at all.
Cicero, Old Age, XIX
31 If |am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal. | am
glad to be wrong; nor will | allow the mistake which gives
me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as |
live. But if when dead, as some insignificant philosophers
think, | am to be without sensation, | am not afraid of
dead philosophers deriding my errors. Again, if we are not
to be immortal, it is nevertheless what a man must wish
— to have his life end at its proper time. For nature puts a
limit to living as to everything else. Now, old age is. as it
were, the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of
which we should slum, especially when we also feel that
we have had more than enough of it.
Cicero, Old Age, XXIII
32 Happy the man, who, studying nature's laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause—
His mind possessing in a quiet state,
Fearless of Fortune, and resigned to Fate!
Virgil, Georges, II
33 In youth alone unhappy mortals live;
But all! the mighty bliss is fugitive:
Discoloured sickness, anxious labours, come.
And age. and death's inexorable doom.
Virgil, Georges, III
34 Ah! Postumus, Postumus, fast fly the years,
And prayers to wrinkles and impending age
Bring not delay; nor shall assuage
Death's stroke with pious tears;
No, not though on each day that comes to thee
With thrice a hundred bulls thou sought to gain
Grim Pluto’s pity, all were vain!
Great Geryon he'll not free.
Or Tityos, from the gloomy stream, whose tide
Each child of earth must traverse shore to shore,
Whether a crown on earth we bore.
Or crofters lived and died.
Horace, Odes, 11, 14
35 While you pray for life, study death. Fatted bulls fall from
some slight wound, and creatures of great stamina are
downed by one blow from a man’s hand. A tiny blade can
sever the tendons of the neck; and when the head is
severed the hulk of the body crumples in a heap. No
secret comer of the body hides the soul. No knife can dig
it out, nor any wound aimed at the vital parts; death is
near at hand. For these death blows | have appointed no
specific soot—anywhere you wish: the way is open. When
breath departs the body, that moment we call dying is so
brief we cannot be aware of it. Whether one is strangled
or drowned, or the skull is fractured from a fall on the
hard ground, or fire deprives us of air; whatever the case,
the end comes quickly. are you blushing for shame? For
so long a time you are in fear of what is over so quickly.
Seneca, On Providence, VI
36 What is death? Either a transition or an end. | am not
afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never
having begun, nor of transition, for | shall never be in
confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as | am
here.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 65
37 As it is with a play, so it is with life—what matters is not
how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not
important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will
—only make sure that you round it off with a good
ending.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 77
38 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been
here, my brother had not died.
But | know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of
God, God will give it thee.
Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.
Martha saith unto him, | know that he shall rise again
in the resurrection at the last day.
Jesus said unto her, | am the resurrection, and the life:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never
die. Believest thou this?
She saith unto him. Yea, Lord: | believe that thou art
the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the
world.
And when she had so said, she went her way, and
called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is
come, and calleth for thee.
As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and
came unto him.
Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in
that place where Martha met him.
The Jews then which were with her in the house, and
comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up
hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth
unto the grave to weep there.
Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw
him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if
thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews
also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the
Spirit, and was troubled,
And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him,
Lord, come and see.
Jesus wept.
Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!
And some of them said, Could not this man, which
opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this
man should not have died?
Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to
the grave. It was a Cave, and a stone lay upon it.
Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister
of him that was dead, saith unto him. Lord, by this time
he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.
Jesus saith unto her, Said | not unto thee, that, if thou
wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
Then they took away the stone from the place w’here
the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said,
Father, | thank thee that thou hast heard me.
And | knew that thou hearest me always: but because
of the people which stand by | said it, that they may
believe that thou hast sent me.
And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud
voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and
foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about
with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them. Loose him, and let
him go.
John 11:21-44
39 Verily, verily, | say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit.
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth
his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
John 12:24-25
40 For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be
made alive.
But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits;
afterward they that are the Christ’s at his coming.
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up
the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have
put dowm all rule and all authority and power.
For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under
his feet.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
| Corinthians 15:21-26
41 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of
flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes,
and another of birds.
There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial:
but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the
terrestrial is another.
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the
moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star
differeth from another star in glory.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in
corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown
in weakness; it is raised in power:
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.
There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body....
Now this | say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption
inherit incorruption....
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this
mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on in-
corruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written.
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy
victory?
| Corinthians 15:39-55
42 And | looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that
sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And
power was given unto them over the fourth part of the
earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death,
and with the beasts of the earth.
Remlation 6:8
43 The death of happy men is not... most grievous, but most
blessed, since it secures their felicity, and puts it out of
fortune’s power. And that Spartan advised well, who,
embracing Diagoras, that had himself been crowned in
the Olympic Games, and saw his sons and grandchildren
victors, said, "Die, Diagoras, for thou canst not be a god."
Plutarch, Pelopidas
44 One finds it also related by many that a soothsayer bade
him prepare for some great danger on the Ides of March.
When this day was come, Caesar, as he went to the
senate, met this soothsayer, and said to him by way of
raillery, "The Ides of March are come," who answered him
calmly, "Yes, they are come, but they are not past." The
day before his assassination he supped with Marcus
Lepidus; and as he was signing some letters according to
his custom, as he reclined at table, there arose a question
what sort of death was the best. At which he immediately,
before any one could speak, said, "A sudden one."
Plutarch, Caesar
45 Throwing away then all things, hold to these only which
are few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives
only this present time, which is an indivisible point, and
that all the rest of his life is either past or it is uncertain.
Short then is the time which every man lives, and small
the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the
longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued
by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon
die, and who know not even themselves, much less him
who died long ago.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, I/l, 10
46 Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human
things are,... Pass then through this little space of time
conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content,
just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature
who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, lV, 48
47 Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and
either a name or not even a name; but name is sound
and echo. And the things which are much valued in life
are empty and rotten and trifling, and like little dogs
biting one another, and little children quarrelling,
laughing, and then straightway weeping.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 33
48 How can it be that the gods after having arranged all
things well and benevolently for mankind, have
overlooked this alone, that some men and very good
men, and men who, as we may say, have had most
communion with the divinity, and through pious acts and
religious observances have been most intimate with the
divinity, when they have once died should never exist
again, but should be completely extinguished?
But if this is so, be assured that if it ought to have
been otherwise, the gods would have done it. For if it
were just, it would also be possible; and if it were
according to nature, nature would have had it so. But
because it is not so, if in fact it is not so, be thou
convinced that it ought not to have been so.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XII, 5
49 This devouring of Kind by Kind is necessary as the means
to the transmutation of living things which could not
keep form for ever even though no other killed them:
what grievance is it that when they must go their
despatch is so planned as to be serviceable to others?
Still more, what does it matter when they are
devoured only to return in some new form? It comes to no
more than the murder of one of the personages in a play;
the actor alters his make-up and enters in a new role. The
actor, of course, was not really killed; but if dying is but
changing a body as the actor changes a costume, or even
an exit from the body like the exit of the actor from the
boards when he has no more to say or do, what is there so
very dreadful in this transformation of living beings one
into another?
Plotinus, Third Ennead, Il, 15
50 Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in
virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings forth
beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral
good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has
been filled with God. This state is its first and its final,
because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once
turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the
things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the
wing.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, IX, 9
51 The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one
with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble
father; but coming to human birth and lured by the
courtships of this sohere, she takes up with another love,
a mortal, leaves her father and falls.
But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts
a%vay the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and
finds her peace.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, IX, 9
52 The soul lives by avoiding those things which if they are
sought bring death. Refrain from the ugly savagery of
pride, from the slothly pleasure of lust, from all that
lyingly bears the name of science, that the wild beasts
may be tamed, the cattle brought to subjection, and the
serpents made harmless. For these animals are an
allegory for the movements of the mind. The pomp of
pride and the delight that is in lust and the poison of
curiosity are the movements of a soul that is dead—not
dead so that it has lost all movement, but dead by
departing from the fountain of life so that it is taken up
by the world that passes away and conformed to it. But
Your word, O God, is a fountain of life everlasting and
does not pass away.
Augustine, Confessions, XIII, 21
53 All these last offices and ceremonies that concern the
dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the
equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are
rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the
dead.
Augustine, City of God, I, 12
54 The death ... of the soul takes place when God forsakes it,
as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 2
55 Of the first and bodily death, then, we may say that to
the good it is good, and evil to the evil. But, doubtless,
the second, as it happens to none of the good, so it can
be good for none.
Augustine, City of God, XIll, 2
56 As regards bodily death, that is, the separation of the
soul from the body, it is good unto none while it is being
endured by those whom we Say are in the article of
death. For the very violence with which body and soul are
wrenched asunder, which in the living had been
conjoined and closely intertwined, brings with it a harsh
experience, jarring horridly on nature so long as it
continues, till there comes a total loss of sensation, which
arose from the very interpenetration of spirit and flesh.
And all this anguish is sometimes forestalled by one
stroke of the body or sudden flitting of the soul, the
swiftness of which prevents it from being felt. But
whatever that may be in the dying which with violently
painful sensation robs of all sensation, yet, when it is
piously and faithfully borne, it increases the merit of
patience, but does not make the name of punishment
inapplicable. Death, proceeding by ordinary generation
from the first man, is the punishment of all who are born
of him, yet, if it be endured for righteousness’ sake, it
becomes the glory of those who are born again; and
though death be the award of sin, it sometimes secures
that nothing be awarded to sin.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 6
57 we enjoy some gratification when our good friends die;
for though their death leaves us in sorrow, we have the
consolatory assurance that they are beyond the ills by
which in this life even the best of men are broken down or
corrupted.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 8
58 Now among all passions inflicted from without, death
holds the first place, just as sexual concupiscences are
chief among internal passions. Consequently, when a
man conquers death and things directed to death, his isa
most perfect victory.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II! Suppl., 96, 6
59 Aegeus. "Just as there never died a man," quoth he,
"But he had lived on earth in some degree.
Just so there never lived a man," he said,
"In all this world, but must be sometime dead.
This world is but a thoroughfare of woe.
And we are pilgrims passing to and fro;
Death is the end of every worldly sore."
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Knight’s Tale
60 | go to seek a great perhaps.
Rabelais, Last Words (ascribed to)
61 Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to
live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down,
like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never
continueth in one stay.
In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we
week for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art
justly displeased?
Book of Common Prayer
62 In everything else there may be sham: the fine
reasonings of philosophy may be a mere pose in us; or
else our trials, by not testing us to the quick, give us a
chance to keep our face always composed. But in the last
scene, between death and ourselves, there is no more
pretending; we must talk plain French, we must show
what there is that is good and clean at the bottom of the
pot.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 19, That Our Happiness
63 There are gallant and fortunate deaths. | have seen death
bring a wonderfully brilliant career, and that in its flower,
to such a splendid end that in my opinion the dead man’s
ambitions and courageous designs had nothing so lofty
about them as their interruption. He arrived where he
aspired to without going there, more grandly and
gloriously than he had desired or hoped. And by his fall
he went beyond the power and the fame to which he had
aspired by his career.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 19, That Our Happiness
64 It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it
everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of
freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned
how to be a Slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all
Subjection and constraint. There is nothing evil in life for
the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be
deprived of life is not an evil.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 20, That to Philosophize
65 What does it matter when it comes, since it is inevitable?
To the man who told Socrates, "The thirty tyrants have
condemned you to death," he replied: "And nature,
them,"
Montaigne, Essays, |, 20, That to Philosophize
66 Nature forces us to it. Go out of this world, she says, as
you entered it. The same passage that you made from
death to life, without feeling or fright, make it again from
life to death. Your death is a part of the order of the
universe; it is a part of the life of the world.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 20, That to Philosophize
67 Now | have often pondered how it happens that in wars
the face of death, whether we see it in ourselves or in
others, seems to us imcomparably less terrifying than in
our houses—-otherwise you would have an army of
doctors and snivelers — and, since death is always the
same, why nevertheless there is much more assurance
against it among villagers and humble folk than among
others, | truly think it is those dreadful faces and
trappings with which we surround it, that frighten us
more than death itself: an entirely new way ol living; the
cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of people
dazed and benumbed by grief; the presence of a number
of pale and weeping servants; a darkened room; lighted
candles; our bedside besieged by doctors and preachers;
in short, everything horror and fright around us. There we
are already shrouded and buried. Children fear even their
friends when they see them masked, and so do we ours.
We must strip the mask from things as well as from
persons; when it is off, we shall find beneath only that
same death which a valet or a mere chambermaid passed
through not long ago without fear. Happy the death that
leaves no leisure for preparing such ceremonies!
Montaigne, Essays, |, 20, That to Philosophize
68 It is not without reason that we are taught to study even
our sleep for the resemblance it has with death. How
easily we pass from waking to sleeping! With how little
sense of loss we lose consciousness of the light and of
ourselves! Perhaps the faculty of sleep, which deprives us
of all action and all feeling, might seem useless and
contrary to nature, were it not that thereby Nature
teaches us that she has made us for dying and living
alike, and from the start of life presents to us the eternal
state that she reserves for us after we die, to accustom us
to it and take away our fear of it.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 6, Of Practice
69 Life is full of fireworks; death, of love and courtesy.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 35, Of Three Good Women
70 Gaunt O, but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must Say is listen’d more
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men’s ends mark’d than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close.
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last.
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
Shakespeare, Richard II, Il, i, 5
71 Prince of Wales. When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, V, iv, 89
72 Feeble. By my troth, | care not; a man can die but once:
we owe God a death... and let it go which way it will, he
that dies this year is quit for the next,
Shakespeare, II Henry IV, III, ti, 250
73 Caesar. Of all the wonders that | yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Shakespeare, Caesar, Il, ti, 34
74 Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Hamlet. Ay, madam, it is common.
Queen. If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
Ham. Seems, madam! nay, it is; | Know not "seems."
"Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye.
Nor the dejected ‘haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But | have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ti, 68
75 King. Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
Hamlet. At supper.
King. At supper! where?
Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A
certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your
worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures
else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat
king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two
dishes, but to one table; that’s the end.
King. Alas, alas!
Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
King. What dost thou mean by this?
Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may goa
progress through the guts of a beggar.
King. Where is Polonius?
Ham. In heaven; send thither to see. If your messenger
find him not there, seek him i’ the other place yourself.
But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you
Shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
King. Go seek him there. [ To some Attendants. ]
Ham. He will stay till you come,
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, iii, 17
76 Ophelia. We must be patient; but | cannot choose but
weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, v, 68
77 Hamlet. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing
once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the
pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches; one
that would circumvent God, might it not?
Horatio. |It might, my lord.
Ham. Or of a courtier; which could say "Good morrow,
sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?" This might be my
Lord Such-a-one, that praised my Lord Such-a-one’s
horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?
Hor. Ay, my lord.
Ham. Why, e’en so; and now my Lady Worm’s;
chapicss, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton’s
Space. Here’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to
sce’t.... There’s another. Why may not that be the skull of
a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his
cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this
rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a
dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?
Hum! This fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land,
with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double
vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines, and
the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of
fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his
purchases, and double ones too, than the length and
breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of
his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor
himself have no more, ha?
Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, i, 83
78 Hamlet. Alas, poor Yorick! | knew him, Horatio; a fellow of
infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on
his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my
imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those
lips that | have kissed | know not how oft. Where be your
gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of
merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not
one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her
paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make
her laugh at that.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, i, 202
79 Hamlet. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why
may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,
till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
Horatio. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider
SO.
Ham. No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus:
Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander
returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make
loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted,
might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, 1, 223
80 Hamlet. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come,
it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the
readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, ti, 231
81 Duke. Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If | do lose thee, | do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep, A breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st.
Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art Death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear’st
Are nursed by baseness. Thou’rt by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou are not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age.
But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich.
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty.
To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III, 1, 4
82 Isabella. The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III, 1, 78
83 Claudio. Death is a fearful thing.
Isabella. And shamed life a hateful.
Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds.
And blown with restless violence round about The
pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that
lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling; ‘tis too
horrible!
The weariest and most loathed wordly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Isab. Alas, alas!
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III, i, 116
84 Othello. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul—
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars! —
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow.
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light.
If | quench thee, thou flaming minister,
| can again thy former light restore.
Should | repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
| know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When | have pluck’d the rose,
| cannot give it vital growth again,
It must needs wither.
Shakespeare, Othello, V, ii, 1
85 Edgar. Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.
Shakespeare, Lear, V, ti, 10
86 Macbeth. If it were done when 'tis done, then ‘twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgement here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, vii, 1
87 Macbeth. There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried
"Murder!"
That they did wake each other. | stood and heard them;
But they did say their prayers, and address’d them
Again to sleep.
Lady Macbeth. There are two lodged together.
Macb. One cried "God bless usl" and "Amen" the other;
As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.
Listening their fear, | could not say "Amen,"
When they did say "God bless us!"
Lady M. Consider it not so deeply.
Macb. But wherefore could not | pronounce "Amen"?
| had most need of blessing, and "Amen"
Stuck in my throat
Lady M. These deeds must not be thought After these
ways; so, it will make us mad.
Mach. Methought | heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast—
Lady M. What do you mean?
Macb. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house;
"Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more."
Shakespeare, Macbeth, II, ti, 23
88 Lady Macbeth. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures; tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, II, ti, 53
89 Macbeth. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Re-enter Lady Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth. My hands are of your colour; but |
shame
To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] | hear a
knocking
At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber.
A little water clears us of this deed.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, II, ti, 60
90 Macbeth. Better be with the dead.
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ectasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing.
Can touch him further.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, Ill, ii, 19
91 Cleopatra. [Antony dies.]
The crown o’ the earth doth melt. My lord!
O, wither’d is the garland of the war,
The soldier’s pole is fall’n; young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xv, 63
92 Guiderius, Fear no more the heat o’ the sun.
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done.
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, IV, ti, 258
93 Stephano. He that dies pay's all debts.
Shakespeare, Tempest, Ill, ii, 140
94 No longer mourn for me when | am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that | am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.
Shakespeare, Sonnet LXX1I
95 Well! said Don Quixote, thou wilt never be silent till thy
Mouth’s full of Clay; when thou’rt dead, | hope | shall
have some Rest. Faith and Troth norv Master, quoth
Sancho, you did ill to talk of Death, Heaven bless us, tis
no Child’s Play; you’ve e’en spoil’d my Dinner; the very
Thought of raw Bones and lanthorn Jaws makes me sick.
Death eats up all Things, both the young Lamb and old
Sheep; and | have heard our Parson say, Death values a
Prince no more than a Clown; all’s Fish that comes to his
Net; he throw's at all, and sweeps Stakes; he’s no Mower
that takes a Nap at Noon-Day, but drives on, fair Weather
or foul, and cuts down the green Grass as well as the ripe
Corn: He’s neither squeamish nor queesy-stomach’d, for
he swallows without chewing, and crams down all things
into his ungracious Maw; and tho’ you can see no Belly
he has, he has a confounded Dropsy, and thirsts after
Men’s Lives, which he guggles down like Mother’s Milk.
Hold, hold, cry’d the Knight, go no further, for thou art
come to a very handsome Period; thou hast said as much
of Death in thy home-spun Cant, as a good Preacher
could have done: Thou hast got the Knack of Preaching,
Man! | must get thee a Pulpit and Benefice, | think.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 20
96 O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could
advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou
hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou
only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast
drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the
pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all
over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!
Sir Walter Raleigh, History of the World, Bk. V, VI, 12
97 Wee can dye by it, if not live by love.
And if unfit for tombes and hearse
Our legend bee, it will be fit for verse;
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty roomes;
As well a well wrought urne becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombes.
Donne, The Canonization
98 Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow.
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee.
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate
men.
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well.
And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally.
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
Donne, Holy Sonnet X
99 Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbor give
To more virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault.
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth;
Th' other, let it sleep with death:
Fitter, where it died, to tell,
Than that it lived at all. Farewell!
Jonson, Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H.
100 Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as
that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is
the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the
wages of sin and passage to another world, is holy and
religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature,
is weak. Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes
mixture of vanity and of superstition... . Groans and
convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping,
and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death
terrible.
Bacon, Of Death
101 It is worthy the observing that there is no passion in the
mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of
death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy
when a man hath so many attendants about him that can
win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death;
love slights it; honour aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear
pre-occupateth it.
Bacon, Of Death
102 There is neither the word nor the thing of purgatory,
neither in this nor any other text; nor anything that can
prove a necessity of a place for the soul without the body.
.,. For God, that could give a life to a piece of clay, hath
the same power to give life again to a dead man, and
renew his inanimate and rotten carcass into a glorious,
Spiritual, and immortal body.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, 44
103 If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer
conformity into it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs
and no calamity in half senses. But the long habit of
living indisposeth us for dying.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial, V
104 To extend our memories by monuments whose death we
daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope
without injury to our expectations in the advent of the
Last Day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose
generations are ordained in this setting part of time are
providentially taken off from such imaginations, and,
being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of
futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the
next world, and cannot excusably decline the
consideration of that duration which maketh pyramids
pillars of snow and all that’s past a moment.
Sir Thomas Browne, Um-Burial, V
105 The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall
live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who
knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that
current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And
since death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans
could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our
longest sun sets at right descensions and makes but
winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we
lie down in darkness and have our light in ashes; since
the brother of death daily haunts us with dying
mementos, and time, that grows old in itself, bids us hope
no long duration, diuturnity is a dream and folly of
expectation.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial, V
106 To hold long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion.
But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and
pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths
with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in
the infamy of his nature.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial, V
107 To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their
productions, to exist in their names and predicament of
chimaeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations,
and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is
nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is
to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope, but
an evidence, in noble believers, his all one to lie in St.
Innocent’s churchyard as in the sands of Egypt; ready to
be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content
with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial, V
108 As men are not able to fight against death, misery,
ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to
be happy, not to think of them at all.
Despite these miseries, man wishes to be happy, and
only wishes to be happy, and cannot wish not to be so.
But how will he set about it? To be happy he would have
to make himself immortal; but, not being able to do so, it
has occurred to him to prevent himself from thinking of
death.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 168-169
109 For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is
but a moment; that the state of death is eternal,
whatever may be its nature; and that thus all our actions
and thoughts must take such different directions,
according to the state of that eternity, that it is
impossible to take one step with sense and judgement,
unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point
which ought to be our ultimate end.
There is nothing clearer than this; and thus, according
to the principles of reason, the conduct of men is wholly
unreasonable, if they do not take another course.
On this point, therefore, we condemn those who live
without thought of the ultimate end of life, who let
themselves be guided by their own inclinations and their
own pleasures without reflection and without concern,
and, as if they could annihilate eternity by turning away
their thought from it, think only of making themselves
happy for the moment.
Yet this eternity exists, and death, which must open
into it and threatens them every hour, must in a little
time infallibly put them under the dreadful necessity of
being either annihilated or unhappy for ever, without
knowing which of these eternities is for ever prepared for
them.
This is a doubt of terrible consequence. They are in
peril of eternal woe and thereupon, as if the matter were
not worth the trouble, they neglect to inquire whether
this is one of those opinions which people receive with
too credulous a facility, or one of those which, obscure in
themselves, have a very firm, though hidden, foundation.
Thus they know not whether there be truth or falsity in
the matter, nor whether there be strength or weakness in
the proofs. They have them before their eyes; they refuse
to look at them; and in that ignorance they choose all
that is necessary to fall into this misfortune if it exists, to
await death to make trial of it, yet to be very’ content in
this state, to make profession of it, and indeed to boast of
it. Can we think seriously of the importance of this
subject without being horrified at conduct so
extravagant?
Pascal, Pensées, Ill, 195
110 We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-
men. Wretched as we arc, powerless as we are, they will
not aid us; we shall die alone.
Pascal, Pensées, 111, 211
111 Eve. Dust | am, and shall to dust returne:
0 welcom hour whenever! why delayes
His hand to execute what his Decree
Fixd on this day? why do! overlive.
Why am! mockt with death, and length’nd out
To deathless pain? how gladly would | meet
Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth
Insensible, how glad would lay me down
As in my Mothers lap? there | should rest
And sleep secure.
Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 770
112 Adam. Have | now seen Death? Is this the way
1 must return to native dust? O sight
Of terrour, foul and ugly to behold,
Horrid to think, how horrible to feel!
Milton, Paradise Lost, XI, 462
113 Michael. Many shapes
Of Death, and many are the wayes that lead
To his grim Cave, all dismal; yet to sense
More terrible at th' entrance then within.
Some, as thou saw’st, by violent stroke shall die,
By Fire, Flood, Famin, by Intemperance more
In Meats and Drinks, which on the Earth shal bring
Diseases dire.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Xl, 467
114 Manoa. Come, come, no time for lamentation now,
Nor much more cause, Samson hath quit
himself Like Samsonj and heroicly hath finish’d
A life Heroic, on his Enemies
Fully reveng’d, hath left them years of mourning,
And lamentation to the Sons of Caphtor
Through all Philistian bounds. To /srael
Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion,
To himself and Fathers house eternal fame;
And which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was feard,
But favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt.
Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair.
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1708
115 Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade.
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap.
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid.
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard
116 If we were immortal we should all be miserable; no
doubt it is hard to die, but it is sweet to think that we
Shall not live for ever, and that a better life will put an
end to the sorrows of this world. If we had the offer of
immortality here below, who would accept the sorrowful
gift?
Rousseau, Emile, I/
117 A frequent and attentive prospect of that moment which
must put a period to all our schemes and deprive us of all
our acquisitions, is indeed of the utmost efficacy to the
just and rational regulation of our lives; nor would ever
anything wicked, or often anything absurd, be
undertaken or prosecuted by him who should begin every
day with a serious reflection that he is born to die.
Johnson, Rambler No. 17
118 When we were alone, | introduced the subject of death,
and endeavoured to maintain that the fear of it might be
got over. | told him that David Hume said to me, he was
no more uneasy to think he should not be after this life,
than that he had not been before he began to exist.
Johnson. "Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are
disturbed; he is mad: if he does not think so, he lies. He
may tell you, he holds his finger in the flame of a candle,
without feeling pain; would you believe him? When he
dies, he at least gives up all he has." Boswell. "Foote, Sir,
told me, that when he was very ill he was not afraid to
die.Johnson. "It is not true. Sir. Hold a pistol to Foote’s
breast, or to Hume’s breast, and threaten to kill them,
and you'll see how they behave." Boswell. "But may we
not fortify our minds for the approach of death?" Here |
am sensible | was in the wrong, to bring before his view
what he ever looked upon with horrour; for although
when in a celestial frame, in his Vanity of Human Wishes,
he has supposed death to be "kind Nature’s signal for
retreat," from this state of being to "a happier seat," his
thoughts upon this aweful change were in general full of
dismal apprehensions. His mind resembled the vast
amphitheatre, the Colisaeum at Rome. In the centre stood
his judgement, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated
those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the
Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon
him. After a conflict, he drives them back into their dens;
but not killing them, they were still assailing him. To my
question, whether we might not fortify our minds for the
approach of death, he answered, in a passion, "No, Sir, let
it alone. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a
time." He added, (with an earnest look,) "A man knows it
must be so, and submits. It will do him no good to whine."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct. 26, 1769)
119 It is plain that the hope of a future life arises from the
feeling, which exists in the breast of every man, that the
temporal is inadequate to meet and satisfy the demands
of his nature.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Pref. to 2nd Ed.
120 The average duration of human life will to a certain
degree vary from healthy or unhealthy climates, from
wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or vicious
manners, and other causes, but it may be fairly doubted
whether there is really the smallest perceptible advance
in the natural duration of human life since first we have
had any authentic history of man.
Malthus, Population, 1X
121 Wagner. Ah, God! how long is art!
And soon it is we die.
Oft when my critical pursuits | ply,
| truly grow uneasy both in head and heart.
How hard to gain the means whereby
A man mounts upward to the source!
And ere man’s ended barely half the course.
Poor devil! | suppose he has to die.
Goethe, Faust, |, 558
122 Mephistopheles. "Past" — ‘tis a stupid word.
Past—why?
Past and pure Naught, sheer Uniformity!
Of what avail’s perpetual creation
If later swept off to annihilation?
"So it is past!" You see what that must mean?
It is the same as had it never been,
And yet whirls on as if it weren’t destroyed,
| should prefer the Everlasting Void.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 5, 11595
123 Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life—
"Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain.
And that unrest which men miscall delight.
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to bum,
With sparklcss ashes loan an unlamented urn.
Shelley, Adonais, XXXIX~ XL
124 ‘Whom the gods love die young,’ was Said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more—
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is.
Except mere breath; and since the silent shore
Awaits at last even those who longest miss
The old archer’s shafts, perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
Byron, Don Juan, IV, 12
125 Darkling | listen; and, for many a time
| have been half in love with easeful Death
, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and | have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
126 ‘Veil, gov’ner, ve must all come to it, one day or
another.’
‘So we must, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller the elder.
‘There’s a Providence in it ail,’ said Sam.
‘O’ course there is,’ replied his father with a nod of grave
approval. ‘Wot ’ud become of the undertakers vithout it,
Sammy?’
Dickens, Pickwick Papers, LII
127 Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When | put out to sea.
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When | embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
| hope to see my Pilot face to face
When | have crost the bar.
Tennyson, Crossing the Bar
128 Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life
and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here
on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at
things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing
the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water
the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of
my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it |
say, it is not m>'self. And therefore three cheers for
Nantucket, and come a stove boat and stove body when
they will, for stave my soul, who can do this?
Melville, Moby Dick, VII
129 The one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which
most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering
there; as if indeed that pallor were much like the badge
of consternation in the other world, as of mortal
trepidation here. And from that pallor of the dead, we
borrow the expressive hue of the shroud in which we
wrap them.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLII
130 The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise
this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood
the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year,
which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always
dry land where we dwell. | see far inland the banks which
the stream anciently washed, before science began to
record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which
has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and
beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old
table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s
kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward
in Massachusetts— from an egg deposited in the living
tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the
annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for
several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an um.
Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and
immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Wlio knows
what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been
buried for ages under many concentric layers of
woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at
first in the aloburnum of the green and living tree, which
has been gradually converted into the semblance of its
well-seasoned tomb—heard perchance gnawing out now
for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat
round the festive board—may unexpectedly come forth
from amidst society’s most trivia! and handselled
furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!
| do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this;
but such is the character of that morrow which mere
lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which
puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns
to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The
sun is but a morning star.
Thoreau, Walden, Conclusion
131 Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving.
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death
Prais’d be the fathomless universe.
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious.
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,
135
132 /ppolit Kirillovitch. | imagine that he [Mitya] felt
something like what criminals feel when they are being
taken to the scaffold. They have another long, long street
to pass down and at walking pace, past thousands of
people. Then there will be a turning into another street
and only at the end of that street the dread place of
execution! | fancy that at the beginning of the journey
the condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must
feel that he has infinite life still before him. The houses
recede, the cart moves on—oh, that’s nothing. Us still far
to the turning into the second street and he still looks
boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously
curious people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still
fancies that he ts just such a man as they. But now the
turning comes to the next street. Oh, that’s nothing,
nothing, there’s still a whole street before him, and
however many houses have been passed, he wdll still
think there are many left And so to the very end, to the
very scaffold.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. IV, XII, 9
133 Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is,
knows how deep a dept of gratitude we owe to Adam, the
first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into
the world.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, III
134 Let us endeavour so to live that when we come to die
even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson’s Calendar, VI
135 Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve ata
funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, IX
136 All say, ‘How hard it is that we have to die’— a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have
had to live.
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, X
137 The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
Mark Twain, Cable from London to the Associated Press
(1897)
138 Our own death is indeed unimaginable, and whenever
we make the attempt to imagine it we can perceive that
we really survive as spectators. Hence the psychoanalytic
school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no
one believes in his own death, or to put the same thing in
another way, in the unconscious every one of us is
convinced of his own immortality.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, I!
139 Life is impoverished, it loses in interest, when the
highest stake in the game of living, life itself, may not be
risked. It becomes as flat, as superficial, as one of those
American flirtations in which it is from the first
understood that nothing is to happen, contrasted with a
Continental love-affair in which both partners must
constantly bear in mind the serious consequences.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, I!
140 To endure life remains, when all is said, the first duty of
all living beings. Illusion can have no value if it makes
this more difficult for us.
We remember the old saying: If you desire peace,
prepare for war.
It would be timely thus to paraphrase it: If you would
endure life, be prepared for death.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, I!
141 We perceive duration as a stream against which we
cannot go. It is the foundation of our being, and, as we
feel, the very substance of the world in which we live.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, |
142 Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal
duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who
lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is
without limit.
The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to
say, its eternal survival after death, is not only in no way
guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not
do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle
solved by the fact that | survive for ever? Is this eternal
life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of
the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and
time.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.4311-
6.4312
143 That the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet
what other end can anything have? The end of an
evening party is to go to bed; but its use is to gather
congenial people together, that they may pass the time
pleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered
ironical because the dance cannot last for ever; the
youngest of us and the most vigorously wound up, after a
few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and
prancing. The transitoriness of things is essential to their
physical being, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad
by virtue of a sentimental illusion, which makes us
imagine that they wish to endure, and that their end is
always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so. what
is truly sad is to have some impulse frustrated in the
midst of its career, and robbed of its chosen object; and
what is painful is to have an organ lacerated or destroyed
when it is still vigorous, and not ready for its natural
sleep and dissolution. We must not confuse the itch
which our unsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the
pleasure of satisfying and dismissing each of them in
turn. Could they all be satisfied harmoniously we should
be satisfied once for all and completely. Then doing and
dying would coincide throughout and be a perfect
pleasure.
Santayana, A Long Way Round to Nirvana
144 A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the
window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily
the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the
lamplight- The time had come for him to set out on his
journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right; snow
was general all over Ireland- It was falling on every part of
the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly
upon the Bog of Allen, and, farther westward, softly
falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was
falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on
the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly
drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the
spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul
swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly
through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent
of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Joyce, The Dead
1.9 Suicide
Other animals, as for example the lemmings, may commit
self-destruction en masse, and when they do so, they do so
driven by instinct, but man alone deliberates about whether
to take his own individual life, disoutes the propriety or
justification of such action, and actually commits the act
with care and forethought.
The basic moral issue is one on which the pagan writers
of antiquity, notably the Roman Stoics, and Christian
theologians and philosophers take opposite sides. Suicide
for the one is a dignified way out of life’s insuperable
difficulties; for the other, it is a grievous, mortal sin,
resulting in eternal damnation. There is, in addition, a
division of opinion among secular writers on whether
deliberate suicide is an act of courage or cowardice or
whether one has the right to take one’s own life.
1 And the Philistines foilowed hard after Saui, and after his
sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and A-bin-a-dab,
and Mal-chi-shu-a, the sons of Saul.
And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers
hit him, and he was wounded of the archers.
Then said Saul to his armourbearer. Draw thy sword,
and thrust me through therewith; lest these
uncircumcised come and abuse me. But his armourbearer
would not; for he was sore afraid. So Saul took a sword,
and fell upon it.
And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead,
he fell likewise on the sword, and died.
So Saul died, and his three sons, and all his house died
together.
I Chronicles 10:2-6
2 When | say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease
my complaint;
Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifi-est me
through visions:
So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather
than my life.
| loathe it; | would not live alway: let me alone; for my
days are vanity.
Job 7:13-16
3 Socrates. Any man who has the spirit of philosophy, will be
willing to die; but he will not take his own life, for that is
held to be unlawful.... The gods are our guardians, and...
we men are a possession of theirs.... And if one of your
own possessions, an ox or an ass, for example, took the
liberty of putting himself out of the way when you had
given no intimation of your wish that he should die,
would you not be angry with him, and would you not
punish him if you could?...
Then, if we look at the matter thus, there may be
reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his
own life until God summons him.
Plato, Phaedo, 61B
4 Whether a man can treat himself unjustly or not, is evident
from what has been said. For (a) one class of just acts are
those acts in accordance with any virtue which are
prescribed by the law; e.g. the law does not expressly
permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit it
forbids. Again, when a man in violation of the law harms
another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts
unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who knows both
the person he is affecting by his action and the
instrument he is using; and he who through anger
voluntarily stabs himself does this contrary to the right
rule of life, and this the law does not allow; therefore he is
acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the
state, not towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but
no one is voluntarily treated unjustly. This is also the
reason why the state punishes; a certain loss of civil
rights attaches to the man who destroys himself, on the
ground that he is treating the state unjustly.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1138a4
5 Then Juno, grieving that she [Dido] should sustain
A death so ling’ring, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of lab'ring nature, and dissolve her life.
For since she died, not doom’d by Heav’n’s decree.
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plung’d her in despair.
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.
Downward the various goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colors from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover’s head,
And said: "I thus devote thee to the dead.
This off’ring to th’ infernal gods | bear."
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:
The struggling soul was loos’d, and life dissolv’d in air.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
6 ‘Rehearse death.' To say this is to tell a person to rehearse
his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has
unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate
beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are
prisons, warders, bars to him? He has an open door. There
is but one chain holding us in fetters, and that is our love
of life. There is no need to cast this love out altogether,
but it does need to be lessened somewhat so that, in the
event of circumstances ever demanding this, nothing
may stand in the way of our being prepared to do at once
what we must do at some time or other.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 26
7 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he
was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the
thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.
Saying, | have sinned in that | have betrayed the
innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see
thou to that.
And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple,
and departed, and went and hanged himself.
And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It
is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it
is the price of blood.
And they took counsel, and bought with them the
potter’s field, to bury strangers in.
Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood,
unto this day.
Matthew 27:3-8
8 [Lycurgus] was now about that age in which life was still
tolerable, and yet might be quitted without regret.
Everything, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently
prosperous condition. He therefore made an end of
himself by a total abstinence from food, thinking it a
statesman’s duty to make his very death, if possible, an
act of service to the state, and even in the end of his life
to give some example of virtue and effect some useful
purpose. He would, on the one hand, crown and
consummate his own happiness by a death suitable to so
honourable a life, and on the other hand, would secure to
his countrymen the enjoyment of the advantages he had
spent his life in obtaining for them, since they had
solemnly sworn the maintenance of his institutions until
his return.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
9 Chiefly being ashamed to sully the glory of his former
great actions, and of his many victories and trophies, he
[Themistocles] determined to put a conclusion to his life,
agreeable to its previous course. He sacrified to the gods,
and invited his friends; and, having entertained them
and shaken hands with them, drank bull's blood, as is the
usual story; as others state, a poison producing instant
death; and ended his days in the city of Magnesia, having
lived sixty-five years, most of which he had spent in
politics and in wars, in government and command. The
king being informed of the cause and manner of his
death, admired him more than ever, and continued to
show kindness to his friends and relations.
Plutarch, Themistocles
10 Brutus, having to pass his army from Abydos to the
continent on the other side, laid himself down one night,
as he used to do, in his tent, and was not asleep, but
thinking of his affairs, and what events he might expect.
For he is related to have been the least inclined to sleep
of all men who have commanded armies, and to have had
the greatest natural capacity for continuing awake, and
employing himself without need of rest. He thought he
heard a noise at the door of his tent, and looking that
way, by the light of his lamp, which was almost out, saw a
terrible figure, like that of a man, but of unusual stature
and severe countenance. He was somewhat frightened at
first, but seeing it neither did nor spoke anything to him,
only stood silently by his bedside, he asked who it was.
The spectre answered him, "Thy evil genius, Brutus, and
thou shalt see me at Philippi," Brutus answered
courageously, "Well, | shall see you," and immediately
the appearance vanished.
When the time was come, he drew up his army near
Philippi against Antony and Caesar, and in the first battle
won the day, routed the enemy, and plundered Caesar’s
camp. The night before the second battle, the same
phantom appeared to him again, but spoke not a word.
He presently understood his destiny was at hand, and
exposed himself to all the danger of the battle. Yet he did
not die in the fight, but seeing his men defeated, got up
to the top of a rock, and there presenting his sword to his
naked breast, and assisted, as they say, by a friend, who
helped him to give the thrust, met his death.
Plutarch, Caesar
11 Now the birds began to sing, and he again fell into a little
slumber. At length Butas came back, and told him all was
quiet in the port. Then Cato, laying himself down, as if he
would sleep out the rest of the night, bade him shut the
door after him. But as soon as Butas was gone out, he
took his sword, and stabbed it into his breast; yet not
being able to use his hand so well, on account of the
swelling, he did not immediately die of the wound; but
struggling, fell off the bed, and throwing down alittle
mathematical table that stood by, made such a noise that
the servants, hearing it, cried out. And immediately his
son and all his friends came into the chamber, where,
seeing him lie weltering in his blood, a great part of his
bowels out of his body, but himself still alive and able to
look at them, they all stood in horror. The physician went
to him, and would have put in his bowels, which were not
pierced, and sewed up the wound; but Cato, recovering
himself, and understanding the intention, thrust away
the physician, plucked out his own bowels, and tearing
open the wound, immediately expired.
In less time than one would think his own family could
have known this accident, all the three hundred were at
the door. And a little after, the people of Utica flocked
thither, crying out with one voice he was their benefactor
and their saviour, the only free and only undefeated
man....
Caesar had been informed that Cato stayed at Utica,
and did not seek to fly; that he had sent away the rest of
the Romans, but himself, with his son and a few of his
friends, continued there very unconcernedly, so that he
could not imagine what might be his design. But having a
great consideration for the man, he hastened thither with
his army. When he heard of his death, it is related he said
these words, "Cato, | grudge you your death, as you have
grudged me the preservation of your life." And, indeed, if
Cato would have suffered himself to owe his life to
Caesar, he would not so much have impaired his own
honour, as augmented the other’s glory.
Plutarch, Cato the Younger
12 Cicero’s death excites our pity; for an old man to be
miserably carried up and down by his servants, flying and
hiding himself from that death which was, in the course
of nature, so near at hand; and yet at last to be
murdered. Demosthenes, though he seemed at first a
little to supplicate, yet, by his preparing and keeping the
poison by him, demands our admiration; and still more
admirable was his using it. When the temple of the god
no longer afforded him a sanctuary, he took refuge, as it
were, at a mightier altar, freeing himself from from arms
and soldiers, and laughing to scorn the cruelty of
Antipater.
Plutarch, Demosthenes and Cicero Compared
13 When he understood she was alive, he eagerly gave
order to the servants to take him up, and in their arms
was carried to the door of the building. Cleopatra would
not open the door, but, looking from a sort of window, she
let down ropes and cords, to which Antony was fastened;
and she and her two women, the only persons she had
allowed to enter the monument, drew him up. Those that
were present say that nothing was ever more sad than
this spectacle, to see Antony, covered all over with blood
and just expiring, thus drawn up, still holding up his
hands to her, and lifting up his body with the little force
he had left. As, indeed, it was no easy task for the
women; and Cleopatra, with all her force, clinging to the
rope, and straining with her head to the ground, with
difficulty pulled him up, while those below encouraged
her with their cries, and joined in all her efforts and
anxiety.
When she had got him up, she laid him on the bed,
tearing all her clothes, which she spread upon him; and,
beating her breast with her hands, lacerating herself, and
disfiguring her own face with the blood from his wounds,
she called him her lord, her husband, her emperor, and
seemed to have pretty nearly forgotten all her own evils,
she was so intent upon his misfortunes. Antony, stopping
her lamentations as well as he could, called for wine to
drink, either that he was thirsty, or that he imagined that
it might put him the sooner out of pain. When he had
drunk, he advised her to bring her own affairs, so far as
might be honourably done, to a safe conclusion, and that,
among all the friends of Caesar, she should rely on
Proculeius; that she should not pity him in his last turn of
fate, but rather rejoice for him in remembrance of his past
happiness, who had been of all men the most illustrious
and powerful, and in the end had fallen not ignobly, a
Roman by a Roman overcome.
Plutarch, Antony
14 Having made these lamentations, crowning the tomb
with garlands and kissing it, she gave orders to prepare
her a bath, and, coming out of the bath, she lay down
and made a sumptuous meal. And a country fellow
brought her a little basket, which the guards intercepting
and asking what it was, the fellow put the leaves which
lay uppermost aside, and showed them it was full of figs;
and on their admiring the largeness and beauty of the
figs, he laughed, and invited them to take some, which
they refused, and, suspecting nothing, bade him carry
them in. After her repast, Cleopatra sent to Caesar a letter
which she had written and sealed; and, putting
everybody out of the monument but her two women, she
shut the doors.
Caesar, opening her letter, and finding pathetic
prayers and entreaties that she might be buried in the
Same tomb with Antony, soon guessed what was doing.
At first he was going himself in all haste, but, changing
his mind, he sent others to see. The thing had been
quickly done. The messengers came at full soeed, and
found the guards apprehensive of nothing; but on
opening the doors they saw her stone-dead, lying upon a
bed of gold, set out in all her royal ornaments. Iras, one of
her women, lay dying at her feet, and Charmion, just
ready to fall, scarce able to hold up her head, was
adjusting her mistress’s diadem. And when one that came
in said angrily, "Was this well done of your lady,
Charmion," "Extremely well," she answered, "and as
became the descendant of so many kings;" and as she
said this, she fell down dead by the bedside.
Plutarch, Antony
15 Take care that there be not among us any young men of
such a mind that, when they have recognized their
kinship to God, and that we are fettered by these bonds,
the body, | mean, and its possessions, and whatever else
on account of them is necessary to us for the economy
and commerce of life, they should intend to throw off
these things as if they were burdens painful and
intolerable, and to depart to their kinsmen.... This is the
labour that your teacher and instructor ought to be
employed upon, if he really were what he should be. You
should come to him and say, "Epictetus, we can no longer
endure being bound to this poor body, and feeding it and
giving it drink, and rest, and cleaning it, and for the sake
of the body complying with the wishes of these and of
those. Are not these things indifferent and nothing to us,
and is not death no evil? And are we not in a manner
kinsmen of God, and did we not come from Him? Allow us
to depart to the place from which we came; allow us to be
released at last from these bonds by which we are bound
and weighed down. Here there are robbers and thieves
and courts of justice, and those who are named tyrants,
and think that they have some power over us by means
of the body and its possessions. Permit us to show them
that they have no power over any man." And | on my part
would say, "Friends, wait for God; when He shall give the
signal and release you from this service, then go to Him;
but for the present endure to dwell in this place where He
has put you: short indeed is this time of your dwelling
here, and easy to bear for those who are so disposed: for
what tyrant or what thief, or what courts of justice, are
formidable to those who have thus considered as things
of no value the body and the possessions of the body?
Wait then, do not depart without a reason."
Epictetus, Discourses, I, 9
16 When Claudius began to deliberate about the acquittal of
Asiaticus, Vitellius, with tears in his eyes, spoke of his old
friendship with the accused, and of their joint homage to
the emperor’s mother, Antonia. He then briefly reviewed
the services of Asiaticus to the State, his recent campaign
in the invasion of Britain, and everything else which
seemed likely to win compassion, and suggested that he
should be free to choose his death. Claudius’s reply was
in the same tone of mercy. Some friends urged on
Asiaticus the quiet death of self-starvation, but he
declined it with thanks. He took his usual exercise, then
bathed and dined cheerfully, and saying that he had
better have fallen by the craft of Tiberius or the fury of
Caius Caesar than by the treachery of a woman and the
shameless mouth of Vitellius, he opened his veins, but
not till he had inspected his funeral pyre, and directed its
removal to another spot, lest the smoke should hurt the
thick foliage of the trees. So complete was his calmness
even to the last.
Tacitus, Annals, Xl, 3
17 Seneca, quite unmoved, asked for tablets on which to
inscribe his will, and, on the centurion’s refusal, turned to
his friends, protesting that as he was forbidden to requite
them, he bequeathed to them the only, but still the
noblest possession yet remaining to him, the pattern of
his life, which, if they remembered, they would win a
name for moral worth and steadfast friendship. At the
same time he called them back from their tears to manly
resolution, now with friendly talk, and now with the
sterner language of rebuke. "Where," he asked again and
again, "are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation
of so manv years’ study against evils to come? Who knew
not Nero’s cruelty? After a mother’s and a brother’s
murder, nothing remains but to add the destruction of a
guardian and a tutor."
Having spoken these and like words, meant, so to say,
for all, he embraced his wife; then softening awhile from
the stem resolution of the hour, he begged and implored
her to spare herself the burden of perpetual sorrow, and,
in the contemplation of a life virtuously spent, to endure
a husband's loss with honourable consolations. She
declared, in answer, that she too had decided to die, and
claimed for herself the blow of the executioner.
Thereupon Seneca, not to thwart her noble ambition,
from an affection too which would not leave behind him
for insult one whom he dearly loved, replied: "I have
shown you ways of smoothing life; you prefer the glory of
dying. | will not grudge you such a noble example. Let
the fortitude of so courageous an end be alike in both of
us, but let there be more in your decease to win fame."
Then by one and the same stroke they sundered with a
dagger the arteries of their arms.
Tacitus, Annals, XV, 62-63
18 It happened at the time that the emperor was on his way
to Campania and that Petronius, after going as far as
Cumse, %vas there detained. He bore no longer the
suspense of fear or of hope. Yet he did not fling away life
with precipitate haste, but having made an incision in his
veins and then, according to his humour, bound them up,
he again opened them, while he conversed with his
friends, not in a serious strain or on topics that might win
for him the glory of courage. And he listened to them as
they repeated, not thoughts on the immortality of the
soul or on the theories of philosophers, but light poetry
and playful verses. To some of his slaves he gave liberal
presents, a flogging to others. He dined, indulged himself
in sleep, that death, though forced on him, might have a
natural appearance. Even in his will he did not, as did
many in their last moments, flatter Nero or Tigellinus or
any other of the men in power. On the contrary, he
described fully the prince’s shameful excesses, with the
names of his male and female companions and their
novelties in debauchery, and sent the account under seal
to Nero. Then he broke his signet-ring, that it might not
be subsequently available for imperilling others.
Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 19
19 When thou hast assumed these names, good, modest,
true, rational, aman of equanimity, and magnanimous,
take care that thou dost not change these names; and if
thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them.... But if
thou shalt perceive that thou fallest out of them and dost
not maintain thy hold, go courageously into some nook
where thou shalt maintain them, or even depart at once
from life, not in passion, but with simplicity and freedom
and modesty, after doing this one laudable thing at least
in thy life, to have gone out of it thus.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 8
20 In no passage of the holy canonical books there can be
found either divine precept or permission to take away
our own life, whether for the sake of entering on the
enjoyment of immortality, or of shunning, or ridding
ourselves of anything what-ever. Nay, the law, rightly
interpreted, even prohibits suicide, where it says, "Thou
Shalt not kill."
... There is no limitation added nor any exception
made in favour of any one, and least of all in favour of
him on whom the command is laid!... The commandment
is, "Thou shalt not kill man"; therefore neither another
nor yourself, for he who kills himself still kills nothing else
than man.
Augustine, City of God, I, 20
21 But this we affirm, this we maintain, this we every way
pronounce to be right, that no man ought to inflict on
himself voluntary death, for this is to escape the ills of
time by plunging into those of eternity; that no man
ought to do so on account of another man’s sins, for this
were to escape a guilt which could not pollute him, by
incurring great guilt of his own; that no man ought to do
SO on account of his own past sins, for he has all the more
need of this life that these sins may be healed by
repentance; that no man should put an end to this life to
obtain that better life we look for after death, for those
who die by their own hand have no better life after death.
Augustine, City of God, I, 26
22 Parricide is more wicked than homicide, but suicide is the
most wicked of all.
Augustine, On Patience
23 Nessus had not yet reached the other side, when we
moved into a wood, which by no path was marked.
Not green the foliage, but of colour dusky; not smooth
the branches, but gnarled and warped; apples none were
there, but withered sticks with poison....
Already | heard wailings uttered on every side, and
Saw no one to make them: wherefore I, all bewildered,
stood still.
| think he thought that | was thinking so many voices
came, amongst those stumps, from people who hid
themselves on our account.
Therefore the Master said: "If thou breakest off any
little shoot from one of these plants, the thoughts, which
thou hast, will all become defective."
Then | stretched my hand a little forward, and plucked
a branchlet from a great thorn; and the trunk of it cried,
"Why dost thou rend me?" And when it had grown dark
with blood, it again began to cry: "Why dost thou tear
me? hast thou no breath of pity?
Men we were, and now are turned to trees: truly thy
hand should be more merciful, had we been souls of
serpents."
As a green brand, that is burning at one end, at the
other drops, and hisses with the wind which is escaping:
so from that broken splint, words and blood came forth
together: whereat | let fall the top, and stood like one who
iS afraid...
The Poet listened a while, and then said to me: "Since
he is silent, lose not the hour; but speak, and ask him, if
thou wouldst Know more." Whereat | to him: "Do thou ask
him farther, respecting what thou thinkest will satisfy me;
for | could not, such pity is upon my heart."
He therefore resumed; "So may the man do freely for
thee what thy words entreat him, O imprisoned spirit,
please thee
tell us farther, how the soul gets bound up in these
Knots; and tell us, if thou mayest, whether any ever frees
itself from such members."
Then the trunk blew strongly, and soon that wind was
changed into these words: "Briefly shall you be answered.
When the fierce spirit quits the body, from which it has
torn itself, Minos sends it to the seventh gulf.
It falls into the wood, and no place is chosen for it; but
wherever fortune flings it, there it sprouts, like grain of
spelt; shoots up to a sapling, and to a savage plant; the
Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, give pain, and to
the pain an outlet.
Like the others, we shall go for our spoils, [but not to
the end that any may be] clothc[d] with them again: for it
is not just that a man have what he takes from himself.
Hither shall we drag them, and through the mournful
wood our bodies shall be suspended, each on the thorny
tree of its tormented shade."
Dante, Inferno, XIII, 1
24 And death is not the remedy for just one malady, but the
remedy for all ills. It is a very sure haven, which is never
to be feared, and often to be sought. It all comes to the
same thing whether man gives himself his death or
suffers it, whether he runs to meet his day or awaits it;
wherever it comes from, it is still his; wherever the thread
breaks, it is all there, that’s the end of the skein.
The most voluntary death is the fairest.
Life depends on the will of others; death, on our own.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 3, Custom of Cea
25 Just as | do not violate the laws against thieves when |
carry away my own money and cut my own purse, or
those against firebugs when | burn my own wood, so | am
not bound by the laws against murderers for having
taken my own life.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 3, Custom of Cea
26 Cassius. Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most
strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass.
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron.
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldy bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
Shakespeare, Caesar, I, iii, 91
27 Hamlet. To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die; to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, His a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep? perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time.
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear.
To grunt and sweat under a weary life.
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, 1, 56
28 Cleopatra. Then is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death.
Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?
What, what! good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian!
My noble girls! Ah, women, women, look,
Our Lamp is spent, it’s out! Good sirs, take heart.
We'll bury him; and then, what’s brave, what's noble.
Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us. Come, away;
This case of that huge spirit now is cold.
Ah, women, women! come; we have no friend
But resolution and the briefest end.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xv, 80
29 Cleopatra. Give me my robe, put on my crown; | have
Immortal longings in me. Now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks | hear
Antony cal; | see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; | hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath. Husband, | come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
| am fire and air; my other elements
| give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.
Kisses them. Iras falls and dies.
Have | the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch.
Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.
Charmian. Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain; that | may
Say,
The gods themselves do weep!
Cleo. This proves me base.
If she first meet the curled Antony,
He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch,
To an asp, which she applies to her breast.
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool.
Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak.
That | might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!
Char. O eastern star!
Cleo. Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
Char. O, break! O, break!
Cleo. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle—
O Antony!—Nay, | will take thee too.
Applying another asp to her arm.
What should | stay— [Dies.]
Char. In this vile world? So, fare thee well.
Now boast thee. Death, in thy possession lies
A lass unparrallel’d. Downy windows, close;
And golden Phaeebus never be beheld
Of eyes again so royal! Your crown’s awry;
I'll mend it, and then play.
Enter the Guard, rushing in.
Ist Guard. Where is the Queen?
Char. Speak softly, wake her not.
Ist Guard. Caesar hath sent—
Char. Too slow a messenger.
Applies an asp.
O, come apace, dispatch! | partly feel thee.
Ist Guard. Approach, ho! All’s not well; Caesar’s
beguiled.
2nd Guard. There’s Dolabella sent from Caesar; call
him.
Ist Guard. What work is here! Charmian, is this well
done?
Char. It is well done, and fitting for a princess
Descended of so many royal kings.
Ah, soldier! [Dies.]
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V, ti, 283
30 Ist Guard. O Caesar,
This Charmian lived but now; she stood and spake.
| found her trimming up the diadem
On her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood
And on the sudden dropp’d.
Caesar. ' O noble weakness!
If they had swallow’d poison, ‘twould appear
By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace.
Dolabella. Here, on her breast.
There is a vent of blood and something blown.
The like is on her arm.
Ist Guard. This is an aspic’s trail; and these figleaves
Have slime upon them, such as the aspic leaves
Upon the caves of Nile.
Caes. Most probable
That so she died; for her physician tells me
She hath pursued conclusions infinite
Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed;
And bear her women from the monument.
She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V, ti, 344
31 A man kills himself under compulsion by another when
that other turns the right hand, with which the man had
by chance laid hold of a sword, and compels him to direct
the sword against his own heart; or the command of a
tyrant may compel a man, as it did Seneca, to open his
own veins, that is to say, he may desire to avoid a greater
evil by a less. External and hidden causes also may so
dispose his imagination and may so affect his body as to
cause it to put on another nature contrary to that which it
had at first, and one whose idea cannot exist in the mind;
but a very little reflection will show that it is as
impossible that a man, from the necessity of his nature,
should endeavour not to exist, or to be changed into
some other form, as it is that something should be
begotten from nothing.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 20, Schol.
32 We do not find in history that the Romans ever killed
themselves without a cause; but the English are apt to
commit suicide most unaccountably; they destroy
themselves even in the bosom of happiness. This action
among the Romans was the effect of education, being
connected with their principles and customs; among the
English it is the consequence of a distemper, being
connected with the physical state of the machine, and
independent of every other cause.
In all probability it is a defect of the filtration of the
nervous juice: the machine, whose motive faculties are
often unexerted, is weary of itself; the soul feels no pain,
but a certain uneasiness in existing. Pain is a local
sensation, which leads us to the desire of seeing an end
of it; the burden of life, which prompts us to the desire of
ceasing to exist, is an evil confined to no particular part.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIV, 12
33 That Suicide may often be consistent with interest and
with our duty to ourselves, no one can question, who
allows that age, sickness, or misfortune, may render life a
burden, and make it worse even than annihilation. |
believe that no man ever threw away life while it was
worth keeping. For such is our natural horror of death,
that small motives will never be able to reconcile us to it;
and though perhaps the situation of man’s health or
fortune did not seem to require this remedy, we may at
least be assured, that any one who, without apparent
reason, has had recourse to it, was cursed with such an
incurable depravity or gloominess of temper as must
poison all enjoyment, and render him equally miserable
as if he had been loaded with the most grievous
misfortune. If Suicide be supposed a crime, it is only
cowardice can impel us to it. If it be no crime, both
prudence and courage should engage us to rid ourselves
at once of existence when it becomes a burden. It is the
only way that we can then be useful to society, by setting
an example, which, if imitated, would preserve to every
one his chance for happiness in life, and would
effectually free him from all danger or misery.
Hume, On Suicide
34 There are said to be occasions when a wise man kills
himself, but generally speaking it is not an excess of
reason that makes people take their own lives.
Voltaire, Letter to James Marriott (Feb. 26, 1767)
35 We talked of the melancholy end of a gentleman who had
destroyed himself. johnson. "It was owing to imaginary
difficulties in his affairs, which, had he talked with any
friend, would soon have vanished." Boswell. "Do you
think, Sir, that all who commit suicide are mad?".Johnson.
"Sir, they are often not universally disordered in their
intellects, but one passion presses so upon them, that
they yield to it, and commit suicide, as a passionate man
will stab another." He added, "I have often thought, that
after a man has taken the resolution to kill himself, it is
not courage in him to do any thing, however desperate,
because he has nothing to fear." Goldsmith. "| don’t see
that." Johnson. "Nay, but my dear Sir, why should not you
see what every one else sees?" Goldsmith. "It is for fear of
something that he has resolved to kill himself; and will
not that timid disposition restrain him?" Johnson. "It does
not signify that the fear of something made him resolve;
it is upon the state of his mind, after the resolution is
taken, that | argue. Suppose a man, either from fear, or
pride, or conscience, or whatever motive, has resolved to
kill himself; when once the resolution is taken, he has
nothing to fear. He may then go and take the King of
Prussia by the nose, at the head of his army. He cannot
fear the rack, who is resolved to kill himself. When
Eustace Budgel was walking down to the Thames,
determined to drown himself, he might, if he pleased,
without any apprehension of danger, have turned aside,
and first set fire to St. James’s palace."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 2h 2773)
36 The powers of this world have indeed lost their dominion
over him who is resolved on death, and his arm can only
be restrained by the religious apprehension of a future
state. Suicides are enumerated by Virgil among the
unfortunate, rather than the guilty, and the poetical
fables of the infernal shades could not seriously influence
the faith or practice of mankind. But the precepts of the
Gospel or the church have at length imposed a pious
servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them
to expect, without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or
the executioner.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLIV
37 A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels
wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his
reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be
contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now
he inquires whether the maxim of his action could
become a universal law' of nature. His maxim is: "From
self-love | adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when
its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than
satisfaction." It is asked then simply whether this
principle founded on self-love can become a universal
law’ of nature. Now we see at once that a system of
nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by
means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to
impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself
and, therefore, could not exist as a system of nature;
hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal
law of nature and, consequently, would be wholly
inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
38 He who contemplates suicide should ask himself whether
his action can be consistent with the idea of humanity as
an end in itself If he destroys himself in order to escape
from painful circumstance, he uses a person merely as a
mean to maintain a tolerable condition up to the end of
life. But a man is not a thing, that is to say, something
which can be used merely as means, but must in all his
actions be always considered as an end in himself. |
cannot, therefore, dispose in any way of a man in my own
person so as to mutilate him, to damage or kill him.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
39 Suicide is not abominable because God forbids it; God
forbids it because it is abominable.
Kant, Lecture (1775)
40 Suicide may at a first glance be regarded as an act of
courage, but only the false courage of tailors and servant
girls. Or again it may be looked upon as a misfortune,
since it is inward distraction which leads to it. But the
fundamental question is: Have | a right to take my life?
The answer will be that I, as this individual, am not
master of my life, because life, as the comprehensive sum
of my activity, is nothing external to personality, which
itself is this immediate personality. Thus when a person is
said to have a right over his life, the words area
contradiction, because they mean that a person has a
right over himself. But he has no such right, since he does
not stand over himself and he cannot pass judgement on
himself. When Hercules destroyed himself by fire and
when Brutus fell on his sword, this was the conduct of a
hero against his personality. But as for an unqualified
right to suicide, we must simply say that there is no such
thing, even for heroes.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 70
41 They tell us that suicide is The greatest piece of
cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and
other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the
nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite
obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every
man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and
person.
Schopenhauer, Suicide
42 Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment— a
question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to
an answer. The question is this: What change will death
produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the
nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it
involves the destruction of the very consciousness which
puts the question and awaits the answer.
Schopenhauer, Suicide
43 | knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation
Who after some years of an enigmatic passion fora
gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at
any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their
union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night
into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank,
almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her
own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia.
Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of
hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a
prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide
would never have taken place. This is a fact, and
probably there have been not a few similar instances in
the last two or three generations.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, |, 1
44 And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the
train the day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew
what she had to do. With a rapid, light step she went
down the steps that led from the tank to the rails and
stopped quite near the approaching train.
She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the
screws and chains, and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first
carriage slowing moving up, and trying to measure the
middle between the front and back wheels, and the very
minute when that middle point would be opposite her.
"There," she said to herself, looking into the shadow of
the carriage, at the sand and coal-dust which covered the
sleepers—"there, in the very middle, and | will punish him
and escape from everyone and from myself."
She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first
Carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she
tried to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was
too late; she missed the moment. She had to wait for the
next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when
about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her,
and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought
back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish
memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered
everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before
her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did
not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage.
And exactly at the moment when the space between the
wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and
drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her
hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she
would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at
the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was
doing. "Where am |? What am | doing? What for?" She
tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge
and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on
her back. "Lord, forgive me all!" she said, feeling it
impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something
was working at the iron above her. And the light by which
she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods,
sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before,
lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered,
began to grow dim, and was quenched for ever.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, VII, 31
45 The reasoning both of pessimist philosophy and of
ordinary suicide is this: There is an animal self which is
attracted to life, but the yearnings of this self can never
be gratified. There is another self, a rational one, which
has no longing for life, but merely critically contemplates
all the false joy of life and the passions of the animal self
and rejects them entirely.
If | yield to the first | see that my life is meaningless
and that | am heading for misery, in which | am more and
more involved. If | abandon myself to the second—the
reasonable self—I no longer feel any attraction to life. |
see that it is absurd and impossible to live for the one
thing | want, that is, my personal happiness. It would be
possible to live for reasonable consciousness, but it is not
worth while and | do not want to. Serve that source from
whence | came—God? Why? If God exists, he will find
people to serve him without me. And why should | do it?
One can contemplate this play of life as long as one does
not find it dull, and when it is dull one can go away and
kill oneself. And that is what | will do.
Tolstoy, On Life, XXII
46 The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort: it helps one
through many a dreadful night.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 157
47 The relatives of a suicide take it in ill part that he did not
remain alive out of consideration for their reputation.
Nietzsche, Human, All~ Too-Human, 322
48 All this about the impossibility of suicide is said on the
supposition of positive motives. When possessed by the
emotion of fear, however, we are in a negative state of
mind; that is, our desire is limited to the mere banishing
of something, without regard to what shall take its place.
In this state of mind there can unquestionably be
genuine thoughts, and genuine acts, of suicide, spiritual
and social, as well as bodily. Anything, anything, at such
times, So as to escape and not to be!
William James, Psychology, X
49 Fear of life in one form or other is the great thing to
exorcise; but it isn’t reason that will ever do it. Impulse
without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is
a poor makeshift. | take it that no man is educated who
has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
William James, Letter to B. P, Blood (June 28, 1896)
Chapter 2
FAMILY
Chapter 2 is divided into three sections: 2.1 The Institution
of the Family, 2.2 Parents and Children, and 2.3 Marriage.
Certain of the passages quoted in this chapter could have
been placed in two of the three sections, and some, perhaps,
in all three. The institution of the family is inseparable from
the marriage rite and all that it entails; the relation of
husband and wife results from marriage and is fundamental
to the institution of the family; the parental care and
direction of children, as well as filial respect and obedience,
are aspects of domestic government that take different
forms in different types of familial institutions.
All of these points of coincidence or overlapping being
acknowledged, it is, nevertheless, the case that the matters
considered in the three sections are sufficiently distinct to
justify a division of the texts accordingly.
However, the reader whose interest is in all of the many
related aspects of the human family would do well to explore
the materials of this chapter as a whole and to trace for
himself the intricate pattern of insights and observations
that are woven together in the fabric of our understanding of
the one human institution with which every human being
has had intimate experience.
There is probably no other subject treated in this book
about which everyone has an opinion or judgment, and
feelings, sentiments, or emotional attitudes, as well as
wishes or desires, overt or covert, conscious or unconscious.
There is probably no other subject on which there are
comments from so wide a diversity of sources—from poets,
novelists, dramatists, and historians; philosophers and
theologians; moralists, economists, and political theorists;
biologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts.
2.1 The Institution of the Family
One important relationship constitutive of most, if not all,
families is that of siblings— brother and brother, sister and
sister, brother and sister. It is a relationship that, as
generalized under the notion of fraternity or brotherhood, is
often set up as a model for those who are not bound to one
another by any ties of consanguinity. On the other hand, as
we are reminded by the opening text from Genesis about
Gain and Abel, animosity and jealousy also tear at the
hearts of those who are tied to one another by bonds of
blood. Blood may be thicker than water, but it also has a
lower boiling point.
Passages dealing with siblings, and their benevolence or
malevolence, are assembled in this section, and are thus
separated from the other two basic familial relationships
(husband and wife, parents and children), which are treated
in Sections 3 and 2 respectively.
Another, perhaps even more basic, theme in this section
is the type of government that is regulative of family life.
Who rules in the family—the husband alone, or both
husband and wife; and who is ruled—the children alone or
both wife and children? What power or authority is exercised
in domestic government? What makes it legitimate? Is it
absolute or limited and, if limited, what are its limits?
Answers to questions of this sort usually involve
comparisons of parental rule with despotic rule and
constitutional government. Those interested in the passages
that treat of such matters should, perhaps, look also at
similar passages in Chapter 10 on Politics, especially Section
10.3 on Government: Its Nature, Necessity, and Forms,
Section 10.4 on Government of and by the People: Republic
and Democracy, and Section 10.6 on Despotism AND
Tyranny. Doing so will help one to think about some of the
most difficult problems of family life—the extent to which
the domestic community can be organized as a democracy,
and the safeguards that can be erected against tyrannical or
despotic misrule.
1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare
Cain, and said, | have gotten a man from the Lord.
And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a
keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain
brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the
Lord.
And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock
and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel
and to his offering:
But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.
And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and
why is thy countenance fallen?
If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if
thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.
And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule
over him.
And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to
pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up
against Abel his brother, and slew him.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy
brother? And he said, | Know not: Am | my brother’s
keeper?
Genesis 4:1—9
2 And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man
of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.
And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his
venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.
And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field,
and was faint:
And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, | pray thee, with that
same red pottage; for | am faint: therefore was his name
called Edom.
And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
And Esau said, Behold, | am at the point to die: and
what profit shall this birthright do to me?
And Jacob said. Swear to me this day; and he sware
unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles;
and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way:
thus Esau despised his birthright.
Genesis 25:27-34
3 If aman have two wives, one beloved, and another hated,
and they have born him children, both the beloved and
the hated; and if the firstborn son be her’s that was
hated:
Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit
that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the
beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is
indeed the firstborn:
But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the
firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he
hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of
the firstborn is his.
Deuteronomy 21:15-17
4 |lf brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have
no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without
unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto
her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of
an husband’s brother unto her.
And It shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth
Shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead,
that his name be not put out of Israel.
And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then
let his brother’s wife go up to the gate unto the elders,
and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto
his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty
of my husband’s brother.
Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak
unto him: and if he stand to it, and say, | like not to take
her;
Then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the
presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his
foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So
Shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his
brother’s house.
Deuteronomy 24:5-9
5 Odysseus. And may the gods accomplish your desire:
a home, a husband, and harmonious converse with
him—the best thing in the world being a strong house
held in serenity where man and wife agree. Woe to their
enemies, joy to their friends! But all this they know best.
Homer, Odyssey, VI, 179
6 Odysseus. Where shall a man find sweetness to surpass his
own home and his parents? In far lands he shall not,
though he find a house of gold.
Homer, Odyssey, IX, 34
7 Teiresias. | tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)—he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father’s bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say | have no skill in prophecy.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 448
8 Antigone. O tomb, O marriage-chamber, hollowed out
house that will watch forever, where | go.
To my own people, who are mostly there;
Persephone has taken them to her.
Last of them all, ill-fated past the rest,
Shall | descend, before my course is run.
Still when | get there | may hope to find
| come as a dear friend to my dear father,
to you, my mother, and my brother too.
All three of you have known my hand in death.
| washed your bodies, dressed them for the grave,
poured out the last libation at the tomb.
Last, Polyneices knows the price | pay
for doing final service to his corpse.
And yet the wise will know my choice was right.
Had | had children or their father dead.
I'd let them moulder. | should not have chosen
in such a case to cross the state’s decree.
What is the law that lies behind these words?
One husband gone, 1 might have found another,
ora child from a new man in first child’s place,
but with my parents hid away in death,
no brother, ever, could spring up for me.
Such was the law by which | honored you.
Sophocles, Antigone, 891
9 Socrates. Here, then, is one difficulty in our law about
women, which we may say that we have now escaped;
the wave has not swallowed us up alive for enacting that
the guardians of either sex should have all their pursuits
in common; to the utility and also to the possibility of this
arrangement the consistency of the argument with itself
bears witness.
Glaucon. Yes, that was a mighty wave which you have
escaped.
Yes, | said, but a greater is coming; you will not think
much of this when you see the next.
Go on; let me see.
The law, | said, which is the sequel of this and of all
that has preceded, is to the following effect—"that the
wives of our guardians are to be common, and their
children are to be common, and no parent is to Know his
own child, nor any child his parent."
Yes, he said, that is a much greater wave than the
other; and the possibility as well as the utility of such a
law are far more questionable.
| do not think, | said, that there can be any dispute
about the very great utility of having wives and children
in common; the possibility is quite another matter, and
will be very much disputed.
1 think that a good many doubts may be raised about
both.
Plato, Republic, V, 457A
10 Socrates. How can marriages be made most beneficial?—
that is a question which | put to you, because | see in
your house dogs for hunting, and of the nobler sort of
birds not a few. Now, | beseech you, do tell me, have you
ever attended to their pairing and breeding?
Glaucon. |In what particulars?
Why, in the first place, although they are all of a good
sort, are not some better than others?
True.
And do you breed from them all indifferently, or do
you take care to breed from the best only?
From the best.
And do you take the oldest or the youngest, or only
those of ripe age?
| choose only those of ripe age.
And if care was not taken in the breeding, your dogs
and birds would greatly deteriorate?
Certainly.
And the same of horses and animals in general?
Undoubtedly.
Good heavens! my dear friend, | said, what
consummate skill will our rulers need if the same
principle holds of the human species!
Certainly, the same principle holds.
Plato, Republic, V, 459A
11 Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by
nature; for man is naturally inclined to form couples—
even more than to form cities, inasmuch as the household
is earlier and more necessary than the city, and
reproduction is more common to man with the animals.
With the other animals the union extends only to this
point, but human beings live together not only for the
sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of
life; for from the start the functions are divided, and
those of man and woman are different; so they help each
other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common
stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure
seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this
friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are
good; for each has its own virtue and they will delight in
the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which
is the reason why childless people part more easily); for
children are a good common to both and what is common
holds them together.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1162a16
12 A husband and father... rules over wife and children, both
free, but the rule differs, the rule over his children being
a royal, over his wife a constitutional rule. For although
there may be exceptions to the order of nature, the male
is by nature fitter for command than the female.
Aristotle, Politics, 1259a39
13 The citizens might conceivably have wives and children
and property in common, as Socrates proposes in the
Republic of Plato, Which is better, our present condition,
or the proposed new order of society?
There are many difficulties in the community of
women. And the principle on which Socrates rests the
necessity of such an institution evidently is not
established by his arguments. Further, as a means to the
end which he ascribes to the state, the scheme, taken
literally, is impracticable, and how we are to interpret it is
nowhere precisely stated.
Aristotle, Politics, 126a4
14 Next after they had got themselves huts and skins and
fire, and the woman united with the man passed with him
into one domicile and the duties of wedlock were learnt
by the two, and they saw an offspring born from them,
then first mankind began to soften. For fire made their
chilled bodies less able now to bear the frost beneath the
canopy of heaven, and Venus impaired their strength and
children with their caresses soon broke down the
haughty’ temper of parents. Then too neighbours began
to join in a league of friendship mutually desiring neither
to do nor suffer harm; and asked for indulgence to
children and womankind, when with cries and gestures
they declared in stammering speech that meet it is for all
to have mercy on the weak. And though harmony could
not be established without exception, yet a very large
portion observed their agreements with good faith, or
else the race of man would then have been wholly cut off,
nor could breeding have continued their generations to
this day.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
15 Aeneas. Arm'd once again, my glitt’ring sword | wield,
While th’ other hand sustains my weighty shield.
And forth | rush to seek th' abandon’d field.
| went; but sad Creusa stopp’d my way,
And cross the threshold in my passage lay,
Embrac’d my knees, and, when | would have gone,
Shew’d me my feeble sire and tender son:
‘lf death be your design, at least,’ said she,
‘Take us along to share your destiny.
If any farther hopes in arms remain,
This place, these pledges of your love, maintain.
To whom do you expose your father’s life.
Your son’s, and mine, your now forgotten wife!’
Virgil, Aeneid, II
16 There came then his brethren and his mother, and,
standing without, sent unto him, calling him.
And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto
him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek
for thee.
And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or
my brethren?
And he looked round about on them which sat about
him, and said. Behold my mother and my brethren!
For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my
brother, and my sister, and mother,
Mark 3:31-35
17 Suppose ye that | am come to give peace on earth? | tell
you. Nay; but rather division:
For from henceforth there shall be five in one house
divided, three against two, and two against three.
The father shall be divided against the son, and the
son against the father; the mother against the daughter,
and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law
against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law
against her mother in law,
Luke 12:51-53
18 Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so
much The property of their parents as of the whole
commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have his
citizens begot by the first-comers, but by the best men
that could be found; the laws of other nations seemed to
him very absurd and inconsistent, where people would be
so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest
and to pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept
their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by
themselves, tvho might be foolish, infirm, or diseased; as
if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would
prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and
were rearing them, and well-born children, in like manner,
their good qualities.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
19 We are inquiring about ordinary marriages and those
which are free from distractions, and making this inquiry
we do not find the affair of marriage in this state of the
world a thing which is especially suited to the Cynic,
“How, then, shall a man maintain the existence of
society?" In the name of God, are those men greater
benefactors to society who introduce into the world to
occupy their own places two or three grunting children,
or those who superintend as far as they can all mankind,
and see what they do, how they live, what they attend to,
what they neglect contrary to their duty? Did they who
left little children to the Thebans do them more good
than Epaminondas who died childless? And did Priamus,
who begat fifty worthless sons, or Danaus or Aeolus
contribute more to the community than Homer? then
Shall the duty of a general or the business of a writer
exclude a man from marriage or the begetting of
children, and such a man shall not be judged to have
accepted the condition of childlessness for nothing; and
Shall not the royalty of a Cynic be considered an
equivalent for the want of children? Do we not perceive
his grandeur and do we not justly contemplate the
character of Diogenes; and do we, instead of this, turn
our eyes to the present Comics, w'ho are dogs that wait
at tables and in no respect imitate the Cynics of old
except perchance in breaking wind, but in nothing else?
For such matters would not have moved us at all nor
should we have wondered if a Cynic should not marry or
beget children. Man, the Cynic is the father of all men;
the men are his sons, the women are his daughters: he so
carefully visits all, so well does he care for all. Do you
think that it is from idle impertinence that he rebukes
those whom he meete? He does it as a father, asa
brother, and as the minister of the father of all, the
minister of Zeus.
Epictetus, Discourses, IIl, 22
20 They who care for the rest rule—the husband the wife,
the parents the children, the masters the servants; and
they who are cared for obey—the women their husbands,
the children their parents, the servants their masters. But
in the family of the just man who lives by faith... even
those who rule serve those whom they seem to
command; for they rule not from a love of power, but
from a sense of the duty they owe to others—not because
they are proud of authority', but because they love
mercy.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 14
21 Now the saints of ancient times were, under the form of
an earthly kingdom, foreshadowing and foretelling the
kingdom of heaven. And on account of the necessity for a
numerous offspring, the custom of one man having
several wives was at that time blameless: and for the
Same reason it was not proper for one woman to have
several husbands, because a woman does not in that way
become more fruitful, but, on the contrary, it is base
harlotry to seek either gain or offspring by promiscuous
intercourse. In regard to matters of this sort, whatever the
holy men of those times did without lust. Scripture passes
over without blame, although they did things which could
not be done at the present time, except through lust.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, III, 12
22 In comparing love to love we should compare one union
with another. Accordingly we must say that friendship
among blood relations is based upon their connection by
natural origin, the friendship of fellow-citizens on their
civic fellowship, and the friendship of those who are
fighting side by side on the comradeship of battle.
Therefore in matters pertaining to nature we should love
our kindred most, in matters concerning relations
between citizens, we should prefer our fellow-citizens,
and on the battlefield our fellow-soldiers....
If however we compare union with union, it is evident
that the union arising from natural origin is prior to, and
more stable than, all others, because it is something
affecting the very substance, while other unions are
something added above and may cease altogether.
Therefore the friendship of kindred is more stable, while
other friendships may be stronger in respect of that
which is proper to each of them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 26, 8
23 Although the father ranks above the mother, the mother
has more to do with the offspring than the father has. Or
we may say that woman was made chiefly in order to be
man’s helpmate in relation to the offspring, whereas the
man was not made for this purpose. Wherefore the
mother has a closer relation to the nature of marriage
than the father has.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ill Suppl., 44, 2
24 Love hates people to be attached to each other except by
himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set
up and maintained under another title, as marriage is.
Connections and means have, with reason, as much
weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not
marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as
much or more for our posterity, for our family. The
practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very
far beyond us. Therefore | like this fashion of arranging it
rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense
of others rather than by our own. How opposite is all this
to the conventions of love!
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
25 | was late in taking up the management of a household.
Those whom nature had sent into the world before me
relieved me of that burden for a long time. | had already
contracted a different bent, more suitable to my
disposition. At all events, from what | have seen of it, it is
an occupation more bothersome than difficult: whoever is
capable of anything else will very easily be capable of
this.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
26 Don Quixote. Another Thing makes me more uneasy:
Suppose we have found out a King and a Princess, and |
have fill’d the World with the Fame of my unparallel’d
Atchievements, yet cannot | tell how to find out that | am
of Royal Blood, though it were but second Cousin to an
Emperor: For, ‘tis not to be expected that the King will
ever consent that | shall wed his Daughter ’till | have
made this out by authentick Proofs, tho’ my Service
deserve it never so much; and thus for want of a
Punctilio, | am in danger of losing what my Valour so
justly merits, Tis true, indeed, |am a Gentleman, and of a
noted ancient Family, and possess’d of an Estate of a
hundred and twenty Crowns a Year; nay, perhaps the
learned Historiographer who is to write the History of my
Life, will So improve and beautify my Genealogy, that he
will find me to be the fifth, or sixth at least, in Descent
from a King; For, Sancho, there are two sorts of Originals
in the World; some who sprung from mighty Kings and
Princes, by little and little have been so lessen’d and
obscur’d, that the Estates and Titles of the following
Generations have dwindled to nothing, and ended ina
Point like a Pyramid; others, who from mean and low
Beginnings still rise and rise, till at last they are rais’d to
the very Top of human Greatness: So vast the Difference
is, that those who were Something are now Nothing, and
those that were Nothing are now Something. And
therefore who knows but that | may be one of those
whose Original is so illustrious; which being handsomely
made out, after due Examination, ought undoubtedly to
satisfy the King, my Father-! n-law. But even supposing he
were still refractory, the Princess is to be so desperately
in love with me, that she will marry me without his
Consent, tho’ | were a Son of the meanest Water-Carrier;
and if her tender Honour scruples to bless me against her
Father’s Will, then it may not be amiss to put a pleasing
Constraint upon her, by conveying her by Force out of the
Reach of her Father, to whose Persecutions either Time or
Death will be sure to put a Period.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 21
27 He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to
fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises,
either of virtue or mischief.
Bacon, Of Marriage and Single Life
28 Private bodies regular and lawful are those that are
constituted without letters, or other written authority,
saving the laws common to all other subjects. And
because they be united in one person representative,
they are held for regular; such as are all families, in which
the father or master ordereth the whole family. For he
obligeth his children, and servants, as far as the law
permitteth, though not further, because none of them are
bound to obedience in those actions which the law hath
forbidden to be done. In all other actions, during the time
they are under domestic government, they are subject to
their fathers and masters, as to their immediate
sovereigns.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 22
29 God, having made man such a creature that, in His own
judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put him
under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and
inclination, to drive him into society, as well as fitted him
with understanding and language to continue and enjoy
it. The first society was between man and wife, which
gave beginning to that between parents and children, to
which, in time, that between master and servant came to
be added. And though all these might, and commonly
did, meet together, and make up but one family, wherein
the master or mistress of it had some sort of rule proper
to a family, each of these, or all together, came short of
"political society," as we Shall see if we consider the
different ends, tics, and bounds of each of these.
Locke, II Civil Government, VII, 77
30 Paternal or parental power is nothing but that which
parents have over their children to govern them, for the
children’s good, till they come to the use of reason, ora
state of knowledge, wherein they may be supposed
capable to understand that rule, whether it be the law of
Nature or the municipal law of their country’, they are to
govern themselves by—capable, | say, to know it, as well
as several others, who live as free men under that law.
The affection and tenderness God hath planted in the
breasts of parents towards their children makes it evident
that this is not intended to be a severe arbitrary
government, but only for the help, instruction, and
preservation of their offspring. But happen as it will, there
is, as | have proved, no reason why it should be thought
to extend to life and death, at any time, over their
children, more than over anybody else, or keep the child
in subjection to the will of his parents when grown to a
man and the perfect use of reason, any farther than as
having received life and education from his parents
obliges him to respect, honour, gratitude, assistance, and
support, all his life, to both father and mother. And thus,
it is true, the paternal is a natural government, but not at
all extending itself to the ends and jurisdictions of that
which is political. The power of the father doth not reach
at all to the property of the child, which is only in his own
disposing.
Locke, II Civil Government, XV, 170
31 Witwoud. Odso, brother, is it you? Your servant, brother.
Sir Wilfull Your servant! Why, yours, sir. Your servant
again—’sheart, and your friend and servant to that—and
a— [Puff.] —and a flap-dragon for your service, sir: anda
hare’s foot, and a hare’s scut for your service, sir; an you
be so cold and so courtly!
Wit. No offense, | hope, brother.
Sir Wil. ’Sheart, sir, but there is, and much offense. A
pox, is this your Inns o' Court breeding, not to know your
friends and your relations, your ciders and your betters?
Wit. Why, Brother Wilfull of Salop, you may be as short
as a Shrewsbury cake, if you please. But | tell you ’tis not
modish to know relations in town. You think you’re in the
country, where great lubberly brothers slabber and kiss
one another when they meet, like a call of sergeants.
—-’Tis not the fashion here; ‘tis not inded, dear brother.
Sir Wil. The fashion’s a fool; and you’re a fop, dear
brother.
Congreve, Way of the World, III, xv
32 The first expansions of the human heart were the effects
of a novel situation, which united husbands and wives,
fathers and children, under one roof. The habit of living
together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to
humanity, conjugal love and paternal affection. Every
family became a little society, the more united because
liberty and reciprocal attachment were the only bonds of
its union. The sexes, whose manner of life had been
hitherto the same, began now to adopt different ways of
living. The women became more sedentary, and
accustomed themselves to mind the hut and their
children, while the men went abroad in search of their
common subsistence. From living a softer life, both sexes
also began to lose something of their strength and
ferocity; but, if individuals became to some extent less
able to encounter wild beasts separately, they found it,
on the other hand, easier to assemble and resist in
common.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
33 In the family, it is clear, for several reasons which lie in its
very nature, that the father ought to command. In the
first place, the authority ought not to be equally divided
between father and mother; the government must be
single, and in every division of opinion there must be one
preponderant voice to decide. Secondly, however lightly
we may regard the disadvantages peculiar to women, yet,
as they necessarily occasion intervals of inaction, this is a
sufficient reason for excluding them from this supreme
authority: for when the balance is perfectly even, a straw
is enough to turn the scale. Besides, the husband ought
to be able to superintend his wife’s conduct, because it is
of importance for him to be assured that the children,
whom he is obliged to acknowledge and maintain, belong
to no one but himself. Thirdly, children should be
obedient to their father, at first of necessity, and
afterwards from gratitude: after having had their wants
satisfied by him during one half of their lives, they ought
to consecrate the other half to providing for his. Fourthly,
servants owe him their services in exchange for the
provision he makes for them, though they may break off
die bargain as soon as it ceases to suit them.
Rousseau, Political Economy
34 The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is
natural, is the family: and even so the children remain
attached to the father only so long as they need him for
their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the
natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the
obedience they owed to the father, and the father,
released from the care he owed his children, return
equally to independence. If they remain united, they
continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the
family itself is then maintained only by convention.
This common liberty results from the nature of man.
His first law’ is to provide for his own preservation, his
first cares are those which he owes to himself; and, as
soon as he reaches years of discretion, he is the sole
judge of the proper means of preserving himself, and
consequently becomes his own master.
The family then may be called the first model of
political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and
the people to the children; and all, being born free and
equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage.
The whole difference b that, in the family, the Jove of the
father for his children repays him for the care he lakes of
them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding
takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have
for the peoples under him.
Rousseau, Social Contract, |, 2
35 | talked of the little attachment which subsisted between
near relations in London. "Sir, (said Johnson,) in a country
SO commercial as ours, where every man can do for
himself, there is not so much occasion for that
attachment. No man is thought the worse of here, whose
brother was hanged."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 6, 1772)
36 Poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not always
prevent marriage. It seems even to be favourable to
generation. A half-starved Highland woman frequently
bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine
lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally
exhausted by two or three. Barrenness, so frequent
among women of fashion, is very rare among those of
inferior station. Luxury in the fair sex, while it inflames
perhaps the passion for enjoyment, seems always to
weaken, and frequently to destroy altogether, the powers
of generation.
But poverty, though it does not prevent the
generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of
children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a
.Soil and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. It is
not uncommon, 1 have been frequently told, in the
Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has |>ornc
twenty children not to have two alive.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 8
37 Laws frequently continue in force long after the
circumstances which first gave occasion to them, and
which could alone render them reasonable, are no more.
In the present state of Europe, the proprietor of a single
acre of land is as perfectly secure of his possession as the
proprietor of a hundred thousand. The right of
primogeniture, however, still continues to be respected,
and as of all institutions it is the fittest to support the
pride of family distinctions, it is still likely to endure for
many centuries. In every other respect, nothing can be
more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family
than a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the
rest of the children,
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, III, 2
38 Personal right of a real kind is the right to the possession
of an external object as a thing, and to the use of itasa
person. mine and thine embraced under this right relate
specially to the family and household; and the relations
involved are those of free beings in reciprocal real
interaction with each other. Through their relations and
influence as persons upon one another, in accordance
with the principle of external freedom as the cause of it,
they form a society composed as a whole of members
standing in community with each other as persons; and
this constitutes the household. n»c mode in which this
social status in acquired by individuals, and the functions
which prevail within it, proceed neither by arbitrary
individual action (facto), nor by mere contract (pacto),
but by law (/ege). And this law as being not only a right,
but also as constituting possession in reference to a
person, iS a right rising above all mere real and personal
right. It must, in fact, form the right of humanity in our
own person; and, as such, it has as its consequence a
natural permissive law. by the favour of which such
acquisition becomes possible to us.
The acquisition that is founded upon this law is, as
regards its objects, threefold. The man acquires a wife;
the husband and wife acquire children, constituting a
family; and the family acquire domestics. All these
objects, while acquirable, are inalienable; and the right of
possession in these objects is the most strictly personal of
all rights.
Kant, Science of Right, 22-23
39 He heard it, but he heeded not—his eyes
Were with his heart and that was far away;
He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,.
There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire,
Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday.
Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, 141
40 The family, as the immediate substantiality of mind, is
specifically characterized by love, which is mind’s feeling
of its own unity. Hence in a family, one’s frame of mind is
to have self-consciousness of one’s individuality within
this unity as the absolute essence of oneself, with the
result that one is in it not as an independent person but
as a member.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 158
41 The ethical dissolution of the family consists in this, that
once the children have been educated to freedom of
personality, and have come of age, they become
recognized as persons in the eyes of the law and as
capable of holding free property of their own and
founding families of their own, the sons as heads of new
families, the daughters as wives. They now have their
substantive destiny in the new family; the old family on
the other hand falls into the background as merely their
ultimate basis and origin, while a fortiori the clan is an
abstraction, devoid of rights.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 177
42 The piety of the family relation should be respected in
the highest degree by the state; by its means the state
obtains as its members individuals who are already moral
(for as mere persons they are not) and who in uniting to
form a state bring with them that sound basis of a
political edifice— the capacity of feeling one with a
whole.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
43 Looking far enough back in the stream of time, and
judging from the social habits of man as he now exists,
the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in
small communities, each with a single wife, or if powerful
with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other
men. Or he may not have been a social animal, and yet
have lived with several wives, like the gorilla; for all the
natives "agree that but one adult male is seen in a band;
when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for
mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the
others, establishes himself as the head of the
community." The younger males, being thus expelled and
wandering about, would, when at last successful in
finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within
the limits of the same family.
Darwin, Descent of Man. III, 20
44 However terrible and disgusting under the capitalist
system the dissolution of the old family tics may appear,
nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an
important part in the process of production, outside the
domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to
children of both sexes, creates a new economic
foundation for a higher form of the family and of the
relations between the sexes. It is, of course, just as
absurd to hold the Teutonic-Christian form of the family to
be absolute and final as it would be to apply that
character to the ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the
Eastern forms which, moreover, taken together, form a
series in historic development. Moreover, it is obvious
that the fact of the collective working group being
composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages, must
necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source
of humane development; although in its soontaneously
developed, brutal, capitalistic form, where the labourer
exists for the process of production, and not the process
of production for the labourer, that fact is a pestiferous
source of corruption and slavery.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, IV, 15
45 Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at
this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the
bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In
its completely developed form this family e.xists only
among the bourgeoisie. But the state of things finds its
complement in the practical absence of the family among
the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course
when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with
the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the e,x-
ploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we
plead guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of
relations when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and
determined by the social conditions under which you
educate, by the intervention of society, direct or indirect,
by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not
invented the intervention of society in education; they do
but seek to alter the character of that intervention and to
rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois claptrap about the family and
education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and
child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the
action of modem industry, all family ties among the
proletarians are tom asunder and their children
transformed into simple articles of commerce and
instruments of labour.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 11
46 The duties of parents to their children are those which
are indissolubly attached to the fact of causing the
existence of a human being. The parent owes to society
to endeavour to make the child a good and valuable
member of it, and owes to the children to provide, so far
as depends on him, such education, and such appliances
and means, as will enable them to start with a fair chance
of achieving by their own exertions a successful life. To
this every child has a claim; and | cannot admit, that as a
child he has a claim to more.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. II, 11, 3
47 The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of
the virtues of freedom. It is sure to be a sufficient one of
everything else. It will always be a school of obedience
for the children, of command for the parents. What is
needed is, that it should be a school of sympathy in
equality, of living together in love, without power on one
side or obedience on the other. This it ought to be
between the parents. It would then be an exercise of
those virtues which each requires to fit them for all other
association, and a model to the children of the feelings
and conduct which their temporary training by means of
obedience is designed to render habitual, and therefore
natural, to them. The moral training of mankind will
never be adapted to the conditions of the life for which
all other human progress is a preparation, until they
practise in the family the same moral rule which is
adapted to the moral constitution of human society. Any
sentiment of freedom which can exist in a man whose
nearest and dearest intimacies are with those of whom he
is absolute master, is not the genuine or Christian love of
freedom, but, what the love of freedom generally was in
the ancients and in the middle ages—an intense feeling
of the dignity and importance of his own personality;
making him disdain a yoke for himself, of which he has no
abhorrence whatever in the abstract, but which he is
abundantly ready to impose on others for his own interest
or glorification.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
48 The pleasure married people get from one another...is
only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole
significance, which lies in the family.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, X
49 Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, I, 1
50 In order to carry through any undertaking in family life,
there must necessarily be either complete division
between the husband and wife, or loving agreement.
When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither
one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be
undertaken.
Many families remain for years in the same place,
though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply
because there is neither complete division nor agreement
between them.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, VII, 23
51 Our immediate family is a part of ourselves. Our father
and mother, our wife and babes, are bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very
selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame.
If they are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if
we stood in their place. Our home comes next. Its scenes
are part of our life; its asoects awaken the tenderest
feelings of affection; and we do not easily forgive the
stranger who, in visiting it, finds fault with its
arrangements or treats it with contempt. All these
different things are the objects of instinctive preferences
coupled with the most important practical interests of
life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over our body,
to deck it with clothing of an ornamental sort, to cherish
parents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home
of our own which we may live in and "improve."
William James, Psychology, X
52 We are told that sexual attraction is diverted from the
members of the opposite sex in one family owing to their
living together from early childhood; or that a biological
tendency against in-breeding has a mental equivalent in
the horror of incest! Whereby it is entirely overlooked
that no such rigorous prohibitions in law and custom
would be required if any trustworthy natural barriers
against the temptation to incest existed. The opposite is
the truth. The first choice of object in mankind is
regularly an incestuous one, directed to the mother and
sister of men, and the most stringent prohibitions are
required to prevent this sustained infantile tendency from
being carried into effect.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXI
53 The indestructible strength of the family as a natural
group formation rests upon the fact that this necessary
presupposition of the father’s equal love can have a real
application in the family.
Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, X
54 The conditions of object-choice in women are often
enough made unrecognizable by social considerations.
Where that choice is allowed to manifest itself freely, it
often occurs according to the narcissistic ideal of the man
whom the girl would have liked to be. If the girl has
remained attached to her father, if, that is to say, she has
remained in the Oedipus-complex, then she chooses
according to a father-type. Since, when she turned from
her mother to her father, the antagonistic part of her
ambivalent feelings remained directed on to her mother,
such a choice should ensure a happy marriage. But very
often a factor emerges which in general imperils such
solutions of the ambivalence-conflict. The antagonism
which has been left behind may follow in the wake of the
positive attachment, and extend to the new object. The
husband, who had in the first instance inherited his
position from the father, comes in the course of time to
inherit the position of the mother as well. In this way it
may easily occur that the second part of a woman’s life is
taken up with a struggle against her husband, just as the
shorter earlier part was occupied with rebellion against
her mother. After this reaction has been lived out, a
second marriage may easily turn out far more
satisfactorily.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXIII
55 Love is but a prelude to life, an overture in which the
theme of the impending work Is exquisitely hinted at, but
which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise.
What is to follow, if all goes well, begins presently to
appear. Passion settles down into possession, courtship
into partnership, pleasure into habit. A child, half mystery
and half plaything, comes to show us what we have done
and to make its consequences perpetual. We see that by
indulging our inclinations we have woven about us a net
from which we cannot escape: our choices, bearing fruit,
begin to manifest our destiny. That life which once
seemed to spread out infinitely before us is narrowed to
one mortal career. We learn that in morals the infinite is a
chimera, and that in accomplishing anything definite a
man renounces everything else. He sails henceforth for
one point of the compass.
Santayana, Life of Reason, 11, 2
2.2 Parents and Children
Some of the matters covered in Section 2.1 unavoidably spill
over into this one, such as the authority of parents and the
respect or obedience owed to them by their offspring. But
there are, in addition, many new points of interest here, such
as observations about the joys and pains of parenthood and
of childhood, and insights into the complexities of the
parent-child relationship. If every facet of the subject is not
covered, or not covered with equal adequacy, it is at least
possible to claim that this assemblage of passages
represents a fair sampling of the wide diversity of opinions
and attitudes across the centuries. Yet it is only recently—in
the last hundred years or less—that our understanding of
this human relationship has grown highly sophisticated and
involves insights that represent probing in depth, as the
reader will discover for himself by comparing the
observations of such moderns as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and
Freud with the remarks of their predecessors.
Many of the passages quoted are not statements about
the relation of parents and children, but rather examples or
manifestations of that relationship. Like the catalogue of the
ships in Homer’s Iliad, the mere recital of the names of
famous pairs or trios recorded in these passages has the
effect of awakening our interest: David and Absalom, Thetis
and Achilles, Priam and Hector, Odysseus and Telemachus,
Clytemnestra and Orestes, Medea and her children, Hector
and Astyanax, Socrates and his sons, Anchises and Aeneas,
Gertrude and Hamlet, Lear and Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan,
Squire Western and Sophia, Rousseau and his father, Mill
and his, Freud and his, Stephen Daedalus (i.e., James Joyce)
and his.
1 Unto the woman he said, | will greatly multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth
children.
Geneses 3:16
2 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said. If thou
Shall without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine
hands,
Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the
doors of my house to meet me, when | return in peace
from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s,
and | will offer it up for a burnt offering.
So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon
to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into
his hands....
And Jephthah came to Mirpeh unto his house, and,
behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels
and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her
he had neither son nor daughter.
And it came to pass, when hr saw her, that he rent his
clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought
me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me:
for | have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and | cannot
go back.
And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened
thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that
which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as
the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies,
even of the children of Ammon.
And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for
me: let me alone two months, that | may go up and down
upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, | and my
fellows.
And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months:
and she went with her companions, and bewailed her
virginity upon the mountains.
And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she
returned unto her father, who did with her according to
his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man.
Judges 11:30-39
3 And the king was much moved, and went up to the
chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus
he said, O my son Ab-sa-lom, my son, my son Ab-sa-lom!
Would God | had died for thee, O Ab-sa-lom, my son, my
son!
Il Samuel 18:33
4 Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the
king, and stood before him.
Am! the one woman said, O my lord, | and this woman
dwell in one house; and | was delivered of a child with her
in the house.
And it came to pass the third day after that | was
delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we
were together; there was no stranger with us in the
house, save we two in the house.
And this woman’s child died in the night; be-cause she
overlaid it.
And she arose at midnight, and took my son from
beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her
bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom.
And when 1 rose in the morning to give my child suck,
behold, it was dead: but when | had considered it in the
morning, behold, it was not my son, which 1 did bear.
And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my
son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the
dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake
before the king.
Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that
liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith. Nay;
but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living.
And the king said. Bring me a sword. And they brought
a sword before the king.
And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and
give half to the one, and half to the other,
Then spake the woman whose the living child was
unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and
she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no
wise slay it. Hut the other said, Let it be neither mine nor
thine, but divide it.
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living
child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
| Kings 3:16-27
5 He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth
him chasteneth him betimes.
Proverbs 13:24
6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is
old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
7 But when the twelfth dawn after this day appeared, the
gods who
live forever came back to Olympos all in a body and
Zeus led them; nor did Thetis forget the entreaties
of her son, but she emerged from the sea’s waves
early
in the morning and went up to the tall sky and
Olympos.
She found Kronos’ broad-browed son apart from the
others
sitting upon the highest peak of rugged Olympos.
She came and sat beside him with her left hand
embracing
his knees, but took him underneath the chin with her
right hand
and spoke in supplication to lord Zeus son of Kronos:
‘Father Zeus, if ever before in word or action
| did you favour among the immortals, now grant what
| ask for.
Now give honour to my son short-lived beyond all
other
mortals. Since even now the lord of men Agamemnon
dishonours him, who has taken away his prize and
keeps it.
Zeus of the counsels, lord of Olympos, now do him
honour.
So long put strength into the Trojans, until the
Achaians
give my son his rights, and his honour is increased
among them. '
Homer, Iliad, |, 493
8 Then tall Hektor of the shining helm answered her....
‘| Know this thing well in my heart, and my mind
knows it:
there will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish,
and Priam, and the people of Priam of the strong ash
Spear.
But it is not so much the pain to come of the Trojans
that troubles me, not even of Priam the king nor
Hekabe,
not the thought of my brothers who in their numbers
and valour
Shall drop in the dust under the hands of men who
hate them,
as troubles me the thought of you, when some bronze-
armoured
Achaian leads you off, taking away your day of liberty,
in tears; and in Argos you must work at the loom of
another,
and carry water from the spring Messeis or Hypercia,
all unwilling, but strong will be the necessity upon
you;
and some day seeing you shedding tears a man will
say of you:
"This is the wife of Hektor, who was ever the bravest
fighter
of the Trojans, breakers of horses, in the daysmwhen
they fought about Ilion."
So will one speak of you; and for you it will be yet a
fresh grief,
to be widowed of such a man who could fight off the
day of your slavery.
But may | be dead and the piled earth hide me under
before |
hear you crying and know by this that they drag you
captive.’
So speaking glorious Hektor held'out his arms to his
baby,
who shrank back to his fair-girdled nurse’s bosom
screaming, and frightened at the aspect of his own
father,
terrified as he saw the bronze and the crest with its
horse-hair,
nodding dreadfully, as he thought, from the peak of
the helmet.
Then his beloved father laughed out, and his honoured
mother,
and at once glorious Hektor lifted from his head the
helmet
and laid it in all its shining upon the ground. Then
taking up his dear son he tossed him about in his arms,
and kissed him,
and lifted his voice in prayer to Zeus and the other
immortals:
‘Zeus, and you other immortals, grant that this boy,
who is my son,
may be as | am, pre-eminent among the Trojans, great
in strength, as am I, and rule strongly over Ilion;
and some day let them say of him: "He is better by far
than his father",
as he comes in from the fighting; and let him kill his
enemy
and bring home the blooded spoils, and delight the
heart of his mother.’
So speaking he set his child again in the arms of his
beloved wife, who took him back again to her fragrant
bosomm smiling in her tears.
Homer, Iliad, Vl, 440
9 Andromache. The day of bereavement leaves a child with
no agemates to befriend him.
He bo\vs his head before everyman, his cheeks are
bewept, he
goes, needy, a boy among his father’s companions,
and tugs at this man by the mantle, that man by the
tunic,
and they pity him, and one gives him a tiny drink from
a goblet,
enough to moisten his lips, not enough to moisten his
palate.
But one whose parents are living beats him out of the
banquet
hitting him with his fists and in words also abuses him:
“Get out, you! Your father is not dining among us."
Homer, Iliad, XXII, 489
10 Athena. "But tell me this now, make it clear to me: You
must be, by your looks, Odysseus' boy? The way your
head is shaped, the fine eyes—yes, how like him! We took
meals like this together many a time, before he sailed for
Troy with all the lords of Argos in the ships. | have not
seen him since, nor has he seen me."
And thoughtfully Telemakhos replied:
"Friend, let me put it in the plainest way. My mother
says | am his son; | Know not surely. Who has known his
own engendering? | wish at least | had some happy man
as father, growing old in his house— but unknown death
and silence are the fate of him that, since you ask, they
call my father."
Homer, Odyssey, |, 213
11 Cilissa. A baby is like a beast, it does not think but you
have to nurse it, do you not, the way it wants.
For the child still in swaddling clothes can not tell us
if he is hungry or thirsty, if he needs to make water.
Children’s young insides are a law to themselves.
Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 753
12 Chorus. Amongst mortals | do assert that they who are
wholly without experience and have never had children
far surpass in happiness those who are parents. The
childless, because they have never proved whether
children grow up to be a blessing or curse to men are
removed from all share in many troubles; whilst those
who have a sweet race of children growing up in their
houses do wear away, as | perceive, their whole life
through; first with the thought how they may train them
up in virtue, next how they shall leave their sons the
means to live; and after all this 'tis far from clear whether
on good or bad children they bestow their toil. But one
last crowning woe for every mortal man | now will name;
suppose that they have found sufficient means to live,
and seen their children grow to man’s estate and walk in
virtue’s path, still if fortune so befall, comes Death and
bears the children’s bodies off to Hades. Can it be any
profit to the gods to heap upon us mortal men beside our
other woes this further grief for children lost, a grief
Surpassing all?
Euripides, Medea, 1090
13 Medea. My friends, | am resolved upon the deed; at once
will | slay my children and then leave this land, without
delaying long enough to hand them over to some more
Savage hand to butcher. Needs must they die in any case;
and since they must, | will slay them—l, the mother that
bare them. O heart of mine, steel thyself! Why do |
hesitate to do the awful deed that must be done? Come,
take the sword, thou wretched hand of mine! Take it, and
advance to the post whence starts the life of sorrow!
Away with cowardice! Give not one thought to thy babes,
how dear they are or how thou art their mother. This one
brief day forget thy children dear, and after that lament;
for though thou wilt slay them yet they were thy darlings
still.
Euripides, Medea, 1236
14 Andromache. O darling child | loved too well for
happiness, your enemies will kill you and leave your
mother forlorn.
Your own father’s nobility, where others found
protection, means your murder now. The memory of his
valor comes ill-timed for you. O bridal bed, O marriage
rites that brought me home to Hector’s house a bride, you
were unhappy in the end. | lived never thinking the baby
| had was born for butchery by Greeks, but for lordship
over all Asia’s pride of earth.
Poor child, are you crying too? Do you know what they
will do to you? Your fingers clutch my dress. What use, to
nestle like a young bird under the mother’s wing?
Hector cannot come back, not burst from underground
to save you, that spear of glory caught in the quick hand,
nor Hector’s kin, nor any strength of Phrygian arms.
Yours the sick leap head downward from the height,
the fall where none have pity, and the spirit smashed out
in death.
O last and loveliest embrace of all, O child’s sweet
fragrant body. Vanity in the end. | nursed for nothing the
swaddled baby at this mother’s breast in vain the wrack
of the labor pains and the long sickness.
Now once again, and never after this, come close to
your mother, lean against my breast and wind your arms
around my neck, and put your lips against my lips.
Euripides, Trojan Women, 740
15 /phis. In grief | ask: Why cannot mortals be
Twice young, then reach old age a second time?
If anything goes wrong at home, we right it
By afterthoughts; but not so with a life.
If youth and age came twice, a double life
Would be our lot, and we could set things right
No matter what mistakes were made. When 1 saw others
With families, | became an adorer of children
And sorely longed for some to call my own.
If | had come to this experience
With children, and known what it is for a father to lose
them,
Never would | have reached the point of woe
Where now | stand; to have started into life
A noble youth, and then be robbed of him.
And now, in my wretchedness, what shall | do?
Return to my house, to see the emptiness
Of many rooms, and a hopeless round of living?
Or shall | go where Capancus once dwelt?
What a delight that was, when | had this child!
But now she is no more—she who would draw
My check to her lips and clasp my head in her hands.
To an old father, nothing is more sweet
Than a daughter. Boys are more spirited, but their ways
Are not so tender.
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 1080
16 Orestes. 1 had two duties, two clear choices, both of
them conflicting.
My father begot me, my mother gave me birth. She
was the furrow in which his seed was sown. But without
the father, there is no birth. That being so, | thought, |
ought to stand by him, the true agent of my birth and
being, rather than with her who merely brought me up.
Euripides, Orestes, 552
17 Orestes. Tell me, what would happen
if our women decided to adopt my mother’s example,
killed their husbands and then came rushing home to
their children, exposing their breasts for pity? Why, they
could murder a man for any trifle, on any pretext. But my
"crime," as you Call it, has stopped that practice for good
or kept it from spreading.
| had every right to kill her. | hated her, and | had
every reason in the world to hate.
Gods, my poor father away from home, a soldier
fighting in war in his country’s service, and what did she
do? She took a lover and betrayed his bed!
And when she was caught, did she do the proper thing
and put herself to death?
Not my mother. No, she murdered him to save herself.
| should not invoke the gods when defending myself
on a charge of murder, but in god's name, in the name of
heaven, what was | supposed to do?
Shout hurrah by keeping still?
Euripides, Orestes, 566
18 Socrates. When my sons are grown up, | would ask you, O
my friends, to punish them; and | would have you trouble
them, as | have troubled you, if they seem to care about
riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they
pretend to be something when they are really nothing,—
then reprove them, as | have reproved you, for not caring
about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that
they are something when they are really nothing. And if
you do this, both | and my sons will have received justice
at your hands.
Plato, Apology, 41B
19 Athenian Stranger. All which a man has belongs to those
who gave him birth and brought him up, and that he
must do all that he can to minister to them, first, in his
property, secondly, in his person, and thirdly, in his soul,
in return for the endless care and travail which they
bestowed upon him of old, in the days of his infancy, and
which he is now to pay back to them when they are old
and in the extremity of their need. And all his life long he
ought never to utter, or to have uttered, an unbecoming
word to them; for of light and fleeting words the penalty
is most severe; Nemesis, the messenger of justice, is
appointed to watch over all such matters. When they are
angry’ and want to satisfy their feelings in word or deed,
he should give way to them; for a father who thinks that
he has been wronged by his son may be reasonably
expected to be very angry. At their death, the most
moderate funeral is best, neither exceeding the
customary expense, nor yet falling short of the honour
which has been usually shown by the former generation
to their parents. And let a man not forget to pay the
yearly tribute of respect to the dead, honouring them
chiefly by omitting nothing that conduces to a perpetual
remembrance of them, and giving a reasonable portion of
his fortune to the dead. Doing this, and living after this
manner, we shall receive our reward from the Gods and
those who are above us [that is, the demons]; and we
Shall spend our day’s for the most part in good hope.
Plato, Laws, IV, 717A
20 Athenian Stranger. Of all animals the boy is the most
unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of
reason in him not yet regulated; he is the most insidious,
Sharp-witted, and insubordinate of animals. Wherefore he
must be bound with many bridles; in the first place, when
he gets away from mothers and nurses, he must be under
the management of tutors on account of his childishness
and foolishness; then, again, being a freeman, he must
be controlled by teachers, no matter what they teach,
and by studies; but he is also a slave, and in that regard
any freeman who comes in his way may punish him and
his tutor and his instructor, if any of them does anything
wrong; and he who comes across him and does not inflict
upon him the punishment which he deserves, shall incur
the greatest disgrace.
Plato, Laws, VII, 8O8B
21 In the matter of food we should help our parents before
all others, since we owe our own nourishment to them,
and it is more honourable to help in this respect the
authors of our being even before ourselves; and honour
too one should give to one’s parents as one does to the
gods, but not any and every honour; for that matter one
should not give the same honour to one’s father and
one’s mother.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1165a21
22 Those are wrong who in their laws attempt to check the
loud crying and screaming of children, for these
contribute towards their growth, and, in a manner,
exercise their bodies. Straining the voice has a
strengthening effect similar to that produced by the
retention of the breath in violent exertions.
Aristotle, Politics, 1336a34
23 Begin, auspicious boy! to cast about
Thy infant eyes, and, with a smile, thy mother single
out.
Thy mother well deserves that short delight.
The nauseous qualms of ten long months and travail
to requite.
Then smile! the frowming infant’s doom is read.
No god shall croum the board, nor goddess bless the
bed.
Virgil, Eclogues, IV
24 Coroebus. Behold! Polites, one of Priam’s sons,
Pursued by Pyrrhus, there for safety runs.
Thro’ swords and foes, amaz’d and hurt, he flies
Thro’ empty courts and open galleries.
Him Pyrrhus, urging with his lance, pursues,
And often reaches, and his thrusts renews.
The youth, transfix’d, with lamentable cries.
Expires before his wretched parent’s eyes:
Whom gasping at his feet when Priam saw,
The fear of death gave place to nature’s law;
And, shaking more with anger than with age,
‘The gods,’ said he, ‘requite thy brutal rage!
As sure they will, barbarian, sure they must,
If there be gods in heav’n, and gods be just—
Who tak’st in wrongs an insolent delight;
With a son’s death t’ infect a father’s sight.
Virgil, Aeneid, 11
25 Aeneas. Scarce had he said, when, on our left, we hear
A peal of rattling thunder roll in air:
There shot a streaming lamp along the sky.
Which on the winged lightning seem’d to fly;
From o’er the roof the blaze began to move.
And, trailing, vanish’d in th' Idaean grove.
It swept a path in heav’n, and shone a guide,
Then in a steaming stench of sulphur died.
“The good old man with suppliant hands implor’d
The gods’ protection, and their star ador’d.
‘Now, now,’ said he, my son, no more delay!
| yield, | follow where Heav’n shews the way....
‘Haste, my dear father, (’tis no time to wait,)
And load my shoulders with a willing freight.
Whate’er befalls, your life shall be my care;
One death, or one deliv’rance, we will share.
My hand shall lead our little son; and you,
My faithful consort, shall our steps pursue."
Virgil, Aeneid, 11
26 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved
Son, in whom | am well pleased.
Matthew 3:17
27 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast
of the passover.
And when he was twelve years old, they went up to
Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.
And when they had fulfilled the days, as they
returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and
Joseph and his mother knew not of it.
But they, supposing him to have been in the company,
went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their
kinsfolk and acquaintance.
And when they found him not, they turned back again
to Jerusalem, seeking him.
And it came to pass, that after three days they found
him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors,
both hearing them, and asking them questions.
And all that heard him were astonished at his
understanding and answers.
And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his
mother said unto him. Son, why hast thou thus dealt with
us? behold, thy father and | have sought thee sorrowing.
And he said unto them. How is it that ye sought me?
wist ye not that | must be about my Father’s business?
And they understood not the saying which he spake
unto them.
And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth,
and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these
sayings in her heart.
Luke 2:41-51
28 And he said, A certain man had two sons:
And the younger of them said to his father. Father,
give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he
divided unto them his living.
And not many days after the younger son gathered all
together, and took his journey into a far country, and
there wasted his substance with riotous living.
And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty
famine in that land; and he began to be in want.
And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that
country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.
And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks
that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
And when he came to himself, he said. How many
hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to
Spare, and | perish with hunger!
| will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him,
Father, | have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was
yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had
compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed
him.
And the son said unto him. Father, | have sinned
against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy
to be called thy son.
But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best
robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and
shoes on his feet:
And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us
eat, and be merry:
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was
lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and
drew nigh to the house, he heard mu-sick and dancing.
And he called one of the servants, and asked what
these things meant.
And he said unto him. Thy brother is come; and thy
father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath
received him safe and sound.
And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore
came his father out, and intreated him.
And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many
years do | serve thee, neither transgressed | at any time
thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid,
that | might make merry with my friends:
But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath
devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him
the fatted calf.
And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and
all that | have is thine.
It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was
lost, and is found.
Luke 15:11-32
29 The sayings of Themistocles, who, when his son was
making many demands of him by means of his mother,
said, "O woman, the Athenians govern the Greeks; |
govern the Athenians, but you govern me, and your son
governs you; so let him use his power sparingly, since,
simple as he is, he can do more than all the Greeks
together."
Plutarch, Marcus Cato
30 As soon as he [Cato] had a son born, though he had
never such urgent business upon his hands, unless it
were some public matter, he would be by when his wife
washed it and dressed it in its swaddling clothes. For she
herself suckled it; nay, she often, too, gave her breast to
her servants’ children, to produce, by suckling the same
milk, a kind of natural love in them to her son. When he
began to come to years of discretion, Cato himself would
teach him to read, although he had a servant, a very
good grammarian, called Chilo, who taught many others;
but he thought not fit, as he himself said, to have his son
reprimanded by a Slave, or pulled, it may be, by the cars
when found tardy in his lesson: nor would he have him
owe to a servant the obligation of so great a thing as his
learning; he himself, therefore (as we were saying),
taught him his grammar, law, and his gymnastic
exercises. Nor did he only show him, too, how to throw a
dart, to fight in armour, and to ride, but to box also and to
endure both heat and cold, and to swim over the most
rapid and rough rivers. He says, likewise, that he wrote
histories, in large characters, with his own hand, that so
his son, without stirring out of the house, might learn to
know' about his countrymen and forefathers; nor did he
less abstain from speaking anything obscene before his
son, than if it had been in the presence of the sacred
virgins, called vestals.
Plutarch, Marcus Cato
31 After the birth of our four sons you yearned for a
daughter, and | seized the opportunity of giving her your
dear name: | know that she was precious to you. Peculiar
poignancy attaches to tenderness for children when their
presence is altogether welcome and completely
untainted by ill will and reproach. The child herself
possessed a marvelous cheeriness of temper and
gentleness, and her responsiveness to love and
eagerness to please evoked not only pleasure but an
appreciation of human goodness. She would invite her
nurse to offer her breast not only to other infants but
even to furnishings and toys in which she took delight. It
was as if, out of humane sensibilities, she invited them to
her own table, to share in the good things she had; what
was most delightful to her she wished all who pleased her
to enjoy.
| cannot see, my dear wife, why these and similar
qualities which delighted us when she was alive should
now distress and confound us when we bring them to
mind. Rather do | fear lest we lose those memories along
with our grief, ... In general, nature avoids everything
that causes distress. But in the case of our child, in the
degree that she proved to us a thing most lovable to
fondle and look at and hear, so the memory of her must
abide with us and become part of us, and it will bring usa
greater quantity and variety of joy than of sorrow.
Plutarch, Consolation to His Wife
32 So, shun damnable deeds. For this there’s at least one
good reason—
Lest our children repeat the crimes we have taught
them. We all
Are easily led, too prone to imitate wicked behavior...
To a child is due the greatest respect: in whatever
Nastiness you prepare, don’t despise the years of your
children,
But let your infant son dissuade you from being a
sinner.
For if, in days to come, he earns the wrath of the
censor,
Being a man like you not only in body and features.
But also the son of your ways, a walker in all of your
footsteps,
Treading deeper in vice, you will—oh, of course!—be
indignant.
Rail with bitter noise, and make a new will. That will
teach him.
Yet what makes you assume the father's frown, and
the father's
Freedom of speech and act, when you behave worse,
as an old man,
Than he ever did, and the windy cupping-glass
searches
Vainly around your head for brains that it cannot
discover?
Juvenal, Satire XIV
33 Once a child is born, it is no longer in our power not to
love it nor care about it.
Epictetus, Discourses, |, 23
34 Throw between yourself and your son a little estate, and
you will know how soon he will wish to bury you and how
soon you wish your son to die.
Epictetus, Discourses, Il, 22
35 My mother (St. Monica] would not be satisfied but urged
him [the bishop] with repeated entreaties and floods of
tears to see me and discuss with me. He, losing patience,
said: "Go your way; as Sure as you live, it is impossible
that the son of these tears should perish." In the
conversations we had afterwards, she often said that she
had accepted this answer as if it had sounded from
heaven.
Augustine, Confessions, I/l, 12
36 What a gulf there is between the restraint of the
marriage-covenant entered into for the sake of children
and the mere bargain of a lustful love, where if children
come they come unwanted— though when they are born,
they compel our love.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 2
37 Why | left the one country and went to the other, You
Knew, O God, but You did not tell either me or my mother.
She indeed was in dreadful grief at my going and
followed me right to the seacoast. There she clung to me
passionately, determined that | should either go back
home with her or take her to Rome with me, but |
deceived her with the pretence that | had a friend whom |
did not want to leave until he had sailed off with a fair
wind. Thus | lied to my mother, and such a mother.
Augustine, Confessions, V, 8
38 When the day was approaching on which she [St. Monica]
was to depart this life—a day that You knew though we
did not—it came about, as | believe by Your secret
arrangement, that she and | stood alone leaning ina
window, which looked inwards to the garden within the
house where we were staying, at Ostia on the Tiber; for
there we were away from everybody, resting for the sea-
voyage from the weariness of our long journey by land.
There we talked together, she and | alone, in deep joy;
and forgetting the things that were behind and looking
forward to those that were before, we were discussing in
the presence of Truth, which You are, what the eternal life
of the saints could be like, which eye has not seen nor
ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man. But
with the mouth of our heart we panted for the high
waters of Your fountain, the fountain of the life which is
with You: that being sprinkled from that fountain
according to our capacity, we might in some sense
meditate upon so great a matter.
And our conversation had brought us to this point,
that any pleasure whatsoever of the bodily senses, in any
brightness whatsoever of corporeal light, seemed to us
not worth of comparison with the pleasure of that eternal
Light, not worthy even of mention. Rising as our love
flamed upward towards that Selfsame, we passed in
review the various levels of bodily things, up to the
heavens themselves, whence sun and moon and stars
shine upon this earth. And higher still we soared, thinking
in our minds and speaking and marvelling at Your works:
and so we came to our own souls, and went beyond them
to come at last to that region of richness unending, where
You feed Israel forever with the food of truth.
Augustine, Confessions, IX, 10
39 When her [St. Monica’s] illness was close to its end,
meeting with exprcssions of endearment such services as
1 rendered, she called me a dutiful loving son, and said in
the great affection of her love that she had never heard
from my mouth any harsh or reproachful word addressed
to herself. But what possible comparison was there, O my
God who made us, between the honour | showed her and
the service she had rendered me?
Augustine, Confessions, IX, 12
40 A man’s children are more lovable to him than his father.
,.. First, because parents love their children as being
part of themselves; but the father is not part of his son,
so that the love of a father for his children, is more like a
man’s love for himself. Secondly, because parents know
better that so and so is their child than vice versa.
Thirdly, because children are nearer to their parents, as
being part of them than their parents are to them to
whom they stand in the relation of a principle. Fourthly,
because parents have loved longer, for the father begins
to love his child at once, while the child begins to love his
father after a lapse of time; and the longer love lasts, the
stronger it is.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 26, 9
41 Strictly speaking, ,. . the father should be loved more
than the mother. For father and mother are loved as
principles of our natural origin. Now the father is principle
in a more excellent way than the mother, because he is
the active principle, while the mother is a passive and
material principle. Consequently, strictly speaking, the
father is to be loved more.
Aquinas, Summa TTieologica, II-ll, 26, 10
42 You fathers and you mothers fond, also.
If you have children, be it one or two,
Yours is the burden of their wise guidance
The while they are within your governance.
Beware that not from your own lax living,
Or by your negligence in chastening
They fall and perish; for | dare well say.
If that should chance you'll dearly have to pay.
Under a shepherd soft and negligent
Full many a sheep and lamb by wolf is rent.
Chaucer, Canterbuly Tales: Physician’s Tale
43 May not these fathers and mothers, think you, be
sorrowful and heavy-hearted, when they see an unknown
fellow, a vagabond stranger, a barbarous lout, a rude cur,
rotten, fleshless, putrified, scraggy, boily, botchy, poor, a
forlorn caitiff, and miserable sneak, by an open rapt,
Snatch away before their own eyes their so fair, delicate,
neat, well-behavioured, richly provided for and healthful
daughters, on whose breeding and education they had
spared no cost nor charges, by bringing them up in an
honest discipline to all the honourable and virtuous
employments becoming one of their sex, descended of a
noble parentage, hoping by those commendable and
industrious means in an opportune and convenient time
to bestow them on the worthy sons of their well-
deserving neighbours and ancient friends, who had
nourished, entertained, taught, instructed, and schooled
their children with the same care and solicitude, to make
them matches fit to attain to the felicity of a so happy
marriage, that from them might issue an offspring and
progeny no less heirs to the laudable endowments and
exquisite qualifications of their parents, whom they every
way resemble, than to their personal and real estates,
moveables and inheritances? How doleful, trist, and
plangorous would such a sight and pageantry prove unto
them?
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 48
44 |f there is any truly natural law, that is to say, any instinct
that is seen universally and permanently imprinted in
both the animals and ourselves (which is not beyond
dispute), | may say that in my opinion, after the care
every animal has for its own preservation and the
avoidance of what is harmful, the affection that the
begetter has for his begotten ranks second. And because
Nature seems to have recommended it to us with a view
to extending and advancing the successive parts of this
machine of hers, it is no wonder if, turning backward, the
affection of children for their fathers is not so great.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
45 A true and well-regulated affection should be born and
increase with the knowledge children give us of
themselves; and then, if they are worthy of it, the natural
propensity going along with reason, we should cherish
them with a truly paternal love; and we should likewise
pass judgment on them if they are otherwise, always
submitting to reason, notwithstanding the force of nature.
It is very often the reverse; and most commonly we feel
more excited over the stamping, the games, and the
infantile tricks of our children than we do later over their
grown-up actions, as if we had loved them for our
pastime, like monkeys, not like men. And some supply
toys very liberally for their childhood, who tighten up at
the slightest expenditure they need when they are of
age. Indeed it seems that the jealousy we feel at seeing
them appear in the world and enjoy it when we are about
to leave it makes us more stingy and tight with them; it
vexes us that they are treading on our heels, as if to
solicit us to leave. And if we had that to fear, then since
in the nature of things they cannot in truth either be or
live except at the expense of our being and our life, we
should not have meddled with being fathers.
As for me, | think it is cruelty and injustice not to
receive them into a share and association in our goods,
and as companions in the understanding of our domestic
affairs, when they are capable of it, and not to cut down
and restrict our own comforts in order to provide for
theirs, since we have begotten them to that end. It is an
injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should
enjoy alone, m a comer of his hearth, possessions that
would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of
many children, and let them meanwhile, for lack of
means, lose their best years without making progress in
public service and the knowledge of men.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
46 It is... wrong and foolish to prohibit children who have
come of age from being familiar with their fathers, and to
prefer to maintain an austere and disdainful gravity
toward them, hoping thereby to keep them in fear and
obedience. For that is a very futile farce, which makes
fathers annoying to their children and, what is worse,
ridiculous. They have in their hands youth and vigor, and
consequently the u-ind and favor of the world behind
them; and they receive with mockery these fierce and
tyrannical looks from men who have no blood left in
either heart or veins—real scarecrows in a hemp field.
Even if | could make myself feared, | would much rather
make myself loved.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
47 My father loved to build up Montaigne, where he was
born; and in all this administration of domestic affairs, 1
love to follow his example and his rules, and shall bind
my successors to them as much as | can. If | could do
better for him, | would. | glory in the fact that his will still
operates and acts through me. God forbid that | should
allow to fail in my hands any semblance of life that |
could restore to so good a father. Whenever | have taken
a hand in completing some old bit of wall and repairing
some badly constructed building, it has certainly been
out of regard more to his intentions than to my own
satisfaction. And 1 blame my indolence that | have not
gone further toward completing the things he began so
handsomely in his house; all the more because | have a
good chance of being the last of my race to possess it,
and the last to put a hand to it.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
48 Launcelot. It is a wise father
that knows his own child.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, II, ti, 80
49 Ghost. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
Hamlet. O God!
Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Ham. Murder!
Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Ham. Haste me to know'’t, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost. | find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v, 22
50 Hamlet. Now, mother, what’s the matter?
Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Ham. Mother, you Itavc my father much offended.
Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Ham Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet!
Ham. What s the matter now?
Have you forgot me?
Ham. No, by the rood, not so:
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;
And— Would it were not so!—you are my mother.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 8
51 Lear. Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom; and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen’d cravvl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,
And you, our no less loving son of Albany,
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now. The Princes, France and
Burgundy,
Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love,
Long in our court have made their amorous so-journ,
And here are to be answer’d. Tell me, my daughters'—
Since now we will divest us, both of rule.
Interest of territory, cares of state—
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
Shakespeare, Lear, 1, i, 38
52 Cordelia. Unhappy that | am, | cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. | love your Majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
Lear. How, how, Cordelia! mend your speech a little.
Lest it may mar your fortunes.
Cor. Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me, |
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when | shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Sure, | shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.
Lear. But goes thy heart with this?
Cor. Ay, good my lord.
Lear. So young, and so untender?
Cor. So young, my lord, and true.
Lear. Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower.
Shakespeare, Lear, I, 1, 93
53 Lear. Hear, Nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
Shakespeare, Lear, I, iv, 297
54 Doctor. Please you, draw near. Louder the music there!
Cordelia. O my dear father! Restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!
Kent. Kind and dear Princess!
Cor. Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Had challenged pity of them. Was this a face
To be opposed against the warring winds?
To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke
Of quick, cross lightning? to watch—poor perdu! —
With this thin helm? Mine enemy’s dog.
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn
In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!
"Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once
Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him.
Doct. Madam, do you; ’tis fittest.
Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?
Lear. You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but | am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
Cor. Sir, do you know me?
Lear. You are a spirit, | know. When did you die?
Cor. Still, still, far wide!
Doct. He’s scarce awake. Let him alone awhile.
Lear. Where have | been? Where am 1? Pair daylight?
lam mightily abused. | should e’en die with pity,
To see another thus. | Know not what to say.
| will not swear these are my hands. Let’s see;
| feel this pin prick. Would | were assured
Of my condition!
Cor. O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o’er me.
No, sir. you must not kneel.
Lear. Pray, do not mock me.
lama very foolish fond old man.
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
| fear | am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks | should know you, and know this man;
Yet | am doubtful; for | am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill | have
Remembers not these garments; nor | know not
Where | did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as | ama man, | think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
Cor. And sol am,|!am.
Lear. Be your tears wet? yes, ‘faith. | pray, weep not.
If you have poison for me, | will drink it.
| know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as | do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause, they have not.
Cor. No cause, no cause.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, vii, 25
55 Pericles. A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear;
No light, no fire; the unfriendly elements
Forgot thee utterly; nor have | time
To give thee hallow’d to thy grave, but straight
Must cast thee, scarcely coffin’d, in the ooze,
Where, fora monument upon thy bones.
And e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whale
And humming water must o’erwhelm thy corpse,
Lying with simple shells. O Lychorida,
Bid Nestor bring me spices, ink, and paper,
My casket and my jewels; and bid Nicander
Bring me the satin coffer. Lay the babe
Upon the pillow. Hie thee, whiles | say
A priestly farewell to her.
Shakespeare, Pericles, Il, |, 57
56 Leontes. Looking on the lines
Of my boy’s face, methoughts | did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech’d,
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled.
Lest it should bite its master, and so prove,
As ornaments oft do, too dangerous.
How like, methought, | then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman.
Shakespeare, Winters Tale, I, ti, 153
57 Sir, reply’d Don Quixote, Children are Flesh and Blood of
their Parents, and, whether good or bad, are to be
cherish’d as part of ourselves. 'Tic the Duty of a Father to
train ’em up from their tenderest Years in the Paths of
Vertue, in good Discipline and Christian Principles, that
when they advance in Years they may become the Staff
and Support of their Parents Age, and the Glory of their
Posterity. But as for forcing them to this or that Study, ’tis
a thing | don’t so well approve. Persuasion is all, | think,
that is proper in such a case; especially when they are so
Fortunate as to be above studying for Bread, as having
Parents that can provide for their future Subsistence,
they ought in my Opinion to be indulged in the Pursuit of
that Science to which their own Genius gives them the
most Inclination.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 16
58 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy:
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and | thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O could | lose all father now! for why
Will man lament the state he should envy,
To have so soon ’scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”
Jonson, On My First Son
59 The joys of parents arc secret; and so are their griefs and
fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter
the other. Children sweeten labours; but they make
misfortunes more bitter. They increase the cares of life;
but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The
perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but
memory, merit, and noble works are proper to men. And
surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations
have proceeded from childless men; which have sought
to express the images of their minds, where those of their
bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in
them that have no posterity. They that arc the first raisers
of their houses arc most indulgent towards their children;
beholding them as the continuance not only of their kind
but of their work; and so both children and creatures.
Bacon, Of Parents and Children
60 There is also no need to distinguish as many kinds of love
as there are diverse objects which we may love; for, to
take an example, although the passions which an
ambitious man has for glory, a miser for money, a
drunkard for wine, a brutal man for a woman whom he
desires to violate, a man of honour for his friend or
mistress, and a good father for his children, may be very
different, still, inasmuch as they participate in love, they
are similar. But the four first only have love for the
possession of the objects to which their passion relates,
and do not have any for the objects themselves, for which
they only have desire mingled with other particular
passions. But the love which a good father has for his
children is so pure that he desires to have nothing from
them, and does not wish to possess them otherwise than
he does, nor to be united with them more closely than he
already is. For, considering them as replicas of himself, he
seeks their good as his own, or even with greater care,
because, in setting before himself that he or they forma
whole of which he is not the best part, he often prefers
their interests to his, and does not fear losing himself in
order to save them.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, LXXXII
61 Dominion is acquired two ways: by generation and by
conquest. The right of dominion by generation is that
which the parent hath over his children, and is called
paternal. And is not so derived from the generation, as if
therefore the parent had dominion over his child because
he begat him, but from the child’s consent, either express
or by other sufficient arguments declared. For as to the
generation, God hath ordained to man a helper, and
there be always two that are equally parents: the
dominion therefore over the child should belong equally
to both, and he be equally subject to both, which is
impossible; for no man can obey two masters. And
whereas some have attributed the dominion to the man
only, as being of the more excellent sex, they misreckon
in it. For there is not always that difference of strength or
prudence between the man and the woman as that the
right can be determined without war. In Commonwealths
this controversy is decided by the civil law: and for the
most part, but not always, the sentence is in favour of the
father, because for the most part Commonwealths have
been erected by the fathers, not by the mothers of
families. But the question lieth now in the state of mere
nature where there are supposed no laws of matrimony,
no laws for the education of children, but the law of
nature and the natural inclination of the sexes, one to
another, and to their children...
If there be no contract, the dominion is in the mother.
For in the condition of mere nature where there are no
matrimonial laws, it cannot be known who is the father
unless it be declared by the mother; and therefore the
right of dominion over the child dependeth on her will,
and is consequently hers. Again, seeing the infant is first
in the power of the mother, so as she may either nourish
or expose it; if She nourish it, it oweth its life to the
motherland is therefore obliged to obey her rather than
any other; and by consequence the dominion over it is
hers. But if she expose it, and another find and nourish it,
the dominion is in him that nourished it. For it ought to
obey him by whom it is preserved, because preservation
of life being the end for which one man becomes subject
to another, every man is supposed to promise obedience
to him in whose power it is to save or destroy him.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 20
62 And because the first instruction of children dependeth
on the care of their parents, it is necessary that they
should be obedient to them whilst they are under their
tuition; and not only so, but that also afterwards, as
gratitude requireth, they acknowledge the benefit of their
education by external signs of honour. To which end they
are to be taught that originally the father of every man
was also his sovereign lord, with power over him of life
and death; and that the fathers of families, when by
instituting a Commonwealth they resigned that absolute
power, yet it was never intended they should lose the
honour due unto them for their education. For to
relinquish such right was not necessary to the institution
of sovereign power; nor would there be any reason why
any man should desire to have children, or take the care
to nourish and instruct them, if they were afterwards to
have no other benefit from them than from other men.
And this accordeth with the fifth Commandment.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 30
63 Manoa. His ransom, if my whole inheritance
May compass it, shall willingly be paid
And numberd down: much rather | shall chuse
To live the poorest in my Tribe, then richest.
And he in that calamitous prison left.
No, | am fixt not to part hence without him.
For his redemption all my Patrimony,
If need be, | am ready to forgo
And quit; not wanting him, | shall want nothing.
Chorus. Fathers are wont to lay up for thir Sons,
Thou for thy Son art bent to lay out all;
Sons wont to nurse thir Parents in old age,
Thou in old age car’st how to nurse thy Son,
Made older then thy age through eye-sight lost.
Man. \t shall be my delight to tend his eyes.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1476
64 If parents carry it lovingly towards their children, mixing
their mercies with loving rebukes, and their loving
rebukes with fatherly and motherly compassions, they are
more likely to save their children than by being churlish
and severe towards them.
Bunyan, Life and Death of Mr. Badman
65 The power, then, that parents have over their children
arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take
care of their offspring during the imperfect state of
childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of
their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place
and ease them of that trouble, is what the children want,
and the parents are bound to. For God having given man
an understanding to direct his actions, has allowed hima
freedom of will and liberty of acting, as properly
belonging thereunto within the bounds of that law he is
under. But whilst he is in an estate wherein he has no
understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to
have any 'Mil of his own to follow. He that understands for
him must will for him too; he must prescribe to his will,
and regulate his actions, but when he comes to the estate
that made his father a free man, the son is a free man
too.
Locke, II Civil Government, VI, 58
66 But though there be a time when a child comes to be as
free from subjection to the will and command of his father
as he himself is free from subjection to the will of
anybody else, and they are both under no other restraint
but that which is common to them both, whether it be the
law of Nature or municipal law of their country, yet this
freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he
ought, by the law of God and Nature, to pay his parents,
God having made the parents instruments in His great
design of continuing the race of mankind and the
occasions of life to their children. As He hath laid on them
an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their
offspring, so He has laid on the children a perpetual
obligation of honouring their parents, which, containing
in it an inward esteem and reverence to be shown by all
outward expressions, ties up the child from anything that
may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger the
happiness or life of those from whom he received his, and
engages him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance,
and comfort of those by whose means he entered into
being and has been made capable of any enjoyments of
life. From this obligation no state, no freedom, can
absolve children.
Locke, II Civil Government, VI, 66
67 Those... that intend ever to govern their children should
begin it whilst they are very little, and look that they
perfectly comply with the will of their parents. Would you
have your son obedient to you when past a child, be sure
then to establish the authority of a father as soon as he is
capable of submission, and can understand in whose
power he is. If you would have him stand in awe of you,
imprint it in his infancy; and as he approaches more to a
man, admit him nearer to your familiarity; so shall you
have him your obedient subject (as is fit) whilst he is a
child, and your affectionate friend when he is a man. For
methinks they mightily misplace the treatment due to
their children, who are indulgent and familiar when they
are little, but severe to them, and keep them at a
distance when they are grown up: for liberty and
indulgence can do no good to children; their want of
judgment makes them stand in need of restraint and
discipline; and on the contrary, imperiousness and
severity is but an ill way of treating men who have reason
of their own to guide them; unless you have a mind to
make your children, when grown up, weary of you, and
secretly to say within themselves, "When will you die,
Father?"
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 40
68 Their notions [the Lilliputians] relating to the duties of
parents and children differ extremely from ours. For, since
the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the
great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue
the species; the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men
and women are joined together like other animals, by the
motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness
towards their young, proceedeth from the like natural
principle: for which reason they will never allow, that a
child is under any obligation to his father for begetting
him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world;
which, considering the miseries of human life, was
neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents,
whose thougNts in their love-encounters were otherwise
employed.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
69 "Pray, brother, have you not observed something very
extraordinary in my niece lately?"—"No, not I," answered
Western: "is anything the matter with the girl?" —"I think
there is," replied she; "and something of much
consequence too."— "Why, she doth not complain of
anything," cries Western; "and she hath had the small-
pox." — "Brother," returned she, "girls are liable to other
distempers besides the small-pox, and sometimes
possibly to much worse." Here Western interrupted her
with much earnestness, and begged her, if anything ailed
his daughter, to acquaint him immediately; adding, "she
knew he loved her more than his own soul, and that he
would send to the world’s end for the best physician to
her." "Nay, nay," answered she, smiling, "the distemper is
not so terrible: but | believe, brother, you are convinced |
know the world, and | promise you | was never more
deceived in my life, if my niece be not most desperately
in love."—"How! in love!" cries Western, in a passion; "in
love, without acquainting me! I'll disinherit her; I’ll turn
her out of doors, stark naked, without a farthing. Is all my
kindness vor ‘ur, and vondness o’ur come to this, to fall in
love without asking me leave?"— "But you will not,"
answered Mrs. Western, "turn this daughter, whom you
love better than your own soul, out of doors, before you
know whether you shall approve her choice. Suppose she
should have fixed on the very person whom you yourself
would wish, | hope you would not be angry then?" — "No,
no," cries Western, "that would make a difference. If she
marries the man | would ha’ her, she may love whom she
pleases, | shan’t trouble my head about that."
Fielding, Tom Jones, VI, 2
70 We now return to take leave of Mr. Jones and Sophia, who,
within two days after their marriage, attended Mr.
Western and Mr. Allworthy into the country. Western hath
resigned his family seat, and the greater part of his
estate, to his son-in-law, and hath retired to a lesser
house of his in another part of the country, which is
better for hunting. Indeed, he is often as a visitant with
Mr. Jones, who, as well as his daughter, hath an infinite
delight in doing everything in their power to please him.
And this desire of theirs is attended with such success,
that the old gentleman declares he was never happy in
his life till now. He hath here a parlor and ante-chamber
to himself, where he gets drunk with whom he pleases:
and his daughter is still as ready as formerly to play to
him whenever he desires it; for Jones hath assured her
that, as, next to pleasing her, one of his highest
satisfactions is to contribute to the happiness of the old
man; so, the great duty which she expresses and
performs to her father, renders her almost equally dear to
him with the love which she bestows on himself.
Sophia hath already produced him two fine children, a
boy and a girl, of whom the old gentleman is so fond, that
he spends much of his time in the nursery, where he
declares the tattling of his little grand-daughter, who is
above a year and a half old, is sweeter music than the
finest cry of dogs in England.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XVIII, 13
71 Illicit conjunctions contribute but little to the propagation
of the species. The father, who is under a natural
obligation to nourish and educate his children, is not then
fixed; and the mother, with whom the obligation remains,
finds a thousand obstacles from shame, remorse, the
constraint of her sex, and the rigour of laws; and besides,
she generally wants the means.
Women who have submitted to public prostitution
cannot have the convenience of educating their children:
the trouble of education is incompatible with their
station; and they are so corrupt that they can have no
protection from the law.
It follows from all this that public continence is
naturally connected with the propagation of the species.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIII, 2
72 | wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of
them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had
minded what they were about when they begot me; had
they duly considered how much depended upon what
they were then doing; —that not only the production of a
rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the
happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps
his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught
tlicy knew to the contrary’, even the fortunes of his whole
house might take their turn from the humours and
dispositions which were then uppermost;— Had they duly
weighed and considered all this, and proceeded
accordingly,—l am verily persuaded | should have made a
quite different figure in the world, from that in which the
reader is likely to see me.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, I, 1
73 Alack-o-day, replied the Corporal, brightening up his face
—your honour knows | have neither wife or child—I can
have no sorrows in this world.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, IV, 4
74 1 cannot recall to mind, without the sweetest emotions,
the memory of that virtuous citizen, to whom | owe my
being, and by whom | was often instructed, in my infancy,
in the respect which is due to you. | see him still, living by
the work of his hands, and feeding his soul on the
sublimest truths. | see the works of Tacitus, Plutarch, and
Grotius lying before him in the midst of the tools of his
trade. At his side stands his dear son, receiving, alas with
too little profit, the tender instructions of the best of
fathers. But, if the follies of youth made me for a while
forget his wise lessons, | have at length the happiness to
be conscious that, whatever propensity one may have to
vice, it is not easy for an education, with which love has
mingled, to be entirely thrown away.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Dedication
75 But is it not a thousand times more common and more
dangerous for paternal rights openly to offend against
humanity? How many talents have not been thrown
away, and inclinations forced, by the unwise constraint of
fathers? How many men, who would have distinguished
themselves in a fitting estate, have died dishonoured and
wretched in another for which they had no taste! How
many happy, but unequal, marriages have been broken
or disturbed, and how many chaste waves have been
dishonoured, by an order of things continually in
contradiction with that of nature! How many good and
virtuous husbands and wives are reciprocally punished
for having been ill-assorted! How many young and
unhappy victims of their parents’ avarice plunge into
vice, or pass their melancholy days in tears, groaning in
the indissoluble bonds which their hearts repudiate and
gold alone has formed! Fortunate sometimes are those
whose courage and virtue remove them from life before
inhuman violence makes them spend it in crime or in
despair. Forgive me, father and mother, whom | shall ever
regret: my complaint embitters your griefs; but would
they might be an eternal and terrible example to every
one who dares, in the name of nature, to violate her most
sacred right.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Appendix
76 | stated to him this case:—"Suppose a man has a
daughter who he knows has been seduced, but her
misfortune is concealed from the world? should he keep
her in his house? Would he not, by doing so, be accessary
to imposition? And, perhaps, a worthy, unsuspecting man
might come and marry this woman, unless the father
inform him of the truth." johnson. "Sir, he is accessary to
no imposition. His daughter is in his house; and if a man
courts her, he takes his chance. If a friend, or, indeed, if
any man asks his opinion whether he should marry her,
he ought to advise him against it, without telling why,
because his real opinion is then required. Or. if he has
other daughters who know of her frailly, he ought not to
keep her in his house. You are to consider the slate of life
is this; we are to judge of one another’s characters as well
aS we can; and a man is not bound, in honesty or honour,
to tell us the faults of his daughter or of himself. A man
who has debauched his friend’s daughter is not obliged
to say to every body— ‘Take care of me; don’t let me into
your houses without suspicion. | once debauched a
friend’s daughter. | may debauch yours.' "
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 5, 1776)
77 | said, | disliked the custom which some people had of
bringing their children into company, because it ina
manner forced us to pay foolish compliments to please
their parents." You are right, Sir. We may be excused for
not caring much about other people’s children, for there
are many who care very little about their own children. It
may be observed, that men, who from being engaged in
business, or from their course in life in whatever way,
seldom see their children, do not care much about them. |
myself should not have had much fondness for a child of
my own." Mrs. Thrale. "Nay, Sir, how can you talk Johnson
"At least, | never wished to have a child."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr 10, t776)
78 | hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when |
approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this
word 1 do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry,
without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit
of chivalry, and is interwoven with the texture of French
manners. | understand by this passion the union of
desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a
single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex,
and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the
sole happiness of our being. | need not blush at
recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love
was disappointed of success, | am rather proud that | was
once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted
sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle
Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and
talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her
family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France,
had preferred her religion to her country. The profession
of her father did not extinguish the moderation and
philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a
small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of
minister of Grassy, in the mountains that separate the
Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the
solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal,
and even learned, education on his only daughter. She
surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences
and languages; and in her short visits to some relations
at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of
Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal
applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my
curiosity; | saw and loved. ... At Crassy and Lausanne |
indulged my dream of felicity: but on my return to
England, | soon discovered that my father would not hear
of this strange alliance, and that, without his consent, |
was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful
struggle | yielded to my fate; | sighed as a lover, | obeyed
as ason; my wound was insensibly healed by time,
absence, and the habits of a new life.
Gibbon, Autobiography
79 From the duty of man towards himself—that is, towards
the humanity in his own person—there thus arises a
personal right on the part of the members of the opposite
sexes, aS persons, to acquire one another really and
reciprocally by marriage. In like manner, from the fact of
procreation in the union thus constituted, there follows
the duty of preserving and rearing children as the
products of this union. Accordingly, children, as persons,
have, at the same time, an original congenital right—
distinguished from mere hereditary right—to be reared by
the care of their parents till they are capable of
maintaining themselves; and this provision becomes
immediately theirs by law, without any particular juridical
act being required to determine it.
For what is thus produced is a person, and it is
impossible to think of a being endowed with personal
freedom as produced merely by a physical process. And
hence, in the practical relation, it is quite a correct and
even a necessary idea to regard the act of generation as
a process by which a person is brought without his
consent into the world and placed in it by the responsible
free will of others. This act, therefore, attaches an
obligation to the parents to make their children—as far as
their power goes—contented with the condition thus
acquired. Hence parents cannot regard their child as, ina
manner, a thing of their own making; for a being
endowed with freedom cannot be so regarded. Nor,
consequently, have they a right to destroy it as if it were
their own property, or even to leave it to chance; because
they have brought a being into the world who becomes in
fact a citizen of the world, and they have placed that
being in a state which they cannot be left to treat with
indifference, even according to the natural conceptions of
right.
Kant, Science of Right, 28
80 Mr. Bennet. An unhappy alternative is before you,
Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of
your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you
do not marry Mr. Collins, and | will never see you again if
you do.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, XX
81 Children have the right to maintenance and education at
the expense of the family’s common capital. The right of
the parents to the service as service of their children is
based upon and is restricted by the common task of
looking after the family generally. Similarly, the right of
the parents over the wishes of their children is
determined by the object in view—discipline and
education. The punishment of children does not aim at
justice as such; the aim is more subjective and moral in
character, i.e. to deter them from exercising a freedom
still in the toils of nature and to lift the universal into
their consciousness and will.
Children are potentially free and their life directly
embodies nothing save potential freedom. Consequently
they are not things and cannot be the property either of
their parents or others. In respect of his relation to the
family, the child’s education has the positive aim of
instilling ethical principles into him in the form of an
immediate feeling for which differences are not yet
explicit, so that thus equipped with the foundation of an
ethical life, his heart may live its early years in love, trust,
and obedience. In respect of the same relation, this
education has the negative aim of raising children out of
the instinctive, physical, level on which they are
Originally, to self-subsistence and freedom of personality
and so to the level on which they have power to leave the
natural unity of the family.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 174-175
82 The relation of love between husband and wife is in itself
not objective, because even if their feeling is their
substantial unity, still this unity has no objectivity. Such
an objectivity parents first acquire in their children, in
whom they can see objectified the entirety of their union.
In the child, a mother loves its father and he its mother.
Both have their love objectified for them in the child.
While in their goods their unity is embodied only in an
external thing, in their children it is embodied in a
Spiritual one in which the parents are loved and which
they love.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 173
83 As a child, man must have lived with his parents
encircled by their love and trust, and rationality must
appear in him as his very own subjectivity. In the early
years it is education by the mother especially which is
important, since ethical principles must be implanted in
the child in the form of feeling. It is noteworthy that on
the whole children love their parents less than their
parents love them. The reason for this is that they’ are
gradually increasing in strength, and are learning to
stand on their own feet, and so are leaving their parents
behind them. The parents, on the other hand, possess in
their children the objective embodiment of their union.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 175
84 When men live more for the remembrance of what has
been than for the care of what is, and when they are more
given to attend to what their ancestors thought than to
think themselves, the father is the natural and necessary
tie between the past and the present, the link by which
the ends of these two chains are connected. In
aristocracies, then, the father is not only the civil head of
the family, but the organ of its traditions, the expounder
of its customs, the arbiter of its manners. He is listened to
with deference, he is addressed with respect, and the
love that is felt for him is always tempered with fear.
When the condition of society becomes democratic
and men adopt as their general principle that it is good
and lawful to judge of all things for oneself, using former
points of belief not as a rule of faith, but simply as a
means of information, the power which the opinions of a
father exercise over those of his sons diminishes as well
as his legal power.
Perhaps the subdivision of estates that democracy
brings about contributes more than anything else to
change the relations existing between a father and his
children. When the property of the father of a family is
scanty, his son and himself constantly live in the same
place and share the same occupations; habit and
necessity bring them together and force them to hold
constant communication. The inevitable consequence is
a sort of familiar intimacy, which renders authority less
absolute and which can ill be reconciled with the external
forms of respect.
Now, in democratic countries the class of those who
are possessed of small fortunes is precisely that which
gives strength to the notions and a particular direction to
the manners of the community. That class makes its
opinions preponderate as universally as its will, and even
those who are most inclined to resist its commands are
carried away in the end by its example. | have known
eager opponents of democracy who allowed their children
to address them with perfect colloquial equality.
Thus at the same time that the power of aristocracy’ is
declining, the austere, the conventional, and the legal
part of parental authority vanishes and a species of
equality prevails around the domestic hearth. | do not
know, on the whole, whether society’ loses by the
change, but | am inclined to believe that man
individually is a gainer by it.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 8
85 The eager fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me:
For this losing is true dying;
This is lordly man’s down-lying,
This his slow but sure reclining.
Star by star his world resigning.
O child of paradise,
Boy who made dear his father’s home,
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come,
| am too much bereft.
Emerson, Threnody
86 Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter
Speaks through her sobs.
The little sisters huddle around speechless and
dismay’d,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be
better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (not maybe
needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better.
She with thin form presently drest in black.
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully
sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep
longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life
escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
Whitman, Come Up From the Fields Father
87 My father, in all his teaching, demanded of me not only
the utmost that | could do, but much that | could by no
possibility’ have done. What he was himself willing to
undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged
from the fact, that | went through the whole process of
preparing my Greek lessons in the same room and at the
same table at which he was writing: and as in those day’s
Greek and English lexicons were not, and | could make no
more use of a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be
made without haring yet begun to learn Latin, | was
forced to have recourse to him for the meaning of every
word which | did not know. This incessant interruption,
he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and
wrote under that interruption several volumes of his
History and all else that he had to write during those
years.
Mill, Autobiography, |
88 | remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my
fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father’s house
for a long absence, he told me that | should find, as | got
acquainted with new people, that | had been taught
many things which youths of my age did not commonly
know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk
to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. What other
things he said on this topic | remember very imperfectly;
but he wound up by saying, that whatever | knew more
than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but
to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot,
of having a father who was able to teach me, and willing
to give the necessary trouble and time; that it was no
matter of praise to me, if | Knew more than those who had
not had a similar advantage, but the deepest disgrace to
me if | did not.
Mill, Autobiography, |
89 | was sure you would be touched by the death of my poor
little boy, to whom you have so often showed kindness. |
imagine every one here thought he could not get through
the winter, though they could give no special name to his
complaint except to call it, with the doctors, "failure in
vital power" following upon the slight shock given to him
by his fall from a pony in Westmorland. But his mother
and | had watched him through so many ebbings and
flowings of his scanty stock of vital power that we had
always hopes for him, and till | went into his room last
Monday morning an hour before the end | did not really
think he would die. The astonishing self-control which he
had acquired in suffering was never shown more than in
the last words he said to me, when his breath grew
shorter and shorter, and from this, and the grieved face of
the doctor as he entered the room, he knew, | am sure,
that the end was come; and he turned to me, and—his
mamma, who was always with him, and whom he adored,
having gone into The next room for a moment—he
whispered to me, in his poor labouring voice, "Don’t let
mamma come in." At his age that seems to me heroic self-
control; and it was this patience and fortitude in him,
joined to his great fragility and his exquisite turn for
music, which interested so many people in him, and
which brings us a sort of comfort now in all the kind and
tender things that are said to us of him. But to Mrs.
Arnold the loss of the occupation of her life—for so the
care of him really was—will for some time to come be
terrible.
Arnold, Letter to Lady de Rothschild (Nov. 30, 1868)
90 /van. "Who doesn’t desire his father’s death?"...
91
He turned suddenly to the audience. "My father has
been murdered and they pretend they are horrified," he
snarled, with furious contempt. "They keep up the sham
with one another. Liars! They all desire the death of their
fathers."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt, IV, XII, 5
"Well, madam," he [Prince Bolkonsky) began, stooping
over the book close to his daughter and placing an arm
on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that she felt
herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old
age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now,
madam, these triangles are equal; please note that the
angle ABC ..."
The princess looked in a scared way at her father’s
eyes glittering close to her; the red patches on her face
came and went, and it was plain that she understood
nothing and was so frightened that her fear would
prevent her understanding any of her father’s further
explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it
was the teacher’s fault or the pupil’s, this same thing
happened every day: the princess’ eyes grew dim, she
could not see and could not hear anything, but was only
conscious of her stern father’s withered face close to her,
of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only of
how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the
problem in peace. The old man was beside himself:
moved the chair on which he was sitting noisily backward
and forward, made efforts to control himself and not
become vehement, but almost always did become
vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise
book away.
The princess gave a wrong answer.
"Well now, isn’t she a fool!" shouted the prince,
pushing the book aside and turning sharply away; but
rising immediately, he paced up and down, lightly
touched his daughter’s hair and sat down again.
He drew up his chair and continued to explain.
"This won’t do, Princess; it won’t do," said he, when
Princess Mary, having taken and closed the exercise book
with the next day’s lesson, was about to leave:
"Mathematics are most important, madam! | don’t want to
have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and you'll like
it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the
nonsense out of your head."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, I, 25
92 Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and
those who were considered worthy to hear it had to come
to the countess, for she did not let it out of her hands.
The tutors came, and the nurses, and Dmitri, and several
acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter each
time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it
fresh proofs of Nikolenka’s virtues. How strange, how
extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the
scarcely perceptible motion of whose tiny limbs she had
felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom
she used to have quarrels with the too-indulgent count,
that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then
"granny," that this son should now be away in a foreign
land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing
some kind of man’s work of his own, without help or
guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that
children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to
manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s growth
toward manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as
extra-ordinary to her as if there had never existed the
millions of human beings who grew up in the same way.
As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the
little creature who lived somewhere under her heart
would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so
now she could not believe that that little creature could
be this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that,
judging by this letter, he now was.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, III, 6
93 Princess Mary, alarmed by her father’s feverish and
sleepless activity after his previous apathy, could not
bring herself to leave him alone and for the first time in
her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away
and her father’s fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He
repeated every injustice he had ever inflicted on her.
Trying to convict her, he told her she had worn him out,
had caused his quarrel with his son, had harbored nasty
suspicions of him, making it the object of her life to
poison his existence, and he drove her from his study
telling her that if she did not go away it was all the same
to him. He declared that he did not wish to remember her
existence and warned her not to dare to let him see her.
The fact that he did not, as she had feared, order her to
be carried away by force but only told her not to let him
see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof
that in the depth of his soul he was glad she was
remaining at home and had not gone away.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 8
94 The passionate devotion of a mother—ill herself, perhaps
—to a sick or dying child is perhaps the most simply
beautiful moral spectacle that human life affords.
Contemning every danger, triumphing over every
difficulty, outlasting all fatigue, woman’s love is here
invincibly superior to anything that man can show.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
95 It is unavoidable and quite normal that the child should
make his parents the objects of his first object-choice. But
his /ibido must not remain fixed on these first chosen
objects, but must take them merely as a prototype and
transfer from these to other persons in the time of
definite object-choice. The breaking loose of the child
from his parents is thus a problem impossible to escape if
the social virtue of the young individual is not to be
impaired. During the time that the repressive activity is
making its choice among the partial sexual impulses and
later, when the influence of the parents, which in the
most essential way has furnished the material for these
repressions, is lessened, great problems fall to the work of
education, which at present certainly does not always
solve them in the most intelligent and economic way.
Freud, Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, 1V
96 For me... this book has an additional subjective
significance, which | did not understand until after its
completion. It reveals itself to me as a piece of my self-
analysis, aS my reaction to the death of my father, that is,
to the most important event, the most poignant loss in a
man’s life.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, Pref. to 2nd (German)
Ed.
97 If we look at the attitude of fond parents towards their
children, we cannot but perceive it as a revival and
reproduction of their own, long since abandoned
narcissism. Their feeling, as is well known, is
characterized by over-estimation, that sure indication of -
a narcissistic feature in object-choice which we have
already appreciated. Thus they are impelled to ascribe to
the child all manner of perfections which sober
observation would not confirm, to gloss over and forget
all his shortcomings—a tendency with which, indeed, the
denial of childish sexuality is connected. Moreover, they
are inclined to suspend in the child’s favour the operation
of all those cultural acquirements which their own
narcissism has been forced to respect, and to renew in his
person the claims for privileges which were long ago
given up by themselves. The child shall have things
better than his parents; he shall not be subject to the
necessities which they have recognized as dominating
life. IIIness, death, renunciation of enjoyment, restrictions
on his own will, are not to touch him; the laws of nature,
like those of society, are to be abrogated in his favour; he
is really to be the centre and heart of creation, "His
Majesty the Baby," as once we fancied ourselves to be.
He is to fulfil those dreams and wishes of his parents
which they never carried out, to become a great man and
a hero in his father’s stead, or to marry a prince as a tardy
compensation to the mother. At the weakest point of all in
the narcissistic position, the immortality of the ego, which
is so relentlessly assailed by reality, security is achieved
by fleeing to the child. Parental love, which is so touching
and at bottom so childish, is nothing but parental
narcissism born again and, transformed though it be into
object-love, it reveals its former character infallibly.
Freud, On Narcissism, II
98 We find it far more offensive for love to be lacking
between parents and children than between brothers and
sisters. We have, so to speak, sanctified the former love
while allowing the latter to remain profane. Yet everyday
observation may show us how frequently the sentiments
entertained towards each other by parents and grownup
children fall short of the ideal set up by society, and how
much hostility lies smouldering, ready to burst into flame
if it were not stifled by considerations of filial or parental
duty and by other, tender impulses. The motives for this
hostility are well Known, and we recognize a tendency for
those of the same sex to become alienated, daughter
from mother and father from son. The daughter sees in
her mother the authority which imposes limits to her will,
whose task it is to bring her to that renunciation of sexual
freedom which society demands; in certain cases, too, the
mother is still a rival, who objects to being set aside. The
same thing is repeated still more blatantly between
father and son. To the son the father is the embodiment
of the social compulsion to which he so unwillingly
submits, the person who stands in the way of his
following his own will, of his early sexual pleasures and,
when there is family property, of his enjoyment of it.
When a throne is involved, this impatience for the death
of the father may approach tragic intensity. The relation
between father and daughter or mother and son would
seem less liable to disaster; the latter relation furnishes
the purest examples of unchanging tenderness,
undisturbed by any egoistic consideration....
The son, when quite a little child, already begins to
develop a peculiar tenderness towards his mother, whom
he looks upon as his own property, regarding his father in
the light of a rival who disputes this sole possession of
his; similarly the little daughter sees in her mother
someone who disturbs her tender relation to her father
and occupies a place which she feels she herself could
very well fill. Observation shows us how far back these
sentiments date, sentiments which we describe by the
term Oedipus complex, because in the Oedipus myth the
two extreme forms of the wishes arising from the
situation of the son—the wish to kill the father and to
marry the mother—are realized in an only slightly
modified form. | do not assert that the Oedipus complex
exhausts all the possible relations which may exist
between parents and children; these relations may well
be a great deal more complicated. Again, this complex
may be more or less strongly developed, or it may even
become inverted, but it is a regular and very important
factor in the mental life of the child; we are more in
danger of underestimating than of overestimating its
influence and that of the developments which may follow
from it. Moreover, the parents themselves frequently
stimulate the children to react with an Oedipus complex,
for parents are often guided in their preferences by the
difference in sex of their children, so that the father
favours the daughter and the mother the son; or else,
where conjugal love has grown cold, the child may be
taken as a substitute for the love-object which has ceased
to attract.
It cannot be said that the world has shown great
gratitude to psycho-analytic research for the discovery of
the Oedipus complex; on the contrary, the idea has
excited the most violent opposition in grown-up people;
and those who omitted to join in denying the existence of
sentiments so universally reprehended and tabooed have
later made up for this by proffering interpretations so
wide of the mark as to rob the complex of its value. My
own unchanged conviction is that there is nothing in it to
deny or to gloss over. We ought to reconcile ourselves to
facts in which the Greek myth itself saw the hand of
inexorable destiny.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XIII
99 | have... described the relationship of a boy to his father
and mother; things proceed in just the same way, with
the necessary reversal, in little girls. The loving devotion
to the father, the need to do away with the superfluous
mother and to take her place, the early display of
coquetry and the arts of later womanhood, make up a
particularly charming picture in a little girl, and may
cause us to forget its seriousness and the grave
consequences which may later result from this situation.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XX1
100 From the time of puberty onward the human individual
must devote himself to the great task of freeing himself
from the parents; and only after this detachment is
accomplished can he cease to be a child and so become a
member of the social community. For a son, the
task,consists in releasing his libidinal desires from his
mother, in order to employ them in the quest of an
external love-object in reality; and in reconciling himself
with his father if he has remained antagonistic to him, or
in freeing himself from his domination if, in the reaction
to the infantile revolt, he has lapsed into subservience to
him. These tasks are laid down for every man; it is
noteworthy how seldom they are carried through ideally,
that is, how seldom they are solved in a manner
psychologically as well as socially satisfactory. In
neurotics, however, this detachment from the parents is
not accomplished at all; the son remains all his life in
subjection to his father, and incapable of transferring his
libido to a new sexual object. In the reversed relationship
the daughter’s fate may be the same. In this sense the
Oedipus complex is justifiably regarded as the kernel of
the neuroses.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXI
101 The only thing that brings a mother undiluted
satisfaction is her relation to a son; it is quite the most
complete relationship between human beings, and the
one that is the most free from ambivalence. The mother
can transfer to her son all the ambition which she has
had to suppress in herself, and she can hope to get from
him the satisfaction of all that has remained to her of her
masculinity complex. Even a marriage is not firmly
assured until the woman has succeeded in making her
husband into her child and in acting the part of a mother
towards him.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXIII
102 A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is
a necessary evil.... Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious
begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an
apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten.
On that mystery and not on the madonna which the
cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the
church is founded and founded irremovably because
founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the
void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelinood. Amor matris,
subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true
thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the
father of any son that any son should love him or he any
son?...
They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that
the criminal annals of the world, stained with all other
incests and bestialities hardly record its breach. Sons
with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves
that dare not speak their name, nephews with
grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize
bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain,
divides affection, increases care. He is a male: his growth
is his father’s decline, his youth his father’s envy, his
friend his father’s enemy.
Joyce, Ulysses
2.3 Marriage
This section, like its predecessor, contains many passages
that reflect or manifest the relation of husband and wife
rather than theorize or comment about it. Here, too, we can
recite a moving list of famous pairs that the reader will
recognize in passages quoted: Jacob and Rachel, Odysseus
and Penelope, Oedipus and Jocasta, Alcibiades and
Hipparete, Caesar and Pompeia, the Wife of Bath and all her
husbands, Petruchio and Katherina, Benedick and Beatrice,
Othello and Desdemona, Leontes and Hermione, Adam and
Eve (in Paradise Lost as well as in Genesis), Mirabell and
Millamant (in Congreve’s Way of the World), Dr. and Mrs.
Samuel Johnson, J. S. Mill and Harriet Taylor, Pierre and
Natasha (in War and Peace).
In addition to passages of the type just mentioned, there
are, of course, many others that look at marriage from every
point of view and express every variety of attitude toward it.
The general impression one can hardly avoid getting is that
of a great, blooming confusion, which may be the only one
that an open-eyed appraisal affords. The reader who
carefully explores the whole range of materials here
assembled, and who compares later with earlier points of
view, may also come away with the impression that our
ancestors were more light-hearted about, or at least less
plagued by, the inherent difficulties of the marriage bond
than later generations for whom the bond is more easily
dissolved by divorce.
The consideration of marriage cannot help touching ona
number of related matters—not only divorce, but also
conjugal love, or sex in marriage, and in incest, adultery,
and cuckoldry. Relevant texts dealing with conjugal love,
marital sex, and adultery will, also be found in Chapter 3 on
Love, especially in Section 3.3 on Sexual Love.
1 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and
Shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 2:24
2 And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother,
shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? tell me,
what shall thy wages be?
And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder
was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.
Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and
well favoured.
And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, | will serve thee
seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.
And Laban said. It is better that | give her to thee,
than that | should give her to another man: abide with
me.
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they
seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to
her.
Genesis 29:15-20
3 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife,
and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it
came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife,
that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give
seed to his brother.
And the thing which he did displeased the Lord:
wherefore he slew him also.
Genesis 38:8-10
4 The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight,
saying. No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.
In the dark they dig through houses, which they had
marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the
light.
For the morning is to them even as the shadow of
death: if one Know them, they are in the terrors of the
shadow of death.
Job 24:15-17
5 A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that
maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.
Proverbs 12:4
6 House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: anda
prudent wife is from the Lord.
Proverbs 19:14
7 Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and
wipeth her mouth, and saith, | have done no wickedness.
Proverbs 30:20
8 Calypso. "Son of Laertes, versatile Odysseus,
after these years with me, you still desire
your old home? Even so, | wish you well.
If you could see it all, before you go—
all the adversity you face at sea—
you would stay here, and guard this house, and be
immortal—though you wanted her forever,
that bride for whom you pine each day.
Cart | be less desirable than she is?
Less interesting? Less beautiful? Can mortals
compare with goddesses in grace and form?"
To this the strategist Odysseus answered:
"My lady goddess, here is no cause for anger.
My quiet Penelope—how well | know—
would seem a shade before your majesty,
death and old age being unknown to you,
while she must die. Yet, it is true, each day
| long for home, long for the sight of home."
Homer, Odyssey, V, 203
9 Penelope. "Do not rage at me, Odysseus!
No one ever matched your caution! Think
what difficulty the gods gave: they denied us
life together in our prime and flowering years,
kept us from crossing into age together.
Forgive me, don’t be angry. | could not
welcome you with love on sight! | armed myself
long ago against the frauds of men,
impostors who might come—and all those many
whose underhanded ways bring evil on!
Helen of Argos, daughter of Zeus and Leda,
would she have joined the stranger, lain with him,
if she had known her destiny? known the Akhaians
in arms would bring her back to her own country?
Surely a goddess moved her to adultery,
her blood unchilled by war and evil coming,
the years, the desolation; ours, too.
But here and now, what sign could be so clear
as this of our own bed?
No other man has ever laid eyes on it—
only my own slave, Aktoris, that my father
sent with me as a gift—she kept our door.
You make my stiff heart know that | am yours."
Now from his [Odysseus’] breast into his eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for
as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
In joy, in Joy, Knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.
The rose Dawn might have found them weeping still
had not grey-eyed Athena slowed the night
when night was most profound, and held the Dawn
under the Ocean of the East. That glossy team,
Firebright and Daybright, the Dawn’s horses
that draw her heavenward for men—Athena
stayed their harnessing.
Homer, Odyssey, XXIII, 208
10 So they [Odysseus and Penelope] came
into that bed so steadfast, loved of old,
opening glad arms to one another.
Telemakhos by now had hushed the dancing,
hushed the women. In the darkened hall
he and the cowherd and the swineherd slept.
The royal pair mingled in love again
and afterward lay revelling in stories;
hers of the siege her beauty stood at home
from arrogant suitors, crowding on her sight,
and how they fed their courtship on his cattle,
oxen and fat sheep, and drank up rivers
of wine out of the vats.
Odysseus told
of what hard blows he had dealt out to others
and of what blows he had taken—all that story.
She could not close her eyes till all was told.
Homer, Odyssey, XXIII, 295
11 Their [the Lycians’] customs are partly Cretan, partly
Carian. They have, however, one singular custom in
which they differ from every other nation in the world.
They take the mother’s and not the father’s name. Ask a
Lycian who he is, and he answers by giving his own
name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line.
Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a Slave,
their children are full citizens; but if a free man marry a
foreign woman, or live with a concubine, even though he
be the first person in the State, the children forfeit all the
rights of citizenship.
Herodotus, History, |, 173
12 Once a year in each village the maidens of age to marry
were collected all together into one place; while the men
stood round them in a circle. Then a herald called up the
damsels one by one, and offered them for sale. He began
with the most beautiful. When she was sold for no small
sum of money, he offered for sale the one who came next
to her in beauty. All of them were sold to be wives. The
richest of the Babylonians who wished to wed bid against
each other for the loveliest maidens, while the humbler
wife-seekers, who were indifferent about beauty, took the
more homely damsels with marriage-portions. For the
custom was that when the herald had gone through the
whole number of the beautiful damsels, he should then
call up the ugliest—a cripple, if there chanced to be one
—and offer her to the men, asking who would agree to
take her with the smallest marriage-portion. And the man
who offered to take the smallest sum had her assigned to
him. The marriage-portions were furnished by the money
paid for the beautiful damsels, and thus the fairer
maidens portioned out the uglier. No one was allowed to
give his daughter in marriage to the man of his choice,
nor might any one carry away the damsel whom he had
purchased without finding bail really and truly to make
her his wife; if, however, it turned out that they did not
agree, the money might be paid back.
Herodotus, History, |, 196
13 Their marriage-law [of the Amazons] lays it down that no
girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle.
Sometimes it happens that a woman dies unmarried at an
advanced age, having never been able in her whole
lifetime to fulfil the condition.
Herodotus, History, IV, 117
14 The Thracians who live above the Crestonaeans observe
the following customs. Each man among them has
several wives; and no sooner does a man die than a sharp
contest ensues among the wives upon the question which
of them all the husband loved most tenderly; the friends
of each eagerly plead on her behalf, and she to whom the
honour is adjudged, after receiving the praises both of
men and women, is slain over the grave by the hand of
her next of kin, and then buried with her husband. The
others are sorely grieved, for nothing is considered such a
disgrace.
Herodotus, History, V, 5
15 Messenger. When she came raging into the house she
went
straight to her marriage bed, tearing her hair
with both her hands, and crying upon Laius
long dead—Do you remember, Laius,
that night long past which bred a child for us
to send you to your death and leave
a mother making children with her son?
And then she groaned and cursed the bed in which
she brought forth husband by her husband, children
by her own child, an infamous double bond.
How after that she died | do not know,—
for Oedipus distracted us from seeing.
He burst upon us shouting and we looked
to him as he paced frantically around,
begging us always: Give me a sword, | Say,
to find this wife no wife, this mother’s womb,
this field of double sowing whence | sprang
and where | sowed my children! As he raved
some god showed him the way—none of us there.
Bellowing terribly and led by some invisible guide he
rushed on the two doors,—
wrenching the hollow bolts out of their sockets,
he charged inside. There, there, we saw his wife
hanging, the twisted rope around her neck.
When he saw her, he cried out fearfully
and cut the dangling noose. Then, as she lay,
poor woman, on the ground, what happened after,
was terrible to see. He tore the brooches—
the gold chased brooches fastening her robe—
away from her and lifting them up high
dashed them on his own eyeballs, shrieking out
such things as: they will never see the crime
| have committed or had done upon me!
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 1241
16 Athenian Stranger. We will say to him who is born of good
parents—O my son, you ought to make such a marriage
as wise men would approve. Now they would advise you
neither to avoid a poor marriage, nor specially to desire a
rich one; but if other things are equal, always to honour
inferiors, and with them to form connections;—this will be
for the benefit of the city and of the families which are
united; for the equable and symmetrical tends infinitely
more to virtue than the unmixed. And he who is
conscious of being too headstrong, and carried away
more than is fitting in all his actions, ought to desire to
become the relation of orderly parents; and he who is of
the opposite temper ought to seek the opposite alliance.
Let there be one word concerning all marriages:—Every
man shall follow, not after the marriage which is most
pleasing to himself, but after that which is most
beneficial to the state. For somehow every one is by
nature prone to that which is likest to himself, and in this
way the whole city becomes unequal in property and in
disposition; and hence there arise in most states the very
results which we least desire to happen. Now, to add to
the law an express provision, not only that the rich man
Shall not marry into the rich family, nor the powerful into
the family of the powerful, but that the slower natures
Shall be compelled to enter into marriage with the
quicker, and the quicker with the slower, may awaken
anger as well as laughter in the minds of many; for there
is a difficulty in perceiving that the city ought to be well
mingled like a cup, in which the maddening wine is hot
and fiery, but when chastened by a soberer God, receives
a fair associate and becomes an excellent and temperate
drink.
Plato, Laws, VI, 773A
17 Athenian Stranger. Drunkenness is always improper,
except at the festivals of the God who gave wine; and
peculiarly dangerous, when a man is engaged in the
business of marriage; at such a crisis of their lives a bride
and bridegroom ought to have all their wits about them.
Plato, Laws, VI, 775A
18 Athenian Stranger. The bride and bridegroom should
consider that they are to produce for the state the best
and fairest specimens of children which they can. Now all
men who are associated in any action always succeed
when they attend and give their mind to what they' are
doing, but when they do not give their mind or have no
mind, they fail; wherefore let the bridegroom give his
mind to the bride and to the begetting of children, and
the bride in like manner give her mind to the bridegroom,
and particularly at the time when their children are not
yet born.
Plato, Laws, VI, 783B
19 The association of man and wife seems to be aristocratic;
for the man rules in accordance with his worth, and in
those matters in which a man should rule, but the
matters that befit a woman he hands over to her. If the
man rules in everything the relation passes over into
oligarchy; for in doing so he is not acting in accordance
with their respective worth, and not ruling in virtue of his
superiority.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1160a33
20 Women should marry when they are about eighteen
years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are
in the prime of life, and the decline in the powerse of
both will coincide. Further, the children, if their birth
takes place soon, aS may reasonably be expected, will
succeed in the beginning of their prime, when the fathers
are already in the decline of life, and have nearly reached
their term of three-score years and ten.
Aristotle, Politics, 1335a28
21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou
Shalt not commit adultery:
But | say unto you, That whosoever looketh ona
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her
already in his heart.
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy
members should perish, and not that thy whole body
should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it
from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy
members should perish, and not that thy whole body
should be cast into hell.
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife,
let him give her a writing of divorcement:
But | say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his
wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to
commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced committeth adultery.
Matthew 5:27-32
22 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and
saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his
wife for every cause?
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not
read, that he which made them at the beginning made
them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall
be one flesh?
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What
therefore God hath joined together, let not man put
asunder.
They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to
give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of
your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from
the beginning it was not so.
And | say unto you. Whosoever shall put away his wife,
except it be for fornication, and shall marry another,
committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is
put away doth commit adultery.
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so
with his wife, it is not good to marry.
But he said unto them. All men cannot receive this
saying, save they to whom it is given.
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from
their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which
were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which
have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him
receive it.
Matthew 19:3-12
23 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It
is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have
his own wife, and let every woman have her own
husband.
Let the husband render unto the wife due
benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto her
husband.
The wife hath not power of her own body, but the
husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power
of his own body, but the wife.
Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with
consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting
and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt
you not for your incontinency.
But | speak this by permission, and not of
commandment.
For | would that all men were even as | myself. But
every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this
manner, and another after that.
| say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good
for them if they abide even as |.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is
better to marry than to burn.
| Corinthians 7:1-9
24 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to
knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the
weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of
life.
| Peter 3:7
25 With respect to wives and children, and that community
which both, with a sound policy, appointed, to prevent all
jealousy, their methods, however, were different. For
when a Roman thought himself to have a sufficient
number of children, in case his neighbour who had none
should come and request his wife of him, he had a lawful
power to give her up to him who desired her, either for a
certain time, or for good. The Lacedaemonian husband,
on the other hand, might allow the use of his wife to any
other that desired to have children by her, and yet still
keep her in his house, the original marriage obligation
still subsisting as at first. Nay, many husbands, as we
have said, would invite men whom they thought likely to
procure them fine and good-looking children into their
houses. What is the difference, then, between the two
customs? Shall we say that the Lacedaemonian system is
one of an extreme and entire unconcern about their
wives, and would cause most people endless disquiet and
annoyance with pangs and jealousies; the Roman course
wears an air of a more delicate acquiescence, draws the
veil of a new contract over the change, and concedes the
general insupportableness of mere community?
Plutarch, Lycurgus and Numa Compared
26 Hipparete was a virtuous and dutiful wife, but, at last,
growing impatient of the outrages done to her by her
husband’s continual entertaining of courtesans, as well
strangers as Athenians, she departed from him and
retired to her brother’s house. Alcibiades seemed not at
all concerned at this, and lived on still in the same
luxury; but the law requiring that she should deliver to
archon in person and not by proxy, the instrument by
which she claimed a divorce, when, in obedience to the
law, she presented herself before him to perform this,
Alcibiades came in, caught her up, and carried her home
through the marketplace, no one daring to oppose him
nor to take her from him. She continued with him till her
death which happened not long after, when Alcibiades
had gone to Ephesus. Nor is this violence to be thought
SO very enormous or unmanly. For the law, in making her
who desires to be divorced appear in public, seems to
design to give her husband an opportunity of treating
with her, and endeavouring to retain her.
Plutarch, Alcibiades
27 His first wife was Papiria, the daughter of Maso, who had
formerly been consul. With her he lived a considerable
time in wedlock, and then divorced her, though she had
made him the father of noble children, being mother of
the renowned Scipio and Fabius Maximus. The reason of
this separation has not come to our knowledge; but there
seems to be a truth conveyed in the account of another
Roman’s being divorced from his wife, which may be
applicable here. This person being highly blamed by his
friends, who demanded, “Was she not chaste? was she
not fair? was she not fruitful?” holding out his shoe,
asked them, whether it was not new and well made. “Yet,”
added he, “none of you can tell where it pinches me.”
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus
28 Caesar at once dismissed Pompeia, but being summoned
as a witness against Clodius, said he had nothing to
charge him with. This looking like a paradox, the accuser
asked him why he parted with his wife. Caesar replied, “1
wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.” Some
say that Caesar spoke this as his real thought; others,
that he did it to gratify the people, who were very earnest
to save Clodius.
Plutarch, Caesar
29 When Philip was trying to force a woman against her will
she said to him, “Let me go. All women are alike when the
light is out.” This is an excellent answer to adulterers and
licentious men, but a married woman ought not be like
any chance female when the light is out. It is when her
body is invisible that her virtue and her sole devotion and
affection for her husband should be evident.
Plutarch, Marriage Counsel
30 She who sleeps third in a big wide bed is certain to
prosper
Marry, and shut your mouth; the wages of silence and
jewels
After all this, do you think our sex deserves a verdic of
Guilty?
That's like pardoning crows and laying all blame on
the pigeons.
Juvenal, Satire II
31 A woman must not resist a husband in anger, by deed or
even by word... From the day they [hear] the matrimonial
contract read to them to them they should regard it as an
instrument by which they became servants; and from
that time they should be mindful of their condition and
not set themselves up against their masters.
Augustine, Confessions, IX, 9
32 A woman's sole purpose in marrying should be
motherhood.
Augustine, Contra Faustum, XIX, 26
33 Adultery belongs not only to the sin of lust, but also to
the sin of injustice, and in this respect may be brought
under the head of covetousness.. .so that adultery is so
much the more grievous than theft as a man loves his
wife more than his chattels.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 73, 5
34 Matrimony did indeed exist under the Old Law, as a
function of nature, but not as the sacrament of the union
of Christ with the Church, for that union was not as yet
brought about. Hence under the Old Law it was allowable
to give a bill of divorce, which is contrary to the nature of
a sacrament.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |—II, 102, 5
35 The marriage union is effected in the same way as the
bond in material contracts. And since material contracts
are not feasible unless the contracting parties express
their will to one another in words, it follows that the
consent which makes a marriage must also be expressed
in words, so that the expression of words is to marriage
what the outward washing is to Baptism.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 45,
36 In marriage there is a contract whereby one is bound to
pay the other the marital debt: wherefore just as in other
contracts, the bond is unfitting if a person bind himself to
what he cannot give or do, so the marriage contract is
unfitting, if it be made by one who cannot pay the marital
debt. This impediment is called by the general name of
impotence as regards coition, and can arise either from
an intrinsic and natural cause, or from and extrinsic and
accidental cause, for instance spell.
If it be due to a natural cause, this may happen in two
ways. For either it is temporary, and can be remedied by
medicine, or by the course of me and then it does not
void a marriage: or it is perpetual and then it voids
marriage, so that the party who labors under this
impediment remains for ever without hope of marriage,
while the other may many to whom she will... in the Lord.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II! Suppl., 58, 1
37 Our Lord permitted a man to put away his wife on
account of fornication, in punishment of the unfaithful
party and in favor of the faithful party, so that the latter
is not bound to marital intercourse with the unfaithful
one. There are however seven cases to be excepted in
which it is not lawful to put away a wife who has
committed fornication, when either the wife is not to be
blamed, or both parties are equally blameworthy. The first
is if the husband also has committed fornication; the
second is if he has prostituted his wife; the third is if the
wife, believing her husband dead on account of his long
absence, has married again; the fourth is if another man
has fraudulently impersonated her husband in the
marriage-bed; the fifth is if she be overcome by force; the
sixth is if he has been reconciled to her by having carnal
intercourse with her after she has committed adultery;
the seventh is if both having been married in the state of
unbelief, the husband has given his wife a bill of divorce
and she has married again; for then if both be converted
the husband is bound to receive her back again.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/l Suppl., 62, 1
38 The [marriage] debt may be demanded in two ways. First,
explicitly, as when they ask one another by words;
secondly, implicitly, when namely the husband knows by
certain signs that the wife would wish him to pay the
debt, but is silent through shame. And so even though
she does not ask for the debt explicitly in words, the
husband is bound to pay it, whenever his wife shows
signs of wishing him to do so.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ill Suppl., 64, 2
39 Since the wife has power of her husband’s body, and vice
versa, with regard to the act of procreation, the one is
bound to pay the [marriage] debt to the other, at any
season or hour, with due regard to the decorum required
in such matters, for this must not be done at once openly.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 64, 9
40 "For then, the apostle says that | am free
To wed, in God’s name, where it pleases me.
He says that to be wedded is no sin;
Better to marry than to burn within.
What care | though folk speak reproachfully
Of wicked Lamech and his bigamy?
| Know well Abraham was holy man,
And Jacob, too, as far as know | can;
And each of them had spouses more than two;
And many another holy man also.
Or can you say that you have ever heard
That God has ever by His express word
Marriage forbidden? Pray you, now, tell me;
Or where commanded He virginity?
| read as well as you no doubt have read
The apostle when he speaks of maidenhead;
He said, commandment of the Lord he’d none.
Men may advise a woman to be one,
But such advice is not commandment, no;
He left the thing to our own judgment so.
For had Lord God commanded maidenhood,
He’d have condemned all marriage as not good;
And certainly, if there were no seed sown.
Virginity—where then should it be grown?
Paul dared not to forbid us, at the least,
A thing whereof his Master’d no behest.
The dart is set up for virginity;
Catch it who can; who runs best let us see.
“But this word is not meant for every wight,
But where God wills to give it, of His might.
| Know well that the apostle was a maid;
Nevertheless, and though he wrote and said
He would that everyone were such as he,
All is not counsel to virginity;
And so to be a wife he gave me leave
Out of permission; there’s no shame should grieve
In marrying me, if that my mate should die.
Without exception, too, of bigamy.
And though ’twere good no woman ’s flesh to touch,
He meant, in his own bed or on his couch;
For peril ’tis fire and tow to assemble;
You know what this example may resemble.
This is the sum: he held virginity
Nearer perfection than marriage for frailty.
And frailty’s all, | say, save he and she
Would lead their lives throughout in chastity.
"| grant this well, | have no great envy
Though maidenhood’s preferred to bigamy;
Let those who will be clean, body and ghost,
Of my condition | will make no boast.
For well you know, a lord in his household,
He has not every vessel all of gold;
Some are of wood and serve well all their days.
God calls folk unto Him in sundry ways,
And each one has from God a proper gift,
Some this, some that, as pleases Him to shift.
"Virginity is great perfection known,
And continence e’en with devotion shown.
But Christ, Who of perfection is the well.
Bade not each separate man he should go sell
All that he had and give it to the poor
And follow Him in such wise going before.
He spoke to those that would live perfectly;
And, masters, by your leave, such am not I.
| will devote the flower of all my age
To all the acts and harvests of marriage.
"Tell me also, to what purpose or end
The genitals were made, that | defend,
And for what benefit was man first wrought?
Trust you right well, they were not made for naught
Explain who will and argue up and down
That they were made for passing out, as known
Of urine, and our two belongings small
Were just to tell a female from a male,
And for no other cause—ah, say you no?
Experience knows well it is not so;
And, so the clerics be not with me wroth,
| say now that they have been made for both
That is to say, for duty and for ease
In getting, when we do not God displease.
Why should men otherwise in their books set
That man shall pay unto his wife his debt?
Now wherewith should he ever make payment,
Except he used his blessed instrument?
Then on a creature were devised these things
For urination and engenderings.
“But | say not that every one is bound,
Who’s fitted out and furnished as I’ve found,
To go and use it to beget an heir;
Then men would have for chastity no care.
Christ was a maid, and yet shaped like a man,
And many a saint, since this old world began,
Yet has lived ever in perfect chastity.
| bear no malice to virginity;
Let such be bread of purest white wheat-seed,
And let us wives be called but barley bread;
And yet with barley bread (if Mark you scan)
Jesus Our Lord refreshed full many a man.
In such condition as God places us
I'll persevere, I’m not fastidious.
In wifehood | will use my instrument
As freely as my Maker has it sent.
If | be niggardly, God give me sorrow!
My husband he shall have it, eve and morrow,
When he’s pleased to come forth and pay his debt.
I'll not delay, a husband | will get
Who shall be both my debtor and my thrall
And have his tribulations therewithal
Upon his flesh, the while | am his wife.
| have the power during all my life
Over his own good body, and not he.
For thus the apostle told it unto me;
And bade our husbands that they love us well.
And all this pleases me wherof | tell.”
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Prologue
41 “Choose, now,” said she, “one of these two things, aye,
To have me foul and old until | die,
And be to you a true and humble wife,
And never anger you in all my life;
Or else to have me young and very fair
And take your chance with those who will repair
Unto your house, and all because of me,
Or in some other place, as well may be.
Now choose which you like better and reply.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Tale
42 A merchant, dwelling once, at Saint-Denis,
Was rich, for which men held him wise, and he
Had got a wife of excellent beauty,
And very sociable and gay was she,
Which is a thing that causes more expense
Than all the good cheer and the deference
That men observe at festivals and dances;
Such salutations and masked countenances
Pass by as does a shadow on the wall;
But woe to him that must pay for it all.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Shioman’s Tale
43 A good wife, who is clean in deed and thought,
Should not be kept a prisoner, that’s plain;
And certainly the labour is in vain
That guards a slut, for, sirs, it just won’t be.
This hold | for an utter idiocy,
That men should lose their labour guarding wives;
So say these wise old writers in their lives.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Manciple’s Tale
44 In the choice of wives they carefully follow a custom
which seemed to us foolish and absurd. Before marriage
some responsible and honorable woman, either a virgin
or a widow, presents the woman naked to her suitor and
after that some upright man presents the suitor naked to
the woman. We laughed at this and condemned it as
foolish. On the contrary they wonder at the stupidity of
other people, who are exceedingly cautious in matters
involving only a little money. For example, men will
refuse to buy a colt, unless they take off its saddle and
harness, which might conceal a sore. But in the choice of
a mate, on which one’s happiness depends for the rest of
one’s life, they act carelessly. They leave all but a hand’s-
breadth of the woman’s face covered with clothing and
judge her by it, so that in marrying a couple runs a great
risk of mutual dislike if later anything in either’s body
should offend the other. Not ail men are so wise that they
consider only a woman s behavior. And even wise men
think that physical beauty in wives adds not a little to the
virtues of the mind. Certainly some deformity may lurk
underneath clothing which will alienate a man from his
wife when it is too late to be separated from her. If such a
deformity is discovered after marriage, a man must bear
his lot, so the Utopians think care ought to be taken by
law at no on be deceived.
Thomas More, Utopia, II, 12
45 A preacher of the gospel, being regularly called, ought,
above all things, first, to purify himself before he teaches
others. Is he able, with a good conscience, to remain
unmarried? let him remain; but if be cannot obstain living
chastely, let him take a wife; God has made that plaster
for that sore.
Luther, Table Talk, H715
46 The preachers of Varennes, saith Panurge, detest and
abhor the second marriages, as altogether foolish and
dishonest. Foolish and dishonest? quoth Pantagruel, A
plague take such preachers! Yea, but, quoth Panurge, the
like mischief also befell the Friar Charmer, who in a full
auditory making a sermon at Pareilly, and therein
abominating the reiteration of marriage, and the entering
again the bonds of a nuptial tie, did swear and heartily
give himself to the swiftest devil in hell, if he had not
rather choose, and would much more willingly undertake,
the unmaidening or depucelating of a hundred virgins,
than the simple drudgery of one widow.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 6
47 Panurge. | will never be in the danger of being made a
cuckold, for the defect hereof is Causa sine qua non; yea,
the sole cause, as many think, of making husbands
cuckolds. What makes poor scoundrel rogues to beg, |
pray you? Is it not because they have not enough at
home wherewith to fill their bellies and their pokes? What
is it makes the wolves to leave the woods? Is it not the
want of flesh meat? What maketh women whores? You
understand me well enough.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 14
48 | N. take thee N. to my wedded Wife [Husband], to have
and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to
cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy
ordinance; and thereto | plight [give] thee my troth.
Book of Common Prayer
49 We have thought to tie the knot of our marriages more
firmly by taking away all means of dissolving them; but
the knot of will and affection has become loosened and
undone as much as that of constraint has tightened. And
on the contrary, what kept marriages in Rome so long in
honor and security was everyone’s freedom to break
them off at will. They loved their wives the better
because they might lose them; and, with full liberty of
divorce, five hundred years and more passed before
anyone took advantage of it.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 15, That Our Desire
50 A good marriage, if such there be, rejects the company
and conditions of love. It tries to reproduce those of
friendship. It is a sweet association in life, full of
constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and
solid services and mutual obligations. No woman who
savors the taste of it... would want to have the place of a
mistress or paramour to her husband. If she is lodged in
his affection as a wife, she is lodged there much more
honorably and securely. When he dances ardent and
eager attention elsewhere, still let anyone ask him then
on whom he would rather have some shame fall, on his
wife or his mistress; whose misfortune would afflict him
more; for whom he wishes more honor. These questions
admit of no doubt in a sound marriage.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
51 Love and marriage are two intentions that go by separate
and distinct roads. A woman may give herself to a man
whom she would not at all want to have married; 1 do not
mean because of the state of his fortune, but because of
his personal qualities. Few men have married their
mistresses who have not repented it.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
52 That man knew what it was all about, it seems to me, who
said that a good marriage was one made between a blind
wife and a deaf husband.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
53 Katharina. Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds.
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled.
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper.
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee.
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour.
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
| am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, Supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours.
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now | see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least arc.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot;
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew V, ji, 136
54 Leonato. Well, niece, | hope to see you one day fitted
with a husband.
Beatrice. Not till God make men of some other metal
than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be
overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an
account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle,
I'll none: Adam’s sons are my brethren; and, truly, | hold
it a sin to match in my kindred.
Leon. Daughter, remember what | told you: if the
Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer,
Beat. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be
not wooed in goo<f time: if the Prince be too important,
tell him there is measure in everything and so dance out
the answer. For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and
repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque
pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and
full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a
measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes
repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque
pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave,
Leon. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.
Beat. | have a good eye, uncle; | can see a church by
daylight.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II, i, 61
55 Benedick. The world must be peopled. When | said |
would die a bachelor, 1 did not think | should live till |
were married.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II, iti, 251
56 Jacques. Will you be married, motley?
Touchstone. As the ox hath his Ix>w, sir, the horse his
curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires;
and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, i11, 79
57 Rosalind. Men are April when they woo, December when
they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the
sky changes when they are wives.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV, 1, 147
58 Touchstone. God 'ild you, sir; | desire you of the like. |
press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country
copulatives, to swear and to forswear; according as
marriage binds and blood breaks: a poor virgin, sir, an ill-
favoured thing, sir, but mine own; a poor humour of mine,
sir, to take that that no man else will: rich honesty dwells
like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul
oyster.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, V, iv, 56
59 Slender. | will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there
be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may
decrease it upon letter acquaintance, when we are
married and have more occasion to know one. another. |
hope, upon familiarity will crow more contempt. But if
you say, "Marry' her," | will marry her; that | am freely
dissolved, and dissolutely.
Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, I, |, 253
60 Mistress Page Wives may be merry, and yet honest too.
Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, IV, ti, 108
61 Clown He that ears my land spares my team and gives
me leave to in the crop; if | be his cuckold, he’s my
drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my
flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood
loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flash and
blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my
friend.
Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, |, tii, 47
62 Othello. O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! | had rather be a toad,
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon,
Than keep a corner in the thing | love
For other’s uses.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 268
63 Desdemona. 1 have heard it said so. O, these men, these
men!
Dost thou in conscience think—tell me, Emilia—
That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind?
Emilia. There be some such, no question.
Des. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?
Emil. Why, would not you?
Des. No, by this heavenly light!
Emil. Nor | neither by this heavenly light;
| might do’t as well i’ the dark.
Des. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?
Emil. The world's a huge thing; it is a great price.
For a small vice.
Des. In troth, | think thou wouldst not.
Emil. \n troth, | think | should; and undo’t when | had
done. Marry, | would not do such a thing for a joint-ring,
nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor
caps, nor any petty exhibition; but, for the whole world—
why, who would not make her husband a cuckold to make
him a monarch? | should venture purgatory for’t.
Des. Beshrew me, if | would do such a wrong For the
whole world.
Emil. Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ the world; and
having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in your own
world, and you might quickly make it right.
Des. | do not think there is any such woman.
Emil. Yes, a dozen; and as many to the vantage
as would store the world they played for.
But | do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps.
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us.
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them; they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
| think it is. And doth affection breed it?
| think it doth. Is't frailty that thus errs?
It is so too. And have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well; else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
Shakespeare, Othello, IV, ili, 60
64 Leontes. There have been.
Or lam much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many aman there is, even at this present,
Now while | speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour. Nay, there's comfort in’t
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open’d,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for 't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and ‘tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south. Be it concluded.
No barricade for a belly; know’t;
It will let in and out the enemy
With bag and baggage. Many thousand on's
Have the disease, and feel’t not.
Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, I, ti, 190
65 Prospero. Then, as my gift and thine own acquisition
Worthily purchased, take my daughter; but
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister’d,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain, and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed,
As Hymen’s lamps shall light you.
Ferdinand. As | hope
For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,
With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,
The most opportune place, the strong’st suggestion;
Our worser genius can, shall never melt
Mine honour into lust, to take away
The edge of that day’s celebration
When | shall think, or Phoebus' steeds are founder’d.
Or Night kept chain’d below.
Shakespeare, Tempest, IV, i, 13
66 Well, quoth Sancho, who had been silent, and list'ning all
the while, my Wife us’d to tell me, she would have every
one marry with their Match. Like to like, quoth the Devil
to the Collier, and every Sow to her own Trough, as t’other
Saying is. ... A Murrain seize those that will spoil a good
Match between those that love one another! Nay, said
Don Quixote, if Marriage should be always the
Consequence of mutual Love, what would become of the
Prerogative of Parents, and their Authority over their
Children? If young Girls might always chuse their own
Husbands, we should have the best Families intermarry
with Coachmen and Grooms; and your Heiresses would
throw themselves away upon the first wild young Fellows,
whose promising Out-sides and Assurance makes ’em set
up for Fortunes, though all their Stock consists in
Impudence. For the Understanding which alone should
distinguish and chuse in these Cases as in all others, is
apt to be blinded or bias’d by Love and Affection; and
Matrimony is so nice and critical a Point, that it requires
not only our own cautious Management, but even the
Direction of a superior Power to chuse right. Whoever
undertakes a long Journey, if he be wise, makes it his
Business to find out an agreeable Companion. How
cautious then should He be, who is to take a Journey for
Life, whose Fellow-Traveller must not part with him but at
the Grave; his Companion at Bed and Board and Sharer
of all the Pleasures and Fatigues of his Journey; as the
Wife must be to the Husband! She is no such Sort of
Ware, that a Man can be rid of when he pleases: When
once that’s purchas’d, no Exchange, no Sale, no
Alienation can be made; She is an inseparable Accident
to Man: Marriage is a Noose, which, fasten’d about the
Neck, runs the closer, and fits more uneasy by our
struggling to get loose: 'Tis a Gordian Knot which none
can unty, and being twisted with our Thread of Life,
nothing but the Scythe of Death can cut it.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 19
67 The Honourable Poor Man, said he [Don Quixote), if the
Poor can deserve that Epithet, when he has a Beautiful
Wife, is bless’d with a Jewel: He that deprives him of her,
robs him of his Honour, and may be said to deprive him of
his Life. The Woman that is Beautiful, and keeps her
Honesty when her Husband is Poor, deserves to be
Crown’d with Laurel, as the Conquerors were of Old.
Beauty is a tempting Bait, that attracts the Eyes of all
Beholders, and the Princely Eagles, and the most high-
flown Birds stood to its pleasing Lure. But when they find
it in Necessity, then Kites and Crows, and other ravenous
Birds will all be grappling with the alluring Prey. She that
can withstand these dangerous Attacks, well deserves to
be the Crown of her Husband. However, Sir, take this
along with you, as the Opinion of a Wise Man, whose
Name | have forgot; he said, there was but one good
Woman in the World, and his Advice was, that every
Married Man should think his own Wife was she, as being
the only way to live contented. For my own part, | need
not make the Application to myself, for | am not Married,
nor have! as yet any Thoughts that way; but if | had,
‘twould not be a Woman’s Fortune, but her Character
should recommend her; for publick Reputation is the Life
of a Lady’s Vertue, and the outward Appearance of
Modesty is in one sense as good as the Reality; since a
private Sin is not so prejudicial in this World, as a publick
Indecency. If you bring a Woman honest to your Bosom,
tis easy keeping her so, and perhaps you may improve
her Vertues. If you take an unchaste Partner to your Bed,
‘tis hard mending her; for the Extremes of Vice and Venue
are so great in a Woman, and their Points so far asunder,
that ‘tis very improbable, | won’t say impossible, they
should ever be reconcil’d.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 22
68 Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant. are
commonly loving husbands; as was said of Ulysses,
vetulam suam praetulit immortalitati [he preferred his
aged wife to immortality). Chaste women are often proud
and forward, as presuming upon the merit of their
chastity. It is one of the best bonds both of chastity and
obedience in the wife if she think her husband wise;
which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives are
young men’s mistresses; companions for middle age; and
old men’s nurses. So as a man may have a quarrel to
marry when he will. But yet he was reputed one of the
wise men that made answer to the question, when a man
should marry?—"A young man not yet, an elder man not
at all." It is often seen that bad husbands have very good
wives; whether it be that it raiseth the price of their
husband’s kindness when it comes; or that the wives take
a pride in their patience. But this never fails if the bad
husbands were of their own choosing, against their
friends’ consent; for then they will be sure to make good
their own folly.
Bacon, Of Marriage and Single Life
69 This said unanimous, and other Rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best, into thir inmost bower
Handed they went; and eas’d the putting off
These troublesom disguises which wee wear.
Strait side by side were laid, nor turned | weene
Adam from his fair Spouse, nor Eve the Rites
Mysterious of connubial Love refus’d:
Whatever Hypocrites austerely talk
Of puritie and place and innocence.
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to som, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase, who bids abstain
But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man?
Haile wedded Love, mysterious Law, true sourse
Of human ofspring, sole proprietie.
In Paradise of all things common else.
By thee adulterous lust was driv’n from men
Among the bestial herds to raunge, by thee
Founded in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure,
Relations dear, and all the Charities
Of Father, Son, and Brother first were known.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 736
70 Adam. | now see
Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh, my Self
Before me; Woman is her Name, of Man
Extracted; for this cause he shall forgoe
Father and Mother, and to his Wife adhere;
And they shall be one Flesh, one Heart, one Soule.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 494
71 They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav’'d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
Milton, Paradise Lost. XII, 641
72 If unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory
of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly
in aman, who is both the image and glory’ of God, it
must, though commonly not so thought, be much more
deflouring and dishonourable; in that he sins both
against his own body, which is the perfecter sex, and his
own glory, which is in the woman; and, that which is
worst, against the image and glory of God, which is in
himself.
Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus
73 What thing more instituted to the solace and delight of
man than marriage? And yet the misinterpreting of some
scripture, directed mainly against the abusers of the law
for divorce given by Moses, hath changed the blessing of
matrimony not seldom into a familiar and coinhabiting
mischief, at least into a drooping and disconsolate
household captivity, without refuge or redemption—so
ungoverned and so wild a race doth superstition run us
from one extreme of abused liberty into the other of
unmerciful restraint. For although God in the first
ordaining of marriage taught us to what end he did it, in
words expressly implying the apt and cheerful
conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh
him against the evil of solitary’ life, not mentioning the
purpose of generation till afterwards, as being but a
secondary end in dignity, though not in necessity: yet
now, if any two be but once handed in the church, and
have tasted in any sort the nuptial bed, let them find
themselves never so mistaken in their dispositions
through any error, concealment, or misadventure, that
through their different tempers, thoughts and
constitutions, they can neither be to one another a
remedy against loneliness nor live in any union or
contentment all their days; yet they shall, so they be but
found suitably weaponed to the least possibility’ of
sensual enjoyment, be made, spite of antipathy, to fadge
together and combine as they may to their unspeakable
wearisomeness and despair of all sociable delight in the
ordinance which God established to that very end.
Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, I, Pref.
74 With regard to marriage, it is plain that it is in accordance
with reason, if the desire of connection is engendered not
merely by external form, but by a love of begetting
children and wisely educating them; and if, in addition,
the love both of the husband and wife has for its cause
not external form merely, but chiefly liberty of mind.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix XX
75 The husband and wife, though they have but one
common concern, yet having different understandings,
will unavoidably sometimes have different wills too. It
therefore being necessary that the last determination
(that is, the rule) should be placed somewhere, it
naturally falls to the man’s share as the abler and the
stronger. But this, reaching but to the things of their
common interest and property, leaves the wife in the full
and true possession of what by contract is her peculiar
right, and at least gives the husband no more power over
her than she has over his life; the pow-er of the husband
being so far from that of an absolute monarch that the
wife has, in many eases, a liberty to separate from him
where natural right or their contract allows it, whether
that contract be made by themselves in the state of
Nature or by the customs or la\N’s of the country they live
in, and the children, upon such separation, fall to the
father or mother’s lot as such contract does determine.
Locke, II Civil Government, VII, 82
76 Sharper. Thus grief still treads upon the heels of
pleasure;
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
Congreve, The Old Bachelor, V, Iii
77 Millamant. Ah! I'll never marry’, unless | am first made
sure of my will and pleasure.
Mirabell. Would you have ’em both before marriage?
Or will you be contented with the first now, and stay for
the other till after grace?
Milla. An, don’t be impertinent,—My dear liberty, shall
| leave thee? My faithful solitude, my darling
contemplation, must | bid you then adieu? Ay-h adieu—
My morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent
slumbers, all ye douceurs, ye sommeils du matin, adieu.
—I can’t do’t, ’tis more than impossible.—Positively,
Mirabell, I’ll lie abed in a morning as long as | please.
Mira. Then I'll gel up in a morning as early as | please.
Milla. Ah, idle creature, get up when you will.—and
d’'ye hear? 1 won’t be called names alter I’m married;
positively | won’t be called names.
Mira. Names!
Milla. Aye, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love,
sweetheart, and the rest of that nauseous cant, in which
men and their wives are so fulsomely familiar—I shall
never bear that,—Good Mirabell, don’t let us be familiar
or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir
Francis; nor go to Hyde Park together the first Sunday in
a new chariot, to provoke eyes and whispers; and then
never be seen there together again, as if we were proud
of one another the first week, and ashamed of one
another ever after. Let us never visit together, nor gotoa
play together, but let us be very strange and well bred;
let us be as strange as if we had been married a great
while; and as well bred as if we were not married at all.
Mira. Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto
your demands are pretty reasonable.
Milla. Trifles—as liberty to pay and receive visits to and
from whom | please; to write and receive letters, without
interrogatories or wry faces on your part; to wear what |
please; and choose conversation with regard only to my
own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse
with wits that | don’t like, because they are your
acquaintance; or to be intimate with fools, because they
may be your relations. Come to dinner when | please,
dine in my dressing room when I’m out of humor, without
giving a reason. To have my closet inviolate; to be sole
empress of my tea table, which you must never presume
to approach without first asking leave. And lastly,
wherever | am, you shall always knock at the door before
you come in. These articles subscribed, if | continue to
endure you a little longer, | may by degrees dwindle into
a wife.
Mira. Your bill of fare is something advanced in this
latter account. Well, have | liberty to offer conditions—
that when you are dwindled into a wife, | may not be
beyond measure enlarged into a husband?
Milla. You have free leave, propose your utmost, speak
and spare not.
Mira. | thank you. /mprimis then, | covenant that your
acquaintance be general; that you admit no sworn
confidante or intimate of your own sex; no she-friend to
screen her affairs under your countenance and tempt you
to make trial of a mutual secrecy. No decoy duck to
wheedle you a fop—scrambling to the play in a mask—
then bring you home in a pretended fright, when you
think you shall be found out—and rail at me for missing
the play, and disappointing the frolic which you had to
pick me up and prove my constancy.
Milla. Detestable imprimis! | go to the play in a mask!
Mira. Item, | article, that you continue to like your own
face as long as | shall; and while it passes current with
me, that you endeavor not to new coin it. To which end,
together with all vizards for the day, | prohibit all masks
for the night, made of oiled-skins and | know not what—
hog’s bones, hare’s gall, pig water, and the marrow of a
roasted cat. In short, | forbid all commerce with the
gentlewoman in what-d’ye-call-it court. /tem, | shut my
doors against all bawds with baskets, and pennyworths of
muslin, china, fans, atlases, etc. /tem, when you shall be
breeding—
Milla. An! Name it not.
Mira. Which may be presumed, with a blessing on our
endeavors—
Milla. Odious endeavors!
Mira. | denounce against all strait lacing, squeezing for
a shape, till you mold my boy’s head like a sugar loaf;
and instead of a man-child, make me father to a crooked
billet. Lastly, to the dominion of the tea table | submit.—
But with proviso that you exceed not in your province;
but restrain yourself to native and simple tea-table
drinks, as tea, chocolate, and coffee. As likewise to
genuine and authorized tea-table talk—such as mending
of fashions, spoiling reputations, railing at absent friends,
and so forth—but that on no account YOU encroach upon
the men’s prerogative, and presume to drink healths, or
toast fellows; for prevention of which, | banish all foreign
forces, all auxiliaries to the tea table, as orange brandy,
all aniseed, cinnamon, citron and Barbados waters,
together with ratafia and the most noble spirit of clary.—
But for cowslip-wine, poppy water, and all dormitives,
those | allow. These provisos admitted, in other things |
may prove a tractable and complying husband.
Milla. O, horrid provisos! filthy strong waters! | toast
fellows, odious men! | hate your odious provisos.
Mira. Then we're agreed. Shall | kiss your hand upon
the contract?
Congreve, Way of the World, IV, v
78 Their [the Lilliputians’] maxim is, that among people of
quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and
agreeable companion, because she cannot always be
young.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
79 This gentleman [Mr. Allworthy] had in his youth married a
very’ worthy and beautiful woman, of whom he had been
extremely fond: by her he had three children, all of whom
died in their infancy’. He had likewise had the misfortune
of burying this beloved wife herself, about five years
before the time in which this history’ chuses to set out.
This loss, however great, he bore like a man of sense and
constancy, though it must be confest he would often talk
a little whimsically on this head; for he sometimes said he
looked on himself as still married, and considered his wife
as only gone a little before him, a journey which he
should most certainly, sooner or later, take after her; and
that he had not the least doubt of meeting her again ina
place where he should never part with her more—
sentiments for which his sense was arraigned by one part
of his neighbours, his religion by a second, and his
sincerity by a third.
Fielding, Tom Jones, I, 2
80 The squire, to whom that poor woman had been a faithful
upper-servant all the time of their marriage, had returned
that behaviour by making what the world calls a good
husband. He very seldom swore at her (perhaps not
above once a Aveek) and never beat her: she had not the
least occasion for jealousy, and was perfect mistress of
her time; for she was never interrupted by her husband,
who was engaged all the morning in his field exercises,
and all the evening with bottle companions. She scarce
indeed ever saw him but at meals; where she had the
pleasure of carving those dishes which she had before
attended at the dressing. From these meals she retired
about five minutes after the other servants, having only
stayed to drink "the king over the water." Such were, it
seems, Mr. Western’s orders; for it was a maxim with him,
that women should come in with the first dish, and go out
after the first glass. Obedience to these orders was
perhaps no difficult task; for the conversation (if it may
be called so) was seldom such as could entertain a lady. It
consisted chiefly of hallowing, singing, relations of
sporting adventures, b—d—y, and abuse of women, and
of the government.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 4
81 "O my dear Sophy, you are a woman of sense; if you
marry a man, as is most probable you will, of less
capacity than yourself, make frequent trials of his temper
before marriage, and see whether he can bear to submit
to such a superiority.—Promise me, Sophy, you will take
this advice; for you will hereafter find its importance." "It
is very likely | shall never marry at all," answered Sophia;
"I think, at least, | shall never marry a man in whose
understanding | see any defects before marriage; and |
promise you | would rather give up my own than see any
such afterwards." "Give up your understanding!" replied
Mrs. Fitzpatrick; "oh, fie, child! | will not believe so
meanly of you. Everything else | might myself be brought
to give up; but never this. Nature would not have allotted
this superiority to the wife in so many instances, if she
had intended we should all of us have surrendered it to
the husband. This, indeed, men of sense never expect of
us."
Fielding, Tom Jones, XI, 7
82 Young women who are conducted by marriage alone to
liberty and pleasure, who have a mind which dares not
think, a heart which dares not feel, eyes which dare not
see, ears which dare not hear, who appear only to show
themselves silly, condemned without intermission to
trifles and precepts, have sufficient inducements to lead
them on to marriage: it is the young men that want to be
encouraged.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIII, 9
83 Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father,
crossing the landing in order to set his back against the
wall, whilst he propounded it to my uncle Toby—of all the
puzzling riddles, said he, in a marriage state,—of which
you may trust me, brother Toby, there are more asses'
loads than all Job’s stock of asses could have carried—
there is not one that has more intricacies in it than this—
that from the very moment the mistress of the house is
brought to bed, every female in it, from my lady’s
gentlewoman down to the cinder-wench, becomes an
inch taller for it; and give themselves more airs upon that
single inch, than all the other inches put together.
| think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that 'tis we who
sink an inch lower. If | meet but a woman with child—I do
it.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, IV, 12
84 A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune
to have a wife who was debauched by a priest before her
marriage, and who since covered herself with disgrace by
public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave her
without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous
and of agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too
scrupulous to seek to seduce another man’s wife, he fears
intercourse with a public woman or with a widow who
would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and sad
state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the
following is a precis:
My wife is criminal, and it is | who am punished.
Another woman is necessary as a comfort to my life, to
my virtue even; and the sect of which | am a member
refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest girl.
The civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon
law, deprive me of the rights of humanity. The Church
reduces me to seeking either the pleasures it reproves, or
the shameful compensations it condemns; it tries to force
me to be criminal.
| cast my eyes over all the peoples of the earth; there
is not a single one except the Roman Catholic people
among whom divorce and a new marriage are not natural
rights.
What upheaval of the rule has therefore made among
the Catholics a virtue of undergoing adultery, and a duty
of lacking a wife when one has been infamously outraged
by one’s own?...
That our priests, that our monks renounce wives, to
that | consent; it, is an outrage against population, itis a
misfortune for them, but they merit this misfortune which
they have made for themselves. They have been the
victims of the popes who wanted to have in them slaves’,
soldiers without families and without fatherland, living
solely for the Church: but I, magistrate, who serve the
state all day, | need a wife in the evening; and the Church
has not the right to deprive me of a benefit which God
accords me. The apostles were married, Joseph was
married, and | want to be. If 1, Alsacian, am dependent on
a priest who dwells at Rome, if this priest has the
barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let him make a
eunuch of me for the singing of Misereres in his chapel.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Adultery
85 Johnson told me, with an amiable fondness, a little
pleasing circumstance relative to this work. Mrs. Johnson,
in whose judgement and taste he had great confidence,
said to him, after a few numbers of The Rambler had
come out, "I thought very well of you before; but | did not
imagine you could have written any thing equal to this."
Distant praise, from whatever quarter, is not so delightful
as that of a wife whom a man loves and esteems.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1750)
86 He [Johnson] talked of the heinousness of the crime of
adultery, by which the peace of families was destroyed.
He said, "Confusion of progeny constitutes the essence of
the crime; and therefore a woman who breaks her
marriage vows is much more criminal than a man who
does it. A man, to be sure, is criminal in the sight of God:
but he does not do his wife a very material injury’, if he
does not insult her; if, for instance, from mere
wantonness of appetite, he steals privately to her
chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not greatly to resent this.
| would not receive home a daughter who had run away
from her husband on that account. A wife should study to
reclaim her husband by more attention to please him. Sir,
aman will not, once in a hundred instances, leave his
wife and go to a harlot, if his wife has not been negligent
of pleasing."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1768)
87 A gentleman who had been very' unhappy in marriage,
married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it
was the triumph of hope over experience.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1770)
88 A question was started, whether the state of marriage
was natural to man. Johnson. "Sir, it is so far from being
natural for a man and woman to live in a state of
marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for
remaining in that connection, and the restraints which
civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are
hardly sufficient to keep them together."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar, 31, 1772)
89 On Friday, May 7, | breakfasted with him at Mr. Thrale’s in
the Borough. While we were alone, | endeavoured as well
as | could to apologise for a lady who had been divorced
from her husband by act of Parliament. | said, that he had
used her very ill, had behaved brutally to her, and that
she could not continue to live with him without having
her delicacy contaminated; that all affection for him was
thus destroyed; that the essence of conjugal union being
gone, there remained only a cold form, a mere civil
obligation; that she was in the prime of life, with qualities
to produce happiness; that these ought not to be lost;
and, that the gentleman on whose account she was
divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily
situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in
question, | thus attempted to palliate what | was sensible
could not be justified; for when | had finished my
harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check;
"My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue
and vice. The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on'’t."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 7, 1773)
90 Boswell, "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty
women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be
as happy, as with any one woman in particular?" /ohnson.
"Ay, Sir, fifty thousand." Boswe//"Then, Sir, you are not of
opinion with some who imagine that certain men and
certain women are made for each other; and that they
cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts?"
Johnson. "To be sure not, Sir. | believe marriages would in
general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all
made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of
characters and circumstances, without the parties having
any choice in the matter,"
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 22, 1776)
91 We then talked of marrying women of fortune; and |
mentioned a common remark, that a man may be, upon
the whole, richer by marrying a woman with a very small
portion, because a woman of fortune will be
proportionally expensive; whereas a woman who brings
none will be very moderate in expenses, Johnson.
"Depend upon it, Sir, this is not true. A woman of fortune
being used to the handling of money, spends it
judiciously: but a woman who gets the command of
money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a
gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great
profusion."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 28, 1776)
92 Johnson. "Between a man and his wife, a husband’s
infidelity is nothing. They are connected by children, by
fortune, by serious considerations of community. Wise
married women don’t trouble themselves about the
infidelity in their husbands." Boswell! "To be sure there is
a great difference between the offence of infidelity ina
man and that of his wife." Johnson. "The difference is
boundless. The man imposes no bastards upon his wife."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct. 10, 1779)
93 The domestic relations are founded on marriage, and
marriage is founded upon the natural reciprocity or
intercommunity ... of the sexes. This natural union of the
sexes proceeds according to the mere animal nature... , or
according to the law. The latter is marriage... , which is
the union of two persons of different sex for life-long
reciprocal possession of their sexual faculties. The end of
producing and educating children may be regarded as
always the end of nature in implanting mutual desire and
inclination in the sexes; but it is not necessary for the
rightfulness of marriage that those who marry should set
this before themselves as the end of their union,
otherwise the marriage would be dissolved of itself when
the production of children ceased.
Kant, Science of Right, 24
94 The relation of the married persons to each other is a
relation of equality as regards the mutual possession of
their persons, as well as of their goods.
Consequently marriage is only truly realized in
monogamy; for in the relation of polygamy the person
who is given away on the one side, gains only a part of
the one to whom that person is given up, and therefore
becomes a mere res. But in respect of their goods, they
have severally the right to renounce the use of any part
of them, although only by a special contract.... Hence the
question may be raised as to whether it is not contrary to
the equality of married persons when the law says in any
way of the husband in relation to the wife, "he shall be
thy master," so that he is represented as the one who
commands, and she is the one who obeys. This, however,
cannot be regarded as contrary to the natural equality of
a human pair, if such legal supremacy is based only upon
the natural superiority of the faculties of the husband
compared with the wife, in the effectuation of the
common interest of the household, and if the right to
command is based merely upon this fact. For this right
may thus be deduced from the very duty of unity and
equality in relation to the end involved.
Kant, Science of Right, 26
95 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, |
96 'Tis pity learned virgins ever wed
With persons of no sort of education,
Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
Grow tired of scientific conversation:
| don’t choose to say much upon this head.
I’m a plain man, and in a single station.
But—Ohn! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?
Byron, Don Juan, I, 22
97 Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife.
He would have written sonnets all his life?
Byron, Don Juan, III, &
98 Marriage results from the free surrender by both sexes of
their personality—a personality in every possible way
unique in each of the parties. Consequently, it ought not
to be entered by two people identical in stock who are
already acquainted and perfectly known to one another;
for individuals in the same circle of relationship have no
special personality of their own in contrast with that of
others in the same circle. On the contrary, the parties
should be drawn from separate families and their
personalities should be different in origin. Since the very
conception of marriage is that it is a freely undertaken
ethical transaction, not a tie directly grounded in the
physical organism and its desires, it follows that the
marriage of blood-relations runs counter to this
conception and so also to genuine natural feeling.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 168
99 Familiarity, close acquaintance, the habit of common
pursuits, should not precede marriage; they should come
about for the first time within it. And their development
has all the more value, the richer it is and the more facets
it has.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 168
100 It is a much greater shock to modesty to go to bed with
a man whom one has only seen twice, after half a dozen
words mumbled in Latin by a priest, than to yield in spite
of one’s self to a man whom one has adored for two years.
Stendhal, On Love, I, 21
101 Among aristocratic nations birth and fortune frequently
make two such different beings of man and woman that
they can never be united to each other. Their passions
draw them together, but the condition of society and the
notions suggested by it prevent them from contracting a
permanent and ostensible tie. The necessary
consequence is a great number of transient and
clandestine connections. Nature secretly avenges herself
for the constraint imposed upon her by the law's of man.
This is not So much the case when the equality of
conditions has swept away all the imaginary or the real
barriers that separated man from woman. No girl then
believes that she cannot become the wife of the man who
loves her, and this renders all breaches of morality before
marriage very uncommon; for, whatever be the credulity
of the passions, a woman will hardly be able to persuade
herself that she is beloved when her lover is perfectly free
to marry her and does not.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, III, Il
102 Mr. Weller. Wen you’re a married man, Samivel, you'll
understand a good many things as you don’t understand
now'; but vether it’s worth while goin’ through so much,
to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the
end of the alphabet, is a matter o’ taste.
Dickens, Pickwick Papers, XXVII
103 Mr. Micawber. Accidents will occur in the best-regulated
families; and in families not regulated by that pervading
influence which sanctifies while it enhances the —a—I
would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the
lofty character of Wife, they may be expected w-ith
confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Dickens, David Copperfield, XXVIII
104 Civilised men are largely attracted by the mental
charms of women, by their wealth, and especially by their
social position; for men rarely marry into a much lower
rank. The men who succeed in obtaining the more
beautiful women will not have a better chance of leaving
a long line of descendants than other men with plainer
wives, save the few who bequeath their fortunes
according to primogeniture. With respect to the opposite
form of selection, namely, of the more attractive men by
the women, although in civilised nations women have
free or almost free choice, whicli is not the ease with
barbarous races, yet their choice is largely influenced by
the social position and wealth of the men; and the
success of the latter in life depends much on their
intellectual pouters and energy, or on the fruits of these
Same powers in their forefathers.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 20
105 Man scans with scrupulous care the character and
pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he
matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage
he rarely, or never, takes any such care. He is impelled by
nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they
are left to their own free choice, though he is in so far
superior to them that he highly values mental charms
and virtues. On the other hand he is strongly attracted by
mere wealth or rank. Yet he might by selection do
something not only for the bodily constitution and frame
of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral
qualities. Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if
they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind;
but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even
partially realised until the laws of inheritance are
thoroughly known. Everyone does good service, who aids
towards this end.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
106 But you Communists would introduce community of
women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of
production. He hears that the instruments of production
are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come
to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common
to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed
at is to do away with the status of women as mere
instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the
virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of
women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially
established by the Communists. The Communists have no
not to introduce community of women; it has existed
almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and
daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to
speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure
in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in
common and thus at the most what the Communists
might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to
introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed,
an openly legalized, community of women.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 11
107 What marriage may be in the ease of two persons of
cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes,
between whom there exists that best kind of equality,
similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal
superiority in them—so that each can enjoy the luxury of
looking up to the other, and can have alternately the
pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of
development—|I will not attempt to describe. To those who
can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it
would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But | maintain,
with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only,
is the ideal of marriage; and that all opinions, customs,
and institutions which favour any other notion of it, or
turn the conceptions and aspirations connected with it
into any other direction, by whatever pretences they may
be coloured, are relies of primitive barbarism. The moral
regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when
the most fundamental of the social relations is placed
under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings
learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal
in rights and in cultivation.
Mill, Subjection of Women, IV
108 Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by
clever folk, especially by the French, which say's that a
girl should not let herself go when she marries, should
not neglect her accomplishments, should be even more
careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried,
and should fascinate her husband as much as she did
before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary
had at once abandoned all her witchery, of which her
singing had been an unusually powerful part. Site gave it
up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took
no pains with her manners or with delicacy of speech, or
with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her
most becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing
him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction to
all those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had
formerly taught her to use would now be merely
ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had
from the first moment given herself up entirely—that is,
with her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from
him. She felt that her unity with her husband was not
maintained by the poetic feelings that had attracted him
to her, but by something else—indefinite but firm as the
bond between her own body and soul.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, X
109 If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body a man
who eats two dinners at once may perhaps get more
enjoyment but will not attain his purpose, for his stomach
will not digest the two dinners.
If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person
who wishes to have many wives or husbands may
perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that case will not
have a family.
If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose
of marriage is the family, the whole question resolves
itself into not eating more than one can digest, and not
having more wives or husbands than are needed for the
family—that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed
a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a
family. And she not only saw no need of any other or
better husband, but as all the powers of her soul were
intent on serving that husband and family, she could not
imagine and saw no interest in imagining how it would be
if things were different.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, X
110 Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only
a husband and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary’
dearness and rapidity, understanding and expressing
each other's thoughts in ways contrary to all rules of
logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and
in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind
of talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign
of something being wrong between them if Pierre
followed a line of logical reasoning. When he began
proving an>'thing, or talking argumentatively and calmly
and she, led on by his example, began to do the same,
she knew’ that they were on the verge of a quarrel.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, XVI
111 Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of
Pierre’s idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man
so important and necessary’ to society be also my
husband? How did this happen?" She wished to express
this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether he is
really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself,
and passed in review all those whom Pierre most
respected. Judging by what he had said there was no one
he had respected so highly as Platon Karataev.
"Do you know’ what | am thinking about?" she asked.
"About Platon Karataev. Would he have approved of you
now, do you think?"
Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He
understood his wife’s line of thought.
"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered,
evidently sincerely trying to imagine Karataev’s opinion
on the subject. "He would not have understood... yet
perhaps he would."
"| love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully,
awfully!"
"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after
reflection. "What he would have approved of is our family
life. He was always so anxious to find seemliness,
happiness, and peace in everything, and | should have
been proud to let him see us. There now—you talk of my
absence, but you wouldn’t believe what a special feeling |
have for you after a separation. ..
"Yes, | should think..." Natasha began.
"No, it’s not that. | never leave off loving you. And one
couldn’t love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of
course—" he did not finish because their eyes meeting
said the rest.
"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed,
“about honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is
at first! On the contraly’, now’ is the best of all."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, XVI
112 Even concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage.
Nietzsche, Bgond Good and EnV, IV, 123
113 Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum
of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
114 When two people are under the influence of the most
violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of
passions, they are required to swear that they will remain
in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition
continuously until death do them part.
Shaw, Getting Married, Pref.
115 Liza. Theres lots of women has to make their husbands
drunk to make them fit to live with. You see, it’s like this.
If aman has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him
when he’s sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A
drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy.
Shaw, Pygmalion, III
116 Owing to the subjection of women there has in most
civilized communities been no genuine companionship
between husbands and wives; their relation has been one
of condescension on the one side and duty on the other.
All the man’s serious thoughts and purposes he has kept
to himself, since robust thought might lead his wife to
betray him. In most civilized communities women have
been denied almost all experience of the world and of
affairs. They have been kept artificially stupid and
therefore uninteresting.
Russell, Marriage and Morals, III
117 It is... possible for a civilized man and woman to be
happy in marriage, although if this is to be the ease a
number of conditions must be fulfilled. There must be a
feeling of complete equality on both sides; there must be
no interference with mutual freedom; there must be the
most complete physical and mental intimacy; and there
must be a certain similarity in regard to standards of
values. (It is fatal, for example, if one values only money
while the other values only good work.) Given all these
conditions. 1 believe marriage to be the best and most
important relation that can exist between two human
beings. If it has not often been realized hitherto, that is
chiefly because husband and wife have regarded
themselves as each other’s policeman. If marriage is to
achieve its possibilities, husbands and wives must learn
to understand that whatever the law may say, in their
private lives they must be free.
Russell, Marriage and Morals, 1X
118 We know the very widespread custom of breaking a
vessel or a plate on the occasion of a rothal; everyone
present possesses himself of a fragment in symbolic
acceptance of the fact that he may no longer put forward
any claim to the bride, presumably a custom which arose
with monogamy.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysts, XVI/1
Chapter 3
LOVE
This chapter is divided into six sections: 3.1 The Nature,
Kinds, and Power of Love, 3.2 Hate, 3.3 Sexual Love, 3.4
Friendship, 3.5 Charity and Mercy, and 3.6 Love of Country:
Patriotism.
While many of the passages here quoted are so
multifaceted in their significance that they could have been
placed in two or more sections, the division of the texts
holds up for the most part. We have placed first the
passages that try to say what love is and what different
types of love there are. That is immediately followed by
quotations dealing with hate—the antithesis or, as some
maintain, the correlate of love. Then come three sections
each devoted to one of the principal kinds of love, and last a
section dealing with a variant of one of these kinds.
The reader may wonder about the relation of this chapter
to the one that precedes it. Conjugal love and the love
between parents and children, treated in quotations
included in the chapter on marriage, involve two of the
types of love that are discussed here—sexual love and
friendship. There are reasons for placing quotations of this
sort in the chapter on Family; however, the reader interested
in these subjects can consult the index under appropriate
terms to find the passages in Chapter 2 that might have
been included in Sections 3.4 and 3.5 of this chapter.
There is also a problem about the relation of this chapter
to the one that follows it. In the opinion of many, love is an
emotion and might, therefore, have been covered in one of
the several sections of Chapter 4. But this would have done
violence to the opinion of those who maintain that love
involves components that are not emotional or passional,
and that certain types of love are the very antithesis of
passion. In addition, the sheer quantity and variety of the
quotations about love would have made it practically
unfeasible to include them all without differentiation in a
single section of Chapter 4.
3.1 The Nature, Kinds, and Power of
Love
As the title of the section indicates, the passages assembled
here are of three sorts: they ivy to say what love is or what
distinctively characterizes it; they try to distinguish the
various kinds of love and to relate them to one another; and
they express divers attitudes toward the power that love
exerts over human beings.
Those who attempt to define what love is and what it is
not cannot avoid facing questions about its relation to
desire. Is the word "love" just a synonym for the word
"desire"? Is desire only one of the components of love? Is the
kind of desire that enters into love different from all the
desires that are not transformed by love? Can there be love
without desire? Different answers to such questions result in
different conceptions of love and different classifications of
the kinds of love. After reading the passages here that deal
with these matters, the reader might find it useful to turn to
the quotations dealing with desire in Section 4.4 of the
chapter that follows.
The fact that English has only one word to cover what
other languages use at least three words to name
complicates the interpretation of passages that attempt to
distinguish different types of love. The Greek triad of eris,
philia, and agape, and the Latin triad of amor, delictio, and
caritas, name three distinct types of love that can only be
designated in English by such phrases as "erotic or sexual
love," "friendly love" "divine love" or "the love of God and of
one’s self and others as creatures of God." Though we do
have single English words—"friendship" and "charity"—for
the second and third types of love, our over-broad or over-
narrow usage of them, together with a prevalent tendency to
over-stress the sexual or erotic aspect of love, often obscures
or distorts our understanding of the kinds of love and their
relation to one another.
One consequence of these linguistic difficulties is the
necessity of placing here not only passages that use the
word "love" with maximum generality to cover every kind of
love, but also passages that use the term in one or another
more restricted sense without indicating the specific type of
love that is intended. To have done otherwise would have
required us to impose our interpretation upon the
quotations. We felt that it was better to let the reader
interpret them for himself, if he wishes, after he has explored
the variety of loves that the quotations in later sections of
this chapter discuss or exemplify.
The passages that express the attitudes writers have
taken toward the force of love in human life range from
admiration bordering on awe or reverence to complaints
verging on fear or dread. Though in most of these quotations
the word "love" is employed without any qualifying
adjective, the reader, we think, will discover for himself that
most of them are referring to sexual or erotic love, especially
those that express qualms about the effects of love.
1 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return
from following after thee; for whither thou goest, | will go;
and where thou lodgest, | will lodge; thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou dicst, will | die, and there will | be buried:
the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death
part thee and me.
Ruth 1; 16-17
2 Set me as a Seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine
arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the
grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a
most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the
floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of
his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
3 Chorus. Love unconquered in fight, love who falls on our
havings.
You rest in the bloom of a girl’s unwithered face.
You cross the sea, you are known in the wildest lairs.
Not the immortal gods can fly,
nor men of a day. Who has you within him is mad.
Sophocles, Antigone, 781
4 Deianira. How foolish one would be to climb into the ring
with Love and try to trade blows with him, like a boxer.
For he rules even the Gods as he pleases.
Sophocles, Women of Trachis, 441
5 Chorus. When in excess and past all limits Love doth
come, he brings not glory or repute to man; but if the
Cyprian queen in moderate might approach, no goddess
is so full of charm as she.
Euripides, Medea, 627
6 Chorus. Cypris, you guide men’s hearts
and the inflexible
hearts of the Gods and with you
comes Love with the flashing wings,
comes Love with the swiftest of wings.
Over the earth he flies
and the loud-echoing salt-sea.
He bewitches and maddens the heart
of the victim he swoops upon.
He bewitches the race of the mountain-hunting
lions and beasts of the sea,
and all the creatures that earth feeds,
and the blazing sun sees—
and man, too—
over all you hold kingly power,
Love, you are only ruler
over all these.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 1268
7 Socrates. The soul of the lover will never forsake his
beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has
forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he
thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the
rules and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided
himself, he now despises, and is ready to sleep like a
servant, wherever he is allowed, as near as he can to his
desired one, who is the object of his worship, and the
physician who can alone assuage the greatness of his
pain.
Plato, Phaedrus, 252A
8 Pausanias. Not every love, but only that which has a noble
purpose, is noble and worthy of praise. The Love who is
the offspring of the common Aphrodite is essentially
common, and has no discrimination, being such as the
meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as
well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the
soul—the most foolish beings are the objects of this love
which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of
accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good
and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his
mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of
the union of the male and female, and partakes of both.
But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived
from a mother in whose birth the female has no part,—
she is from the male only; this is that love which is of
youths, and the goddess being older, there is nothing of
wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love
turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more
valiant and intelligent nature; any one may recognise the
pure enthusiasts in the very character of their
attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent
beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much
about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And
in choosing young men to be their companions, they
mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in
company with them, not to take them in their
inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with
them, or run away from one to another of them. But the
love of young boys should be forbidden by law, because
their future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad,
either in body or soul, and much noble enthusiasm may
be thrown away upon them.
Plato, Symposium, 181A
9 "What then is Love?" | (Socrates] asked; "Is he mortal?"
"No." "What then?" "As in the former instance, he is
neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the
two." "What is he, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit, and like
all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the
mortal." "And what," | said, "is his power?" "He
interprets," she [Diotima] replied, "between gods and
men, conveying and taking across to the gods the
prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands
and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the
chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is
bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet
and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms,
and all prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God
mingles not with man; but through Love all the
intercourse and converse of god with man, whether
awake or asleep, iS carried on.”
Plato, Symposium, 202B
10 “For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the
beautiful only.” "What then?” ”The love of generation and
of birth in beauty.” “Yes ” | said. "Yes, indeed,” she
[Diotima] replied. “But why of generation?” “Because to
the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and
immortality,” she replied; “and if, as has been already
admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the
good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together
with good: Wherefore love is of immortality.”
All this she taught me at various times when she
spoke of love. And | remember her once saying to me,
“What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and the attendant
desire? See you not how all animals, birds, as well as
beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony when
they take the infection of love, which begins with the
desire of union; whereto is added the care of offspring, on
whose behalf the weakest are ready to battle against the
strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them, and
will let themselves be tormented with hunger or suffer
anything in order to maintain their young. Man may be
supposed to act thus from reason; but why should
animals have these passionate feelings? Can you tell me
why?” Again | replied that | did not know. She said to me:
“And do you expect ever to become a master in the art of
love, if you do not know this?” “But | have told you
already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason why |
come to you; for | am conscious that | want a teacher; tell
me then the cause of this and of the other mysteries of
love.” “Marvel not,” she said, “if you believe that love is
of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged;
for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal
nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting
and immortal: and this is only to be attained by
generation, because generation always leaves behind a
new existence in the place of the old. Nay even in the life
of the same individual there is succession and not
absolute unity: a man is called the same, and yet in the
short interval which elapses between youth and age, and
in which every animal is said to have life and identity, he
is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation
—hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always
changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of
the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires,
pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one
of us, but are always coming and going; and equally true
of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us
mortals, not only do the sciences in general spring up
and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the
Same; but each of them individually experiences a like
change. For what is implied in the word ‘recollection’, but
the departure of knowledge, which is ever being
forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection,
and appears to be the same although in reality new,
according to that law of succession by which all mortal
things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by
substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another
new and similar existence behind—unlike the divine,
which is always the same and not another? And in this
way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything,
partakes of immortality; but the immortal in another way.
Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their
offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the
sake of immortality.”
Plato, Symposium, 206B
11 The pleasure of the eye is the beginning of love. For no
one loves if he has not first been delighted by the form of
the beloved, but he who delights in the form of another
does not, for all that, love him, but only does so when he
also longs for him when absent and craves for his
presence.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1167a3
12 Those who have done a service to others feel friendship
and love for those they have served even if these are not
of any use to them and never will be. This is what
happens with craftsmen too; every man loves his own
handiwork better than he would be loved by it if it came
alive; and this happens perhaps most of all with poets; for
they have an excessive love for their own poems, doting
on them as if they were their children. This is what the
position of benefactors is like; for that which they have
treated well is their handiwork, and therefore they love
this more than the handiwork does its maker. The cause
of this is that existence is to all men a thing to be chosen
and loved, and that we exist by virtue of activity (that is,
by living and acting), and that the handiwork is ina
sense, the producer in activity; he loves his handiwork,
therefore, because he loves existence. And this is rooted
in the nature of things; for what he is in potentiality, his
handiwork manifests in activity.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1167b32
13 It is pleasant to be loved, for this... makes a man see
himself as the possessor of goodness, a thing that every
being that has a feeling for it desires to possess: to be
loved means to be valued for one’s own personal
qualities.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1371a18
14 Mother of the Aeneadae, darling of men and gods,
increase-giving Venus, who beneath the gliding signs of
heaven fittest with thy presence the ship-carrying sea,
the corn-bearing lands, since through thee every kind of
living things is conceived, rises up and beholds the light
of the sun. Before thee, goddess, flee the winds, the
clouds of heaven; before thee and thy advent; for thee
earth manifold in works puts forth sweet-smelling flowers;
for thee the levels of the sea do laugh and heaven
propitiated shines with outspread light. For soon as the
vernal aspect of day is disclosed, and the birth-favouring
breeze of Favonius unbarred is blowing fresh, first the
fowls of the air, O lady, show signs of thee and thy
entering in, thoroughly smitten in heart by thy power.
Next the wild herds bound over The glad pastures and
swim the rapid rivers: in such wise each made prisoner by
thy charms follows thee with desire, whither thou goest to
lead it on. Yes, throughout seas and mountains and
sweeping rivers and leafy homes of birds and grassy
plains, striking fond love into the breasts of all thou
constrainest them each after its kind to continue their
races with desire.... Thou... art sole mistress of the nature
of things and without thee nothing rises up into the
divine borders of light, nothing grows to be glad or lovely.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
15 The passion we usually call love (and, heaven help me! |
can come up with no other name for it) is so trivial that |
can think of nothing to compare it with.
Cicero, Disputations, IV, 32
16 Love conquers all; and we must yield to Love.
Virgil, Eclogues, X
17 Not only man’s imperial race, but they
That wing the liquid air, or swim the sea,
Or haunt the desert, rush into the flame:
For Love is lord of all, and is in all the same.
Tis with this rage, the mother-lion stung,
Scours o’er the plain, regardless of her young:
Demanding rites of love, she sternly stalks.
And hunts her lover in his lonely walks.
"Tis then the shapeless bear his den forsakes;
In woods and fields, a wild destruction makes:
Boars with their tusks; to battle tigers move,
Enraged with hunger, more enraged with love.
Then woe to him, that, in the desert land
Of Libya, travels o’er the burning sand!
The stallion snuffs the well-known scent afar,
And snorts and trembles for the distant mare;
Nor bits nor bridles can his rage restrain,
And rugged rocks are interposed in vain:
He makes his way o’er mountains, and contemns
Unruly torrents, and unforded streams.
The bristled boar, who feels the pleasing wound,
New grinds his arming tusks, and digs the ground.
The sleepy lecher shuts his little eyes;
About his churning chaps the frothy bubbles rise:
He rubs his sides against a tree; prepares
And hardens both his shoulders for the wars.
What did the youth, when Love’s unerring dart
Transfixed his liver and inflamed his heart?
Alone, by night, his watery way he took;
About him, and above the billows broke;
The sluices of the sky were open spread.
And rolling thunder rattled o’er his head;
The raging tempests called him back in vain,
And every boding omen of the main:
Nor could his kindred, nor the kindly force
Of weeping parents, change his fatal course;
No, not the dying maid, who must deplore
His floating carcase on the Sestian shore.
Virgil, Georgics, III
18 Now everyone recognizes that the emotional state for
which we make this "Love" responsible rises in souls
aspiring to be knit in the closest union with some
beautiful object, and that this aspiration takes two forms,
that of the good whose devotion is for beauty itself, and
that other which seeks its consummation in some vile
act.... It is sound, | think, to find the primal source of Love
in a tendency of the Soul towards pure beauty, in a
recognition, in a kinship, in an unreasoned consciousness
of friendly relation.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, V, |
19 Those that love beauty of person without carnal desire
love for beauty’s sake; those that have—for women, of
course—the copulative love, have the further purpose of
self-perpetuation: as long as they are led by these
motives, both are on the right path, though the first have
taken the nobler way.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, V, 1
20 A body tends by its weight towards the place proper to it
—weight does not necessarily tend towards the lowest
place but towards its proper place. Fire tends upwards,
stone downwards. By their weight they are moved and
seek their proper place. Oil poured over water is borne on
the surface of the water, water poured over oil sinks
below the oil: it is by their weight that they are moved
and seek their proper place. Things out of their place are
in motion: they come to their place and are at rest. My
love is my weight: wherever | go my love is what brings
me there.
Augustine, Confessions, XIII, 9
21 If we were beasts, we should love the fleshly and sensual
life, and this would be our sufficient good; and when it
was well with us in respect of it, we should seek nothing
beyond. In like manner, if we were trees, we could not,
indeed, in the strict sense of the word, love anything;
nevertheless we should seem, as it were, to long for that
by which we might become more abundantly and
luxuriantly fruitful. If we were stones, or waves, or wind,
or flame, or anything of that kind, we should want,
indeed, both sensation and life, yet should possess a kind
of attraction towards our own proper position and natural
order. For the specific gravity of bodies is, as it were, their
love, whether they are carried downwards by their
weight, or upwards by their levity. For the body is borne
by its gravity, as the spirit by love, whithersoever it is
borne. But we are men, created in the image of our
Creator, Whose eternity is true, and Whose truth is
eternal, Whose love is eternal and true.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 28
22 Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by
the love of self, even to the contempt of God: the
heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.
The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the
Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest
glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 28
23 Through Love the universe with constancy makes
changes all without discord: earth’s elements, though
contrary, abide in treaty bound: Phoebus in his golden
car leads up the glowing day; his sister rules the night
that Hesperus brought: the greedy sea confines its waves
in bounds, lest the earth’s borders be changed by its
beating on them: all these are firmly bound by Love,
which rules both earth and sea, and has its empire in the
heavens too. If Love should slacken this its hold, all
mutual love would change to war; and these would strive
to undo the scheme which now their glorious movements
carry out with trust and with accord. By Love are peoples
too kept bound together by a treaty which they may not
break. Love binds with pure affection the sacred tie of
wedlock, and speaks its bidding to all trusty friends. O
happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as is the
universe, by Love!
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 11
24 The good we receive from God is twofold, the good of
nature, and the good of grace. Now the fellowship of
natural goods bestowed on us by God is the foundation of
natural love, in virtue of which not only man, so long as
his nature remains unimpaired, loves God above all
things and more than himself, but also every single
creature, each in its own way, that is, either by an
intellectual, or by a rational, or by an animal, or at least
by a natural love, as stones do, for instance, and other
things bereft of knowledge, because each part naturally
loves the common good of the whole more than its own
particular good. This is evidenced by its operation, since
the principal inclination of each part is towards common
action conducive to the usefulness of the whole. It may
also be seen in political virtues according to which
sometimes the citizens suffer damage even to their own
property and persons for the sake of the common good.
And so much more is this realized with regard to the
friendship of charity which is based on the fellowship of
the gifts of grace. Therefore man ought, out of charity, to
love God, Who is the common good of all. more than
himself, since happiness is in God as in the universal and
fountain-head principle of all who are able to have a
Share of that happiness.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 26, 3
25 It is natural to a man to love his own work (thus it is to be
observed that poets love their own poems); and the
reason is that we love to be and to live, and these are
made manifest especially in our action.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 26, 12
26 [Everything] hath its specific love, as, for example, the
simple bodies have a love which has an innate affinity to
their proper place; and that is why earth ever drops to
the centre; but the love of fire is for the upper
circumference, under the heaven of the moon, and
therefore it ever riseth thereto.
Primary compound bodies, like the minerals, have a
love for the place where their generation is ordained; and
therein they grow, and thence draw vigour and power.
Whence we see the magnet ever receive power from the
direction of its generation.
Plants, which are the primary living things, havea
more manifest love for certain places, according as their
composition requires; and therefore we see certain plants
almost always gather along watercourses, and certain on
the ridges of mountains, and certain on slopes and at the
foot of hills, the which, if we transplant them, either die
altogether or live as if in gloom, like things parted from
the place dear to them.
As for the brute animals, not only have they a more
manifest love for their place, but we see that they love
one another.
Men have their proper love for perfect and comely
things. And because man (though his whole form be one
sole substance) has in himself, by his nobility, something
of the nature of each of these things, he may have all
these loves, and has them all indeed. For in virtue of the
nature of the simple body, which predominates in the
subject, he naturally loves to descend; and therefore
when he moves his body upward it is more toilsome. By
the second nature, of a complex body, he loves the place
and further the time of his generation, and therefore
everyone is naturally of more efficient body at the place
where he was generated, and at the time of his
generation, than at any other...
And by the third nature, to wit that of plants, man
hath love for certain food, not in so far as it affects the
sense but in so far as it is nutritious; and such food
maketh the working of this nature most perfect; and
other food does not so, but makes it imperfect. And
therefore we see that some certain food shall make men
fair of face and stout of limb, and of a lively colour; and
certain other shall work the contrary’ of this. And in
virtue of the fourth nature, that of animals, to wit the
sensitive, man hath another love whereby he loveth
according to sensible appearance, like to a beast; and
this is the love in man which most needeth a ruler,
because of its overmastering operation, especially in the
delight of taste and touch. And by the fifth and last
nature, that is to say the truly human or, rather say, the
angelic, to wit the rational, man hath love to truth and to
virtue; and from this love springeth the true and perfect
friendship, drawn from nobility.
Dante, Convivio, I/l, 3
27 Virgil. Nor Creator, nor creature, my son, was ever without
love, either natural or rational; and this thou knowest.
The natural is always without error; but the other may
err through an evil object, or through too little or too
much vigour.
While it is directed to the primal goods, and in the
secondary, moderates itself, it cannot be the cause of
sinful delight;
but when it is turned awry to evil, or soeeds towards
the good with more or less care than it ought, against the
Creator his creature works. Hence thou mayst understand
that love must be the seed of every virtue in you, and of
every deed that deserves punishment.
Now inasmuch as love can never turn its face from the
weal of its subject, all things are safe from self-hatred;
and because no being can be conceived as existing
alone in isolation from the Prime Being, every affection is
cut off from hate of him.
It follows, if | judge well in my division, that the evil we
love is our neighbour’s, and this love arises in three ways
in your clay.
There is he who through his neighbour's abasement
hopes to excel, and solely for this desires that he be cast
down from his greatness; there is he who fears to lose
power, favour, honour and fame because another is
exalted, wherefore he groweth sad so that he loves the
contrary; and there is he who seems to be so shamed
through being wronged, that he becomes greedy of
vengeance, and such must needs seek another’s hurt.
This threefold love down below is mourned for: now |
desire that thou understand of the other, which hastes
toward good in faulty degree. Each one apprehends
vaguely a good wherein the mind may find rest, and
desires it; wherefore each one strives to attain thereto.
If lukewarm love draw you towards the vision of it or
the gaining of it, this cornice, after due penitence,
torments you for it.
Another good there is, which maketh not men happy;
‘tis not happiness, ‘tis not the good essence, the fruit and
root of all good.
The love that abandons itself too much to this, is
mourned for above us in three circles: but how it is
distinguished in three divisions, | do not say, in order that
thou search for it of thyself.
Dante, Purgatorio, XVII, 91
28 "Master, my vision is so quickened in thy light, that |
discern clearly all that thy discourse imports or describes;
therefore | pray thee, sweet Father dear, that thou
define love to me, to which thou dost reduce every good
work and its opposite."
"Direct," said he [Virgil], "towards me the keen eyes of
the understanding, and the error of the blind who make
them guides shall be manifest to thee.
The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive
to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is
awakened into activity.
Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a
real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the
mind turn thereto.
And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that
inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure
is bound anew within you.
Then, even as fire moves upward by reason of its form,
whose nature it is to ascend, there where it endures
longest in its material;
so the enamoured mind falls to desire, which is a
spiritual movement, and never rests until the object of its
love makes it rejoice.
Now may be apparent to thee, how deeply the truth is
hidden from the folk who aver that every act of love is in
itself a laudable thing,
because, forsooth, its material may seem always to be
good; but not every’ imprint is good, albeit the wax may
be good."
“Thy words and my attendant wit," | answered him,
“have made love plain to me, but that has made me more
teeming with doubt;
for if love is offered to us from without, and the soul
walks with no other foot, it is no merit of hers whether
she go straight or crooked."
And he to me: "So far as reason sees here, | can tell
thee; from beyond that point, ever await Beatrice, for 'tis
a matter of faith.
Every substantial form, which is distinct from matter
and is in union with it, has a specific virtue contained
within itself
which is not perceived save in operation, nor is
manifested except by its effects, just as life in a plant by
the green leaves.
Therefore man knows not whence the understanding
of the first cognitions may come, nor the inclination to
the prime objects of appetite,
which are in you, even as the instinct in bees to make
honey; and this prime will admits no desert of praise or of
blame.
Now in order that to this will every other may be
related, innate with you is the virtue which giveth
counsel, and ought to guard the threshold of assent.
This is the principle whence is derived the reason of
desert in you, according as it garners and winnows good
and evil loves.
Those who in their reasoning went to the foundation,
perceived this innate freedom, therefore they left ethics
to the world.
Wherefore suppose that every love which is kindled
within you arise of necessity, the power to arrest it is
within you."
Dante, Purgatorio, XVIII, 10
29 So fared it with this rash and hardy knight [Troilus].
Who was a king’s son of most high degree.
For though he thought that nothing had the might
To curb the heart of such a one as he,
Yet with a look, no longer was he free.
And he who stood but now in pride above
All men, at once was subject most to Love,
And now | bid you profit by this man,
Ye worthy folk, and wise and proud withal,
And scorn not Love, he who so lightly can
The freedom of rebellious hearts enthral;
For still the common fate on you must fall.
That love, at nature’s very heart indwelling,
Shall bind all things by nature’s might compelling.
That this is true hath oftentimes been proved,
For well you know, and in wise books may read,
That men of greatest worth have deepest loved.
And none so powerful in word or deed,
But he the greater power of love must heed,
For all his fame or high nobility;
Thus hath it been and ever shall it be!
And fitting is it that it should be so,
For wisest men have most with love been pleased,
And those that dwelt in sorrow and in woe.
By love have often been consoled and cased,
And cruel wrath by love hath been appeased;
For love lends lustre to an honorable name,
And saves mankind from wickedness and shame.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 33-36
30 [Her] thought was this, "Alas, since | [Cressida] am free,
Should | now love and risk my happy state And maybe
put in bonds my liberty?
What folly such a course to contemplate!
Am | not satisfied to see the fate
Of others, with their fear and joy and pain?
Who loveth not, no cause hath to complain,
"For lovers ever lead a stormy life,
And have done so since loving was begun.
For always some distrust and foolish strife
There is in love, some cloud across the sun.
Then nothing by us women can be done,
But weep in wretchedness and sit and think,
This is our lot, the cup of woe to drink!’
"And slanderous tongues, they are so very quick
To do us harm, and men are so untrue.
And once they’re satisfied, they soon grow sick
Of ancient love and look for something new!
But when all’s done, then what can women do!
These men at first their love like mad will spend.
But sharp attacks oft weaken at the end.
"Full often it hath been exemplified,
The treason that to women men will show;
And that’s the end, when such a love hath died.
For what becomes of it, when it doth go.
No living creature on this earth can know.
For then there’s nothing left to love or spurn;
What once was naught, to nothing doth return.
"And if | love, how busy must | be
To guard against all idle people’s chatter.
And fool them that they see no fault in me.
For true or not, to them it doesn’t matter,
If but their lying tales amuse or flatter;
For who can stop the wagging of a tongue,
Or sound of bells the while that they are rung!"
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Il, 111-115
31 O happy light, of which the beams so clear
Illume the third expanse of heaven’s air.
Loved of the sun, of Jove the daughter dear,
O Love’s Delight, thou goodly one and fair,
In gentle hearts abiding everywhere,
Thou primal cause of joy and all salvation.
Exalted be thy name through all creation!
In heaven and hell, on earth and salty sea,
All creatures answer to thy might supernal,
For man, bird, beast, fish, herb and leafy tree.
Their seasons know from thy breath ever vernal,
God loves, and grants that love shall be eternal.
All creatures in the world through love exist,
And lacking love, lack all that may persist.
Mover of Jove to that so happy end,
Through which all earthly creatures live and be,
When mortal love upon him thou didst send,
For as thou wilt, the power lies with thee
Of case in love or love’s adversity,
And in a thousand forms is thy descent
On earth, in love to favor or prevent!
Fierce Mars for thee must subjugate his ire,
All hearts from thee receive their fates condign;
Yet ever when they feel thy sacred fire,
In dread of shame, their vices they resign,
And gentler grow, more brave and more benign;
And high or low, as each in his rank strives,
All owe to thee the joys of all their lives.
Houses and realms in greater unity,
And faith in friendship thou canst make to grow.
Thou understandest likings hard to see.
Which cause much wonder that they should be so,
As when in puzzlement, one seeks to know.
Why this loves that, why she by him is sought.
Why one and not the other fish is caught.
From thee comes law for all the universe,
And this | know, as all true lovers see,
That who opposeth, ever hath the worse.
Now, lady bright, in thy benignity,
Help me to honor those who honor thee,
And teach me, clerk of love, that | may tell
The joy of those who in thy service dwell.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, III, 1-6
32 Arcita. Know you not well the ancient writer’s saw
Of ‘Who shall give a lover any law?’
Love is a greater law, aye by my pan,
Than man has ever given to earthly man.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Knight’s Tale
33 Proteus. O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day.
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away!
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, Iii, 84
34 Biron. Love, first learned in a lady’s eyes.
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power.
And gives to every' power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d:
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper’d with Love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, IV, tii, 327
35 Juliet. Dost thou love me? | know thou wilt say "Ay,"
And | will take thy word: yet, if thou swear’st.
Thou mayst prove false; at lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:
Or if thou think’st | am too quickly won,
I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay.
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, | am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my ‘haviour light;
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II, ii, 90
36 Lysander. Ay me! for aught that | could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history.
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood—
Hermione. O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.
Lys. Or else misgraffed in respect of years—
Her. O spite! too old to be engaged to young.
Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—
Her, O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes.
Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice.
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it.
Making it momentary as a sound.
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night.
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere
a man hath pow-er to say "Behold!"
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, I, 1, 132
37 Lorenzo. The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls
And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents.
Where Cressid lay that night.
Jessica. In such a night
Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself
And ran dismay’d away.
Lor. In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
Jes. In such a night
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs
That did renew old AEson.
Lor. In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.
Jes. In such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well.
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith
And ne’er a true one.
Lor. In such a night
Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew.
Slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jes. | would out-night you, did no body come;
But, hark, | hear the footing of a man.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, V, i, 1
38 Benedick. | do much wonder that one man, seeing how
much another man is a fool when he dedicates his
behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such
Shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own
scorn by falling in love: and such a man is Claudio. | have
known when there was no music with him but the drum
and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabor and
the pipe: | have known when he would have walked ten
mile a-foot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten
nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. He
was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an
honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned
orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet,
just so many strange dishes. May | be so converted and
see with these eyes? | cannot tell; | think not: | will not be
sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll
take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he
Shall never make me such a fool. One woman is fair, yet |
am well; another is wise, yet | am well; another virtuous,
yet | am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one
woman Shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be,
that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never
cheapen her; fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come
not near me; noble, or not | for an angel; of good
discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of
what colour it please God.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II, tii, 7
39 Rosalind. Love is merely a madness, and, | tell you,
deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do:
and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is
that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in
love too.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, ti, 420
40 Rosalind. Why, how now, Orlando! where have you been
all this while? You a lover! An you serve me such another
trick, never come in my sight more.
Orlando. My fair Rosalind, | come within an hour of my
promise.
Ros. Break an hour’s promise in love! He that will
divide a minute into a thousand parts and break but a
part of the thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of
love, it may be said of him that Cupid hath clapped him
o’ the shoulder, but I’ll warrant him heart-whole.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV, i, 38
41 Rosalind. The poor world is almost six thousand years old,
and in all this time there was not any man died in his own
person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains
dashed out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he could
to die Before, and he is one of the patterns of love.
Leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though
Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot
midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to
wash him in the Hellespont and being taken with the
cramp was drowned: and the foolish chroniclers of that
age found it was “Hero of Sestos.” But these are all lies:
men have died from time to time and worms have eaten
them, but not for love.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV, 1, 94
42 Othello. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approved good masters,
That | have ta’en away this old man’s daughter,
It is most true; true, | have married her:
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am | in my speech,
And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace.
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field,
And little of this great world can | speak
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,
And therefore little shall | grace my cause
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,
| will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver
Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration, and what mighty magic,
For such proceeding | am charged withal,
| won his daughter. ...
Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still question’d me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That | have pass’d.
| ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein | spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels’ history;
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch
heaven,
It was my hint to soeak—such was the process
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline;
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence,
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She’d come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse; which | observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That | would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively. | did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears
When | did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer’d. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
She swore, in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange,
"Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful.
She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d
That heaven had made her such a man. She thank’d me.
And bade me, if | had a friend that loved her,
| should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint | spake:
She loved me for the dangers | had pass’d,
And | loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft | have used.
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.
Shakespeare, Othello, I, tii, 76
43 Othello. Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,
But | do love thee! and when | love thee not.
Chaos is come again.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, iti, 90
44 Othello. | pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate.
Speak of me as! am; nothing extenuate.
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all
his tribe.
Shakespeare, Othello, V, ti, 340
45 Cleopatra. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
Antony. There’s beggary in the love than can be
reckon’d.
Cleo. |'ll set a bourn how far to be beloved.
Ant. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new
earth.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I, i, 14
46 Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
Can yet the lease of my true love control.
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CVI//
47 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and checks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CKVI/
48 Reply’d Don Quixote; a Knight-Errant cannot be without a
Mistress; ‘tis not more essential for the Skies to have
Stars; than ’tis to us to be in Love. Insomuch, that | dare
affirm, that no History ever made mention of any Knight-
Errant, that was not a Lover; for were any Knight free
from the Impulses of that generous Passion, he wou’d not
be allow’d to be a lawful Knight; but a mis-born Intruder,
and one who was not admitted within the Pale of
Knighthood at the Door, but leap’d the Fence, and stole
in like a Robber and a Thief.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 13
49 Don Quixote. Dost thou not know, excommunicated
Traitor (for certainly Excommunication is the least
Punishment can fall upon thee, after such Profanations of
the peerless Dulcinea's Name) and art thou not assur’d,
vile Slave and ignominious Vagabond, that | shou’d not
have Strength sufficient to kill a Flea, did not [Dulcinea]
give Strength to my Nerves, and infuse Vigour into my
Sinews? Speak, thou Villain with the Viper’s Tongue; Who
do’st thou imagine has restor’d the Queen to her
Kingdom, cut off the Head of a Giant, and made thee a
Marquis (for | count all this as done already) but the
Power of Du/cinea, who makes use of my Arm, as the
Instrument of her Act in me? She fights and overcomes in
me; and | live and breathe in her, holding Life and Being
from her.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, |, 30
50 Stand still, and | will read to thee
A lecture, love, in Love’s philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadow's went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced;
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread.
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadow’s, flow
From us and our cares; but, now’ 'tis not so.
That love hath not attained the high’st degree,
Which is still diligent lest others see.
Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint, and westwardly decline.
To me thou, falsely, thine,
And | to thee, mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day;
But oh, love’s day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his first minute after noon, is night.
Donne, A Lecture upon the Shadow
51 Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind.
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though | must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Vet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where | begun.
Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
52 The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man.
For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and
now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much
mischief, sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.
Bacon, Of Love
53 We may, it seems to me, find differences in love
according to the esteem which we bear to the object
loved as compared with oneself: for when we esteem the
object of love less than ourselves, we have only a simple
affection for it; when we esteem it equally with ourselves,
that is called friendship; and when we esteem it more,
the passion which we have may be called devotion.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, LXXXIII
54 The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.
We feel it in a thousand things. | say that the heart
naturally loves the Universal Being, and also itself
naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it
hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have
rejected the one and kept the other. Is it by reason that
you love yourself?
Pascal, Pensees, IV, 277
55 Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external
cause. This... explains with sufficient clearness the
essence of love; that which is given by some authors,
who define love to be the will of the lover to unite himself
to the beloved object, expressing not the essence of love
but one of its properties, and in as much as these authors
have not seen with sufficient clearness what is the
essence of love, they could not have a distinct
conception of its properties, and consequently their
definition has by everybody been thought very obscure. |
must observe, however, when | say that it is a property in
a lover to will a union with the beloved object, that | do
not understand by a will a consent or deliberation ora
free decree of the mind..., nor even a desire of the lover
to unite himself with the beloved object when it is
absent, nor a desire to continue in its presence when it is
present, for love can be conceived without either one or
the other of these desires; but by will | understand the
satisfaction that the beloved object produces in the lover
by its presence, by virtue of which the joy of the lover is
strengthened, or at any rate supported.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 59, Schol. 6
56 Any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight
which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in
him, has the idea we call love. For when a man declares
in autumn when he is eating them, or in spring when
there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more but
that the taste of grapes delights him: let an alteration of
health or constitution destroy the delight of their taste,
and he then can be said to love grapes no longer.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 11, XX, 4
37 Fainall. For a passionate lover, methinks you are a man
somewhat too discerning in the failings of your mistress.
Mirabell And for a discerning man, somewhat too
passionate a lover; for | like her with all her faults, nay,
like her for her faults. Her follies are so natural, are so
artful, that they become her, and those affectations
which in another woman would be odious, serve but to
make her more agreeable. I'll tell thee, Fainall, she once
used me with that insolence that in revenge | took her to
pieces; sifted her, and separated her failings; | studied
"em, and got ’em by rote. The catalogue was so large that
| was not without hopes, one day or other, to hate her
heartily: to which end | so used myself to think of ’em
that at length, contrary to my design and expectation,
they gave me every hour less and less disturbance, till in
a few days it became habitual to me to remember ’em
without being displeased. They are now grown as familiar
to me as my own frailties, and in all probability in a little
time longer | shall like "em as well.
Congreve, Way of the Worlds |, iii
58 Mirabell. Do you lock yourself up from me, to make my
search more curious? Or is this pretty artifice contrived to
signify that here the chase must end, and my pursuit be
crowned, for you can fly no further?
Millamant. Vanity! No—FIl fly and be followed to the
last moment. Though | am upon the very verge of
matrimony, | expect you should solicit me as much as if |
were wavering at the grate of a monastery, with one foot
over the threshold. I'll be solicited to the very last, nay
and afterwards.
Mira. What, after the last?
Milla. O, | Should think | was poor and had nothing to
bestow, if | were reduced to an inglorious ease; and freed
from the agreeable fatigues of solicitation.
Mira. But do not you know that when favors are
conferred upon instant and tedious solicitation, that they
diminish in their value and that both the giver loses the
grace, and the receiver lessens his pleasure?
Milla. \t may be in things of common application, but
never sure in love. O, | hate a lover that can dare to think
he draws a moment’s air, independent on the bounty of
his mistress. There is not so impudent a thing in nature as
the saucy look of an assured man, confident of success.
The pedantic arrogance of a very husband has not so
pragmatical an air.
Congreve, Way of the World, IV, v
59 To avoid, however, all contention, if possible, with these
philosophers, if they will be called so; and to show our
own disposition to accommodate matters peaceably
between us, we shall here make them some concessions,
which may possibly put an end to the dispute.
First, we will grant that many minds, and perhaps
those of the philosophers, are entirely free from the least
traces of such a passion.
Secondly, that what is commonly called love, namely,
the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain
quantity of delicate white human flesh, is by no means
that passion for which | here contend. This is indeed more
properly hunger; and as no glutton is ashamed to apply
the word love to his appetite, and to say he loves such
and such dishes; so may the lover of this kind, with equal
propriety, say, he hungers after such and such women.
Thirdly, | will grant, which | believe will be a most
acceptable concession, that this love for which | am an
advocate, though it satisfies itself in a much more
delicate manner, doth nevertheless seek its own
satisfaction as much as the grossest of all our appetites.
And, lastly, that this love, when it operates towards
one of a different sex, is very apt, towards its complete
gratification, to call in the aid of that hunger which | have
mentioned above; and which it is so far from abating,
that it heightens all its delights to a degree scarce
imaginable by those who have never been susceptible of
any other emotions than what have proceeded from
appetite alone.
In return to all these concessions, | desire of
philosophers to grant, that there is in some (I believe in
many) human breasts a kind and benevolent disposition,
which is gratified by contributing to the happiness of
others. That in this gratification alone, as in friendship, in
parental and filial affection, as indeed in general
philanthropy, there is a great and exquisite delight. That
if we will not cal! such disposition love, we have no name
for it. That though the pleasures arising from such pure
love may be heightened and sweetened by the
assistance of amorous desires, yet the former can subsist
alone, nor are they destroyed by the intervention of the
latter. Lastly, that esteem and gratitude are the proper
motives to love, as youth and beauty are to desire, and,
therefore, though such desire may naturally cease, when
age or sickness overtakes its object; yet these can have
no effect on love, nor ever shake or remove, from a good
mind, that sensation or passion which hath gratitude and
esteem for its basis.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VI, |
60 Our connections with the fair sex are founded on the
pleasure of enjoyment; on the happiness of loving and
being loved; and likewise on the ambition of pleasing the
ladies, because they are the best judges of some of those
things which constitute personal merit. This general
desire of pleasing produces gallantry, which is not love
itself, but the delicate, the volatile, the perpetual
simulation of love. According to the different
circumstances of every country and age, love inclines
more to one of those three things than to the other two.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVIII, 22
61 In general, it may be affirm’d, that there is no such
passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely
as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or
of relation to ourself.... We may affirm, that man in
general, or human nature, is nothing but the object both
of love and hatred, and requires some other cause, which
by a double relation of impressions and ideas, may excite
these passions.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I/l, 11 1
62 There are so many sorts o( love that one does not know
to whom to address oneself for a definition of it. The
name of "love" is given boldly to a caprice lasting a few
days, a sentiment without esteem, gallants’ affectations,
a frigid habit, a romantic fantasy, relish followed by
prompt disrelish: people give this name to a thousand
chimeras.
If philosophers want to probe to the bottom this barely
philosophical matter, let them meditate on the banquet
of Plato, in which Socrates, honourable lover of Alcibiades
and Agathon, converses with them on the metaphysics of
love.
Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher:
Virgil follows in the steps of Lucretius; amor omnibus
idem.
It is the stuff of nature broidered by nature. Do you
want an idea of love? look at the sparrows in your garden;
look at your pigeons; look at the bull which is brought to
the heifer; look at this proud horse which two of your
grooms lead to the quiet mare awaiting him; she draws
aside her tail to welcome him; see how her eyes sparkle;
hark to the neighing; watch the prancing, the curvetting,
the cars pricked, the mouth opening with little
convulsions, the swelling nostrils, the flaring breath, the
manes rising and floating, the impetuous movement with
which he hurls himself on the object which nature has
destined for him; but be not jealous of him, and think of
the advantages of the human species; in love tJicy
compensate for all those that nature has given to the
animals— strength, beauty, nimbleness, speed....
As men have received the gift of perfecting all that
nature accords them, they have perfected love.
Cleanliness, the care of oneself, by rendering the skin
more delicate, increase the pleasure of contact; and
attention to one’s health renders the organs of
voluptuousness more sensitive. All the other sentiments
that enter into that of love, just like metals which
amalgamate with gold: friendship, regard, come to help;
the faculties of mind and body are still further chains.
Self-love above all lightens all these bonds. One
applauds oneself for one’s choice, and a crowd of illusions
form the decoration of the building of which nature has
laid the foundations.
That is what you have above the animals. Hut if you
taste so many pleasures unknown to them, how many
sorrows too of which the beasts have no idea! What is
frightful for you is that over three-fourths of the earth
nature has poisoned the pleasures of love and the
sources of life with an appalling disease to which man
alone is subject, and which infects in him the organs of
generation alone.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Love
63 To argue from her [Mrs. Johnson’s] being much older than
Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not
really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of
reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore there are no
common principles upon which one can persuade another
concerning it. Every man feels for himself, and knows
how he is affected by particular qualities in the person he
admires, the impressions of which are too minute and
delicate to be substantiated in language.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1752)
64 If our friend has been injured, we readily sympathise with
his resentment, and grow angry with the very person with
whom he is angry. If he has received a benefit, we readily
enter into his gratitude, and have a very high sense of
the merit of his benefactor. Cut if he is in love, though we
may think his passion just as reasonable as any of the
kind, yet we never think ourselves bound to conceive a
passion of the same kind, and for the same person for
whom he has conceived it. the passion appears to every
body, but the man who feels it, entirely disproportioned
to the value of the object; and love, though it is pardoned
in a certain age because we know it is natural, is always
laughed at, because we cannot enter into it.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, I, 4
65 Love is a matter of fee/ing, not of will or volition, and |
cannot love because | will to do so, still less because |
ought (| cannot be necessitated to love); hence there is
no such thing as a duty to love. Benevolence however
{amor benevolentiae), as a mode of action, may be
subject to a law of duty. Disinterested benevolence is
often called (though very improperly) /ove; even where
the happiness of the other is not concerned, but the
complete and free surrender of all one's own ends to the
ends of another (even a superhuman) being, love is
spoken of as being also our duty. But all duty is
necessitation or constraint, although it may be self-
constraint according to a law. But what is done from
constraint is not done from love.
It is a duty to do good to other men according to our
power, whether we love them or not, and this duty loses
nothing of its weight, although we must make the sad
remark that our species, alas! is not such as to be found
particularly worthy of love when we know it more closely.
Hatred of men, however, is always hateful: even though
without any active hostility it consists only in complete
aversion from mankind (the solitary misanthropy). For
benevolence still remains a duty even towards the
manhater, whom one cannot love, but to whom we can
show kindness.
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, XII
66 | went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what | never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst.
Where | used to play on the green.
And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So | turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;
And | saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds.
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
Blake, The Garden of Love
67 "Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care.
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair."
So sung alittle Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only Self to please.
To bind another to Its delight,
Joy's in another's loss of ease.
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite."
Blake, The Clod and the Pebble
68 No move towards the extinction of the passion between
the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand
years that the world has existed. Men in the decline of life
have in all ages declaimed against a passion which they
have ceased to feel, but with as little reason as success.
Those who from coldness of constitutional temperament
have never felt what love is will surely be allowed to be
very incompetent judges with regard to the power of this
passion to contribute to the sum of pleasurable
sensations in life. Those who have spent their youth in
criminal excesses and have prepared for themselves, as
the comforts of their age, corporal debility' and mental
remorse, may well inveigh against such pleasures as vain
and futile, and unproductive of lasting satisfaction. But
the pleasures of pure love will bear the contemplation of
the most improved reason, and the most exalted virtue.
Perhaps there is scarcely a man w'ho has once
experienced the genuine delight of virtuous love,
however great his intellectual pleasures may have been,
that does not look back to the period as the sunny spot in
his whole life, where his imagination loves to bask, which
he recollects and contemplates with the fondest regrets,
and which he would most wish to live over again.
Malthus, Population, XI!
69 And if she met him, though she smiled no more,
She look’d a sadness sweeter than her smile.
As if her heart had deeper thoughts in store
She must not own, but cherish’d more the while
For that compression in its burning core;
Even innocence itself has many a wile.
And will not dare to trust itself with truth,
And love is taught hypocrisy from youth.
Byron, Don Juan, 1, 72
70 Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast.
Keats, Lamia, Il, 1
71 Love means in general terms the consciousness of my
unity with another, so that | am not in selfish isolation but
win my self-consciousness only as the renunciation of my
independence and through knowing myself as the unity
of myself with another and of the other with me. Love,
however, is feeling, that is, ethical life in the form of
something natural. In the state, feeling disappears; there
we are conscious of unity as law; there the content must
be rational and known to us. The first moment in love is
that | do not wish to be a self-subsistent and independent
person and that, if | were, then | would feel defective and
incomplete. The second moment is that | find myself in
another person, that | count for something in the other,
while the other in turn comes to count for something in
me. Love, therefore, is the most tremendous
contradiction; the Understanding cannot resolve it since
there is nothing more stubborn than this point of self-
consciousness which is negated and which nevertheless |
ought to possess as affirmative. Love is at once the
propounding and the resolving of this contradiction. As
the resolving of it, love is unity of an ethical type.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 158
72 This is what goes on in the mind [in the birth of love]:
1. Admiration.
2. One says to one’s self: "How delightful to kiss her, to
be kissed in return," etc.
3. Hope.
One studies her perfections. It is at this moment that a
woman should surrender herself, to get the greatest
possible sensual pleasure. The eyes of even the most
modest women light up the moment hope is born;
passion is so strong and pleasure is so acute that they
betray themselves in the most obvious manner.
4. Love is born.
To love is to derive pleasure from seeing, touching and
feeling through all one’s senses and as closely as
possible, a lovable person who loves us.
5. The first crystallization begins.
We take a joy in attributing a thousand perfections to
a woman of whose love we are sure; we analytic all our
happiness with intense satisfaction. This reduces itself to
giving ourselves an exaggerated idea of a magnificent
possession which has just fallen to us from Heaven in
some way we do not understand, and the continued
possession of which is assured to us.
This is what you will find if you let a lover turn things
over in his mind for twenty-four hours.
In the salt mines of Salzburg a bough stripped of its
leaves by winter is thrown into the depths of the disused
workings; two or three months later it is pulled out again,
covered with brilliant crystals: even the tiniest twigs, no
bigger than a timtit’s claw, are spangled with a vast
number of shimmering, glittering diamonds, so that the
Original bough is no longer recognizable.
| call crystallization that process of the mind which
discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of
events....
This phenomenon which | have allowed myself to call
crystallization, arises from the promptings of Nature
which urge us to enjoy ourselves and drive the blood to
our brains, from the feeling that our delight increases
with the perfections of the beloved, and from the
thought: "She is mine," The savage has no time to get
beyond the first step. He grasps his pleasures, but his
brain is concentrated on following the buck fleeing from
him through the forest, and wdth whose flesh he must
repair his own strength as quickly as possible, at the risk
of falling beneath the hatchet of his enemy.
At the other extreme of civilization, | have no doubt
that a sensitive woman arrives at the point of
experiencing no sensual pleasure except with the man
She loves. This is in direct opposition to the savage. But,
amongst civilized communities woman has plenty of
leisure, whilst the savage lives so close to essentials that
he is obliged to treat his female as a beast of burden. If
the females of many animals have an easier lot, it is only
because the subsistence of the males is more assured.
But let us leave the forests and return to Paris. A
passionate man sees nothing but perfection in the
woman he loves; and yet his affections may still wander,
for the spirit wearies of monotony, even in the case of the
most perfect happiness.
So what happens to rivet his attention at this:
6. Doubt is born.
When his hopes have first of all been raised and then
confirmed by ten or a dozen glances, or a whole series of
other actions which may be compressed into a moment or
spread over several days, the lover, recovering from his
first amazement and growing used to his happiness, or
perhaps merely guided by theory which, based always on
his most frequent experiences, is really only correct in the
case of light women, the lover, | say, demands more
positive proofs of love and wants to advance the moment
of his happiness.
If he takes too much for granted he will be met with
indifference, coldness or even anger: in France there will
be a suggestion of irony which seems to say: "You think
you have made more progress than you really have." A
woman behaves m this way either because she is
recovering from a moment of intoxication and obeys the
behests of modesty, which she is alarmed at having
transgressed, or merely from prudence or coquettishness.
The lover begins to be less sure of the happiness
which he has promised himself; he begins to criticize the
reasons he gave himself for hoping.
He tries to fall back on the other pleasures of life. He
finds they no longer exist. He is seized with a dread of
appalling misery, and his attention becomes
concentrated.
7. Second crystallization.
Now begins the second crystallization, producing as its
diamonds various confirmations of the following idea:
"She loves me."
Every quarter of an hour, during the night following
the birth of doubt, after a moment of terrible misery, the
lover says to himself: "Yes, she loves me"; and
crystallization sets to work to discover fresh charms; then
gaunt-eyed doubt grips him again and pulls him up with
a jerk. His heart misses a beat; he says to himself: "But
does she love me?" Through all these harrowing and
delicious alternations the poor lover feels acutely: "With
her | would experience joys which she alone in the world
could give me."
It is the clearness of this truth and the path he treads
between an appalling abyss and the most perfect
happiness, that make the second crystallization appear to
be so very much more important than the first.
The lover hovers incessantly amongst these three
ideas;
1. She is perfect in every way.
2. She loves me,
3. How can | get the strongest possible proof of her
love for me?
The most heart-rending moment in love that is still
young is when it finds that it has been wrong in its chain
of reasoning and must destroy a whole agglomeration of
crystals.
Even the fact of crystallization itself begins to appear
doubtful.
Stendhal, On Love, I, 2
73 Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him
more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
Love is like a fever; it comes and goes without the will
having any part in the process. That is one of the
principal differences between sympathy-love and
passion-love, and one can only congratulate one’s self on
the fine qualities of the person one loves as on a lucky
chance.
Stendhal, On Love, I, 5
74 Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days.
Estate, good-fame.
Plans, credit and the Muse,—
Nothing refuse.
‘Tis a brave master;
Let it have scope;
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,—
They shall return
More than they were.
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever.
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise.
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a Self of purer clay.
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go.
The gods arrive.
Emerson, Give All to Love
75 | hold it true, whatever befall;
| feel it, when | sorrow most;
"T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all,
Tennyson, In Memoriam, XXVII
76 In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love.
Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 19
77 To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her; for indeed | knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid.
Not only to keep down the base in man.
But teach high thought, and amiable words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
Tennyson, Guinevere, 472
78 Young love-making—that gossamer web! Even the points
it clings to—the things whence its subtle interlacings are
Swung—are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of
finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs,
unfinished phrases, lightest changes of check and lip,
faintest tremors. The web itself is made of soontaneous
beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards
another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.
Greorge Eliot, Middlemarch, IV, 36
79 Father Zossima. Love in action is a harsh and dreadful
thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is
greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in
the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the
ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking
on and applauding as though on the stage. But active
love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too,
perhaps, a complete science.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. 1,11, 4
80 She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity,
tenderness, and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears
trickle under his spectacles and hoped they would not be
noticed.
"We won’t speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre,
and his gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very
strange to Natasha.
"We won’t speak of it, my dear—I'’Il tell him
everything; hut one thing | beg of you, consider me your
friend and if you want help, advice, or simply to open
your heart to someone—not now, but when your mind is
clearer—think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it. "I
Shall be happy if it’s in my power..
Pierre grew confused.
"Don’t speak to me like that. | am not worth it!"
exclaimed Natasha and turned to leave the room, but
Pierre held her hand.
He knew he had something more to say to her. But
when he said it he was amazed at his own words.
"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said
he to her.
“Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with
shame and self-abasement.
"All over?" he repeated. "If | were not myself, but the
handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and
were free, | would this moment ask on my knees for your
hand and your love!"
For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of
gratitude and tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she
went out of the room.
Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the
anteroom, restraining tears of tenderness and joy that
choked him, and without finding the sleeves of his fur
cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.
"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the
coachman.
"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can | go
now? Surely not to the Club or to pay calls?" All men
seemed so pitiful, so poor, in comparison with this feeling
of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison
with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him
through her tears.
"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees
of frost Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from
his broad chest and inhaled the air with joy.
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets,
above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only
looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid
and humiliating were all mundane things compared with
the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the
entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of
dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the
center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard,
surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but
8
H
distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth,
its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the
enormous and brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which
was Said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the
world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long
luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary
he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright
comet which, having traveled in its orbit with
inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space,
seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth—to
remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail
erect, shining and displaying its white light amid
countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that
this comet fully responded to what was passing in his
own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a
new life.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, VIII, 22
"When loving with human love one may pass from love to
hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither death
nor anything else can destroy it. It is the very essence of
the soul. Yet how many people have | hated in my life?
And of them all, | loved and hated none as | did her."
And... [Prince Andrew] vividly pictured to himself
Natasha, not as he had done in the past with nothing but
her charms which gave him delight, but for the first time
picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her
feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now
understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection
of her, the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were
possible for me to see her once more! Just once, looking
into those eyes to Say..."
,..And his attention was suddenly carried into
another world, a world of reality and delirium in which
something particular was happening. In that world some
structure was still being erected and did not fall,
something was still stretching out, and the candle with its
red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx
lay near the door; but besides all this something creaked,
there was a whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx
appeared, standing at the door. And the sphinx had the
pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of whom
he had just been thinking.
"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,"
thought Prince Andrew, trying to drive that face from his
imagination. But the face remained before him with the
force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew wished to
return to that former world of pure thought, but he could
not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft
whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur,
something oppressed him and stretched out, and the
strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a
little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a
dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water
he lost consciousness. When he came to himself,
Natasha, that same living Natasha whom of all people he
most longed to love with this new pure divine love that
had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He
realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was
not surprised but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on
her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes
riveted on him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was
pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it something
quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out
his hand.
"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"
With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew
nearer to him on her knees and, taking his hand carefully,
bent her face over it and began kissing it, just touching it
lightly with her lips.
"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and
glancing at him. "Forgive me!"
"| love you," said Prince Andrew.
"Forgive... !"
"Forgive what?" he asked.
"Forgive me for what | ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha
in a scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing
his hand more rapidly, just touching it with her lips.
"| love you more, better than before," said Prince
Andrew, lifting her face with his hand so as to look into
her eyes.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XI, 32
82 All men from their very earliest years know that besides
the good of their animal personality there is another, a
better, good in life, which is not only independent of the
gratification of the appetites of the animal personality,
but on the contrary the greater the renunciation of the
welfare of the animal personality the greater this good
becomes.
This feeling, solving all life’s contradictions and giving
the greatest good to man, is known to all. That feeling is
love.
Life is the activity of animal personality subjected to
the lavs' of reason. Reason is the law to which, for his own
good, man’s animal personality must be subjected. Love
is the only reasonable activity of man.
Tolstoy, On Life, XXII
83 Philosophy, when just escaping from its golden pupa-
sldn, mythology, proclaimed the great evolutionary
agency of the universe to be Love. Or, since this pirate-
lingo, English, is poor in such-like words, let us say Eros,
the exuberance-love. Afterwards, Empedocles set up
passionate-love and hate as the two co-ordinate powers
of the universe. In some passages, kindness is the word.
But certainly, in any sense in which it has an opposite, to
be senior partner of that opposite, is the highest position
that love can attain. Nevertheless, the ontological
gospeller, in whose days those views were familiar topics,
made the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have
been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love. What,
then, can he say to hate?... [John’s] statement that God is
love seems aimed at that saying of Ecclesiastes that we
cannot tell whether God bears us love or hatred. "Nay,"
says John, "we can tell, and very simply! We know and
have trusted the love which God hath in us. God is love."
There is no logic in this, unless it means that God loves
all men. In the preceding paragraph, he had said, "God is
light and in him is no darkness at all." We are to
understand, then, that as darkness is merely the defect of
light, so hatred and evil are mere imperfect stages of .,.
love and loveliness. This concords with that utterance
reported in John’s Gospel: "God sent not the Son into the
world to judge the world; but that the world should
through him be saved. He that believeth on him is not
judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already.. .
. And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the
world, and that men loved darkness rather than the
light." That is to say, God visits no punishment on them;
they punish themselves, by their natural affinity for the
defective. Thus, the love that God is, is not a love of
which hatred is the contrary; otherwise Satan would be a
co-ordinate power; but it is a love which embraces hatred
as an imperfect stage of it, an Anteros—yea, even needs
hatred and hatefulncss as its object. For self-love is no
love; so if God’s self is love, that which he loves must be
defect of love; just as a luminary can light up only that
which otherwise would be dark.
C. S. Peirce, Evolutionary Love
84 Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good
and evil.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 153
85 Libido is an expression taken from the theory of the
emotions. We call by that name the energy (regarded as a
quantitative magnitude, though not at present actually
mensurable) of those instincts which have to do with all
that may be comprised under the word love. The nucleus
of what we mean by love naturally consists (and this is
what is commonly called love, and what the poets sing
of) in sexual love with sexual union as its aim. But we do
not separate from this—what in any case has a share in
the name love —on the one hand, self-love, and on the
other, love for parents and children, friendship, and love
for humanity in general, and also devotion to concrete
objects and to abstract ideas. Our justification lies in the
fact that psycho-analytic research has taught us that all
these tendencies are an expression of the same
instinctive activities; in relations between the sexes these
instincts force their way towards sexual union, but in
other circumstances they are diverted from this aim or
are prevented from reaching it, though always preserving
enough of their original nature to keep their identity
recognizable (as in such features as the longing for
proximity, and self-sacrifice).
We are of opinion, then, that language has carried out
an entirely justifiable piece of unification in creating the
word love with its numerous uses, and that we cannot do
better than take it as the basis of our scientific
discussions and expositions as well.
Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, IV
86 In the development of mankind as a whole, just as in
individuals, love alone acts as the civilizing factor in the
sense that it brings a change from egoism to altruism.
And this is true both of the sexual love for women, with
all the obligations which it involves of sparing what
women are fond of, and also of the desexualized,
sublimated homosexual love for other men, which springs
from work in common.
Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, VI
87 A small minority are enabled ... to find happiness along
the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations
of the erotic function are necessary before this is
possible. These people make themselves independent of
their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main
value from the fact of being loved to their own act of
loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by
attaching their love not to individual objects but to all
men equally and they avoid the uncertainties and
disappointments of genital love by turning away from its
sexual aim and modifying the instinct into an impulse
with an inhibited aim. The state which they induce in
themselves by this process— an unchangeable,
undeviating, tender attitude— has little superficial
likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from
which it is nevertheless derived.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, IV
88 When a love-relationship is at its height, no room is left
for any interest in the surrounding world; the pair of
lovers are sufficient unto themselves, do not even need
the child they have in common to make them happy. In
no other case does Eros so plainly betray the core of his
being, his aim of making one out of many.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, V
89 An animal exhibits in its life-activity a multitude of acts
of breathing, digesting, secreting, excreting, attack,
defense, search for food, etc., a multitude of specific
responses to specific stimulations of the environment.
But mythology comes in and attributes them all toa
nisus for self-preservation. Thence it is but a step to the
idea that all conscious acts are prompted by self-love.
This premiss is then elaborated in ingenious schemes,
often amusing when animated by a cynical knowledge of
the "world," tedious when of a would-be logical nature, to
prove that every act of man including his apparent
generosities is a variation played on the theme of self-
interest.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Il, 5
90 When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadow's deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace.
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrow's of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars.
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Yeats, When You Are Old
91 Down by the salley gardens my love and | did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white
feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the
tree;
But |, being young and foolish, with her would not
agree.
In a field by the river my love and | did stand.
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white
hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the
weirs;
But | was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Yeats, Down by the Salley Gardens
92 Imagine a piece of music which expresses love. It is not
love for any particular person. Another piece of music will
express another love. Here we have two distinct
emotional atmospheres, two different fragrances, and in
both eases the quality of love will depend upon its
essence and not upon its object. Nevertheless, it is hard
to conceive a love which is, so to speak, at work, and yet
applies to nothing. As a matter of fact, the mystics
unanimously bear witness that God needs us, just as we
need God. Why should He need us unless it be to love us?
And it is to this very conclusion that the philosopher who
holds to the mystical experience must come. Creation will
appear to him as God undertaking to create creators, that
He may have, besides Himself, beings worthy of His love.
We should hesitate to admit this if it were merely a
question of humdrum dwellers on this comer of the
universe called Earth. But, as wt have said before, it is
probable that life animates all the planets resolving
round all the stars. It doubtless lakes, by reason of the
diversity of conditions in which it exists, the most varied
forms, some very remote from what we imagine them to
be; but its essence is everywhere the same, a slow
accumulation of potential energy' to be spent suddenly in
free action. We might still hesitate to admit this, if we
regarded as accidental the appearance amid the plants
and animals that people the earth of a living creature
such as man, capable of loving and making himself loved.
But we have shown that this appearance, while not
predetermined, was not accidental either. Though there
were other lines of evolution running alongside the line
which led to man, and though much is incomplete in man
himself, we can say, while keeping closely to what
experience shows, that it is man who accounts for the
presence of life on our planet. Finally, we might well go
on hesitating if we believed that the universe is
essentially raw matter, and that life has been super-
added to matter. We have shown, on the contrary’, that
matter and life, as we define them, are coexistent and
interdependent. This being the ease, there is nothing to
prevent the philosopher from following to its logical
conclusion the idea which mysticism suggests to him of a
universe which is the mere visible and tangible aspect of
love and of the need of loving, together with all the
consequences entailed by this creative emotion: | mean
the appearance of living creatures in which this emotion
finds its complement; of an infinity of other beings
without which they could not have appeared, and lastly
of the unfathomable depths of material substance
without which life would not have been possible.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, III
93 To be omnivorous is one pole of true love: to be exclusive
is the other. A man whose heart, if | may say so, lies
deeper, hidden under a thicker coat of mail, will have less
play of fancy, and will be far from finding every charm
charming, or every sort of beauty a stimulus to love. Yet
he may not be less prone to the tender passion, and when
once smitten may be so penetrated by an unimagined
tenderness and joy, that he will declare himself incapable
of ever loving again, and may actually be so. Having no
rivals and in deeper soil, love can ripen better in sucha
constant spirit; it will not waste itself in a continual patter
of little pleasures and illusions. But unless the passion of
it is to die down, it must somehow assert its universality:
what it loses in diversity it must gain in applicability. It
must become a principle of action and an influence
colouring everything that is dreamt of; otherwise it would
have lost its dignity and sunk into a dead memory ora
domestic bond.
True love, it used to be said, is love at first sight.
Manners have much to do with such incidents, and the
race which happens to set, at a given time, the fashion in
literature makes its temperament public and exercises a
sort of contagion over all men’s fancies. If women are
rarely seen and ordinarily not to be spoken to; if all
imagination has to build upon is a furtive glance or
casual motion, people fall in love at first sight. For they
must fall in love somehow, and any stimulus is enough if
none more powerful is forthcoming. When society, on the
contrary, allows constant and easy intercourse between
the sexes, a first impression, if not reinforced, will soon be
hidden and obliterated by others. Acquaintance becomes
necessary for love when it is necessary for memory. But
what makes true love is not the information conveyed by
acquaintance, not any circumstantial charms that may be
therein discovered: it b still a deep and dumb instinctive
affinity, an inexplicable emotion seizing the heart, an
influence organising the world, like a luminous crystal,
about one magic point. So that although love seldom
springs up suddenly in these days into anything like a
full-blown passion, it is sight, it is presence, that makes in
time a conquest over the heart; for all virtues,
sympathies, confidences will fail to move a man to
tenderness and to worship, unless a poignant effluence
from the object envelop him, so that he begins to walk, as
it were, in a dream.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 1
94 If to create was love’s impulse originally, to create is its
effort still, after it has been chastened and has received
some rational extension. The machinery which serves
reproduction thus finds kindred but higher uses, as every
organ does in a liberal life; and what Plato called a desire
for birth in beauty may be sublimated even more, until it
yearns for an ideal immortality in a transfigured world, a
world made worthy of that love which its children have so
often lavished on it in their dreams.
Santayana, Life of Reason, II, 1
3.2 Hate
In almost all the traditional enumerations of the emotions,
love and hate are joined together as contraries, along with
such paired opposites as hope and desire, pleasure and pain,
desire and aversion, and so on. If there are kinds of love that
are either not emotional at all or involve bodily passion as
just one, and perhaps even a minor, component, then it may
be the case that there are also kinds of hate that are pure
acts of will without passion or involve will as well as
emotion. The reader should have this in mind as he
discovers that there may be as many varieties of hate as
there are of love. He should also explore related passages in
Section 4.10 on Jealousy in the following chapter.
Where passages treat love and hate together, they are
usually quoted here rather than under love. Also included
here are passages from Freud That deal with instinctual
aggressiveness, even though the word "hate" does not
appear in them; in addition, of course, there are other
passages from Freud in which his theory of love-hate
ambivalence is set forth.
One of the major subjects covered in this section is
misanthropy—hatred for mankind. The reader may wonder
about the type of love that is its opposite. Is it friendship or
charity or both? Comparing the texts with passages in
Sections 3.4 and 3.5 may help him to arrive at an answer.
1 Terror drove them, and Fear, and Hate whose wrath is
relentless,
she the sister and companion of murderous Arcs, she who
is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter
grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking
heaven.
Homer, Iliad, IV, 440
2 Socrates. | have said enough in answer to the charge of
Meletus: any elaborate defence is unnecessary; but |
know only too well how many are the enmities which 1
have incurred, and this is what will be my destruction if |
am destroyed;— not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the
envy and detraction of the world, which has been the
death of many good men, and will probably be the death
of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of
them.
Plato, Apology, 20A
3 Socrates. Misanthropy arises out of the too great
confidence of inexperience;—you trust a man and think
him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then ina
little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then
another and another, and when this has happened
several times to a man, especially when it happens
among those whom he deems to be his own most trusted
and familiar friends, and he has often quarrelled with
them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one
has any good in him at all... , . Experience would have
taught him the true state of the ease, that few are the
good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in
the interval between them.
Plato, Phaedo, 89B
4 Enmity and Hatred should clearly be studied by reference
to their opposites. Enmity may be produced by anger or
spite or calumny. Now whereas anger arises from offences
against oneself, enmity may arise even without that; we
may hate people merely because of what we take to be
their character. Anger is always concerned with
individuals,. .. whereas hatred is directed also against
classes: we all hate any thief and any informer. Moreover,
anger can be cured by time; but hatred cannot. The one
aims at giving pain to its object, the other at doing him
harm; the angry man wants his victims to feel; the hater
does not mind whether they feel or not. All painful things
are felt; but the greatest evils, injustice and folly, are the
least felt, since their presence causes no pain. And anger
iS accompanied by pain, hatred is not: the angry man
feels pain, but the hater does not. Much may happen to
make the angry man pity those who offend him, but the
hater under no circumstances wishes to pity a man whom
he has once hated: for the one would have the offenders
suffer for what they have done; the other would have
them cease to exist.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1382b1
5 What | am most apprehensive about concerning you is
this: because you are unaware of (he real pathway to
fame, you may think it is really glorious to have more
power than anyone else and to lord it over your fellow
citizens. If this is your opinion, you really are blind when
it comes to knowing real fame. What really is glorious is
to be a citizen held in high regard by all, deserving well
of the republic, one who is praised, courted, and loved.
But to be feared and hated is obnoxious. It is a proof of
weakness and degeneracy.
Cicero, Philippics, |, 14
6 Injuries done to us by those of higher rank must be
endured, and not only with composure, but with the
appearance of good cheer. They will commit the same
offense again if they are convinced they got away with it
once. Those whose spirit has become overbearing
because of good fortune have this serious fault; they hate
those whom they have injured.
Seneca, On Anger, II, 33
7 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in
darkness even until now.
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and
there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and
walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth,
because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.
I John 2:9-Il
8 For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning,
that we should love one another.
Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his
brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own
works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hale you.
I John 3:11-13
9 If aman say, | love God, and hateth his brother, he is a
liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
| John 4:20
10 Benefits received are a delight to us as long as we think
we can requite them; when that possibility is far
exceeded, they are repaid with hatred instead of
gratitude.
Tacitus, Annals, IV, 18
11 It is, indeed, human nature to hate the man whom you
have injured.
Tacitus, Agricola
12 It is strange that we should not realise that no enemy
could be more dangerous to us than the hatred with
which we hate him, and that by our efforts against him
we do less damage to our enemy than is wrought in our
own heart.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 18
13 It is impossible for an effect to be stronger than its cause.
Now every hatred arises from some love as its cause... .
Therefore it is impossible absolutely for hatred to be
stronger than love.
But furthermore, love must be stronger, absolutely
speaking, than hatred. Because a thing is moved to the
end more strongly than to the means. Now turning away
from evil is ordered as a means to the gaining of good, as
to amend. Therefore, absolutely speaking, the soul’s
movement in respect of good is stronger than its
movement in respect of evil.
Nevertheless hatred sometimes seems to be stronger
than love, for two reasons. First, because hatred is more
keenly fell than love... . Secondly, because comparison is
made between a hatred and a love which do not
correspond to one another.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 29, 3
14 | saw two frozen in one hole so closely, that the one
head was a cap to the other; and as bread is chewed
for hunger, so the uppermost put his teeth into the other
there where the brain joins with the nape.
Not otherwise did Tydeus gnaw the temples of
Menalippus for rage, than he the skull and the other
parts,
"O thou! who by such brutal token shewest thy hate
on him whom thou devourest, tell me why," | said; "on
this condition,
that if thou with reason complainest of him, I, Knowing
who ye are and his offence, may yet repay thee in the
world above, if that, wherewith | speak, be not dried up."
From the fell repast that sinner raised his mouth,
wiping it upon the hair of the head he had laid waste
behind.
Then he began: "Thou willest that | renew desperate
grief, which wrings my heart, even at the very thought,
before | tell thereof.
But if my words are to be a seed, that may bear fruit of
infamy to the traitor whom | gnaw, thou shall see me
speak and weep at the same time.
1 know not who thou mayest be, nor by what mode
thou hast come down here; but, when | hear thee, in truth
thou seemest to me a Florentine.
Thou hast to know that | was Count Ugolino, and this
the Archbishop Ruggieri; now | will tell thee why | am
such a neighbour to Aim.
That by the effect of his ill devices I, confiding in him,
was taken and thereafter put to death, it is not necessary
to say.
But that which thou canst not have learnt, that is, how
cruel was my death, thou shall hear—and know if he has
offended me.
A narrow hole within the mew, which from me has the
title of Famine, and in which others yet must be shut up,
had through its opening already shewn me several
moons, when | slept the evil sleep that rent for me the
curtain of the future.
This man seemed to me lord and master, chasing the
wolf and his whelps, upon the mountain for which the
Pisans cannot see Lucca.
With hounds meagre, keen, and dexterous, he had put
in front of him Gualandi with Sismondi, and with
Lanfranchi.
After short course, the father and his sons seemed to
me weary; and methought | saw their flanks torn by the
sharp teeth.
When | awoke before the dawn, | heard my sons [who
were with me, weeping in their sleep, and] asking for
bread.
Thou art right cruel, if thou dost not grieve already at
the thought of what my heart foreboded; and if thou
weepest not, at what are thou used to weep?
They were now awake, and the hour approaching at
which our food used to be brought us, and each was
anxious from his dream,
and below | heard the outlet of the horrible tower
locked up: whereat | looked into the faces of my sons,
without uttering a word.
| did not weep: so stony grew | within; they wept; and
my little Anselm said: ‘Thou lookest so, father, what ails
thee?’
But | shed no tear, nor answered all that day, nor the
next night, till another sun came forth upon the world.
When a small ray was sent into the doleful prison, and
1 discerned in their four faces the aspect of my own,
| bit on both my hands for grief. And they, thinking
that | did it from desire of eating, of a sudden rose up,
and said: ‘Father, it will give us much less pain, if thou
wilt cat of us: thou didst put upon us this miserable flesh,
and do thou strip it off.’
Then | calmed myself, in order not to make them, more
unhappy; that day and the next we all were mute. Ah,
hard earth! why didst thou not open?
When we had come to the fourth day, Gaddo threw
himself stretched out at my feet, saying: 'My father! why
don’t you help me?’
There he died; and even as thou seest me, saw | the
three fall one by one, between the fifth day and the sixth;
whence | betook me, already blind, to groping over each,
and for three days called them, after they were dead;
then fasting had more power than grief."
When he had spoken this, with eyes distorted he
seized the miserable skull again with his teeth, which as
a dog’s were strong upon the bone.
Dante, Inferno, XXXII, 124
15 The prince must consider... how to avoid those things
which will make him hated or contemptible; and as often
as he shall have succeeded he will have fulfilled his part,
and he need not fear any danger in other reproaches.
It makes him hated above all things, as | have said, to
be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and
women of his subjects, from both of which he must
abstain. And when neither their property nor honour is
touched, the majority of men live content, and he has
only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can
curb with ease in many ways.
Machiavelli, Prince, XIX
16 Hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad
ones.
Machiavelli, Prince, XIX
17 Gloucester. Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
|, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
|, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion.
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up.
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as | halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time.
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since | cannot prove a lover.
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
| am determined to prove a villian
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Shakespeare, Richard III, I, i, 1
18 Lady Anne. Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster!
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!
Be it lawful that | invocate thy ghost.
To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter’d son,
Stabb’d by the selfsame hand (Richard’s] that made
these wounds!
Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life,
| pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.
Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!
Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!
More direful hap betide that hated wretch
That makes us wretched by the death of thee
Than | can wish to adders, spiders, toads,
Or any creeping venom’d thing that lives!
If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect
May fright the hopeful mother at the view;
And that be heir to his unhappiness!
If ever he have wife, let her be made
As miserable by the death of him
As | am made by my poor lord and thee!
Shakespeare, Richard Ill, I, ti, 5
19 Shylock. You'll ask me, why | rather choose to have
A weight of carrion flesh than to receive
Three thousand ducats: I’Il not answer that:
But say it is my humour: is it answer’d?
What if my house be troubled with a rat
And | be pleased to give ten thousand ducats
To have it baned? What, are you answer’d yet?
Some men there are love not a gaping pig;
Some, that are mad if they behold a cat;
And others, when the bagpipe sings i’ the nose,
Cannot contain their urine: for affection,
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer:
As there is no firm reason to be render’d.
Why he cannot abide a gaping pig;
Why he, a harmless necessary cat;
Why he, a woollen bag-pipe; but of force
Must yield to such inevitable shame
As to offend, himself being offended;
So can | give no reason, nor | will not.
More than a lodged hate end a certain loathing
| bear Antonio, that | follow thus
A losing suit against him. Are you answer’d?
Bassannio. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man,
To excuse the current of thy cruelty.
Shy. |am not bound to please thee with my answers.
Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love?
Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill?
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 40
20 /ago. That Cassio loves her, | do well believe it;
That she loves him, ‘tis apt and of great credit.
The Moor, howbeit that | endure him not,
Is of constant, loving, noble nature,
And | dare think he’ll prove to Desdemona
A most dear husband. Now, | do love her too;
Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure
| stand accountant for as great a sin,
But partly led to diet my revenge,
For that | do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap’d into my seat; the thought whereof
Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards;
And nothing can or shall content my soul
Till 1am even’d with him, wife for wife,
Or failing so, yet that | put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgement cannot cure. Which thing to do,
If this poor trash of Venice, whom | trash
For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,
21
I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip.
Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb—
For | fear Cassio with my night-cap too—
Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me.
For making him egregiously an ass
And practising upon his peace and quiet
Even to madness.
Shakespeare, Othello, Il, i, 295
Timon. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall
That girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth
And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent!
Obedience fail in children! slaves and fools.
Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench,
And minister in their steads! To general filths
Convert o’ the instant, green virginity!
Do’t in your parents’ eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives
And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal!
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed;
Thy mistress is 0’ the brothel! Son of sixteen.
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire.
With it beat out his brains! Piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth.
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades.
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries.
And let confusion live! Plagues, incident to men.
Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica.
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth.
That ’gainst the stream of virtue they may strive.
And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,
Sow all the Athenian bosoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath,
That their society, as their friendship, may
Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee.
But nakedness, thou detestable town!
Take thou that too, with multiplying bans!
Timon will to the woods; where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all—
The Athenians both within and out that wall!
And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high and low!
Amen.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, IV, 1, 1
22 As for the passions, of hate, lust, ambition, and
covetousness, what crimes they are apt to produce is so
obvious to every man’s experience and understanding as
there needeth nothing to be said of them, saying that
they are infirmities, so annexed to the nature, both of
man and all other living creatures, as that their effects
cannot be hindered but by extraordinary use of reason, or
a constant severity in punishing them. For in those things
men hate, they find a continual and unavoidable
molestation; whereby either a man’s patience must be
everlasting, or he must be eased by removing the power
of that which molesteth him: the former is difficult; the
latter is many times impossible without some violation of
the law.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 27
23 All men naturally hate one another. They employ lust as
far as possible in the service of the public weal. But this is
only a [pretence] and a false image of love; for at bottom
it is only hate.
Pascal, Pensees, VII, 451
24 Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an
external cause, and haired is nothing but sorrow with the
accompanying idea of an external cause. We see too that
he who loves a thing necessarily endeavours to keep it
before him and to preserve it, and, on the other hand, he
who hates a thing necessarily endeavours to remove and
destroy it.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop, 13, Schol.
25 Every one endeavours as much as possible to make
others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates.
And so we see that each person by nature desires that
other persons should live according to his way of
thinking; but if every one does this, then all area
hindrance to one another, and if every one wishes to be
praised or beloved by the rest, then they all hate one
another.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 31, Corol.
26 No one can hate God....
The idea of God which is in us is adequate and perfect,
and therefore insofar as we contemplate God do we act,
and consequently no sorrow can exist with the
accompanying idea of God; that is to say, no one can
hate God....
Love to God cannot be turned into hatred....
But some may object, that if we understand God to be
the cause of all things, we do for that very reason
consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But | reply, that
insofar as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases
to be a passion, that is to say, it ceases to be sorrow; and
therefore insofar as we understand God to be the cause of
sorrow do we rejoice.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 18
27 Zara. Heav’n has no Rage like Love to hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury like a Woman scorn’d.
Congreve, The Mourning Bride, III, ti
28 My wife and family received me with great surprize and
joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but |
must freely confess, the sight of them filled me only with
hatred, disgust and contempt; and the more, by
reflecting on the near alliance | had to them. For,
although since my unfortunate exile from the
Houyhnhnm country, | had compelled my self to tolerate
the sight of Yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de
Mendez; yet my memory and imaginations were
perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those
exalted Houyhnhnms. And when | began to consider, that
by copulating with one of the Yahoo-species, | had
become a parent of more, it struck me With the utmost
Shame, confusion, and horror.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 11
29 | have ever hated all nations, professions and
communities, and all my love is toward individuals.... But
principally | hate and detest that animal called man;
although | heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Swift, Letter to Pope (Sept. 29, 1725)
30 The body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, dean of
this cathedral church, is buried here, where fierce
indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go,
passerby, and imitate if you can one who strove with all
his strength to serve human liberty.
Swift, Epitaph in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
31 In this, we have said, he [Mr. Allworthy] did not agree
with his wife; nor, indeed, in anything else: for though an
affection placed on the understanding is, by many wise
persons, thought more durable than that which is
founded on beauty, yet it happened otherwise in the
present case. Nay, the understandings of this couple were
their principal bone of contention, and one great cause of
many quarrels, which from time to time arose between
them; and which at last ended, on the side of the lady, in
a sovereign contempt for her husband; and on the
husband’s, in an utter abhorrence of his wife.
Fielding, Tom Jones, II, 7
32 One situtation only of the married state is excluded from
pleasure: and that is, a state of indifference: but as many
of my readers, | hope, Know what an exquisite delight
there is in conveying pleasure to a beloved object, so
some few, | am afraid, may have experienced the
satisfaction of tormenting one we hate. It is, | apprehend,
to come at this latter pleasure, that we see both sexes
often give up that ease in marriage which they might
33
otherwise possess, though their mate was never so
disagreeable to them. Hence the wife often puts on fits of
love and jealousy, nay, even denies herself any pleasure,
to disturb and prevent those of her husband; and he
again, in return, puts frequent restraints on himself, and
stays at home in company which he dislikes, in order to
confine his wife to what she equally detests. Hence, too,
must flow those tears which a widow sometimes so
plentifully sheds over the ashes of a husband with whom
She led a life of constant disquiet and turbulency, and
whom now she can never hope to torment any more.
Fielding, Tom Jones, II, 7
"If | was not as great philosopher as Socrates himself,"
returned Mrs. Western, "you would overcome my
patience. What objection can you have to the young
gentleman?"
"A very solid objection, in my opinion," says Sophia—"|
hate him."
"Will you never learn a proper use of words?"
answered the aunt. "Indeed, child, you should consult
Bailey’s Dictionary’. It is impossible you should hate a
man from whom you have received no injury. By hatred,
therefore, you mean no more than dislike, which is no
sufficient objection against your marrying of him. | have
known many couples, who have entirely disliked each
other, lead very’ comfortable genteel lives. Believe me,
child, | know these things better than you. You will allow
me, | think, to have seen the world, in which | have not an
acquaintance who would not rather be thought to dislike
her husband than to like him. The contrary is such out-of-
fashion romantic nonsense, that the very imagination of
it is shocking."
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 3
34 Johnson. A man will please more upon the whole by
negative qualities than by positive; by never offending,
than by giving a great deal of delight. In the first place,
men hate more steadily than they love; and if | have said
something to hurt a man once, | shall not get the better
of this, by saving many things to please him.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1777)
35 Ahab. "All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard
masks. But in each event—in the living act, the
undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features
from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike,
strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach
outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the
white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes |
think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks
me; he heaps me; | see in him outrageous strength, with
an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing
is chiefly what | hate; and be the white whale agent, or
be the white whale principal, | will wreak that hate upon
him. Talk not to me of blasohemy, man; I’d strike the sun
if it insulted me."
Melville, Moby Dick, XXXVI
36 His three boats stove around him, and oars and men
both, whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-
knife from his broken prow’, had dashed at the whale, as
an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a siv-
inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life, of the whale.
That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly
sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby
Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of
grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or
Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.
Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since
that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild
vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that
in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with
him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual
and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam
before him as the monomaniac incarnation of ail those
malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in
them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half
a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from
the beginning; to whose dominion even the modem
Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the
ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue
devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them;
but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white
whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that
most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of
things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the
sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of
life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly
personified, and made practically assailable in Moby
Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of
all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from
Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar,
he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLI
37 Enmity or hatred seems also to be a highly persistent
feeling, perhaps more so than any other that can be
named.... Dogs are very apt to hate both strange men and
strange dogs, especially if they live near at hand, but do
not belong to the same family, tribe, or clan; this feeling
would thus seem to be innate, and is certainly a most
persistent one. It seems to be the complement and
converse of the true social instinct. From what we hear of
Savages, it would appear that something of the same
kind holds good with them. If this be so, it would be a
small step in any one to transfer such feelings to any
member of the same tribe if he had done him an injury
and had become his enemy. Nor is it probable that the
primitive conscience would reproach a man for injuring
his enemy; rather it would reproach him, if he had not
revenged himself. To do good in return for evil, to love
your enemy, is a height of morality to which it may be
doubted whether the social instincts would, by
themselves, have ever led us. It is necessary that these
instincts, together with Sympathy, should have been
highly cultivated and extended by the aid of reason,
instruction, and the love or fear of God, before any such
golden rule would ever be thought of and obeyed.
Darvin, Descent of Man, I, 4, fn. 27
38 The hunting instinct has [a]. . . remote origin in the
evolution of the race. The hunting and the fighting
instinct combine in many manifestations. They both
support the emotion of anger; they combine in the
fascination which stories of atrocity have for most minds;
and the utterly blind excitement of giving the rein to our
fury when our blood is up (an excitement whose intensity
is greater than that of any other human passion save
one) is only explicable as an impulse aboriginal in
character, and having more to do with immediate and
overwhelming tendencies to muscular discharge than to
any possible reminiscences of effects of experience, or
association of ideas. | say this here, because the pleasure
of disinterested cruelty has been thought a paradox, and
writers have sought to show that it is no primitive
attribute of our nature, but rather a resultant of the
subtile combination of other less malignant elements of
mind. This is a hopeless task. If evolution and the survival
of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of
human rivals must have been among the most important
of man’s primitive functions, the fighting and the chasing
instincts must have become ingrained. Certain
perceptions must immediately, and without the
intervention of interferences and ideas, have prompted
emotions and motor discharges; and both the latter must,
from the nature of the case, have been very violent, and
therefore, when unchecked, of an intensely pleasurable
kind. It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a
primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate,
especially where a fight or a hunt is promised as part of
the fun.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
39 | will put the following case: Let there be a person near
me whom | hate so strongly that | have a lively impulse to
rejoice should anything happen to him. But the moral
side of my nature does not give way to this impulse; | do
not dare to express this sinister wish, and when
something does happen to him which he does not
deserve | suppress my satisfaction, and force myself to
thoughts and expressions of regret. Everyone will at some
time have found himself in such a position. But now let it
happen that the hated person, through some
transgression of his own, draws upon himself a well-
deserved calamity; | shall now be allowed to give free
rein to my Satisfaction at his being visited by a just
punishment, and | shall be expressing an opinion which
coincides with that of other impartial persons. But |
observe that my satisfaction proves to be more intense
than that of others, for It has received reinforcement from
another source—from my hatred, which was hitherto
prevented by the inner censorship from furnishing the
affect, but which, under the altered circumstances, is no
longer prevented from doing so. This case generally
occurs in social life when antipathetic persons or the
adherents of an unpopular minority have been guilty of
some offence. Their punishment is then usually
commensurate not with their guilt, but with their guilt
plus the ill-will against them that has hitherto not been
put into effect.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VI, H
40 It is noteworthy that in the use of the word hate no,..
intimate relation to sexual pleasure and the sexual
function appears: on the contrary, the painful character
of the relation seems to be the sole decisive feature. The
ego hates, abhors, and pursues with intent to destroy all
objects which are for it a source of painful feelings,
without taking into account whether they mean to it
frustration of sexual satisfaction or of gratification of the
needs of self-preservation. Indeed, it may be asserted
that the true prototypes of the hate-relation are derived
not from sexual life, but from the struggle of the ego for
self-preservation and self-maintenance.
Freud, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
41 The relation of hate to objects is older than that of love. It
is derived from the primal repudiation by the narcissistic
ego of the external world whence flows the stream of
stimuli. AS an expression of the pain-reaction induced by
objects, it remains in constant intimate relation with the
instincts of self-preservation, so that sexual and ego-
instincts readily develop an antithesis which repeats that
of love and hate.
Freud, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
42 Almost every intimate emotional relation between two
people which lasts for some time—marriage, friendship,
the relations between parents and children—leaves a
sediment of feelings of aversion and hostility, which have
first to be eliminated by repression. This is less disguised
in the common wrangles between business partners or in
the grumbles of a subordinate at his superior. The same
thing happens when men come together in larger units.
Every time two families become connected by a marriage,
each of them thinks itself superior to or of better birth
than the other. Of two neighbouring towns, each is the
other’s most jealous rival; every little canton looks down
upon the others with contempt. Closely related races
keep one another at arm’s length; the South German
cannot endure the North German, the Englishman casts
every' kind of aspersion upon the Scotchman, the
Spaniard despises the Portuguese. We are no longer
astonished that greater differences should lead to an
almost insuperable repugnance, such as the Gallic people
feel for the German, the Aryan for the Semite, and the
white races for the coloured.
Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, VI
43 In our unconscious we daily and hourly deport all who
stand in our way, all who have offended or injured us. the
expression: "Devil take him!" which so frequently comes
to our lips in joking anger, and which really means "Death
take him!" is in our unconscious an earnest, deliberate
death-wish. Indeed, our unconscious will murder even for
trifles; like the ancient Athenian law of Draco, it knows no
other punishment for crime than death; and this has a
certain consistency, for every injury to our almighty and
autocratic ego is at bottom a crime of /ese-majeste
And so, if we are to be judged by the wishes in our
unconscious, we are, like primitive man, simply a gang of
murderers. It is well that all these wishes do not possess
the potency' which was attributed to them by primitive
men; in the crossfire of mutual maledictions, mankind
would long since have perished, the best and wisest of
men and the lovliest and fairest of women with the rest.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, I!
44 Men clearly do not find it easy to do without satisfaction
of this tendency to aggression that is in them; when
deprived of satisfaction of it they' are ill at case. There is
an advantage, not to be undervalued, in the existence of
smaller communities, through which the aggressive
instinct can find an outlet in enmity towards those
outside the group. It is always possible to unite
considerable numbers of men in love towards one
another, so long as there are still some remaining as
objects for aggressive manifestations,... The Jewish
people, scattered in all directions as they arc, have in this
way rendered services which deserve recognition to the
development of culture in the countries where they
settled; but unfortunately not all the massacres of Jew's
in the Middle Ages sufficed to procure peace and security
for their Christian contemporaries.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, V
3.3 Sexual Love
The love that the Greeks called eros and the Romans amor is
certainly always a love that involves intense bodily passions,
persistent emotional drives, powerful, often disturbing,
desires, and a mixture of sensual pleasures and pains that
are usually inseparable from one another. This much is
explicitly clear or plainly intimated in the passages that
treat sexual or erotic love. But what may not be clear, and
even perplexing, is the relation of sexuality itself to sexual
love.
Are all sexual desires or acts impulses or embodiments of
love—in men and other animals? Or does sexual behavior
become a manifestation of love, or a kind of love, only when
sexual desires and activities are somehow transformed by
other sentiments and impulses, such as the sentiments and
impulses that are involved in the kind of love called
friendship? Such questions lead to still another. If there can
be mere sexuality, i.e., sexual desire or performance, without
love, can there also be love without sexual involvement of
any kind? If the reader wishes to pursue such inquiries, he
will find it useful to consider what is said about other kinds
of love, as set forth in the next two sections.
Light on these matters may also come from a pivotal
distinction that underlies many discussions of love and that
is particularly germane to the consideration of sexual love—
the distinction between acquisitive and benevolent
impulses. Acquisitive desire aims at self-satisfaction or
benefit to one’s self, whereas the benevolent impulse tends
in the opposite direction toward the good of another or
benefit to the person beloved. The term "concupiscence" or
“concupiscent" that occurs in certain of the quotations
connotes acquisitive desire unaccompanied by any
benevolent impulse. The answer to the question about the
distinction between mere sexuality and sexual love may,
therefore, turn on the answer to another question: Is
concupiscence or purely acquisitive desire ever truly a form
of love? The reader will find that the authors quoted do not
agree on any single or simple answer to the question.
Wherever the truth of the matter lies, the fact that
concupiscence enters into the consideration of sexual love
impels us to include in this section texts that deal with lust
in its myriad forms—not just sexual lust, but the lust for
power, the lust for worldly goods, and so on. This, in turn,
makes a certain amount of moralizing unavoidable; for,
though love, especially sexual love, is either favored or
feared, it is never condemned as immoral, as lust, sexual or
otherwise, always Is. If the moral problems that are raised
interest the reader, he should turn to Chapter 9 on Ethics,
and especially to Section 9.10 on Virtue and Vice and
Section 9.12 on temperance and Intemperance.
The discussion of sexual love as well as lust also involves
moral considerations of the sort connoted by such terms as
"fornication" and "adultery" which are relevant to the
treatment of marriage and conjugal love in the preceding
chapter as well as here.
| And it came to pass after these things, that his master’s
[Potiphar’s] wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said,
Lie with me.
But he refused, and said unto his master’s wife,
Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the
house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my
hand;
There is none greater in this house than |; neither hath
he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou
art his wife: how then can | do this great wickedness, and
sin against God?
And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by
day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to
be with her.
And it came to pass about this time, that Joseph went
into the house to do his business; and there was none of
the men of the house there within.
And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with
me: and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and
got him out.
And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his
garment in her hand, and was fled forth,
That she called unto the men of her house, and spake
unto them, saying. See, he hath brought in an Hebrew
unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me,
and | cried with a loud voice:
And it came to pass, when he heard that | lifted up my
voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and
fled, and got him out.
And she laid up his garment by her, until his lord came
home.
And she spake unto him, according to these words,
saying, The Hebrew servant, which thou hast brought
unto us, came in unto me to mock me:
And it came to pass, as | lifted up my voice and cried,
that he left his garment with me, and fled out.
And it came to pass, when his master heard the words
of his wife, which she spake unto him, saying, After this
manner did thy servant to me; that his wrath was
kindled.
And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the
prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound:
and he was there in the prison.
Genesis 39:7-20
2 And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose
from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s
house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing
herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.
And David sent and enquired after the woman. And
one said. Is not this Bath-sheba, the daughter of E-li-am,
the wife of U-ri-ah the Hittite?
And David sent messengers, and took her; and she
came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was
purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her
house.
And the woman conceived, and sent and told David,
and said, | am with child.... And it came to pass in the
morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by
the hand of U-ri-ah.
And he wrote in the letter, saying. Set ye U-ri-ah in the
forefront of the hottest battle, and retire yet from him,
that he may be smitten, and die.
And it came to pass, when Joab observed the city, that
he assigned U-ri-ah unto a place where he knew that
valiant men were.
And the men of the city went out, and fought with
Joab: and there fell some of the people of the servants of
David: and U-ri-ah the Hittite died also.... And when the
wife of U-ri-ah heard that U-ri-ah her husband was dead,
she mourned for her husband.
And when the mourning was past, David sent and
fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and
bare him a son. But the thing that David had done
displeased the Lord.
/1 Samuel 11:2-21
3 And Amnon said unto Tamar, Bring the meat into the
chamber, that | may eat of thine hand. And Tamar took
the cakes which she had made, and brought them into
the chamber to Amnon her brother.
And when she had brought them unto him to cat, he
took hold of her, and said unto her. Come lie with me, my
sister.
And she answered him, Nay, my brother, do not force
me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel; do not
thou this folly.
And I, whither shall | cause my shame to go? and as
for thee, thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now
therefore, | pray thee, speak unto the king; for he will not
withhold me from thee.
Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice; but,
being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her.
Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred
wherewith he hated her was greater than the love
wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her,
Arise, be gone.
And she said unto him, There is no cause: this evil in
sending me away is greater than the other that thou didst
unto me. But he would not hearken unto her.
Then he called his servant that ministered unto him,
and said, Put now this woman out from me, and bolt the
door after her.
And she had a garment of divers colours upon her; for
with such robes were the king’s daughters that were
virgins apparelled. Then his servant brought her out, and
bolted the door after her.
I1 Samuel 13:10-18
4 To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the
tongue of a strange woman.
Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her
take thee with her eyelids.
For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to
a piece of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the
precious life.
Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not
be burned?
Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be
burned?
So he that goeth in to his neighbour’s wife; whosoever
toucheth her shall not be innocent.
Proverbs 6:24-29
5 Now to his harp the blinded minstrel sang of Ares’
dalliance with Aphrodite; how hidden in Hephaistos’
house they played at love together, and the gifts of Ares,
dishonoring Hephaistos’ bed—and how the word that
wounds the heart came to the master from Helios, who
had seen the two embrace; and when he learned it. Lord
Hephaistos went with baleful calculation to his forge.
There mightily he armed his anvil block and
hammered out a chain, whose tempered links could not
be sprung or bent; he meant that they should hold.
Those shackles fashioned, hot in wrath Hephaistos
climbed to the bower and the bed of love, pooled all his
net of chain around the bed posts and swung it from the
rafters overhead— light as a cobweb even gods in bliss
could not perceive, so wonderful his cunning. Seeing his
bed now made a Snare, he feigned a journey to the trim
stronghold of Lemnos, the dearest of earth’s towns to
him. And Arcs? Ah, golden Arcs’ watch had its reward
when he beheld the great smith leaving home. How
promptly to the famous door he came, intent on pleasure
with sweet Kythereia!
She, who had left her father’s side but now, sat in her
chamber when her lover entered; and tenderly he
pressed her hand and said;
“Come and lie down, my darling, and be happy!
Hephaistos is no longer here, but gone to see his grunting
Sintian friends on Lemnos."
As she, too, thought repose would be most welcome,
the pair went in to bed—into a shower of clever
chains, the netting of Hephaistos. So trussed, they could
not move apart, nor rise, at last they knew there could be
no escape, they were to see the glorious cripple now— for
Helios had spied for him, and told him; so he turned back,
this side of Lemnos Isle, sick at heart, making his way
homeward. Now in the doorway of the room he stood
while deadly rage took hold of him; his voice, hoarse and
terrible, reached all the gods:
"O Father Zeus, O gods in bliss forever, here is
indecorous entertainment for you, Aphrodite, Zeus’s
daughter, caught in the act, cheating me, her cripple,
with Ares—devastating Ares. Cleanlimbed beauty is her
joy, not these bandylegs | came into the world with: no
one to blame but the two gods who bred me! Come see
this pair entwining here in my own bed! How hot it makes
me burn! | think they may not care to lie much longer,
pressing on one another, passionate lovers; they’ll have
enough of bed together soon. And yet the chain that
bagged them holds them down till Father sends me back
my wedding gifts— all that | poured out for his damned
pigeon, so lovely, and so wanton."
All the others were crowding in, now, to the brazen
house— Poseidon who embraces earth, and Hermes the
runner, and Apollo, lord of Distance. The goddesses
stayed home for shame; but these munificences ranged
there in the doorway, and irrepressible among them all
arose the laughter of the happy gods. Gazing hard at
Hephaistos’ handiwork the gods in turn remarked among
themselves:
"No dash in adultery now."
"The tortoise tags the hare— Hephaistos catches Ares
—and Ares outran the wind."
"The lame god’s craft has pinned him. Now shall he
pay what is due from gods taken in cuckoldry."
They made these improving remarks to one another,
but Apollo leaned aside to say to Hermes:
"Son of Zeus, beneficent Wayfinder, would you accept
a coverlet of chain, if only you lay by Aphrodite’s golden
side?"
To this the Wayfinder replied, shining:
“Would | not, though, Apollo of distances! Wrap me in
chains three times the weight of these, come goddesses
and gods to see the fun; only let me lie beside the pale-
golden one!"
The gods gave way again to peals of laughter.
Homer, Odyssey, VIII, 266
6 That man seems to me peer of gods, who sits in thy
presence, and hears close to him thy sweet speech and
lovely laughter; that indeed makes my heart flutter in my
bosom. For when | see thee but a little, | have no
utterance left, my tongue is broken down, and
straightway a subtle fire has run under my skin, with my
eyes | have no sight, my ears ring, sweat pours down, and
a trembling seizes all my body; | am paler than grass, and
seem in my madness little letter than one dead.
Sappho, The Ode to Aphrodite (fragment)
7 The Nurse. The chaste, they love not vice of their own will,
but yet they love it.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 359
8 Socrates. In the friendship of the lover there is no real
kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you.
"Just as the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover adores his
beloved."
Plato, Phaedrus, 241B
9 Aristophanes ., . had a mind to praise Love in another
way, unlike that either of Pausanias or Eryximachus.
Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have
never, as | think, at all understood the power of Love. For
if they had understood him they would surely have built
noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifies in
his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought
to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of
men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the
great impediment to the happiness of the race. | will try
to describe his power to you [Eryximachus], and you shall
teach the rest of the world what | am teaching you. In the
first place, let me treat of the nature of man and what has
happened to it; for the original human nature was not like
the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they
are now, but originally three in number; there was man,
woman, and the union of the two, having a name
corresponding to this double nature, which had once a
real existence, but is now lost, and the word
"Androgynous" is only preserved as a term of reproach. In
the second place, the primeval man was round, his back
and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and
four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways,
set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears,
two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He
could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards
as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a
great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight
in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in
the air; this was when he wanted to run fast. Now the
sexes were three, and such as | have described them;
because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the man
was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the
earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made
up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved
round and round like their parents. Terrible was their
might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were
great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is
told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says,
dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon
the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should
they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts,
as they had done the giants, then there would be an end
of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them;
but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their
insolence to be unrestrained.
At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered
a way. He said: "Methinks | have a plan which will humble
their pride and improve their manners; men shall
continue to exist, but | will cut them in two and then they
will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers;
this will have the advantage of making them more
profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and
if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, | will split
them again and they shall hop about on a single leg." He
spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is
halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg witha
hair; and as he cut them one after another, he bade
Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in
order that the man might contemplate the section of
himself: he would thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo
was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their
forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin
from the sides all over that which in our language is
called the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he
made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened ina
knot (the same which is called the navel); he also
moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles,
much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last;
he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and
navel, as a memorial of the primeval state. After the
division the two parts of man, each desiring his other
half, came together, and throwing their arms about one
another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow
into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger
and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything
apart; and when one of the halves died and the other
survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or
woman as we Call them,—being the sections of entire
men or women,—and clung to that. They were being
destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a new
plan; he turned the parts of generation round to the front,
for this had not been always their position, and they
sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in
the ground, but in one another; and after the
transposition the male generated in the female in order
that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they
might breed, and the race might continue; or if man
came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go
their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire
of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our
Original nature, making one of two, and healing the state
of man.
Each of us when separated, having one side only, like
a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always
looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that
double nature which was once called Androgynous are
lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed,
and also adulterous women who lust after men: the
women who are a section of the woman do not care for
men, but have female attachments; the female
companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of
the male follow the male, and while they are young,
being slices of the original man, they hang about men
and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of
boys and youths, because they have the most manly
nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but
this is not true; (or they do not act thus from any want of
shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and
have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which
is like them. And these when they grow up become our
statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the
truth of what | am saying. When they reach manhood
they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined to
marry or beget children,—if at all, they do so only in
obedience to the law; but they are satisfied if they may
be allowed to live with one another un-wedded; and such
a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always
embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of
them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself,
whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort,
the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship
and intimacy, and will not be out of the other’s sight, as |
may say, even for a moment: these are the people who
pass their whole lives together; yet they could not
explain what they desire of one another. For the intense
yearning which each of them has towards the other does
not appear to be the desire of lover’s intercourse, but of
something else which the soul of either evidently desires
and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and
doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his
instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by
side and to say to them, "What do you people want of one
another?" they would be unable to explain. And suppose
further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: "Do
you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be
in one another’s company? for if this is what you desire, |
am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together,
so that being two you shall become one, and while you
live live a common life as if you were a single man, and
after your death in the world below still be one departed
soul instead of two—l ask whether this is what you
lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain
this?"—there is not a man of them who when he heard
the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that
this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming
one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient
need. And the reason is that human nature was originally
one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of
the whole is called love.
Plato, Symposium, 189A
10 Animals in general seem naturally disposed to this
intercourse at about the same period of the year, and
that is when winter is changing into summer. And this is
the season of spring, in which almost all things that fly or
walk or swim take to pairing. Some animals pair and
breed in autumn also and in winter, as is the case with
certain aquatic animals and certain birds. Man pairs and
breeds at all seasons, as is the case also with
domesticated animals, owing to the shelter and good
feeding they enjoy: that is to say, with those whose
period of gestation is also comparatively brief, as the sow
and the bitch, and with those birds that breed frequently.
Many animals time the season of intercourse with a view
to the right nurture subsequently of their young. In the
human species, the male is more under sexual
excitement in winter, and the female in summer.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 542a20
11 Men in most cases continue to be sexually competent
until they are sixty years old, and if that limit be
overpassed then until seventy years; and men have been
actually known to procreate children at seventy years of
age. With many men and many women it so happens that
they are unable to produce children to one another, while
they are able to do so in union with other individuals. The
same thing happens with regard to the production of
male and female offspring; for sometimes men and
w’omcn in union with one another produce male children
or female, as the ease may be, but children of the
opposite sex when otherwise mated. And they are apt to
change in this respect with advancing age: for sometimes
a husband and wife while they are young produce female
children and in later life male children; and in other eases
the very contrary occurs. And just the same thing is true
in regard to the generative faculty: for some while young
are childless, but have children when they grow older;
and some have children to begin with, and later on no
more.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 585b6
12 As when in sleep a thirsty man seeks to drink and water
is not given to quench the burning in his frame, but he
seeks the idols of waters and toils in vain and thirsts as
he drinks in the midst of the torrent stream, thus in love
Venus mocks lovers with idols, nor can bodies satisfy
them by all their gazing upon them nor can they with
their hands rub aught off the soft limbs, wandering
undecided over the whole body. At last when they have
united and enjoy the flower of age, when the body now
has a presage of delights and Venus is in the mood to sow
the fields of woman, they greedily clasp each other’s
body and suck each other’s lips and breathe in, pressing
meanwhile teeth on each other’s mouth; all in vain, since
they can rub nothing off nor enter and pass each with his
whole body into the other’s body; for so sometimes they
seem to will and strive to do: so greedily are they held in
the chains of Venus, while their limbs melt overpowered
by the might of the pleasure. At length when the
gathered desire has gone forth, there ensues for a brief
while a short pause in the burning passion; and then
returns the same frenzy, then comes back the old
madness, when they are at a loss to know what they
really desire to get, and cannot find what device is to
conquer that mischief; in such utter uncertainty they
pine away by a hidden wound.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
13 But anxious cares already seiz'd the queen:
She fed within her veins a flame unseen;
The hero’s valor, acts, and birth inspire
Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.
His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart.
Improve the passion, and increase the smart.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
14 Dido. To this one error! might yield again;
For, since Sichaeus was untimely slain.
This only man is able to subvert
The fix’d foundations of my stubborn heart.
And, to confess my frailty, to my shame.
Somewhat | find within, if not the same,
Too like the sparkles of my former flame.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
15 What priestly rites, alas! what pious art.
What vows avail to cure a bleeding heart!
A gentle fire she feeds within her veins.
Where the soft god secure in silence reigns.
Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves.
From street to street the raving Dido roves.
So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,
Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind.
Distracted with her pain she flies the woods.
Bounds o’er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods,
With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
16 The queen and prince, as love or fortune guides.
One common cavern in her bosom hides.
Then first the trembling earth the signal gave.
And flashing fires enlighten all the cave;
Hell from below, and Juno from above.
And howling nymphs, were conscious of their love
From this ill-omen’d hour in time arose
Debate and death, and all succeeding woes.
The queen, whom sense of honor could not move,
No longer made a secret of her love.
But call’d it marriage, by that specious name
To veil the crime and sanctify the shame.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
17 What | hate is the girl who gives with a feeling she has to.
Dry in the bed, with her mind somewhere else, gathering
wool.
Duty is all very well, hut’s let’s not confuse it with
pleasure;
| do not want any girl doing her duty for me.
What | like to hear are the words of utter abandon,
Words that say, "Not too soon!", words that say, "Wait just
a while!"
Let me see my girl with eyes that confess her excitement;
Let her, after she comes, want no more for a while.
What does youth know of delight? Some things ought not
to be hurried;
After some thirty-odd years, lovers begin to learn how.
Let the premature guzzle wine that is hardly fermented,
I'll take wine from a jar mellowed in vintage with time.
Only the full-grown tree resists the heat of the sunlight,
Meadow'S too recently sown offer the barefoot no joy.
Who wants Hermione, if Helen is his for the taking?
Look for a woman, mature, not any slip of a girl.
Love is an art learned late, but if you are willing, and
patient,
Playing your part like a man, you will have fitting reward.
Ovid, Art of Love, II, 685
18 What a girl ought to know is herself, adapting her
method,
Taking advantage of ways nature equips her to use.
Lie on your back, if your face and all of your features are
pretty;
If your posterior’s cute, better be seen from behind.
Milanion used to bear Atalanta’s legs on his shoulders;
If you have beautiful legs, let them be lifted like hers.
Little girls do all right if they sit on top, riding horseback;
Hector’s Andromache knew she could not do this: too tall!
Press the couch with your knees and bend your neck
backward a little,
If your view, full-length, seems what a lover should crave.
If the breasts and thighs are youthful and lovely to look
at,
Let the man stand and the girl lie on a slant on the bed.
Let your hair come down, in the Laodamian fashion:
If your belly is lined, better be seen from behind.
There are a thousand ways: a simple one, never too
tiring,
Is to lie on your back, turning a bit to the right.
My Muse can give you the truth, more truth than Apollo
or Ammon;
Take it from me, what | know took many lessons to learn.
Let the woman feel the act of love to her marrow,
Let the performance bring equal delight to the two.
Coax and flatter and tease, with inarticulate murmurs,
Even with sexual words, in the excitement of play,
And if nature, alas! denies you the final sensation
Cry out as if you had come, do your best to pretend.
Really, | pity the girl whose place, let us say, cannot give
her
Pleasure it gives to the man, pleasure she ought to enjoy.
So, if you have to pretend, be sure the pretense is
effective,
Do your best to convince, prove it by rolling your eyes.
Prove by your motions, your moans, your sighs, what a
pleasure it gives you.
Ah, what a shame! That part has its own intimate signs.
Ovid, Art of Love, Ill, 771
19 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the
world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is
not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father,
but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but
he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
| John 2:15-17
20 | came to Carthage, where a cauldron of illicit loves leapt
and boiled about me. | was not yet in love, but | was in
love with love, and from the very depth of my need hated
myself for not more keenly feeling the need. | sought
some object to love, since | was thus in love with loving;
and | hated security and a life with no snares for my feet.
For within | was hungry, all for the want of that spiritual
food which is Thyself, my God; yet [though | was hungry
for want of it] | did not hunger for it: | had no desire
whatever for incorruptible food, not because | had it in
abundance but the emptier | was, the more | hated the
thought of it. Because of all this my soul was sick, and
broke out in sores, whose itch | agonized to scratch with
the rub of carnal things—carnal, yet if there were no soul
in them, they would not be objects of love. My longing
then was to love and to be loved, but most when |
obtained the enjoyment of the body of the person who
loved me.
Thus | polluted the stream of friendship with the filth
of unclean desire and sullied its limpidity with the hell of
lust. And vile and unclean as | was, so great was my
vanity that | was bent upon passing for clean and courtly.
And | did fall in love, simply from wanting to. O my God,
my Mercy, with how much bitterness didst Thou in Thy
goodness sprinkle the delights of that time! | was loved,
and our love came to the bond of consummation: | wore
my chains with bliss but with torment too, for | was
scourged with red hot rods of jealousy, with suspicions
and fears and tempers and quarrels.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 1
211in my great worthlessness—for it was greater thus early
—had begged You for chastity, saying "Grant me chastity
and continence, but not yet." For | was afraid that You
would hear my prayer too soon, and too soon would heal
me from the disease of lust which | wanted satisfied
rather than extinguished.
Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 7
22 Certainly, had not culpable disobedience been visited
with penal disobedience, the marriage of Paradise should
have been ignorant of this struggle and rebellion, this
quarrel between will and lust, that the will may be
satisfied and lust restrained, but those members, like all
the rest, should have obeyed the will. The field of
generation should have been sown by the organ created
for this purpose, as the earth is sown by the hand. And
whereas now, as we esSay to investigate this subject
more exactly, modesty hinders us and compels us to ask
pardon of chaste ears, there would have been no cause to
do so, but we could have discoursed freely, and without
fear of seeming obscene, upon all those points which
occur to one who meditates on the subject. There would
not have been even words which could be called
obscene, but all that might be said of these members
would have been as pure as what is said of the other
parts of the body. Whoever, then, comes to the perusal of
these pages with unchaste mind, let him blame his
disposition, not his nature; let him brand the actings of
his own impurity, not the words which necessity forces us
to use, and for which every pure and pious reader or
hearer will very readily pardon me.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 23
23 | define charity as a motion of the soul whose purpose is
to enjoy God for His own sake and one’s self and one’s
neighbor for the sake of God. Lust, on the other hand is a
motion of the soul bent upon enjoying one’s self, one’s
neighbor, and any creature without reference to God.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Ill, 10
24 Some of the earlier doctors, considering the nature of
concupiscence as regards generation in our present state,
concluded that in the state of innocence generation
would not have been effected in the same way, Thus
Gregory of Nyssa says that in Paradise the human race
would have been multiplied by some other means, just as
the angels were multiplied without coition by the
operation of the Divine Power. He adds that God made
man male and female before sin because He foreknew the
mode of generation which would take place after sin,
which He foresaw.
But this is unreasonable. For what is natural to man
was neither acquired nor forfeited by sin. Now it is clear
that generation by coition is natural to man by reason of
his animal life, which he possessed even before sin... just
as it is natural to other perfect animals, as the corporeal
members make it clear. So we cannot allow that these
members would have had a natural use, as other
members had, before sin.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 98, 2
25 The virtue of chastity most of all makes man apt for
contemplation, since sexual pleasures most of all weigh
the mind down to sensible objects.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 180, 2
26 A remedy can be employed against concupiscence in two
ways. First, on the part of concupiscence by repressing it
in its root, and thus matrimony affords a remedy by the
grace given therein. Secondly, on the part of its act, and
this in two ways: first, by depriving the act to which
concupiscence inclines of its outward shamefulness, and
this is done by the marriage blessings which justify carnal
concupiscence; secondly, by hindering the shameful act,
which is done by the very nature of the act; because
concupiscence, being satisfied by the conjugal act, does
not incline so much to other wickedness.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 42, 3
27 No wise man should allow himself to lose a thing except
for some compensation in the shape of an equal or better
good. Wherefore for a thing that has a loss attached to it
to be eligible, it needs to have some good connected with
it, which by compensating for that loss makes that thing
ordinate and right. Now there is a loss of reason
incidental to the union of man and woman, both because
the reason is carried away entirely on account of the
vehemence of the pleasure, so that it is unable to
understand anything at the same time... and again
because of the tribulation of the flesh which such persons
have to suffer from solicitude for temporal things.
Consequently the choice of this union cannot be made
ordinate except by certain compensation whereby that
Same union is righted; and these are the goods which
excuse marriage and make it right.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II! Suppl., 49, 1
28 Some say that whenever pleasure is the chief motive for
the marriage act it is a mortal sin; that when it is an
indirect motive it is a venial sin; and that when it spurns
the pleasure altogether and is displeasing, it is wholly
void of venial sin; so that it \s'ould be a mortal sin to seek
pleasure in this act, a venial sin to take the pleasure
when offered, but that perfection requires one to detest
it. But this is impossible since... the same judgment
applies to pleasure as to action, because pleasure in a
good action is good, and in an evil action, evil; wherefore,
as the marriage act is not evil in itself, neither will it be
always a mortal sin to seek pleasure therein.
Consequently the right answer to this question is that if
pleasure be sought in such a way as to exclude the
honesty of marriage, so that, to wit, it is not as a wife but
aS a woman that a man treats his wife, and that he is
ready to use her in the same way if she were not his wife,
it is a mortal sin; wherefore such a man is said to be too
ardent a lover of his wife, because his ardor carries him
away from the goods of marriage. If, however, he seek
pleasure within the bounds of marriage, so that it would
not be sought in another than his wife, it is a venial sin.
Aquinas, Summa Thcologica, III Suppl., 49, 6
29 Although old people have not sufficient calidity to
procreate, they have sufficient to copulate. Wherefore
they are allowed to marry, insofar as marriage is intended
as aremedy, although it does not befit them as fulfilling
an office of nature.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II! Suppl., 58. 1
30 | came into a place void of all light, which bellows like the
sea in tempest, when it is combated by warring winds.
The hellish storm, which never rests, leads the spirits
with its sweep; whirling, and smiting it vexes them.
When they arrive before the min, there the shrieks,
the meanings, and the lamentation; there they
blaspheme the divine power.
| learnt that to such torment are doomed the carnal
sinners, who subject reason to lust.
Dante, Inferno, V, 28
31 1 began: "Poet [Virgil], willingly would | soeak with those
two that go together, and seem so light upon the wind."
And he to me: "Thou shall see when they are nearer to
us; and do thou then entreat them by that love, which
leads them; and they will come."
Soon as the wind bends them to us, | raised my voice:
"O wearied souls! come to speak with us, if none denies
ea
As doves called by desire, with raised and steady
wings come through the air to their loved nest, borne by
their will:
so those spirits issued from the band where Dido is,
coming to us through the malignant air; such was the
force of my affectuous cry.
"O living creature, gracious and benign! that goest
through the black air, visiting us who stained the earth
with blood; if the King of the Universe were our friend, we
would pray him for thy peace; seeing that thou hast pity
of our perverse misfortune.
Of that which it pleases thee to hear and to speak, we
will hear and speak with you, whilst the wind, as now, Is
silent for us.
The town, where | was born, sits on the shore, where Po
decends to rest with his attendant streams.
Love, which is quickly caught in gentle heart, took him
with the fair body of which | was bereft; and the manner
still afflicts me.
Love, which to no loved one permits excuse for loving,
took me so strongly with delight in him, that, as thou
seest, even now it leaves me not.
Love led us to one death; Caina waits for him who
quenched our life." These words from them were offered
to us.
After | had heard those wounded souls, | bowed my
face, and held it low until the Poet said to me: "What art
thou thinking of?"
When | answered, | began: "Ah me! what sweet
thoughts, what longing led them to the woful pass!"
Then | turned again to them; and | spoke, and began:
“Francesca, thy torments make me weep with grief and
pity.
But tell me: in the time of the sweet sighs, by what
and how love granted you to know the dubious desires?"
And she to me: "There is no greater pain than to recall
a happy time in wretchedness; and this thy teacher
knows.
But if thou hast such desire to learn the first root of
our love, | will do like one who weeps and tells.
One day, for pastime, we read of Lancelot, how love
constrained him; we were alone, and without all
SUSPICION.
Several times that reading urged our eyes to meet,
and changed the colour of our faces; but one moment
alone it was that overcame us.
When we read how the fond smile was kissed by such
a lover, he, who shall never be divided from me,
kissed my mouth all trembling: the book, and he who
wrote it, was a Galeotto; that day we read in it no farther."
Whilst the one spirit spake, the other wept so, that |
fainted with pity, as if | have been dying; and fell, asa
dead body falls.
Dante, Inferno, V, 73
32 And then he [Troilus] told him [Pandar] of his happy
night,
And how at first he was afraid, and why,
And said, "| swear upon my honor bright
And by my faith in you and God on high,
| never knew what loving did imply;
For as my heart’s desires rose in height,
The greater grew my love and my delight,"
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, 236
33 Now, to speak of the first desire, that is, concupiscence,
according to the law for our sexual parts, which were
lawfully made and by rightful word of God; | say, for as
much as man is not obedient to God, Who is his Lord,
therefore is the flesh disobedient to Him, through
concupiscence, which is also called the nourishing of and
the reason for sin. Therefore all the while that a man has
within himself the penalty of concupiscence, it is
impossible but that he will be sometimes tempted and
moved in his flesh to do sin. And this shall not fail so long
as he lives; it may well grow feeble and remote by virtue
of baptism and by the grace of God through penitence;
but it shall never be fully quenched so that he shall never
be moved within himself, unless he be cooled by sickness
or by maleficence of sorcery or by opiates.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Parson's Tale
34 This is the Devil’s other hand, with five fingers to catch
the people into his slavery. The first finger is the foolish
interchange of glances between the foolish woman and
the foolish man, which slays just as the basilisk slays folk
by the venom of its sight; for the lust of the eyes follows
the lust of the heart. The second finger is vile touching in
wicked manner; and thereupon Solomon says that he
who touches and handles a woman fares like the man
that handles the scorpion which stings and suddenly
slays by its poisoning; even as, if any man touch warm
pitch, it defiles his fingers. The third is vile words, which
are like fire, which immediately burns the heart. The
fourth finger is kissing; and truly he were a great fool who
would kiss the mouth of a burning oven or of a furnace.
And the more fools they are who kiss in vileness; for that
mouth is the mouth of Hell; and | speak specifically of
these old dotard whoremongers, who will yet kiss though
they cannot do anything, and so taste them. Certainly
they are like dogs, for a dog, when he passes a rosebush,
or other bushes, though he cannot piss, yet will he heave
up his leg and make an appearance of pissing. And as for
the opinion of many that a man cannot sin for any
lechery he does with his wife, certainly that opinion is
wrong. God knows, a man may slay himself with his own
knife, and make himself drunk out of his own tun.
Certainly, be it wife, be it child, or any worldly thing that
a man loves more than he loves God, it is his idol, and he
is an idolater. Man should love his wife with discretion,
calmly and moderately; and then she is as it were his
sister. The fifth finger of the Devil’s hand is the stinking
act of lechery. Truly, the five fingers of gluttony the Fiend
thrusts into the belly of a man, and with his five fingers of
lechery he grips him by the loins in order to throw him
into the furnace of Hell; wherein he shall have the fire
and the everlasting worms, and weeping and wailing,
Sharp hunger and thirst, and horror of devils that shall
trample all over him, without respite and without end.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Parson’s Tale
35 Then said Pantagruel, How dost thou know that the privy
parts of women are at such a cheap rate? For in this city
there are many virtuous, honest, and chaste women
besides the maids. Et ub/ prenus? [And where will you
find them?] said Panurge. | will give you my opinion of it,
and that upon certain and assured knowledge. | do not
brag, that | have bum-basted four hundred and
seventeen, since | came into this city, though it be but
nine days ago; but this very morning | met with a good
fellow, who in a wallet, such as AEsop’s was, carried two
little girls, of two or three years old at the most, one
before, and the other behind. He demanded alms of me,
but | made him answer, that | had more cods than pence.
Afterwards | asked him. Good man, these two girls, are
they maids? Brother, said he, | have carried them thus
these two years, and in regard of her that is before, whom
| see continually, in my opinion she is a virgin;
nevertheless, | will not put my finger in the fire for it; as
for her that is behind, doubtless | can say nothing.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Il, 15
36 The woman who goes to bed with a man should put off
her modesty with her skirt and put it on again with her
petticoat.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 21, Power of the Imagination
37 Married people, whose time is all their own, should
neither press their undertaking nor even attempt it if
they are not ready; it is better to fail unbecomingly to
handsel the nuptial couch, which is full of agitation and
feverishness, and wait for some other more private and
less tense opportunity, than to fall into perpetual misery
for having been stunned and made desperate by a first
refusal. Before taking possession, the patient should try
himself out and offer himself, lightly, by sallies at
different times, without priding himself and obstinately
insisting on convincing himself definitively. Those who
know that their members are naturally obedient, let them
take care only to counteract the tricks of their fancies.
People are right to notice the unruly liberty of this
member, obtruding so importunately when we have no
use for it, and failing so importunately when we have the
most use for it, and struggling for mastery so imperiously
with our will, refusing with so much pride and obstinacy
our solicitations, both mental and manual.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 21, Power of the Imagination
38 Truly it is also a fact worthy of consideration that the
masters of the craft order as a remedy to amorous
passions the entire and open sight of the body that we
pursue; that to cool our love, we need only see freely
what we love.... And although this recipe may perhaps
proceed from a somewhat cooled and delicate
temperament, still it is a wonderful sign of our
defectiveness that acquaintance and familiarity disgust
us with one another. It is not so much modesty as
artfulness and prudence that makes our ladies so
circumspect in refusing us entry to their boudoirs before
they are painted and dressed up for public display.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
39 we eat and drink as the animals do, but these are not
actions that hinder the operations of our mind. In these
we keep our advantage over them. But this other puts
every other thought beneath its yoke and by its
imperious authority brutifies and bestializes ail the
theology and philosophy there is in Plato; and yet he
does not complain of it. In everything else you can keep
some decorum; all other operations come under the rules
of decency. This one cannot even be imagined other than
vicious or ridiculous. Just to see this, try to find a wise
and discreet way of doing it. Alexander used to say that
he knew himself to be mortal chiefly by this action and
by sleep. Sleep suffocates and supresses the faculties of
our mind; the sexual act likewise absorbs and dissipates
them. Truly it is a mark not only of our original corruption
but also of our inanity and deformity.
On the one hand Nature pushes us on to it, having
attached to this desire the most noble, useful, and
pleasant of all her operations; and on the other hand she
lets us accuse and shun it as shameless and indecent,
blush at it, and recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes
to call brutish the operation that makes us?
The various nations in their religions have many
conventions in common, such as sacrifices, lamps,
burning incense, fasts, offerings, and, among other
things, the condemnation of this action. All opinions
come to this, besides the very widespread practice of
cutting off the foreskin, which is a punishment of the act.
Perhaps we are right to blame ourselves for making such
a stupid production as man, to call the action shameful,
and shameful the parts that are used for it.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
40 The truth is that it is contrary to the nature of love if it is
not violent, and contrary to the nature of violence if it is
constant. And those who are astonished at this and
exclaim against it and seek out the causes of this malady
in women as if it were unnatural and incredible, why
don’t they see how often they accept it in themselves
without being appalled and calling it a miracle? It would
perhaps be more strange to see any stability in it. It is not
simply a bodily passion. If there is no end to avarice and
ambition, neither is there any to lechery. It still lives after
satiety; no constant satisfaction or end can be prescribed
to it, for it always goes beyond its possession.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
41 He who can await, the morning after, without dying c>f
shame, the disdain of those fair eyes that have witnessed
his limpness and impertinence,... never felt the
satisfaction and pride of having conquered them and put
circles around them by the vigorous exercise of a busy
and active night.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
42 Now this is a relationship that needs mutuality and
reciprocity. The other pleasures that we receive may be
acknowledged by recompenses of a different nature, but
this one can be paid for only in the same kind of coin. In
truth, in this delight the pleasure | give tickles my
imagination more s%vcctly than that which | feel. Now
there is no nobility in a man who can receive pleasure
where he gives none; it is a mean soul that is willing to
owe everything and takes pleasure in fostering relations
with persons to whom he is a burden. There is neither
beauty, nor grace, nor intimacy so exquisite that a
gallant man should desire it at this price. If they can be
kind to us only out of pity, | had much rather not live at
all than live on alms.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
43 Friar Laurence. These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder.
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathesome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Il, vi, 9
44 Theseus, Fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, I, |, 67
45 Polonius. | do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both.
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, tii, 115
46 Queen. O Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there | see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Hamlet. Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed.
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty—
Queen. O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine cars;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
Ham. A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole.
And put it in his pocket!
Queen. No more!
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 88
47 Fairies. Fie on sinful fantasy!
Fie on lust and luxury!
Lust is but a bloody fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire.
Fed in heart, whose flames aspire
As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
Pinch him for his villainy;
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.
Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, V, v, 97
48 Cressida. They say all lovers swear more performance
than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they
never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten
and discharging less than the tenth part of one.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, III, ii, 91
49 Pandarus. Go to, a bargain made. Seal it, seal it; I’ll be
the witness. Here | hold your hand, here my cousin’s. If
ever you prove false one to another, since | have taken
such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-
between be called to the world’s end after my name; call
them all Pan-dars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all
false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars!
say, amen.
Troilus. Amen.
Cressida. Amen.
Pan. Amen. Whereupon | will show you a chamber with
a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your
pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!
And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here Bed,
chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, ti, 204
50 /ago. Mark me with what violence she first loved the
Moor, but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies; and
will she love him still for prating? let not thy discreet
heart think it. Her eye must be fed; and what delight
shall she have to look on the devil? When the blood is
made dull with the act of sport, there should be, again to
inflame it and to give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness
in favour, sympathy in years, manners, and beauties; all
which the Moor is defective in. Now, for want of these
required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find
itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and
abhor the Moor; very nature will instruct her in it and
compel her to some second choice.
Shakespeare, Othello, II, i, 224
51 Fool. Now’ a little fire in a wild field were like an old
lecher’s heart; a small spark, all the rest on’s body cold.
Shakespeare, Lear, Ill, iv, 116
52 Gloucester. The trick of that voice | do well remember.
Is’t not the King?
Lear. Ay, every inch a king!
When | do stare, see how the subject quakes.
| pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause?
Adultery?
Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery! No:
the wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly
Docs lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester’s bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got ‘tween the lawful sheets.
To’t, luxury, pell-mell; for | lack soldiers.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, vi, 108
53 Philo. Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front; his captain’s heart.
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy’s lust.
Flourish. Enter Antony, Cleopatra, her Ladies, the
Train, with Eunuchs fanning her.
Look, where they come!
Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transform’d
Into a strumpet’s fool.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I, i, 1
54 Prospero. Look thou be true; do not give dalliance Too
much the rein. The strongest oaths are straw To the fire i'
the blood.
Shakespeare, Tempest, IV, i, 51
55 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had.
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXIX
56 | could be content that we might procreate like trees,
without conjunction, or that there were any way to
perpetuate the World without this trivial and vulgar way
of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in
all his life; nor is there any thing that will more deject his
cool’d imagination, when he shall consider what an odd
and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Il, 9
57 Lust has become natural to us and has made our second
nature. Thus there are two natures in us— the one good,
the other bad. Where is God? Where you are not, and the
kingdom of God is within you.
Pascal, Pensées, X, 660
58 When lust
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk.
But most by leud and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbruites, till she quite loose
The divine property of her first being.
Milton, Comus, 463
59 Nor those mysterious parts were then conceald,
Then was not guiltie shame, dishonest shame
Of natures works, honor dishonorable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubl’d all mankind
With shews instead, meer shews of seeming pure,
And banisht from mans life his happiest life,
Simplicitie and spotless innocence.
Milton, Paradise Lort, IV, 312
60 The love of a harlot, that is to say, the lust of sexual
intercourse, which arises from mere external form, and
absolutely all love which recognises any other cause than
the freedom of the mind, easily passes into hatred,
unless, which is worse, it becomes a species of delirium,
and thereby discord is cherished rather than concord.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix XIX
61 He [Johnson] for a considerable time used to frequent the
Green Room, and seemed to take delight in dissipating
his gloom, by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of the
motley circle then to be found there. Mr. David Hume
related to me from Mr. Garrick, that Johnson at last denied
himself this amusement, from considerations of rigid
virtue; saying, "I'll come no more behind your scenes,
David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your
actresses excite my amorous propensities."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1749)
62 Boswell "So then. Sir, you would allow of no irregular
intercourse whatever between the sexes?"
Johnson "To be sure | would not. Sir. | would punish it
much more than it is done, and so restrain it. In all
countries there has been fornication, as in all countries
there has been theft; but there may be more or less of the
one, as well as of the other, in proportion to the force of
law. All men will naturally commit fornication, as all men
will naturally steal. And, Sir, it is very absurd to argue, as
has been often done, that prostitutes are necessary to
prevent the violent effects of appetite from violating the
decent order of life; nay, should be permitted, in order to
preserve the chastity of om wives and daughters. Depend
upon it, Sir, severe laws, steadily enforced, would be
sufficient against those evils, and would promote
marriage."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 5, 1776)
63 With the venerable proconsul [Gordianus], his son, who
had accompanied him into Africa as his lieutenant, was
likewise declared emperor. His manners were less pure,
but his character was equally amiable with that of his
father. Twenty-two acknowledge concubines, and a library
of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his
inclinations, and from the productions which he left
behind him, it appears that the former as well as the
latter were designed for use rather than ostentation.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VII
64 Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly
contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human
nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the
virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the
softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while
they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross
appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is
elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental
passion. The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners
gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through
the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight
dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once
temptations and opportunity to female frailty.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1X
65 The laws of Constantine against rapes were dictated with
very little indulgence for the most amiable weaknesses of
human nature; since the description of that crime was
applied not only to the brutal violence which compelled,
but even to the gentle seduction which might persuade,
an unmarried woman, under the age of twenty-five, to
leave the house of her parents.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIV
66 O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Blake, The Sick Rose
67 Mephistopheles. What good is it to reap immediate
pleasure?
The joy’s not near so great, | say,
As if you first prepare the ground
With every sort of idle folly,
Knead and make ready your pretty dolly,
As many Romance tales expound.
Goethe, Faust, |, 2647
68 Julia’s voice was lost, except in sighs,
Until too late for useful conversation;
The tears were gushing from her gentle eyes,
| wish, indeed, they had not had occasion,
But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?
Not that remorse did not oppose temptation;
A little still she strove, and much repented,
And whispering “I will ne’er consent”— consented.
Byron, Don Juan, 1,117
69 A wise woman should never give herself for the first time
by appointment—it should be an unforeseen delight.
Stendhal, On Love, II, 60
70 If... one considers the important part which the sexual
impulse in all its degrees and nuances plays not only on
the stage and in novels, but also in the real world, where,
next to the love of life, it shows itself the strongest and
most powerful of motives, constantly lays claim to half
the powers and thoughts of the younger portion of
mankind, is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort,
exerts an adverse influence on the most important
events, interrupts the most serious occupations every
hour, sometimes embarrasses for a while even the
greatest minds, does not hesitate to intrude with its trash
interfering with the negotiations of statesmen and the
investigations of men of learning, knows how to slip its
love letters and locks of hair even into ministerial
portfolios and philosophical manuscripts, and no less
devises daily the most entangled and the worst actions,
destroys the most valuable relationships, breaks the
firmest bonds, demands the sacrifice sometimes of life or
health, sometimes of wealth, rank, and happiness, nay,
robs those who are otherwise honest of all conscience,
makes those who have hitherto been faithful, traitors;
accordingly, on the whole, appears as a malevolent
demon that strives to pervert, confuse, and overthrow
everything;—then one will be forced to cry, Wherefore all
this noise? Wherefore the straining and storming, the
anxiety and want? It is merely a question of every Hans
finding his Grethe. Why should such a trifle play so
important a part, and constantly introduce disturbance
and confusion into the well-regulated life of man? But to
the earnest investigator the spirit of truth gradually
reveals the answer. It is no trifle that is in question here;
on the contrary, the importance of the matter is quite
proportionate to the seriousness and ardour of the effort.
The ultimate end of all love affairs, whether they are
played in sock or cothurnus, is really more important than
all other ends of human life, and is therefore quite worthy
of the profound seriousness with which every one pursues
it. That which is decided by it is nothing less than the
composition of the next generation. The dramatis
personoe who shall appear when we are withdrawn are
here determined, both as regards their existence and
their nature, by these frivolous love affairs.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Vol. III, 44
71 All love, however ethereally it may bear itself, is rooted in
the sexual impulse alone, nay, it absolutely is only a more
definitely determined, specialised, and indeed in the
strictest sense individualised sexual impulse.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Vol. III, 44
72 With the great majority of animals ... the taste for the
beautiful is confined, as far as we can judge, to the
attractions of the opposite sex.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 3
73 The law of battle for the possession of the female appears
to prevail throughout the whole great class of mammals.
Most naturalists will admit that the greater siae, strength,
courage, and pugnacity of the male, his special weapons
of offence, as well as his special means of defence, have
been acquired or modified through that form of selection
which | have called sexual. This does not depend on any
superiority in the general struggle for life, but on certain
individuals of one sex, generally the males, being
successful in conquering other males, and leaving a
larger number of offspring to inherit their superiority than
do the less successful males.
Darwin, Descent of Man, II, 18
74 Of all the causes which have led to the differences in
external appearance between the races of man, and toa
certain extent between man and the lower animals,
sexual selection has been the most efficient.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 20
75 Ratikin. There’s something here, my dear boy [Alyosha],
that you don’t understand yet. A man will fall in love with
some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even with a part of
a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that), and
he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and
mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he'll
steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll
deceive. Pushkin, the poet of women’s feet, sung of their
feet in his verse. Others don’t sing their praises, but they
can’t look at their feet without a thrill—and it’s not only
their feet. Contempt’s no help here, brother, even if he
did despise Grushenka. He does, but he can’t tear himself
away.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, Il, 7
76 Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual
intercourse. He will go any length for it— risk fortune,
character, reputation, life itself. And what do you think he
has done? In a thousand years you would never guess—
He has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes its place.
Mark Twain, Notebook
77 Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it
but degenerated—into a vice.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 168
78 What can be the aim of withholding from children, or let
us say from young people, this information about the
sexual life of human beings? Is it a fear of arousing
interest in such matters prematurely, before it
spontaneously stirs in them? Is it a hope of retarding by
concealment of this kind the development of the sexual
instinct in general, until such time as it can find its way
into the only channels open to it in the civilized social
order? Is it Supposed that children would show no interest
or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if
they were not prompted to do so by outside influence? Is
it regarded as possible that the knowledge withheld from
them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely
and seriously intended that later on they should consider
everything connected with sex as something despicable
and abhorrent from which their parents and teachers wish
to keep them apart as long as possible?
| am really at a loss to say which of these can be the
motive for the customary concealment from children of
everything connected with sex. | only know that these
arguments are one and all equally foolish, and that | find
it difficult to pay Acm compliment of serious refutation.
Freud, Sexual Enlightenment of Children
79 Seriously, it is not so easy to define what the term sexual
includes. Everything connected wth the difference
between the two sexes is perhaps the only way of hitting
the mark; but you will find that too general and
indefinite. If you take the sexual act itself as the central
point, you will perhaps declare sexual to mean
everything which is concerned with obtaining pleasurable
gratification from the body (and particularly the sexual
organs) of the opposite sex; in the narrowest sense,
everything which is directed to the union of the genital
organs and the performance of the sexual act. In doing
so, however, you come very near to reckoning the sexual
and the improper as identical, and childbirth would really
have nothing to do with sex. If then you make the
function of reproduction the kernel of sexuality you run
the risk of excluding from it a whole host of things like
masturbation, or even kissing, which are not directed
towards reproduction, but which are nevertheless
undoubtedly sexual. However, we have already found
that attempts at definition always lead to difficulties; let
us give up trying to do any better in this particular case.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XX
80 It is indeed one of the most important social tasks of
education to restrain, confine, and subject to an
individual control (itself identical with the demands of
society) the sexual instinct when it breaks forth in the
form of the reproductive function. In its own interests,
accordingly, society would postpone the child’s full
development until it has attained a certain stage of
intellectual maturity, since educability practically ceases
with the full onset of the sexual instinct. Without this the
instinct would break all bounds, and the laboriously
erected structure of civilization would be swept away. Nor
is the task of restraining it ever an easy one; success in
this direction is often poor and, sometimes, only too
great. At bottom society’s motive is economic; since it
has not means enough to support life for its members
without work on their part, it must see to it that the
number of these members is restricted and their energies
directed away from sexual activities on to their work—the
eternal primordial struggle for existence, therefore,
persisting to the present day.
Experience must have taught educators that the task
of moulding the sexual will of the next generation can
only be carried out by beginning to impose their
influence very early, and intervening in the sexual life of
children before puberty, instead of waiting till the storm
bursts. Consequently almost all infantile sexual activities
are forbidden or made disagreeable to the child; the ideal
has been to make the child’s life asexual, and in course of
time it has come to this that it is really believed to be
asexual, and is given out as such, even at the hands of
science. In order, then, to avoid any contradiction with
established beliefs and aims, the sexual activity of
children is overlooked—no small achievement by the way
—while science contents itself with otherwise explaining
it away. The little child is Supposed to be pure and
innocent; he who says otherwise shall be condemned as a
hardened blasphemer against humanity’s tendecrest and
most sacred feelings.
The children alone take no part in this convention;
they assert their animal nature naively enough and
demonstrate persistently that they have yet to learn their
purity. Strange to say, those who deny sexuality in
children are the last to relax educative measures against
it; they follow up with the greatest severity every
manifestation of the childish tricks the existence of which
they deny. Moreover, it is theoretically of great interest
that the time of life which most flagrantly contradicts the
prejudice about asexual childhood, the years of infancy
up to five or six, is precisely the period which is veiled by
oblivion in most people’s memories; an oblivion which
can only be dispelled completely by analysis but which
even before this was sufficiently penetrable to allow some
of the dreams of childhood to be retained.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho Analysis, XX
81 A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.
Yeats, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
82 What lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me Jay?
| answer that | gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That | loved bodily.
Flinging from his arms | laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that | gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch.
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
| gave what other women gave
That stepped out of their clothes,
But when this soul, its body off.
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,
And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There’s not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.
Yeats, A Last Confession
3.4 Friendship
Though friendship is exemplified and extolled in passages
taken from the poets, biographers, and historians, the
analysis of it is drawn mainly from the pages of
philosophers, theologians, and essayists—especially Plato,
Aristotle, and Cicero, Augustine and Aquinas, and
Montaigne.
The most complete analysis is, perhaps, to be found in
Aristotle’s Ethics. He devotes two whole books of that work
to the subject, from which there are many quotations here.
His differentiation of the types of friendship sharply
separates associations based on mutual pleasure or
reciprocal utility from that relationship in which each of the
persons is concerned with the good of the other. Only this, in
his judgment, is true or genuine friendship; the others are
counterfeits of it. True friendship, in other words, always
involves the dominance of benevolent impulses, tending
toward the benefit of the beloved, whereas the counterfeits
of friendship spring primarily or purely from acquisitive
desire—seeking something for one’s self.
It is true friendship thus conceived that almost all the
other writers have in mind when they discuss the subject or
describe examples of it. It is also friendship thus conceived
that is identified with a kind of love that is distinct from
erotic or sexual love, whether between men and women or
between persons of the same sex. How the love that is
friendship is affected by the admixture of sexual love or by
the absence of it is the obverse of a question raised earlier—
how is sexual or erotic love affected by the admixture of
friendship or the absence of it?
However these questions are answered, the reader will
find that the difference between heterosexual and
homosexual relationships enters into the consideration of
the love that is friendship as well as into the consideration of
sexual or erotic love. Can persons of the opposite sex be
friends as readily and as enduringly as persons of the same
gender? Are there fewer obstacles to genuine friendship
among persons of the same sex?
1 Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,
and in their death they were not divided: they were
swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed
you in scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments
of gold upon your apparel.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O
Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.
| am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very
pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was
wonderful, passing the love of women.
Il Samuel 1:2S~ 26
2 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward
for their labour.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to
him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another
to help him up.
Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but
how can one be warm alone?
And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand
him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
3 Diomedes. When two go together, one of them at least
looks forward
to see what is best; a man by himself, though he be
careful,
still has less mind in him than two, and his wits have
less weight.
Homer, Iliad, X, 224
4 Darius. There is nothing in all the world so precious asa
friend who is at once wise and true,
Herodotus, History, V, 24
5 Creon. To throw away
an honest friend is, as it were, to throw
your life away, which a man loves the best.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 611
6 The Nurse. | have learned much from my long life. The
mixing bowl of friendship, the love of one for the other,
must be tempered. Love must not touch the marrow of
the soul. Our affections must be breakable chains that we
can cast them off or tighten them.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 251
7 Hecuba. Real friendship is shown in times of trouble
prosperity is full of friends.
Euripides, Hecuba, 1227
8 Menelaus. Friends—and | mean real friends—reserve
nothing:
The property of one belongs to the other.
Euripides, Andromache, 376
9 Pericles. The doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the
t\vo, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient
in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the
very consciousness that the return he makes will be a
payment, not a free gift.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, II, 40
10 Sorates. All people have their fancies; some desire
horses, and others dogs; and some are fond of gold, and
others of honour. Now, | have no violent desire of any of
these things; but | have a passion for friends; and | would
rather have a good friend than the best cock or quail in
the world: | would even go further, and say the best horse
or dog. Yea, by the dog of Egypt, | should greatly prefer a
real friend to all the gold of Darius, or even to Darius
himself: | am such a lover of friends as that. And when |
see you and Lysis, at your early age, so easily possessed
of this treasure, and so soon, he of you, and you of him, |
am amazed and delighted, seeing that | myself, although
| am now advanced in years, am so far from having made
a similar acquisition, that | do not even know in what way
a friend is acquired.
Plato, Lysis, 21 IB
11 Without friends no one would choose to live, though he
had all other goods; even rich men and those in
possession of office and of dominating power are thought
to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such
prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which
is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards
friends? Or how can prosperity be guarded and preserved
without friends? The greater it is, the more exposed is it
to risk. And in poverty and in other misfortunes men
think friends are the only refuge. It helps the young, too,
to keep from error; it aids older people by ministering to
their needs and supplementing the activities that are
failing from weakness; those in the prime of life it
stimulates to noble actions ... for with friends men are
more able both to think and to act.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1155a5
12 There are therefore three kinds of friendship, equal in
number to the things that are lovable; for with respect to
each there is a mutual and recognized love, and those
who love each other wish well to each other in that
respect in which they love one another. Now those who
love each other for their utility do not love each other for
themselves but in virtue of some good which they get
from each other. So too with those who love for the sake
of pleasure; it is not for their character that men love
ready-witted people, but because they find them
pleasant. Therefore those who love for the sake of utility
love for the sake of what is good for themselves, and
those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake
of what is pleasant to themselves, and not in so far as the
other is the person loved but in so far as he is useful or
pleasant. And thus these friendships are only incidental;
for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person
is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure. Such
friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the panics do
not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no
longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him....
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are
good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each
other qua good, and they are good in themselves. Now
those who wish well to their friends for their sake are
most truly friends; for they do this by reason of their own
nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship
lasts as long as they are good—and goodness is an
enduring thing. And each is good without qualification
and to his friend, for the good are both good without
qualification and useful to each other. So too they are
pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without
qualification and to each other, since to each his own
activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the
actions of the good are the same or like. And such a
friendship is as might be expected permanent, since
there meet in it all the qualities that friends should have.
For all friendship is for the sake of good or of pleasure—
good or pleasure either in the abstract or such as will be
enjoyed by him who has the friendly feeling—and is
based on a certain resemblance; and to a friendship of
good men all the qualities we have named belong in
virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the
case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are
alike in both friends, and that which is good without
qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and
these are the most lovable qualities. Love and friendship
therefore are found most and in their best form between
such men.
But it is natural that such friendships should be
infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such
friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb
says, men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten
salt together’; nor can they admit each other to
friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable
and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the
marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but
are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the
fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but
friendship does not.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1156a7
13 Between sour and elderly people friendship arises less
readily, inasmuch as they are less good-tempered and
enjoy companionship less; for these are thought to be the
greatest marks of friendship and most productive of it.
This is why, while young men become friends quickly, old
men do not; it is because men do not become friends
with those in whom they do not delight; and similarly
sour people do not quickly make friends either. But such
men may bear goodwill to each other; for they wish one
another well and aid one another in need; but they are
hardly friends because they do not spend their days
together nor delight in each other, and these are thought
the greatest marks of friendship
Aristotle, 1158a1
14 There is another kind of friendship, viz. that which
involves an inequality between the parties, for example
that of father to son and in general of elder to younger,
that of man to wife and in general that of ruler to subject.
And these friendships differ also from each other; for it is
not the same that exists between parents and children
and between rulers and subjects, nor is even that of
father to son the same as that of son to father, nor that of
husband to wife the same as that of wife to husband. For
the virtue and the function of each of these is different,
and so are the reasons for which they love; the love and
the friendship are therefore different also. Each party,
then, neither gets the same from the other, nor ought to
seek it; but when children render to parents what they
ought to render to those who brought them into the
world, and parents render what they should to their
children, the friendship of such persons will be abiding
and excellent. In all friendships implying inequality the
love also should be proportional, that is, the better should
be more loved than he loves, and so should the more
useful, and similarly in each of the other cases; for when
the love is in proportion to the merit of the parties, then
in a sense arises equality, which is certainly held to be
characteristic of friendship.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1158b12
15 If, then, being is in itself desirable for the supremely
happy man (since it is by its nature good and pleasant),
and that of his friend is very much the same, a friend will
be one of the things that are desirable. Now that which is
desirable for him he must have, or he will be deficient in
this respect. The man who is to be happy wall therefore
need virtuous friends.
Aristotle, 1170b14
16 Friendship is a partnership, and as a man is to himself, so
is he to his friend; now in his own case the consciousness
of his being is desirable, and so therefore is the
consciousness of his friend’s being, and the activity of
this consciousness is produced when they live together,
so that it is natural that they aim at this. And whatever
existence means for each class of men, whatever it is for
whose sake they value life, in that they wish to occupy
themselves with their friends; and so some drink
together, others dice together, others join in athletic
exercises and hunting, or in the study of philosophy, each
class spending their days together in whatever they love
most in life; for since they wish to live with their friends,
they do and share in those things which give them the
sense of living together. Thus the friendship of bad men
turns out an evil thing (for because of their instability
they unite in bad pursuits, and besides they become evil
by becoming like each other), while the friendship of
good men is good, being augmented by their
companionship; and they are thought to become better
too by their activities and by improving each other; for
from each other they take the mould of the
characteristics they approve— whence the saying ‘noble
deeds from noble men’.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1171b33
17 We may describe friendly feeling towards any one as
wishing for him what you believe to be good things, not
for your own sake but for his, and being inclined, so far as
you can, to bring these things about. A friend is one who
feels thus and excites these feelings in return: those who
think they feel thus towards each other think themselves
friends. This being assumed, it follows that your friend is
the sort of man who shares your pleasure in what is good
and your pain in what is unpleasant, for your sake and for
no other reason. This pleasure and pain of his will be the
token of his good wishes for you, since we all feel glad at
getting what we wish for, and pained at getting what we
do not. Those, then, are friends to whom the same things
are good and evil.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1380b35
18 Kindness—under the influence of which a man is said to
‘be kind’—may be defined as helpfulness towards some
one in need, not in return for anything, nor for the
advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the
person helped. Kindness is great if shown to one who is in
great need, or who needs what is important and hard to
get, or who needs it at an important and difficult crisis; or
if the helper is the only, the first, or the chief person to
give the help. Natural cravings constitute such needs;
and in particular cravings, accompanied by pain, for what
is not being attained. The appetites are cravings of this
kind; sexual desire, for instance, and those which arise
during bodily injuries and in dangers; for appetite is
active both in danger and in pain. Hence those who stand
by us in poverty or in banishment, even if they do not
help us much, are yet really kind to us, because our need
is great and the occasion pressing.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1385a17
19 Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord
on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual
good will and affection. And with the exception of
wisdom, | am inclined to think nothing better than this
has been given to man by the immortal gods. There are
people who give the palm to riches or to good health, or
to power and office, many even to sensual pleasures. This
last is the ideal of brute beasts; and of the others we may
say that they are frail and uncertain, and depend less on
our own prudence than on the caprice of fortune. Then
there are those who find the "chief good" in virtue. Well,
that is a noble doctrine. But the very virtue they talk of is
the parent and preserver of friendship, and without it
friendship cannot possibly exist.
Cicero, Friendship, VI
20 Laelius. And great and numerous as are the blessings of
friendship, this certainly is the sovereign one, that it
gives us bright hopes for the future and forbids weakness
and despair. In the face of a true friend a man sees as it
were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if his
friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his
friend’s strength is his; and in his friend’s life he enjoys a
second life after his own is finished. This last is perhaps
the most difficult to conceive. But such is the effect of the
respect, the loving remembrance, and the regret of
friends which follow us to the grave. While they take the
sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the
survivors. Nay, if you eliminate from nature the tie of
affection, there will be an end of house and city, nor will
so much as the cultivation of the soil be left. If you don’t
see the virtue of friendship and harmony, you may learn
it by observing the effects of quarrels and feuds. Was any
family ever so well established, any state so firmly
settled, as to be beyond the reach of utter destruction
from animosities and factions? This may teach you the
immense advantage of friendship.
Cicero, Friendship, VII
21 Laelius. True friendship is very difficult to find among
those who engage in politics and the contest for office.
Where can you find the man to prefer his friend’s
advancement to his own? And to say nothing of that,
think how grievous and almost intolerable it is to most
men to share political disaster. You will scarcely find any
one who can bring himself to do that. And though what
Ennius says is quite true—"the hour of need shows the
friend indeed"—yet it is in these two ways that most
people betray their untrustworthiness and inconstancy,
by looking down on friends when they are themselves
prosperous, or deserting them in their distress. A man,
then, who has shown a firm, unshaken, and unvarying
friendship in both these contingencies we must reckon as
one of a class the rarest in the world, and all but
superhuman.
Cicero, Friendship, XVII
22 Thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet
and mellow. For when | had them with me it was with the
feeling that 1 was going to lose them, and now that |
have lost them | keep the feeling that | have them with
me still.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 63
23 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends.
John 15:13
24 Did you never see little dogs caressing and playing with
one another, so that you might say there is nothing more
friendly? but, that you may know what friendship is,
throw a bit of flesh among them, and you will learn.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 22
25 During the period in which | first began to teach in the
town of my birth, | had found a very dear friend, who was
pursuing similar studies. He was about my own age, and
was now coming, as | was, to the very flowering-time of
young manhood. He had indeed grown up with meas a
child and we had gone to school together and played
together. Neither in those earlier days nor indeed in the
later time of which | now speak was he a friend in the
truest meaning of friendship: for there is no true
friendship unless You weld it between souls that cleave
together through that charity which is shed in our hearts
by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 4
26 All kinds of things rejoiced my soul in their [my friends’]
company—to talk and laugh and do each other
kindnesses; read pleasant books together, pass from
lightest jesting to talk of the deepest things and back
again; differ without rancour, as a man might differ with
himself, and when most rarely dissension arose find our
normal agreement all the sweeter for it; teach each other
or learn from each other; be impatient for the return of
the absent, and welcome them with joy on their home-
coming; these and such like things, proceeding from our
hearts as we gave affection and received it back, and
shown by face, by voice, by the eyes, and a thousand
other pleasing ways, kindled a flame which fused our
very souls and of many made us one. This is what men
value in friends.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 8-9
27 Is not the unfeigned confidence and mutual love of true
and good friends our one solace in human society, filled
as it is with misunderstandings and calamities? And yet
the more friends we have, and the more widely they are
scattered, the more numerous are our fears that some
portion of the vast masses of the disasters of life may
light upon them. For we are not only anxious lest they
suffer from famine, war, disease, captivity, or the
inconceivable horrors of slavery, but we are also affected
with the much more painful dread that their friendship
may be changed into perfidy, malice, and injustice. And
when these contingencies actually occur—as they do the
more frequently the more friends we have and the more
widely they are scattered—and when they come to our
knowledge, who but the man who has experienced it can
tell with what pangs the heart is torn?
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 8
28 The happy man needs friends , .. not, indeed, to make
use of them, since he suffices himself, nor to delight in
them, since he possesses perfect delight in the operation
of virtue, but for the purpose of a good operation,
namely, that he may do good to them, that he may
delight in seeing them do good, and again that he may
be helped by them in his good work.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !I-l/l, 4, 8
29 The movement of love has a twofold tendency: towards
the good which a man wishes to someone, whether for
himself or for another; and towards that to which he
wishes some good. Accordingly, man has love of
concupiscence towards the good that he wishes to
another, and love of friendship towards him to whom he
wishes good.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 26, 4
30 When our friends fall into sin, we ought not to deny them
the benefits of friendship so long as there is hope of their
mending their ways, and we ought to help them more
readily to regain virtue than to recover money, had they
lost it, since virtue is more akin than money to friendship.
When, however, they fall into very great wickedness, and
become incurable, we ought no longer to show them
friendliness.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 25, 6
31 Because the friendship of comrades originates through
their own choice, love of this kind takes precedence of
the love of kindred in matters where we are free to do as
we choose, for instance in matters of action. Yet the
friendship of kindred is more stable, since it is more
natural, and preponderates over others in matters
touching nature. Consequently we are more bound to
them in the providing of necessaries.
Aquinas, Summa TTieoiogica, Il-Il, 26, 8
32 Pandar. And | will gladly share with you your pain.
If it turn out | can no comfort bring;
For his a friend’s right, please let me explain.
To share in woful as in joyful things,
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 85
33 This perfect friendship | speak of is indivisible: each one
gives himself so wholly to his friend that he has nothing
left to distribute elsewhere; on the contrary, he is sorry
that he is not double, triple, or quadruple, and that he
has not several souls and several wills, to confer them all
on this one object. Common friendships can be divided
up: one may love in one man his beauty, in another his
easygoing ways, in another liberality, in one paternal
love, in another brotherly love, and so forth; but this
friendship that possesses the soul and rules it with
absolute sovereignty cannot possibly be double. If two
called for help at the same time, which one would you
run to? If they demanded conflicting services of you, how
would you arrange it? If one confided to your silence a
thing that would be useful for the other to know, how
would you extricate yourself? A single dominant
friendship dissolves all other obligations. The secret |
have sworn to reveal to no other man, | can impart
without perjury to the one who is not another man: he is
myself. It is a great enough miracle to be doubled, and
those who talk of tripling themselves do not realize the
loftiness of the thing: nothing is extreme that can be
matched. And he who supposes that of two men | love
one just as much as the other, and that they love each
other and me just as much as | love them, multiplies into
a fraternity the most singular and unified of all things, of
which even a single one is the rarest thing in the world to
find.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 28, Of Friendship
34 We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged
frankly; and because there are few who can endure frank
criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to
criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship; for to
undertake to wound and offend a man for his own good is
to have a healthy love for him, | find it a rough task to
judge a man in whom the bad qualities exceed the good.
Plato prescribes three qualities in a man who wants to
examine another man’s soul: knowledge, good will,
boldness.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
35 Amiens. Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude....
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Il, vii, 174
36 Polonius. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, iii, 61
37 Buckingham. Heaven has an end in all; yet, you that hear
me,
This from a dying man receive as certain:
Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels
Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends
And give your hearts to, when they once perceive
The least rub in your fortunes, fall away
Like water from ye, never found again
But where they mean to sink ye.
Shakespeare, Henry Vil, Il, i, 124
38 Well, Sancho, (said Don Quixote... turning to his
"Squire) did not | tell thee | should not want ’Squires;
behold who offers me his Service, the most excellent
Batchelor of Arts, Sampson Carrasco, the perpetual
Darling of the Muses, and Glory of the Salamanaca-
Schools, sound and active of Body, patient of Labour,
inur’d to Abstinence, silent in Misfortune, and in short,
endow’d with all the Accomplishments that constitute a
"Squire. But forbid it Heav’n, that to indulge my private
Inclinations | should presume to weaken the whole Body
of Learning, by removing from it so substantial a Pillar, so
vast a Repository of Sciences, and so eminent a Branch of
the Liberal Arts. No, my Friend, remain thou another
Sampson in thy Country, be the Honour of Spain, and the
Delight of thy ancient Parents; | shall content myself with
any ‘Squire, since Sancho does not vouchsafe to go with
me. | do, 1 do, (cry’d Sancho, relenting with Tears in his
Eyes) | do vouchsafe; it shall never be said of Sancho
Panza, no longer Pipe no longer Dance.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 7
39 My Master, quoth the Squire of the Wood, is more stout
than foolish, but more Knave than either. Mine is not like
yours then, quoth Sancho, he has not one Grain of
Knavery in him; he’s as dull as an old crack’d Pitcher,
hurts no Body, does all the Good he can to every Body; a
Child may persuade him it is Night at Noon-Day, and he is
so simple, that | can’t help loving him, with all my Heart
and Soul, and can’t leave him, in spite of all his Follies.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 13
40 It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more
truth and untruth together in few words than in that
speech, “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a
wild beast or a god.” For it is most true that a natural and
secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man
hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue
that it should have any character at all of the divine
nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in
solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man’s
self for a higher conversation, such as is found to have
been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as
Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles
the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana, and truly and really
in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the
church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and
how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company; and
faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling
cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth
with it a little: Magna civitas, magna solitudo [A great
city is a great solitude]; because in a great town friends
are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the
most part, which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may
go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and
miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the
world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of
solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and
affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast,
and not from humanity.
Bacon, Of Friendship
41 We may have affection for a flower, a bird, a horse; but
unless we have a very ill-regulated mind, we can have
friendship for men alone. And they are so truly the object
of this passion, that there is no man so imperfect that we
cannot have for him a very perfect friendship, when we
are loved by him, and when we have a truly noble and
generous soul.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, LXXXIII
42 Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive
and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our
presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society
is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would
endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his
absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without
passion.
Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hy«
pocris)’, both in himself and in regard to others. He does
not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it
to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from
justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart. | set it
down as a fact that if all men knew' w’hat each said of
the other, there w’ould not be four friends in the wurld.
Pascal, Pensées, ||, 100-101
43 Alceste. The more we love our friends, the less we flatter
them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows
itself.
Moliere, Le Misanthrope, II, v
44 In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to case us,
Points out some circumstance to please us,
Swift, On the Death of Dr, Swift, 7
45 1 hope my friends will pardon me when | declare, | Know'
none of them without a fault; and | should be sorry if |
could imagine | had any friend who could not see mine.
Forgiveness of this kind we give and demand in turn. It is
an exercise of friendship, and perhaps none of the least
pleasant And this forgiveness we must bestow, without
desire of amendment. There is, perhaps, no surer mark of
folly, than an attempt to correct the natural infirmities of
those we love.
Fielding, Tom Jones, 11, 7
46 The only way when friends quarrel is to see it out fairly in
a friendly manner, as a man may call it, either with a fist,
or sword, or pistol, according as they like, and then let it
be all over; for my own part, d—n me if ever | love my
friend better than when | am fighting with him! To bear
malice is more like a Frenchman than an Englishman.
Fielding, Tom Jones, IX, 4
47 Friendship is the marriage of the soul; and this marriage
is subject to divorce. It is a tacit contract between t\s ’0
sensitive and virtuous persons, | say "Sensitive," because
a monk, a recluse can be not wicked and live without
Knowing what friendship is. | say "rirtuous," because the
w'icked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have
companions in debauch, self-seekers have partners,
politicians get partisans; the generality of idle men have
attachments; princes have courtiers; virtuous men alone
have friends.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Friendship
48 [Johnson] was well acquainted with Mr. Henry Hervey,
one of the branches of the noble family of that name, who
had been quartered at Lichfield as an officer of the army,
and had at this time a house in London, where Johnson
was frequently entertained, and had an opportunity of
meeting genteel company. Not very long before his
death, he mentioned this, among other particulars of his
life, which he was kindly communicating to me; and he
described this early friend, "Harry Hervey," thus: "He was
a vicious man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog
Hervey, | shall love him."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1737)
49 | have often thought, that as longevity is generally
desired, and | believe, generally expected, it would be
wise to be continually adding to the number of our
friends, that the loss of some may be supplied by others.
Friendship, "the wine of life," should like a well-stocked
cellar, be thus continually renewed; and it is consolatory
to think, that although we can seldom add what will
equal the generous first-growths of our youth, yet
friendship becomes insensibly old in much less time than
is Commonly imagined, and not many years are required
to make it very’ mellow and pleasant. Warmth will, no
doubt, make a considerable difference. Men of
affectionate temper and bright fancy will coalesce a great
deal sooner than those who are cold and dull.
The proposition which | have now endeavoured to
illustrate was, at a subsequent period of his life, the
opinion of Johnson himself. He said to Sir Joshua
Reynolds, "If aman does not make ne>v acquaintance as
he advances through life, he will soon find himself left
alone. A man. Sir, should keep his friendship in constant
repair."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1755)
50 A literary lady of large fortune was mentioned, as one
who did good to many, but by no means "by stealth," and
instead of "blushing to find it fame," acted evidently from
vanity. Johnson. "| have seen no beings who do as much
good from benevolence, as she does, from whatever
motive. If there are such under the earth, or in the clouds,
| wish they would come up, or come down. What Soame
Jenyns says upon this subject is not to be minded; he isa
wit. No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not possible
for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with
vanity, interest, or some other motive."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 1776)
51 On Wednesday, May 19, | sat a part of the evening with
him [Johnson], by ourselves. | observed, that the death of
our friends might be a consolation against the fear of our
own dissolution, because we might have more friends in
the other world than in this. He perhaps felt this as a
reflection upon his apprehension as to death; and said,
with heat, "How can a man know where his departed
friends are, or whether they will be his friends in the
other world? How many friendships have you known
formed upon principles of virtue? Most friendships are
formed by caprice or by chance, mere confederacies in
vice or leagues in folly.”
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 19, 1784)
52 In civilised society [man] stands at all times in need of
the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while
his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of
a few persons.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 2
53 Love is an agreeable; resentment, a disagreeable,
passion: and accordingly we are not half so anxious that
our friends should adopt our friendships, as that they
should enter into our resentments.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, |, 1
54 They who would confine friendship to two persons, seem
to confound the wise security of friendship with the
jealousy and folly of love. The hasty, fond, and foolish
intimacies of young people, founded commonly upon
some slight similarity of character altogether
unconnected with good conduct, upon a taste, perhaps,
for the same studies, the same amusements, the same
diversions, or upon their agreement in some singular
principle or opinion not commonly adopted; those
intimacies which a freak begins, and which a freak puts
an end to, how agreeable soever they may appear while
they last, can by no means deserve the sacred and
venerable name of friendship.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, |, 2
55 Friendship (in its perfection) is the union of two persons
through equal mutual love and respect. One easily sees
that it is an ideal in which a morally good will unites both
parties in sympathy and shared well-being. If it does not
also cause life’s entire happiness, the acceptance of this
ideal in such mutual sentiment includes the worthiness to
be happy, so that friendship among men is our duty. It is
easy to see that although aiming at friendship, asa
maximum of good sentiment toward one another, is no
ordinary duty but rather an honorable one proposed by
reason, yet perfect friendship is a mere idea (but still a
practically necessary one), unattainable in every attempt
to realize it.
Kant, Elements of Ethics, 46
56 A friend in need—how much to be wished for (assuming
that he is an active one, helpful at his own expense)! But
it is also a great burden to feel oneself tied to the destiny
of others and laden with alien responsibilities. Friendship,
therefore, cannot be a bond aimed at mutual advantage,
but must be purely moral; and the assistance which each
may count on from the other in case of need must not be
thought of as the end and determining ground of
friendship (for thereby one person would partly lose the
respect of the other), but only as the outward sign of their
inner, heartfelt benevolence (without putting it to a test,
which is always dangerous). Friendship is not based on
advantage, for each friend is magnanimously concerned
with sparing the other any burden, bearing any such
burden entirely by himself, and, yes, even completely
concealing it from the other; but each one, nevertheless,
can always flatter himself with the idea that in case of
need he could definitely count upon the other’s help. But
if one accepts a benefit from the other, then he can
probably count on an equality in their love, but not in
their respect; for he sees himself plainly as a step lower,
inasmuch as he is obligated and yet not reciprocally able
to obligate.
Kant, Elements of Ethics, 46
57 To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth
a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost
every man we meet requires some civility—requires to be
humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of
religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be
questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him.
But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my
ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment
without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend
therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. | who alone am, |
who see nothing in nature whose existence | can affirm
with equal evidence to my own, behold now the
semblance of my being, in all its height, variety and
curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend
may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Emerson, Friendship
58 “Wal’r, my boy,” replied the captain, “in the Proverbs of
Solomon you will find the following words, ‘May we never
want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!’ When
found, make a note of.”
Dickens, Dombey and Son, 1, 15
59 There is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures
between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the
very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old
couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly
morning.
Melville, Moby Dick, X
60 | dream’d in a dream | saw a city invincible to the attacks
of the whole of the rest of the earth, | dream’d that was
the new city of Friends.
Whitman, | Dream’d in a Dream
61 Father Zossima. Until you have become really, in actual
fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to
pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common
interest, will ever teach men to share property and
privileges with equal consideration for all. Everyone will
think his share too small and they will be always envying,
complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it
will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have
to go through the period of isolation.... The isolation that
prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it has not fully
developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For everyone
strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible,
wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for
himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in
attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead
of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete
solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units,
they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one
holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from
the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and
repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks,
‘How strong | am now and how secure,’ and in his
madness he does not understand that the more he heaps
up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For
he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut
himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to
believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity,
and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and
the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in
these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to
understand that the true security is to be found in social
solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this
terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and
all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are
separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the
time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in
darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of
the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until
then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if
he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy,
a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out
of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly
love, that the great idea may not die.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Ft. Il, VI, 2
62 The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady
and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a
whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, VIII
63 We have to conclude that all the feelings of sympathy,
friendship, trust and so forth which we expend in life are
genetically connected with sexuality and have developed
out of purely sexual desires by an enfeebling of their
sexual aim, however pure and non-sensual they may
appear in the forms they take on to our conscious self-
perception. To begin with we knew none but sexual
objects; psycho-analysis shows us that those persons
whom in real life we merely respect or are fond of may be
sexual objects to us in our unconscious minds still.
Freud, Dynamics of the Transference
64 A friend’s only gift is himself, and friendship is not
friendship, it is not a form of free or liberal society, if it
does not terminate in an ideal possession, in an object
loved for its own sake. Such objects can be ideas only,
not forces, for forces are subterranean and instrumental
things, having only such value as they borrow from their
ulterior effects and manifestations. To praise the utility of
friendship, as the ancients so often did, and to regard it
as a political institution justified, like victory or
government, by its material results, is to lose one’s moral
bearings. The value of victory or good government is
rather to be found in the fact that, among other things, it
might render friendship possib]Je. We are not to look now
for what makes friendship useful, but for whatever may
be found in friendship that may lend utility to life.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 6
65 Friendship may indeed come to exist without sensuous
liking or comradeship to pave the way; but unless
intellectual sympathy and moral appreciation are
powerful enough to react on natural instinct and to
produce in the end the personal affection which at first
was wanting, friendship does not arise. Recognition given
to a man’s talent or virtue is not properly friendship.
Friends must desire to live as much as possible together
and to share their work, thoughts, and pleasures. Good-
fellowship and sensuous affinity are indispensable to give
Spiritual communion a personal accent; otherwise men
would be indifferent vehicles for such thoughts and
powers as emanated from them, and attention would not
be in any way arrested or refracted by the human
medium through which it beheld the good.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 6
3.5 Charity and Mercy
The main texts quoted in this section lake their departure
from the message of the Gospels that God is love and from
the precepts of charity enunciated by Jesus Christ—that one
should love God with all one's heart and all one’s soul, and
one’s neighbor as one’s self. The quotations from Christian
theologians, apologists, and poets constitute an extended
commentary on the love that is an obligation for those who
follow the teachings of Christ. Augustine and Aquinas,
particularly, show how fundamental and far-reaching the
precepts of charily arc, and explain why, of the three
theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—the greatest is
charity.
One impulse of charity, loo often allowed to obscure more
important aspects of it, involves care or concern for the relief
of the needy or suffering. We have, therefore, included
passages that praise or recommend almsgiving. We have
also included texts that extol mercy and recommend
forgiveness to temper strict justice. These too reflect aspects
of charity in the theological or religious sense, whether
Jewish or Christian. But we have not included here passages
that dwell on the benevolent impulses at the heart of
friendship when pagan or later writers who treat such love
approach it entirely from a secular and not a religious point
of view.
1 Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself.
Leviticus 19:18
2 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy.
He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger
for ever.
He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded
us according to our iniquities.
For as the heaven h high above the earth, so great is
his mercy toward them that fear him.
As far as the cast is from the west, so far hath he
removed our transgressions from us.
Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth
them that fear him.
For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we
are dust.
As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the
field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the
place thereof shall know it no more.
But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting upon them that fear him, and his
righteousness unto children’s children.
Psalm 103:8-17
3 If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he
be thirsty, give him water to drink:
For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and
the Lord shall reward thee.
Proverbs 25:21-22
4 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen
of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father
which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a
trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory
of men. Verily | say unto you, they have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know
what thy right hand doeth:
That thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father
which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:1-4
5 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain
king, which would take account of his servants.
And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought
unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.
But forasmuch as he had not to pay. his lord
commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children,
and all that he had, and payment to be made.
The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him,
saying, Lord, have patience with me, and | will pay thee
all.
Then the lord of that servant was moved with
compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.
But the same servant went out, and found one of his
fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and
he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying,
Pay me that thou owest.
And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and
besought him, saying. Have patience with me, and | will
pay thee all.
And he would not; but went and cast him into prison,
till he should pay the debt.
So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they
were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that
was done.
Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto
him, O thou wicked servant, | forgave thee all that debt,
because thou desiredst me:
Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy
fellowservant, even as | had pity on thee?
And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the
tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you,
if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother
their trespasses.
Matthew 18:23-35
6 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand,
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For | was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: | was
thirsty, and ye gave me drink: | was a stranger, and ye
took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me; | was sick, and ye visited
me; 1 was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord,
when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty,
and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a Stranger, and took thee in? or
naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto
thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them. Verily |
say unto you. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Matthew 25:34-40
7 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them
reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered
them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of
all?
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the
commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one
Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other
commandment greater than these.
Mark 12:28-31
8 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him,
saying. Master, what shall | do to inherit eternal life?
He said unto him. What is written in the law? how
readest thou?
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as
thyself.
And he said unto him. Thou hast answered right; this
do, and thou shalt live.
But he, wiling to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And
who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down
from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which
stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and
departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that
way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other
side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came
and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where
he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on
him,
And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in
oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought
him to an inn, and took care of him.
And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two
pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him.
Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more,
when | come again, | will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was
neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said. He that shewed mercy on him. Then said
Jesus unto him. Go, and do thou likewise.
Luke 10:25-37
9 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the
temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat
down, and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto hima
woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in
the midst.
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in
adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such
should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to
accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger
wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up
himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among
you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own
conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest,
even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the
woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but
the woman, he said unto her. Woman, where are those
thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her.
Neither do | condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
John 8:1-11
10 It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Acts 20:35
11 Though | speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not charity, | am become as sounding brass, or
a tinkling cymbal.
And though | have the gift of prophecy, and
understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though
| have all faith, so that | could remove mountains, and
have not charity, | am nothing.
And though | bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
and though | give my body to be burned, and have not
charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity en-victh
not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.
Doth not behave itself unseemly, secketh not her own,
is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be
prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues,
they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall
vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that
which is in part shall be done away.
When | was a child, | spake as a child, | understood as
a child, | thought as a child: but when | became a man, |
put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face
to face: now | know in part; but then shall | Know even as
also |am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but
the greatest of these is charity.
! Corinthians 13:1-13
12 Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
| Peter 4:8
13 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and
every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
| John 4:7-8
14 Kindness or humanity has a larger field than bare justice
to exercise itself in; law and justice we cannot, in the
nature of things, employ on others than men; but we may
extend our goodness and charity even to irrational
creatures; and such acts flow from a gentle nature, as
water from an abundant spring. It is doubtless the part of
a kind-natured man to keep even worn-out horses and
dogs, and not only take care of them when they are foals
and whelps, but also when they are grown old.
Plutarch, Marcus Cato
15 [The] divine Master inculcates two precepts—the love of
God and the love of our neighbour—and as in these
precepts a man finds three things he has to love—God,
himself, and his neighbour— and that he who loves God
loves himself thereby, it follows that he must endeavour
to get his neighbour to love God, since he is ordered to
love his neighbour as himself. He ought to make this
endeavour in behalf of his wife, his children, his
household, all within his reach, even as he would wish his
neighbour to do the same for him if he needed it; and
consequently he will be at peace, or in well-ordered
concord, with all men, as far as in him lies.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 14
16 We are commanded to love one another: but it is a
question whether man is to be loved by man for his own
sake, or for the sake of something else. If it is for his own
Sake, we enjoy him; if it is for the sake of something else,
we use him. It seems to me, then, that he is to be loved
for the sake of something else. For if a thing is to be loved
for its own sake, then in the enjoyment of it consists a
happy life, the hope of which at least, if not yet the
reality, is our comfort in the present time. But a curse is
pronounced on him who places his hope in man.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 22
17 But if they shall so love God with all their heart, and all
their mind, and all their soul, that still all the heart, and
all the mind, and all the soul shall not suffice for the
worthiness of this love; doubtless they will so rejoice with
all their heart, and all their mind, and all their soul, that
all the heart, and all the mind, and all the soul shall not
suffice for the fulness of their joy.
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, XXV
18 Charity signifies not only the love of God but alsoa
certain friendship with Him; and this implies, besides
love, a certain mutual return of love, together with
mutual communion.... Now this fellowship of man with
God, which consists in a certain familiar intercourse with
Him, is begun here, in this life, by grace, but will be
perfected in the future life, by glory; each of which things
we hold by faith and hope. Therefore just as friendship
with a person would be impossible if one disbelieved in,
or despaired of, the possibility of his fellowship or familiar
intercourse, so too, friendship with God, which is charity,
is impossible without faith, so as to believe in this
fellowship and intercourse with God, and to hope to
attain to this fellowship. Therefore charity is altogether
impossible without faith and hope.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 65, 5
19 Since good, in human acts, depends on their being
regulated by the due rule, it is necessary that human
virtue, which is a principle of good acts, consist in
attaining the rule of human acts. Now the rule of human
acts is twofold .... namely, human reason and God. Yet
God is the first rule, by which even human reason must
be regulated. Consequently the theological virtues which
consist in attaining this first rule, since their object is
God, are more excellent than the moral, or the
intellectual virtues, which consist in attaining human
reason: and it follo\vs that among the theological virtues
themselves, the first place belongs to that which attains
God most.
Now that which is of itself always ranks before that
which is by another. But faith and hope attain God indeed
in so far as we derive from Him the knowledge of truth or
the acquisition of good; but charity attains God Himself
that it may rest in Him, but not that something may
accrue to us from Him. Hence charity is more excellent
than faith or hope, and, consequently, than all the other
virtues, just as prudence, which by itself attains reason, is
more excellent than the other moral virtues, which attain
reason in so far as it appoints the mean in human
operations of passions.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 23, 6
20 Charity... consists in man’s loving God above all things,
and subjecting himself to Him entirely, by referring all
that is his to God. It is therefore of the very notion of
charity that man should so love God as to wish to submit
to Him in all things, and always to follow’ the rule of His
commandments; for whatever is contrary to His
commandments is manifestly contrary to charity, and
therefore by its very nature is capable of destroying
charity.
If indeed charity were an acquired habit dependent on
the power of its subject, it would not necessarily be
removed by one mortal sin, for act is directly contrary’,
not to habit but to act. Now the endurance of a habit in
its subject does not require the endurance of its act, so
that when a contrary act supervenes, the acquired habit
is not at once done away. But charity, being an infused
habit, depends on the action of God Who infuses it, Who
stands in relation to the infusion and preservation of
charity, as the sun does to the diffusion of light in the air.
.., Consequently, just as the light would cease at once in
the air, were an obstacle placed to its being lit up by the
sun, even so charity ceases at once to be in the soul
through the placing of an obstacle to the outpouring of
charity by God into the soul.
Now it is evident that through every mortal sin which
is contrary to God’s commandments, an obstacle is
placed to the outpouring of charity, since from the very
fact that a man chooses to prefer sin to God’s friendship,
which requires that we should follow His will, it follows
that the habit of charity is lost at once through one
mortal sin.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 24, 12
21 Love of one’s enemies may be understood in three ways.
First, as though we were to love our enemies as enemies;
this is perverse, and contrary to charity, since it implies
love of that which is evil in another.
Secondly love of one’s enemies may mean that we
love them as to their nature, but in a universal way, and
in this sense charity requires that we should love our
enemies, namely, that in loving God and our neighbour,
we should not exclude our enemies from the love given to
our neighbour in general.
Thirdly love of one’s enemies may be considered as
specially directed to them, namely, that we should have a
special movement of love towards our enemies. Charity
does not require this absolutely, because it does not
require that we should have a special movement of love
to every individual man, since this would be impossible.
Nevertheless charity does require this, in respect of our
being prepared in mind, namely that we should be ready
to love our enemies individually, if the necessity were to
occur.
That man should actually do so, and love his enemy
for God’s sake, without it being necessary’ for him to do
so, belongs to the perfection of charity-
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 25, 8
22 "1 am more fasting from being satisfied," said I, "than if |
had kept silent at first, and more perplexity | amass in my
mind.
How can it be that a good when shared, shall make the
greater number of possessors richer in it, than if it is
possessed by a few?"
And he [Virgil] to me: "Because thou dost again fix thy
mind merely on things of earth, thou drawest darkness
from true light.
That infinite and ineffable Good, that is on high,
speedeth so to love as a ray of light comes to a bright
body.
As much of ardour as it finds, so much of itself doth it
give, so that how far soever love extends, eternal
goodness giveth increase upon it;
and the more people on high who comprehend each
other, the more there are to love well, and the more love
is there, and like a mirror one giveth back to the other."
Dante, Purgatorio, XV, 58
23 Ye youth, so happy at the dawn of life.
In whom love springs as native to your days.
Estrange you from the world and its vain strife.
And let your hearts their eyes to him upraise
Who made you in his image! Give him praise,
And think this world is but a passing show,
Fading like blooms that all too briefly blow.
And love ye him who on the cross did buy
Our souls from timeless death to live for aye,
Who died and rose and reigns in heaven high!
Your deepest love his love will ne’er betray,
Your faith on him | bid you safely lay;
And since his love is best beyond compare,
Love of the world deny with all its care.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, V, 263-264
24 The hearts of men, which fondly here admyre
Faire seeming shewes, and feed on vaine delight,
Transported with celestiall desyre
Of those faire formes, may lift themselves up hyer.
And learne to love with zealous humble dewty
Th’ Eternall Fountaine of that heavenly Beauty.
Spenser, Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, 16
25 Portia. The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
"Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty.
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, IV, |, 184
26 Isabella. Well, believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe.
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ii, 58
27 Angelo. Your brother is a forfeit of the law.
And you but waste your words.
Isabella. Alas, alas!
Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgement, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips.
Like man new made,
Ang. Be you content, fair maid;
It is the law, not |, condemn your brother.
Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,
It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow.
Isab. To-morrow! O, that’s sudden! Spare him, spare
him!
He’s not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens
We kill the fowl of season. Shall we serve Heaven
With less respect than we do minister
To our gross selves?
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ti, 71
28 Cry’d Don Quixote, Is it for a Knight-Errant when he
meets with People laden with Chains, and under
Oppression, to examine whether they are in those
Circumstances for their Crimes, or only thro’ Misfortune?
We are only to relieve the Afflicted, to look on their
Distress, and not on their Crimes.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 30
29 To forgive sin is not an act of injustice, though the
punishment have been threatened. Even amongst men,
though the promise of good bind the promiser; yet
threats, that is to say, promises of evil, bind them not;
much less shall they bind God, who is infinitely more
merciful than men.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 38
30 The infinite distance between body and mind is a symbol
of the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and
charity; for charity is supernatural.
Pascal, Pensées, XII, 793
31 He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives
as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or
contempt of others towards himself with love or
generosity.
All affects of hatred are evil, and, therefore, the man
who lives according to the guidance of reason will strive
as much as possible to keep himself from being agitated
by the affects of hatred, and, consequently, will strive to
keep others from being subject to the same affects. But
hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the
other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred
passes into love. Therefore he who lives according to the
guidance of reason will strive to repay the hatred of
another, etc., with love, that is to say, with generosity...
He who wishes to avenge injuries by hating in return
does indeed live miserably. But he who, on the contrary,
strives to drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and
confidently, with equal case resisting one man ora
number of men, and needing scarcely any assistance
from fortune. Those whom he conquers yield gladly, not
from defect of strength, but from an increase of it.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 46
32 The intellectual love of the mind towards God is the very
love with which He loves Himself, not in so far as He is
infinite, but in so far as He can be manifested through the
essence of the human mind, considered under the form of
eternity; that is to say, the intellectual love of the mind
towards God is part of the infinite love with which God
loves Himself...
Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves Himself,
loves men, and consequently that the love of God
towards men and the intellectual love of the mind
towards God are one and the same thing.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 36, Corol.
33 "Those," he [Capt. Blifil] said, "came nearer to the
Scripture meaning, who understood by it [charity]
candour, or the forming of a benevolent opinion of our
brethren, and passing a favourable judgment on their
actions; a virtue much higher, and more extensive in its
nature, than a pitiful distribution of alms, which, though
we would never so much prejudice, or even ruin our
families, could never reach many; whereas charity, in the
other and truer sense, might be extended to all
mankind."
Fielding, Tom Jones, II, 3
34 Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to
heaven.
Fielding, Tom Jones, III, 10
35 It is in endeavouring to instruct mankind that we are best
able to practise that general virtue which comprehends
the love of all.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Pref.
36 My uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.
Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one
which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him
cruelly all dinner-time,—and which after infinite attempts,
he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—PIl not hurt
thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going
across the room, with the fly in his hand,—FU not hurt a
hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and
opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor
devil, get thee gone, why should | hurt thee? This world
surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 11, 12
37 "—She had since that, she told me, stray’d as far as
Rome, and walk’d round St. Peter’s once—and return’d
back—that she found her way alone across the Apennines
—had travell’d over all Lombardy without money,—and
through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes—how she
had borne it, and how she had got supported, she could
not tell—but God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the
shorn lamb."
Sterne, Sentimental Journey: "Maria"
38 He who the Ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by Woman lov’d.
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spider’s enmity.
He who torments the Chafer’s sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night.
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief.
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 39
39 Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of
nicely-calculated less or more.
Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Ill, 43
40 No love and no expression of love may, in the merely
human and worldly sense, be deprived of a relationship
to God. Love is a passionate emotion, but in this emotion,
even before he enters into a relation with the object of his
love, the man must first enter into a relationship with
God, and thereby realize the claim that love is the
fulfillment of the law. Love is a relation to another man or
to other men, but it is by no means and dares by no
means be a matrimonial, a friendly, a merely human
agreement, however steadfast and tender the connection
between man and man. Everyone individually before he
in love enters into a relation with the beloved, with the
friend, the loved ones, the contemporaries, has first to
enter into a relation with God and with God’s demands.
As soon as one leaves out the God-relationship the
questions at issue become merely human determinations
of what they wish to understand by loving; what they will
require of one another; and their mutual judgment
because of this becomes the highest judgment. Not only
the one who listens absolutely to the call of God will not
belong to a woman, in order not to be delayed through
wishing to please her; but also the one who in love
belongs to a woman, will first and foremost belong to
God; he will not seek first to please his wife, but will first
endeavor to make his love pleasing unto God. Hence it is
not the wife who will tench her husband how he ought to
love her, or the husband the wife, or the friend the friend,
or the contemporary the contemporary, but it is God who
will teach every individual how he ought to love, even if
his love still only lays hold on the law referred to when
the apostle say's, "Love is the fulfillment of the law." This
makes it quite natural that the one who has only a
worldly, or a merely human conception about what love
is. must come to regard that as self-love and unkindness
which, understood in the Christian sense, is precisely
love. When, on the other hand, the God-relationship
determines what love is between man and man, then love
is kept from pausing in any self-deception or illusion,
while certainly the demand for self-abnegation and
sacrifice is again made more infinite. The love which does
not lead to God, the love which does not have this as its
sole goal, to lead the lovers to love God, stops at the
purely human judgment as to what love and What love’s
sacrifice and submission are; it stops and thereby
escapes the possibility of the last and most terrifying
horror of the collision: that in the love relationship there
are infinite differences in the idea of what love is.
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, I, 3A
41 With malice toward none; with charily for all; with
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. Jet
us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the
nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the
battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace,
among ourselves and with all nations.
Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address
42 "| must make you one confession," Ivan began. "I could
never understand how one can love one’s neighbours. It’s
just one’s neighbours, to my mind, that one can’t love,
though one might love those at a distance. | once read
somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a
hungry’, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his
bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his
mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful
disease. 1 am convinced that he did that from ‘self-
laceration,’ from the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake
of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him.
For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon
as he shows his face, love is gone."
“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,"
observed Alyosha; "he, too, said that the face of a man
often hinders many people not practised in love, from
loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of love in
mankind, and almost Christ-like love. | know that myself,
Ivan,"
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. 11, V, 4
43 Father Zossima. And can it be a dream, that in the end
man will find his joy only in deeds of light and mercy, and
not in cruel pleasures as now, in gluttony, fornication,
ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one with the
other? | firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at
hand. People laugh and ask; "When will that time come
and does it look like coming?" | believe that with Christ’s
help we shall accomplish this great thing. And how many
ideas there have been on earth in the history of man
which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared!
Yet when their destined hour had come, they came forth
and spread over the whole earth. So it will be with us, and
our people will shine forth in the world, and all men will
say: stone which the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone of the building."
Dostoevsky, Brokers Karamazov, Pt. Il, Vl, 3
44 Do not do unto others as you would that they should do
unto you. their tastes may not be the same.
Shaw, A fan and Superman Maxims for Revolutionists
3.6 Love of Country
PATRIOTISM
Unlike the diverse loves treated in the three preceding
sections, patriotism, or love of one’s country, is not a distinct
type of love. It can probably be most closely aligned with the
kind of love that is true friendship, the dominantly
benevolent tendency which would impel a man to lay down
his life for his friend. So, it is often said, the patriot too
would, if necessary, lay down his life for his country.
For the most part, the writers here quoted praise
patriotism as something desirable and even virtuous, while
others raise doubts about its value or condemn an uncritical
or blind patriotism. Dr. Johnson may have gone too far in
that direction when he said that patriotism is the last refuge
of a scoundrel, but that helps to preserve a balance against
the other extreme which attaches no qualifications to its
praise of patriotism.
1 Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here obedient to their laws we lie.
Simonides, Epigram on Thermopylae
2 Had the Athenians, from fear of the approaching danger,
quitted their country, or had they without quitting it
submitted to the power of Xerxes, there would certainly
have been no attempt to resist the Persians by sea; in
which case the course of events by land would have been
the following. Though the Peloponnesians might have
carried ever so many breastworks across the Isthmus, yet
their allies would have fallen off from the
Lacedaemonians, not by voluntary desertion, but
because town after town must have been taken by the
fleet of the barbarians; and so the Lacedaemonians would
at last have stood alone, and, standing alone, would have
displayed prodigies of valour and died nobly. Either they
would have done thus, or else, before it came to that
extremity, seeing one Greek state after another embrace
the cause of the Medes, they would have come to terms
with King Xerxes—and thus, either way Greece would
have been brought under Persia. For | cannot understand
of what possible use the walls across the Isthmus could
have been, if the king had had the mastery of the sea. If
then a man should now say that the Athenians were the
saviours of Greece, he would not exceed the truth. For
they truly held the scales; and whichever side they
espoused must have carried the day. They too it was who,
when they had determined to maintain the freedom of
Greece, roused up that portion of the Greek nation which
had not gone over to the Medes; and so, next to the gods,
repulsed the invader. Even the terrible oracles which
reached them from Delphi, and struck fear into their
hearts, failed to persuade them to fly from Greece. They
had the courage to remain faithful to their land, and
await the coming of the foe.
Herodotus, History, VII, 139
3 Cassandra. The Trojans have that glory which is loveliest:
they died for their own country.
Euripides, Trojan Women, 386
4 Pericles. There is justice in the claim that steadfastness in
his country's battles should be as a cloak to cover a
man’s other imperfections; since the good action has
blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than
outweighed his demerits as an individual.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, II, 42
5 Pericles. Your country has a right to your services in
sustaining the glories of her position. These are a
common source of pride to you all, and you cannot
decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its
honours.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 11, 63
6 Alcibiades. | hope that none of you \rill think any the worse
of me if, after having hitherto passed as a lover of my
country, | now actively join its worst enemies in attacking
it, or will suspect what | say as the fruit of an outlaw’s
enthusiasm. | am an outlaw from the iniquity of those
who drove me forth, not, if you will be guided by me, from
your service; my worst enemies are not you who only
harmed your foes, but they who forced their fiends to
become enemies; and love of country' is what | do not
feel when | am wronged, but what | felt when secure in
my rights as a citizen. Indeed | do not consider that | am
now attacking a country that is still mine; J] am rather
trying to recover one that is mine no longer; and the true
lover of his country' is not he who consents to lose it
unjustly rather than attack it, but he who longs for it so
much that he will go all lengths to recover it.
Thucydides, Peloponnrsian War, VI, 92
7 The good man should be a lover of self (for he will both
himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his
fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt
both himself and his neighbours, following as he does evil
passions. For the wicked man, what he does clashes with
what he ought to do, but what the good man ought to do
he does; for reason in each of its possessors chooses what
is best for itself, and the good man obeys his reason. It is
true of the good man too that he does many acts for the
sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies
for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours
and in general the goods that are objects of competition,
gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short
period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild
enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of
humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to
many' trivial ones. Now those who die for others
doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize
that they choose for themselves.
Aristotle, 1169a12
8 Good 'tis and fine, for fatherland to die!
Death tracks him too who shirks; nor will
He fail To smite the coward loins that quail,
The coward limbs that fly!
Horace, III, 2
9 By what sweet charm | Know not the native land
draws all men nor allows them to forget her.
Ovid, Epistulae Ex Ponto, I, 3
10 [Sertorius] was a sincere lover of his country, and had a
great desire to return home; but in his adverse fortune he
showed undaunted courage, and behaved himself
towards his enemies in a manner free from all dejection
and mean-spiritedness; and when he was in his
prosperity, and in the height of his victories, he sent word
to Metellus and Pompey that he was ready to lay down
his arms and live a private life if he were allowed to
return home, declaring that he had rather live as the
meanest citizen in Rome than, exiled from it, be supreme
commander of all other cities together.
Plutarch, Sertorius
11 A wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his
citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance
have need of the state and of him, and then he will
always find them faithful.
Machiavelli, Prince, 1X
12 Not because Socrates said it, but because it is really my
feeling, and perhaps excessively so, | consider all men my
compatriots, and embrace a Pole as | do a Frenchman,
setting this national bond after the universal and
common one. | am scarcely infatuated with the sweetness
of my native air. Brand-new acquaintances that are
wholly of my own choice seem to me to be well worth
those other common chance acquaintances of the
neighborhood. Friendships purely of our own acquisition
usually surpass those to which community of climate or
of blood binds us. Nature has put us into the world free
and unfettered; we imprison ourselves in certain narrow
districts, like the kings of Persia, who bound themselves
never to drink any other water than that of the river
Choaspes, stupidly gave up their right to use any other
waters, and dried up all the rest of the world as far as
they were concerned.
What Socrates did near the end of his life, in
considering a sentence of exile against him worse than a
sentence of death, | shall never, | think, be so broken or
so strictly attached to my own country as to do. These
divine lives have quite a few aspects that | embrace more
by esteem than by affection. And there are also some so
lofty and extraordinary that | cannot embrace them even
by esteem, inasmuch as | cannot understand them. That
was a very fastidious attitude for a man who considered
the world his city.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
13 Gaunt. This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
Tin's fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world.
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or aS a moat defensive to a house.
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Shakespeare, Richard II, Il, i, 40
14 There is an honour... which may be ranked amongst the
greatest, which happeneth rarely; that is, of such as
sacrifice themselves to death or danger for the good of
their country.
Bacon, Of Honour and Reputation
15 What | distinguish by the name of virtue, in a republic, is
the love of one’s country, that is, the love of equality. It is
not a moral, nor a Christian, but a political virtue; and it
is the spring which sets the republican government in
motion, as honour is the spring which gives motion to
monarchy.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Advertisement
16 Do we wish men to be virtuous? Then let us begin by
making them love their country: but how can they love it,
if their country be nothing more to them than to
strangers, and afford them nothing but what it can refuse
nobody?
Rousseau, Political Economy
17 If children are brought up in common in the bosom of
equality; if they are imbued with the laws of the State
and the precepts of the general will; if they are taught to
respect these above all things; if they are surrounded by
examples and objects which constantly remind them of
the tender mother who nourishes them, of the love she
bears them, of the inestimable benefits they receive from
her, and of the return they owe her, we cannot doubt that
they will learn to cherish one another mutually as
brothers, to will nothing contrary to the will of society, to
substitute the actions of men and citizens for the futile
and vain babbling of sophists, and to become in time
defenders and fathers of the country of which they will
have been so long the children.
Rousseau, Political Economy
18 As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State What
does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IIl, 15
19 The [religion of the State] is good in that it unites the
divine cult with love of the law's, and, making country
the object of the citizens’ adoration, teaches them that
service done to the State is service done to its tutelary
god. It is a form of theocracy, in which there can be no
pontiff save the prince, and no priests save the
magistrates. To die for one’s country then becomes
martyrdom; violation of its laws, impiety; and to subject
one who is guilty to public execration is to condemn him
to the anger of the gods: Sacer estod.
On the other hand, it is bad in that, being founded on
lies and error, it deceives men, makes them credulous
and superstitious, and drowns the true cult of the Divinity
in empty ceremonial. It is bad, again, when it becomes
tyrannous and exclusive, and makes a people
bloodthirsty and intolerant, so that it breathes fire and
slaughter, and regards as a Sacred act the killing of
every’ one who does not believe in its gods. The result is
to place such a people in a natural state of war with all
others, so that its security is deeply endangered.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, 8
20 Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson
suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an
apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that
he did not mean a real and generous love of our country,
but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages
and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest. |
maintained, that certainly all patriots were not
scoundrels. Being urged, (not by Johnson,) to name one
exception, | mentioned an eminent person, whom we all
greatly admired. Johnson. "Sir, | do not say that he is not
honest; but we have no reason to conclude from his
political conduct that he is honest. Were he to accept of a
place from this ministry, he would lose that character of
firmness which he has, and might be turned out of his
place in a year."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr, 7, 1775)
21 The more the operations of the national authority are
intermingled in the ordinary exercise of government, the
more the citizens are accustomed to meet with it in the
common occurrences of their political life, the more it is
familiarised to their sight and to their feelings, the further
it enters into those objects which touch the most sensible
chords and put in motion the most active springs of the
human heart, the greater will be the probability that it
will conciliate the respect and attachment of the
community. Man is very much a creature of habit. A thing
that rarely strikes his senses will generally have hut little
influence upon his mind. A government continually ata
distance and out of sight can hardly be expected to
interest the sensations of the people.
Hamilton, Federalist 27
22 Patriotism is often understood to mean only a readiness
for exceptional sacrifices and actions. Essentially,
however, it is the sentiment which, in the relationships of
our daily life and under ordinary conditions, habitually
recognizes that the community is one’s substantive
groundwork and end. It is out of this consciousness,
which during life’s daily round stands the test in all
circumstances, that there subsequently also arises the
readiness for extraordinary exertions. But since men
would often rather be magnanimous than law-abiding,
they readily persuade themselves that they possess this
exceptional patriotism in order to be sparing in the
expression of a genuine patriotic sentiment or to excuse
their lack of it. If again this genuine patriotism is looked
upon as that which may begin of itself and arise from
subjective ideas and thoughts, it is being confused with
opinion, because so regarded patriotism is deprived of its
true ground, objective reality.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 268
23 Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
24 It has been said of old, that in a despotism there is at
most but one patriot, the despot himself; and the saying
rests on a just appreciation of the effects of absolute
subjection, even to a good and wise master.
Mill, Representative Government, III
25 [The] feeling of nationality may have been generated by
various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of
race and descent. Community of language, and
community of religion, greatly contribute to it.
Geographical limits are one of its causes. But the
strongest of all is identity of political antecedents; the
possession of a national history and consequent
community of recollections; collective pride and
humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the
same incidents in the past.
Mill, Representative Government, XVI
26 It is natural for us who were not living in those days to
imagine that when half Russia had been conquered and
the inhabitants were fleeing to distant provinces, and one
levy after another was being raised for the defense of the
fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least
were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving
their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales
and descriptions of that time without exception speak
only of the self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief,
and the heroism of the Russians. But it was not really so.
It appears so to us because we see only the general
historic interest of that time and do not see all the
personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality
those personal interests of the moment so much
transcend the general interests that they always prevent
the public interest from being felt or even noticed. Most
of the people at that time paid no attention to the
general progress of events but were guided only by their
private interests, and they were the very people whose
activities at that period were most useful.
Those who tried to understand the general course of
events and to take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism
were the most useless members of society, they saw
everything upside down, and all they did for the common
good turned out to be useless and foolish.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XII, 4
Chapter 4
EMOTION
Chapter 4 is divided into eleven sections: 4,1 The Passions:
The Range of the Emotions, 4.2 Fear, 4.3 Anger, 4.4 Desire,
4.5 Hope and Despair, 4.6 Joy and Sorrow, 4.7 Pleasure and
Pain, 4.8 Pity and Envy, 4.9 Greed and Avarice, 4.10
Jealousy, and 4.11 Pride and Humility.
The section titles immediately tell the reader what to
expect here. He is acquainted in his own experience with
most of the feelings, dispositions, sentiments, moods, or
states of mind and body that are named; those he has not
experienced himself, he has met with in the behavior of
others—in fact or fiction. Yet they are not all emotions or
passions in the strict sense in which these terms have come
to mean a state of feeling that arises from profound bodily
changes, of relatively short duration, so intense that fora
short time the individual is completely dominated by it. In
fact, only fear and anger exemplify this very strict
conception of emotion or passion involving widespread
physiological changes that run a brief course during which
they completely control and determine the individual’s
behavior. But we also use the words "fear" and "anger" to
name much less violent upheavals—persistent feelings,
moods, or sentiments that underlie and color an individual’s
attitudes or responses toward certain aspects of his
environment. The same holds for desire, hope and despair,
and joy and sorrow. All of these are emotions or passions in
the sense just indicated—relatively persistent states of
feeling, determinative of attitude or conduct, involving
bodily changes that are milder than the violent seizures of
fear and anger in their most intense occurrence.
In the discussion of these matters, "passion" is the older,
“emotion” the newer term. In assembling the passages
quoted in this chapter, we have treated them as
synonymous. Still another traditional term that has similar
meaning is "affect."
The study of emotion now falls within the province of
psychology, and has for a century or more; but earlier than
that the analysis and classification of the passions was
mainly the work of moral and political philosophers, or even
of those concerned with oratory. In fact, the first
comprehensive account of the passions appears in
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, although the subject is also considered
in his Ethics in connection with his analysis of such virtues
as courage and temperance.
Section 4.1 sets the stage for all the sections to follow: its
quotations, drawn from a wide variety of contexts, deal with
emotion or passion in general, and with the enumeration
and classification of specific passions or emotions, or even
milder feelings or sentiments. It will be noted that, in such
enumerations and classifications, some of the passions are
paired opposites, such as joy and sorrow, or hope and
despair, and some stand alone and do not have opposites,
such as fear and anger. It will also be noted that different
principles are employed in classifying the passions;
sometimes they are divided into the irascible and the
concupiscible; sometimes into the pleasant and the
unpleasant; sometimes into the violent and the mild. In
ordering the sections of this chapter, we have adopted still
another principle.
We have put first, in Sections 4.2 through 4.7, emotions,
passions, or feelings that, from the point of view of most
moralists and of men generally, are in themselves neither
good nor bad. Thus, for example, what we do about fear or
anger, pleasure or pain, joy and sorrow, and desire—how we
control such feelings or give into the m—may be the subject
of moral approval or disapproval, but not the feelings
themselves. Nevertheless, hope and despair, included in this
group, are not always treated merely as feelings without
moral coloration; hope is alSo regarded as a theological
virtue, and despair as its opposite—one of the mortal sins.
This is also true of anger. Nevertheless, in the main, the
subjects treated in Sections 4.2 through 4.7 are approached
as phenomena to be examined rather than as dispositions to
be praised or censured.
In contrast, the subjects treated in Sections 4.8 through
4.11 do, for the most part, elicit approbation or censure from
those who discuss them. For example, such words as "envy,"
"greed," "avarice," and "jealousy," usually connote excessive
or inordinate tendencies or dispositions—desire or other
passions out of control. While this does not hold to the same
extent for "pity," it, too, is frequently used in a pejorative
sense. And while the terms "pride" and "humility" almost
always connote attitudes or dispositions that are considered
admirable or reprehensible, sometimes pride is condemned
and humility praised, and sometimes the reverse.
One pair of feelings—love and hate, usually included in
enumerations of the passions—are not given a special
section in this chapter because Chapter 3 deals with them.
However, an emotion closely connected with love and hate—
jealousy—is treated here in Section 4.10.
A whole chapter might have been devoted to pleasure
and pain, so extensive and so varied is the discussion of
these subjects. While the main treatment of them will be
found in Section 4.7, the reader will also find reference to
them in other sections, for almost all the other passions or
emotions are tinged with pleasure or pain, or at least with
the affective tone of the pleasant or the unpleasant. They
also appear, in connection with desire, under the guise of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction. When our desires are
satisfied, we are pleased; when they are unsatisfied, we are
displeased or pained.
On the psychological plane, the matters treated in this
chapter have a bearing on matters treated in Chapter 5 on
Mind, especially Section 5.7 on Will: Free Choice, and even,
to some extent. Section 5.6 on Madness. On the plane of
moral philosophy, the connection is with subjects covered in
Chapter 9 on Ethics, especially Section 9.10 on Virtue and
Vice, Section 9.11 on Courage and Cowardice, and Section
9.12 on Temperance and Intemperance.
These remarks about the subject matter of Chapter 4 asa
whole make it unnecessary to append forewords to each of
its sections.
4.1 The Passions
THE RANGE OF THE EMOTIONS
1 Since things that are found in the soul are of three kinds—
passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be
one of these. By passions | mean appetite, anger, fear,
confidence, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing,
emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are
accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things
in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling
these, for example, of becoming angry or being pained or
feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of
which we stand well or badly with reference to the
passions, for example, with reference to anger we stand
badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we
feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the
other passions.
Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions,
because we are not called good or bad on the ground of
our passions, but are so called on the ground of our
virtues and our rices, and because we are neither praised
nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or
anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels
anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way),
but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or
blamed.
Aristotle, Ethics,
2 The emotions are all those feelings that so change men as
to affect their judgements, and that are also attended by
pain or pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like,
with their opposites.
Aristotle, Phetoric, 1378a20
3 Now | assert that the mind and the soul are kept together
in close union and make up a single nature, but that the
directing principle which we call mind and
understanding, is the head so to speak and reigns
paramount in the whole body. It has a fixed seat in the
middle region of the breast: here throb fear and
apprehension, about these spots dwell soothing joys;
therefore here is the understanding or mind. All the rest
of the soul disseminated through the whole body obeys
and moves at the will and inclination of the mind. It by
itself alone knows for itself, rejoices for itself, at times
when the impression does not move either soul or body
together with it. And as when some part of us, the head
or the eye, suffers from an attack of pain, we do not feel
the anguish at the same time over the whole body, thus
the mind sometimes suffers pain by itself or is inspirited
with joy, when all the rest of the soul throughout the
limbs and frame is stirred by no novel sensation. But
when the mind is excited by some more vehement
apprehension, we see the whole soul feel in unison
through all the limbs, sweats and paleness spread over
the whole body, the tongue falter, the voice die away, a
mist cover the eyes, the ears ring, the limbs sink under
one; in short we often see men drop dowm from terror of
mind; so that anybody may easily perceive from this that
the soul is closely united with the mind, and, when it has
been smitten by the influence of the mind, forthwith
pushes and strikes the body.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
4 Every disturbance is the disruption of a mind either devoid
of or contemptuous of reason, or disobedient to reason.
Such a disruption is provoked in two ways, either by an
idea of good or by an idea of evil. So we end up with four
types of mental disruption. Two of them proceed from an
idea of good. One of these is exultant pleasure, in other
words, extreme joy brought on by the presence of some
great good. The counterpart of this is an excessive
longing for some great good. Such a longing is contrary
to reason, and it may rightly be called desire or lust.
These two instances, exultant pleasure and lust deriving
from some idea of a good, both disrupt the soul. So do
their two opposites, fear and distress, also cause such
disruptions because of the idea of evil. Fear is the
imagining of a threatened evil, and distress is occasioned
by the presence of a serious evil. Distress is really the
strong awareness of an evil real enough to cause genuine
anguish. Thus the man who feels pain is convinced that
he is meant to feel pain. With all our power we must
strive to resist these disturbances, loosed as they are by
folly coupled with a kind of evil spirit over the life of
mankind, if we want to pass our days in peace and quiet.
Cicero, Disputations, III, 11
5 In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a pious
soul is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad,
but what is the cause of his sadness; not whether he
fears, but what he fears. For | am not aware that any right
thinking person would find fault with anger ata
wrongdoer which seeks his amendment, or with sadness
which intends relief to the suffering, or with fear lest one
in danger be destroyed. The Stoics, indeed, are
accustomed to condemn compassion. But how much
more honourable had it been in that Stoic we have been
telling of had he been disturbed by compassion
prompting him to relieve a fellow-creature than to be
disturbed by the fear of shipwreck!... However, it may
justly be asked, whether our subjection to these
affections, even while we follow virtue, is a part of the
infirmity of this life? For the holy angels feel no anger
while they punish those whom the eternal law of God
consigns to punishment, no fellow-feeling with misery
while they relieve the miserable, no fear while they aid
those who are in danger; and yet ordinary language
ascribes to them also these mental emotions, because,
though they have none of our weakness, their acts
resemble the actions to which these emotions move us.
Augustine, City of God, IX, 5
6 The character of the human will is of moment; because, if
it is wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if
it is right, they will be not merely blameless, but even
praiseworthy. For the will is in them all; yea, none of them
is anything else than will. For what are desire and joy but
a volition of consent to the things we wish? And what are
fear and sadness but a volition of aversion from the
things which we do not wish? But when consent takes the
form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is
called desire; and when consent takes the form of
enjoying the things we wh, this is called joy. In like
manner, when we turn with aversion from that which we
do not wish to happen, this volition is termed fear; and
when we turn away from that which has happened
against our will, this act of will is called sorrow’. And
generally in respect of all that we seek or shun, aS a
man’s wall is attracted or repelled, so it is changed and
turned into these different affections.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 6
7 The sensitive appetite is one generic power, and is called
sensuality; but it is divided into two powers, which are
species of the sensitive appetite—the irascible and the
concupiscible. .., Therefore... there must be two
appetitive powers in the sensitive part—one through
which the soul is inclined absolutely to seek what is
Suitable according to the senses, and to fly from what is
hurtful, and this is called the concupiscible; and another
by which an animal resists these attacks that hinder what
is suitable and inflict harm, and this is called the
irascible...,
Now these two are not to be reduced to one principle,
for sometimes the soul busies itself with unpleasant
things against the inclination of the concupiscible
appetite in order that, following the impulse of the
irascible appetite, it may fight against obstacles. Hence
also the passions of the irascible appetite seem to go
against the passions of the concupiscible appetite, since
concupiscence, on being roused, diminishes anger, and
anger being roused, diminishes concupiscence in many
cases. This is clear also from the fact that the irascible is,
as it were, the champion and defender of the
concupiscible, when it rises up against what hinders the
acquisition of the suitable things which the concupiscible
desires, or against what inflicts harm, from which the
concupiscible flies. And for this reason all the passions of
the irascible appetite rise from the passions of the
concupiscible appetite and terminate in them; for
instance, anger rises from sadness, and having wrought
vengeance, terminates in joy.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 81, 2
8 All the irascible passions imply movement towards
something. Now this movement in the irascible part
towards something may be due to two causes; one is the
mere aptitude or proportion to the end, and this pertains
to love or hatred; the other is the presence of good or
evil, and this pertains to sadness or joy...
Since then in the order of generation or sequence,
proportion or aptitude to the end precedes the
achievement of the end, it follows that, of all the irascible
passions, anger is the last in the order of generation. And
among the other passions of the irascible part which
imply a movement arising from Jove of good or hatred of
evil, those whose object is good, namely, hope and
despair, must naturally precede those whose object is
evil, namely, daring and fear.... In like manner fear,
through being a movement from evil, precedes daring....
And if we wish to know the order of all the passions in
the way of generation, love and hatred are first; desire
and aversion, second; hope and despair, third; fear and
daring, fourth; anger, fifth; sixth and last, joy and
sadness, which follow from all the passions... yet so that
love precedes hatred; desire precedes aversion; hope
precedes despair; fear precedes daring; and joy precedes
sadness.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 25, 3
9 Joy relates to present good, sadness relates to present evil,
hope regards future good, and fear, future evil. As to the
other passions that concern good or evil, present or
future, they all culminate in these four. For this reason
have some said that these four are the principal passions,
because they are general passions. And this is true,
provided that by hope and fear we understand the
common tendency of the appetite to desire or aversion
for something.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 25, 4
10 All passions that allow themselves to be savored and
digested are only mediocre.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 2, Of Sadness
11 Ambition can teach men valor, and temperance, and
liberality, and even justice. Greed can implant in the
heart of a shop apprentice, brought up in obscurity and
idleness, the confidence to cast himself far from hearth
and home, in a frail boat at the mercy of the waves and
angry Neptune; it also teaches discretion and wisdom.
Venus herself supplies resolution and boldness to boys
still subject to discipline and the rod, and arms the tender
hearts of virgins who are still in their mothers’ laps....
In view of this, a sound intellect will refuse to Judge
men simply by their outward actions; we must probe the
inside and discover what springs set men in motion. But
since this is an arduous and hazardous undertaking, |
wish fewer people would meddle with it.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 1, Of the Inconsistency
12 Hamlet O, what a rogue and peasant slave am |!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion.
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do.
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That | have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech.
Make mad the guilty and appal the free.
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like Jobn-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can nothing; no, not for a king.
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am | a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
"Swounds, | should take it: for it cannot be
But | am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
| should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy, villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am |! This is most brave,
That |, the son of a dear father murder’d
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon’t! foh!
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 576
13 Hamlet. Blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and | will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, ti, 73
14 | note ... that we do not observe the existence of any
subject which more immediately acts upon our soul than
the body to which it is joined, and that we must
consequently consider that what in the soul is a passion
is in the body commonly speaking an action; so that
there is no better means of arriving at a Knowledge of our
passions than to examine the difference which exists
between soul and body in order to know to which of the
two we must attribute each one of the functions which
are within us.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, I/
15 The number of [passions] which are simple and primitive
is not very large. For, in making a review of all those
which | have enumerated, we may easily notice that there
are but six which are such, that is, wonder, love, hatred,
desire, joy and sadness; and that all the others are
composed of some of these six, or are species of them.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, LXIX
16 Whoever has lived in such a way that his conscience
cannot reproach him for ever having failed to perform
those things which he has judged to be the best (which is
what | here call following after virtue) receives from this a
satisfaction which is so powerful in rendering him happy
that the most violent efforts of the passions never have
sufficient power to disturb the tranquillity of his soul.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CXLVIII
17 The soul may have pleasures of its own, but as to those
which are common to it and the body, they depend
entirely on the passions, so that the men whom they can
most move are capable of partaking most of enjoyment in
this life. It is true that, such men may also find most
bitterness when they do not know how to employ them
well, or fortune is contrary to them. But the principal use
of prudence of self-control is that it teaches us to be
masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them
that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and
that we even derive joy from them all.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CCXII
18 By knowing each man’s ruling passion, we are sure of
pleasing him; and yet each has his fancies, opposed to
his true good, in the very idea which he has of the good.
It is a singularly puzzling fact.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 106
19 There is internal war in man between reason and the
passions.
If he had only reason without passions...
If he had only passions without reason...
But having both, he cannot be without strife, being
unable to be at peace with the one without being at war
with the other. Thus he is always divided against and
opposed to himself.
This internal war of reason against the passions has
made a division of those who would have peace into two
sects. The first would renounce their passions and
become gods; the others would renounce reason and
become brute beasts. But neither can do so, and reason
still remains, to condemn the vileness and injustice of the
passions and to trouble the repose of those who abandon
themselves to them; and the passions keep always alive
in those who would renounce them.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 412—413
20 The forms of speech by which the passions are expressed
are partly the same and partly different from those by
which we express our thoughts. And first generally all
passions may be expressed /ndicatively; as, | love, | fear, |
Joy, | deliberate, | will, |! command: but some of them
have particular expressions by themselves, which
nevertheless are not affirmations, unless it be when they
serve to make other inferences besides that of the
passion they proceed from. Deliberation is expressed
subjunctively; which is a speech proper to signify
suppositions, with their consequences; as, /f this be done,
then this will follow; and differs not from the language of
reasoning, save that reasoning is in general words, but
deliberation for the most part is of particulars. The
language of desire, and aversion, is imperative; as, Do
this, forbear that, which when the party is obliged to do,
or forbear, is command; otherwise prayer; or else
counsel. The language of vainglory, of indignation, pity
and revengefulness, optative: but of the desire to know,
there is a peculiar expression called interrogative; as,
What is it, when shall it, how is it done, and why so?
Other language of the passions | find none: for cursing,
swearing, reviling, and the like do not signify as speech,
but as the actions of a tongue accustomed.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 6
21 The mind is subject to passions in proportion to the
number of inadequate ideas which it has, and ... it acts in
proportion to the number of adequate ideas which it has.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 1, Corol.
22 Of joy, sorrow, and desire, and consequently of every
effort which either, like vacillation of mind, is
compounded of these, or, like love, hatred, hope, and
fear, is derived from them, there are just as many kinds
as there are kinds of objects by which we are affected.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 56
23 Envy and anger, not being caused by pain and pleasure
simply in themselves, but having in them some mixed
considerations of ourselves and others, are not therefore
to be found in all men, because those other parts, of
valuing their merits, or intending revenge, is wanting in
them. But all the rest [of the passions], terminating
purely in pain and pleasure, are, | think, to be found in all
men. For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in
respect of pleasure; we hate, fear, and grieve, only in
respect of pain ultimately. In fine, all these passions are
moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of
pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way
or other annexed to them.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX, 14
24 Modes of Self-love the Passions we may call;
"Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all;
But since not every good we can divide,
And Reason bids us for our own provide;
Passions, tho’ selfish, if their means be fair,
List under Reason, and deserve her care;
Those, that imparted, court a nobler aim,
Exalt their kind, and take some Virtue’s name.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 93
25 Strength of mind is Exercise, not Rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but Passion is the gale.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 104
26 On diff'rent senses diff’rent objects strike;
Hence diff’rent Passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak, the organs of the frame;
And hence one master Passion in the breast,
Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest.
As Man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death;
The young disease, that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:
So, cast and mingled with his very frame,
The Mind’s disease, its rulling Passion came.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 128
27 Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but
a contrary impulse; and if this contrary impulse ever
arises from reason, that latter faculty must have an
Original influence on the will, and must be able to cause,
as well as hinder any act of volition. But if reason has no
Original influence, 'tis impossible it can withstand any
principle, which has such an efficacy’, or ever keep the
mind in suspence a moment. Thus it appears, that the
principle, which opposes our passion, cannot be the same
with reason, and is only call’d so in an improper sense.
We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of
the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and
ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never
pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
As this opinion may appear somewhat extraordinary, it
may not be improper to confirm it by some other
considerations.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. II, Ill, 3
28 Reason is the discovery of truth or falshood. Truth or
falshood consists in an agreement or disagreement either
to the rea/ relations of ideas, or to real existence and
matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of
this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being
true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.
Now 'tis evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are
not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement;
being original facts and realities, compleat in themselves,
and implying no reference to other passions, volitions,
and actions. ’Tis impossible, therefore, they can be
pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or
conformable to reason.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. III, I, 1
29 Emotions and passions are essentially distinct; the former
belong to feeling insofar as this coming before reflection
makes it more difficult or even impossible, Hence emotion
is called hasty (animus praeceps). And reason declares
through the notion of virtue that a man should collect
himself; but this weakness in the life of one’s
understanding, joined with the strength of a mental
excitement, is only a lack of virtue { Untugend), and as it
were a weak and childish thing, which may very well
consist with the best will, and has further this one good
thing in it, that this storm soon subsides. A propensity to
emotion (for example, resentment) is therefore not so
closely related to vice as passion is. Passion, on the other
hand, is the sensible appetite grown into a permanent
inclination (for example, hatred in contrast to
resentment). The calmness with which one indulges it
leaves room for reflection and allows the mind to frame
principles thereon for itself; and thus when the
inclination falls upon what contradicts the law, to brood
on it, to allow it to root itself deeply, and thereby to take
up evil (as of set purpose) into one’s maxim; and this is
then specifically evil, that is, it is a true vice,
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, XVI
30 The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and
pain, happiness and misery. Happiness i never better
exhibited than by young animals such as puppies,
kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our ow-n
children. Even insects play together, as has been
described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw
ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so
many puppies.
The fact that the lower animals are excited by the
Same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it
will not be necessary to weary the reader by many’
details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us,
causing the muscles to tremble, the heat to palpitate, the
sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end.
Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently
characteristic of most wild animals. It is, | think,
impossible to read the account given by Sir E. Tennent, of
the behaviour of the female elephants, used as decoys,
without admitting that they intentionally practise deceit,
and well know what they are about. Courage and timidity
are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the
Same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some dogs
and horses are ill-tempered, and easily turn sulky; others
are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly
inherited. Every’ one knows how liable animals are to
furious rage, and how’ plainly they shew it. Many, and
probably true, anecdotes have been published on the
long-delayed and artful revenge of various animals. ..,
The love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old
writer quaintly says, "A dog Is the only thing on this
earth that luvs you more than he luvs himself."
In the agony of death a dog has been known to caress
his master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering
under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator;
this man, unless the operation was fully justified by an
increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of
stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. .
Most of the more complex emotions are common to
the higher animals and ourselves. Every one has seen
how jealous a dog is of his master’s affection, if lavished
on any other creature; and | have observed the same fact
with monkeys. This shews that animals not only love, but
have desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel
emulation. They love approbation or praise; and a dog
carrying a basket for his master exhibits in a high degree
self-complacency or pride. There can, | think, be no doubt
that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear, and
something very like modesty when begging too often for
food. A great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and
this may be called magnanimity. Several observers have
stated that monkeys certainly dislike being laughed at;
and they sometimes invent imaginary offences. In the
Zoological Gardens | saw a baboon who always got into a
furious rage when his keeper took out a letter or book
and read it aloud to him; and his rage %vras so violent
that, as | witnessed on one occasion, he bit his own leg
till the blood flowed. Dogs shew what may be fairly called
a sense of humour, as distinct from mere play; if a bit of
stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often
carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting
down with it on the ground close before him, will wait
until his master comes quite close to take it away. The
dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating
the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the
practical joke.
We will now turn to the more intellectual emotions and
faculties, which are very important, as forming the basis
for the development of the higher mental powers.
Animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from
ennui, aS may be seen with dogs, and, according to
Rengger, with monkey's, All animals feel Wonder, and
many exhibit Curiosity. They sometimes suffer from this
latter quality.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 3
31 In speaking of the instincts it has been impossible to
keep them separate from the emotional excitements
which go with them. Objects of rage, love, fear, etc., not
only prompt a man to outward deeds, but provoke
characteristic alterations in his attitude and visage, and
affect his breathing, circulation, and other organic
functions in specific ways. When the outward deeds are
inhibited, these latter emotional expressions still remain,
and we read the anger in the face, though the blow may
not be struck, and the fear betrays itself m voice and
color, though one may suppress all other sign, /nstinctive
reactions and emotional expressions thus shade
imperceptibly into each other. Every object that excites
an instinct excites an emotion as well. Emotions,
however, fall short of instincts, in that the emotional
reaction usually terminates in the subject’s own body,
whilst the instinctive reaction is apt to go farther and
enter into practical relations with the exciting object.
William James, Psychology, XXV
32 Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions
is that the mental perception of some fact excites the
mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter
state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My
theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow
directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our
feeling of the same changes as they occur Is the
emotion. Common-sense Says, we lose our fortune, are
sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run;
we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The
hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of
sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not
immediately induced by the other, that the bodily
manifestations must first be interposed between, and
that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry
because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because
we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble,
because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may
be. Without the bodily states following on the perception,
the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale,
colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then
see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult
and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually
feel afraid or angry.
William James, Psychology, XXV
33 If one should seek to name each particular [emotion] of
which the human heart is the seat, it is plain that the
limit to their number would He in the introspective
vocabulary of the seeker, each race of men having found
names for some shade of feeling which other races have
left undiscriminated. If then we should seek to break the
emotions, thus enumerated, into groups, according to
their affinities, it is again plain that all sorts of groupings
would be possible, according as we chose this character
or that as a basis, and that all groupings would be equally
real and true. The only question would be, does this
grouping or that suit our purpose best? The reader may
then class the emotions as he will, as sad or joyous,
sthenic or asthenic, natural or acquired, inspired by
animate or inanimate things, formal or material, sensuous
or ideal, direct or reflective, egoistic or non-egoistic,
retrospective, prospective or immediate, organismally or
environmentally initiated, or what more besides. All these
are divisions which have been actually proposed. Each of
them has its merits, and each one brings together some
emotions which the others keep apart.
William James, Psychology, XXV
34 | think we shall gain a great deal by following the
suggestion of a writer who, from personal motives, vainly
insists that he has nothing to do with the rigouis of pure
science. | am speaking of Georg Groddeck, who is never
tired of pointing out that the conduct through life of what
we call our ego is essentially passive, and that, as he
expresses it, we are "lived" by unknown and
uncontrollable forces.
Freud, Ego and !d, I!
35 The ego has the task of bringing the influence of the
external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies,
and endeavours to substitute the reality-principle for the
pleasure-principle which reigns supreme in the id. In the
ego, perception plays the part which in the id devolves
upon instinct. The ego represents what we call reason
and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the
passions....
The functional importance of the ego is manifested in
the fact that normally control over the approaches to
motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is
like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the
superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that
the rider seeks to do so with his own strength while the
ego uses borrowed forces. The illustration may be carried
further. Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his
horse, is obliged to guide it where it wants to go; so in the
Same way the ego constantly carries into action the
wishes of the id as if they were its own.
Freud, Ego and !d, I
4.2 Fear
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall | fear?
the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall | be
afraid?
Psalm 27:1
2 Chorus. There are times when fear is good.
It must keep its watchful place
at the heart’s controls. There is
advantage
in the wisdom won from pain.
Should the city, should the man
rear a heart that nowhere goes
in fear, how shall such a one
any more respect the right?
Aeschylus, Eumenides, 517
3 Xerxes. Fear not all things alike, nor count up every risk.
For if in each matter that comes before us thou wilt look
to all possible chances, never wilt thou achieve anything.
Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer
one’s share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may
happen, and never incur a mischance.
Herodotus, History, VII, 50
4 Peloponnesian Commanders. A faint heart will make all art
powerless in the face of danger. For fear takes a%vay
presence of mind, and without valour art is useless.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, II, 87
5 Nicias. | do not call animals or any other things which have
no fear of dangers, because they are ignorant of them,
courageous, but only fearless and senseless. Do you
[Laches] imagine that | should call little children
courageous, which fear no dangers because they know'
none? There is a difference, to my way of thinking,
between fearlessness and courage.
Plato, Laches, 197A
6 Socrates. In my opinion the terrible and the hopeful are
the things which do or do not create fear, and fear is not
of the present, nor of the past, but is of future and
expected evil.
Plato, Laches, 198A
7 Fear may be defined as a pain or disturbance due toa
mental picture of some destructive or painful evil in the
future. Of destructive or painful evils only; for there are
some evils, for example, wickedness or stupidity, the
prospect of which does not frighten us: | mean only such
as amount to great pains or losses. And even these only if
they appear not remote but so near as to be imminent:
we do not fear things that are a very long way off: for
instance, we all Know we shall die, but we are not
troubled thereby, because death is not close at hand.
From this definition it will follow that fear is caused by
whatever we feel has great power of destroying us, or of
harming us in ways that tend to cause us great pain.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1382a21
8 Of those we have wronged, and of our enemies or rivals, it
is not the passionate and outspoken whom we have to
fear, but the quiet, dissembling, unscrupulous; since we
never know when they are upon us, we can never be sure
they are at a safe distance.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1382b19
9 If fear is associated with the expectation that something
destructive will happen to us, plainly nobody will be
afraid who believes nothing can happen to him; we shall
not fear things that we believe cannot happen to us, nor
people who we believe cannot inflict them upon us; nor
Shall we be afraid at times when we think ourselves safe
from them. It follows therefore that fear is felt by those
who believe something to be likely to happen to them, at
the hands of particular persons, in a particular form, and
at a particular time. People do not believe this when they
are, or think they are, in the midst of great prosperity,
and are in consequence insolent, contemptuous, and
reckless—the kind of character produced by wealth,
physical strength, abundance of friends, power: nor yet
when they feel they have experienced every kind of
horror already and have grown callous about the future,
like men who are being flogged and are already nearly
dead—if they are to feel the anguish of uncertainty, there
must be some faint expectation of escape.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1382b29
10 Even as children are flurried and dread all things in the
thick darkness, thus we in the daylight fear at times
things not a whit more to be dreaded than what children
shudder at in the dark and fancy sure to be. This terror
therefore and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by
the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the
aspect and law of nature.
Lucretius, Nature of Tilings, VI
11 If one were successful in getting rid of all fear, then we
would also be rid of that judicious manner of living that is
most highly evidenced in those who fear the laws,
magistrates, poverty, disgrace, and pain.
Cicero, Disputations, IV, 20
12 Aeneas. Mute and amaz'd, my hair with terror stood;
Fear shrunk my sinews, and congeal’d my blood.
Mann’d once again, another plant | try:
That other gush’d with the same sanguine dye.
Then, fearing guilt for some offense unknown,
With pray’rs and vows and Dryads | atone,
With all the sisters of the woods, and most
The God of Arms, who rules the Thracian coast,
That they, or he, these omens would avert.
Release our fears, and better signs impart.
Clear’d, as | thought, and fully fix’d at length
To learn the cause, | tugged with all my strength:
| bent my knees against the ground; once more
The violated myrtle ran with gore.
Scarce dare | tell the sequel: from the womb
Of wounded earth, and caverns of the tomb,
A groan, as of a troubled ghost, renew’d
My fright, and then these dreadful words ensued:
‘Why dost thou thus my buried body rend?
O spare the corpse of thy unhappy friend!
Spare to pollute thy pious hands with blood:
The tears distil not from the wounded wood;
But ev’ry drop this living tree contains
Is kindred blood, and ran in Trojan veins.
O fly from this unhospitable shore.
Warn’'d by my fate; for | am Polydore!
Here loads of lances, in my blood embrued,
Again shoot upward, by my blood renew’d.’
"My falt’ring tongue and shiv’ring limbs declare
My horror, and in bristles rose my hair.
Virgil, Aeneid, III
13 To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike
terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of
mind himself.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 105
14 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made
perfect in love.
| John 4:18
L5 It is irrational and poor-spirited not to seek conveniences
for fear of losing them, for upon the same account we
should not allow ourselves to like wealth, glory, or
wisdom, since we may fear to be deprived of all these;
nay, even virtue itself, than which there is no greater nor
more desirable possession. ... It is weakness that brings
men, unarmed against fortune by reason, into these
endless pains and terrors; and they indeed have not even
the present enjoyment of what they dote upon, the
possibility of the future loss causing them continual
pangs, tremors, and distresses. We must not provide
against the loss of wealth by poverty, or of friends by
refusing all acquaintance, or of children by having none,
but by morality and reason.
Plutarch, Solon
16 The strangeness of things often makes them seem
formidable when they are not so; and ... by our better
acquaintance, even things which are really terrible lose
much of their frightfulness.
Plutarch, Cains Marius
17 We are... in the condition of deer; when they flee from
the huntsmen’s feathers in fright, whither do they turn
and in what do they seek refuge as safe? They turn to the
nets, and thus they perish by confounding things which
are objects of fear with things that they ought not to fear.
Thus we also act: in what cases do we fear? In things
which are independent of the will. In what cases, on the
contrary, do we behave with confidence, as if there were
no danger? In things dependent on the will. To be
deceived then, or to act rashly, or shamelessly or with
base desire to seek something, does not concern us at all,
if we only hit the mark in things which are independent of
our will. But where there is death, or exile or pain or
infamy, there we attempt to run away, there we are
struck with terror. Therefore, as we may expect it to
happen with those who err in the greatest matters, we
convert natural confidence into audacity, desperation,
rashness, shamelessness; and we convert natural caution
and modesty into cowardice and meanness, which are full
of fear and confusion. For if a man should transfer caution
to those things in which the will may be exercised and
the acts of the will, he will immediately, by willing to be
cautious, have also the power of avoiding what he
chooses: but if he transfer it to the things which are not
in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things
which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear,
he will be unstable, he will be disturbed. For death or
pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.
Epictetus, Discourses, 11, 1
18 In this abode of weakness, and in these wicked days....
anxiety has also its use, stimulating us to seek with
keener longing for that security where peace is complete
and unassailable.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 10
19 Fear is twofold... one is filial fear, by which a son fears to
offend his father or to be separated from him; the other is
servile fear, by which one fears punishment. Now filial
fear must increase when charity increases, even as an
effect increases with the increase of its cause. For the
more one loves a man, the more one fears to offend him
and to be separated from him. On the other hand servile
fear, as regards its servility, is entirely cast out when
charity comes, although the fear of punishment remains
as to its substance.... This fear decreases as charity
increases, chiefly as regards its act, since the more a man
loves God, the less he fears punishment; first, because he
thinks less of his own good, to which punishment is
opposed; secondly, because, the faster he clings, the
more confident he is of the reward, and consequently, the
less fearful of punishment.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, /I-/l, 19, 10
20 [The prince] ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor
should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate
manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much
confidence may not make him incautious and too much
distrust render him intolerable.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be
loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be
answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it
is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to
be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be
dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general
of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly,
covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours
entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and
children, as is said above, when the need is far distant;
but when it approaches they turn against you. And that
prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has
neglected other precautions, is ruined; because
friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by
greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but
they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be
relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one
who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is
preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the
baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their
advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of
punishment which never fails.
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in sucha
way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred;
because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is
not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains
from the property of his citizens and subjects and from
their women.
Machiavelli, Prince, XVII
21 The thing | fear most is fear... . Those who have been well
drubbed in some battle, and who are still all wounded
and bloody—you can perfectly well bring them back to
the charge the next day. But those who have conceived a
healthy fear of the enemy—you would never get them to
look him in the face. Those who are in pressing fear of
losing their property, of being exiled, of being
subjugated, live in constant anguish, losing even the
Capacity to drink, eat, and rest; whereas the poor, the
exiles, and the slaves often live as joyfully as other men.
And so many people who, unable to endure the pangs of
fear, have hanged themselves, drowned themselves, or
leaped to their death, have taught us well that fear is
even more unwelcome and unbearable than death itself.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 18, Of Fear
22 Fear sometimes arises from want of judgment as well as
from want of courage. All the dangers | have seen, | have
seen with open eyes, with my sight free, sound, and
entire; besides, it takes courage to be afraid.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 6, Of Coaches
23 He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
24 As to the significance of fear or terror, | do not see that it
can ever be praiseworthy or useful; it likewise is not a
Special passion, but merely an excess of cowardice,
astonishment and fear, which is always vicious, just as
bravery is an excess of courage which is always good,
provided that the end proposed is good; and because the
principal cause of fear is surprise, there is nothing better
for getting rid of it than to use premeditation and to
prepare oneself for all eventualities, the fear of which
may cause it.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CLXXVI
25 Being assured that there be causes of all things that have
arrived hitherto, or shall arrive hereafter, it is impossible
for a man, who continually endeavoureth to secure
himself against the evil he fears, and procure the good he
desireth, not to be in a perpetual soficitude of the time to
come; so that every man, especially those that are
overprovident, are in an estate like to that of Prometheus.
For as Prometheus (which, interpreted, is the prudent
man) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large
prospect, where an eagle, feeding on his liver, devoured
in the day as much as was repaired in the night: so that
man, which looks too far before him in the care of future
time, hath his heart all the day long gnawed on by fear of
death, poverty, or other calamity; and has no repose, nor
pause of his anxiety, but in sleep.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 12
26 True fear comes from faith; false fear comes from doubt.
True fear is joined to hope, because it is born of faith, and
because men hope in the God in whom they believe.
False fear is joined to despair, because men fear the God
in whom they have no belief. The former fear to lose Him;
the latter fear to find Him.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 262
27 Fear was given us as a monitor to quicken our industry,
and keep us upon our guard against the approaches of
evil; and therefore to have no apprehension of mischief at
hand, not to make a just estimate of the danger, but
heedlessly to run into it, be the hazard what it will,
without considering of what use or consequence it may
be, is not the resolution of a rational creature, but brutish
fury.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concering Education, 115
28 There is no passion so distressing as fear, which gives us
great pain and makes us appear contemptible in our own
eyes to the last degree.
Boswell, London Journal (Nov. 18, 1762)
29 Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of
government, and ought in particular never to be
employed against any order of men who have the
smallest pretensions to independency. To attempt to
terrify them serves only to irritate their bad humour, and
to confirm them in an opposition which more gentle
usage perhaps might easily induce them either to soften,
or to lay aside altogether.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
30 Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and
every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate
the wrath of their invisible enemies.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XI!
31 And now this spell was snapt: once more
| viewed the ocean green.
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen—
Like One, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 442
32 They [the Norsemen] understood in their heart that it
was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no
favour for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they
were not brave. Consider too whether there is not
something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our
day as in that, the duty of being brave. Va/our is still
value. The first duty for a man is still that of subduing
Fear. We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till
then. A man’s acts are slavish, not true but specious; his
very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and
coward, till he have got Fear under his feet.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
33 In civilized life ... it has at last become possible for large
numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave
without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Many of
us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the
meaning of the word. Hence the possibility of so much
blindly optimistic philosophy and religion.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
34 Napoleon. There is only one universal passion: fear. Of all
the thousand qualities a man may have, the only one you
will find as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my
army asin me, is fear. It is fear that makes men fight; it is
indifference that makes them run away: fear is the
mainspring of war. Fear! | know fear well, better than you,
better than any woman- | once saw a raiment of good
Swiss soldiers massacred by a mob in Paris because | was
afraid to interfere: | felt myself a coward to the tips of my
toes as | looked on at it. Seven months ago | revenged my
shame by pounding that mob to death with cannon balls.
Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a back from
anything he really wanted—or a woman either?
Shaw, The Man of Destiny
4.3 Anger
1 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he
that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
Proverbs 16:32
2 Oedipus. And as | journeyed | came to the place where, as
you say, this king met with his death. Jocasta, | will tell
you the whole truth. When | was near the branching of
the crossroads, going on foot, | was encountered by a
herald and a carriage with a man in it, just as you tell me.
He that led the way and the old man himself wanted to
thrust me out of the road by force. | became angry and
struck the coachman who was pushing me. When the old
man saw this he watched his moment, and as | passed he
struck me from the carriage, full on the head with his two
pointed goad.
But he was paid in full and presently my stick had
struck him backwards from the car and he rolled out of it.
And then | killed them all.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 799
3 Syracusan generals and Gylippus. The fortune of our
greatest enemies [the Athenians] having... betrayed
itself, and their disorder being what | have described, let
uS engage in anger, convinced that, as between
adversaries, nothing is more legitimate than to claim to
sate the whole wrath of one’s soul in punishing the
aggressor, and nothing more sweet, as the proverb has it,
than the vengeance upon an enemy, which it will now be
ours to take. That enemies they are and mortal enemies
you all know, since they came here to enslave our
country, and if successful had in reserve for our men all
that is most dreadful, and for our children and wives all
that is most dishonourable.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, VII, 68
4 Athenian Stranger. Let this, then, be the law about abuse,
which shall relate to all cases;—No one shall speak evil of
another; and when a man disputes with another he shall
teach and learn of the disputant and the company, but he
Shall abstain from evil-speaking; for out of the
imprecations which men utter against one another, and
the feminine habit of casting aspersions on one another,
and using foul names, out of words light as air, in very
deed the greatest enmities and hatreds spring up. For the
speaker gratifies his anger, which is an ungracious
clement of his nature; and nursing up his wrath by the
entertainment of evil thoughts, and exacerbating that
part of his soul which was formerly civilized by education,
he lives in a state of savageness and moroseness, and
pays a bitter penalty for his anger. And in such cases
almost all men take to saying something ridiculous about
their opponent, and there is no man who is in the habit of
laughing at another who does not miss virtue and
earnestness altogether, or lose the better half of
greatness.
Plato, Laws, XI, 934B
5 The man who is angry at the right things and with the
right people, and, further, as he ought, when he ought,
and as long as he oughft, is praised. This will be the good-
tempered man, then, since good temper is praised. For
the good-tempered man tends to be unperturbed and not
to be led by passion, but to be angry in the manner, at
the things, and for the length of time, that the rule
dictates.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1125b32
6 Anger seems to listen to argument to some extent, but to
mishear it, as do hasty servants who run out before they
have heard the whole of what one says, and then muddle
the order, or as dogs bark if there is but a knock at the
door, before looking to see if it is a friend: so anger by
reason of the warmth and hastiness of its nature, though
it hears, does not hear an order, and springs to take
revenge. For argument or imagination informs us that we
have been insulted or slighted, and anger, reasoning as it
were that anything like this must be fought against, boils
up straightway.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1149a25
7 Anger may be defined as an impulse, accompanied by
pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight
directed without justification towards what concerns
oneself or towards what concerns one’s friends. If this is a
proper definition of anger, it must always be felt towards
some particular individual... and not ‘man’ in general. It
must be felt because the other has done or intended to
do something to him or one of his friends. It must always
be attended by a certain pleasure—that which arises from
the expectation of revenge. For since nobody aims at
what he thinks he cannot attain, the angry man is aiming
at what he can attain, and the belief that you will attain
your aim is pleasant.... It is also attended by a certain
pleasure because the thoughts dwell upon the act of
vengeance, and the images then called up cause
pleasure, like the images called up in dreams.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1378a31
8 Enmity is anger waiting for a chance for revenge.
Cicero, Disputations, IV, 9
9 She [Armata] flew to rage; for now the snake possess’d
Her vital parts, and poison’d all her breast;
She raves, she runs with a distracted pace.
And fills with horrid howls the public place.
And, as young striplings whip the top for sport,
On the smooth pavement of an empty court;
The wooden engine flies and whirls about,
Admir’d, with clamors, of the beardless rout;
They lash aloud; each other they provoke,
And lend their little souls at ev’ry stroke:
Thus fares the queen; and thus her fury blows
Amidst the crowd, and kindles as she goes.
Nor yet content, she strains her malice more,
And adds new ills to those contriv’d before:
She flies the town, and, mixing with a throng
Of madding matrons, bears the bride along,
Wand’ring thro’ woods and wilds, and devious ways.
And with these arts the Trojan match delays.
Virgil, Aeneid, VII
10 Aghast he [Turnus] wak’d; and, starting from his bed,
Cold sweat, in clammy drops, his limbs o’erspread.
"Arms! arms!" he cries: "my sword and shield prepare!"
He breathes defiance, blood, and mortal war.
So, when with crackling flames a caldron fries,
The bubbling waters from the bottom rise:
Above the brims they force their fiery way;
Black vapors climb aloft, and cloud the day.
Virgil, Aeneid, VII
11 He who will not curb his passion, will wish that undone
which his grief and resentment suggested, while he
violently plies his revenge with unsated rancour. Rage is
a short madness. Rule your passion, which commands, if
it do not obey; do you restrain it with a bridle, and with
fetters.
Horace, Epistles, |, 2
12 Hesitation is the best cure for anger. Seek this concession
from anger right away, not to gain its pardon, but that it
may evidence some discrimination. The first blows of
anger are heavy, but if it wails, it will think again. Do not
try to destroy it immediately. Attacked piecemeal, it will
be entirely overcome.
Seneca, On Anger, Il, 29
13 Marcius alone, himself, was neither stunned nor
humiliated. In mien, carriage, and countenance he bore
the appearance of entire composure, and, while all his
friends were full of distress, seemed the only man that
was not touched with his misfortune. Not that either
reflection taught him, or gentleness of temper made it
natural for him, to submit; he was wholly possessed, on
the contrary, with a profound and deepseated fury, which
passes with many for no pain at all. And pain, it is true,
transmuted, so to say, by its own fiery heat into anger,
loses every appearance of depression and feebleness; the
angry man makes a show of energy, as the man in a high
fever does of natural heat, while, in fact, all this action of
soul is but mere diseased palpitation, distension, and
inflamation.
Plutarch, Coriolanus
14 If any have offended against thee, consider first: What is
my relation to men, and that we are made for one
another...
Second, consider what kind of men they are... and
particularly, under what compulsions in respect of
opinions they are; and as to their acts, consider with what
pride they do what they do.
Third, that if men do rightly what they do, we ought
not to be displeased; but if they do not right, it is plain
that they do so involuntarily and in ignorance....
Fourth, consider that thou also doest many things
wrong, and that thou art a man like others; and even if
thou dost abstain from certain faults, still thou hast the
disposition to commit them, though either through
cowardice, or concern about reputation, or some such
mean motive, thou dost abstain from such faults.
Fifth, consider That thou dost not even understand
whether men are doing wrong or not, for many things are
done with a certain reference to circumstances. And in
short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to
pass a correct judgement on another man’s acts.
Sixth, consider when thou art much vexed or grieved,
that man’s life is only a moment, and after a short time
we are all laid out dead.
Seventh, that it is not men’s acts which disturb us, for
those acts have their foundation in men’s ruling
principles, but it is our own opinions which disturb us....
Eighth, consider how much more pain is brought on us
by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by
the acts themselves....
Ninth, consider that a good disposition is invincible, if
it be genuine, and not an affected smile and acting a
part- For what will the most violent man do to thee, if
thou continuest to be of a kind disposition towards him,
and if, as opportunity offers, thou gently admonishest
him and calmly correctest his errors at the very time
when he is trying to do thee harm....
Remember these nine rules, as if thou hadst received
them as a gift from the Muses, and begin at last to bea
man while thou lives.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XI, 18
15 Anger does not arise except on account of some pain
inflicted, and unless there be the desire and hope of
revenge. ... If the person who inflicted the injury excel
very much, anger does not ensue, but only sorrow.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |-Il, 46, 1
16 Unmerited contempt more than anything else isa
provocative of anger. Consequently deficiency of
littleness in the person with whom we are angry tends to
increase our anger, insofar as it adds to the
unmeritedness of being despised. For just as the higher a
man’s position is, the more undeservedly he is despised,
so the lower it is the less reason he has for despising.
Thus a nobleman is angry if he be insulted by a peasant;
a wise man, if by a fool; a master, if by a servant.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 47, 4
17 We crossed the circle, to the other bank, near a fount,
that boils and pours down through a cleft, which it has
formed.
The water was darker far than perse; and we,
accompanying the dusky waves, entered down by a
strange path.
This dreary streamlet makes a Marsh, that is named
Styx, when it has descended to the foot of the grey
malignant shores.
And I, who stood intent on looking, saw muddy people
in that bog, all naked and with a look of anger.
They were smiting each other, not with hands only,
but with head, and with chest, and with feet; maiming
one another with their teeth, piece by piece.
The kind Master said: "Son, now see the souls of those
whom anger overcame; and also | would have thee to
believe for certain,
that there are people underneath the water, who sob,
and make it bubble at the surface; as thy eye may tell
thee, whichever way it turns.
Fixed in the slime, they say: ‘Sullen were we in the
sweet air, that is gladdened by the Sun, carrying lazy
smoke within our hearts;
now lie we sullen here in the black mire.’ This hymn
they gurgle in their throats, for they cannot speak it in
full words."
Dante, Inferno, VII, 100
18 When | am angry | can write, pray, and preach well, for
then my whole temperament is quickened, my
understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations
and temptations depart.
Luther, Table Talk, H319
19 Aristotle says that anger sometimes serves as a weapon
for virtue and valor. That is quite likely; yet those who
deny it answer humorously that it is a weapon whose use
is novel. For we move other weapons, this one moves us;
our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds
us, we do not hold it.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 31, Of Anger
20 Norfolk Stay, my lord.
And let your reason with your choler question
What 'tis you go about. To climb steep hills
Requires slow pace at first. Anger is like
A full hot horse, who being allow’d his way,
Self-mettle tires him.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, I, 1, 129
21 To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the
Stoics.
Bacon, Of Anger
22 Angeris..,aspecies of hatred or aversion which we
have towards those who have done some evil to or have
tried to injure not any chance person but more
particularly ourselves. Thus it has the same content as
indignation, and all the more so in that it is founded on
an action which affects us, and for which we desire to
avenge ourselves, for this desire almost always
accompanies it; and it is directly opposed to gratitude, as
indignation is to favour. But it is incomparably more
violent than these three other passions, because the
desire to repel harmful things and to revenge oneself, is
the most persistent of all desires.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CXCIX
23 We can distinguish two kinds of anger: the one which is
very hasty and manifests itself very much on the surface,
but which yet has little effect and can be easily
appeased; the other which does not show itself so much
to begin with, but which all the more powerfully gnaws
the heart and has more dangerous effects. Those who
have much goodness and much love are most subject to
the first, for it does not proceed from a profound hatred,
but from an instant aversion, which surprises them,
because, being impelled to imagine that all things should
go in the way which they judge to be best, so soon as it
happens otherwise, they wonder and frequently are
displeased, even although the matter does not affect
them personally, because, having much affection, they
interest themselves for those whom they love in the same
way as for themselves....
The other kind of anger in which hatred and sadness
predominate, is not so apparent at first if it be not
perhaps that it causes the face to grow pale; but its
strength is little by little increased by the agitation of an
ardent desire to avenge oneself excited in the blood,
which, being mingled with the bile which is sent towards
the heart from the lower part of the liver and spleen,
excites there a very keen and ardent heat. And as it is the
most generous souls who have most gratitude, it is those
who have most pride, and who are most base and infirm,
who most allow themselves to be carried away by this
kind of anger; for the injuries appear so much the greater
as pride causes us to esteem ourselves more, and
likewise the more esteem the good things which they
remove; which last we value so much the more, as our
soul is the more feeble and base, because they depend
on others.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CCI-CCI!
24 Betty. They are gone, sir, in great anger.
Petulant. Enough, let ’em trundle. Anger helps
complexion, saves paint.
Congreve, Way of the World, I, ix
25 | was angry with my friend:
| told my wrath, my wrath did end.
| was angry with my foe:
| told it not, my wrath did grow.
Blake, A Poison Tree
26 If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger,
even at the risk of maiming it for fife, A blow in cold blood
neither can nor should be forgiven.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
4.4 Desire
1 Socrates. In every one of us there are two guiding and
ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is
the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired
opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are
sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and
sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. When
opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the
conquering principle is called temperance; but when
desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us
to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess. Now
excess has many names, and many members, and many
forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a
name, neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of
the name. The desire of eating, for example, which gets
the better of the higher reason and the other desires, is
called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it is called a
glutton; the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the
possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only
too obvious, and there can be as little doubt by what
name any other appetite of the same family would be
called;—it will be the name of that which happens to be
dominant. And now | think that you will perceive the drift
of my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner
plainer than the unspoken, | had better say further that
the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of
opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment
of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the
desires which are her own kindred—that supreme desire, |
say, which by leading conquers and by the force of
passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a
name, is called love.
Plato, Phaedrus, 237B
2 Socrates. Might a man be thirsty, and yet unwilling to
drink?
Yes, he [Glaucon] said, it constantly happens.
And in such a case what is one to say? Would you not
say that there was something in the soul bidding a man
to drink, and something else forbidding him, which is
other and stronger than the principle which bids him?
| should say so.
And the forbidding principle is derived from reason,
and that which bids and attracts proceeds from passion
and disease?
Clearly.
Then we may fairly assume that they are two, and that
they differ from one another; the one with which a man
reasons, we may Call the rational principle of the soul, the
other, with which he loves and hungers and thirsts and
feels the flutterings of any other desire, may be termed
the irrational or appetitive, the ally of sundry pleasures
and satisfactions?
Yes, he said, we may fairly assume them to be
different.
Then let us finally determine that there are two
principles existing in the soul. And what of passion, or
Spirit? Is it a third, or akin to one of the preceding?
1 should be inclined to say—akin to desire.
Well, | said, there is a story which | remember to have
heard, and in which | put faith. The story is, that Leontius,
the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus,
under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead
bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He
felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and
abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered
his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him;
and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies,
saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.
| have heard the story myself, he said.
The moral of the tale is, that anger at times goes to
war with desire, as though they were two distinct things.
Yes; that is the meaning, he said.
And are there not many other cases in which we
observe that when a man’s desires violently prevail over
his reason, he reviles himself, and is angry at the violence
within him, and that in this struggle, which is like the
struggle of factions in a State, his spirit is on the side of
his reason—but for the passionate or spirited element to
take part with the desires when reason decides that she
should not be opposed, is a sort of thing which | believe
that you never observed occurring in your-self, nor, as |
should imagine, in any one else?
Plato, Republic, IV, 439A
3 Athenian Stranger. The class of men is small—they must
have been rarely gifted by nature, and trained by
education—who, when assailed by wants and desires, are
able to hold out and observe moderation, and when they
might make a great deal of money are sober in their
wishes, and prefer a moderate to a large gain. But the
mass of mankind are the very opposite; their desires are
unbounded, and when they might gain in moderation
they prefer gains without limit.
Plato, Laws, XI, 918B
4 These two at all events appear to be sources of movement:
appetite and mind (if one may venture to regard
imagination as a kind of thinking; for many men follow
their imaginations contrary to knowledge, and in all
animals other than man there is no thinking or
calculation but only imagination).
Both of these then are capable of originating local
movement, mind and appetite: (1) mind, that is, which
calculates means to an end, i.e. mind practical (it differs
from mind speculative in the character of its end); while
(2) appetite is in every form of it relative to an end: for
that which is the object of appetite is the stimulant of
mind practical; and that which is last in the process of
thinking is the beginning of the action. It follows that
there is a justification for regarding these two as the
sources of movement, i.e. appetite and practical thought;
for the object of appetite starts a movement and asa
result of that thought gives rise to movement, the object
of appetite being to it a source of stimulation. So too
when imagination originates movement, it necessarily
involves appetite.
That which moves therefore is a single faculty and the
faculty of appetite; for if there had been two sources of
movement—mind and appetite— they would have
produced movement in virtue of some common character.
As it is, mind is never found producing movement without
appetite (for wish is a form of appetite; and when
movement is produced according to calculation it is also
according to wish), but appetite can originate movement
contrary to calculation, for desire is a form of appetite.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 433a8
5 The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same.
For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the
real good is the primary object of rational wish. But desire
iS consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire;
for the thinking is the starting-point.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072a27
6 The avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols
was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become
customary, men always want more and more without end;
for it is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and
most men live only for the gratification of it.
Aristotle, Politics, 1267a42
7 That which all desire is good, as we have said; and so, the
more a thing is desired, the better it is.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1365al
8 Whilst what we crave is wanting, it seems to transcend all
the rest; then, when it has been gotten, we crave
something else, and ever does the same thirst of life
possess US, cis we gape for it open-mouthed.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
9 To you everything appears small that you possess: to me
all that | have appears great. Your desire is insatiable:
mine is satisfied. To (children) who put their hand into a
narrow-necked earthen vessel and bring out figs and
nuts, this happens; if they fill the hand, they cannot take
it out, and then they cry. Drop a few of them and you will
draw things out. And do you part with your desires; do
not desire many things and you will have what you want.
Epictetus, Discourses, III, 9
10 There is no profit from the things which are valued and
eagerly sought to those who have obtained them; and to
those who have not yet obtained them there is an
imagination that when these things are come, all that is
good will come with them; then, when they are come, the
feverish feeling is the same, the tossing to and fro is the
same, the satiety, the desire of things which are not
present; for freedom is acquired not by the full possession
of the things which are desired, but by removing the
desire.
Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 1
11 Remember that you must behave as at a banquet. Is
anything brought round to you? Put out your hand and
take a moderate share. Does it pass by you? Do not stop
it. Is it not yet come? Do not yearn in desire toward it, but
wait till it reaches you. So with regard to children, wife,
office, riches; and you will some time or other be worthy
to feast with the gods. And if you do not so much as take
the things which are set before you, but are able even to
forego them, then you will not only be worthy to feast
with the gods, but to rule with them also.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XV
12 Theophrastus, in his comparison of bad acts—such a
comparison as one would make in accordance with the
common notions of mankind— says, like a true
philosopher, that the offences which are committed
through desire are more blameable than those which are
committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger
seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and
unconscious contraction; but he who offends through
desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be ina
manner more intemperate and more womanish in his
offences. Rightly then, and in a way worthy of
philosophy, he said that the offence which is committed
with pleasure is more blameable than that which is
committed with pain; and on the whole the one is more
like a person who has been first wronged and through
pain is compelled to be angry; but the other is moved by
his own impulse to do wrong, being carried towards doing
something by desire.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Il, 10
13 All things in their own way are inclined by appetite
towards good, but in different ways. Some are inclined to
good by their natural inclination, without knowledge, as
plants and inanimate bodies. Such inclination towards
good is called a natural appetite. Others, again, are
inclined towards good, but with some knowledge: not
that they know the aspect of goodness, but that they
know some particular good; as the sense, which knows
the sweet, the white, and so on. The inclination which
follows this knowledge is called a sensitive appetite.
Other things, again, have an inclination towards good,
but with a knowledge whereby they know the aspect of
good itself; this is proper to the intellect. This is most
perfectly inclined towards good; not, indeed, as if it were
merely guided by another towards good, like things
devoid of knowledge, nor towards some particular good
only, as things which have only sensitive knowledge, but
as inclined towards good universal in itself. Such
inclination is termed will.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 59, 1
14 Between two foods, distant and appetising in like
measure, death by starvation would ensue ere a free man
put either to his teeth.
So would a lamb stand still between two cravings of
fierce wolves, in equipoise of dread; so would a dog stand
still between two hinds.
Dante, Paradiso, IV, 1
15 Desires are either natural and necessary, like eating and
drinking; or natural and not necessary, like intercourse
with females; or neither natural nor necessary. Of this last
type are nearly all those of men; they are all superfluous
and artificial. For it is marvelous how little Nature needs
to be content, how little she has left us to desire. The
dressings of our cooking have nothing to do with her
ordaining. The Stoics say that a man could stay alive on
one olive a day. The delicacy of our wines is no part of her
teaching, nor the embellishments that we add to our
amorous appetites....
These extraneous desires, which ignorance of the good
and a false opinion have insinuated into us, are in such
great number that they drive out almost all the natural
ones; neither more nor less than if there were such a
great number of foreigners in a city that they put out the
natural inhabitants, or extinguished their ancient
authority and power, completely usurping it and taking
possession of it.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
16 That passion which they say is produced by idleness in
the hearts of young men, although it makes its way with
leisure and a measured step, very evidently show’s, to
those who have tried to oppose its strength, the power of
that conversion and alteration that our judgment suffers.
| attempted at one time to keep tensed tensed to
withstand it and beat it down: for | am so far from being
one of those who invite vices, that | do not even follow
them, unless they drag me away. | would feel it come to
life, grow, and increase in spite of my resistance, and
finally seize me, alive and watching, and possess me, to
such an extent that, as from drunkenness, the picture of
things began to seem to me other than usual. | would see
the advantages of the object of my desire visibly
expanding and growling, and increasing and swelling
from the breath of my imagination; the difficulties of my
undertaking growing easy and smooth, my reason and
my conscience withdrawing. But, this fire having
vanished all in an instant like a flash of lightning, | would
see my soul regain another kind of sight, another state,
and another judgment; the difficulties of the retreat
would seem to me great and invincible, and the same
things would appear in a light and aspect very’ different
from that in which the heat of desire had presented them
to me.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
17 It is an amusing conception to imagine a mind exactly
balanced between two equal desires. For it is indubitable
that it will never decide, since inclination and choice
imply inequality in value; and if we were placed between
the bottle and the ham with an equal appetite for
drinking and for eating, there would doubtless be no
solution but to die of thirst and of hunger.
Montaigne, II, 14, How Our Mind
18 Salarino, O, ten times faster Venus’ pigeons fly
To seal love’s bonds new-made, than they are wont
To keep obliged faith unforfeited!
Gratiano. That ever holds: who riseth from a feast
With that keen appetite that he sits down?
Where is the horse that doth untread again
His tedious measures with the unbated fire
That he did pace them first? All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.
How like a younker or a prodigal
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,
Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind!
How like the prodigal doth she return,
With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails,
Lean, rent and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, II, vi, 5
19 Troilus. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will
is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is
boundless and the act a Slave to limit.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, ti, 87
20 The passion of desire is an agitation of the soul caused by
the spirits which dispose it to wash for the future the
things which it represents to itself as agreeable. Thus we
do not only desire the presence of the absent good, but
also the conservation of the present, and further, the
absence of evil, both of that which we already have, and
of that which we believe we might experience in time to
come.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, LXXXVI
21 That which men desire they are also said to love, and to
hate those things for which they have aversion. So that
desire and love are the same thing; save that by desire,
we always signify the absence of the object; by /ove,
most commonly the presence of the same. So also by
aversion, we signify the absence; and by hate, the
presence of the object.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 6
22 Continual success in obtaining those things which a man
from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual
prospering, is that men call felicity; | mean the felicity’ of
this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual
tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself
is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor
without fear, no more than without sense,
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 6
23 Elmira. The declaration is extremely gallant, but, to say
the truth, it is a good deal surprising. Me-thinks you
ought to have fortified your mind better, and to have
reasoned a little upon a design of this nature. A devotee
as you are, whom every one speaks of as-
Tartuffe. An! being a devotee does not make me the
less aman; and when one comes to view your celestial
charms, the heart surrenders, and reasons no more. |
know, that such language from me, seems somewhat
strange; but, madam, after all, | am not an angel, and
should you condemn the declaration | make, you must lay
the blame upon your attractive charms.
Moliere, Tartuffe, III, iii
24 We do not desire a thing because we adjudge it to be
good, but, on the contrary, we call it good because we
desire it, and consequently everything to which we are
averse we Call evil. Each person, therefore, according to
his affect judges or estimates what is good and what is
evil, what is better and what is worse, and what is the
best and what is the worst. Thus the covetous man thinks
plenty of money to be the best thing and poverty the
worst The ambitious man desires nothing like glory, and
on the other hand dreads nothing like shame. To the
envious person, again, nothing is more pleasant than the
misfortune of another, and nothing more disagreeable
than the prosperity of another. And so each person
according to his affect judges a thing to be good or evil,
useful or useless.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 39, Schol.
25 Desire is the essence itself of man insofar as it is
conceived as determined to any action by any one of his
affections.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 59, Def. 1
26 That desire is a state of uneasiness, every one who
reflects on himself will quickly find. Who is there that has
not felt in desire what the wise man says of hope, (which
is not much different from it), that it being "deferred
makes the heart sick"; and that still proportionable to the
greatness of the desire, which sometimes raises the
uneasiness to that pitch, that it makes people cry out,
"Give me children," give me the thing desired, "or | die."
Life itself, and all its enjoyments, is a burden cannot be
borne under the lasting and unremoved pressure of such
an uneasiness.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 11, XXI,
32
27 The Stoical Scheme of supplying our Wants, by lopping
off our Desires, is like cutting off our Feet when we want
Shoes.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
28 Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was
chill, was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength,
exerted it in poison.
Johnson, Letter to James Boswell (Dec, 8, 1763)
29 The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow
capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the
conveniences and ornaments of building, dress,
equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no
limit or certain boundary.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 11
30 The desire of a man for a woman is not directed at her
because she is a human being, but because she is a
woman. That she is a human being is of no concern to
him.
Kant, Lecture at Konigsberg (1775)
31 Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted
desires.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 10
32 The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The
master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the
copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind
him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said
over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys
whispered each other, and winked at Oliver, while his
next neighbors nudged him. Child as he was, he was
desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose
from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and
spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own
temerity:
"Please, sir, | want some more."
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very
pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small
rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the
copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the
boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "| want some more,"
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the
ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for
the beadle.
Dickens, Oliver Twist, II
33 Ah, Love! could you and | with Him conspire To grasp this
sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then Remold it
nearer to the Heart’s Desire!
FitzGerald, Rubaiyat, XCIX
34 Mendoza. There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose
your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
Shaw, Man and Superman, IV
35 Lady. Havent you noticed that people always exaggerate
the value of the things they havent got? The poor think
they need nothing but riches to be quite happy and
good. Everybody worships truth, purity, unselfishness, for
the same reason: because they have no experience of
them. Oh, if they only knew!
Shaw, The Man of Destiny
4.5 Hope and Despair
1 And Job spake, and said,
Let the day perish wherein | was born, and the night in
which it was said, There is a man child conceived.
Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from
above, neither let the light shine upon it.
Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a
cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.
As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not
be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into
the number of the months.
Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come
therein.
Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to
raise up their mourning.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look
for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of
the day:
Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s
womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
Why died | not from the womb? why did | not give up
the ghost when | came out of the belly?
Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts
that | should suck?
For now should | have lain still and been quiet, |
should have slept: then had | been at rest,
With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built
desolate places for themselves;
Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses
with silver:
Or as an hidden untimely birth | had not been; as
infants which never saw light.
Job 3:2-16
2 My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent
without hope.
Job 7:6
3 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art
thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my
roaring?
O my God, | cry in the daytime, but thou hear-est not;
and in the night season, and am not silent.
But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of
Israel.
Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou
didst deliver them.
They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted
in thee, and were not confounded.
But | am aworm, and no man; a reproach of men, and
despised of the people.
Psalm 22:1-6
4 Odyssus. Then Sisyphos in torment | beheld being
roustabout to a tremendous boulder. Leaning with both
arms braced and legs driving, he heaved it toward a
height, and almost over, but then a Power spun him
round and sent the cruel boulder bounding again to the
plain. Whereon the man bent down again to toil, dripping
sweat, and the dust rose overhead.
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 594
5 Athenians. Hope, danger’s comforter, may be indulged in
by those who have abundant resources, if not without
loss at all events without ruin; but its nature is to be
extravagant, and those who go so far as to put their all
upon the venture see it in its true colours only when they
are ruined.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, V, 103
6 Aeneas. "Endure, and conquer! Jove will soon dispose
To future good our past and present woes.
With me, the rocks of Scylla you have tried;
Th’ inhuman Cyclops and his den defied.
What greater ills hereafter can you bear?
Resume your courage and dismiss your care,
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate
Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.
Thro’ various hazards and events, we move
To Latium and the realms foredoom’d by Jove.
Call’d to the seat (the promise of the skies)
Where Trojan kingdoms once again may rise,
Endure the hardships of your present state;
Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate,"
These words he spoke, but spoke not from his heart;
His outward smiles conceal’d his inward smart.
Virgil, Aeneid, |
7 And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany;
and he lodged there.
Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he
hungered.
And when he Saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it,
and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said
unto it. Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.
And presently the fig tree withered away.
And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying,
How soon is the fig tree withered away!
Matthew 21:17-20
8 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
saying, Eli, Eli, la-ma sa-bach-tha-ni? that is to say, My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Matthew 27:46
9 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not
hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with
patience wait for it....
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for
us, who can be against us?
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up
for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all
things?...
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day
long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him that loved us.
For | am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come.
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:24-39
10 The species of a passion is taken from the object. Now, in
the object of hope, we may note four conditions. First,
that it is something good, since, properly speaking, hope
regards only the good; in this respect, hope differs from
fear, which regards evil. Secondly, that it is future, for
hope does not regard that which is present and already
possessed. In this respect, hope differs from joy which
regards a present good. Thirdly, that it must be
something arduous and difficult to obtain, for we do not
speak of any one hoping for trifles, which are in one’s
power to have at any time; in this respect, hope differs
from desire or cupidity, which regards the future good
absolutely. Therefore it belongs to the concupiscible,
while hope belongs to the irascible part. Fourthly, that
this difficult thing is something possible to obtain, for one
does not hope for that which one cannot get at all; and,
in this respect, hope differs from despair. It is therefore
evident that hope differs from desire, as the irascible
passions differ from the concupiscible. For this reason,
moreover, hope presupposes desire, just as all the
irascible passions presuppose the passions of the
concupiscible part.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-Il, 40, 1
11 Every mortal sin takes its principal malice and gravity
from the fact of its turning away from God, for if it were
possible to turn to a changeable good, even inordinately,
without turning away from God, it would not be a mortal
sin. Consequently a sin which, first and of its very nature,
includes turning away from God, is most grievous among
mortal sins.
Now unbelief, despair and hatred of God are opposed
to the theological virtues; and among them, if we
compare hatred of God and unbelief to despair, we shall
find that, in themselves, that is, in respect of their proper
species, they are more grievous. For unbelief is due toa
man not believing God’s own truth, while the hatred of
God arises from man’s will being opposed to God’s
goodness itself; but despair consists in a man ceasing to
hope for a share of God’s goodness. Hence it is clear that
unbelief and hatred of God are against God as He is in
Himself, while despair is against Him according as His
good is shared in by us. Therefore strictly speaking it isa
more grievous sin to disbelieve God’s truth or to hate God
than not to hope to receive glory from Him.
If, however, despair be compared to the other two sins
from man’s point of view, then despair is more dangerous,
since hope withdraws us from evils and induces us to
seek for good things, so that when hope is given up, men
rush headlong into sin, and are drawn away from good
works.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 20, 3
12 The good Master to me: "Thou askest not what spirits are
these thou seest? | wish thee to know, before thou goest
farther,
that they sinned not; and though they have merit, it
suffices not: for they had not Baptism, which is the portal
of the faith that thou believest;
and seeing they were before Christianity, they
worshipped not God aright; and of these am | myself.
For such defects, and for no other fault, are we lost;
and only in so far afflicted, that without hope we live in
desire."
Great sadness took me at the heart on hearing this;
because | knew men of much worth, who in that Limbo
were suspense.
Dante, Inferno, IV, 31
13 "Hope," said I, "is a certain expectation of future glory,
the product of divine grace and precedent merit."
Dante, Paradiso, XXV, 67
14 May heaven bring relief for all this sorrow!
There’s ground for hope, for such is heaven's way;
For | have seen on many a misty morrow
Following oft a merry summer’s day,
And after winter, comes along the May.
"Tis known, and vouched for by authorities,
That storms are presages of victories.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, 152
15 Now enters despair, which is despair of the mercy of God,
and comes sometimes of too extravagant sorrows and
sometimes of too great fear: for the victim imagines that
he has done so much sin that it will avail him not to
repent and forgo sin; because of which fear he abandons
his heart to every kind of sin, as Saint Augustine says.
This damnable sin, if it be indulged to the end, is called
sinning in the Holy Ghost. This horrible sin is so
dangerous that, as for him that is so desperate, there is
no felony or sin that he hesitates to do; as was well
showed by Judas. Certainly, then, above all other sins,
this sin is most displeasing to Christ, and most hateful.
Chaucer, Canterburly Tales: Parson’s Tale
16 Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. No
husbandman would sow one grain of com if he hoped not
it would grow up and become seed; no bachelor would
marry a wife if he hoped not to have children; no
merchant or tradesman would set himself to work if he
did not hope to reap benefit thereby.
Luther, Table Talk, H298
17 Richmond. True hope is swift and flies with swallow’s
wings;
Kings it makes gods and meaner creatures kings.
Shakespeare, Richard Ill, V, 11, 23
18 Hope is a disposition of the soul to persuade itself that
what it desires will come to pass: and this is caused by a
particular movement of the spirits, i.e. by that of joy and
that of desire mingled together; and fear is another
disposition of the soul which persuades it that the thing
hoped for will not come to pass; and it must be observed
that, although these two passions are contrary, we can
nevertheless have them both at the same time, that is to
say, when we represent to ourselves different reasons at
the same time, some of which cause us to judge that the
accomplishment of desire is easy, while the others make
it seem difficult.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CLXV
19 When | see the blindness and the wretchedness of man,
when | regard the whole silent universe and man without
light, left to himself and, as it were, lost in this corner of
the universe, without knowing who has put him there,
what he has come to do, what will become of him at
death, and incapable of all knowledge, | become terrified,
like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a
dreadful desert island and should awake without knowing
where he is and without means of escape. And thereupon
| wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not
fall into despair.
Pascal, Pensées, XI, 693
20 Elder Brother. Where an equall poise of hope and fear
Does arbitrate th’event, my nature is
That | encline to hope, rather then fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion.
Milton, Comus, 410
21 Satan. Me miserable! which way shall | file
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way | flie is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatning to devour me opens wide.
To which the Hell | suffer seems a Heav’n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 73
22 Samson. Promise was that |
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 38
23 Samson. O loss of sight, of thee | most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull’d, which might in part my grief have eas’d,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, | dark in light expos’d
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool.
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half | seem to live, dead more then half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 67
24 Despair is sorrow arising from the idea of a past or future
object from which cause for doubting is removed.
Confidence, therefore, springs from hope and despair
from fear, whenever the reason for doubting the issue is
taken away; a case which occurs either because we
imagine a thing past or future to be present and
contemplate it as present, or because we imagine other
things which exclude the existence of those which made
us to doubt.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 59, Def. 15
25 Hope is that pleasure in the mind, which every one finds
in himself, upon the thought of a probable future
enjoyment of a thing which is apt to delight him.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX, 9
26 Despair is the thought of the unattainableness of any
good, which works differently in men’s minds, sometimes
producing uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and
indolency.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX, 11
27 Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home.
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 95
28 | have many years ago magnified in my own mind, and
repeated to you, a ninth beatitude, added to the eighth in
the Scripture; "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he
Shall never be disappointed."
Pope, Letter to John Gay (Oct. 16, 1727)
29 It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be
deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations,
however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its
extinction.
Johnson, Idier No. 58
30 Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the
chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all
other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of
hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations
improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be
asked, what is the improper expectation which it is
dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer,
that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason,
but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common
occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an
expectation that requires the common course of things to
be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.
Johnson, Letter (June 8, 1762)
31 Faust. Look up!—The peaks, gigantic and supernal,
Proclaim the hour most solemn now is nearing. They early
may enjoy the light eternal
That later to us here below is wended.
Now on the alpine meadows, sloping, vernal,
A clear and lavish glory has descended
And step by step fulfils its journey’s ending.
The sun steps forth!—Alas, already blinded,
| turn away, the pain my vision rending.
Thus is it ever when a hope long yearning
Has made a wish its own, supreme, transcending.
And finds Fulfilment’s portals outward turning;
From those eternal deeps bursts ever higher
Too great a flame, we stand, with wonder burning.
To kindle life’s fair torch we did aspire
And seas of flame—and what a flame!—embrace us!
Is it Love? Is it Hate? that twine us with their fire,
In alternating joy and pain enlace us.
So that again toward earth we turn our gazing,
Baffled, to hide in youth’s fond veils our faces.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 1, 4695
32 Hopes, what are they?—Beads of morning
Strung on slender blades of grass;
Or a spider’s web adorning
In a strait and treacherous pass.
Wordsworth. Inscription Supposed to be Found in and
Near a Hermit's Cell
33 The concept of the sickness unto death must be
understood ... in a peculiar sense. Literally it means a
sickness the end and outcome of which is death. Titus
one speaks of a mortal sickness as synonymous with a
sickness unto death. In this sense despair cannot be
called the sickness unto death. But in the Christian
understanding of it death itself is a transition unto life. In
view of this, there is from the Christian standpoint no
earthly, bodily sickness unto death. For death is
doubtless the last phase of the sickness, but death is not
the last thing. If in the strictest sense we are to speak of a
sickness unto death, it must be one in which the last
thing is death, and death the last thing. And this
precisely is despair.
Yet in another and still more definite sense despair is
the sickness unto death. It is indeed very far from being
true that, literally understood, one dies of this sickness,
or that this sickness ends with bodily death. On the
contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this, not to
be able to die. So it has much in common with the
situation of the moribund when he lies and struggles with
death, and cannot die. So to be sick unto death is, not to
be able to die—yet not as though there were hope of life;
no, the hopelessness in this ease is that even the last
hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest
danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes
acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one
hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that
death has become one’s hope, despair is the
disconsolateness of not being able to die.
It is in this last sense that despair is the sickness unto death,
this agonizing contradiction, this sickness in the self,
everlastingly to die, to die and yet not to die, to die the
death. For dying means that it is all over, but dying the
death means to live to experience death; and if fora
single instant this experience is possible, it is tantamount
to experiencing it forever. If one might die of despair as
one dies of a sickness, then the eternal in him, the self,
must be capable of dying in the same sense that the
body dies of sickness. But this is an impossibility; the
dying of despair transforms itself constantly into a living.
Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, I, I, C
34 Ida. Tears, idle tears, | Know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more....
Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On lips that are for others; deep as love.
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Tennyson, The Princess, IV, 21
35 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is
called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the
desperate city you go into the desperate country, and
have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and
muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is
concealed even under what are called the games and
amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for
this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom
not to do desperate things.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
36 The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon.
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two—is gone.
FitzGerald, Rubaiyat, XVI
37 Not, I'll not, carrion comfort. Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of
man
In me or, most weary, cry 1 can no more. | can; Can
something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
G. M. Hopkins, Carrion Comfort
38 Zeus did not wish man, however much he might be
tormented by the other evils, to fling away his life, but to
go on letting himself be tormented again and again.
Therefore he gives man hope,— in reality it is the worst of
all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 71
39 As for despair, the term has a very simple meaning. It
means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only
with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of
probabilities which make our action possible. When we
want something, we always have to reckon with
probabilities. | may be counting on the arrival of a friend.
The friend is coming by rail or streetcar; this supposes
that the train will arrive on schedule, or that the streetcar
will not jump the track. | am left in the realm of
possibility; but possibilities are to be reckoned with only
to the point where my action comports with the ensemble
of these possibilities, and no further. The moment the
possibilities | am considering are not rigorously involved
by my action, | ought to disengage myself from them,
because no God, no scheme, can adapt the world and its
possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, "Conquer
yourself rather than the world," he meant essentially the
same thing.
Sartre, Existentialism
4.6 Joy and Sorrow
1 And if ye take this also from me, and mischief befall him,
ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave.
Genesis 44:29
2 Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning.
Psalm 30:5
3 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to
the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and
the living will lay it to his heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of
the countenance the heart is made better.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but
the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than fora
man to hear the song of fools.
For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the
laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 7:2-6
4 Achilleus. There is not any advantage to be won from grim
lamentation. Such is the way the gods spun life for
unfortunate mortals, that we live in unhappiness, but the
gods themselves have no sorrows.
Homer, Iliad, XXIV, 523
5 So spoke great Achilleus and went back into the shelter
and sat down on the elaborate couch from which he had
risen, against the inward wall, and now spoke his word to
Priam:
‘Your son is given back to you, aged sir, as you asked
it.
He lies on a bier. When dawn shows you yourself shall
see him as you take him away. Now you and | must
remember our supper.
For even Niobe, she of the lovely tresses, remembered
to eat, whose twelve children were destroyed in her
palace, six daughters, and six sons in the pride of their
youth, whom Apollo killed with arrows from his silver bow,
being angered with Niobe....
But she remembered to cat when she was worn out
with weeping.’
Homer, Iliad, XXIV, 596
6 Oedipus. Who will be kind to Oedipus this evening And
give the wanderer charity?
Though he ask little and receive still less,
It is sufficient:
Suffering and time, Vast time, have been instructors in
contentment,
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 3
7 Attendant. There’s nothing like the sight
Of an old enemy down on his luck.
Euripides, Heracleidae, 939
8 [phigenia. The unfortunate, having once known prosperity
themselves, bear no kind feelings towards their luckier
neighbours.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 353
9 Pericles. Grief is felt not so much for the want of what we
have never known, as for the loss of that to which we
have been long accustomed.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 11, 44
10 It is difficult to convince a mourner that he grieves by his
own choice and because he thinks he must.
Cicero, Disputations, Ill, 33
11 What first AEneas in this place beheld,
Reviv’d his courage, and his fear expell’d.
For while, expecting there the queen, he rais’d
His wond’ring eyes, and round the temple gaz’d.
Admir’d the fortune of the rising town.
The striving artists, and their arts’ renown;
He saw, in order painted on the wall,
Whatever did unhappy Troy befall:
The wars that fame around the world had blown,
All to the life, and ev’ry leader known.
There Agamemnon, Priam here, he spies,
And fierce Achilles, who both kings defies.
He stopp’d, and weeping said: "O friend! ev’n here
The monuments of Trojan woes appear!
Our known disasters fill ev’n foreign lands:
See there, where old unhappy Priam stands!
Ev’n the mute walls relate the warrior’s fame,
And Trojan griefs the Tyrians’ pity claim."
Virgil, Aeneid, |
12 No pleasure is unalloyed: some trouble ever intrudes
upon our happiness.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII
13 So much more does joy without discretion transport and
agitate the mind than either fear or sorrow.
Plutarch, Aratus
14 | must die. Must I then die lamenting? | must be put in
chains. Must | then also lament? | must go into exile. Docs
any man then hinder me from going with smiles and
cheerfulness and contentment?
Epictetus, Discourses, I, 1
15 Imagine every man who is grieved at anything or
discontented to be like a pig which is sacrificed and kicks
and screams.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 28
16 Every soul is wretched that is bound in affection of mortal
things: it is tormented to lose them, and in their loss
becomes aware of the wretchedness which in reality it
had even before it lost them.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 6
17 Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it
cleaves to sorrow.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 10
18 What is it in the soul... that makes it delight more to have
found or regained the things it loves than if it had always
had them? Creatures other than man bear the same
witness, and all things are filled with testimonies
acclaiming that it is so. The victorious general has his
triumph; but he would not have been victorious if he had
not fought; and the greater danger there was in the
battle, the greater rejoicing in the triumph. The storm
tosses the sailors and threatens to wreck the ship; all are
pale with the threat of death. But the sky grows clear, the
sea calm, and now they are as wild with exultation as
before with fear. A friend is sick and his pulse threatens
danger; all who want him well feel as if they shared his
sickness. He begins to recover, though he cannot yet
walk as strongly as of old; and there is more joy than
there was before, when he was still well and could walk
properly.
Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 3
19 The pleasures of this life for which | should weep are in
conflict with the sorrows of this life in which | should
rejoice, and | know not on which side stands the victory.
Woe is me, Lord, have pity on me! For | have likewise
sorrows which are evil and these are in conflict with Joys
that are good, and | know not on which side stands the
victory. Woe is me, Lord have mercy upon me!... Is not the
life of man on earth a trial? Who would choose trouble
and difficulty? Thou dost command us to endure them,
not to love them. No one loves what he endures, though
he may love to endure. For though he rejoices at his
endurance, yet he would rather that there were nothing
to endure. In adversity | desire prosperity, in prosperity |
fear adversity. Yet what middle place is there between the
two, where man’s life may be other than trial? There is
woe and woe again in the prosperity of this world, woe
from the fear of adversity, woe from the corruption of joy!
There is woe in the adversity of this world, and a second
woe and a third, from the longing for prosperity, and
because adversity itself is hard, and for fear that
endurance may break! Is not man’s life upon earth trial
without intermission?
Augustine, Confessions, X, 28
20 Sadness may be considered in two ways; as existing
actually, and as existing in the memory, and in both ways
sadness can cause pleasure. Because sadness, as actually
existing, causes pleasure, since it brings to mind that
which is loved, the absence of which causes sadness; and
yet the mere thought of it gives pleasure.—The
recollection of sadness becomes a cause of pleasure on
account of the subsequent deliverance, because absence
of evil is looked upon as something good; hence
according as a man thinks that he has been delivered
from that which caused him sorrow and pain, so much
reason has he to rejoice.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 32, 4
21 A hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up,
because the soul is more intent on it; but if it be allowed
to escape, the soul’s intention is dispersed as it were on
outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened.
This is why when men, burdened with sorrow, make
outward show of their sorrow, by tears or groans or even
by words, their sorrow is assuaged.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 38,2
22 Immoderate sorrow is a disease of the mind, but
moderate sorrow is the mark of a well disposed soul
according to the present state of life.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-Il, 59,3
23 Pandar. For as all joys on earth are short and brief,
So time will bring for sorrow its relief.
Because if Fortune’s wheel should cease to turn,
Then Fortune she at once no more would be;
And since in no fixed place she may sojourn,
It may chance, by mere mutability,
Such good luck she hath now in store for thee,
And such a boon to thee she soon will bring.
That for the joy of it, thy heart shall sing.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 121-122
24 Pandar. For that same ground that bears the useless
weed,
Bears also wholesome herbs, and quite as oft;
And where the rough and stinging nettles breed,
Waxes the rose, so sweet and smooth and soft;
And next the valley, lifts the hill aloft,
And after night, then comes the glad tomorrow.
And so is joy the after end of sorrow.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 136
25 "O God," she cried, "these blessings temporal,
Which scholars falsely call felicity,
With bitterness are mingled and with gall!
God only knows what anguish then hath he
Who sees his empty joys before him flee!
For either joys arrive inopportune.
Or else they flit and vanish all too soon!
"O fickle fate! O worldly joy unstable!
Of men thou makest but a sport and play!
All know that they to hold their joy are able,
Or know it not—there is no other way.
Now if one knows it not, how may he say
That he of perfect joy perceives the spark,
If ignorance still leaves him in the dark?
"But if he knows that joy is transitory,
Since joy in every worldly thing must flee,
This troubling thought diminishes the glory
Of earthly joy, and so in such degree,
Imperfect must be his felicity;
If loss of joy he fears a jot or tittle.
This proves that earthly Joy is worth but little.
"And so this problem | must thus decide.
That verily, for aught that | can see.
No perfect joy can in this world abide."
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Il, 117-120
26 O true it is, before they can be cured,
Whether of fever or other great disease,
The sick must drink, for all they have endured.
Full bitter drink, and for their better ease,
Must oft partake of things that do not please,
All this to Troilus may be applied,
Who after pain it glad and satisfied.
And sweetness now seemed more than ever sweet.
For all the bitterness that went before;
And now the lime goes by on winged feet,
In joy so great, it never could be more,
Or better pay for all the griefs they bore.
And here | beg that lovers all will heed
This good example at their time of need!
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, 174-175
27 And to be glad they often her besought,
Which to her grief such mitigation brought
As for a splitting headache one might feel
If one were kindly rubbed upon the heel.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, IV, 104
28 Good friends, my readers, who peruse this book.
Be not offended, whilst on it you look;
Denude yourselves of all deprav'd affection,
For it contains no badness nor infection:
‘Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth
Of any value, but in point of mirth;
Thinking therefore how sorrow might your mind
Consume, 1 could no apter subject find;
One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span;
Because to laugh is proper to the man.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, |, To the Readers
29 Metrodorus used to say that in sadness there is some
alloy of pleasure. | do not Know whether he meant
something else, but for my part 1 indeed imagine that
there is design, consent, and pleasure in feeding ones
melancholy; | mean beyond the ambition that can also be
involved. There is some shadow of daintiness and luxury
that smiles on us and flatters us in the very lap of
melancholy.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 20, We Taste Nothing Pure
30 Richard. | cannot weep; for all my body's moisture
Scarce screes to quench my furnace-burning heart:
Nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burthen;
For selfsame wind that | should speak withal
Is kindling coals that fires all my breast.
And burns me up with flames that tears would quench.
To weep is to make less the depth of grief:
Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me.
Shakespeare, Ill Henry VI, Il, 1,84
31 Pandulph. You hold too heinous a respect of grief.
Constance. He talks to me that never had a son.
King Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child.
Const. Grief fills the room up of my absent child.
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have | reason to be fond of grief?
Shakespeare, King John, III, iv, 90
32 Claudio. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy; | were but
little happy, if 1 could say how much.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II, i, 317
33 Benedick Every one can master a grief but he that has it.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing III, 11, 29
34 King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature,
Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. 'Tis unmanly grief.
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd.
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'Tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died today,
“This must be so.”
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ti, 87
33 King. When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions,
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, v, 78
36 Ross. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
That ever yet they heard.
Macduff Hum! | guess at it.
Ross. Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter’d. To relate the manner
Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer.
To add the death of you.
Malcolm. Merciful heaven!
What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
Macd, My children too?
Ross. Wife, children, servants, all
That could be found.
Macd. And | must be from thence!
My wife kill’d too?
Ross. | have said.
Mal. Be comforted.
Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge
To cure this deadly grief.
Macd. He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
Mal. Dispute it like a man.
Macd. | shall do so;
But | must also feel it as a man.
| cannot but remember such things were.
That were most precious to me.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, iii, 201
37 However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for
the time, if you can prevail upon him to enter into some
amusement; and however happy a man may be, he will
soon be discontented and wretched, if he be not diverted
and occupied by some passion or pursuit which prevents
weariness from overcoming him. Without amusement
there is no joy; with amusement there is no sadness.
Pascal, Pensees, Il, 139
38 Hence loathed Melancholy
Of Cerberus, and blackest midnight bom,
In Stygian Cave forlorn
’Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy,
Find out som uncouth cell.
Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-Raven sings;
There under Ebon shades, and low-brow’d Rocks,
As ragged as thy Locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But com thou Goddes fair and free,
In heav’n yeleap’d Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To Ilvy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as som Sager sing)
The frolick Wind that breathes the Spring,
Zephir with Aurora playing.
As he met her once a Maying,
There on Beds of Violets blew.
And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew,
Fill’d her with thee a daughter fair,
So bucksom, blith, and debonair.
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrincled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Com, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if | give thee honour due.
Mirth, admit me of thy crue
To live with her, and live with thee.
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the Lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night.
From his watch-towre in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to com in spight of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine,
Or the twisted Eglantine.
Milton, L'Allegro, 1
39 Hence vain deluding joyes,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes;
Dwell in som idle brain.
And fancies bond with gaudy shapes possess.
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddes, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose Saintly visage is too bright
To hit the Sense of human sight;
And therfore to our weaker view.
Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue.
Black, but such as in esteem.
Prince Memnons sister might beseem.
Or that Starr’d Ethiope Queen that strove
To set her beauties praise above
The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended.
Thee bright-hair’d Vesta long of yore.
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she (in Saturns raign,
Such mixture was not held a stain)
Oft in glimmering Bowres, and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Com pensive Nun, devout and pure.
Sober, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowring with majestick train.
And sable stole of Cipres Lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Com, but keep thy wonted state,
With eev’n step, and musing gate,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thy self to Marble, till
With a sad Leaden downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
And joyn with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet.
And hears the Muses in a ring,
Ay round about Joves Altar sing.
And adde to these retired Leasure,
That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring.
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The Cherub Contemplation,
And the mute Silence hist along,
‘Less Philome! will daign a Song,
In her sweetest, saddest plight.
Smoothing the rugged brow of night.
While Cynthia checks her Dragon yoke.
Gently o're th’accustom’d Oke;
Sweet Bird that shunn’st the noise of folly,
Most musicall, most melancholy!
Milton, [1 Panseroso, 1
40 Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine,
The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat,
The glowing Violet.
The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine.
With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies....
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the haples youth.
Milton, Lycidas, 142
41 The desire which springs from joy, other things being
equal, is stronger than that which springs from sorrow.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 18
42 Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the
present or assured approaching possession of a good; and
we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in
our power that we can use it when we please. Thus a man
almost starved has joy at the arrival of relief, even before
he has the pleasure of using it: and a father, in whom the
very well-being of his children causes delight, is always,
as long as his children are in such a state, in the
possession of that good; for he needs but to reflect on it,
to have that pleasure.
Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of
a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or
the sense of a present evil.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX, 7-8
43 Remorse goes to sleep when our fortunes are prosperous,
and makes itself felt more keenly in adversity.
Rousseau, Confessions, I]
44 The subject of grief for the loss of relations and friends
being introduced, | observed that it was strange to
consider how soon it in general wears away. Dr. Taylor
mentioned a gentleman of the neighbourhood as the only
instance he had ever known of a person who had
endeavoured to retain grief. He told Dr. Taylor, that after
his Lady's death, which affected him deeply, he reso/ved
that the grief, which he cherished with a kind of sacred
fondness, should be lasting; but that he found he could
not keep it long. johnson. "All grief for what cannot in the
course of nature be helped, soon wears away; in some
sooner, indeed, in some later; but it never continues very
long, unless where there is madness. ... If, indeed, the
cause of our grief is occasioned by our own misconduct, if
grief is mingled with remorse of conscience, it should be
lasting."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Sept. 14, 1777)
45 Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 8
46 A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know.
Thro' the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 53
47 On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet—
But hark!—that heavy sound breaks in once more
As if the clouds its echo would repeat.
Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Ill, 22
48 Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind but affections of
the will, and so they do not lie in the domain of memory.
We cannot recall our joys and sorrows; by which | mean
that we cannot renew them. We can recall only the ideas
that accompanied them; and, in particular, the things we
were led to say; and these form a gauge of our feelings at
the time. Hence our memory of joys and sorrows is always
imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference to us
as soon as they are over. This explains the vanity of the
attempt, which we sometimes make, to revive the
pleasures and the pains of the past. Pleasure and pain are
essentially an affair of the will; and the will, as such, is
not possessed of memory, which is a function of the
intellect; and this in its turn gives out and takes in
nothing but thoughts and ideas, which are not here in
question.
It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly
recall the good lime that is now no more; but that in good
days we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of
the bad.
Schopenhauer, Further Psychological Observations
49 Such was the deck where now lay the Handsome Sailor.
Through the rosetan of his complexion no pallor could
have shown. It would have taken days of sequestration
from the winds and the sun to have brought about the
effacement of that. Hut the skeleton in the cheekbone at
the point of its angle was just beginning delicately to be
defined under the warm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-
contained, some brief experiences devour our human
tissue as secret fire in a ship's hold consumes cotton in
the bale.
Melville, Billy Budd
50 "It is Rachel of old." said the elder [Father Zossima],
“weeping for her children, and will not be comforted
because they are not. Such is the lot set on earth for you
mothers. He not comforted. Consolation is not what you
need. Weep and be not consoled, but weep. Only every
time that you weep be sure to remember that your little
son is one of the angels of God, that he looks down from
there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and
points at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will
you keep that great mother’s grief. But it will turn in the
end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears
of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it
from sin."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. |, Il, 3
51 Father Zossima. Tins is not your place for the time. | bless
you for great service in the world. Yours will be a long
pilgrimage. And you will have to take a wife, too. You will
have to bear alt before you come back. There will much
to do. Hut | don’t doubt of you, and so 1 send you forth.
Christ IS with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not
abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow
you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in
sorrow seek happiness.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. |, H, 7
52 The spiritual haughtiness and nausea of every man who
has suffered profoundly—it almost determines the order
of rank how profoundly human beings can suffer—his
shuddering certainly, which permeates and colors him
through and through, (hat by virtue of his suffering he
knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly
know, and that he knows his way and has once been "at
home" in many distant, terrifying worlds of which know
nothing"—this spiritual and silent haughtiness of the
sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the
"initiated," of the almost sacrificed, finds all kinds of
disguises necessary to protect itself against contact with
obtrusive and pitying hands and altogether against
everything that is not its equal in suffering. Profound
suffering makes noble; it separates.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1X, 270
53 The special kind of boredom from which modem urban
populations suffer is intimately bound up with their
separation from the life of Earth. It makes life hot and
dusty and thirsty, like a pilgrimage in the desert. Among
those who are rich enough to choose their way of life, the
particular brand of unendurable boredom from which
they suffer is due, paradoxical as this may seem, to their
fear of boredom. In flying from the fructifying kind of
boredom, they fall a prey to the other far worse kind. A
happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is
only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1, 4
34 Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
Yeats, Easter 1916
4.7 Pleasure and Pain
1 A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and
to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of
his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him
under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 8:15
2 Odysseus. There is no boon in life more sweet, | say, than
when a summer joy holds all the realm, and banqueters
sit listening to a harper in a great hall, by rows of tables
heaped with bread and roast meat, while a steward goes
to dip up wine and brim your cups again. Here is the
flower of life, it seems to me!
Homer, Odyssey, IX, 5
3 Herald. Who, except the gods, can live time through
forever without any pain?
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 553
4 Chorus. For sufferers it is sweet to know beforehand clearly
the pain that still remains for them.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bounds, 698
5 Phaedrus. Bodily pleasures... almost always have previous
pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly
called slavish.
Plato, Phaedrus, 258B
6 Socrates. How singular is the thing called pleasure, and
how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to
be the opposite of it; for they are never present to a man
at the same instant, and yet he who pursues either is
generally compelled to take the other; their bodies are
two, but they are joined by a single head.
Plato, Phaedo, 60A
7 Glaucon. Pleasure deprives a man of the use of his
faculties quite as much as pain.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 402B
8 Socrates. He whose desires are drawn towards knowledge
in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the
soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasure.. .. Such an one
is sure to be temperate and the reverse of covetous; for
the motives which make another man desirous of having
and spending, have no place in his character.
Plato, Republic, Vl, 485B
9 Athenian Stranger. The true life should neither seek for
pleasures, nor, on the other hand, entirely avoid pains,
but should embrace the middle state.
Plato, Laws, VII, 792B
10 Since no one nature or state either is or is thought the
best for all, neither do all pursue the same pleasure; yet
all pursue pleasure. And perhaps they actually pursue not
the pleasure they think they pursue nor that which they
would say they pursue, but the same pleasure; for all
things have by nature something divine in them.
Aristotle, 1153b28
11 The pleasures of creatures different in kind differ in kind,
and it is plausible to suppose that those of a single
species do not differ. But they vary to no small extent, in
the case of men at least; the same things delight some
people and pain others, and are painful and odious to
some, and pleasant to and liked by others. This happens,
too, in the case of sweet things; the same things do not
seem sweet to a man in a fever and a healthy man—nor
hot to a weak man and one in good condition. The same
happens in other cases. But in all such matters that
which appears to the good man is thought to be really so.
If this is correct, as it seems to be, and virtue and the
good man as such are the measure of each thing, those
also will be pleasures which appear so to him, and those
things pleasant which he enjoys. If the things he finds
tiresome seem pleasant to some one, that is nothing
Surprising; for men may be ruined and spoilt in many
ways; but the things are not pleasant, but only pleasant
to these people and to people in this condition. Those
which are admittedly disgraceful plainly should not be
said to be pleasures, except to a perverted taste; but of
those that are thought to be good what kind of pleasure
or what pleasure should be said to be that proper to man?
Is it not plain from the corresponding activities? The
pleasures follow these. Whether, then, the perfect and
supremely happy man has one or more activities, the
pleasures that perfect these will be said in the strict
sense to be pleasures proper to man, and the rest will be
so in a secondary and fractional way, as are the activities.
Aristotle, 1176a8
12 It is always the first sign of love, that besides enjoying
some one’s presence, we remember him when he is gone,
and feel pain as well as pleasure, because he is there no
longer. Similarly there is an element of pleasure even in
mourning and lamentation for the departed. There is
grief, indeed, at his loss, but pleasure in remembering
him and as it were seeing him before us in his deeds and
in his life.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1370b22
13 We must consider that of desires some are natural, others
vain, and of the natural some are necessary and others
merely natural; and of the necessary some are necessary
for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and
others for very life. The right understanding of these facts
enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health
of the body and the soul’s freedom from disturbance,
since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to
obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain
and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the
tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature
has not to wander as though in search of something that
iS missing, and to look for some other thing by which he
can fulfil the good of the soul and the good of the body.
For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel
pain owing to the absence of pleasure; but when we do
not feel pain, v.'c no longer need pleasure. And for this
cause we Call pleasure the beginning and end of the
blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good
innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of
choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again,
using the feeling as the standard by which we judge
every good.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
14 O miserable minds of men! O blinded breasts! in what
darkness of life and in how great dangers is passed this
term of life whatever its duration! not choose to see that
nature craves for herself no more than this, that pain hold
aloof from the body, and she in mind enjoy a feeling of
pleasure exempt from care and fear? Therefore we see
that for the body's nature few things are needed at all,
such and such only as lake away pain.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
L5 If someone maintains that pain is the greatest evil, what
part can courage play in his philosophy? Courage is
nothing less than indifference to hardship and pain.
Cicero, De Officiis, Ill, 33
16 The best thing we can say about pleasure is to admit that
it may add some spice to life. But it certainly adds
nothing really suitable.
Cicero, De Officiis, Ill, 33
17 Even when theyre over, pleasures of a depraved nature
are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same
way as a criminal’s anxiety doesn’t end with the
commission of the crime, even if it’s undetected at the
time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable;
even if they don’t do one any harm, theyre fleeting in
character. Look around for some enduring good instead.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 27
18 The better pleasures gained in successful action and
effort leave the baser appetites no time or place, and
make active and heroic men forget them.
Plutarch, Cimon and Lucullus Compared
19 If you are dazzled by the semblance of any promised
pleasure, guard yourself against being bewildered by it;
but let the affair wait your leisure, and procure yourself
some delay. Then bring to your mind both points of lime—
that in which you shall enjoy the pleasure, and that in
which you will repent and reproach yourself, after you
have enjoyed it—and set before you, in opposition to
these, how you will rejoice and applaud yourself if you
abstain. And even though it should appear to you a
seasonable gratification, lake heed that its enticements
and allurements and seductions may not subdue you, but
set in opposition to this how much better it is to be
conscious of having gained so great a victory.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XXXIV
20 The pleasure demanded for the Sage’s life cannot be in
the enjoyments of the licentious or in any gratifications of
the body—there is no place for these, and they stifle
happiness—nor in any violent emotions—what could so
move the Sage?—it can be only such pleasure as there
must be where Good is, pleasure that does not rise from
movement and is not a thing of process, for all that is
good is immediately present to the Sage and the Sage is
present to himself: his pleasure, his contentment, stands,
immovable.
Plotinus, First Ennead, IV, 12
21 In old age.,. [the Sage] will desire neither pains nor
pleasures to hamper him; he will desire nothing of this
world, pleasant or painful; his one desire will be to know
nothing of the body. If he should meet with pain he will
pit against it the powers he holds to meet it; but pleasure
and health and ease of life will not mean any increase of
happiness to him nor will their contraries destroy or
lessen it.
Plotinus, First Ennead, IV, 14
22 Men procure the actual pleasures of human life by way of
pain—I mean not only the pain that comes upon us
unlocked for and beyond our will, but unpleasantness
planned and willingly accepted. There is no pleasure in
eating or drinking, unless the discomfort of hunger and
thirst come before. Drunkards eat salty things to develop
a thirst so great as to be painful, and pleasure arises
when the liquor quenches the pain of the thirst. And it is
the custom that promised brides do not give themselves
at once lest the husband should hold the gift cheap
unless delay had set him craving.
We see this in base and dishonourable pleasure, but
also in the pleasure that is licit and permitted, and again
in the purest and most honourable friendship. We have
seen it in the ease of him who had been dead and was
brought back to life, who had been lost and was found.
Universally the greater joy is heralded by greater pain.
Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 3
23 Philosophy. All pleasures have this way: those who enjoy
them they drive on with stings. Pleasure, like the winged
bee, scatters its honey sweet, then flies away, and with a
clinging sting it strikes the hearts it touches.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, III
24 Although the name of passion is more appropriate to
those passions which have a corruptive and evil
tendency, such as bodily ailments, and sadness and fear
in the soul, yet some passions are ordered to something
good... . And in this sense pleasure is called a passion.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 31,1
25 We take pleasure both in those things which we desire
naturally, when we get them, and in those things which
we desire as a result of reason. But we do not speak of joy
except when pleasure follows reason; and so we do not
ascribe joy to irrational animals, but only pleasure.
Now whatever we desire naturally can also be the
object of reasoned desire and pleasure, and consequently
whatever can be the object of pleasure, can also be the
object of joy in rational beings. And yet everything is not
always the object of joy, since sometimes one feels a
certain pleasure in the body without rejoicing in it
according to reason. And accordingly pleasure extends to
more things than does joy.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 31, 3
26 If ... we compare intellectual pleasures with sensible
pleasures according as we delight in the very actions, for
instance in sensitive and in intellectual knowledge,
without doubt intellectual pleasures are much greater
than sensible pleasures. For man takes much more
delight in knowing something, by understanding it, than
in knowing something by perceiving it with his sense;
both because intellectual knowledge is more perfect and
because it is better known, since the intellect reflects on
its own act more than sense does. Moreover intellectual
knowledge is more loved; for there is no one who would
not forfeit his bodily sight rather than his intellectual
vision in the way beasts or fools are without the latter, as
Augustine says in the City of God.
If, however, intellectual spiritual pleasures be
compared with sensible bodily pleasures, then, in
themselves and absolutely speaking, spiritual pleasures
are greater. And this appears from the consideration of
the three things needed for pleasure; namely, the good
which is brought into conjunction, that to which it is
joined, and the union itself. For spiritual good is both
greater and more loved than bodily good; a sign of this is
that men abstain from even the greatest bodily pleasures,
rather than suffer loss of honour which is an intellectual
good. Likewise the intellectual part is much more noble
and more knowing than the sensitive part. Also the
conjunction is more intimate, more perfect and more firm.
More intimate, because the senses stop at the outward
accidents of a thing, while the intellect penetrates to the
essence; for the object of the intellect is what a thing is.
More perfect, because the conjunction of the sensible to
the sense implies movement, which is an imperfect act;
thus sensible pleasures are not wholly together at once,
but some part of them is passing away, while some other
part is looked forward to as yet to be realized, as is
manifest in pleasures of the table and in sexual
pleasures. But intelligible things are without movement;
hence pleasures of this kind are realized all at once. They
are more firm, because the objects of bodily pleasures are
corruptible and soon pass away; but spiritual goods are
incorruptible.
On the other hand, in relation to us, bodily pleasures
are more vehement, for three reasons. First, because
sensible things are more known to us than intelligible
things. Secondly, because sensible pleasures, through
being passions of the sensitive appetite, are
accompanied by some alteration in the body; but this
does not occur in spiritual pleasures unless by reason of a
certain reaction of the superior appetite on the lower.
Thirdly, because bodily pleasures are sought as remedies
for bodily defects or troubles, from which various griefs
arise. And so bodily pleasures, because they come after
griefs of this kind, are felt the more, and consequently are
more welcome than spiritual pleasures, which have no
contrary griefs.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 31, 5
27 Doing good to another may give pleasure in three ways.
First, in relation to the effect, which is the good conferred
on another. In this respect, since through being united to
others by love we look upon their good as being our own,
we take pleasure in the good we do to others, especially
to our friends, as in our own good. Secondly, in
consideration of the end; as when a man, from doing
good to another, hopes to get some good for himself,
either from God or from man; for hope is a cause of
pleasure. Thirdly, in consideration of the principle; and
thus, doing good to another can give pleasure in respect
of a three-fold principle. One is the power of doing good;
and in this regard doing good to another becomes
pleasant in so far as it arouses in man an imagination of
abundant good existing in him, of which he is able to give
others a share. Therefore men take pleasure in their
children, and in their own works, as being things on
which they bestow a share of their own good. Another
principle is a man’s habitual inclination to do good, by
reason of which doing good becomes connatural to him,
for which reason the liberal man takes pleasure in giving
to others. The third principle is the motive; for instance
when a man is moved by one whom he loves to do good
to someone. For whatever we do or suffer for a friend is
pleasant, because love is the principle cause of pleasure.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-Il, 32, 6
28 Bodily pleasures hinder the use of reason in three ways.
First, by distracting the reason ... we attend much to that
which pleases us. Now when the attention is firmly fixed
on one thing, it is either weakened in respect of other
things, or it is entirely withdrawn from them; and thus if
the bodily pleasure be great, either it entirely hinders the
use of reason, by concentrating the mind’s attention on
itself, or else it hinders it considerably. Secondly, by
being contrary to reason. Because some pleasures,
especially those that are in excess, are contrary to the
order of reason, and in this sense the Philosopher says
that bodily pleasures destroy the estimate of prudence,
but not the speculative estimate, to which they are not
opposed, for instance that the three angles of a triangle
are together equal to two right angles. In the first sense,
however, they hinder both estimates. Thirdly, by fettering
the reason, in so far as bodily pleasure is followed by a
certain alteration in the body, greater even than in the
other passions, in proportion as the appetite is more
vehemently affected towards a present than towards an
absent thing. Now such bodily disturbances hinder the
use of reason, aS may be seen in the ease of drunkards, in
whom the use of reason is fettered or hindered.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 33, 3
29 Now the greatest good of everything is its last end. And
the end ... is twofold: namely, the thing itself, and the use
of that thing; thus the miser’s end is either money, or the
possession of money. Accordingly, man’s last end may be
said to be either God Who is the Supreme Good
absolutely; or the enjoyment of God, which denotes a
certain pleasure in the last end. And in this sense a
certain pleasure of man may be said to be the greatest
among human goods.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 34, 3
30 Pain itself can be pleasurable accidentally in so far as it is
accompanied by wonder, as in stage-plays; or in so far as
it recalls a beloved object to one’s memory, and makes
one feel one’s love for the thing, whose absence gives us
pain. Consequently, since love is pleasant, both pain and
whatever else results from love, in so far as they remind
us of our love, are pleasant. And, for this reason, we
derive pleasure even from pains depicted on the stage, in
so far as, in witnessing them, we perceive ourselves to
conceive a certain love for those who are there
represented.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 35, 3
31 The greatest of all pleasures consists in the
contemplation of truth.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 38, 4
32 Every animal, as soon as it is born, whether rational or
brute, loves itself and fears and flees those things which
are counter to it, and hates them....
| say, then, that from the beginning it loves itself,
although without discrimination. Then it comes to
distinguish the things which are most pleasant, and Jess
and more detestable, and follows and flees in greater and
less degree according as its consciousness distinguishes
not only in other things which it loves secondarily, but
just in itself which it loves primarily. And recognising in
itself divers parts, it loves those in itself most which are
most noble. And since the mind is a more noble part of
man than the body, it loves that more; and thus, loving
itself primarily and other things for its own sake, and
loving the better part of itself better, it is clear that it
loves the mind better than the body or aught else; which
mind it ought by nature to love more than aught else.
Wherefore if the mind always delights in the exercise of
the thing it loves (which is the fruition of love), exercise
in that thing which it loves most is the most delightful.
The exercise of our mind then is most delightful to us;
and that which is most delightful to us constitutes our
felicity and our blessedness, beyond which there is no
delight, nor any equal to it, as may be seen by whoso well
considers the preceding argument.
Dante, Convivio, IV, 22
33 This should console us, that in the course of nature, if the
pain is violent, it is short; if it is long, it is light. ,.. You
will not feel it very long, if you feel it too much; it will put
an end to itself, or to you; both come to the same thing. If
you cannot bear it, it will bear you off.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 14, That the Taste of Good
34 But to speak in good earnest, isn’t man a miserable
animal? Hardly is it in his power, by his natural condition,
to taste a single pleasure pure and entire, and still he is
at pains to curtail that pleasure by his reason.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 30, Of Moderation
35 If we got our headache before getting drunk, we should
take care not to drink too much; but pleasure, to deceive
us, walks ahead and hides her sequel from us.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 39, Of Solitude
36 When | imagine man besieged by desirable delights—let
us put the case that all his members should be forever
seized with a pleasure like that of generation at its most
excessive point—l| feel him sink under the weight of his
delight, and | see him wholly incapable of supporting a
pleasure so pure, so constant, and so universal. In truth,
he flees it when he is in it, and naturally hastens to
escape it, as from a place where he cannot stand firm,
where he is afraid of sinking.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 20, We Taste Nothing Pure
37 Intemperance is the plague of sensual pleasure; and
temperance is not its scourge, it is its seasoning.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
38 Romeo. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Il, ti, 1
39 Juliet. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Il, ti, 185
40 Bolingbroke. O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more
Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.
Shakespeare, Richard II, I, tii, 294
41 Leonato. There was never yet philosopher That could
endure the toothache patiently. However they have writ
the style of gods And made a push at chance and
sufferance.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, V, i, 35
42 The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning, it
far surpasseth all other in nature. For, shall the pleasures
of the affections so exceed the pleasure of the sense, as
much as the obtaining of desire or victory exceedeth a
song or a dinner? and must not of consequence the
pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the
pleasures of the affections? We see in all other pleasures
there is satiety, and after they be used, their verdure
departeth; which showeth well they be but deceits of
pleasure, and not pleasures: and that it was the novelty
which pleased, and not the quality.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, VIII, 5
43 The deceiving of the senses is one of the pleasures of the
senses.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, X, 13
44 Pleasure ... or delight is the appearance or sense of good;
and molestation or displeasure, the appearance or sense
of evil. And consequently all appetite, desire, and love is
accompanied with some delight more or less; and all
hatred and aversion with more or less displeasure and
offence.
Of pleasures, or delights, some arise from the sense of
an object present; and those may be called pleasures of
sense (the word sensual, as it is used by those only that
condemn them, having no place till there be laws). Of this
kind are all onerations and exonerations of the body; as
also all that is pleasant, in the sight, hearing, smell, taste,
or touch. Others arise from the expectation that proceeds
from foresight of the end or consequence of things,
whether those things in the sense please or displease:
and these are p/easures of the mind of him that draweth
those consequences, and are generally called joy. In the
like manner, displeasures are some in the sense, and
called pain; others, in the expectation of consequences,
and are called grief.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 6
45 The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They
are different in all men, and they vary to such an extent
in each individual that there is no man who differs more
from another man than from himself at different times. A
man has other pleasures than a woman has; a rich man
and a poor man have different pleasures; a prince, a
warrior, a merchant, a citizen, a peasant, the old, the
young, the well, the sick, all vary in this respect; the
slightest accidents change them.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
46 Raphael. Sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine,
But live content, which is the calmest life:
But pain is perfet miserie, the worst
Of evils, and excessive, overturnes
All patience.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 459
47 The pleasures of sense are really intellectual pleasures
confusedly known. Music charms us, although its beauty
consists only in the harmonies [convenances] of numbers
and in the counting (of which we are unconscious but
which nevertheless the soul does make) of the beats or
vibrations of sounding bodies, which beats or vibrations
come together at definite intervals. The pleasure which
sight finds in good proportions is of the same nature; and
the pleasures caused by the other senses will be found to
amount to much the same thing, although we may not be
able to explain it so distinctly.
Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace, 17
48 Attention and repetition help much to the fixing any
ideas in the memory. But those which naturally at first
make the deepest and most lasting impressions, are
those which are accompanied with pleasure or pain. The
great business of the senses being, to make us take
notice of what hurts or advantages the body, it is wisely
ordered by nature, as has been shown, that pain should
accompany the reception of several ideas; which,
supplying the place of consideration and reasoning in
children, and acting quicker than consideration in grown
men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects
with that haste which is necessary for their preservation;
and in both settles in the memory a caution for the
future.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Bk. Il, X, 3
49 Amongst the simple ideas which we receive both from
sensation and reflection, pain and pleasure are two very
considerable ones. For as in the body there is sensation
barely in itself, or accompanied with pain or pleasure, so
the thought or perception of the mind is simply so, or else
accompanied also with pleasure or pain, delight or
trouble, call it how you please. These, like other simple
ideas, cannot be described, nor their names defined; the
way of knowing them is, as of the simple ideas of the
senses, only by experience. For, to define them by the
presence of good or evil, is no otherwise to make them
known to us than by making us reflect on what we feel in
ourselves, upon the several and various operations of
good and evil upon our minds, as they are differently
applied to or considered by us....
Things then are good or evil, only in reference to
pleasure or pain. ... By pleasure and pain, 1 must be
understood to mean of body or mind, as they are
commonly distinguished; though in truth they be only
different constitutions of the mind, sometimes occasioned
by disorder in the body, sometimes by thoughts of the
mind....
Pleasure and pain and that which causes them,—good
and evil, are the hinges on which our passions turn. And
if we reflect on ourselves, and observe how these, under
various considerations, operate in us; what modifications
or tempers of mind, what internal sensations (if | may so
call them) they produce in us we may thence form to
ourselves the ideas of our passions.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Bk. U, XX, 1-3
50 Men may and should correct their palates, and give relish
to what either has, or they suppose has none. The relish
of the mind is as various as that of the body, and like that
too may be altered; and it is a mistake to think that men
cannot change the displeasingness or indifferency that is
in actions into pleasure and desire, if they will do but
what is in their power.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX, 71
51 The senses have not only that advantage over
conscience, which things necessary must always have
over things chosen, but they have likewise a kind of
prescription in their favour. we feared pain much earlier
than we apprehended guilt, and were delighted with the
sensations of pleasure before we had capacities to be
charmed with the beauty of rectitude.
Johnson, Rambler No. 7
52 The armies of pain send their arrows against us on every
side, the choice is only between those which are more or
less sharp, or tinged with poison of greater or less
malignity; and the strongest armour which reason can
supply will only blunt their points, but cannot repel them.
The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands
is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the
torments of the body, we can in a great measure prc«T\’c
the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the natural
and genuine force of an evil without heightening its
acrimony or prolonging its effects.
Johnson, Rambler No. 32
53 Johnson. "When we talk of pleasure, we mean sensual
pleasure. When a man says, he had pleasure with a
woman, he does not mean conversation, but something
of a very different nature. Philosophers tell you, that
pleasure is contrary to happiness. Gross men prefer
animal pleasure. So there are men who have preferred
living among savages. Now what a wretch must he be,
who is content with such conversation as can be had
among savages! You may remember an officer at Fort
Augustus, who had served in America, told us of a woman
whom they were obliged to bind, in order to gel her back
from savage life." Boswell. "She must have been an
animal, a beast." Johnson. "Sir, she was a speaking cat."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 7, 1778)
54 The universal communicability of a pleasure involves in
its very concept that the pleasure is not one of enjoyment
arising out of mere sensation, but must be one of
reflection.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 44
55 Epicurus was not wide of the mark when he said that at
bottom all gratification is bodily sensation, and only
misunderstood himself in ranking intellectual and even
practical delight under the head of gratification.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 54
56 The value of life for us, measured simply by what we
enjoy (by the natural end of the sum of all our
inclinations, that is by happiness), is easy to decide. It is
less than nothing. For who would enter life afresh under
the same conditions? Who would even do so according to
a new, self-devised plan (which should, however, follow
the course of nature), if it also were merely directed to
enjoyment?
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 83, fn. 1
57 The superiority of intellectual to sensual pleasures
consists rather in their filling up more lime, in their
having a larger range, and in their being Jess liable to
satiety, than in their being more real and essential.
Malthus, Population, XI!
58 In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or
intellectual, reason, that faculty which enables us to
calculate consequences, is the proper corrective and
guide. It is probable, therefore, that improved reason will
always tend to prevent the abuse of sensual pleasures,
though it by no means follows that it will extinguish
them.
Malthus, Population, X!
59 Emma. One half of the world cannot understand the
pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen, Emma, IX
60 And the small ripple spilt upon the beach
Scarcely o'erpass’d the cream of your champagne.
When o’er the brim the sparkling bumpers reach,
That spring-dew of the spirit! the heart’s rain!
Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach
Who please,—the more because they preach in vain,—
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication:
Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk
The hopes of all men, and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:
But to return,—Get very drunk; and when
You wake with headache, you shall see what then.
Byron, Don Juan, 11, 178-179
61 You will find,
Though sages may pour out their wisdom’s treasure,
There is no sterner moralist than Pleasure.
Byron, Don Juan, III, 65
62 To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be
cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it
is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter
yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been
so along time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable
any more.
Melville, Moby Dick, XI!
63 | discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that
the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much
higher one than that of skill and sport.
Darwin, Autobiography
64 Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their
intellectual tastes, because they have not time or
opportunity for indulging them; and they addict
themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they
deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the
only ones to which they have access, or the only ones
which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be
questioned whether any one who has remained equally
susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly
and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages,
have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine
both.
Mill, Utilitarianism, II
65 Now to decide whether this is really so; whether mankind
do desire nothing for itself but that which is a pleasure to
them, or of which the absence is a pain; we have
evidently arrived at a question of fact and experience,
dependent, like all similar questions, upon evidence. It
can only be determined by practised self-consciousness
and self-observation, assisted by observation of others. |
believe that these sources of evidence, impartially
consulted, will declare that desiring a thing and finding it
pleasant, aversion to it and thinking of it as painful, are
phenomena entirely inseparable, or rather parts of the
Same phenomenon; in strictness of language, two
different modes of naming the same psychological fact:
that to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake
of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are
one and the same thing; and that to desire anything,
except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a
physical and metaphysical impossibility.
Mill, Utilitarianism, IV
66 It is at the same time indubitable that the replacement of
the pleasure-principle by the reality-principle can
account only for a small part, and that not the most
intense, of painful experiences. Another and no less
regular source of "pain" proceeds from the conflicts and
dissociations in the psychic apparatus during the
development of the ego towards a more highly co-
ordinated organization. Nearly all the energy with which
the apparatus is charged, comes from the inborn
instincts, but not all of these are allowed to develop to
the same stage. On the way, it over and again happens
that particular instincts, or portions of them, prove
irreconcilable in their aims or demands with others which
can be welded into the comprehensive unity of the ego.
They are, thereupon, split off from this unity by the
process of repression, retained on lower stages of psychic
development, and for the time being cut off from all
possibility of gratification. If they then succeed, as so
easily happens with the repressed sex-impulses, in
fighting their way through—along circuitous routes—to a
direct or a substitutive gratification, this success, which
might otherwise have brought pleasure, is experienced
by the ego as "pain." In consequence of the old conflict
which ended in repression, the pleasure-principle has
been violated anew, just at the moment when certain
impulses were at work on the achievement of fresh
pleasure in pursuance of the principle. The details of the
process by which repression changes a possibility of
pleasure into a source of "pain" are not yet fully
understood, or are not yet capable of clear presentation,
but it is certain that all neurotic "pain" is of this kind, is
pleasure which cannot be experienced as such.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, |
67 The feeling of happiness produced by indulgence of a
wild, untamed craving is incomparably more intense than
is the satisfying of a curbed desire. The irresistibility of
perverted impulses, perhaps the charm of forbidden
things generally, may in this way be explained
economically.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 11
4.8 Pity and Envy
1 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children,
because he was the son of his old age; and he made him
a coat of many colours.
And when his brethren saw that their father loved him
more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not
speak peaceably unto him.
And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his
brethren: and they hated him yet the more.
And he said unto them, Hear, | pray you, this dream
which | have dreamed:
For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and,
lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold,
your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to
my sheaf.
And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign
over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us?
And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for
his words.
And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his
brethren, and said, Behold, | have dreamed a dream
more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven
stars made obeisance to me.
And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and
his father rebuked him, and said unto him. What is this
dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall | and thy mother
and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to
thee to the earth?
And his brethren envied him; but his father observed
the saying...,
And when they saw him afar off, even before he came
near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.
And they said one to another. Behold, this dreamer
cometh.
Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him
into some pit, and we will say. Some evil beast hath
devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his
dreams.
And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their
hands; and said. Let us not kill him.
And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast
him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand
upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to
deliver him to his father again.
And it came to pass when Joseph was come unto his
brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat
of many colours that was on him;
And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit
was empty, there was no water in it.
And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up
their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ish-
mee-lites came from Gil-e-ad with their camels bearing
Spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to
Egypt.
And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we
slay our brother, and conceal his blood?
Come, and let us sell him to the Ish-mee-lites, and let
not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our
flesh. And his brethren were content.
Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and
they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold
Joseph to the Ish-mee-lites for twenty pieces of silver: and
they brought Joseph into Egypt.
Genesis 37:3-28
2 Agamemnon. |n few men is it part of nature to respect
a friend’s prosperity without begrudging him,
as envy's wicked poison settling to the heart piles up the
pain in one sick with unhappiness,
who, staggered under sufferings that are all his own,
winces again to the vision of a neighbor’s bliss.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 832
3 Periander. How much better a thing it is to be envied than
pitied.
Herodotus, History, Ill, 52
4 Pericles. Men can endure to hear others praised only so
long as they can severally persuade themselves of their
own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this
point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 11, 35
5 Pity may be defined as a feeling of pain caused by the
sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls
one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect
to befall ourselves or some friend of ours, and moreover
to befall us soon. In order to feel pity, we must obviously
be capable of supposing that some evil may happen to us
or some friend of ours.... It is therefore not felt by those
completely ruined, who suppose that no further evil can
befall them, since the worst has befallen them already;
nor by those who imagine themselves immensely
fortunate—their feeling is rather presumptuous insolence,
for when they think they possess all the good things of
life, it is clear that the impossibility of evil befalling them
will be included, this being one of the good things in
question. Those who think evil may befall them are such
as have already had it befall them and have safely
escaped from it; elderly men, owing to their good sense
and their experience; weak men, especially men inclined
to cowardice; and also educated people, since these can
take long views. Also those who have parents living, or
children, or wives; for these are our own, and the evils
mentioned above may easily befall them. And those who
are neither moved by any courageous emotion such as
anger or confidence (these emotions take no account of
the future), nor by a disposition to presumptuous
insolence (insolent men, too, take no account of the
possibility that something evil will happen to them), nor
yet by great fear (panic-stricken people do not feel pity,
because they are taken up with what is happening to
themselves); only those feel pity who are between these
two extremes. In order to feel pity we must also believe in
the goodness of at least some people; if you think nobody
good, you will believe that everybody deserves evil
fortune. And, generally, we feel pity whenever we are in
the condition of remembering that similar misfortunes
have happened to us or ours, or expecting them to
happen in future.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1385b13
6 Envy is pain at the sight of such good fortune as consists
of the good things already mentioned; we feel it towards
our equals; not with the idea of getting something for
ourselves, but because the other people have it. We shall
feel it if we have, or think we have, equals; and by
‘equals’ | mean equals in birth, relationship, age,
disposition, distinction, or wealth. We feel envy also if we
fall but a little short of having everything; which is why
people in high place and prosperity feel it—they think
every one else is taking what belongs to themselves. Also
if we are exceptionally distinguished for some particular
thing, and especially if that thing is wisdom or good
fortune. Ambitious men are more envious than those who
are not. So also those who profess wisdom; they are
ambitious—to be thought wise. Indeed, generally, those
who aim at a reputation for anything are envious on this
particular point. And small-minded men are envious, for
everything seems great to them.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1387b22
7 We envy those who are near us in time, place, age, or
reputation.... Also our fellow-competitors, who are indeed
the people just mentioned— we do not compete with men
who lived a hundred centuries ago, or those not yet born,
or the dead, or those who dwell near the Pillars of
Hercules, or those whom, in our opinion or that of others,
we take to be far below us or far above us. So too we
compete with those who follow the same ends as
ourselves: we compete with our rivals in sport or in love,
and generally with those who are after the same things;
and it is therefore these whom we are bound to envy
beyond all others.... We also envy those whose possession
of or success in a thing is a reproach to us; these are our
neighbours and equals; for it is clear that it is our own
fault we have missed the good thing in question; this
annoys us, and excites envy in us. We also envy those
who have what we ought to have, or have got what we
did have once. Hence old men envy younger men, and
those who have spent much envy those who have spent
little on the same thing. And men who have not got a
thing, or not got it yet, envy those who have got it
quickly. We can also see what things and what persons
give pleasure to envious people, and in what states of
mind they feel it: the states of mind in which they feel
pain are those under which they will feel pleasure in the
contrary things. If therefore we ourselves with whom the
decision rests are put into an envious state of mind, and
those for whom our pity, or the award of something
desirable, is claimed are such as have been described, it
is obvious that they will win no pity from us.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1388a6
8 Emulation is pain caused by seeing the presence, in
persons whose nature is like our own, of good things that
are highly valued and are possible for ourselves to
acquire; but it is felt not because others have these
goods, but because we have not got them ourselves. It is
therefore a good feeling felt by good persons, whereas
envy is a bad feeling felt by bad persons.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1388a30
9 The envious person wastes at the thriving condition of
another; Sicilian tyrants never invented a greater
torment than envy.
Horace, Epistles, |, 2
10 When you hear the name of someone who has become
famous on account of a particular merit or achievement,
you yap like puppies when they encounter strangers.
Seneca, On the Happy Life, XIX
11 Folly has habituated us to live with a view to others
rather than to ourselves, and our nature holds so much
envy and malice that our pleasure in our own advantages
is not So great as our distress at others.
Plutarch, Contentment
12 When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately
consider with what opinion about good or evil he has
done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity
him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry,
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 26
13 The proud are without pity, because they despise others,
and think them wicked, so that they account them as
suffering deservedly whatever they suffer.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 30, 2
14 Falcon. That pity wells up soon in gentle heart,
Feeling its likeness in all pains that smart.
Is proved, and day by day, aS men may see,
As well by deeds as by authority;
For gentle heart can spy out gentleness.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Squire's Tale
15 He who asks for pity without reason is a man not to be
pitied when there is reason. To be always lamenting for
ourselves is the way never to be lamented; by continually
putting on a pitiful act, we become pitiable to no one. He
who acts dead when still alive is subject to be thought
alive when dying. | have seen it get some people’s goat
to be told that their color was good and their pulse even;
| have seen them restrain their laughter because it
betrayed their recovery, and hate health because it was
not pitiable. What is more, they were not women.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
16 Caesar. Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous;
Antony. Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.
Caes. Would he were fatter! But 1 fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
| do not Know the man | should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
| rather tell thee what is to be fear’d
Than what | fear; for always | am Caesar.
Shakespeare, Caesar, I, ii, 192
17 Othello. Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned to-
night; for she shall not live. No, my heart is turned to
stone; | strike it, and it hurts my hand. O, the world hath
not a sweeter creature! She might lie by an emperor’s
side and command him tasks.
lago. Nay, that’s not your way.
Oth. Hang her! | do but say what she is; so delicate
with her needle; an admirable musician: O! she will sing
the savageness out of a bear. Of so high and plenteous
wit and invention—
lago. She's the worse for all this.
Oth. O, a thousand thousand times. And then, of so
gentle a condition!
lago. Ay, too gentle.
Oth. Nay, that’s certain; but yet the pity of it, lago! O
lago, the pity of it, lago!
Shakespeare, Othello, IV, i, 191
18 Macbeth. This Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air.
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, vii, 16
19 Envy keeps no holidays.
Nothing but death can reconcile envy to virtue.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. VI, Ill, 16
20 Deformed persons, and eunuchs, and old men, and
bastards, are envious. For he that cannot possibly mend
his outi case, will do what he can to impair another’s.
Bacon, Of Envy
21 The consideration of the present good excites joy in us,
and that of evil, sadness, when it is a good or an evil
which is represented as belonging to us.... But when it is
represented to us as pertaining to other men, we may
esteem them either as worthy or unworthy of it; and
when we esteem them worthy, that does not excite in us
any other passion but joy, inasmuch as it is some
satisfaction to us to see that things happen as they
should. There is only this difference, that the joy that
comes from what is good is serious, while what comes
from evil is accompanied by laughter and mockery. But if
we esteem them unworthy of it, the good excites envy
and the evil pity, which are species of sadness.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, LXI-LXII
22 Pity is a species of sadness, mingled with love or good-
will towards those whom we see suffering some evil of
which we consider them undeserving. It is thus contrary
to envy by reason of its object, and to scorn because it
considers its objects in another way.... Those who feel
themselves very feeble and subject to the adversities of
fortune appear to be more disposed to this passion than
others, because they represent the evil of others as
possibly occurring to themselves; and then they are
moved to pity more by the love that they bear to
themselves than by that which they bear to others.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CLXXXV-GLXXXVI
23 Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to
ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man’s
calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have
not deserved the same, the compassion is greater,
because there then appeareth more probability that the
Same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an
innocent man may happen to every man.
Hobbes, Human Nature, IX
24 Aman who lives according to the dictates of reason
endeavours as much as possible to prevent himself from
being touched by pity.
The man who has properly understood that everything
follows from the necessity of the divine nature, and
comes to pass according to the eternal law’s and rules of
nature, will in truth discover nothing which is worthy of
hatred, laughter, or contempt, nor will he pity any one,
but, so far as human virtue is able, he will endeavour to
do well, as we say, and to rejoice. We must add also, that
a man who is easily touched by the affect of pity, and is
moved by the misery or tears of another, often does
something of which he afterward repents, both because
from an affect we do nothing which we certainly know to
be good, and also because we are so easily deceived by
false tears. But this | say expressly of the man who lives
according to the guidance of reason. For he who is moved
neither by reason nor pity to be of any service to others is
properly called inhuman; for he seems to be unlike a
man.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 50, Corol; Schol.
25 It is a secret well known to great men, that, by conferring
an obligation, they do not always procure a friend, but
are certain of creating many enemies.
Fielding, Tom Jones, I, 9
26 It is good proverb which says that "it is better to be
envious than to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore,
as hard as we can.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Envy
27 Most of the misery which the defamation of blameless
actions, or the obstruction of honest endeavours brings
upon the world, is inflicted by men that propose no
advantage to themselves but the satisfaction of
poisoning the banquet which they cannot taste, and
blasting the harvest which they have no right to reap.
Johnson, Rambler No, 183
28 Johnson. Pity is not natural to man. Children are always
cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and
improved by the cultivation of reason.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 20, 1763)
29 Johnson. |f a madman were to come into this room with a
stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his
mind; but our primary consideration would be to take
care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and
pity him afterwards.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 3, 1776)
30 Once, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
On every crowded street to stare
Upon great Juan riding by:
Even like these to rail and sweat
Staring upon his sinewy thigh.
Yeats, On Those That Hated 'The Playboy of the Western
World,' 1907
31 True pity consists not so much in fearing suffering as in
desiring it. The desire is a faint one and we should hardly
wish to see it realized; yet we form it in spite of ourselves,
as if Nature were committing some great injustice and it
were necessary to get rid of all suspicion of complicity
with her.
Bergson, Time and Free Will, |
4.9 Greed and Avarice
1 He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor
he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also
vanity.
Ecclesiastes 5:10
2 He who will be covetous, will also be anxious: but he that
lives in a state of anxiety, will never in my estimation be
free.
Horace, Epistles, |, 16
3 And he said unto them. Take heed, and beware of
covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things which he possesseth.. . .
Therefore | say unto you, Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put
on.
The life is more than meat, and the body is more than
raiment...
Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they
spin not; and yet | say unto you, that Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these.
If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the
field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven; how much more
will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?
And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall
drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.
For all these things do the nations of the world seek
after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of
these things.
But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these
things shall be added unto you.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good
pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves
bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that
faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth
corrupteth.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be
also.
Luke 12:15-34
4 Here saw | too many more than elsewhere, both on the one
side and on the other, with loud howlings, rolling weights
by force of chests;
they smote against each other, and then each
wheeled round just there, rolling aback, shouting "Why
boldest thou?" and "Why throwest thou away?"
Thus they returned along the gloomy circle, on either
hand, to the opposite point, [again] shouting [at each
other] their reproachful measure.
Then every one, when he had reached it, turned
through his half-circle towards the other joust. And I, who
felt my heart as it were stung,
said: "My Master, now shew me what people these are;
and whether all those tonsured on our left were of the
clergy."
And he to me: "In their first life, all were so squint-
eyed in mind, that they made no expenditure in it with
moderation.
Most clearly do their voices bark out this, when they
come to the two points of the circle, where contrary guilt
divides them.
These were Priests, that have not hairy covering on
their heads, and Popes and Cardinals, in whom avarice
does its utmost."
And |: "Master, among this set, | surely ought to
recognise some that were defiled by these evils."
And he to me; "Vain thoughts combinest thou; their
undiscerning life, which made them sordid, now makes
them too obscure for any recognition.
To all eternity they shall continue butting one another;
these shall arise from their graves with closed fists; and
these with hair shorn off.
Ill-giving, and ill-keeping, has deprived them of the
bright world, and put them to this conflict; what a conflict
it is, | adorn no words to tell."
Dante, Inferno, VII, 25
5 | stand up like a scholar in pulpit.
And when the ignorant people all do sit,
| preach, as you have heard me say before.
And tell a hundred false japes, less or more.
| am at pains, then, to stretch forth my neck,
And cast and west upon the folk | beck.
As does a dove that’s sitting on a barn.
With hands and swift tongue, then, do! so yarn
That it’s a joy to see my busyness.
Of avarice and of all such wickedness
Is all my preaching, thus to make them free
With offered pence, the which pence come to me.
For my intent is only pence to win,
And not at all for punishment of sin.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Pardoner’s Tale, Prologue
6 | preach no sermon, save for covetousness.
For that my theme is yet, and ever was,
‘Radix malorum est cupiditas.'
Thus can | preach against that self-same vice
Which | indulge, and that is avarice.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Pardoner’s Tale, Prologue
7 The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common,
and men always do so when they can, and for this they
will be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so,
yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and
blame.
Machiavelli, Prince, III
8 Shylock. How now. Tubal! what news from Genoa? hast
thou found my daughter?
Tubal. | often came where | did hear of her, but cannot
find her.
Shy. Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone,
cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse
never fell upon our nation till now; | never felt it till now:
two thousand ducats in that; and other precious, precious
jewels. | would my daughter were dead at my foot, and
the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at my foot,
and the ducats in her coffin! No news of them? Why, so:
and | know not what’s spent in the search: why, thou loss
upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to
find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge: nor no ill
luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs
but of my breathing; no tears but of my shedding.
Tub. Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as |
heard in Genoa—
Shy. What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck?
Tub. Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis.
Shy. | thank God, | thank God. Is’t true, is’t true?
Tub. | spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the
wreck.
Shy. | thank thee, good Tubal: good new’s, good
nc\N’s! ha, ha! where? in Genoa?
Tub. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as | heard, in one
night fourscore ducats.
Shy. Thou stickest a dagger in me: | shall never see my
gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! fourscore
ducats.
Tub. There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my
company to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but
break.
Shy. |am very glad of it: I'll plague him; I'll torture
him: | am glad of it.
Tub. One of them showed me a ring that he had of
your daughter for a monkey.
Sky. Out upon her! Thou torturest me. Tubal: it was my
turquoise; | had it of Leah when | was a bachelor: | would
not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III, i, 85
9 Brutus. Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself Are much
condemn’d to have an itching palm.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV, iii, 9
10 It almost always happens that the man who grows rich
changes his notions of poverty, states his wants by some
new measure, and from Hying the enemy that pursued
him bends his endeavours to overtake those whom he
sees before him. The power of gratifying his appetites
increases their demands; a thousand wishes crowd in
upon him, importunate to be satisfied, and vanity and
ambition open prospects to desire, which still grow wider
as they are more contemplated.
Johnson, Rambler No, 38
11 Many there are who openly and almost professedly
regulate all their conduct by their love of money, who
have no reason for action or forbearance, for compliance
or refusal, than that they hope to gain more by one than
by the other. These are indeed the meanest and cruellest
of human beings, a race with whom, as with some
pestiferous animals, the whole creation seems to be at
war, but who, however detested or scorned, long continue
to add heap to heap, and when they have reduced one to
beggary are still permitted to fasten on another.
Johnson, Rambler No. 175
12 Johnson. No man was born a miser, because no man was
born to possession. Every man is born cupidus —desirous
of getting; but not avarus —desirous of keeping.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 25, 1778)
13 All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in
every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of
the masters of mankind.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, III, 4
14 Avarice is an insatiate and universal passion; since the
enjoyment of almost every object that can afford pleasure
to the different tastes and tempers of mankind may be
procured by the possession of wealth.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXX1
15 Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
Dickens, A Christmas Carol, |
16 With the very earliest development of the circulation of
commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and
the passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first
metamorphosis. This product is the transformed shape of
the commodity, or its gold chrysalis. Commodities are
thus sold not for the purpose of buying others, but in
order to replace their commodity form by their money
form. From being the mere means of effecting the
circulation of commodities, this change of form becomes
the end and aim. The changed form of the commodity is
thus prevented from functioning as its unconditionally
alienable form, or as its merely transient money form. The
money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller
becomes a hoarder of money.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, |, 3
17 With the possibility of holding and storing up exchange
value in the shape of a particular commodity arises also
the greed for gold. Along with the extension of
circulation, increases the power of money, that absolutely
social form of wealth ever ready for use. "Gold is a
wonderful thing! Whoever possesses it is lord of all he
wants. By means of gold one can even get souls into
Paradise." (Columbus in his letter from Jamaica, 1503.)
Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed
into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into
gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable.
Circulation becomes the great social retort into which
everything is thrown, to come out again as crystallized
gold. Not even are the bones of Saints, and still less are
more delicate red sacrosancta extra commercium
hominum able to withstand this alchemy. Just as every
qualitative difference between commodities is
extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the
radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions.
But money itself is a commodity, an external object,
capable of becoming the private property of any
individual. Thus social power becomes the private power
of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced
money as subversive of the economic and moral order of
things. Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled
Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the
earth, greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering
incarnation of the very principle of its own life.
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1,1,3
18 Capital has not invented surplus labour. Wherever a part
of society possesses the monopoly of the means of
production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the
working time necessary for his own maintenance an extra
working time in order to produce the means of
subsistence for the owners of the means of production,
whether this proprietor be the Athenian [nobleman],
Etruscan theocrat, [Roman citizen], Norman baron,
American slave owner, Wallachian boyard, modern
landlord or capitalist. It is, however, clear that in any
given economic formation of society, where not the
exchange value but the use-value of the product
predominates, surplus labour will be limited by a given
set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here
no boundless thirst for surplus labour arises from the
nature of the production itself. Hence, in antiquity
overwork becomes horrible only when the object is to
obtain exchange value in its specific independent money
form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory
working to death is here the recognized form of overwork.
Only read Diodorus Siculus. Still, these are exceptions in
antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production still
moves within the lower forms of slave-labour, corvee-
labour, etc., are drawn into the whirlpool of an
international market dominated by the capitalistic mode
of production, the sale of their products for export
becoming their principal interest, the civilized horrors of
overwork are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery,
serfdom, etc. Hence, the negro labour in the Southern
States of the American Union preserved something of a
patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly
directed to immediate local consumption. But in
proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital
interest to these states, the overworking of the negro and
sometimes the using up of his life in seven years’ of
labour became a factor in a calculated and calculating
system. It was no longer a question of obtaining from him
a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a
question of production of surplus labour itself.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Ill, 10
19 It is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his
whole life through, but labour power, that, therefore, all
his disposable time is by nature and law labour time, to
be devoted to the self-expansion of capital. Time for
education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling
of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free
play of his bodily and mental activity, even the rest time
of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians!)--
moonshine! But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its
werewolf hunger for surplus labour, capital oversteps not
only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum
bounds of the working day. It usurps the time for growth,
development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It
steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air
and sunlight. It higgles over a meal time, incorporateing
it where possible with the process of production itself, so
that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of
production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and
oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed
for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily
powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an
organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is
not the normal maintenance of the labour power which is
to determine the limits of the working day; it is the
greatest possible daily expenditure of labour power, no
matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be,
which is to determine the limits of the labourers’ period of
repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of
labour power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the
maximum of labour power that can be rendered fluent in
a working day. It attains this end by shortening the
extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches
increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its
fertility.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Ill, 10
20 From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving
spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once
more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single
scurvy individual—here was its one and final aim.
Engels, Origin of the Family, |X
4.10 Jealousy
1 Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of
fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Song of Solomon 8:6
2 With ambitious natures, otherwise not ill qualified for
command, the feeling of jealousy of those near them in
reputation continually stands in the way of the
performance of noble actions; they make those their
rivals in virtue, whom they ought to use as their helpers
to it.
Plutarch, Lysander
3 Cressida. "Another shame is this, that folk abuse
True love and say, ‘Yea, jealousy is love!’
A bushel of venom such folk will excuse
If but a grain of love therein they shove.
But God knows this, who lives and reigns above,
If it be liker love or liker hate,
And by its name we should it designate.
"Some sorts of jealousy, | will confess,
Are more excusable than other kinds,
As when there’s cause, or when folk long repress
Some harsh fantastic notion in their minds,
Which in expression no free outlet finds,
And on itself it thus doth grow and feed;
For such repression is a gentle deed.
"And some are filled with fury and despite
So full that it surpasses all restraint—
But, sweetheart, you are not in such plight,
Thank God, and all your grieving and your plaint,
| call it an illusive lover’s taint
From love’s excess, and from anxiety."
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Ill, 147-149
4 Whatever justice there may be in jealousy, it still remains
to be seen whether its agitation is really useful. Is there
someone who thinks to shackle women by his
ingenuity?... What occasion will not be enough for them
in SO Knowing an age?
Curiosity is vicious in all things, but here it is
pernicious. It is folly to want to be enlightened about a
disease for which there is no medicine that does not
make it worse and aggravate it; the shame of which is
increased and made public principally by jealousy;
revenge for which wounds our children more than it cures
us. You dry up and die in quest of a proof so obscure,
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
5 lago. O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But, O, what damned minutes tells he o’er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!
Othello. O misery!
lago. Poor and content is rich and rich enough,
But riches fineless is as poor as winter
To him that ever fears he shall be poor.
Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend
From jealous!
Oth. Why, why is this?
Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy,
To follow still the changes of the moon
With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt
Is once to be resolved. Exchange me for a goat,
When | shall turn the business of my soul
To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,
Matching thy inference. 'Tis not to make me jealous
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of soeech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.
Nor from mine own weak merits will | draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;
For she had eyes, and chose me. No, lago;
I'll see before | doubt; when | doubt, prove;
And on the proof, there is no more but this—
Away at once with love or jealousy!
Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 165
6 Jago. Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
Othello. Ha! ha! false to me?
lago. Why, how now, general! no more of that.
Oth. Avaunt! be gone! thou hast set me on the rack.
| swear ‘tis better to be much abused
Than but to know ’t a little.
lago. How now, my lord!
Oth. What sense had | of her stol’n hours of lust?
| saw’t not, thought it not, it harm’d not me.
| slept the next night well, was free and merry;
| found not Cassio’s kisses on her lips.
He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n,
Let him not know ’t, and he’s not robb’d at all.
lago. | am sorry to hear this.
Oth. | had been happy, if the general camp,
Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So | had nothing known. O, now, for ever
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!
lago. \|s't possible, my lord?
Oth. Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore,
Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof;
Or, by the worth of man’s eternal soul.
Thou hadst been better have been born a dog
Than answer my waked wrath!
lago. |s't come to this?
Oth. Make me to see’t; or, at the least, so prove it
That the probation bear no hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!
lago. My noble lord—
Oth. lf thou dost slander her and torture me,
Never pray more; abandon all remorse;
On horror’s head horrors accumulate;
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add
Greater than that.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, hi, 330
7 Desdemona. Alas the day! | never gave him cause.
Emilia. But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous, ‘Tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.
Shakespeare, Othello, Ill, iv, 158
8 Leontes. Ha’ not you seen, Camillo—
But that’s past doubt, you have, or your eyeglass
Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn—or heard—
For to a vision So apparent rumour
Cannot be mute—or thought—for cogitation
Resides not in that man that does not think—
My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess.
Or else be impudently negative,
To have nor eyes nor cars nor thought, then say
My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name
As rank as any flax-wench that puts to
Before her troth-plight; sayt and justify!.
Camillo. | would not be a stander-by to hear
My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
My present vengeance taken. ’Shrew my heart,
You never spoke what did become you less
Than this; which to reiterate were sin
As deep as that, though true.
Leon. |s whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh?—a note infallible
Of breaking honesty—horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
Cam. Good my lord, be cured
Of this diseased opinion, and betimes;
For ’tis most dangerous.
Leon. Say it be, 'tis true.
Cam. No, no, my lord.
Leon. \t is; you lie, you lie,
Shakespeare, Winters Tale, I, ti, 267
9 Jealousy is a species of fear which is related to the desire
we have to preserve to ourselves the possession of some
thing; and it does not so much proceed from the strength
of the reasons that suggest the possibility of our losing
that good, as from the high estimation in which we hold
it, and which is the cause of our examining even the
minutest subjects of suspicion, and taking them to be
very considerable reasons for anxiety.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CLXVII
10 It is, indeed, very possible for Jealous persons to kill the
objects of their jealousy, but not to hate them.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 4
11 It is hard to imagine what some jealous men can make up
their mind to and overlook, and what they can forgive!
The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all
women know it. The jealous man can forgive
extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent
scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost
conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has
seen, if only he can somehow be convinced that it has all
been "for the last time," and that his rival will vanish from
that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth, or
that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where
that dreaded rival will not get near her. Of course the
reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did
disappear next day, he would invent another one and
would be jealous of him. And one might wonder what
there was in a love that had to be so watched over, what
a love could be worth that needed such strenuous
guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And
yet among them are men of noble hearts. It is
remarkable, too, that those very men of noble hearts,
standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and spying,
never feel the stings of conscience at that moment,
anyway, though they understand clearly enough with
their "noble hearts" the shameful depths to which they
have voluntarily sunk.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Ft. Ill, VIll, 3
4.11 Pride and Humility
1 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18
2 Chorus. The curse on great daring
shines clear; it wrings atonement
from those high hearts that drive to evil,
from houses blossoming to pride
and peril.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 374
3 Creon. The rigid spirits are the first to fall.
The strongest iron, hardened in the fire,
most often ends in scraps and shatterings.
Sophocles, Antigone, 473
4 Athena. The gods
Love men of steady sense and hate the proud.
Sophocles, Ajax, 132
5 Messanger. Whenever men forget their mere man's nature,
Thinking a thought too high, they have no use
Of their huge bulk and boldness, but they fall
On most untoward disasters sent by Heaven.
Ajax, even when he first set out from home,
Proved himself foolish, when his father gave him
His good advice at parting. ‘Child,’ he said,
‘Resolve to win, but always with God’s help.’
But Ajax answered with a senseless boast:
‘Father, with God’s help even a worthless man
Could triumph. | propose, without that help,
To win my prize of fame.’
Sophocles, Ajax, 758
6 Hecuba. We boast, are proud, we plume our confidence—
the rich man in his insolence of wealth,
the public man’s conceit of office or success—
and we are nothing; our ambition, greatness, pride,
all vanity.
Euripides, Hecuba, 623
7 Electra. There is no form of anguish with a name—
no suffering, no fate, no fall
inflicted by heaven, however terrible—
whose tortures human nature could not bear
or might not have to bear.
| think of Tantalus,
born—or so they say—the son of Zeus himself
and blessed by birth and luck as few men are:
happy Tantalus...
| do not mock his fall,
and yet that same Tantalus now writhes and trembles
in terror of the rock that overhangs his head,
though even as a man he sat as honored equal
at the table of the gods, but could not hold his tongue,
being sick with pride.
Euripides, Orestes, 1
8 Syracusan generals and Gylippus. When men are once
checked in what they consider their special excellence,
their whole opinion of themselves suffers more than if
they had not at first believed in their superiority, the
unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give
way more than their real strength warrants.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, VII, 66
9 Socrates. The three kinds of vain conceit... the vain
conceit of beauty, of wisdom, and of wealth, are
ridiculous if they are weak, and detestable when they are
powerful.
Plato, Philebus, 49B
10 Pride seems even from its name to be concerned with
great things; what sort of great things, is the first
question we must try to answer. It makes no difference
whether we consider the state of character or the man
characterized by it. Now the man is thought to be proud
who thinks himself worthy of great things, being worthy
of them; for he who does so beyond his deserts is a fool,
but no virtuous man is foolish or silly. The proud man,
then, is the man we have described. For he who is worthy
of little and thinks himself worthy of little is temperate,
but not proud; for pride implies greatness, as beauty
implies a good-sized body, and little people may be neat
and well-proportioned but cannot be beautiful. On the
other hand, he who thinks himself worthy of great things,
being unworthy of them, is vain; though not every one
who thinks himself worthy of more than he really is
worthy of is vain. The man who thinks himself worthy of
less than he is really worthy of is unduly humble, whether
his deserts be great or moderate, or his deserts be small
but his claims yet smaller. And the man whose deserts
are great would seem most unduly humble; for what
would he have done if they had been less? The proud
man, then, is an extreme in respect of the greatness of
his claims, but a mean in respect of the rightness of
them; for he claims what is in accordance with his merits,
while the others go to excess or fall short.
If, then, he deserves and claims great things, and
above all the great things, he will be concerned with one
thing in particular. Desert Is relative to external goods;
and the greatest of these, we should say, is that which we
render to the gods, and which people of position most
aim at, and which is the prize appointed for the noblest
deeds; and this is honour; that is surely the greatest of
external goods. Honours and dishonours, therefore, are
the objects with respect to which the proud man is as he
should be. And even apart from argument it is with
honour that proud men appear to be concerned; for it is
honour that they chiefly claim, but in accordance with
their deserts, The unduly humble man falls short both in
comparison with his own merits and in comparison with
the proud man's claims. The vain man goes to excess in
comparison with his own merits, but does not exceed the
proud man’s claims.
Now the proud man, since he deserves most, must be
good in the highest degree; for the better man always
deserves more, and the best man most. Therefore the
truly proud man must be good. And greatness in every
virtue would seem to be characteristic of a proud man.
And it would be most unbecoming for a proud man to fly
from danger, swinging his arms by his sides, or to wrong
another; for to what end should he do disgraceful acts, he
to whom nothing is great? If we consider him point by
point we shall see the utter absurdity of a proud man who
is not good. Nor, again, would he be worthy of honour if
he were bad; for honour is the prize of virtue, and it is to
the good that it is rendered. Pride, then, seems to be a
sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater,
and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to
be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and
goodness of character.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1123b34
11 A slow step is thought proper to the proud man, a deep
voice, and a level utterance; for the man who takes few
things seriously is not likely to be hurried, nor the man
who thinks nothing great to be excited, while a shrill
voice and a rapid gait are the results of hurry and
excitement.
Such, then, is the proud man; the man who falls short
of him is unduly humble, and the man who goes beyond
him is vain. Now even these are not thought to be bad
(for they are not malicious), but only mistaken. For the
unduly humble man, being worthy of good things, robs
himself of what he deserves, and seems to have
something bad about him from the fact that he does not
think himself worthy of good things, and seems also not
to know himself; else he would have desired the things
he was worthy of, since these were good.... Vain people,
on the other hand, are fools and ignorant of themselves,
and that manifestly; for, not being worthy of them, they
attempt honourable undertakings, and then are found
out; and they adorn themselves with clothing and
outward show and such things, and wish their strokes of
good fortune to be made public, and speak about them
as if they would be honoured for them.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1125a13
12 We do not expect a vine to bear figs or an olive grapes,
but when It comes to ourselves, if we do not possess the
combined advantages of millionaire and scholar and
general and philosopher, of the flatterer and the plain
speaker, of the frugal and the extravagant, we
calumniate ourselves and are irked with ourselves and
despise ourselves as leading a drab and curtailed life.
Plutarch, Contentment
13 Consider what men are when they are eating, sleeping,
generating, casing themselves and so forth. Then what
kind of men they are when they are imperious and
arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place.
But a short time ago to how many they were slaves and
for what things; and after a little time consider in what a
condition they will be.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 19
14 The pride which is proud of its want of pride is the most
intolerable of all.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XII, 27
15 "Your might," said she (Cecilia), "is scarce a tiling to
dread;
For power of every mortal man but is
Like to a bladder full of wind, ywis.
For with a needle’s point, when it is blown,
Prick it, and all the pride of it comes down."
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Second Nun’s Tale
16 | hold that a man should be cautious in making an
estimate of himself, and equally conscientious in
testifying about himself—whether he rates himself high
or low makes no difference. If | seemed to myself good
and wise or nearly so, | would shout it out at the top of
my voice. To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity,
not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is
cowardice and pusillanimity, according to Aristotle. No
virtue is helped by falsehood, and truth is never subject
to error. To say more of yourself than is true is not always
presumption; it too is often stupidity. To be immoderately
pleased with what you are, to fall therefore into an
undiscerning self-love, is in my opinion the substance of
this vice. The supreme remedy to cure it is to do just the
opposite of what those people prescribe who, by
prohibiting talking about oneself, even more strongly
prohibit thinking about oneself. The pride lies in the
thought; the tongue can have only a very slight share in
it.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 6, Of Practice
17 Ajax. Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow?
| Know not what pride is.
Agamemnon. Your mind is the dearer, Ajax, and your
virtues the fairer. He that is proud cats up himself; pride
is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and
whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed
in the praise.
Ajax. 1 do hate a proud man, as | hate the
engendering of toads.
Nestor. [Aside.] Vet he loves himself. Is’t not strange?
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Il, iii, 161
18 Fool. There was never yet fair woman but she made
mouths in a glass.
Shakespeare, Lear, Ill, ti, 35
19 All those who form a good opinion of themselves for some
other reason, whatever it may be, have not a true
generosity, but merely a pride which always very vicious,
although it is all the mote so, the more the cause for
which we esteem ourselves is unjust. And the most unjust
cause of all is when we are proud without any reason,
that is to say, without our thinking so far as this goes that
there is in us any merit for which we ought to be
esteemed, simply taking the view that merit is not taken
into consideration at all, and that as glory is regarded as
nothing but usurpation, those who ascribe most of it to
themselves really possess the greatest amount of it. This
vice is So unreasonable and absurd, that | should scarcely
have believed that there were men who could allow
themselves to give way to it, if no one were ever unjustly
praised; but flattery is everywhere so common that there
is no man to defective that he does not often see himself
esteemed for things that do not merit any praise, or even
that merit blame; and this give occasion to the most
ignorant and stupid to fall into this species of pride.
Descartes, Passions of the Soul, CLVI/
20 The passion whose violence or continuance maketh
madness is either great vainglory, which is commonly
called pride and se/f-conceit, or great dejection of mind.
Pride subjecteth a man to anger, the excess whereof is
the madness called rage, and fury. And thus it comes to
pass that excessive desire of revenge, when it becomes
habitual, hurteth the organs, and becomes rage: that
excessive love, with jealousy, becomes also rage:
excessive opinion of a man’s own self, for devine
inspiration, for wisdom, learning, form, and the like,
becomes distraction and giddiness: the same, joined with
envy, rage: vehement opinion of the truth of anything,
contradicted by others, rage.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 8
211 thank God, amongst those millions of Vices | do inherit
and hold from Adam, 1 have escaped one, and that a
mortal enemy to Charity, the first and father-sin, not
onely of man, but of the devil. Pride.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Il, 8
22 Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a
soldier’s servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to
have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them.
Those who write against it want to have the glory of
having written well; and those who read it desire the
glory of having read it. | who write this have perhaps this
desire, and perhaps those who will read it.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 150
23 He who will know fully the vanity of man has only to
consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je
ne sails quoi, and the effects are dreadful. This je ne sais
quoi, SO small an object that we cannot recognise it,
agitates a whole country, princes, armies, the entire
world.
Cleopatra’s nose; had it been shorter, the whole
aspect of the world would have been altered.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 162
24 Contradiction.—-Pride counterbalancing all miseries. Man
either hides his miseries, or, if he disclose them, glories in
knowing them.
Pride counterbalances and takes away all miseries.
Here is a strange monster and a very plain aberration. He
is fallen from his place and is anxiously seeking it. This is
what all men do. Let us see who will have found it.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 405-406
25 When a man thinks too much of himself, this imagination
is called pride, and is a kind of delirium, because he
dreams with his eyes open, that he is able to do all those
things to which he attains in imagination alone,
regarding them therefore as realities, and rejoicing in
them so long as he cannot imagine anything to exclude
their existence and limit his power of action. Pride,
therefore, is that joy which arises from a man’s thinking
too much of himself.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 26, Schol.
26 Then | saw in my dream, that when they were got out of
the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them,
and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town
there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair; it is kept all the
year long; it beareth the name of Vanity Fair because the
town where it is kept is lighter than vanity; and also
because all that is there sold, or that cometh thither, is
vanity.... This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing
of ancient standing.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, |
27 Pride is a sin that sticks close to nature, and is one of the
first follies wherein it shows itself to be polluted. For even
in childhood, even in little children, pride will first of all
show itself; it is a hasty, an early appearance of the sin of
the soul.
Bunyan, Life and Death of Mr. Badman
28 My reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not
be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices
and follies only which nature hath entitled them to. | am
not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a
pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a
politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a
suborner, an attorney, a tray tor, or the like; this is all
according to the due course of things: but, when | behold
a lump of deformity, and diseases both in body and mind,
smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the
measures of my patience; neither shall | be ever able to
comprehend how such an animal and such a vice could
tally together. The wise and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who
abound in all excellencies that can adorn a rational
creature, have no name for this vice in their language,
which hath no terms to express any thing that is evil,
except those whereby they describe the detestable
qualities of their Yahoos; among which they were not able
to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly
understanding human nature, as it sheweth it self in
other countries, where that animal presides. But |, who
had more experience, could plainly observe some
rudiments of it among the wild Yahoos.
But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government
of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they
possess, than | should be for not wanting a leg or an arm,
which no man in his wits would boast of, although he
must be miserable without them. | dwell the longer upon
this subject from the desire | have to make the society of
an English Yahoo by any means not insupportable; and
therefore, | here intreat those who have any tincture of
this absurd vice, that they will not presume to appear in
my sight.
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, IV, 12
29 To be vain, is rather a Mark of Humility than Pride. Vain
Men delight in telling what Honours have been done
them, what great Company they have kept, and the like;
by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were
more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not
believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly
proud, thinly the greatest Honours below his Merit, and
consequently scorns to boast. | therefore deliver it asa
Maxim, that whoever desires the Character of a proud
Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
30 Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgement, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules.
Is pride, the nc\'cr-failing vice of fools.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 201
31 Vanity is as advantageous lo a government as pride is
dangerous. To be convinced of this v-x need only
represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits
which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions,
politeness, and taste; on the other, the infinite evils
which spring from the pride of certain nations, as
laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything—in fine,
the destruction of the nations which have happened to
fall under their government, as well as of their own.
Laziness is the effect of pride; labour, a consequence of
vanity.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIX, 9
32 Johnson. He that stands to contemplate the crouds that
fill the streets of a populous city, will see many
passengers whose air and motion it will be difficult to
behold without contempt and laughter; but if he examine
what are the appearances that thus powerfully excite his
risibility, he will find among them neither poverty nor
disease, nor any involuntary or painful defect. The
disposition to derision and insult, is awakened by the
softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness
of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly
trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, and the lofty mien;
by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks
elaborately formed as evidences of importance.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (!750)
33 Johnson. Scarce any man dies in publick, but with
apparent resolution; from that desire of praise which
never quits us.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Sept. IS, 1777)
34 With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment
of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their
eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess
those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can
possess but themselves. In their eyes the merit of an
object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful is
greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour
which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of
it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but
themselves. Such objects they are willing to purchase at
a higher price than things much more beautiful and
useful, but more common.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1,11
35 The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are
also. Thus, next to humility, | have noticed that pride isa
pretty good husband. A good pride is, as | reckon it, worth
from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year. Pride is
handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices,
letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a
great gain to exchange vanity for pride. Pride can go
without domestics, without fine clothes, can live ina
house with two rooms, can cat potato, purslain, beans,
lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk
with poor men, or sit silent well contented in fine saloons.
But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women,
health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way
leading nowhere. Only one drawback; proud people are
intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.
Emerson, Wealth
36 If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no
sufficient reason for living.
Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, XXIII
Chapter 5
MIND
Chapter 5 is divided into seven sections: 5.1 Intelligence
and Understanding, 5.2 The Senses and Sense Perception,
5.3 Memory, 5.4 Imagination, 5.5 Dreams, 5.6 Madness, and
5.7 Will: Free Choice.
We are employing the term "mind," as indeed it is often
used, to cover a wide variety of human powers and
functions. Understanding, sense perception, memory, and
imagination all contribute in one way or another to the
processes of thinking, problem-solving, learning, and
knowing. In the sphere of human thought and in man's
acquirement of knowledge, each not only makes a
distinctive contribution, but all work together in an
integrated fashion. Hence the reader should bear in mind
that the contents of the first four sections are closely related
and, to some extent, overlapping. He should also be aware
that many points discussed in these sections recur, either
explicitly or by implication, in Chapter 6 on Knowledge,
especially Section 6.7 on Reasoning, Demonstration, and
Disputation.
The remaining three sections are included in this chapter
each for a special reason. Dreaming involves memory and
imagination and is a specifically mental phenomenon, even
though it does not, in a strict sense, contribute to thought or
knowledge, and involves emotions and desires as well as
cognitive processes. As included here, madness covers all
forms of mental disorder, not merely aberrations of thought
or fancy. Though will, like emotion and desire, is not a
cognitive power, it is usually distinguished from emotion
and desire by its close relation to intellect or reason. This is
especially true for those authors who affirm the will’s
freedom in its acts of choice. That is why the discussion of
volition, and particularly of free will or free choice, is
included here. Other discussions of freedom will be found in
Chapter 13 on Liberty and Equality, and in Chapter 9 on
Ethics, Section 9.4 on Moral Freedom. Some matters
discussed in this chapter, are more fully considered in
Chapter 4 on Emotion, especially Section 4.1 on The
Passions: The Range of the Emotions.
5.1 Intelligence and Understanding
There are a large number of names for the human faculty,
ability, or power that is the subject of this section.
Sometimes it is simply called “mind,” sometimes “intellect,”
sometimes “reason,” sometimes “wit.” The two names in the
title of this section are also used. Each of these words has a
somewhat different connotation; certain authors are at pains
to distinguish reason from understanding, or intellect from
intelligence; but all of these words have this common thread
of meaning: they designate the power or ability by which
men solve problems, make judgments, engage in reasoning
or in deliberation, and make practical decisions.
Some modern writers use “mind” or “understanding”
more broadly to include man’s sensitive abilities as well—his
powers of sense perception, memory, and imagination.
However, since Sections 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 are specifically
devoted to the consideration of sense, memory, and
imagination, we have restricted the materials included in
this section to discussions of mind as the power of thought,
judgment, insight, and reasoning. The reader will find
related matters treated in Section 6.7 on Reasoning,
Demonstration, and Disputation.
The quotations collected here deal with questions about
the relation of mind and body; about the immateriality or
Spirituality of mind or intellect; about the different acts of
the intellect and how they are related; about the role of
reason or intelligence in the sphere of action as well as in
the sphere of thought; about wit, sagacity, and cunning as
aspects of intelligence; and about human speech as
indicative and expressive of the power and processes of
human rationality. In this last connection, the reader is
referred to related material in Section 7.1 on The Nature of
Language.
1 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.
Proverbs 23:7
2 The earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind that
museth upon many things.
Wisdom of Solomon 9:15
3 Socrates. Tell me, then, are not the organs through which
you perceive warm and hard and light and sweet, organs
of the body?
Theaetetus. Of the body, certainly.
Soc. And you would admit that what you perceive
through one faculty you cannot perceive through
another; the objects of hearing, for example, cannot be
perceived through sight, or the objects of sight through
hearing?
Theaet. Of course not.
Soc. If you have any thought about both of them, this
common perception cannot come to you, either through
the one or the other organ?
Theaet. It cannot.
Soc. How about sounds and colours: in the first place
you would admit that they both exist?
Theaet. Yes.
Soc. And that either of them is different from the
other, and the same with itself?
Theaet. Certainly.
Soc. And that both are two and each of them one?
Theaet. Yes.
Soc. You can further observe whether they are like or
unlike one another?
Theat. | dare say.
Soc. But through what do you perceive all this about
them? for neither through hearing nor yet through seeing
can you apprehend that which they have in common. Let
me give you an illustration of the point at issue:—lf there
were any meaning in asking whether sounds and colours
are saline or not, you would be able to tell me what
faculty would consider the question. It would not be sight
or hearing, but some other.
Theaet. Certainly; the faculty of taste.
Soc. Very good; and now tell me what is the power
which discerns, not only in sensible objects, but in all
things, universal notions, such as those which are called
being and not-being, and those others about which we
were just asking—what organs will you assign for the
perception of these notions?
Theaet You are thinking of being and not-being,
likeness and unlikeness, sameness and difference, and
also of unity and other numbers which are applied to
objects of sense; and you mean to ask, through what
bodily organ the soul perceives odd and even numbers
and other arithmetical conceptions.
Soc. You follow me excellently, Theaetetus; that is
precisely what | am asking.
Theaet. Indeed, Socrates, | cannot answer; my only
notion is, that these, unlike objects of sense, have no
separate organ, but that the mind, by a power of her own,
contemplates the universals in all things.
Plato, Theaetetus, 184B
4 Quick wit is a faculty of hitting upon the middle term
instantaneously. It would be exemplified by a man who
saw that the moon has her bright side always turned
towards the sun, and quickly grasped the cause of this,
namely that she borrows her light from him; or observed
somebody in conversation with a man of wealth and
divined that he was borrowing money, or that the
friendship of these people sprang from a common enmity.
In all these instances he has seen the major and minor
terms and then grasped the causes, the middle terms.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 89b10
5 If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in
which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being
thought, or a process different from but analogous to
that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be,
while impassible, capable of receiving the form of an
object; that is, must be potentially identical in character
with its object without being the object. Mind must be
related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is
sensible.
Therefore, since everything is a possible object of
thought, mind in order, as Anaxagoras says, to dominate,
that is, to Know, must be pure from all admixture; for the
copresence of what is alien to its nature is a hindrance
tmd a block: it follows that it too, like the sensitive part,
can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a
certain capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called
mind (by mind | mean that whereby the soul thinks and
judges) is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing. For
this reason it cannot reasonably be regarded as blended
with the body: if so, it would acquire some quality, e.g.
warmth or cold, or even have an organ like the sensitive
faculty: as it is, it has none. It was a good idea to call the
soul ‘the place of forms’, though (1) this description holds
only of the intellective soul, and (2) even this is the forms
only potentially, not actually....
Once the mind has become each set of its possible
objects, aS a man of science has, when this phrase is used
of one who is actually a man of science (this happens
when he is now able to exercise the power on his own
initiative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but ina
different sense from the potentiality which preceded the
acquisition of knowledge by learning or discovery: the
mind too is then able to think itself.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 429a13
6 Mind is in a sense potentially whatever is thinkable,
though actually it is nothing until it has thought. What it
thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be
on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually
stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind.
Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its
objects are. For (a) in the case of objects which involve no
matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical; for
speculative knowledge and its object are identical...
Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole,
we find two factors involved, (1) a matter which is
potentially all the particulars included in the class, (2) a
cause which is productive in the sense that it makes
them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g, an art
to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be
found within the soul.
And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is
by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another
which is what it is by virtue of making all things: this isa
sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes
potential colours into actual colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible,
unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for
always the active is superior to the passive factor, the
Originating force to the matter which it forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the
individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual
knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior
even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at
another not. When mind is set free from its present
conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more:
this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however,
remember its former activity because, while mind in this
sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and
without it nothing thinks.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 429b30
7 The nature of the mind and soul is bodily; for when it is
seen to push the limbs, rouse the body from sleep, and
alter the countenance and guide and turn about the
whole man, and when we see that none of these effects
can take place without touch nor touch without body,
must we not admit that the mind and the soul are of a
bodily nature?...
| will now go on to explain in my verses of what kind of
body the mind consists and out of what it is formed. First
of all | say that it is extremely fine and formed of
exceedingly minute bodies. That this is so you may, if you
please to attend, clearly perceive from what follows:
nothing that is seen takes place with a velocity equal to
that of the mind when it starts some suggestion and
actually sets it agoing; the mind therefore is stirred with
greater rapidity than any of the things whose nature
stands out visible to sight. But that which is so passing
nimble, must consist of seeds exceedingly round and
exceedingly minute, in order to be stirred and set in
motion by a small moving power.... The following fact too
likewise demonstrates how fine the texture is of which its
nature is composed, and how small the room is in which it
can be contained, could it only be collected into one
mass: soon as the untroubled sleep of death has gotten
hold of a man and the nature of the mind and soul has
withdrawn, you can perceive then no diminution of the
entire body either in appearance or weight: death makes
all good save the vital sense and heat. Therefore the
whole soul must consist of very small seeds and be
inwoven through veins and flesh and sinews; inasmuch
as, after it has all withdrawn from the whole body, the
exterior contour of the limbs preserves itself entire and
not a tittle of the weight is lost. Just in the same way
when the flavour of wine is gone or when the delicious
aroma of a perfume has been dispersed into the air or
when the savour has left some body, yet the thing itself
does not therefore look smaller.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
8 In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the
ills contracted by the mind more severe than those
contracted by the body.
Cicero, Philippics, XI, 4
9 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his
stature?
Matthew 6:27
10 But still, just for the sake of asking. For the sake of
something to give to the chapels, ritual entrails.
The consecrated meat of a little white pig, pray for one
thing,
Pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body, a spirit
Unafraid of death, but reconciled to it, and able To
bear up, to endure whatever troubles afflict it. Free from
hate and desire, preferring Hercules’ labors
To the cushions and loves and feasts of Sardana-
pallus.
Juvenal, Satire X
11 Indeed, for the power of seeing and hearing, and indeed
for life itself, and for the things which contribute to
support it, for the fruits which are dry, and for wine and
oil give thanks to God: but remember that he has given
you something else better than all these, | mean the
power of using them, proving them and estimating the
value of each. For what is that which gives information
about each of these powers, what each of them is worth?
Is it each faculty itself? Did you ever hear the faculty of
vision saying anything about itself? or the faculty of
hearing? or wheat, or barley, or a horse or a dog? No; but
they are appointed as ministers and slaves to serve the
faculty which has the power of making use of the
appearances of things. And if you inquire what is the
value of each thing, of whom do you inquire? who
answers you? How then can any other faculty be more
powerful than this, which uses the rest as ministers and
itself proves each and pronounces about them? for which
of them knows what itself is, and what is its own value?
which of them knows when it ought to employ itself and
when not? what faculty is it which opens and closes the
eyes, and turns them away from objects to which it ought
not to apply them and does apply them to other objects?
No; but it is the faculty of the will.
Epictetus, Discourses, Il, 23
12 It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of
intellectual operation which we call the soul is a principle
both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by
means of the intellect man can know the natures of all
corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things
cannot have any of them in its own nature because that
which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of
anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man’s tongue
being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humour, cannot
perceive anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to
it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the
nature of any body it would be unable to know all bodies.
Now every body has some determinate nature. Therefore
it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body.
It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a
bodily organ, since the determinate nature of that bodily
organ would prevent the knowledge of all bodies; as
when a certain determinate colour is not only in the pupil
of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase
seems to be of that same colour.
Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the
mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from
the body. Now only that which subsists can have an
operation per se. For nothing can operate except a being
in act; hence a thing operates according as it is. For this
reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that
what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that
the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind,
is something incorporeal and subsistent.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 75, 2
13 The intellectual soul, because it can comprehend
universal, has a power extending to the infinite; therefore
it cannot be limited by nature either to certain fixed
natural judgments, or to certain fixed means whether of
defence or of clothing, as is the case with other animals,
the souls of which have knowledge and power in regard
to fixed particular things. Instead of all these, man has by
nature his reason and his hands, which are the organs of
organs, since by their means man can make for himself
instruments of an infinite variety, and for any number of
purposes.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 76, 5
14 To say that a thing is understood more by one than by
another may be taken in two senses. First, so that the
word more be taken as determining the act of
understanding as regards the thing understood; and
thus, one cannot understand the same thing more than
another, because to understand it otherwise than as It is,
either better or worse, would entail being deceived, and
such a one would not understand it... . In another sense
the word more can be taken as determining the act of
understanding on the part of him who understands; and
SO one may understand the same thing better than
someone else, through having a greater power of
understanding, just as a man may see a thing better with
his bodily sight, whose power is greater, and whose sight
iS more perfect. The same applies to the intellect in two
ways. First, as regards the intellect itself, which is more
perfect. For it is plain that the better the disposition of a
body, the better the soul allotted to it, which clearly
appears in things of different species. And the reason for
this is that act and form are received into matter
according to matter’s capacity, Hence because some men
have bodies of better disposition, their souls have a
greater power of understanding. Thus it is said that we
see that those who have delicate flesh are of apt mind.
Secondly, this occurs in regard to the lower powers of
which the intellect has need in its operation, for those in
whom the imaginative, cogitative and remembering
powers are of better disposition are better disposed to
understand.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 85, 7
15 There are three classes of intellects; one which
comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what
others comprehend; and a third which neither
comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the
first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is
useless.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXII
16 Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the
soul is oppressed, so is the body.
Luther, Table Talk, H645
17 Whenever ... we meet with heathen writers, let us learn
from that light of truth which is admirably displayed in
their works, that the human mind, fallen as it is, and
corrupted from its integrity, is yet invested and adorned
by God with excellent talents.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Il, 2
18 Meditation is a powerful and full study for anyone who
knows how to examine and exercise himself vigorously: |
would rather fashion my mind than furnish it. There is no
occupation that is either weaker or stronger, according to
the mind involved, than entertaining one’s own thoughts.
The greatest minds make it their profession, to whom
living ts thinking (Cicero]. Thus nature has favored it with
this privilege, that there is nothing we can do so long,
and no action to which we can devote ourselves more
commonly and easily. It is The occupation of the gods,
says Aristotle, from which springs their happiness and
ours.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 3, Three Kinds of Association
19 Hamlet. What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in uS unused.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, iv, 33
20 Ist Gentleman. But | much marvel that your lordship,
having
Rich tire about you, should at these early hours
Shake off the golden slumber of repose,
"Tis most strange
Nature should be so conversant with pain,
Being thereto not compell'd.
Cerimon. | hold it ever
Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches. Careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend;
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god. 'Tis known, | ever
Have studied physic, through which secret art,
By turning o’er authorities, | have,
Together with my practice, made familiar
To me and to my aid the blest infusions
That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;
And | can speak of the disturbances
That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me
A more content in course of true delight
Than to be thirsty after tottering honour,
Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,
To please the fool and Death.
Shakespeare, Pericles, Ill, ti, 21
21 The mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and
equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect
according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an
enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it
be not delivered and reduced.
Bacon, Advancament of Learning, Bk. 11, XIV, 9
22 Our method, though difficult in its operation, is easily
explained. It consists in determining the degrees of
certainty, whilst we, as it were, restore the senses to their
former rank, but generally reject that operation of the
mind which follows close upon the senses, and open and
establish a new and certain course for the mind from the
first actual perceptions of the senses themselves. This, no
doubt, was the view taken by those who have assigned so
much to logic; showing clearly thereby that they sought
some support for the mind, and suspected its natural and
spontaneous mode of action. But this is now employed
too late as a remedy, when all is clearly lost, and after the
mind, by the daily habit and intercourse of life, has come
prepossessed with corrupted doctrines, and filled with the
vainest idols. The art of logic, therefore, being (as we
have mentioned), too late a precaution, and in no way
remedying the matter, has tended more to confirm errors,
than to disclose truth. Our only remaining hope and
Salvation is to begin the whole labor of the mind again.
Bacon, Novum Organum, Pref.
23 The human understanding, from its peculiar nature,
easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in
things than it really finds.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 45
24 The greatest and, perhaps, most radical distinction
between different men’s dispositions for philosophy and
the sciences is this, that some are more vigorous and
active in observing the differences of things, others in
observing their resemblances; for a steady and acute
disposition can fix its thoughts, and dwell upon and
adhere to a point, through all the refinements of
differences, but those that are sublime and discursive
recognize and compare even the most delicate and
general resemblances; each of them readily falls into
excess, by catching either at nice distinctions or shadows
of resemblance.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 55
25 Examining attentively that which | was, | saw that | could
conceive that | had no body, and that there was no world
nor place where 1 might be; but yet that | could not for
all that conceive that | was not. On the contrary, | saw
from the very fact that | thought of doubting the truth of
other things, it very evidently and certainly followed that
| was; on the other hand if | had only ceased from
thinking, even if all the rest of what | had ever imagined
had really existed, | should have no reason for thinking
that | had existed. From that | knew that | was a
substance the whole essence or nature of which is to
think, and that for its existence there is no need of any
place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that
this "me," that is to say, the soul by which | am what! am,
is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to
know than is the latter; and even if body would not, the
soul would not cease to be what It is.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, IV
26 What of thinking? | find here that thought is an attribute
that belongs to me; it alone cannot be separated from
me. |! am, | exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when
1 think; for it might possibly be the ease if | ceased
entirely to think, that | should likewise cease altogether
to exist. | do not now admit anything which is not
necessarily true: to speak accurately | am not more than
a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind or a soul, or an
understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose
significance was formerly unknown to me. | am, however,
a real thing and really exist; but what thing? 1 have
answered: a thing which thinks.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, I!
27 By virtues intellectual are always understood such
abilities of the mind as men praise, value, and desire
should be in themselves; and go commonly under the
name of a good wit; though the same word, wit, be used
also to distinguish one certain ability from the rest.
These virtues are of two sorts; natural and acquired.
By natural, | mean not that which a man hath from his
birth: for that is nothing else but sense; wherein men
differ so little one from another, and from brute beasts, as
it is not to be reckoned amongst virtues. But | mean that
wit which is gotten by use only, and experience, without
method, culture, or instruction. This natural wit
consisteth principally in two things: celerity of imagining
(that this, swift succession of one thought to another);
and steady direction to some approved end. On the
contrary, a slow imagination maketh that defect or fault
of the mind which is commonly called dul/ness, stupidity,
and sometimes by other names that signify slowness of
motion, or difficulty to be moved.
And this difference of quickness is caused by the
difference of men’s passions; that love and dislike, some
one thing, some another: and therefore some men’s
thoughts run one way, some another, and are held to,
and observe differently the things that pass through their
imagination. And whereas in this succession of men’s
thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they
think on, but either in what they be like one another, or
in what they be unlike, or what they serve for, or how
they serve to such a purpose; those that observe their
similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely
observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by
which, in this occasion, is meant a good fancy. But they
that observe their differences, and dissimilitudes, which
is called distinguishing, and discerning, and judging
between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not
easy, are said to have a good judgement: and particularly
in matter of conversation and business, wherein times,
places, and persons are to be discerned, this virtue is
called discretion.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 8
28 The secret thoughts of a man run over all things holy,
prophane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without
shame, or blame; which verbal discourse cannot do,
farther than the judgement shall approve of the time,
place, and persons.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 8
29 There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to
penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of
given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other
able to comprehend a great number of premises without
confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect.
The one has force and exactness, the other
comprehension. Now the one quality can exist without
the other; the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can
also be comprehensive and weak.
Pascal, Pensées, |, 2
30 | can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head (for
it is only experience which teaches us that the head is
more necessary than feet). But | cannot conceive man
without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 339
31 All our dignity consists ... in thought. By it we must
elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we
cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is
the principle of morality.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 347
32 A thinking reed. —It is not from space that | must seek
my dignity, but from the government of my thought. |
shall have no more if | possess worlds. By space the
universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom;
by thought | comprehend the world.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 348
33 Satan. The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make
a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 254
34 Belial. For who would loose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through Eternity,
To perish rather, swallowd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 146
35 Man thinks.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Axiom 2
36 The body cannot determine the mind to thought, neither
can the mind determine the body to motion nor rest, nor
to anything else, if there be anything else.... That is to
say, that the mind and the body are one and the same
thing, conceived at one time under the attribute of
thought, and at another under that of extension. For this
reason, the order or concatenation of things is one,
whether nature be conceived under this or under that
attribute, and consequently the order of the actions and
passions of our body is coincident in nature with the
order of the actions and passions of the min4d....
Although these things are so, and no ground for
doubting remains, | scarcely believe, nevertheless, that,
without a proof derived from experience, men will be
induced calmly to weigh what has been said, so firmly are
they persuaded that, solely at the bidding of the mind,
the body moves or rests, and does a number of things
which depend upon the will of the mind alone, and upon
the power of thought.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 2; Schol.
37 The more perfect a thing is, the more reality it
DOSSeSSES....
Hence it follows that that part of the mind which
abides, whether great or small, is more perfect than the
other part. For the part of the mind which is eternal is the
intellect, through which alone we are said to act, but that
part which, as we have shown, perishes, is the
imagination itself, through which alone we are said to
suffer. Therefore that part which abides, whether great or
small, is more perfect than the latter.
These are the things 1 proposed to prove concerning
the mind, insofar as it is considered without relation to
the existence of the body, and from these ... it is evident
that our mind, insofar as it understands, is an eternal
mode of thought, which is determined by another eternal
mode of thought, and this again by another, and so on ad
infinitum, so that all taken together form the eternal and
infinite intellect of God.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 40
38 Dim as the borrow’d beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand’ring travel en,
Is Reason to the soul.
Dryden, Religio Laici, 1
39 Insofar as the concatenation of their perceptions is due to
the principle of memory alone, men act like the lower
animals, resembling the empirical physicians whose
methods are those of mere practice without theory.
Indeed, in three-fourths of our actions we are nothing but
empirics. For instance, when we expect that there will be
daylight tomorrow, we do so empirically, because it has
always so happened until now. It is only the astronomer
who thinks it on rational grounds.
But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths
that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us
Reason and the sciences, raising as to the knowledge of
ourselves and of God. And it is this in us that is called the
rational soul or mind.
It is also through the knowledge of necessary truths,
and through their abstract expression, that we rise to acts
of reflexion, which make us think of what is called |, and
observe that this or that is within us: and thus, thinking
of ourselves, we think of being, of substance, of the
simple and the compound, of the immaterial, and of God
Himself, conceiving that what is limited in us is in Him
without limits. And these acts of reflexion furnish the
chief objects of our reasonings.
Leibniz. Monadology, 28-30
40 The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the
understanding with ideas is,—the perception of the
operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed
about the ideas it has got;— which operations, when the
soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the
understanding with another set of ideas, which could not
be had from things without. And such are perception,
thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing,
and all the different actings of our own minds;—which we
being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from
these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as
we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of
ideas every man has wholly himself; and though it be not
sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet
it is very like it, and might properly enough be called
internal sense. But as | call the other sensation, so | call
this reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the
mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.
By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, |
would be understood to mean, that notice which the
mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of
them, by reason whereof there conic to be ideas of these
operations in the understanding. These two, | say, viz.
external material things, as the objects of sensation, and
the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of
reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all
our ideas take their beginnings.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, |, 4
41 Follow a child from its birth, and observe the alterations
that lime makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the
senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas,
it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the
more it has matter to think on. After some time it begins
to know the objects which, being most familiar with it,
have made lasting impressions. Thus it comes by degrees
to know the persons it daily converses with, and
distinguishes them from strangers; which are instances
and effects of its coining to retain and distinguish the
ideas the senses convey to it. And so we may observe
how the mind, by degrees, improves in these; and
advances to the exercise of those other faculties of
enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of
reasoning about them, and reflecting upon all these....
In time the mind comes to reflect on its own
operations about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby
stores itself with a new set of ideas, which | call ideas of
reflection. These are the impressions that are made on
our senses by outward objects that are extrinsical to the
mind; and its own operations, proceeding from powers
intrinsical and proper to itself, which, when reflected on
by itself, become also objects of its contemplation—arc,
as | have said, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first
capacity of human intellect is,—that the mind is fitted to
receive the impressions made on it; either through the
senses by outward objects, or by its own operations when
it reflects on them. This is the first step a man makes
towards the discovery of anything, and the groundwork
whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall
have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts
which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as
heaven itself, take their rise and footing here; in all that
great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote
specualtions it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not
one jot beyond those ideas winch sense or reflection
have offered for its contemplation.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, |, 22-24
42 The power of perception is that which we call the
Understanding. Perception, which we make the act of the
understanding, is of three sorts:—1. The perception of
ideas in our minds. 2. The perception of the signification
of signs. 3. The perception of the connexion or
repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is
between any of our ideas. All these are attributed to the
understanding, or perceptive power, though it be the two
latter only that use allows us to say we understand.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX1, 5
43 The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were,
drop into the mind, are the most valuable of any we have,
and therefore should be secured, because they seldom
return again.
Locke, Letter to Samuel Bold (May 16, 1699)
44 Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind
that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such |
take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of
heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those
bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world,
have not any subsistence without a mind, that their
being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so
long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not
exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they
must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the
mind of some Eternal Spirit—it being perfectly
unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of
abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an
existence independent of a spirit. To be convinced of
which, the reader need only reflect, and try to separate in
his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its
being perceived.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 6
45 Far as Creation’s ample range extends.
The scale of sensual, mental pow’rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man’s imperial race.
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme.
The mole’s dim curtain, and the lynx’s beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between.
And hound sagacious on the tainted green;
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles thro’ the vernal wood;
The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing dew:
How Instinct varies in the grov’ling swine,
Compar’d, half-reas’ning elephant, with thine:
"Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier;
For ever sep’rate, yet for ever near
| Remembrance and Reflection how ally’d;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th’ insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow’rs of all subdu’d by thee alone.
Is not thy Reason all these pow’rs in one?
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 207
46 Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train.
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain;
These mix’d with art, and to due bounds confin’d,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 117
47 We may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two
classes or species, which are distinguished by their
different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible
and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts or Ideas.
The other species want a name in our language, and in
most others; | suppose, because it was not requisite for
any, but philosophical purposes, to rank them under a
general term or appellation. Let us, therefore, use a little
freedom, and call them /mpressions; employing that word
in a sense somewhat different from the usual. By the term
impression, then, | mean all our more lively perceptions,
when we hear, or sec, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or
will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which
are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious,
when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements
above mentioned.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, 11, 12
48 Nothing, at first view, may seem more unbounded than
the thought of man, which not only escapes all human
power and authority, but is not even restrained within the
limits of nature and reality. To form monsters, and join
incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the
imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most
natural and familiar objects. And while the body is
confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain
and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us
into the most distant regions of the universe; or even
beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where
nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never
was seen, or heard of, may yet be conceived; nor is
anything beyond the power of thought, except what
implies an absolute contradiction.
But though our thought seems to possess this
unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer
examination, that it is really confined within very narrow
limits, and that all this creative power of the mind
amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding,
transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials
afforded us by the senses and experience. When we think
of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas,
gold, and mountain with which we were formerly
acquainted. A virtuous horse we can conceive; because,
from our own feeling, we can conceive virtue; and this we
may unite to the figure and shape of a horse, which is an
animal familiar to us. In short, all the materials of
thinking are derived either from our outward or inward
sentiment: the mixture and composition of these belongs
alone to the mind and will. Or, to express myself in
philosophical language, all our ideas or more feeble
perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively
ones.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, II, 13
49 It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has
conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as
proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your
begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every
thing you sec, hear, read, or understand. Tins is of great
use.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 11, 19
50 A feeble body makes a feeble mind.
Rousseau, Emile, |
51 Such is the delight of mental superiority that none on
whom nature or study have conferred it would purchase
the gifts of fortune by its loss,
Johnson, Rambler No. ISO
52 Reason never has an immediate relation to an object; it
relates immediately to the understanding alone. It is only
through the understanding that it can be employed in the
field of experience. It does not. form conceptions of
objects, it merely arranges them and gives to them that
unity which they are capable of possessing when the
sphere of their application has been extended as widely
as possible. Reason avails itself of the conception of the
undemanding for the sole purpose of producing totality in
the different series, This totality the undemanding does
not concern itself with; its only occupation is the
connection of experiences, by which series of conditions
in accordance with conceptions are established. the
object of reason is, therefore, the understanding and its
proper destination. As the latter brings unity into the
diversity of objects by means of its conceptions, so the
former brings unity into the diversity of conceptions by
means of ideas; as it sets the final aim of a collective
unity to the operations of the understanding, which
without this occupies itself with a distributive unity
alone,
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
53 Reason is not to be considered as an indefinitely
extended plane, of the bounds of which we have only a
general knowledge; it ought rather to be compared toa
sphere, the radius of which may be found from the
curvature of its surface—that is, the nature of a priori
synthetical propositions— and, consequently, its
circumference and extent, Beyond the sphere of
experience there are no objects which it can cognize;
nay, even questions regarding such supposititious
objects relate only to the subjective principles of a
complete determination of the relations which exist
between the understanding-conceptions which lie within
this sphere.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
54 1 should be inclined ... to consider the world and this life
as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the
creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to
awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the
dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from
the clod of clay.
Malthus, Population, XVIII
55 He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven.
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound.
Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, 11, 72
56 What Exile from himself can flee?
To zones, though more and more remote.
Still, still pursues, where-e’er | be,
The blight of life—the demon Thought.
Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, I, To Inez
57 the history of mind is its own act. Mind is only what it
does, and its act is to make itself the object of its own
consciousness. In history its act is to gain consciousness
of itself as mind, to apprehend itself in its interpretation
of itself to itself. This apprehension is its being and its
principle, and the completion of apprehension at one
stage is at the same time the rejection of that stage and
its transition to a higher. To use abstract phraseology, the
mind apprehending this apprehension anew, or in other
words returning to itself again out of its rejection of this
lower stage of apprehension, is the mind of the stage
higher than that on which it stood in its earlier
apprehension.
The question of the perfectibility and Education of the
Human Race arises here. Those who have maintained this
perfectibility have divined something of the nature of
mind, something of the fact that it is its nature to have
self-knowledge as the law of its being, and, since it
apprehends that which it is, to have a form higher than
that which constituted its mere being. But to those who
reject this doctrine, mind has remained an empty word,
and history a superficial play of casual, so-called "merely
human," strivings and passions. Even if, in connexion
with history, they speak of Providence and the plan of
Providence, and so express a faith in a higher power, their
ideas remain empty because they expressly declare that
for them the plan of Providence is inscrutable and
incomprehensible.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 343
58 In the course of this work of the world mind, states,
nations, and individuals arise animated by their
particular determinate principle which has its
interpretation and actuality in their constitutions and in
the whole range of their life and condition. While their
consciousness is limited to these and they are absorbed
in their mundane interests, they are all the time the
unconscious tools and organs of the world mind at work
within them. The shapes which they take pass away,
while the absolute mind prepares and works out its
transition to its next higher stage.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 344
59 Will without freedom is an empty word, while freedom is
actual only as will, as subject... , Mind isin principle
thinking, and man is distinguished from beast in virtue of
thinking. But it must not be imagined that man is half
thought and half will, and that he keeps thought in one
pocket and will in another, for this would be a foolish
idea. The distinction between thought and will is only
that between the theoretical attitude and the practical.
These, however, are surely not two faculties; the will is
rather a special way of thinking, thinking translating
itself into existence, thinking as the urge to give itself
existence.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 4
60 When a hypothesis has once come to birth in the mind,
or gained a footing there, it leads a life so far comparable
with the life of an organism, as that it assimilates matter
from the outer world only when it is like in kind with it
and beneficial; and when, contrarily, such matter is not
like in kind but hurtful, the hypothesis, equally with the
organism, throws it off, or, if forced to take it, gets rid of it
again entire.
Schopenhauer, Some Forms of Literature
61 Great intellectual gifts mean an activity pre-eminently
nervous in its character, and consequently a very high
degree of susceptibility to pain in every form.
Schopenhauer, Personality
62 Thought, true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is
it not the daughter of Pain? Born as out of the black
whirlwind;—true effort, in fact, as a captive struggling to
free himself: that is Thought.
Carlyle, The Hero as Poet
63 One should not think slightingly of the paradoxical; for
the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and
the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without
feeling: a paltry mediocrity. But the highest pitch of every
passion is always to will its own downfall; and so it is also
the supreme passion of the Reason to seek a collision,
though this collision must in one way or another prove its
undoing. The supreme paradox of all thought is the
attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.
Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, III
64 How can we speak of the action of the mind under any
divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works,
and so forth, since it melts will into perception,
knowledge into act? Each becomes the other. Itself alone
iS.
Emerson, Intellect
65 What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
Emerson, Intellect
66 There is one mind common to all individual men. Every
man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He
that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a
freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he
may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any
time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath
access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or
can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
Emerson, History
67 The brain is only one condition out of many on which
intellectual manifestations depend; the others being,
chiefly, the organs of the senses and the motor
apparatuses, especially those which are concerned in
prehension and in the production of articulate speech.
T. H. Huxley, Relations of Man to the Lower Animals
68 The spontaneous process which goes on within the mind
itself is higher and choicer than that which is logical; for
the latter, being scientific, is common property, and can
be taken and made use of by minds who are personally
strangers, in any true sense, both to the ideas in question
and to their development.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pt. Il, V, 4
69 The action of thinking may incidentally have other
results; it may serve to amuse us, for example, and
among di/ettanti it is not rare to find those who have so
perverted thought to the purposes of pleasure that it
seems to vex them to think that the questions upon
which they delight to exercise it may ever get finally
settled; and a positive discovery which takes a favorite
subject out of the arena of literary debate is met with ill-
concealed dislike.
C. S. Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear
70 Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in
bits. Such words as "chain" or "train" do not describe it
fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing
jointed; it flows. A "river" or a "stream" is the metaphor
by which it is most naturally described. /n talking of it
hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of
consciousness, or of subjective life.
William James, Psychology, IX
71 The mind is at every stage a theatre of simultaneous
possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of
these with each other, the selection of some, and the
suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting
agency of attention. The highest and most elaborated
mental products are filtered from the data chosen by the
faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered by the
faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from a
still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The
mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as
a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the
statue stood there from eternity. But there were a
thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone
is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
Just so the world of each of us, howsoever different our
several views of it may be, all lay embedded in the
primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere
matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if
we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that
black and jointless continuity of soace and moving clouds
of swarming atoms which science calls the only real
world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will
be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative
strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like
sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the
given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same
stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same
monotonous and inexpressive chaos! My world is but one
ina million alike embedded, alike real to those who may
abstract them. How different must be the worlds in the
consciousness of ant, cuttle-fish, or crab!
William James, Psychology, IX
72 What happens in the brain after experience has done its
utmost is what happens in every material mass which has
been fashioned by an outward force,—in every pudding
or mortar, for example, which | may make with my hands.
The fashioning from without brings the elements into
collocations which set new internal forces free to exert
their effects in turn. And the random irradiations and
resettlements of our ideas, which supervene upon
experience, and constitute our free mental play, are due
entirely to these secondary internal processes, which
vary enormously from brain to brain, even though the
brains be exposed to exactly the same "outer relations,"
The higher thought-processes owe their being to causes
which correspond far more to the sourings and
fermentations of dough, the setting of mortar, or the
subsidence of sediments in mixtures, than to the
manipulations by which these physical aggregates came
to be compounded.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
73 The causes of our mental structure are doubtless natural,
and connected, like all our other peculiarities, with those
of our nervous structure. Our interests, our tendencies of
attention, our motor impulses, the aesthetic, moral, and
theoretic combinations we delight in, the extent of our
power of apprehending schemes of relation, just like the
elementary relations themselves, time, space, difference
and similarity and the elementary kinds of feeling, have
all grown up in ways of which at present we can give no
account.... And the more sincerely one seeks to trace the
actual course of psychogenesis, the steps by which as a
race we may have come by the peculiar mental attributes
which we possess, the more clearly one perceives "the
slowly gathering twilight close in utter night."
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
74 The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves
all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
75 Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual
compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the
world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical
limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying
in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the
perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from
human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of
Nature, the generations have gradually created an
ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its
natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler
impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual
world.
Russell, Study of Mathematics
76 The power of reason is thought small in these days, but |
remain an unrepentant rationalist. Reason may be a small
force, but is constant, and works always in one direction,
while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile
strife. Therefore every orgy of unreason in the end
strengthens the friends of reason, and shows afresh that
they are the only true friends of humanity.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, 1X
77 Mental activity, which works its way from the memory-
image to the production of identity of perception via the
outer world, merely represents a roundabout way to wish-
fulfilment made necessary by experience. Thinking is
indeed nothing but a substitute for the hallucinatory
wish; and if the dream is called a wish-fulfilment, this
becomes something self-evident, since nothing but a
wish can impel our psychic apparatus to activity. The
dream, which fulfils its wishes by following the short
regressive path, has thereby simply preserved for us a
specimen of the primary method of operation of the
psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned as
inappropriate. What once prevailed in the waking state,
when our psychic life was still young and inefficient,
seems to have been banished into our nocturnal life; just
as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive
weapons of adult humanity, the bow and arrow.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VII, C
78 The first of these displeasing propositions of psycho-
analysis is this: that mental processes are essentially
unconscious, and that those which are conscious are
merely isolated acts and parts of the whole psychic entity.
Now | must ask you to remember that, on the contrary,
we are accustomed to identify the mental with the
conscious. Consciousness appears to us as positively the
characteristic that defines mental life, and we regard
psychology as the study of the content of consciousness.
This even appears so evident that any contradiction of it
seems obvious nonsense to us, and yet it is impossible for
psycho-analysis to avoid this contradiction, or to accept
the identity between the conscious and the psychic. The
psycho-analytical definition of the mind is that it
comprises processes of the nature of feeling, thinking,
and wishing, and it maintains that there are such things
as unconscious thinking and unconscious wishing. But in
doing so psycho-analysis has forfeited at the outset the
sympathy of the sober and scientifically minded, and
incurred the suspicion of being a phantastic cult
occupied with dark and unfathomable mysteries. You
yourselves must find it difficult to understand why |
should stigmatize an abstract proposition, such as "The
psychic is the conscious," as a prejudice; nor can you
guess yet what evolutionary process could have led to
the denial of the unconscious, if it does indeed exist, nor
what advantage could have been achieved by this denial.
It seems like an empty wrangle over words to argue
whether mental life is to be regarded as co-extensive with
consciousness or whether it may be said to stretch
beyond this limit, and yet | can assure you that the
acceptance of unconscious mental processes represents a
decisive step towards a new orientation in the world and
in science.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, |
79 Our best hope for the future is that the intellect— the
scientific spirit, reason—should in time establish a
dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of
reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to
human emotions, and to all that is determined by them,
the position to which they are entitled. But the common
pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would
prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and
would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever,
like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such
a development is a danger for the future of mankind.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
80 Demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying
and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection.
Where there is no question of a problem to be solved ora
difficulty to be surmounted, the course of suggestions
flows on at random; we have the first type of thought
described. If the stream of suggestions is controlled
simply by their emotional congruity, their fitting
agreeably into a single picture or story, we have the
second type. But a question to be answered, an
ambiguity to be resolved, sets up an end and holds the
current of ideas to a definite channel. Every suggested
conclusion is tested by its reference to this regulating
end, by its pertinence to the problem in hand. This need
of straightening out a perplexity also controls the kind of
inquiry undertaken. A traveler whose end is the most
beautiful path will look for other considerations and will
test suggestions occurring to him on another principle
than if he washes to discover the way to a given city. The
problem fixes the end of thought and the end controls
the process of thinking.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt. I, 1, 3
81 Thinking is stoppage of the immediate manifestation of
impulse until that impulse has been brought into
connection with other possible tendencies to action so
that a more comprehensive and coherent plan of activity
is formed. Some of the other tendencies to action lead to
use of eye, ear, and hand to observe objective conditions;
others result in recall of what has happened in the past.
Thinking is thus a postponement of immediate action,
while it effects internal control of impulse through a
union of observation and memory, this union being the
heart of reflection.
Dewey, Experience and Education, V
82 Reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the
pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts;
it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage
of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into
custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its
realization. And its operation is always subject to test in
experience. The plans which are formed, the principles
which man projects as guides of reconstructive action,
are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in
practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as
they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the
guidance it requires. We may call them programmes of
action, but since they are to be used in making our future
acts less blind, more directed, they are flexible.
Intelligence is not something possessed once for all. It is
in constant process of forming, and its retention requires
constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-
minded will to learn and courage in re-adjustment.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, lV
83 If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our
species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the
prehistoric periods show us to be the constant
characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say
not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. |n short, intelligence,
considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the
faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools
to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the
manufacture.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, II
84 Knowledge and action are... only two aspects of one and
the same faculty...
If instinct is, above all, the faculty of using an
organized natural instrument, it must involve innate
knowledge (potential or unconscious, it is true), both of
this instrument and of the object to which it is applied.
Instinct is therefore innate knowledge of a thing. But
intelligence is the faculty of constructing unorganized—
that is to say artificial—instruments. If, on its account,
nature gives up endowing the living being with the
instruments that may serve him, it is in order that the
living being may be able to vary his construction
according to circumstances. The essential function of
intelligence is therefore to see the way out of a difficulty
in any circumstances whatever, to find what is most
suitable, what answers best the question asked. Hence it
bears essentially on the relations between a given
situation and the means of utilizing it. What is innate in
intellect, therefore, IS the tendency to establish relations,
and this tendency implies the natural knowledge of
certain very general relations, a kind of stuff that the
activity of each particular intellect will cut up into more
special relations. Where activity is directed toward
manufacture, therefore, knowledge necessarily bears on
relations. But this entirely forma/ knowledge of
intelligence has an immense advantage over the material
knowledge of instinct. A form, just because it is empty,
may be filled at will with any number of things in turn,
even with those that are of no use. So that a formal
knowledge is not limited to what is practically useful,
although it is in view of practical utility that it has made
its appearance in the world. An intelligent being bears
within himself the means to transcend his own nature.
He transcends himself, however, less than he wishes,
less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely
formal character of intelligence deprives it of the ballast
necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that
are of the most powerful interest to speculation. Instinct,
on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is
incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not
speculate. Here we reach the point that most concerns
our present inquiry. The difference that we shall now
proceed to denote between instinct and intelligence is
what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out.
We formulate it thus: There are things that intelligence
alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never
find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will
never seek them.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, II
85 In the higher reaches of human nature, as much as in the
lower, rationality depends on distinguishing the
excellent; and that distinction can be made, in the last
analysis, only by an irrational impulse. As life is a better
form given to force, by which the universal flux is
subdued to create and serve a somewhat permanent
interest, so reason is a better form given to interest itself,
by which it is fortified and propagated, and ultimately,
perhaps, assured of satisfaction. The substance to which
this form is given remains irrational; so that rationality,
like all excellence, is something secondary and relative,
requiring a natural being to possess or to impute it. When
definite interests are recognised and the values of things
are estimated by that standard, action at the same time
veering in harmony with that estimation, then reason has
been born and a moral world has arisen.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 1
86 Reason, aS Hume said with profound truth, is an
unintelligible instinct. It could not be otherwise if reason
is to remain something transitive and existential; for
transition is unintelligible, and yet is the deepest
characteristic of existence. Philosophers, however, having
perceived that the function of thought is to fix static
terms and reveal eternal relations, have inadvertently
transferred to the living act what is true only of its ideal
object; and they have expected to find in the process,
treated psychologically, that luminous deductive
clearness which belongs to the ideal world it tends to
reveal. The intelligible, however, lies at the periphery of
experience, the surd at its core; and intelligence is but
one centrifugal ray darting from the slime to the stars.
Thought must execute a metamorphosis; and while this is
of course mysterious, it is one of those familiar mysteries,
like motion and will, which are more natural than
dialectical lucidity itself; for dialectic grows cogent by
fulfilling intent, but intent or meaning is itself vital and
inexplicable.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 3
5.2 The Senses and Sense Perception
Whether mind, intellect, or the rational faculty is material or
immaterial has long been debated and is still an issue in
dispute. The reader will find indications of this controversy
in Section 5.1. In contrast, he will find no disagreement here
about the bodily or corporeal character of the senses.
From the very beginning of Western psychology, special
sense-organs have been the recognized seats of man’s
power to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Modern
anatomical and physiological investigations have discovered
additional sense-organs and increased our knowledge of
such organs as the eye and the ear. In consequence, the
traditional enumeration of the five senses has been enlarged
to include other modes of sensitivity. But while the study of
the senses thus fails within the sohere of anatomy and
physiology, the discussion of sensation and sense
perception deals with questions that are psychological or
philosophical in their basic terms.
For example, all the knowledge we have of the structure
and functioning of the sense-organs does not fully explain
how sensation takes place; nor does it help us to decide
which of several competing theories of sense perception is
the best account of that process. The reader will find these
matters disputed in the quotations below. He will also find
the consideration of such questions as the difference
between sense-knowledge and intellectual knowledge, the
relation of percepts to concepts, and the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities; or between such things as
size and motion which are perceptible by two or more senses
and such things as color which is perceptible by the eye
alone, or sound which is perceptible only by the ear.
Another problem that is discussed in a number of
quotations is the problem of the trustworthiness and
fallibility of the senses and of sense perception. Sensory
deceptions, illusions, and hallucinations are often cited by
the skeptic to support his case. On the other hand, it is said
that the senses themselves make no mistakes; the errors
attributed to the senses are errors of judgment, not of sense
perception. For the discussion of related matters, the reader
is referred to several sections in Chapter 6 on Knowledge,
Section 6.2 on Experience, Section 6.4 on Error, Ignorance,
and the Limits of Human Knowledge, and Section 6.6 on
Doubt and Skepticism.
1 Timaeus. Sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest
benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars, and the
sun, and the heaven, none of the words which we have
spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered.
But now the sight of day and night, and the months and
the revolutions of the years, have created number, and
have given us a conception of time, and the power of
enquiring about the nature of the universe; and from this
source we have derived philosophy, than which no
greater good ever was or will be given by the gods to
mortal man. This is the greatest boon of sight: and of the
lesser benefits why should | speak? even the ordinary’
man if he were deprived of them would bewail his loss,
but in vain. Thus much let me say however: God invented
and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the
courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to
the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to
them, the unperturbed to the perturbed; and that we,
learning them and partaking of the natural truth of
reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of
God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may be
affirmed of speech and hearing: they have been given by
the gods to the same end and for a like reason. For this is
the principal end of speech, whereto it most contributes.
Plato, Timaeus, 47A
2 Socrates. The simple sensations which reach the soul
through the body are given at birth to men and animals
by nature, but their reflections on the being and use of
them are slowly and hardly gained, if they are ever
gained, by education and long experience.
Theaetetus. Assuredly.
Soc. And can a man attain truth who fails of attaining
being?
Theaet. Impossible.
Soc. And can he who misses the truth of anything,
have a knowledge of that thing?
Theaet. He cannot.
Soc. Then knowledge does not consist in impressions
of sense, but in reasoning about them; in that only, and
not in the mere impression, truth and being can be
attained?
Theaet. Clearly.
Soc. And would you call the two processes by the
Same name, when there is so great a difference between
them?
Theaet. That would certainly not be right.
Soc. And what name would you give to seeing,
hearing, smelling, being cold and being hot?
Theaet. | should call all of them perceiving— what
other name could be given to them?
Soc. Perception would be the collective name of them?
Theaet. Certainly.
Soc. Which, as we say, has no part in the attain-tnent
of truth any more than of being?
Theaet. Certainly not.
Soc. And therefore not in science or knowledge?
Theaet. No.
Soc. Then perception, Thcactctus, can never be the
same as knowledge or science.
Plato, Theaetetus, 186A
3 Scientific knowledge is not possible through the act of
perception. Even if perception as a faculty is of ‘the such'
and not merely of a ‘this somewhat', yet one must at any
rate actually perceive a ‘this somewhat’, and at a definite
present place and time: but that which is
commensurately universal and true in all cases one
cannot perceive, since it is not ‘this’ and it is not ‘now’; if
it were, it would not be commensurately universal—the
term we apply to what is always and everywhere. Seeing,
therefore, that demonstrations are commensurately
universal and universals imperceptible, we clearly cannot
obtain scientific knowledge by the act of perception: nay,
it is obvious that even if it were possible to perceive that
a triangle has its angles equal to two right angles, we
should still be looking for a demonstration—we should
not (as some say) possess knowledge of it; for perception
must be of a particular, whereas scientific knowledge
involves the recognition of the commensurate universal.
So if we were on the moon, and saw the earth shutting
out the sun’s light, we should not know the cause of the
eclipse: we should perceive the present fact of the
eclipse, but not the reasoned fact at all, since the act of
perception is not of the commensurate universal, | do not,
of course, deny that by watching the frequent recurrence
of this event we might, after tracking the commensurate
universal, possess a demonstration for the commensurate
universal is elicited from the several groups of singulars.
The commensurate universal is precious because it
makes clear the cause; so that in the case of facts like
these which have a cause other than themselves
universal knowledge is more precious than sense-
perceptions and than intuition. (As regards primary truths
there is of course a different account to be given.) Hence
it is clear that knowledge of things demonstrable cannot
be acquired by perception, unless the term perception is
applied to the possession of scientific knowledge through
demonstration. Nevertheless certain points do arise with
regard to connexions to be proved which are referred for
their explanation to a failure in sense-perception: there
are cases when an act of vision would terminate our
inquiry, not because in seeing we should be knowing, but
because we should have elicited the universal from
seeing; if, for example, we saw the pores in the glass and
the light passing through, the reason of the kindling
would be clear to us because we should at the same time
see it in each instance and intuit that it must be so in all
instances.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 87b27
4 The following results applying to any and every sense may
now be formulated.
(A) By a ‘sense’ is meant what has the power of
receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without
the matter. This must be conceived of as taking place in
the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a
signet-ring without the iron or gold; we say that what
produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but
its particular metathe constitution makes no difference:
in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured
or flavoured or sounding, but it is indifferent what in each
case the substance is; what alone matters is what quality
it has, i.e. in what ratio its constituents are combined.
(B) By ‘an organ of sense’ is meant that in which
ultimately such a power is seated.
The sense and its organ are the same in fact, but their
essence is not the same. What perceives is, of course, a
Spatial magnitude, but we must not admit that either the
having the power to perceive or the sense itself is a
magnitude; what they are is a certain ratio or power ina
magnitude. This enables us to explain why objects of
sense which possess one of two opposite sensible
qualities in a degree largely in excess of the other
opposite destroy the organs of sense; if the movement
set up by an object is too strong for the organ, the
equipoise of contrary qualities in the organ, which just is
its sensory power, is disturbed; it is precisely as concord
and tone are destroyed by too violently twanging the
strings of a lyre. This explains also why plants cannot
perceive, in spite of their having a portion of soul in them
and obviously being affected by tangible objects
themselves; for undoubtedly their temperature can be
lowered or raised. The explanation is that they have no
mean of contrary qualities, and so no principle in them
capable of taking on the forms of sensible objects without
their matter; in the case of plants the affection is an
affection by form-and-matter together. The problem
might be raised: Can what cannot smell be said to be
affected by smells or what cannot see by colours, and so
on? It might be said that a smell is just what can be
smelt, and if it produces any effect it can only be so as to
make something smell it, and it might be argued that
what cannot smell cannot be affected by smells and
further that what can smell can be affected by it only in
So far as it has in it the power to smell (similarly with the
proper objects of all the other senses). Indeed that this is
SO is made quite evident as follows. Light or darkness,
sounds and smells leave bodies quite unaffected; what
does affect bodies is not these but the bodies which are
their vehicles, e.g. what splits the trunk of a tree is not
the sound of the thunder but the air which accompanies
thunder. Yes, but, it may be objected, bodies are affected
by what is tangible and by flavours. If not, by what are
things that are without soul affected, i.e, altered in
quality? Must we not, then, admit that the objects of the
other senses also may affect them? Is not the true
account this, that all bodies are capable of being affected
by smells and sounds, but that some on being acted
upon, having no boundaries of their own, disintegrate, as
in the instance of air, which does become odorous,
showing that some effect is produced on it by what is
odorous? But smelling is more than such an affection by
what is odorous— what more? Is not the answer that,
while the air owing to the momentary duration of the
action upon it of what is odorous does itself become
perceptible to the sense of smell, smelling is an observing
of the result produced?
Aristotle, On the Soul, 424a16
5 Without touch there can be no other sense, and the organ
of touch cannot consist of earth or of any other single
element.
It is evident, therefore, that the loss of this one sense
alone must bring about the death of an animal. For as on
the one hand nothing which is not an animal can haye
this sense, so on the other it is the only one which is
indispensably necessary to what is an animal. This
explains, further, the following difference between the
other senses and touch. In the case of all the others
excess of intensity in the qualities which they apprehend,
i.e. excess of intensity in colour, sound, and smell,
destroys not the animal but only the organs of the sense
(except incidentally, as when the sound is accompanied
by an impact or shock, or where through the objects of
sight or of smell certain other things are set in motion,
which destroy by contact); flavour also destroys only in
so far as it is at the same time tangible. But excess of
intensity in tangible qualities, e.g. heat, cold, or
hardness, destroys the animal itself. As in the case of
every sensible quality excess destroys the organ, so here
what is tangible destroys touch, which is the essential
mark of life; for it has been shown that without touch it is
impossible for an animal to be. That is why excess in
intensity of tangible qualities destroys not merely the
organ, but the animal itself, because this is the only
sense which it must have.
All the other senses are necessary to animals, as we
have said, not for their being, but for their well-being.
Such, e.g. is sight, which, since it lives in air or water, or
generally in what is pellucid, it must have in order to see,
and taste because of what is pleasant or painful to it, in
order that it may perceive these qualities in its nutriment
and so may desire to be set in motion, and hearing that it
may have communication made to it, and a tongue that it
may communicate with its fellows.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 435b2
6 Since a particular figure felt by the hands in the dark is
known to be the same which is seen in the bright light of
day, touch and sight must be excited by a quite similar
cause. Well then if we handle a square thing and it
excites our attention in the dark, in the daylight what
square thing will be able to fall on our sight, except the
image of that thing? Therefore the cause of seeing, it is
plain, lies in images and no thing can be perceived
without them.
Well the idols of things | soeak of are borne along all
round and are discharged and transmitted in all
directions; but because we can see with the eyes alone,
the consequence is that, to whatever point we turn our
sight, there all the several things meet and strike it with
their shape and colour. And the image gives the power to
see and the means to distinguish how far each thing is
distant from us; for as soon as ever it is discharged, it
pushes before it and impels all the air which lies between
it and the eyes; and thus that air all streams through our
eyes and brushes so to say the pupils and so passes
through. The consequence is that we see how far distant
each thing is. And the greater the quantity of air which is
driven on before it and the larger the current which
brushes our eyes, the more distant each different thing is
seen to be. You must know these processes go on with
extreme rapidity, so that at one and the same moment
we see what like a thing is and how far distant it is. And
this must by no means be deemed strange herein that,
while the idols which strike the eyes cannot be seen one
at a time, the things themselves are seen. For thus when
the wind too beats us with successive strokes and when
piercing cold streams, we are not wont to feel each single
particle of that wind and cold, but rather the whole result;
and then we perceive blows take effect on our body just
as if something or other were beating it and giving usa
sensation of its body outside. Again when we thump a
stone with a finger, we touch merely the outermost colour
on the surface of the stone, and yet we do not feel that
colour by our touch, but rather we feel the very hardness
of the stone seated in its inmost depths.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
7 You will find that from the senses first has proceeded the
knowledge of the true and that the senses cannot be
refuted. For that which is of itself to be able to refute
things false by true things must from the nature of the
case be proved to have the higher certainty. Well then
what must fairly be accounted of higher certainty than
sense? Shall reason founded on false sense be able to
contradict them, wholly founded as it is on the senses?
And if they are not true, then all reason as well is
rendered false. Or shall the ears be able to take the eyes
to task, or the touch the ears? Again shall the taste call in
question this touch, or the nostrils refute or the eyes
controvert it? Not so, | guess; for each apart has its own
distinct office, each its own power; and therefore we must
perceive what is soft and cold or hot by one distinct
faculty, by another perceive the different colours of
things and thus see all objects which are conjoined with
colour. Taste too has its faculty apart; smells spring from
one source, sounds from another. It must follow therefore
that any one sense cannot confute any other. No nor can
any sense take itself to task, since equal credit must be
assigned to it at all times. What therefore has at any time
appeared true to each sense, is true. And if reason shall
be unable to explain away the cause why things which
close at hand were square, at a distance looked round, it
yet is better, if you are at a loss for the reason, to state
erroneously the causes of each shape, than to let slip
from your grasp on any side things manifest and ruin the
groundwork of belief and wrench up all the foundations
on which rest life and existence. For not only would all
reason give way, life itself would at once fall to the
ground, unless you choose to trust the senses and shun
precipices and all things else of this sort that are to be
avoided, and to pursue the opposite things. All that host
of words then be sure is quite unmeaning, which has
been drawn out in array against the senses.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
8 When therefore we force these voices forth from the
depths of our body and discharge them straight out at
the mouth, the pliant tongue deft fashioner of words
gives them articulate utterance and the structure of the
lips does its part in shaping them. Therefore when the
distance is not long between the point from which each
several voice has started and that at which it arrives, the
very words too must be plainly heard and distinguished
syllable by syllable; for each voice retains its structure
and retains its shape. But if the space between be more
than is suitable, the words must be huddled together in
passing through much air and the voice be disorganised
in its flight through the same. Therefore it is that you can
hear a sound, yet cannot distinguish what the meaning of
the words is: so huddled and hampered is the voice when
it comes.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
9 Now mark me, and | will duscuss the way in which the
contact of smell affects the nostrils: and first there must
be many things from which a varied flow of smells
streams and rolls on; and we must suppose that they thus
stream and discharge and disperse themselves among all
things alike; but one smell fits itself better to one
creature, another to another on account of their unlike
Shapes; and therefore bees are drawn on by the smell of
honey through the air to a very great distance, and so are
vultures by carcases,
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
10 All sense-perception can occur only through the medium
of some bodily substance, since in the absence of body
the soul is utterly absorbed in the Intellectual Sphere.
Sense-perception being the gripping not of the
Intellectual but of the sensible alone, the soul, if it is to
form any relationship of knowledge, or of impression, with
objects of sense, must be brought in some kind of contact
with them by means of whatever may bridge the gap.
The knowledge, then, is realized by means of bodily
organs.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, V, 1
11 Our fleshly sense is slow because it is fleshly sense: and
that is the limit of its being. It can do what it was made to
do; but it has no power to hold things transient as they
run their course from their due beginning to their due
end. For in Your word, by which they are created, they
hear their law: "From this point: not beyond that."
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 10
12 Whatever things you perceive by fleshly sense you
perceive only in part, not knowing the whole of which
those things are but parts and yet they delight you so
much. For if fleshly sense had been capable of grasping
the whole—and had not for your punishment received
part only of the whole as its just limit—you would wish
that whatever exists in the present might pass on, that
the whole might be perceived by you for your delight.
What we speak, you hear by a bodily sense: and certainly
you do not wish the same syllable to go on sounding but
to pass away that other syllables may come and you may
hear the whole speech. It is always so with all things that
go to make up one whole: all that goes to make up the
whole does not exist at one moment. If all could be
perceived in one act of perception, it would obviously
give more delight than any of the individual parts.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 11
13 As far as regards the doctrine which treats of. . . rational
philosophy, far be it from us to compare them [the
Platonists] with those who attributed to the bodily senses
the faculty of discriminating truth, and thought, that all
we learn is to be measured by their untrustworthy and
fallacious rules. ,.. Such... were the Stoics, who ascribed
to the bodily senses that expertness in disputation which
they so ardently love, called by them dialectic, asserting
that from the senses the mind conceives the notions of
those things which they explicate by definition. And
hence is developed the whole plan and connection of
their learning and teaching. | often wonder, with respect
to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the
wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that
beauty, by what eyes of the flesh have they seen
widsom’s comeliness of form? Those, however, whom we
justly rank before all others, have distinguished those
things which are conceived by the mind from those which
are perceived by the senses, neither taking away from
the senses anything to which they are competent, nor
attributing to them anything beyond their competency.
Augustine, City of God, VIII, 7
14 The intellectual soul ... in the order of nature, holds the
lowest place among intellectual substances; for it is not
naturally gifted with the knowledge of truth, as the
angels are, but has to gather knowledge from individual
things by way of the senses,... But nature never fails in
necessary things; therefore the intellectual soul had to be
endowed not only with the power of understanding, but
also with the power of feeling. Now the action of the
senses Is not performed without a corporeal instrument.
Therefore the intellectual soul had to be united to a body
which could be an adequate organ of sense.
Now all the other senses are based on the sense of
touch. But the organ of touch has to be a medium
between contraries, such as hot and cold, wet and dry,
and the like, of which the sense of touch has the
perception; thus it is in potency with regard to contraries,
and is able to perceive them. Therefore the more the
organ of touch is reduced to an even temperament, the
more sensitive will be the touch. But the intellectual soul
has the power of sense in all its completeness, because
what belongs to the inferior nature pre-exists more
perfectly in the superior... . Therefore the body to which
the intellectual soul is united should be a mixed body,
above all others reduced to the most even temperament.
For this reason among animals man has the best sense of
touch. And among men, those who have the best sense of
touch have the best intellect. A sign of this is that we
observe those who are refined in body are well endowed
in mind, as stated in the book on the Soul.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 76, 5
15 The proper sense judges of the proper sensible by
discerning it from other things which come under the
Same sense; for instance, by discerning white from black
or green. But neither sight nor taste can discern white
from sweet, because what discerns between two things
must know both. Therefore the discerning judgment must
be assigned to the common sense, to which, as toa
common term, all apprehensions of the senses must be
referred, and by which, again, all the intentions of the
senses are perceived; aS when someone secs that he
secs. For this cannot be done by the proper sense, which
only knows the form of the sensible by which it is
changed, in which change the action of sight is
completed, and from which change follows another in the
common sense which perceives the act of vision.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 78, 4
16 Although the operation of the intellect has its origin in
the senses, yet, in the thing apprehended through the
senses, the intellect knows many things which the senses
cannot perceive.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 78, 4
17 Our intellect’s proper and proportionate object is the
nature of a sensible thing. Now a perfect judgment
concerning anything cannot be formed, unless all that
pertains to that thing is known; especially if that which is
the term and end of judgment is not known... . Now it is
clear that a smith cannot judge perfectly of a knife unless
he knows the work that must be done, and in like manner
the natural philosopher cannot judge perfectly of natural
things unless he knows sensible things. But in the
present state of life whatever we understand we know by
comparison to natural sensible things. Consequently it is
not possible for our intellect to form a perfect judgment
while the senses are suspended, through which sensible
things are known to us.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 84, 8
18 This same deception that the senses convey to our
understanding they receive in their turn. Our soul at
times takes a like revenge; they compete in lying and
deceiving each other. What we see and hear when stirred
with anger, we do not hear as it is.... The object that we
love seems to us more beautiful than it is... and uglier the
one that we loathe. To a man vexed and-afflicted the
brightness of the day seems darkened and gloomy. Our
senses are not only altered, but often completely
stupefied by the passions of the soul. How many things
we see which we do not notice if our mind is occupied
elsewhere! ... It seems as though the soul draws the
powers of the senses inward and occupiw them. Thus
both the inside and the outside of man is full of weakness
and falsehood.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
19 To judge the appearances that we receive of objects, we
would need a judicatory instrument; to verify this
instrument, we need a demonstration; to verify the
demonstration, an instrument: there we are in a circle.
Since the senses cannot decide our dispute, being
themselves full of uncertainty, it must be reason that
does so. No reason can be established without another
reason: there we go retreating back to infinity.
Our conception is not itself applied to foreign objects,
but is conceived through the mediation of the senses;
and the senses do not comprehend the foreign object,
but only their own impressions. And thus the conception
and semblance w’c form IS not of the object, but only of
the impression and effect made on the sense; which
impression and the object are different things. Wherefore
whoever judges by appearances judges by something
other than the object.
And for saying that the impressions of the senses
convey to the soul the quality of the foreign objects by
resemblance, how can the soul and understanding make
sure of this resemblance, having of itself no
communication with foreign objects? Just as a man who
does not know Socrates, seeing his portrait, cannot say
that it resembles him.
Now if anyone should want to judge by appearances
anyway, to judge by all appearances is impossible, for
they clash with one another by their contradictions and
discrepancies, aS we see by experience. Shall some
selected appearances rule the others? We shall have to
verify this selection by another selection, the second by a
third; and thus it will never be finished....
Finally, there is no existence that is constant, either of
our being or of that of objects. And we, and our
judgment, and all mortal things go on flowing and rolling
unceasingly. Thus nothing certain can be established
about one thing by another, both the judging and the
judged being in continual change and motion,
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
20 The senses... are very sufficient to certify and report
truth, though not always immediately, yet by
comparison, by help of instrument, and by producing and
urging such things as are too subtile for the sense to
some effect comprehensible by the sense.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, XIII, 4
21 Many experiences little by little destroyed all the faith
which | had rested in my senses; for | from time to time
observed that those towers which from afar appeared to
me to be round, more closely observed seemed square,
and that colossal statues raised on the summit of these
towers, appeared as quite tiny statues when viewed from
the bottom; and so in an infinitude of other cases | found
error in judgments founded on the external senses. And
not only in those founded on the external senses, but
even in those founded on the internal as well; for is there
anything more intimate or more internal than pain? And
yet | have learned from some persons whose arms or legs
have been cut off, that they sometimes seemed to feel
pain in the part which had been amputated, which made
me think that | could not be quite certain that it was a
certain member which pained me, even although | felt
pain in it. And to those grounds of doubt | have lately
added two others, which are very general; the first is that
| never have believed myself to feel anything in waking
moments which | cannot also sometimes believe myself
to fee! when | sleep, and as! do not think that these
things which | seem to feel in sleep, proceed from objects
outside of me, | do not see any reason why | should have
this belief regarding objects which | seem to perceive
while awake. The other was that being still ignorant, or
rather supposing myself to be ignorant, of the author of
my being, | saw nothing to prevent me from having been
so constituted by nature that | might be deceived even in
matters which seemed to me to be most certain. And as
to the grounds on which | was formerly persuaded of the
truth of sensible objects, | had not much trouble in
replying to them. For since nature seemed to cause me to
lean towards many things from which reason repelled me,
| did not beleive that | should trust much to the teachings
of nature. And although the ideas which | receive by the
senses do not depend on my will, | did not think that one
should for that reason conclude that they proceeded from
things different from myself, since possibly some faculty
might be discovered in me—though hitherto unknown to
me—which produced them.
But now that | begin to know myself better, and to
discover more clearly the author of my being, | do not in
truth think that | should rashly admit all the matters
which the senses seem to teach us, but, on the other
hand, | do not think that | should doubt them all
universally.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, VI
22 In order rightly to see what amount of certainty belongs
to sense we must distinguish three grades as falling
within it. To the first belongs the immediate affection of
the bodily organ by external objects; and this can be
nothing else than the motion of the particles of the
sensory organs and the change of figure and position due
to that motion. The second comprises the immediate
mental result, due to the mind’s union with the corporeal
organ affected; such are the perceptions of pain, of
pleasurable stimulation, of thirst, of hunger, of colours, of
sound, savour, odour, cold, heat, and the like, which...
arise from the union and, as it were, the intermixture of
mind and body. Finally, the third contains all those
judgments which, on the occasion of motions occurring in
the corporeal organ, we have from our earliest years been
accustomed to pass about things external to us.
For example, when | see a staff, it is not to be thought
that intentional species fly off from it and reach the eye,
by merely that rays of light reflected from the staff excite
certain motions in the optic nerve and, but its mediation,
in the brain as well. ... It is in this cerebral motion, which
Is common to us and to the brutes, that the first grade of
perception consists. But from this the second grade of
perception results; and that merely extends to the
perception of the colour or light reflected from the stick,
and is due to the fact that the mind is so intimately
conjoined with the brain as to be affected by the motions
arising in it. Nothing more than this should be assigned
to sense, if we wish to distinguish it accurately from the
intellect. For though my judgment that there is a staff
situated without me, which judgment results from the
sensation of colour by which | am affected, and likewise
my reasoning from the extension of that colour, its
boundaries, and its position relatively to the parts of my
brain, to the size, the shape, and the distance of the said
staff, are vulgarly assigned to sense, and are
consequently here referred to the third grade of
sensation, they clearly depend upon the understanding
alone.... Magnitude, distance and figure can be perceived
by reasoning alone, which deduces them one from
another...
From this it is clear that when we say that the
certitude obtainable by the understanding is much
greater than that attacking to the senses the meaning of
those words is, that those judgments which when we are
in full maturity new observations have led us to make,
are surer than those we have formed in early infancy and
apart from all reflection; and this is certainly true. For it is
clear that here there is no question of the first or second
grade of sense-perception, because in them no falsity can
reside. When, therefore, it is alleged that refraction
makes a staff appear broken in the water, it is the same
as if it were said that it appears to us in the same way as
it would to an infant who judged that it was broken, and
as it does even to us who, owing to the prejudices to
which we from our earliest years have grown accustomed,
judge in the same way.... Hence, in this instance, it is the
understanding solely which corrects the error of sense;
and no case can ever be adduced in which error results
from our trusting the operation of the mind more than
sense.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, VI
23 There is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at
first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs
of sense. The rest are derived from that original...
The cause of sense is the external body, or object,
which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either
immediately, as in the taste and touch; or mediately, as
in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which pressure, by the
mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes of
the body, continued inwards to the brain and heart,
causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or
endeavour of the heart to deliver itself: which endeavour,
because outward, seemeth to be some matter without.
And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call sense;
and consisteth, as to the eye, in a light, or colour figured;
to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an odour; to the
tongue and palate, in a savour; and to the rest of the
body, in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other
qualities as we discern by feeling. All which qualities
called sensible are in the object that causeth them but so
many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth
our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are
they anything else but diverse motions (for motion
produceth nothing but motion). But their appearance to
us is fancy, the same waking that dreaming. And as
pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye makes us fancy a
light, and pressing the car produceth a din; so do the
bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their
strong, though unobserved action. For if those colours
and sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause
them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses
and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where we
know the thing we see is in one place; the appearance, in
another. And though at some certain distance the real
and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in
us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is
another. So that sense in all eases is nothing else but
original fancy caused (as | have said) by the pressure that
is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, cars,
and other organs, thereunto ordained.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 1
24 The homogeneal light and rays which appear red, or
rather make objects appear so, | call rubrific or red-
making; those which make objects appear yellow, green,
blue, and violet, | call yellow-making, green-making,
blue-making, violet-making, and so of the rest. And if at
any time | speak of light and rays as coloured or endued
with colours, | would be understood to speak not
philosophically and properly, but grossly, and accordingly
to such conceptions as v'ulgar people in seeing all these
experiments would be apt to frame. For the rays, to speak
properly, are not coloured. In them there is nothing else
than a certain power and disposition to stir up a
sensation of this or that colour. For as sound in a bell or
musical siring, or other sounding body, is nothing but a
trembling motion, and in the air nothing but that motion
propagated from the object, and in the sensorium 'tis a
sense of that motion under the form of sound; so colours
in the object are nothing but a disposition to reflect this
or that sort of rays more copiously than the rest; in the
rays they are nothing but their dispositions to propagate
this or that motion into the sensorium, and in the
sensorium they are sensations of those motions under the
forms of colours.
Newton, Optics, |, 2
25 We might get to know the beauty of the universe in each
soul, if we could unfold all that is enfolded in it and that
is perceptibly developed only through time. But as each
distinct perception of the soul includes an infinite
number of confused perceptions, which involve the whole
universe, the soul itself knows the things of which it has
perception, only in so far as it has distinct and
heightened [or unveiled] perceptions of them; and it has
perfection in proportion to its distinct perceptions. Each
soul knows the infinite, knows all, but confusedly; as
when | walk on the sea-shore and hear the great noise the
sea makes, | hear the particular sounds which come from
the particular waves and which make up the total sound,
but | do not discriminate them from one another. Our
confused perceptions are the result of the impressions
which the whole universe makes upon us.
Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace, 13
26 The next thing to be considered is, how' bodies produce
ideas in us; and that is manifestly by impulse, the only
way which we can conceive bodies to operate in.
If then external objects be not united to our minds
when they produce ideas therein; and yet we perceive
these original qualities in such of them as singly fall
under our senses, it is evident that some motion must be
thence continued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by
some parts of our bodies, to the brains or the scat of
sensation, there to produce in our minds the particular
ideas we have of them. And since the extension, figure,
number, and motion of bodies of an observable bigness,
may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident
some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them
to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some
motion; which produces these ideas which we have of
them in us.
After the same manner that the ideas of these original
qualities are produced in us, we may conceive that the
ideas of secondary qualities are also produced, viz. by the
operation of insensible particles on our senses. For, it
being manifest that there are bodies and good store of
bodies, each whereof are so small, that we cannot by any
of our senses discover either their bulk, figure, or motion,
—as is evident in the particles of the air and water, and
others extremely smaller than those; perhaps as much
smaller than the particles of air and water, as the
particles of air and water are smaller than peas or hail-
stones;—let us suppose at present that the different
motions and figures, bulk and number, of such particles,
affecting the several organs of our senses, produce in us
those different sensations which we have from the
colours and smells of bodies; v.g. that a violet, by the
impulse of such insensible particles of matter, of peculiar
figures and bulks, and in different degrees and
modifications of their motions, causes the ideas of the
blue colour, and sweet scent of that flower to be
produced in our minds- It being no more impossible to
conceive that God should annex such ideas to such
motions, with which they have no similitude, than that he
should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a piece of
steel dividing our flesh, with which that idea hath no
resemblance.
What | have said concerning colours and smells may
be understood also of tastes and sounds, and other the
like sensible qualities; which, whatever reality we by
mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the
objects themselves, but powers to produce various
sensations in us; and depend on those primary qualities,
viz, bulk, figure, texture, and motion of parts as | have
said.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk, II, VIII, 11-
14
27 It is for want of reflection that we are apt to think that our
senses show us nothing but material things. Every act of
sensation, when duly considered, gives us an equal view
of both parts of nature, the corporeal and spiritual. For
whilst | know, by seeing or hearing, etc., that there is
some corporeal being without me, the object of that
sensation, | do more certainly know, that there is some
Spiritual being within me that sees and hears. This, 1
must be convinced, cannot be the action of bare
insensible matter; nor ever could be, without an
immaterial thinking being.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XXIII,
15
28 | find | can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary
and shift the scene as oft as | think fit. It is no more than
willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my
fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes
way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth
very properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is
certain and grounded on experience; but when we think
of unthinking agents or of exciting ideas exclusive of
volition, we only amuse ourselves with words.
But, whatever power | may have over my own
thoughts, | find the ideas actually perceived by Sense
have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad
daylight | open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose
whether | shall see or no, or to determine what particular
objects shall present themselves to my view; and so
likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas
imprinted on them are not creatures of my \rill. There is
therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 28-29
29 The ideas imprinted on the Senses by the Author of
nature are called rea/ things; and those excited in the
imagination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are
more properly termed /deas, or images of things, which
they copy and represent. But then our sensations, be
they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless ideas,
that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceived by it, as
truly as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of Sense
are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be
more strong, orderly, and coherent than the creatures o!
the mind; but this is no argument that they exist without
the mind. They are also less dependent on the spirit, or
thinking substance which perceives them, in that they
are excited by the will of another and more powerful
Spirit; yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea,
whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than ina
mind perceiving it....
| do not argue against the existence of any one thing
that we can apprehend either by sense or reflexion. That
the things | see with my eyes and touch with my hands
do exist, really exist, | make not the least question. The
only thing whose existence we deny is that which
philosophers call Matter or corporeal substance. And in
doing of this there is no damage done to the rest of
mankind, who, | dare say, will never miss it,. . . lf the word
substance be taken in the vulgar sense—for a
combination of sensible qualities, such as extension,
solidity, weight, and the like—this we cannot be accused
of taking away: but if it be taken in a philosophic sense—
for the support of accidents or qualities without the mind
—then indeed | acknowledge that we take it away, if one
may be said to take away that which never had any
existence, not even in the imagination.... Since therefore
the objects of sense exist only in the mind, and are withal
thoughtless and inactive, | chose to mark them by the
word /dea, which implies those properties.
But, say what we can, some one perhaps may be apt
to reply, he will still believe his senses, and never suffer
any arguments, how plausible soever, to prevail over the
certainty of them. Be it so; assert the evidence of sense
as high as you please, we are wiling to do the same. That
what | see, hear, and feel doth exist, that is to say, is
perceived by me, | no more doubt than | do of my own
being. But | do not see how the testimony of sense can be
alleged as a proof for the existence of anything which is
not perceived by sense. We are not for having any man
turn sceptic and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary,
we give them all the stress and assurance imaginable....
Secondly, it will be objected that there is a great
difference betwixt real fire for instance, and the idea of
fire, betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt, and
actually being so: if you suspect it to be only the idea of
fire which you see, do but put your hand into it and you
will be convinced wth a witness. This and the like may be
urged in opposition to our tenets. To all which the answer
is evident from what hath been already said; and | shall
only add in this place, that if real fire be very different
from the idea of fire, so also is the real pain that it
occasions very different from the idea of the same pain,
and yet nobody will pretend that real pain either is, or
can possibly be, in an unperceiving thing, or without the
mind, any more than its idea.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 33-41
30 It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural
instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses;
and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before
the use of reason, we always suppose an external
universe, which depends not on our perception, but
would exist, though we and every sensible creature were
absent or annihilated. Even the animal creation are
governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of
external objects, in all their thoughts, designs, and
actions.
It seems also evident, that, when men follow this blind
and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the
very images, presented by the senses, to be the external
objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one
are nothing but representations of the other. This very
table which we see while, and which we feel hard, is
believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to
be something external to our mind, which perceives it.
Our presence bestows not being on it: our absence does
not annihilate it. It preserves its existence uniform and
entire, independent of the situation of intelligent beings,
who perceive or contemplate it.
But this universal and primary opinion of all men is
soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which
teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind
but an image or perception, and that the senses are only
the inlets, through which these images are conveyed,
without being able to produce any immediate intercourse
between the mind and the object. The table, which we
see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: but
the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no
alteration: it was, therefore, nothing but its image, which
was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates
of reason; and no man, who reflects, ever doubted, that
the existences, which we consider, when we say, this
house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the
mind, and fleeting copies or representations of other
existences, which remain uniform and independent.
So far, then, are we necessitated by reasoning to
contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature,
and to embrace a new system with regard to the
evidence of our senses. But here philosophy finds herself
extremely embarrassed, when she would justify this new
system, and obviate the cavils and objections of the
sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and
irresistible instinct of nature: for that led us to a quite
different system, which is acknowledged fallible and even
erroneous. And to justify this pretended philosophical
system, by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or
even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of
all human capacity.
By what argument can it be proved, that the
perceptions of the mind must be caused by external
objects, entirely different from them, though resembling
them (if that be possible) and could not arise either from
the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of
some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other
cause still more unknown to us? It is acknowledged, that,
in fact, many of these perceptions arise not from
anything external, as in dreams, madness, and other
diseases. And nothing can be more inexplicable than the
manner, in which body should so operate upon mind as
ever to convey an image of itself to a substance,
supposed of so different, and even contrary a nature.
It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the
senses be produced by external objects, resembling
them: how shall this question be determined? By
experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature.
But here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The
mind has never anything present to it but the
perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of
their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a
connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in
reasoning.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 118-119
31 As we have no immediate experience of what other men
feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are
affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel
in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack,
as long as we ourselves are at our case, our senses will
never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and
never can carry us beyond our own person, and it is by
the imagination only that we can form any conception of
what are his sensations.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, |, 1
32 In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our
knowledge may relate to objects, it is at least quite clear
that the only manner in which it immediately relates to
them is by means of an intuition. To this as the
indispensable groundwork, all thought points. But an
intuition can take place only in so far as the object is
given to us. This, again, is only possible, to man at least,
on condition that the object affect the mind in a certain
manner. The capacity for receiving representations
(receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected
by objects, is called sensibility. By means of sensibility,
therefore, objects are given to us, and it alone furnishes
us with intuitions; by the understanding they are
thought, and from it arise conceptions. But all thought
must directly, or indirectly, by means of certain signs,
relate ultimately to intuitions; consequently, with us, to
sensibility, because in no other way can an object be
given to us.
The effect of an object upon the faculty of
representation, so far as we are affected by the said
object, is sensation. That sort of intuition which relates to
an object by means of sensation is called an empirical
intuition. The undetermined object of an empirical
intuition is called phenomenon, That which in the
phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, | term its
matter, but that which effects that the content of the
phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, |
call its form. But that in which our sensations are merely
arranged, and by which they are susceptible of assuming
a certain form, cannot be itself sensation. It is, then, the
matter of all phenomena that is given to us a posteriori,
the form must lie ready a priori for them in the mind, and
consequently can be regarded separately from all
sensation.
| call all representations pure, in the transcendental
meaning of the word, wherein nothing is met with that
belongs to sensation. And accordingly we find existing in
the mind a priori, the pure form of sensuous intuitions in
general, in which all the manifold content of the
phenomenal world is arranged and viewed under certain
relations. This pure form of sensibility | shall call pure
intuition. Thus, if | take away from our representation of a
body all that the understanding thinks as belonging to it,
as substance, force, divisibility, etc., and also whatever
belongs to sensation, as impenetrability, hardness,
colour, etc.; yet there is still something left us from this
empirical intuition, namely, extension and shape. These
belong to pure intuition, which exists a prior/in the mind,
as a mere form of sensibility, and without any real object
of the senses or any sensation.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic
33 In general, we receive impressions only in consequence
of motion, and we might establish it as an axiom that,
without motion, there is no sensation. This general
principle applies very accurately to the sensations of heat
and cold: when we touch a cold body, the caloric which
always tends to become /n eguilibrio in all bodies, passes
from our hand into the body we touch, which gives us the
feeling or sensation of cold. The direct contrary happens,
when we touch a warm body, the caloric then passing
from the body into our hand produces the sensation of
heat. If the hand and the body touched be of the same
temperature, or very nearly so, we receive no impression,
either of heat or cold, because there is no motion or
passage of caloric; and thus no sensation can take place
without some correspondent motion to occasion it.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, I, 1
34 The eye—it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where’er they be,
Against or with our will.
Wordsworth, Expostulation and Reply
35 O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
Keats, Letter to Benjamin Bailey, (Nov. 22, 1817)
36 Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely,
that at any given moment the feeling which he has
exists.
T. H. Huxley, Letter to J. G. T. Sinclair (July 21, 1890)
37 Are not the sensations we get from the same object, for
example, always the same? Does not the same piano-key,
struck with the same force, make us hear in the same
way? Docs not the same grass give us the same feeling of
green, the same sky the same feeling of blue, and do we
not get the same olfactory sensation no matter how many
times we put our nose to the same flask of cologne? It
seems a piece of metaphysical sophistry to suggest that
we do not; and yet a close attention to the matter shows
that there is no proof that the same bodily sensation is
ever got by us twice.
What is got twice is the same object. we hear the
Same note over and over again; we see the same of
green, or smell the same objective perfume, or
experience the same species of pain. The realities,
concrete and abstract, physical and ideal, whose
permanent existence we believe in, seem to be
constantly coming up again before our thought, and lead
us, in our carelessness, to suppose that our "ideas" of
them are the same ideas. When we come, some time
later, to the chapter on Perception, we shall see how
inveterate is our habit of not attending to sensations as
subjective facts, but of simply using them as stepping-
stones to pass over to the recognition of the realities
whose presence they reveal. The grass out of the window
now looks to me of the same green in the sun as in the
Shade, and yet a painter would have to paint one part of
it dark brown, another part bright yellow, to give its real
sensational effect. We take no heed, as a rule, of the
different way in which the same things look and sound
and smell at different distances and under different
circumstances. The sameness of the things is what we are
concerned to ascertain; and any sensations that assure
us of that will probably be considered in a rough way to
be the same with each other. This is what makes off-hand
testimony about the subjective identity of different
sensations well-nigh worthless as a proof of the fact. The
entire history of Sensation is a commentary on our
inability to tell whether two sensations received apart are
exactly alike.
William James, Psychology, IX
38 Nature ... is frugal in her operations, and will not be at
the expense of a particular instinct to give us that
knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce.
Reproduced sights and contacts tied together with the
present sensation in the unity of a thing with a name,
these are the complex objective stuff out of which my
actually perceived table is made. Infants must go through
a long education of the eye and ear before they can
perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every
perception is an acquired perception.
William James, Psychology, XIX
39 A sensation is rather like a client who has given his case
to a lawyer and then has passively to listen in the
courtroom to whatever account of his affairs, pleasant or
unpleasant, the lawyer finds it most expedient to give.
William James, Pragmatism, VII
40 The state of becoming conscious is a special psychic act,
different from and independent of the process of
becoming fixed or represented, and consciousness
appears to us as a sensory organ which perceives a
content proceeding from another source.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, IV
5.3 Memory
The two most famous metaphors that have been used to say
what memory is—one, that it is the storehouse of ideas; the
other, that it is decaying sense—may give us some grasp of
the subject, but upon closer examination they are more
misleading than instructive. Something must be
experienced or learned before it can be remembered, and
that which is remembered must somehow be retained
between the time of acquisition and the time of recall or
recollection; but after we have acknowledged these two
points, we are left with many difficult questions about the
objects of memory, about the kind of knowledge that
memory is, about the difference between immediate
memory and memory after a long interval of time, about the
related processes of reminiscence, recollection, and
recognition, about the gradual fading away of memories,
and forgetfulness and forgetting.
The quotations collected here touch on all these matters
as well as others, and represent the fascination of memory
not only for psychologists and philosophers, but also for the
poets and the historians, who are concerned with our sense
of time and our knowledge of the past. That fascination is,
perhaps, most eloquently expressed in the passages taken
from Augustine’s Confessions. The modern scientific and the
psychoanalytical interest in the subject are represented here
in the quotations from William James and Sigmund Freud.
1 Cebes added: Your favourite doctrine, Socrates, that
knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily
implies a previous time in which we have learned that
which we now recollect. But this would be impossible
unless our soul had been m some place before existing in
the form of man; here then is another proof of the soul's
immortality.
But tell me, Cebes, said Simmias, interposing, what
arguments are urged in favour of this doctrine of
recollection. | am not very sure at the moment that |
remember them.
One excellent proof, said Cebes, is afforded by
questions. If you put a question to a person in a right
way, he will give a true answer of himself, but how could
he do this unless there were knowledge and right reason
already in him? And this is most clearly shown when he is
taken to a diagram or to anything of that sort...
And if we acquired this knowledge before we were
born, and were born having the use of it, then we also
knew before we were born and at the instant of birth not
only the equal or the greater or the less, but all other
ideas; for we are not speaking only of equality, but of
beauty, goodness, justice, holiness, and of all which we
stamp with the name of essence in the dialectical
process, both when we ask and when we answer
questions. Of all this we may certainly affirm that we
acquired the knowledge before birth?
We may.
But if, after having acquired, we have not forgotten
what in each case we acquired, then we must always
have come into life having knowledge, and shall always
continue to know as long as life lasts—for knowing is the
acquiring and retaining Knowledge and not forgetting. Is
not forgetting, Simmias, just the losing of knowledge?
Quite true, Socrates,
But if the knowledge which we acquired before birth
was lost by us at birth, and if afterwards by the use of the
senses we recovered what we previously knew, will not
the process which we call learning be a recovering of the
knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be
rightly termed recollection?
Very true.
So much is clear—that when we perceive something,
either by the help of sight, or hearing, or some other
sense, from that perception we are able to obtain a notion
of some other thing like or unlike which is associated with
it. but has been forgotten. Whence, as | was saying, one
of two alternatives follows:—either we had this
knowledge at thrth, and continued to know through life;
or, after birth, those who are said to learn only remember,
and learning is simply recollection.
Plato, Phaedo, 72B
2 Socrates. Tell me, then, whether | am right in saying that
you may learn a thing which at one time you did not
know?
Theaetetus. Certainly you may.
Soc. And another and another?
Theaet. Yes.
Soc. | would have you imagine, then, that there exists
in the mind of man a block of wax, which is of different
sizes in different men; harder, moister, and having more
or less of purity in one than another, and in some of an
intermediate quality.
Theaet. | see.
Soc. Let us say that this tablet is a gift of Memory, the
mother of the Muses; and that when we wish to
remember anything which we have seen, or heard, or
thought in our own minds, we hold the wax to the
perceptions and thoughts, and in that material receive
the impression of them as from the seal of a ring; and
that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as
the image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot
be taken, then we forget and do not know.
Plato, Theaetetus, 191A
3 Acts of recollection, as they occur in experience, are due to
the fact that one movement has by nature another that
succeeds it in regular order.
If this order be necessary, whenever a subject
experiences the former of two movements thus
connected, it will [invariably], experience the latter; if,
however, the order be not necessary, but customary, only
in the majority of cases will the subject experience the
latter of the two movements. But it is a fact that there are
some movements, by a single experience of which
persons take the impress of custom more deeply than
they do by experiencing others many times; hence upon
seeing some things but once we remember them better
than others which we may have seen frequently.
Whenever, therefore, we are recollecting, we are
experiencing certain of the antecedent movements until
finally we experience the one after which customarily
comes that which we seek. This explains why we hunt up
the series, having started in thought either from a
present intuition or some other, and from something
either similar, or contrary, to what we seek, or else from
that which is contiguous with it. Such is the empirical
ground of the process of recollection.
Aristotle, Memory and Reminiscence, 451610
4 Many animals have memory, and are capable of
instruction; but no other creature except man can recall
the past at will.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 488b25
5 Men of fine genius are readily reminded of things, but
those who receive with most pains and difficulty,
remember best; every new thing they learn, being, as it
were, burnt and branded in on their minds.
Plutarch, Cato the Younger
6 A memory has to do with something brought into ken from
without, something learned or something experienced;
the Memory-Principle, therefore, cannot belong to such
beings as are immune from experience and from time.
No memory, therefore, can be ascribed to any divine
being, or to the Authentic-Existent or the Intellectual-
Principle: these are intangibly immune; time does not
approach them; they possess eternity centred around
Being; they know nothing of past and sequent; all Is an
unbroken state of identity, not receptive of change.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, I/l, 25
7 Memory, in point of fact, is impeded by the body: even as
things are, addition often brings forgetfulness; with
thinning and clearing away, memory will often revive.
The soul is a stability; the shifting and fleeting thing
which body is can be a cause only of Us forgetting not of
its remembering—Lethe stream may be understood in
this sense—and memory is a fact of the soul.
Plotinus, Fourth Enneady III, 26
8 | shall mount beyond this power of my nature, still rising
by degrees towards Him who made me. And so! come to
the fields and vast palaces of memory, where are stored
the innumerable images of material things brought to it
by the senses. Further there is stored in the memory the
thoughts we think, by adding to or taking from or
otherwise modifying the things that sense has made
contact with, and all other things that have been
entrusted to and laid up in memory, save such as
forgetfulness has swallowed in its grave. When | turn to
memory, | ask it to bring forth what | want: and some
things are produced immediately, some take longer as if
they had to be brought out from some more secret place
of storage; some pour out in a heap, and while we are
actually wanting and looking for something quite
different, they hurl themselves upon us in masses as
though to say: "May it not be we that you want?" | brush
them from the face of my memory with the hand of my
heart, until at last the thing | want is brought to light as
from some hidden place. Some things are produced just
as they are required, easily and in right order; and things
that come first give place to those that follow, and giving
place are stored up again to be produced when | want
them. This is what happens, when | say anything by
heart.
In the memory all the various things are kept distinct
and in their right categories, though each came into the
memory by its own gate. For example, light and all the
colors and shapes of bodies come in by the eyes, all the
kinds of sound by the cars, all scents by the nostrils, all
tastes by the mouth; and by a sense that belongs to the
whole body comes in what is hard and what is soft, what
is hot or cold, rough or smooth, heavy or light, whether
outside the body or inside. All these things the vast
recesses, the hidden and unsearchable caverns, of
memory receive and store up, to be available and
brought to light when need arises: yet all enter by their
own various gates to be stored up in memory. Nor indeed
do the things themselves enter: only the images of the
things perceived by the senses are there for thought to
remember them.
And even though we know by which senses they were
brought in and laid up in the memory, who can tell how
these images were formed? Even when | am in darkness
and in silence, 1 can if | will produce colors in my
memory', and distinguish black from white and any other
colors if | choose; and sounds do not break in and disturb
the image | am considering that came in through the eye,
since the sounds themselves were already there and He
stored up apart. For | can summon them too, if | like, and
they are immediately present; and though my tongue is
at rest and my throat .silent | can sing as | will; nor do the
images of the colors, although they are as truly present,
interfere or interrupt when | call from the storehouse
some other thing which came in by the car. Similarly all
other things that were brought in by the other senses and
stored up in the memory can be called up at my pleasure:
| distinguish the scent of lilies from the scent of violets,
though at that instant | smell nothing; and | like honey
better than wine, some smooth thing better than rough,
though | am not tasting or handling but only
remembering.
All this | do inside me. in the huge court of my
memory. In my memory are sky and earth and sea, ready
at hand along with all the things that | have ever been
able to perceive in them and have not forgotten. And in
my memory too | meet myself—I recall myself, what |
have done, when and where and in what state of mind |
was when | did it. In my memory are all the things |
remember to have experienced myself or to have been
told by others. From the same store | can weave into the
past endless new likenesses of things either experienced
by me or believed on the strength of things experienced;
and from these again | can picture actions and events
and hopes for the future; and upon them all | can
meditate as if they were present, "| shall do this or that,"
| say to myself in the vast recess of my mind with its
immeasurable store of images of things so great: and this
or that follows. "O, if only this or that could be!" or again,
“May God prevent this or that!" Such things | say within
myself, and when | speak of them the images of all the
things | mention are to hand from the same storehouse of
memory, and if the images were not there | could not so
much as speak of the things.
Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O
my God, a spreading limitless room within me.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 8
9 Now when | hear that there are three kinds of questions:
whether a thing is, what it is, of what sort it is: | do
indeed retain the images of the sounds of which those
words are composed, and | know that they passed
through the air with a certain noise and now no longer
are. But the things themselves which the sounds signified
| could not come at by any bodily sense nor see them at
all save by my mind; and what | stored in my memory
was not their images but the truths themselves. But how
they got into me, it is for them to tell if they can. For I run
my mind over all the doorways of my body, but | cannot
find any door by which they could have come in. For my
eyes say; "If they were coloured, we reported them to
you"; the nostrils say: "If they had any smell, they went in
through us"; the sense of taste says: "Unless there was
any taste in them, there is no use in my being asked"; the
sense of touch says: "If the thing is not a body, | did not
handle it, and if | did not handle it, | did not report it to
you." Very well then, whence and how did they get into
my memory? | do not know. For when | first learned them
| was not trusting some other man’s mind, but recognized
them in my own; and | saw them as true and committed
them to my mind as if placing them where | could get at
them again whenever | desired. Thus they must have
been in my mind even before | learned them, though they
were not in my memory. Then where were they, or how
did it come that when | heard them spoken | recognized
them and said: "It is so, it is true," unless they were in my
memory already, but so far back, thrust away as it were in
such remote recesses, that unless they had been drawn
forth by some other man’s teaching, | might perhaps
never have managed to think of them at all?
Augustine, Confessions, X, 10
10 The memory also contains the innumerable principles
and laws of numbers and dimensions; and none of these
have been impressed upon it by any bodily sense, seeing
that they have neither colour nor sound nor scent nor
taste nor feel. | have heard the sounds of the words by
which they are expressed when we discuss them, but the
sounds are not the same as the truths themselves. For
the sounds are of one kind in Greek, quite different in
Latin, but the things themselves are neither Greek nor
Latin nor of any other language. | have seen the lines
drawn by architects, some of them as fine as a spider’s
web; but the truths are different, they are not the images
of such things as the eye of my body has shown me. To
know them is to recognize them interiorly without any
concept of any kind of body whatsoever. With all my
bodily senses | have perceived the numbers we use in
counting; but the basic numbers by which we count are
not the same as these, nor images of these; but really
are. Let whoever does not see these truths laugh at me
for talking thus: while he laughs at me | shall be sorry for
him.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 12
11 Assuredly, Lord, | toil with this, toil within myself: | have
become to myself a soil laborious and of heavy sweat. For
| am not now considering the parts of the heavens, or
measuring the distances of the stars, or seeking how the
earth is held in space; it is | who remember, I, my mind. It
is not remarkable if things that | am not are far from my
knowledge: but what could be closer to me than myself?
Yet the power of memory in me 1 do not understand,
though without memory | could not even name myself.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 16
12 For memory sets before us, not what we choose, but what
it pleases. Indeed there is nothing that imprints a thing
so vividly on our memory as the desire to forget it: a good
way to give our mind something to guard, and to impress
it on her, is to solicit her to lose it.
Montaigne, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
13 If souls came from anything but a natural succession, and
had been something else outside of the body, they would
have a memory of their first existence, considering the
natural faculties that are proper to them, of reflecting,
reasoning, and remembering....
For to value the condition of our souls as highly as we
want to, we must presuppose them to be wholly knowing
when they are in their natural simplicity and purity. Thus
they would have been such, being free from the corporeal
prison, as much before entering it as we hope they will be
after they have gone out of it. And this knowledge they
would have to remember still while in the body, as Plato
said that what we learned was only a recollection of what
we had known; a thing which each man by experience
can maintain to be false. In the first place, because we
recollect only precisely what we are taught, and if
memory were doing its job purely, it would at least
suggest to us some point beyond what we have learned.
Second, what it knew when it was in its purity was a real
knowledge, by its divine intelligence understanding
things as they are, whereas here it is made to receive
falsehood and vice, if it is instructed about them. In this it
cannot use its power of reminiscence, this idea and
conception never having lodged in it.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 12, Apology for Raymond
Sebond
14 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
| summon up remembrance of things past,
| sigh the lack of many a thing | sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.
Then can | drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night.
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XXX
15 | make no more estimation of repeating a great number
of names or words upon once hearing, or the pouring
forth of a number of verses or rhymes ex tempore, or the
making of a satirical simile of everything, or the turning
of everything to a jest, or the falsifying or contradicting of
everything by cavil, or the like (whereof in the faculties of
the mind there is great copie, and such as by device and
practice may be exalted to an extreme degree of
wonder), than | do of the tricks of tumblers, funambuloes,
baladines; the one being the same in the mind that the
other is in the body, matters of strangeness without
worthiness.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XV, 2
16 Let the required nature be memory, or that which excites
and assists memory. The constitutive instances are order
or distribution, which manifestly assists memory; topics
or common-places in artificial memory, which may be
either places in their literal sense, as a gate, acomer, a
window, and the like, or familiar persons and marks, or
anything else (provided it be arranged in a determinate
order), aS animals, plants, and words, letters, characters,
historical persons, and the like, of which, however, some
are more convenient than others. All these common-
places materially assist memory, and raise it far above its
natural strength. Verse, too, is recollected and learnt
more easily than prose. From this group of three instances
—order, the common-places of artificial memory, and
verses—is constituted one species of aid for the memory,
which may be well termed a separation from infinity. For
when aman strives to recollect or recall anything to
memory, without a preconceived notion or perception of
the object of his search, he inquires about, and labors,
and turns from point to point, as if involved in infinity. But
if he have any preconceived notion, this infinity is
separated off, and the range of his memory is brought
within closer limits. In the three instances given above,
the preconceived notion is clear and determined. In the
first, it must be something that agrees with order; in the
second, an image which has some relation or agreement
with die fixed common-places; in the third, words which
fall into a verse: and thus infinity is divided off. Other
instances will offer another species, namely, that
whatever brings the intellect into contact with something
that strikes the sense (the principal point of artificial
memory), assists the memory. Others again offer another
species, namely, whatever excites an impression by any
powerful passion, as fear, wonder, shame, delight, assists
the memory. Other instances will afford another species;
thus those impressions remain most fixed in the memory
which are taken from the mind when clear and least
occupied by preceding or succeeding notions, such as the
things we learn in childhood, or imagine before sleep,
and the first time of any circumstance happening.
Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 26
17 The things perceived by sense remain in some animals;
in others they do not remain. Those in whom they do not
remain, however, have either no knowledge at all, or at
least none beyond the simple perception of the things
which do not remain; others, again, when they perceive,
retain a certain something in their soul. Now, as there are
many animals of this description, there is already a
distinction between one animal and another; and to this
extent, that in some there is reason from the memory of
things; and in others there is none. Memory, therefore, as
is said, follows from sense; but from repeated recollection
of the same thing springs experience (for repeated acts of
memory constitute a single experience)...
Wherefore... there is no perfect Knowledge which can
be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been
obtained from experience, or derived in some way from
our senses; all Knowledge, at all events, is examined by
these, approved by them, and finally presents itself to us
firmly grounded upon some preexisting knowledge which
we possessed: because without memory there is no
experience, which is nothing else than reiterated
memory; in like manner memory cannot exist without
endurance of the things perceived, and the thing
perceived cannot remain where it has never been.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, Intro.
18 Sometimes a man seeks what he hath lost; and from that
place, and time, wherein he misses it, his mind runs back,
from place to place, and time to time, to find where and
when he had it; that is to say, to find some certain and
limited time and place in which to begin a method of
seeking. Again, from thence, his thoughts run over the
Same places and times to find what action or other
occasion might make him lose it. This we call
remembrance, or calling to mind.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 3
19 Time and Education begets experience; Experience
begets Memory; Memory begets Judgment and Fancy:
Judgment begets the strength and structure, and Fancy
begets the ornaments of a Poem, The Ancients therefore
fabled not absurdly, in making memory the mother of the
Muses, For memory is the World (though not really, yet so
as in a looking glass) in which the Judgment (the severer
sister) busieth herself in a grave and rigid examination of
all the parts of Nature, and in registring by Letters, their
order, causes, uses, differences, and resemblances;
Whereby the Fancy, when any work of Art is to be
performed, findeth her materials at hand and prepared
for use, and needs no more than a swift motion over
them, that what she wants, and is there to be had, may
not lye too long unespied. So that when she seemeth to
fly from one Indies to the other, and from Heaven to
Earth, and to penetrate into the hardest matter, and
obscurest places, into the future and into her self, and all
this in a point of time; the voyage is not very great, her
self being all she seeks; and her wonderful celerity,
consisteth not so much in motion, as in copious Imagery
discreetly ordered, and perfectly registred in the memory.
Hobbes, Answer to Sir Will. D'Avenant's Preface Before
Gondibert
20 But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy,
and deals with the memory of men without distinction to
merit of perpetuity.... Who knows whether the best of
men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable
persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the
known account of time?
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial, V
21 Memory ... is nothing else than a certain concatenation of
ideas, involving the nature of things which are outside
the human body, a concatenation which corresponds in
the mind to the order and concatenation of the affections
of the human body. | say, firstly, that it is a concatenation
of those ideas only which involve the nature of things
which are outside the human body, and not of those
ideas which explain the nature of those things, for there
are in truth ideas of the affections of the human body,
which involve its nature as well as the nature of external
bodies. | say, in the second place, that this concatenation
takes place according to the order and concatenation of
the affections of the human body, that | may distinguish
it from the concatenation of ideas which takes place
according to the order of the intellect, and enables the
mind to perceive things through their first causes, and is
the same in all men. Hence we can clearly understand
how it is that the mind from the thought of one thing at
once turns to the thought of another thing which is not in
any way like the first. ... In this manner each person will
turn from one thought to another according to the
manner in which the habit of each has arranged the
images of things in the body. The soldier, for instance, if
he sees the footsteps of a horse in the sand, will
immediately turn from the thought of a horse to the
thought of a horseman, and so to the thought of war. The
countryman, on the other hand, from the thought of a
horse will turn to the thought of his plough, his field, etc.;
and thus each person will turn from one thought to this or
that thought, according to the manner in which he has
been accustomed to connect and bind together the
images of things in his mind.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Prop. 18, Schol.
22 Retention is the power to revive again in our minds those
ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, or have
been as it were laid aside out of sight. And thus we do,
when we conceive heat or light, yellow or sweet,—the
object being removed. This is memory, which is as it were
the store-house of our ideas. For, the narrow mind of man
not being capable of having many ideas under view and
consideration at once, it was necessary to have a
repository, to lay up those ideas which, at another time, it
might have use of. But, our ideas being nothing but
actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be
anything when there is no perception of them; this laying
up of our ideas in the repository of the memory signifies
no more but this,—that the mind has a power in many
cases to revive perceptions which it has once had, with
this additional perception annexed to them, that /t has
had them before. And in this sense it is that our ideas are
said to be in our memories, when indeed they are
actually nowhere;—but only there is an ability in the
mind when it will to revive them again, and as it were
paint them anew on itself, though some with more, some
with less difficulty; some more lively, and others more
obscurely. And thus it is, by the assistance of this faculty,
that we are said to have all those ideas in our
understandings which, though we do not actually
contemplate, yet we can bring in sight, and make appear
again, and be the objects of our thoughts, without the
help of those sensible qualities which first imprinted
them there.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, X, 2
23 The memory of some men, it is true, is very tenacious,
even to a miracle. But yet there seems to be a constant
decay of all our ideas, even oi those which are struck
deepest, and in minds the most retentive; so that if they
be not sometimes renewed, by repeated exercise of the
senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at
first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last
there remains nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well
as children, of our youth, often die before us; and our
minds represent to us those tombs to which we are
approaching; where, though the brass and marble
remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the
imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds
are laid in fading colours; and if not sometimes refreshed,
vanish and disappear. How much the constitution of our
bodies and the make of our animal spirits are concerned
in this; and whether the temper of the brain makes this
difference, that in some it retains the characters drawn
on it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others
little better than sand, | shall not here inquire; though it
may seem probable that the constitution of the body
does sometimes influence the memory, since we
oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its
ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days calcine all
those images to dust and confusion, which seemed to be
as lasting as if graved in marble.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, X, 5
24 Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Shelley, To —
25 Blessed are the forgetful: for they get over their
stupidities, too.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, VII, 217
26 Try ... to symbolize what goes on in a man who Is racking
his brains to remember a thought which occurred to him
last week. The associates of the thought are there, many
of them at least, but they refuse to awaken the thought
itself. We cannot suppose that they do not irradiate at all
into its brain-tract, because his mind quivers on the very
edge of its recovery. Its actual rhythm sounds in his cars;
the words seem on the imminent point of following, but
fail. What it is that blocks the discharge and keeps the
brain-excitement here from passing beyond the nascent
into the vivid state cannot be guessed. But we see in the
philosophy of desire and pleasure, that such nascent
excitements, soontaneously tending to a crescendo, but
inhibited or checked by other causes, may become
potent mental stimuli and determinants of desire. All
questioning, wonder, emotion of curiosity, must be
referred to cerebral causes of some such form as this. The
great difference between the effort to recall things
forgotten and the search after the means to a given end,
is that the latter have not, whilst the former have, already
formed a part of our experience....
The forgotten thing is felt by us as a gap in the midst
of certain other things. If it is a thought, we possess a dim
idea of where we were and what we were about when it
occurred to us. We recollect the general subject to which
it relates. But all these details refuse to shoot together
into a solid whole, for the lack of the vivid traits of this
missing thought, the relation whereof to each detail
forms now the main interest of the latter. We keep
running over the details in our mind, dissatisfied, craving
something more. From each detail there radiate lines of
association forming so many tentative guesses. Many of
these are immediately seen to be irrelevant, are therefore
void of interest, and lapse immediately from
consciousness. Others are associated with the other
details present, and with the missing thought as well.
When these surge up, we have a peculiar feeling that we
are "warm," as the children say when they play hide and
seek; and such associates as these we clutch at and keep
before the attention. Thus we recollect successively that
when we had the thought in question we were at the
dinner-table; then that our friend J. D. was there; then
that the subject talked about was so and so; finally, that
the thought came a propos of a certain anecdote, and
then that it had something to do with a French quotation.
Now all these added associations arise independently of
the will, by the spontaneous process we know so well.
All that the will does is to emphasize and linger over
those which seem pertinent, and ignore the rest. Through
this hovering of the attention in the neighborhood of the
desired object, the accumulation of associates becomes
so great that the combined tensions of their neural
processes break through the bar, and the nervous wave
pours into the tract which has so long been awaiting its
advent. And as the expectant, sub-conscious itching
there, bursts into the fulness of vivid feeling, the mind
finds an inexpressible relief.
William James, Psychology, XIV
27 The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments
fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no
memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others,
it is confined to a few moments, hours, or days. Others,
again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by
means of which they may be recalled as long as life
endures.
William James, Psychology, XVI
28 Memory proper, or secondary memory as it might be
styled, is the knowledge of a former state of mind after it
has already once dropped from consciousness; or rather /t
is the knowledge of an event, or fact, of which meantime
we have not been thinking, with the additional
consciousness that we have thought or experienced it
before.
The first clement which such a knowledge involves
would seem to be the revival in the mind of an image or
copy of the original event. And it is an assumption made
by many writers that the revival of an image is all that is
needed to constitute the memory of the original
occurrence. But such a revival is obviously not a memory,
whatever else it may be; it is simply a duplicate, a second
event, having absolutely no connection with the first
event except that it happens to resemble it. The clock
strikes to-day; it struck yesterday; and may strike a
million times ere it wears out. The rain pours through the
gutter this week; it did so last week; and will do so in
soecula soeculorum. But does the present clock-stroke
become aware of the past ones, or the present stream
recollect the past stream, because they repeat and
resemble them? Assuredly not.... No memory is involved
in the mere fact of recurrence. The successive editions of
a feeling are so many independent events, each snug in
its own skin. Yesterday's feeling is dead and buried; and
the presence of to-day’s is no reason why it should
resuscitate. A farther condition is required before the
present image can be held to stand for a past original.
That condition is that the fact imaged be expressly
referred to the past, thought as /n the past. But how can
we think a thing as in the past, except by thinking of the
past together with the thing, and of the relation of the
two? And how can we think of the past? In the chapter on
Time-perception we have seen that our intuitive or
immediate consciousness of pastness hardly carries us
more than a few seconds backward of the present instant
of time. Remoter dates are conceived, not perceived;
known symbolically by names, such as "last week,"
"1850"; or thought of by events which happened in them,
as the year in which we attended such a school, or met
with such a loss.—So that if we wish to think of a
particular past epoch, we must think of a name or other
symbol, or else of certain concrete events, associated
therewithal. Both must thought of, to think the past
epoch adequately. And to "refer" any special fact to the
past epoch is to think that fact with the names and
events which characterize its date, to think it, in short,
with a lot of contiguous associates.
But even this would not be memory. Memory requires
more than mere dating of a fact in the past. It must be
dated in my past. In other words, | must think that |
directly experienced its occurrence. It must have that
“warmth and intimacy" which... characteriz[es] all
experiences "appropriated" by the thinker as his own.
William James, Psychology, XVI
29 In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as
important a function as recollecting....
This peculiar mixture of forgetting with our
remembering is but one instance of our mind's selective
activity. Selection is the very keel on which our mental
ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is
obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on
most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.
It would take as long for us to recall a space of time as it
took the original time to elapse, and we should never get
ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo,
accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this
foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous
number of the facts which filled them.
William James, Psychology, XVI
30 In human experience, the most compelling example of
non-sensuous perception is our knowledge of our own
immediate past. | am not referring to our memories of a
day past, or of an hour past, or of a minute past. Such
memories are blurred and confused by the intervening
occasions of our personal existence. But our immediate
past is constituted by that occasion, or by that group of
fused occasions, which enters into experience devoid of
any perceptible medium intervening between it and the
present immediate fact. Roughly speaking, it is that
portion of our past lying between a tenth of a second and
half a second ago. It is gone, and yet it is here. It is our
indubitable self, the foundation of our present existence.
Yet the present occasion while claiming self-identity,
while sharing the very nature of the byegone occasion in
all Its living activities, nevertheless is engaged in
modifying it, in adjusting it to otherinfluences, in
completing it with other values, in deflecting it to other
purposes. The present moment is constituted by the
influx of the other into that self-identity which is the
continued life of the immediate past within the
immediacy of the present.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XI, 12
31 Memory is the purest example of mirror knowledge. When
| remember a piece of music or a friend’s face, my state of
mind resembles, though with a difference, what it was
when | heard the music or saw the face. If | have sufficient
Skill, | can play the music or paint the face from memory,
and then compare my playing or painting with the
Original, or rather with something which 1 have reason to
believe closely similar to the original. But we trust our
memory, up to a point, even if it does not pass this test. If
our friend appears with a black eye, we say, "How did you
get that injury?" not "| had forgotten that you had a black
eye." The tests of memory, as we have already had
occasion to notice, are only confirmations; a considerable
degree of credibility attaches to a memory on its own
account, particularly if it is vivid and recent.
A memory is accurate, not in proportion to the help it
gives in handling present and future facts, but in
proportion to its resemblance to a past fact. When
Herbert Spencer, after fifty years, saw again the lady he
had loved as a young man, whom he had imagined still
young, it was the very accuracy of his memory which
incapacitated him from handling the present fact. In
regard to memory, the definition of "truth," and therefore
of "knowledge," lies in the resemblance of present
imagining to past sensible experience. Capacity for
handling present and future facts may be confirmatory in
certain circumstances, but can never define what we
mean when we Say that a certain memory is "knowledge."
Russell, Human Knowledge, VI, 1
32 When | had reached in my procedure with [my patients] a
point at which they declared that they knew nothing
more, | would assure them that they did know, that they
must just tell it out, and | would venture the assertion
that the memory which would emerge at the moment
that | laid my hand on the patient’s forehead would be
the right one. In this way | succeeded, without hypnosis,
in learning from the patient all that was necessary fora
construction of the connection between the forgotten
pathogenic scenes and the symptoms which they had left
behind. This was a troublesome and in its length an
exhausting proceeding, and did not lend itself toa
finished technique. But | did not give it up without
drawing definite conclusions from the data which | had
gained. | had substantiated the fact that the forgotten
memories were not lost. They were in the possession of
the patient, ready to emerge and form associations with
his other mental content, but hindered from becoming
conscious, and forced to remain in the unconscious by
some sort of a force. The existence of this force could be
assumed with certainty, for in attempting to drag up the
unconscious memories into the consciousness of the
patient, in opposition to this force, one got the sensation
of his own personal effort striving to overcome it. One
could get an idea of this force, which maintained the
pathological situation, from the resistance of the patient.
It is on this idea of resistance that | based my theory of
the psychic processes of hystericals. It had been found
that in order to cure the patient it was necessary that this
force should be overcome. Now with the mechanism of
the cure as a Starting point, quite a definite theory could
be constructed. These same forces, which in the present
situation as resistances opposed the emergence of the
forgotten ideas into consciousness, must themselves
have caused the forgetting, and repressed from
consciousness the pathogenic experiences. | called this
hypothetical process repression, and considered that it
was proved by the undeniable existence of resistance.
Freud, Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, II
33 It is quite true that the unconscious wishes are always
active. They represent paths which are always
practicable, whenever a quantum of excitation makes use
of them. It is indeed an outstanding peculiarity of the
unconscious processes that they are indestructible.
Nothing can be brought to an end in the unconscious;
nothing is past or forgotten. ., . Indeed, the fading of
memories and the weak affect of impressions which are
no longer recent, which we are apt to take as self-evident,
and to explain as a primary effect of time on our psychic
memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes
brought about by laborious work.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VII, D
34 The process of repression is not to be regarded as
something which takes place once for all, the results of
which are permanent, as when some living thing has
been killed and from that time onward is dead; on the
contrary, repression demands a constant expenditure of
energy, and if this were discontinued the success of the
repression would be jeopardized, so that a fresh act of
repression would be necessary. We may imagine that
what is repressed exercises a continuous straining in the
direction of consciousness, so that the balance has to be
kept by means of a steady counter-pressure. A constant
expenditure of energy, therefore, is entailed in
maintaining a repression, and economically its abrogation
denotes a Saving.
Freud, Repression
5.4 Imagination
Imagination is the faculty of poetry and fiction—of
imaginative literature in all its forms. The poets express their
appreciation of its resources and of its gifts. Fancy and
fantasy not only create realms that cannot be explored by
sense; imagination also exercises a magic touch on sensible
reality, reshaping and enlivening it in a variety of ways.
Imagination like memory is thought of by the
philosophers and psychologists as a residue or by-product of
sense and sense perception, Yet the products of imagination
often go beyond the world of things perceived and
remembered. The fictions or constructions of the
imagination—such as mermaids, centaurs, unicorns, and
golden mountains— may involve elements derived from
sense perception, but they also represent compositions that
have never been experienced. What mode of being, if any, is
possessed by such objects of imagination? Or, for that
matter, by the imaginary persons who are the characters in
plays and novels?
The word "ideas" is used by some writers—Hume, for
example—for the images that are derived from sense
impressions. Other writers make a sharp distinction between
images or phantasms—the products of imagination—and
ideas or concepts which are the elements of thought and are
attributed to the mind or intellect rather than to the
Imagination. When images and ideas or concepts are
distinguished, problems arise concerning their inter-
dependence. Can we conceive things that we cannot
imagine? Is there a difference between the unimaginable
and the inconceivable?
For the discussion of related matters, the reader is
referred to Section 6.2 on Experience, and to Section 16.3
on Poetry and Poets; and also to Section 5.1 on Intelligence
and Understanding.
1 Imagination is different from either perceiving or
discursive thinking, though it is not found without
sensation, or judgement without it. That this activity is
not the same kind of thinking as judgement is obvious.
For imagining lies within our own power whenever we
wish (e.g. we can call up a picture, as in the practice of
mnemonics by the use of mental images), but in forming
Opinions we are not free: we cannot escape the
alternative of falsehood or truth. Further, when we think
something to be fearful or threatening, emotion is
immediately produced, and so too with what is
encouraging; but when we merely imagine we remain as
unaffected as persons who are looking at a painting of
some dreadful or encouraging scene. Again within the
field of judgement itself we find varieties—knowiedge,
opinion, prudence, and their opposites; of the differences
between these | must speak elsewhere.
Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be
in part imagination, in part judgement: we must therefore
first mark off the sphere of imagination and then speak of
judgement. If then imagination is that in virtue of which
an image arises for us, excluding metaphorical uses of
the term, is it a single faculty or disposition relative to
images, in virtue of which we discriminate and are either
in error or not? The faculties in virtue of which we do this
are sense, opinion, science, intelligence.
That imagination is not sense is clear from the
following considerations: Sense is either a faculty or an
activity, e.g. sight or seeing: imagination takes place in
the absence of both, as e.g. in dreams. (2) Again, sense is
always present, imagination not. If actual imagination
and actual sensation were the same, imagination would
be found in all the brutes: this is held not to be the case;
e.g. it is not found in ants or bees or grubs. (3) Again,
sensations are always true, imaginations are for the most
part false. (4) Once more, even in ordinary speech, we do
not, when sense functions precisely with regard to its
object, say that we imagine it to be a man, but rather
when there is some failure of accuracy in its exercise. And
(5), aS we were saying before, visions appear to us even
when our eyes are shut. Neither is imagination any of the
things that are never in error: e.g. Knowledge or
intelligence; for imagination may be false.
It remains therefore to see if it is opinion, for opinion
may be either true or false.
But opinion involves belief (for without belief in what
we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes
though we often find imagination we never find belief.
Further, every opinion is accompanied by belief, belief by
conviction, and conviction by discourse of reason: while
there are some of the brutes in which we find
imagination, without discourse of reason. It is clear then
that imagination cannot, again, be (1) opinion plus
sensation, or (2) opinion mediated by sensation, or (3) a
blend of opinion and sensation; this is impossible both for
these reasons and because the content of the supposed
opinion cannot be different from that of the sensation (I
mean that imagination must be the blending of the
perception of white with the opinion that it is white: it
could scarcely be a blend of the opinion that it is good
with the perception that it is white); to imagine is
therefore (on this view) identical with the thinking of
exactly the same as what one in the strictest sense
perceives. But what we imagine is sometimes false
though our contemporaneous judgement about it is true;
e.g. we imagine the sun to be a foot in diameter though
we are convinced that it is larger than the inhabited part
of the earth, and the following dilemma presents itself.
Either (a) while the fact has not changed and the
observer has neither forgotten nor lost belief in the true
opinion which he had, that opinion has disappeared, or
{b') if he retains it then his opinion is at once true and
false. A true opinion, however, becomes false only when
the fact alters without being noticed.
Imagination is therefore neither any one of the states
enumerated, nor compounded out of them.
But since when one thing has been set in motion
another thing may be moved by it, and imagination is
held to be a movement and to be impossible without
sensation, i.e. to occur in beings that are percipient and
to have for its content what can be perceived, and since
movement may be produced by actual sensation and that
movement is necessarily similar in character to the
sensation itself, this movement must be (1) necessarily
(a) incapable of existing apart from sensation, (6)
incapable of existing except when we perceive, (2) such
that in virtue of its possession that in which it is found
may present various phenomena both active and passive,
and (3) such that it may be either true or false.
The reason of the last characteristic is as follows.
Perception (1) of the special objects of sense is never in
error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood, (2)
That of the concomitance of the objects concomitant with
the sensible qualities comes next: in this case certainly
we may be deceived; for while the perception that there
is white before us cannot be false, the perception that
what is white is this or that may be false. (3) Third comes
the perception of the universal attributes which
accompany the concomitant objects to which the special
sensibles attach (| mean c,g. of movement and
magnitude); it is in respect of these that the greatest
amount of sense-illusion is possible.
The motion which is due to the activity of sense in
these three modes of its exercise will differ from the
activity of sense; (1) the first kind of derived motion is
free from error while the sensation is present; (2) and (3)
the others may be erroneous whether it is present or
absent, especially when the object of perception is far off.
If then imagination presents no other features than those
enumerated and is what we have described, then
imagination must be a movement resulting from an
actual exercise of a power of sense.
As sight is the most highly developed sense.,.
imagination has been formed from light because it is not
possible to see without light.
And because imaginations remain in the organs of
sense and resemble sensations, animals in their actions
are largely guided by them, some (i.e. the brutes)
because of the non-existence in them of mind, others (i.e.
men) because of the temporary eclipse in them of mind
by feeling or disease or sleep.
About imagination, what it is and why it exists, let so
much suffice.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 427b14
2 And now that | have taught what the nature of Ac mind is
and out of what things it is formed into one quickened
being with the body, and how it is dissevered and returns
into its first-beginnings, | will attempt to lay before you a
truth which most nearly concerns these questions, the
existence of things which we call idols of things: these,
like films peeled off from the surface of things, fly to and
fro through the air, and do likewise frighten our minds
when they present themselves to us awake as well as in
sleep, what time we behold strange shapes and idols of
the light-bereaved, which have often startled us in
appalling wise as we lay relaxed in sleep: this | will essay,
that we may not haply believe that souls break loose from
Acheron or that shades fly about among the living or that
something of us is left behind after death, when the body
and the nature of the mind destroyed together have
taken their departure into their several first-beginnings.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
3 In the present state of life in which the soul is united to a
passible body, it is impossible for our intellect to
understand anything actually except by turning to the
phantasms. And of this there are two indications. First of
all because the intellect, being a power that does not
make use of a corporeal organ, would in no way be
hindered in its act through the lesion of a corporeal organ
if for its act Acre were not required the act of some power
that does make use of a corporeal organ. Now sense,
imagination and the other powers belonging to the
sensitive part, make use of a corporeal organ. Therefore it
is clear that for the intellect to understand actually, not
only when it acquires fresh knowledge, but also when it
uses knowledge already acquired, there is need for the
act of the imagination and of the other powers. For when
the act of the imagination is hindered by a lesion of the
corporeal organ, for instance, in a case of frenzy, or when
the act of the memory is hindered, as in the case of
lethargy, we see that a man is hindered from actually
understanding things of which he had a previous
knowledge. Secondly, anyone can experience this of
himself, that when he tries to understand something, he
forms certain phantasms to serve him by way of
examples, in which as it were he examines what he is
striving to understand. It is for this reason that when we
wish to make someone understand something, we lay
examples before him, from which he can form phantasms
for the purpose of understanding.
Now the reason of this is that the power of knowledge
iS proportioned to the thing known. Thus... the proper
object of the human intellect, which is united to a body,
iS a quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter, and
through such natures of visible things it rises even to
some knowledge of things invisible. Now it belongs to
such a nature to exist in an individual, and this cannot be
apart from corporeal matter. ., . And so the nature of a
stone or any material thing cannot be known completely
and truly, except according as it is known as existing in
the individual. Now we apprehend the individual through
the senses and the imagination. And, therefore, for the
intellect to understand actually its proper object, it must
of necessity turn to the phantasms in order to examine
the universal nature existing in the individual.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 84, 7
4 O fantasy, that at times dost so snatch us out of ourselves
that we are conscious of naught, even though a thousand
trumpets sound about us,
who moves thee, if the senses set naught before thee?
A light moves thee which takes its form in heaven, of
itself, or by a will that sendeth it down.
Dante, Purgatorio, XVII, 13
5 And I, who to the goal of all my longings was drawing nigh,
even as was meet the ardour of the yearning quenched
within me.
Bernard gave me the sign and smiled to me that |
should look on high, but | already of myself was such as
he would have me;
because my sight, becoming purged, now more and
more was entering through the ray of the deep light
which in itself is true.
Thenceforward was my vision mightier than our
discourse, which faileth at such sight, and fail-cth
memory at so great outrage.
As is he who dreaming seeth, and when the dream is
gone the passion stamped remaineth, and naught else
cometh to the mind again;
even such am |; for almost wholly faileth me my vision,
yet doth the sweetness that was born of it still drop
within my heart.
So doth the snow unstamp it to the sun, so to the wind
on the light leaves was lost the Sibyl’s wisdom.
Dante, Paradiso, XXXIII, 46
6 So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some
definite subject that will bridle and control them, they
throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague
field of imagination.
... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not
bring forth in this agitation.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 8, Of Idleness
7 How many men have been made sick by the mere power of
imagination?
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
8 Holofernes. This is a gift that | have, simple, simple; a
foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes,
objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these
are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the
womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of
occasion.
Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, IV, ii, 67
9 Theseus. Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear.
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night’s Dream, V, I, 18
10 Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engender’d in the eyes,
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy’s knell:
I'll begin it—Ding, dong, bell.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III, 11, 63
11 Chorus. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The fiat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your Imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance:
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass; for the which supply.
Admit me Chorus to this history.
Shakespeare, Henry V, Prologue
12 Chorus. Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed king at Hampton pier
Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning:
Play with your fancies, and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails.
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw' the huge bottoms through the furrow’d sea,
Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical.
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow:
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy.
And leave your England, as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women
Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance;
For who is he, whose chin is but enrich’d
With one appearing hair, that will not follow
These cull’d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back;
Tells Harry that the King doth offer him
Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry,
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
Alarum, and chambers go off.
And down goes all before them. Still be kind.
And eke out our performance with your mind.
Shakespeare, Henry V, III, Prologue
13 Macbeth. Why do | yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, tii, 134
14 So, Sancho, as to the Use which | make of the Lady
Dulcinea, she is equal to the greatest Princesses in the
World. Pr’ythee tell me. Dost thou think the Poets, who
every one of ’em celebrate the Praises of some Lady or
other, had all real Mistresses? Or that the Amaryllis's, the
Phyllis's, the Sylvia's the Diana’s, the Galatea's, the
Alida's, and the like, which you shall find in so many
Poems, Romances, Songs and Ballads, upon ever Stage,
and even in every Barber’s Shop, were Creatures of Flesh
and Blood, and Mistresses to those that did and do
celebrate ’em? No, no, never think it; for | dare assure
thee, the greatest Part of ’em were nothing but the meer
Imaginations of the Poets, for a Ground-work to exercise
their Wits upon, and give to the World Occasion to look
on the Authors as Men of an amorous and gallant
Disposition: And so ’tis sufficient for me to imagine, that
Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and chaste; as for her Birth
and Parentage, they concern me but little; for there’s no
need to make an Enquiry about a Woman’s Pedigree, as
there is of us Men, when some Badge of Honour is
bestowed on us; and so she’s to me the greatest Princess
in the World: For thou ought’st to know, Sancho, if thou
know’st it not already, that there are but two things that
chiefly excite us to love a Woman, an attractive Beauty,
and unspotted Fame. Now these two Endowments are
happily reconcil’d in Dulcinea; for as for the one, she has
not her Equal, and few can vie with her in the other: But
to cut off all Objections at once, | imagine, that All | say of
her is really so, without the least Addition or Diminution: |
fancy her to be just such as | would have her for Beauty
and Quality. He/en cannot stand in Competition with her;
Lucretia cannot rival her; and all the Heroines which
Antiquity has to boast, whether Greeks, Romans or
Barbarians, are at once out-done by her incomparable
Perfections. Therefore let the World say what it will;
should the Ignorant Vulgar foolishly censure me, | please
my self with the Assurances | have of the Approbation of
Men of the strictest Morals, and the nicest Judgment.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 25
15 Sancho. Heaven defend me, said he to himself, what a
Heart of a Chicken have I! This now, which to me is a sad
Disaster, to my Master, Don Quixote, would be a rare
Adventure. He would look upon these Caves and
Dungeons as lovely Gardens, and glorious Palaces, and
hope to be led out of these dark narrow Cells into some
fine Meadow; while I, luckless, helpless, heartless Wretch
that | am, every Step | take, expect to sink into some
deeper Pit than this, and go down | don’t know whither.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 55
16 That power by which we are properly said to know things,
iS purely spiritual, and not less distinct from every part of
the body than blood from bone, or hand from eye. It is a
single agency, whether it receives impressions from the
common sense simultaneously with the fancy, or applies
itself to those that are preserved in the memory, or forms
new ones. Often the imagination is so beset by these
impressions that it is unable at the same time to receive
ideas from the common sense, or to transfer them to the
motor mechanism in the way befitting its purely
corporeal character. In all these operations this cognitive
power is at one time passive, at another active, and
resembles now the seal and now the wax. But the
resemblance on this occasion is only one of analogy, for
among corporeal things there is nothing wholly similar to
this faculty. It is one and the same agency which, when
applying itself along with the imagination to the common
sense, Is Said to see, touch, etc.; if applying itself to the
imagination alone in so far as that is endowed with
diverse impressions, it is said to remember; if it turn to
the imagination in order to create fresh impressions, it is
said to imagine or conceive; finally if it act alone it is said
to understand.... Now it is the same faculty that in
correspondence with those various functions is called
either pure understanding, or imagination, or memory, or
sense. It is properly called mind when it either forms new
ideas in the fancy, or attends to those already formed., . .
But after having grasped these facts the attentive reader
will gather what help is to be expected from each
particular faculty, and discover how far human effort can
asSail to supplement the deficiencies of our mental
powers.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, XII
17 When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless
something else hinder it) eternally; and whatsoever
hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but in time, and by
degrees, quite extinguish it: and as we see in the water,
though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling
for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion
which is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when
he secs, dreams, etc. For after the object is removed, or
the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen,
though more obscure than when see it. And this is it the
Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing....
Imagination, therefore, is nothing but deeming sense;
and is found in men and many other living creatures, as
well sleeping as waking.
The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay of
the motion made in sense, but an obscuring of it, in such
manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the
stars; which stars do no less exercise their virtue by
which they are visible in the day than in the night.... This
decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I
mean fancy itself), we call /magination, as | said before.
But when we would express the decay, and signify that
the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory. So
that imagination and memory are but one thing, which
for diverse considerations hath diverse names.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 2
18 It is that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and
falsity, the more deceptive that she is not always so; for
she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an
infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally
false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the
same character on the true and the false.
| do not speak of fools, | speak of the wisest men; and
it is among them that the imagination has the great gift
of persuasion. Reason protests in vain; it cannot set a
true value on things.
This arrogant power, the enemy of reason, who likes to
rule and dominate it, has established in man a second
nature to show how all-powerful she is. She makes men
happy and sad, healthy and sick, rich and poor; she
compels reason to believe, doubt, and deny; she blunts
the senses, or quickens them; she has her fools and
Sages; and nothing vexes us more than to see that she
fills her devotees with a satisfaction far more full and
entire than does reason. Those who have a lively
imagination are a great deal more pleased with
themselves than the wise can reasonably be. They look
down upon men with haughtiness; they argue with
boldness and confidence, others with fear and diffidence;
and this gaiety of countenance often gives them the
advantage in the opinion of the hearers, such favour have
the imaginary wise in the eyes of judges of like nature.
Imagination cannot make fools wise; but she can make
them happy, to the envy of reason which can only make
its friends miserable; the one covers them with glory, the
other with shame.
What but this faculty of imagination dispenses
reputation, awards respect and veneration to persons,
works, laws, and the great? How insufficient are all the
riches of the earth without her consent!
Would you not say that this magistrate, whose
venerable age commands the respect of a whole people,
is governed by pure and lofty reason, and that he judges
causes according to their true nature without considering
those mere trifles which only affect the imagination of the
weak? See him go to sermon, full of devout zeal,
strengthening his reason with the ardour of his love. He is
ready to listen with exemplary respect. Let the preacher
appear, and let nature have given him a hoarse voice or a
comical cast of countenance, or let his barber have given
him a bad shave, or let by chance his dress be more
dirtied than usual, then, however great the truths he
announces, 1 wager our senator loses his gravity.
If the greatest philosopher in the world find himself
upon a plank wider than actually necessary, but hanging
over a precipice, his imagination will prevail, though his
reason convince him of his safety. Many cannot bear the
thought without a cold sweat. | will not state all its
effects.
Pascal, Pansees, 11, 82
19 Imagination has this peculiarity that it produces the
greatest things with as little time and trouble as little
things.
Pascal, Concerning the Vacuum
20 An imagination is an idea which indicates the present
constitution of the human body rather than the nature of
an external body, not indeed distinctly but confusedly, so
that the mind is said to err. For example, when we look at
the sun, we imagine his distance from us to be about 200
feet, and in this we are deceived so long as we remain in
ignorance of the true distance, When this is known, the
error is removed, but not the imagination, that is to say,
the idea of the sun which manifests his nature in so far
only as the body is affected by him; so that although we
know his true distance, we nevertheless imagine him
close to us. For it is not because we are ignorant of the
sun’s true distance that we imagine him to be so close to
us, but because the mind conceives the magnitude of the
sun just in so far as the body is affected by him. So when
the rays of the sun falling upon a surface of water are
reflected to our eyes, we imagine him to be in the water,
although his true place is known to us. So with the other
imaginations by which the mind is deceived; whether
they indicate the natural constitution of the body or an
increase or diminution in its power of action, they are not
opposed to the truth, nor do they disappear with the
presence of the truth. We know that when we
groundlessly fear any evil, the fear vanishes when we
hear correct intelligence; but we also know, on the other
hand, that when we fear an evil which will actually come
upon us, the fear vanishes when we hear false
intelligence, so that the imaginations do not disappear
with the presence of the truth, in so far as it is true, but
because other imaginations arise which are stronger, and
which exclude the present existence of the objects we
imagine.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 1, Schol.
21 The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit;
and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me
leave to use a school-distinction) is no other than the
faculty of imagination in the writer, which like a nimble
Spaniel, beats over and ranges thro’ the field of memory,
till it sorings the quarry it hunted after; or, without
metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the
species or ideas of those things which it designs to
represent. Wit written is that which is well defin’d, the
happy result of thought, or product of imagination.
Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, Pref.
22 True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 297
23 It is evident that there is a principle of connexion
between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and
that, in their appearance to the memory or imagination,
they introduce each other with a certain degree of
method and regularity. In our more serious thinking or
discourse this is so observable that any particular
thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain
of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected. And even
in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our
very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the
imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that
there was still a connexion upheld among the different
ideas, which succeeded each other. Were the loosest and
freest conversation to be transcribed, there would
immediately be observed something which connected it
in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the person
who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you,
that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession
of thought, which had gradually led him from the subject
of conversation. Among different languages, even where
we cannot suspect the least connexion or
communication, it is found, that the words, expressive of
ideas, the most compounded, do yet nearly correspond to
each other: a certain proof that the simple ideas,
comprehended in the compound ones, were bound
together by some universal principle, which had an equal
influence on all mankind.
Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that
different ideas are connected together; | do not find that
any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all
the principles of association; a subject, however, that
seems worthy of curiosity. To me, there appear to be only
three principles of connexion among ideas, namely,
Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or
Effect.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, III, 18—19
24 Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and
though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas
furnished by the internal and external senses, it has
unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating,
and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and
vision. It can feign a train of events, with all the
appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time
and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out
to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any
historical fact, which it believes with the greatest
certainty.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, V, 39
25 The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted
with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running,
without control, into the most distant parts of space and
time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has
rendered too familiar to it.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 130
26 The world of reality has its bounds, the world of
imagination is boundless; as we cannot enlarge the one,
let us restrict the other; for all the sufferings which really
make us miserable arise from the difference between the
real and the imaginary.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
27 Our conversation to-day, | Know not how, turned, (I think
for the only time at any length, during our long
acquaintance,) upon the sensual intercourse between the
sexes, the delight of which he [Johnson] ascribed chiefly
to imagination. "Were it not for imagination, Sir, (said he,)
a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid
as of a Duchess. But such is the adventitious charm of
fancy, that we find men who have violated the best
principles of society, and ruined their fame and their
fortune, that they might possess a woman of rank."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 9, 1778)
28 In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata, which
lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions.
No image could ever be adequate to our conception of a
triangle in general. For the generalness of the conception
it never could attain to, as this includes under itself all
triangles, whether right-angled, acute-angled, etc., whilst
the image would always be limited to a single part of this
sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere
else than in thought, and it indicates a rule of the
synthesis of the imagination in regard to pure figures in
Space. Still less is an object of experience, or an image of
the object, ever adequate to the empirical conception. On
the contrary', the conception always relates immediately
to the schema of the imagination, as a rule for the
determination of our intuition, in conformity with a
certain general conception. The conception of a dog
indicates a rule, according to which ray imagination can
delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in general,
without being limited to any particular individual form
which experience presents to me, or indeed to any
possible image that | can represent to myself in concreto.
This schematism of our understanding in regard to
phenomena and their mere form, is an art, hidden in the
depths of the human soul, whose true modes of action we
Shall only with difficulty’ discover and unveil. Thus much
only can we say: "The /mage is a product of the empirical
faculty of the productive imagination—the schema of
sensuous conceptions (of figures in space, for example) is
a product, and, as it were, a monogram of the pure
imagination a priori, whereby and according to which
images first become possible, which, however, can be
connected with the conception only mediately by means
of the schema which they indicate, and are in themselves
never fully adequate to it." On the other hand, the
schema of a pure conception of the understanding is
something that cannot be reduced into any image—it is
nothing else than the pure synthesis expressed by the
category, conformably to a rule of unity according to
conceptions. It is a transcendental product of the
imagination, a product which concerns the determination
of the internal sense, according to conditions of its form
(time) in respect to all representations, in so far as these
representations must be conjoined a priori in one
conception, conformably to the unity of apperception.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic
29 The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a
powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature
out of the material supplied to it by actual nature. It
affords us entertainment where experience proves too
commonplace; and we even use it to remodel experience,
always following, no doubt, laws that are based on
analogy, but still also following principles which have a
higher seat in reason (and which are every whit as
natural to us as those followed by the understanding in
laying hold of empirical nature). By this means we get a
sense of our freedom from the law of association (which
attaches to the empirical employment of the
imagination), with the result that the material can be
borrowed by us from nature in accordance with that law,
but be worked up by us into something else—namely,
what surpasses nature.
Such representations of the imagination may be
termed ideas. This is partly because they at least strain
after something lying out beyond the confines of
experience, and so seek to approximate to a presentation
of rational concepts (i.e., intellectual ideas), thus giving
to these concepts the semblance of an objective reality.
But, on the other hand, there is this most important
reason, that no concept can be wholly adequate to them
as internal intuitions. The poet essays the task of
interpreting to sense the rational ideas of invisible
beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity,
creation, etc. Or, again, as to things of which examples
occur in experience, e.g., death, envy, and all vices, as
also love, fame, and the like, transgressing the limits of
experience he attempts with the aid of an imagination
which emulates the display of reason in its attainment of
a maximum, to body them forth to sense with a
completeness of which nature affords no parallel; and it is
in fact precisely in the poetic art that the faculty of
aesthetic ideas can show itself to full advantage. This
faculty, however, regarded solely on its own account, is
properly no more than a talent (of the imagination).
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 49
30 The imagination then, | consider either as primary, or
secondary. The primary /magination | hold to be the living
Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a
repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation
in the infinite | AM. The secondary Imagination | consider
as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious
will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its
agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of
its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to
re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible,
yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify.
It is essentially vita/, even as all objects (as objects) are
essentially fixed and dead.
Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play
with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no
other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the
order of time and space; while it is blended with, and
modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which
we express by the word choice. But equally with the
ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials
ready made from the law of association.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, XIII
31 We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we
know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we
imagine; we want the poetry of life; our calculations have
outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can
digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have
enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external
world has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally
circumscribed those of the internal world; and man,
having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.
Shelley, Defence of Poetry
32 Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still soread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar...
Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Every thing is spoilt by use;
Where's the check that doth not fade,
Too much gazed at? Where’s the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where’s the eye, however blue.
Doth not weary? Where’s the face
One would meet in every place?
Where’s the voice, however soft.
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind:
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
While as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet.
And Jove grew languid.—Break the mesh
Of the Fancy’s silken leash;
Quickly break her prison-string.
And such joys as these she'll bring,—
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
Keats, Fancy
33 Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
34 | am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s
affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the
Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it
existed before or not,—for | have the same idea of all our
passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative
of essential Beauty. In a Word, you may know my
favourite speculation by my first Book, and the little Song
1 sent in my last, which is a representation from the fancy
of the probable mode of operating in these Matters. The
Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream,—he
awoke and found it truth.
Keats, Letter to Benjamin Bailey, (Nov. 22, 1817)
35 Fancy is a wilful, imagination a spontaneous act; fancy, a
play as with dolls and puppets which we choose to call
men and women; imagination, a perception and affirming
of a real relation between a thought and some material
fact. Fancy amuses; imagination expands and exalts us.
Emerson, Poetry and Imagination
36 There is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive
down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them
again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And
even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in
the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the
mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the
plain, even though they soar.
Melville, Moby Dick, XCVI
37 What a faculty must that be which can paint the most
barren landscape and humblest life in glorious colors! It is
pure and invigorated senses reacting on a sound and
strong imagination. Is not that the poet’s ease? The
intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize nor
are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with Nature
that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to
imagination. When we were dead and dry as the highway,
some sense which has been healthily fed will put us in
relation with Nature, in sympathy with her; some grains
of fertilizing pollen, floating in the air, fall on us, and
suddenly the sky is all one rainbow, is full of music and
fragrance and flavor. The man of intellect only, the
prosaic man, is a barren, staminiferous flower; the poet is
a fertile and perfect flower.
Thoreau, Journal (Aug. 20, 1851)
38 The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of
man. By this faculty he unites former images and ideas,
independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and
novel results. A poet, as Jean Paul Richter remarks, "who
must reflect whether he shall make a character say yes or
no—to the devil with him; he is only a stupid corpse."
Dreaming gives us the best notion of this power; as Jean
Paul again says, "The dream is an involuntary art of
poetry." The value of the products of our imagination
depends of course on the number, accuracy, and
clearness of our impressions, on our judgment and taste
in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations,
and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily
combining them. As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all
the higher animals, even birds have vivid dreams, and
this is shewn by their movements and the sounds
uttered, we must admit that they possess some power of
imagination. There must be something special, which
causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially during
moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner
called baying.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 3
39 Sensations, once experienced, modify the nervous
organism, so that copies of them arise again in the mind
after the original outward stimulus is gone. No mental
copy, however, can arise in the mind, of any kind of
sensation which has never been directly excited from
without.
The blind may dream of sights, the deaf of sounds, for
years after they have lost their vision or hearing; but the
man born deaf can never be made to imagine what sound
is like, nor can the man born blind ever have a mental
vision. In Locke’s words... "the mind can frame unto itself
no one new simple idea." The originals of them all must
have been given from without. Fantasy, or Imagination,
are the names given to the faculty of reproducing copies
of originals once felt. The imagination is called
"reproductive" when the copies are literal; "productive"
when elements from different originals are recombined so
as to make new wholes.
After-images belong to sensation rather than to
imagination; so that the most immediate phenomena of
imagination would seem to be those tardier images...
coercive hauntings of the mind by echoes of unusual
experiences for hours after the latter have taken place.
The phenomena ordinarily ascribed to imagination,
however, are those mental pictures of possible sensible
experiences, to which the ordinary processes of
associative thought give rise.
When represented with surroundings concrete enough
to constitute a date, these pictures, when they revive,
form recollections, ...\When the mental pictures are of
data freely combined, and reproducing no past
combination exactly, we have acts of imagination
properly so called.
William James, Psychology, XVIII
40 Renunciation of pleasure has always been very hard to
man; he cannot accomplish it without some kind of
compensation. Accordingly he has evolved for himself a
mental activity in which all these relinquished sources of
pleasure and abandoned paths of gratification are
permitted to continue their existence, a form of existence
in which they are free from the demands of reality and
from what we call the exercise of testing reality. Every
longing is soon transformed into the idea of its fulfilment;
there is no doubt that dwelling upon a wish-fulfilment in
phantasy brings satisfaction, although the knowledge
that it is not reality remains thereby unobscured. In
phantasy, therefore, man can continue to enjoy a
freedom from the grip of the external world, one which he
has long relinquished in actuality.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXIII
41 In imagination, not in perception, lies the substance of
experience, while knowledge and reason are but its
chastened and ultimate form.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 2
5.5 Dreams
Long before dreams and dreaming became the subject of
psychological investigation and psychoanalytical theory, the
occurrence and content of dreams were objects of wonder,
fear, and speculation. The quotations drawn from the Old
Testament and from the poets, historians, and biographers of
antiquity bear witness to the influence of dreams and to the
importance of the role played by soothsayers and prophets
as interpreters of their content. Famous dreams and famous
interpretations of dreams are here reported, along with
discussions by the philosophers of antiquity concerning the
art of divination through dreams. The ancients were not
without their skeptical doubts about the supernatural origin
of dreams or about their trustworthiness as forecasters of the
future. Aristotle, for example, offers some purely naturalistic
explanations of dreaming and dream content.
The modern treatment of dreams stresses the relation of
dreaming to the powers of the imagination, and the reader
is, therefore, advised to relate this section to the preceding
one on the imagination. What is ordinarily called day-
dreaming or fantasy is, of course, nothing but the
imagination at work under more or less conscious control or
with some directive purpose. In contrast, the dreams that
take place during sleep, or in the process of awakening,
manifest no such control or direction. It is precisely this fact
that lies at the heart of Freud’s unique contribution—his
interpretation of dreams as an expression of the
unconscious, revealing to the interpreter wishes, emotions,
or tendencies of which the dreamer was himself unaware.
The significance of dreams for the diagnosis and treatment
of psychic disorders connects this section with the one that
follows on madness.
1 And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward
Haran.
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there
all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the
stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay
down in that place to sleep.
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the
earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold
the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, |am
the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of
Isaac: the land whereon thou best, to thee will | give it,
and to thy seed;
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and
thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and
to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy
seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
And, behold, | am with thee, and will keep thee in all
places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into
this land; for | will not leave thee, until | have done that
which | have spoken to thee of.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely
the Lord is in this place; and | knew it not.
Genesis 28:10-16
2 Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall
see VISIONS.
Joel 2:28
3 Penelope. Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: one
gateway
of honest horn, and one of ivory.
Issuing by the ivory gate are dreams
of glimmering illusion, fantasies,
but those that come through solid polished horn
may be borne out, if mortals only know them.
Homer, Odyssey, XIX, 562
4 Chorus. It is vain, to dream and to see splendors, and the
image slipping from the arms’ embrace escapes, not to
return again, on wings drifting down the ways of sleep.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 423
5 Clytaemestra. Eyes illuminate the sleeping brain, but in
the daylight man’s future cannot be seen.
Aeschylus, Eumenides, 104
6 Jocasta. As to your mother’s marriage bed,—don’t fear it.
Before this, in dreams too, as well as oracles,
many aman has lain with his own mother.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 980
7 The Second Maiden. Oh! to set foot, if only in a dream, in
my father’s home and city, a luxury sweet sleep affords, a
pleasure shared by us with wealth!
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 453
8 Socrates. Let me feast my mind with the dream as day
dreamers are in the habit of feasting themselves when
they are walking alone; for before they have discovered
any means of effecting their wishes—that is a matter
which never troubles them—they would rather not tire
themselves by thinking about possibilities; but assuming
that what they desire is already granted to them, they
proceed with their plan, and delight in detailing what
they mean to do when their wish has come true—that is a
way which they have of not doing much good toa
Capacity which was never good for much.
Plato, Republic, V, 457B
9 Socrates. When the reasoning and human and ruling
power is asleep; then the wild beast within us, gorged
wth meat or drink, starts up and having shaken off sleep,
goes forth to satisfy his desires; and there is no
conceivable folly or crime—not excepting incest or any
other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of
forbidden food—which at such a time, when he has
parted company with all shame and sense, a man may
not be ready to commit.
Most true, he [Glaucon] said.
But when a man’s pulse is healthy and temperate, and
when before going to sleep he has awakened his rational
powers, and fed them on noble thoughts and enquiries,
collecting himself in meditation; after having first
indulged his appetites neither too much nor too little, but
just enough to lay them to sleep, and prevent them and
their enjoyments and pains from interfering with the
higher principle—which he leaves in the solitude of pure
abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to the
knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present, or
future: when again he has allayed the passionate
element, if he has a quarrel against anyone—I say, when,
after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up
the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, then,
as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least
likely to be the sport of fantastic and lawless visions.
| quite agree.
In saying this | have been running into a digression;
but the point which | desire to note is that in all of us,
even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature,
which peers out in sleep.
Plato, Republic, 1X, 571B
10 It is not improbable that some of the presentations which
come before the mind in sleep may even be causes of the
actions cognate to each of them. For as when we are
about to act [in waking hours], or are engaged in any
course of action, or have already performed certain
actions, we often find ourselves concerned with these
actions, or performing them, in a vivid dream; the cause
whereof is Aat the dream-movement has had a way
paved for it from the original movements set up in the
daytime; exactly so, but conversely, it must happen that
the movements set up first in sleep should also prove to
be starting-points of actions to be performed in the
daytime, since the recurrence by day of the thought of
these actions also has had its way paved for it in the
images before the mind at night. Thus then it is quite
conceivable that some dreams may be tokens and causes
[of future events].
Aristotle, Prophesying by Dreams, 463a22
11 On the whole, forasmuch as certain of the lower animals
also dream, it may be concluded that dreams are not sent
by God, nor are they designed for this purpose [to reveal
the future]. They have a divine aspect, however, for
Nature [their cause] is divinely planned, though not itself
divine. A special proof [of their not being sent by God] is
this: the power of foreseeing the future and of having
vivid dreams is found in persons of inferior type, which
implies that God does not send their dreams; but merely
that all those whose physical temperament is, as it were,
garrulous and excitable, see sights of all descriptions; for,
inasmuch as they experience many movements of every
kind, they just chance to have visions resembling
objective facts, their luck in these matters being merely
like that of persons who play at even and odd. For the
principle which is expressed in the gambler’s maxim: ‘If
you make many throws your luck must change,’ holds
good in their case also.
Aristotle, Prophesying by Dreams, 463b11
12 Of all animals man is most given to dreaming. Children
and infants do not dream, but in most cases dreaming
comes on at the age of four or five years. Instances have
been known of full-grown men and women that have
never dreamed at all; in exceptional cases of this kind, it
has been observed that when a dream occurs in
advanced life it prognosticates either actual dissolution
or a general break-up of the system.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 537b14
13 To whatever pursuit a man is closely tied down and
strongly attached, on whatever subject we have
previously much dwelt, the mind having been put toa
more than usual strain in it, during sleep we for the most
part fancy that we are engaged in the same; lawyers
think they plead causes and draw up covenants of sale,
generals that they fight and engage in battle, sailors that
they wage and carry on war with the winds, we think we
pursue our task and investigate the nature of things
constantly and consign it when discovered to writings in
our native tongue. So all other pursuits and arts are seen
for the most part during sleep to occupy and mock the
minds of men.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
14 Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polish’d iv’ry this, that of transparent horn:
True visions thro’ transparent horn arise;
Thro’ polish’d iv’ry pass deluding lies.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
15 Darius was by this time upon his march from Susa, very
confident, not only in the number of his men, which
amounted to six hundred thousand, but likewise in a
dream, which the Persian soothsayers interpreted rather
in flattery to him than according to the natural
probability. He dreamed that he saw the Macedonian
phalanx all on fire, and Alexander waiting on him, clad in
the same dress which he himself had been used to wear
when he was courier to the late king; after which, going
into the temple of Belus, he vanished out of his sight. The
dream would appear to have supernaturally signified to
him the illustrious actions the Macedonians were to
perform, and that as he, from a courier’s place, had risen
to the throne, so Alexander should come to be master of
Asia, and not long surviving his conquests, conclude his
life with glory.
Plutarch, Alexander
16 The senses are suspended in the sleeper through certain
evaporations and the escape of certain exhalations, as we
read in the book on S/eep, And, therefore, according to
the disposition of such evaporation, the senses are more
or less suspended. For when the motion of the vapors is
considerable, not only are the senses suspended, but also
the imagination, so that there are no phantasms; and this
happens especially when a man falls asleep after eating
and drinking copiously. If, however, the motion of the
vapors be somewhat less, phantasms appear, but
distorted and without order; thus it happens in a case of
fever. And if the motion be still more attenuated, the
phantasms will have a certain order; thus especially does
it happen towards the end of sleep, in sober men and
those who are gifted with a strong imagination. If the
motion of the vapors is very slight, not only does the
imagination retain its freedom, but also the common
sense is partly freed, so that sometimes while asleep a
man may Judge that what he sees is a dream, discerning,
as it were, between things and their likenesses.
Nevertheless, the common sense remains partly
suspended, and therefore, although it discriminates some
likenesses from the reality, yet is it always deceived in
some particular. Therefore, while man is asleep, according
as sense and imagination are free, so the judgment of his
intellect is unfettered, though not entirely. Consequently,
if a man syllogizes while asleep, when he wakes up he
invariably recognizes a flaw in some respect.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 84, 8
17 Pandar. And all your dreams and other such like folly.
To deep oblivion let them be consigned;
For they arise but from your melancholy,
By which your health is being undermined.
A straw for all the meaning you can find
In dreams! They aren’t worth a hill of beans,
For no one knows what dreaming really means.
Priests in the temples sometimes choose to say
That dreams come from the Gods as revelations;
But other times they speak another way,
And call them hellish false hallucinations!
And doctors say they come from complications,
Or fast or surfeit, or any other lie,
For who knows truly what they signify?
And others say that through impressions deep,
As when one has a purpose firm in mind,
There come these visions in one’s sleep;
And others say that they in old books find.
That every season hath its special kind
Of dream, and all depends upon the moon;
But all such folk are crazy as a loon!
Dreams are the proper business of old wives,
Who draw their auguries from birds and fowls,
For which men often fear to lose their lives,
The raven’s croak or mournful shriek of owls!
O why put trust in bestial shrieks and howls!
Alas, that noble man should be so brash
To implicate his mind in such like trash!
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, V, 52—55
18 Let us bend our course another way, and try a new sort of
divination. Of what kind? asked Panurge. Of a good
ancient and authentic fashion, answered Pantagruel; it is
by dreams. For in dreaming, such circumstances and
conditions being thereto adhibited, as are clearly enough
described by Hippocrates ... by Plato, Plotin, lamblicus,
Synesius, Aristotle, Xenophon, Galen, Plutarch,
Artemidorus, Daldianus, Herophilus, Q. Calaber,
Theocritus, Pliny, Athenaeus, and others, the soul doth
oftentimes foresee what is to come. How true this is, you
may conceive by a very vulgar and familiar example; as
when you see that at such a time as suckling babes, well
nourished, fed and fostered with good milk, sleep soundly
and profoundly, the nurses in the interim get leave to
sport themselves, and are licentiated to recreate their
fancies at what range to them shall seem most fitting and
expedient, their presence, sedulity, and attendance on
the cradle being, during all that space, held unnecessary.
Even just so, when our body is at rest, that the concoction
is every where accomplished, and that, till it awake, it
lacks for nothing, our soul delighteth to disport itself, and
is well pleased in that frolic to take a review of its native
country, which is the heavens, where it receiveth a most
notable participation of its first beginning, with an
imbuement from its divine source, and in contemplation
of that infinite and intellectual sohere, whereof the centre
is every where, and the circumference in no place of the
universal world, (to wit, God, according to the doctrine of
Hermes Trismegistus,) to whom no new thing happeneth,
whom nothing that is past escapeth, and unto whom all
things are alike present; it remarketh not only what is
preterit and gone, in the inferior course and agitation of
sublunary matters, but withal taketh notice what is to
come; then bringing a relation of those future events
unto the body by the outward senses and exterior organs,
it is divulged abroad unto the hearing of others.
Whereupon the owner of that soul deserveth to be
termed a vaticinator, or prophet. Nevertheless, the truth
is, that the soul is seldom able to report those things in
such sincerity as it hath seen them, by reason of the
imperfection and frailty of the corporeal senses, which
obstruct the effectuating of that office; even as the moon
doth not communicate unto this earth of ours that light
which she receiveth from the sun with so much
splendour, heat, vigour, purity, and liveliness as it was
given her. Hence it is requisite for the better reading,
explaining, and unfolding of these somniatory
vaticinations, and predictions, of that nature that a
dexterous, learned, skilful, wise, industrious, expert,
rational, and peremptory expounder or interpreter be
pitched upon.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 13
19 Those who have compared our life to a dream were
perhaps more right than they thought. When we dream,
our soul lives, acts, exercises all her faculties, neither
more nor less than when she is awake; but if more loosely
and obscurely, still surely not so much so that the
difference is as between night and bright daylight; rather
as between night and shade. There she sleeps, here she
slumbers: more and less. It is always darkness, and
Cimmerian darkness.
Sleeping we are awake, and waking asleep. | do not
see so clearly in sleep; but my wakefulness | never find
pure and cloudless enough. Moreover sleep in its depth
sometimes puts dreams to sleep. But our wakefulness is
never so awake as to purge and properly dissipate
reveries, which are the dreams of the waking, and worse
than dreams.
Since our reason and our soul accept the fancies and
opinions which arise in it while sleeping, and authorise
the actions of our dreams with the same approbation as
they do those of the day, why do we not consider the
possibility that our thinking, our acting, may be another
sort of dreaming, and our waking another kind of sleep?
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
20 | have no cause to complain of my imagination. | have
had few thoughts in my life that have even interrupted
the course of my sleep, unless they have been those of
desire, which awakened me without afflicting me. |
seldom dream, and then it is about fantastic things and
chimeras usually produced by amusing thoughts, more
ridiculous than sad. And | hold that it is true that dreams
are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is an
art to sorting and understanding them... .
Plato says, moreover, that it is the function of wisdom
to draw from them instructions for divining the future. |
see nothing in that, except for the marvelous experiences
related by Socrates, Xenophon, and Aristotle, personages
of irreproachable authority.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
21 Mercutio. O, then, | see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners, legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat.
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies
Straight.
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues.
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his car, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus friglited swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes;
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage;
This is she—
Romeo. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk’st of nothing.
Mer. True, | talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, |, iv, 54
22 Brutus. Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
Shakespeare, Caesar, II, i, 02
23 Hamlet. O God, | could be bounded in a nutshell and
count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that |
have bad dreams.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ti, 260
24 The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call
dreams. And these also (as all other imaginations) have
been before, either totally or by parcels, in the sense. And
because in sense, the brain and nerves, which are the
necessary' organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep as
not easily to be moved by the action of external objects,
there can happen in sleep no imagination, and therefore
no dream, but what proceeds from the agitation of the
inward parts of man’s body; which inward parts, for the
connexion they have with the brain and other organs,
when they be distempered do keep the same in motion;
whereby the imaginations there formerly made, appear
as if aman were waking; saving that the organs of sense
being now benumbed, so as there is no new object which
can master and obscure them with a more vigorous
impression, a dream must needs be more clear, in this
silence of sense, than are our waking thoug)Nts....
And seeing dreams are caused by the distemper of
some of the inward parts of the body, diverse distempers
must needs cause different dreams. And hence it is that
lying cold breedeth dreams of fear, and raiseth the
thought and image of some fearful object, the motion
from the brain to .the inner parts, and from the inner
parts to the brain being reciprocal. ... In sum, our dreams
are the reverse of our waking imaginations; the motion
when we are awake beginning at one end, and when we
dream, at another.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 2
25 To say He hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than
to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is not of
force to win belief from any man that knows dreams are
for the most part natural, and may proceed from former
thoughts; and such dreams as that, from self-conceit, and
foolish arrogance, and false opinion of a man’s own
goodliness, or other virtue, by which he thinks he hath
merited the favour of extraordinary revelation. To say he
hath seen a vision, or heard a voice, is to say that he
dreamed between sleeping and waking: for in such
manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream
for a vision, as not having well observed his own
slumbering.
Hobbs, Leviathan, III, 32
26 Half our days we paw in the shadow of the earth, and the
brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. A good
part of our sleeps is peered out with visions, and
phantastical objects wherin we are confessedly deceived.
The day supplyeth us with truths, the night with fictions
and falsehoods, which uncomfortably divide the natural
account of our beings. And therefore having passed the
day in sober labours and rational enquiries of truth, we
are fain to betake ourselves unto such a state of being,
wherin the soberest heads have acted all the
monstrosities of melancholy, and which unto open eyes
are no better than folly and madness.
Sir Thomas Browne, On Dreams
27 If we dreamt the same thing every night, it would affect
us aS much as the objects we see every day. And if an
artisan were sure to dream every night for twelve hours’
duration that he was a king, | believe he would be almost
as happy as a king, who should dream every night for
twelve hours on end that he was an artisan.
If we were to dream every night that we were pursued
by enemies and harassed by these painful phantoms, or
that we passed every day in different occupations, as in
making a voyage, we should suffer almost as much as if it
were real, and should fear to sleep, as we fear to wake
when we dread in fact to enter on such mishaps. And,
indeed, it would cause pretty nearly the same discomforts
as the reality.
But since dreams are all different, and each single one
is diversified, what is seen in them affects us much less
That what we see when awake, because of its continuity,
which is not, however, so continuous and level as not to
change too; but it changes less abruptly, except rarely,
as when we travel, and then we say, "It seems to mel am
dreaming." For life is a dream a little less inconstant.
Pascal, Pensees, VI, 386
28 Methought | saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like A/cestis from the grave.
Whom Joves great Son to her glad Husband gave.
Rescu’d from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save.
And such, as yet once more | trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
Her face was vail’d, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin’d
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she enclin’d
| wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.
Milton, Methought | saw my late espoused Saint
29 He [Johnson] related, that he had once in a dream a
contest of wit with some other person, and that he was
very much mortified by imagining that his opponent had
the better of him. 'Now, (said he,) one may mark here the
effect of sleep in weakening the power of reflection; for
had not my judgement failed me, | should have seen, that
the wit of this supposed antagonist, by whose superiority
| felt myself depressed, was as much furnished by me, as
that which | thought | had been uttering in my own
character,’
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1730)
30 | would ask if dreams (from which our sleep is never free,
although we rarely remember what we have dreamed),
may not be a regulation of nature adapted to ends. For,
when all the muscular forces of the body are relaxed,
dreams serve the purpose of internally stimulating the
vital organs by means of the imagination and the great
activity which it exerts—an activity that in this state
generally rises to psycho-physical agitation. This seems
to be why imagination is usually more actively at work in
the sleep of those who have gone to bed at night with a
loaded stomach, just when this stimulation is most
needed. Hence, | would suggest that without this internal
stimulating force and fatiguing unrest that makes us
complain of our dreams, which in fact, however, are
probably curative, sleep, even in a sound state of health,
would amount to a complete extinction of life.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 67
31 Her lips were red, herlooks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy.
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 190
32 Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence; Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
Byron, The Dream, |
33 Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music :--do | wake or sleep?
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
34 When | was a child, | well remember a somewhat similar
circumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality ora
dream, | never could entirely settle. The circumstance
was this. | had been cutting up some caper or other—|
think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as | had seen
a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother
who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or
sending me to bed supperless,—my stepmother dragged
me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to
bed, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of
the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our
hemisphere. | felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it,
so upstairs | went to my little room in the third floor,
undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,
and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets,
| lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire
hours must elapse before | could hope to get out of bed
again. Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached
to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at
the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets,
and the sound of gay voices all over the house. | felt
worse and worse—at last | got up, dressed, and softly
going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my
stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet,
beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good
slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but
condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length
of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of
stepmothers, and back 1 had to go to my room. For
several hours | lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal
worse than | have ever done since, even from the
greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last | must have
fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly
waking from it—half steeped in dreams—| opened my
eyes, and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in
outer darkness. Instantly | felt a shock running through
all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to
be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in
mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the
nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to
which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my
bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, | lay there,
frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away
my hand; yet ever thinking that if | could but stir it one
single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. | knew not
how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but
waking in the morning, | shudderingly remembered it all,
and for day's and weeks and months afterwards | lost
myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery.
Nay, to this very hour, | often puzzle myself with it.
Melville, Moby Dick, IV
35 In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a
singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary
semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are
created, but the setting and the whole picture are so
truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so
unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the
dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even,
could never have invented them in the waking state.
Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and
make a powerful impression on the overwrought and
deranged nervous system.
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 1, 5
36 The world of dreams is our real world whilst we are
sleeping, because our attention then lapses from the
sensible world. Conversely, when we wake the attention
usually lapses from the dreamworld and that becomes
unreal. But if a dream haunts us and compels our
attention during the day it is very apt to remain figuring
in Our consciousness as a sort of sub-universe alongside
of the waking world. Most people have probably had
dreams which it is hard to imagine not to have been
glimpses into an actually existing region of being,
perhaps a comer of the "spiritual world." And dreams
have accordingly in all ages been regarded as
revelations, and have played a large part in furnishing
forth mythologies and creating themes for faith to lay
hold upon. The "larger universe" here, which helps us to
believe both in the dream and in the waking reality which
is its immediate reductive, is the tota/ universe, of Nature
plus the Supernatural. The dream holds true, namely, in
one half of That universe; the waking perceptions in the
other half.
William James, Psychology, XXI1
37 In the dream life, the child, as it were, continues his
existence in the man, with a retention of all his traits and
wishes, including those which he was obliged to allow to
fall into disuse in his later years. With irresistible might it
will be impressed on you by what processes of
development, of repression, sublimation, and reaction
there arises out of the child, with its peculiar gifts and
tendencies, the so-called normal man, the bearer and
partly the victim of our painfully acquired civilization.
Freud, Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, III
38 That all the material composing the content of a dream is
somehow derived from experience, that it is reproduced
or remembered in the dream—this at least may be
accepted as an incontestable fact. Yet it would be wrong
to assume that such a connection between the dream-
content and reality will be easily obvious from a
comparison between the two. On the contrary, the
connection must be carefully sought, and in quite a
number of cases it may for a long while elude discovery.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, |, B
39 The dream represents a certain state of affairs, such as |
might wish to exist; the content of the dream is thus the
fulfilment of a wish; its motive a wish.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, I/
40 The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of a
musical instrument, which, instead of being played by
the hand of a musician, is struck by some external force;
the dream is not meaningless, not absurd, does not
presuppose that one part of our store of ideas is dormant
while another part begins to awake. It is a perfectly valid
psychic phenomenon, actually a wish-fulfilment; it may
be enrolled in the continuity of the intelligible psychic
activities of the waking state; it is built up by a highly
complicated intellectual activity.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, III
41 The dream often appears to have several meanings; not
only may several wish-fulfilments be combined in it... but
one meaning or one wish-fulfilment may conceal another,
until in the lowest stratum one comes upon the fulfilment
of a wish from the earliest period of childhood.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, V, B
42 In a certain sense, all dreams are convenience-dreams;
they serve the purpose of continuing to sleep instead of
waking. The dream is the guardian of sleep, not its
disturber. ... The wish to sleep, to which the conscious
ego has adjusted itself, and which... represents the ego's
contribution to the dream, must thus always be taken
into account as a motive of dream-formation, and every
successful dream is a fulfilment of this wish.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, V, C
43 It has been my experience—and to this | have found no
exception—that every dream treats of oneself. Dreams
are absolutely egoistic.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VI, C
44 Tire inclusion of a certain content in a dream within a
dream is, therefore, equivalent to the wish that what has
been characterized as a dream had never occurred. In
other words; when a particular incident is represented by
the dream-work in a dream, it signifies the strongest
confirmation of the reality of this incident, the most
emphatic affirmation of it. The dream-work utilizes the
dream itself as a form of repudiation, and thereby
confirms the theory that a dream is a wish-fulfilment.
Freud, Intapretation of Dreams, VI, C
45 The investigation of day-dreams might really have
afforded the shortest and best approach to the
understanding of nocturnal dreams.
Like dreams, they are wish-fulfilments; like dreams,
they are largely based upon the impressions of childish
experiences; like dreams, they obtain a certain
indulgence from the censorship in respect of their
creations. If we trace their formation, we become aware
how the wish-motive which has been operative in their
production has taken the material of which they are built,
mixed it together, rearranged it, and fitted it together
into a new whole. They bear very much the same relation
to the childish memories to which they refer as many of
the baroque palaces of Rome bear to the ancient ruins,
whose hewn stones and columns have furnished the
material for the structures built in the modern style.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VI, |
46 Dreaming is on the whole an act of regression to the
earliest relationships of the dreamer, a resuscitation of his
childhood, of the impulses which were then dominant and
the modes of expression which were then available.
Behind this childhood of the individual we are then
promised an insight into the phylogenetic childhood, into
the evolution of the human race, of which the
development of the individual is only an abridged
repetition influenced by the fortuitous circumstances of
life... and we are encouraged to expect, from the analysis
of dreams, a knowledge of the archaic inheritance of
man, a Knowledge of psychical things in him that are
innate. It would seem that dreams and neuroses have
preserved for us more of the psychical antiquities than
we suspected; so that psycho-analysis may claim a high
rank among those sciences which endeavour to
reconstruct the oldest and darkest phases of the
beginnings of mankind.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VII, B
47 And what of the value of dreams in regard to our
knowledge of the future? That, of course, is quite out of
the question. One would like to substitute the words: /n
regard to our knowledge of the fast. For in every sense a
dream has its origin in the past. The ancient belief that
dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely devoid of
the truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream
certainly leads us into the future; but this future, which
the dreamer accepts as his present, has been shaped in
the likeness of the past by the indestructible wish.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VII, F
48 Had | the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
| would spread the cloths under your feet:
But |, being poor, have only my dreams;
| have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams,
Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
5.6 Madness
Irrationality is peculiar to the so-called "rational animal."
Though we sometimes refer to other animals as "mad," we
do not do so in the sense in which human madness Is
understood as loss or disorder of mind. It is that sense of the
term which runs through the quotations below, even when
the word itself does not appear, but some other word—such
as "frenzy," "lunacy," "melancholy," or "insanity"—takes its
place. Only in quotations drawn from comparatively recent
writers do such technical terms as "neurosis," "psychosis," or
"hysteria" occur, together with the medical names for the
symptoms or other manifestations of mental disease. The
clinical picture of one mental disorder—epilepsy—was
known to the ancients. Regarded popularly as "the sacred
disease," it was treated in a scientific manner by
Hippocrates.
The reader will find in the quotations from the poets, the
historians, and the biographers a wide variety of examples
of human madness, together with expressions of the awe or
wonder that its manifestations inspire in those who behold
it. There are, in addition, observations about the role of the
emotions or passions in frenzy or lunacy, about the effect of
madness on the rational processes and on the exercise of
choice, and about the difference between the cogency of the
insane and the lucidity of the sane. One special form of
madness is often exemplified and commented on, and that is
the madness of the lover—the divine madness.
The modern approach to mental disease, with its
distinction between the symptoms of the illness and the
disease process itself, and with its classification of neuroses
and psychoses, is represented here in the quotations drawn
from William James and Sigmund Freud.
1 Orestes. | go, an outcast wanderer from this land, and
leave
behind, in life, in death, the name of what | did.
Chorus. No, what you did was well done. Do not
therefore bind
your mouth to foul speech. Keep no evil on your lips.
You liberated all the Argive city when
you lopped the heads of these two snakes with one clean
stroke.
Or. No!
Women who serve this house, they come like gorgons,
they
wear robes of black, and they are wreathed in a tangle
of snakes. | can no longer stay.
Ch. Orestes, dearest to your father of all men
what fancies whirl you? Hold, do not give way to fear.
Or. These are no fancies of affliction. They are clear,
and real, and here; the bloodhounds of my mother’s hate.
Ch. It is the blood still wet upon your hands, that
makes
this shaken turbulence be thrown upon your sense.
Or. Ah, Lord Apollo, how they grow and multiply,
repulsive for the blood drops of their dripping eyes.
Ch. There is one way to make you clean: let Loxias
touch you, and set you free from these disturbances.
Or. You can not see them, but | see them. | am driven
from this place. | can stay here no longer.
Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 1042
2 Towards this tongue of land. , . the men to whom the
business was assigned carried out a double bridge from
Abydos; and while the Phoenicians constructed one line
with cables of white flax, the Egyptians in the other used
ropes made of papyrus. Now it is seven furlongs across
from Abydos to the opposite coast. When, therefore, the
channel had been bridged successfully, it happened that
a great storm arising broke the whole work to pieces, and
destroyed all that had been done.
So when Xerxes heard of it he was full of wrath, and
straightway gave orders that the Hellespont should
receive three hundred lashes, and that a pair of fetters
should be cast into it. Nay, | have even heard it said that
he bade the branders take their irons and therewith
brand the Hellespont. It is certain that he commanded
those who scourged the waters to utter, as they lashed
them, these barbarian and wicked words: "Thou bitter
water, thy lord lays on thee this punishment because
thou heist wronged him without a cause, having suffered
no evil at his hands. Verily King Xerxes will cross thee,
whether thou wilt or no. Well dost thou deserve that no
man should honour thee with sacrifice; for thou art of a
truth a treacherous and unsavoury river." While the sea
was thus punished by his orders, he likewise commanded
that the overseers of the work should lose their heads.
Herodotus, History, VIl, 34—35
3 Tecmessa. In the depth of night, after the evening flares
Had all gone out, Ajax, with sword in hand.
Went slowly groping toward the door, intent
Upon some pointless errand. | objected.
And said, "Ajax, what are you doing? Why
Do you stir? No messenger has summoned you:
You have heard no trumpet. Why, the whole army now’s
asleep!"
He answered briefly in a well-worn phrase, "Woman, a
woman's decency is silence."
| heard, and said no more; he issued forth alone.
| don’t Know what horrors occurred outside,
But when he came back in, he brought with him
A mass of hobbled bulls and shepherd dogs
And woolly captives. He struck the heads off some;
Others’ he severed with an upward cut;
And some, held fast in bonds, he kept abusing
With words and blows, as though they were human
beings—
And all the while he was vexing poor dumb beasts.
At length he darted out the door and spoke
Wild, rending words, directed toward some phantom,
Exulting with a harsh laugh how he’d paid them,
Odysseus and the sons of Atreus. Then
He sprang back in again, and somehow, slowly,
By painful stages came to his right mind.
Sophocles, Ajax, 285
4 Messenger. Offerings to Zeus were set before the hearth
to purify the house, for Heracles
had cast the body of the king outside.
There the children stood, in lovely cluster,
with Megara and the old man. In holy hush
the basket made the circle of the hearth.
And then, as Heracles reached out his hand
to take the torch and dip it in the water,
he stood stockstill. There he stood, not moving,
while the children stared. Suddenly he changed:
his eyes rolled and bulged from their sockets,
and the veins stood out, gorged with blood, and froth
began to trickle down his bearded chin.
Then he spoke, laughing like a maniac:
"Why hallow fire, Father, to cleanse the house
before | kill Eurystheus? Why double work,
when at one blow | might complete my task?
I'll go and fetch Eurystheus’ head, add it
to that other corpse, then purify my hands.
Empty your water out! Drop those baskets!
Someone fetch my bow. Put weapons in my hands:
| march against Mycenae! Let me have
crowbars and picks: the Cyclopes built well,
cramping stone on stone with plumb and mallet,
but with my pick I'll rip them down again."
Then he fancied that his chariot stood there;
he made as though to leap its rails, and rode off,
prodding with his hand as though it held a goad.
Whether to laugh or shudder, we could not tell.
We stared at one another. Then one man asked,
"Is the master playing, or is he... mad?"
Up and down, throughout the house, he drove,
and riding through the great hall, claimed it was
Nisus’ city, though it was, in fact, his house.
He threw himself to the floor, and acted out
a feast. He tarried there a while, then said
he was approaching Isthmus’ wooded valley.
He unstrapped his buckles and stripped himself bare,
and wrestled with no one; then called for silence
and crowned himself the victor of a match
that never was. Then raged against Eurystheus,
and said he’d come to Mycenae. His father
caught him by that muscled hand and said:
"What do you mean, my son? What is this journey
that you make? Or has the blood of those you've slain
made you mad?" He thought Eurystheus’ father
had come, trembling, to supplicate his hand;
pushed him away, and set his bow and arrows
against his sons. He thought he was killing
Eurystheus' children. Trembling with terror,
they rushed here and there; one hid beneath
his mother’s robes, one ran to the shadow
of a pillar, and the last crouched like a bird
below the altar. Their mother shrieked:
"You are their father! Will you kill your sons?"
And shouts broke from the old man and the slaves.
Around the pillar he pursued his son
in dreadful circles, then caught up with him
and pierced him to the heart. Backward he fell,
dying, and stained the flagstones with his blood.
His father shouted in triumph, exulting,
"Here is the first of Eurystheus’ youngsters dead;
his death repays me for his father's hate."
He aimed his bow at the second, who crouched
below the altar’s base, trying to hide.
The boy leaped first, fell at his father’s knees
and held his hand up to his father’s chin.
"Dearest Father," he cried, "do not murder me.
| am your own son, yours, not Eurystheus’!"
But he stared from stony gorgon eyes,
found his son too close to draw the bow,
and brought his club down on that golden head,
and smashed the skull, as though a blacksmith
smiting steel. Now that his second son lay dead,
he rushed to kill the single victim left.
But before he drew the bow, the mother
seized her child, ran within and locked the doors.
And, as though these were the Cyclopean walls,
he pried the panels up, ripped out the jambs,
and with one arrow brought down son and wife.
And then he rushed to kill his father too,
but look! a phantom came—or so it seemed to us—
Pallas, with plumed helm, brandishing a spear.
She hurled a rock; it struck him on the chest,
stopped short his murderous rage and knocked him
into sleep. He slumped to the floor and hit
his back against a pillar which had fallen there,
Snapped in two pieces when the roof collapsed.
Delivered from the fear that made us run,
we helped the old man lash him down with ropes
against the pillar, lest when he awakes
still greater grief be added to the rest.
He sleeps now, wretched man, no happy sleep,
killer of his wife and sons. | do not know
one man alive more miserable than this.
Euripides, Heracles, 922
5 Messenger. And now the stranger worked a miracle.
Reaching for the highest branch of a great fir,
he bent it down, down, down to the dark earth,
till it was curved the way a taut bow bends
or like a rim of wood when forced about the circle
of a wheel. Like that he forced that mountain fir
down to the ground. No mortal could have done it.
Then he seated Pentheus at the highest tip
and with his hands let the trunk rise straightly up,
slowly and gently, lest it throw its rider.
And the tree rose, towering to heaven, with my master
huddled at the top. And now the Maenads saw him
more clearly than he saw them. But barely had they seen,
when the stranger vanished and there came a great voice
out of heaven—Dionysus'’, it must have been—
crying: "Women, | bring you the man who has mocked
at you and me and at our holy mysteries.
Take vengeance upon him." And as he spoke
a flash of awful fire bound earth and heaven.
The high air hushed, and along the forest glen
the leaves hung still; you could hear no cry of beasts.
The Bacchae heard that voice but missed its words,
and leaping up, they stared, peering everywhere.
Again that voice. And now they knew his cry,
the clear command of god. And breaking loose
like startled doves, through grove and torrent,
over jagged rocks, they flew, their feet maddened
by the breath of god. And when they saw my master
perching in his tree, they climbed a great stone
that towered opposite his perch and showered him
with stones and javelins of fir, while the others
hurled their wands. And yet they missed their target,
poor Pentheus in his perch, barely out of reach
of their eager hands, treed, unable to escape.
Finally they splintered branches from the oaks
and with those bars of wood tried to lever up the tree
the roots. But every effort failed.
Agave cried out: "Maenads, make a circle
about the trunk and grip it with your hands.
Unless we lake this climbing beast, he will reveal
the secrets of the god." With that, thousands of hands
tore the fir tree from the earth, and down, down
from his high perch fell Pentheus, tumbling
to the ground, sobbing and screaming as he fell,
for he knew his end was near. His own mother,
like a priestess with her victim, fell upon him
first. But snatching off his wig and snood
so she would recognize his face, he touched her checks,
screaming, "No, no, Mother! | am Pentheus,
your own son, the child you bore to Echion!
Pity me, spare me, Mother! | have done a wrong,
but do not kill your own son for my offense!"
But she was foaming at the mouth, and her crazed eyes
rolling with frenzy. She was mad, stark mad,
possessed by Bacchus. Ignoring his cries of pity,
she seized his left arm at the wrist; then, planting
her foot upon his chest, she pulled, wrenching away
the arm at the shoulder—not by her own strength,
for the god had put inhuman power in her hands.
Ino, meanwhile, on the other side, was scratching off
his flesh. Then Autonoe and the whole horde
of Bacchae swarmed upon him. Shouts everywhere,
he screaming with what little breath was left,
they shrieking in triumph. One tore off an arm,
another a foot still warm in its shoe. His ribs
were clawed clean of flesh and every hand
was smeared with blood as they played ball with scraps
of Pentheus’ body.
The pitiful remains lie scattered,
one piece among the sharp rocks, others
lying lost among the leaves in the depths
of the forest. His mother, picking up his head,
impaled it on her wand. She seems to think it is
some mountain lion’s head which she carries in triumph
through the thick of Cithaeron. Leaving her sisters
at the Maenad dances, she is coming here, gloating
over her grisly prize. She calls upon Bacchus:
he is her "fellow-huntsman," "comrade of the chase,
crowned with victory." But all the victory
she carries home is her own grief.
Euripides, Bacchae, 1063
6 Socrates. Of madness there were two kinds; one produced
by human infirmity, the other ... a divine release of the
soul from the yoke of custom and convention.
Phaedrus. True.
Soc. The divine madness was subdivided into four
kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four
gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of
Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the
Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the
description of the last kind of madness, which was also
said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of loveina
figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and
possibly true though partly erring myth, which was also a
hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine,
Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him
we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain.
Plato, Phaedrus, 265A
7 A disaster followed, whether accidental or treacherously
contrived by the emperor, is uncertain, as authors have
given both accounts, worse, however, and more dreadful
than any which have ever happened to this city by the
violence of fire. It had its beginning in that part of the
circus which adjoins the Palatine and Caelian hills, where,
amid the shops containing inflammable wares, the
conflagration both broke out and instantly became so
fierce and so rapid from the wind that it seized in its
grasp the entire length of the circus. For here there were
no houses fenced in by solid masonry, or temples
surrounded by walls, or any other obstacle to interpose
delay. The blaze in its fury ran first through the level
portions of the city, then rising to the hills, while it again
devastated every place below them, it outstripped all
preventive measures; so rapid was the mischief and so
completely at its mercy the city, with those narrow
winding passages and irregular streets, which
characterised old Rome.... And no one dared to Slop the
mischief, because of incessant menaces from a number of
persons who forbade the extinguishing of the flames,
because again others openly hurled brands, and kept
shouting that there was one who gave them authority,
either seeking to plunder more freely, or obeying orders.
Nero at this time was at Antium, and did not return to
Rome until the fire approached his house, which he had
built to connect the palace with the gardens of Maecenas.
It could not, however, be stopped from devouring the
palace, the house, and everything around it. However, to
relieve the people, driven out homeless as they svere, he
threw open to them the Campus Martius and the public
buildings of Agrippa, and even his own gardens, and
raised temporary structures to receive the destitute
multitude. Supplies of food were brought up from Ostia
and the neighbouring towns, and the price of com was
reduced to three sesterces a peck. These acts, though
popular, produced no effect, since a rumour had gone
forth everywhere that, at the very time when the city was
in flames, the emperor appeared on a private stage and
sang of the destruction of Troy, comparing present
misfortunes with the calamities of antiquity.
Tacitus, Annals, XV, 38-39
8 Every man prefers to grieve in a sane mind, rather than to
be glad in madness.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 27
9 To suffer ecstasy means to be placed outside oneself. This
happens as to the apprehensive power and as to the
appetitive power. As to the apprehensive power, a man is
said to be placed outside himself when he is placed
outside the knowledge proper to him. This may be due to
his being raised to a higher knowledge; thus, a man is
said to suffer ecstasy because he is placed outside the
connatural apprehension of his sense and reason, when
he is raised up so as to comprehend things that surpass
sense and reason. Or it may be due to his being cast
down into a state of debasement; thus a man may be said
to suffer ecstasy when he is overcome by violent passion
or madness. As to the appetitive part, a man is said to
suffer ecstasy when the appetite is borne towards
something else, so that it goes forth out from itself, as it
were.
The first of these ecstasies is caused by love by way of
disposition, in so far, namely, as love makes the beloved
to dwell in the lover's mind; and the more we give our
mind to one thing, the less we think of others. The second
ecstasy is caused by love directly; by love of friendship,
absolutely, by love of concupiscence, not absolutely but
in a relative sense. Because in love of concupiscence, the
lover is taken out from himself, in a certain sense; in so
far, namely, as not being satisfied with enjoying the good
that he has, he seeks to enjoy something outside himself.
But since he seeks to have this extrinsic good for himself,
he does not go out from himself absolutely, and this
affection remains finally within him. On the other hand, in
the love of friendship, a man's affection goes out from
itself absolutely, because he washes and does good to his
friend, as it were, caring and providing for him, for his
Sake.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 28, 3
10 Of what is the subtlest madness made, but the subtlest
wisdom? As great enmities are born of great friendships,
and mortal maladies of vigorous health, so are the
greatest and wildest manias born of the rare and lively
stirrings of our soul; it is only a half turn of the peg to
pass from the one to the other. In the actions of the
insane we see how neatly madness combines with the
most vigorous operations of our soul. Who does not know'
how imperceptibly near is madness to the lusty flights of
a free mind and the effects of supreme and extraordinary
virtue?
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
11 Is there not some rashness in philosophy to consider that
men produce their greatest deeds and those most closely
approaching divinity when they are out of their minds
and frenzied and mad? We improve by the privation and
deadening of our reason. The two natural ways to enter
the cabinet of the gods and there foresee the course of
destinies are madness and sleep. This is amusing to think
about: by the dislocation that the passions bring about in
our reason, we become virtuous; by the extirpation of
reason that is brought about by madness or the
semblance of death, we become prophets and
soothsayers. | never was more willing to believe
philosophy. It is a pure transport that the sacred truth
inspired in the philosophical spirit, which wrests from it,
against its intention, the admission that the tranquil state
of our soul, the sedate state, the healthiest state that
philosophy can acquire for her, is not her best state. Our
waking is more asleep than sleep; our wisdom less wise
than madness. Our dreams are worth more than our
reasonings. The worst position we can take is in
ourselves.
But does not philosophy think that we have enough
sense to notice that the voice which makes the spirit
when it is detached from man so clairvoyant, so great, so
perfect, and while it is in man so earthly, ignorant, and
shadowed, is a voice coming from the spirit which is a
part of earthly, ignorant, and shadowed man, and for that
reason a voice not to be trusted or believed?
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
12 Malvolio. | am not mad, Sir Topas: | say to you, this house
is dark.
Clown. Madman, thou errest: | say, there is no
darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled
than the Egyptians in their fog.
Mal. | say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though
ignorance were as dark as hell; and | say, there was never
man thus abused.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, IV, Ii, 44
13 Polonius. How now, Ophelia! What’s the matter?
Ophelia. O, my lord, my lord, | have been so affrighted!
Pol. With what, i’ the name of God?
Oph. My lord, as | was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul’d,
Ungarter’d, and down-gyved to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors—he comes before me.
Pol. Mad for thy love?
Oph. My lord, | do not know;
But truly, | do fear it.
Po! What said he?
Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow.
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so;
At last, a little shaking of mine arm
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go;
And, with his head over his shoulder turn’d.
He seem’'d to find his way without his eyes;
For out o’doors he went without their helps,
And, to the last, bended their light on me,
Pol. Come, go with me: | will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love,
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures. | am sorry.
What, have you given him any hard words of late?
Oph. No, my good lord, but, as you did command,
| did repel his letters and denied His access to me.
Pol. That hath made him mad.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, 1, 74
14 Hamlet. | am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is
southerly | know a hawk from a handsaw.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, 1, 396
15 Ophelia. O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword.
The expectancy and rose of the fair state.
The glass of fashion and the mould of form.
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows.
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what | have seen, see what | see!
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, 1, 158
16 Queen. To whom do you speak this?
Hamlet. Do you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is | see.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.
Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
[Exit Ghost]
Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Ham. Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That | have utter’d. Bring me to the test,
And | the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 131
17 Laertes. O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight.
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens! is’t possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine.
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
Ophelia. [Sings]
"They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain’d many a tear"—
Fare you well, my dove!
Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus.
Oph. [sings] "You must sing a-down a-down,
An you call him a-down-a."
O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that
stole his master’s daughter.
Laer. This nothing’s more than matter.
Oph. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance, pray,
love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
Laer. A document in madness, thoughts and
remembrance fitted.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, v, 155
18 Lear. You see me here, you gods, a poor old man.
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
| will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are, yet | Know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weep;
No, I’ll not weep.
| have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O Fool, | shall go mad!
Shakespeare, Lear, II, iv, 275
19 Lear. Pray? do not mock me.
lama very foolish fond old man.
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
| fear | am not in my perfect mind.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, vil, 60
20 Doctor. | have two nights watched with you, but can
perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last
walked?
Gentlewoman. Since his Majesty went into the field, |
have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown
upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write
upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to
bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.
Doct. A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once
the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching! In
this slumbery agitation, besides her walking and other
actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard
her say?
Gent. That, sir, which | will not report after her.
Doct. You may to me; and 'tis most meet you should.
Gent. Neither to you nor any one; having no witness to
confirm my speech.
Enter Lady Macbeth, with a taper.
Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise;
and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.
Doct. How came she by that light?
Gent. Why, it stood by her. She has light by her
continually; ’tis her command.
Doct. You see, her eyes are open.
Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut.
Doct. What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her
hands.
Gent. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem
thus washing her hands. | have known her continue in
this a quarter of an hour.
Lady Macbeth. Yet here’s a spot.
Doct. Hark! she speaks. | will set down what comes
from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Lady M. Out, damned spot! out, | say! One; two. Why,
then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a
soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it,
when none can call our power to account? Yet who would
have thought the old man to have had so much blood in
him.
Doct. Do you mark that?
Lady M. The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she
now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’
that, my lord, no more o’ that! You mar all with this
starting.
Doct. Go to, go to; you have known what you should
not.
Gent. She has spoke what she should not, | am sure of
that. Heaven knows what she has known.
Lady M. Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh,
oh, oh!
Doct. What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged,
Gent. | would not have such a heart in my bosom for
the dignity of the whole body.
Doct. Well, well, well—
Gent. Pray God it be, sir.
Doct. This disease is beyond my practice, Yet | have
known those which have walked in their sleep who have
died holily in their beds.
Lady M. Wash your hands, put on your night-gown;
look not so pale. | tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he
cannot come out on’s grave.
Doct. Even so?
Lady M. To bed, to bed! there’s knocking at the gate.
Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s
done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed! [Exit]
Doct. Will she go now to bed?
Gert. Directly.
Shakespeare. Macbeth, V, i, |
21 Macbeth, How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor. Not so sick, my lord.
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
Macb. Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased.
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Rare out the written troubles of the brain.
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doct. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
Mach. Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, Iii, 37
22 Having thus lost his Understanding, lie unluckily
stumbled upon the oddest Fancy that ever enter’d into a
Madman’s Brain; for now he thought it convenient and
necessary, as well for the Increase of his own Honour, as
the Service of the Publick, to turn Knight-Errant, and
roam through the whole World arm’d Cap-a-pee, and
mounted on his Steed, in quest of Adventures; that thus
Imitating those Knight-Errants of whom he had read, and
following their Course of Life, redressing all manner of
Grievances, and exposing himself to Danger on all
Occasions, at last, after a happy Conclusion of his
Enterprizes, he might purchase everlasting Honour and
Renown.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, |
23 As they were thus discoursing, they discover’d some
thirty or forty Wind-mills, that are in that Plain; and as
soon as the Knight had spy’d them. Fortune, cry'd he,
directs our Affairs better than we our selves could have
wish’d: Look yonder, Friend Sancho, there are at least
thirty outrageous Giants, whom | intend to encounter;
and having depriv’d them of Life, we will begin to enrich
our selves with their Spoils: For they are lawful Prize; and
the Extirpation of that cursed Brood will be an acceptable
Service to Heaven. What Giants? quoth Sancho Panza.
Those whom thou see’st yonder, answer’d Don Quixote,
with their long-extended Arms; some of that detested
Race have Arms of so immense a Size, that sometimes
they reach two leagues in length. Pray look better, Sir,
quoth Sancho; those things yonder are no Giants, but
Wind-mills, and the Arms you fancy, are their Sails, which
being whirl’d about by the Wind, make the Mill go. 'Tis a
Sign, cry’d Don Quixote, thou art but little acquainted
with Adventures! | tell thee, they are Giants; and
therefore if thou art afraid, go aside and say thy Prayers,
for | am resolv’d to engage in a dreadful unequal Combat
against them all. This said, he clapp’d Spurs to his Horse
Rozinante, without giving Ear to his Squire Sancho, who
bawl'd out to him, and assur'd him, that they were Wind-
mills, and no Giants. But he was so fully possess'd with a
strong Conceit of the contrary, that he did not to much as
hear his Squire's Outcry, nor was he sensible of what they
were, although he was already very near them: Far from
that, Stand, Cowards, cry'd he as loud as he could; stand
your Ground, ignoble Creatures, and fly not basely from a
single Knight, who darest encounter you all. At the same
Time the Wind rising, the Mill-Sails began to move, which,
when Don Quixote spy'd, Base Miscreants, cry'd he,
though you move more Arms than the Giant Briareus, you
shall pay for your Arrogance. He most devoutly
recommended himself to his Lady Dulcinea, imploring her
Assistance in this perilous Adventure; and so covering
himself with his Shield, and couching his Lance, he rush’d
with Rozinante's utmost Speed upon the first Wind-mill
he could come at, and running his Lance into the Sail, the
Wind whirl’d it about with such Swiftness, that the
Rapidity of the Motion presently broke the Lance into
Shivers, and hurl'd away both Knight and Horse along
with it, till down he fell rolling a good Way off in the Field.
Sancho Panza ran as fast as his Ass could drive to help
his Master, whom he found lying, and not able to stir,
such a Blow he and Rozinante had receiv'd. Mercy o’me!
cry'd Sancho, did not | give your Worship fair Warning?
Did not | tell you they were Wind-mills, and that no Body
could think otherwise, unless he had also Wind-mills in
his Head? Peace, Friend Sancho, reply’d Don Quixote:
There is nothing so subject to the Inconstancy of Fortune
as War. | am verily persuaded, that cursed Necromancer
Freston, who carry’d away my Study and my Books, has
transform’d these Giants into Wind-mills, to deprive me of
the Honour of the Victory, such is his inveterate Malice
against me: But in the End, all his pernicious Wiles and
Stratagems shall prove ineffectual against the prevailing
Edge of my Sword. Amen, say |, reply’d Sancho; and so
heaving him up again upon his Legs, once more the
Knight mounted poor Rozinante, that was half Shoulder-
Slipp’d with his Fall.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 8
24 Know then, my most faithful Squire, that Amadis de Gaul
was one of the most accomplish’d Knights-Errant, nay, |
should not have said, he was one of them, but the most
perfect, the chief, and Prince of them all. And let not the
Belianises, nor any others, pretend to stand in
Competition with him for the Honour of Priority; for, to my
Knowledge, should they attempt it, they would be
egregiously in the wrong, | must also inform thee, that
when a Painter studies to excel and grow famous in his
Art, he takes care to imitate the best Originals; which
Rule ought likewise to be observ’d in all other Arts and
Sciences that serve for the Ornament of well-regulated
Commonwealths.... Now, Sancho, | find that among the
things which most display’d that Champion’s Prudence
and Fortitude, his Constancy and Love, and his other
Heroick Virtues, none was more remarkable than his
retiring from his disdainful Oriana, to do Penance on the
Poor Rock, changing his Name into that of Beltenebros, or
The Lovely Obscure, a Title certainly most significant, and
adapted to the Life which he then intended to lead. So |
am resolv’d to imitate him in this, the rather because |
think it a more easy Task than it would be to copy his
other Atchievements, such as cleaving the Bodies of
Giants, cutting off the Heads of Dragons, killing dreadful
Monsters, routing whole Armies, dispersing Navies, and
breaking the Force of Magick Spells. And since these
Mountainous Wilds offer me so fair an Opportunity, | see
no Reason why | should neglect it, and therefore I'll lay
hold on it now. Very well, quoth Sancho; but pray. Sir,
what is it that you mean to do in this Fag-end of the
World? Have | not already told thee, ansu'er’d Don
Quixote, that | intend to copy Amadis in his Madness,
Despair, and Fury? Nay, at the same time | imitate the
valiant Orlando Furioso's Extravagance, when he ran
mad, after he had found the unhappy Tokens of the fair
Angelica's dishonourable Commerce with Medoro at the
Fountain; at which time, in his f ran tick Despair, he tore
up Trees by the Roots, troubled the Waters of the clear
Fountains, slew the Shepherds, destroy’d their Flocks,
fir’d their Huts, demolish’d Houses, drove their Horses
before him, and committed a hundred thousand other
Extravagancies worthy to be recorded in the eternal
Register of Fame.... Sir, quoth Sancho, | dare say the
Knights who did these Penances had some Reason to be
mad; but what need have You to be mad too? What Lady
has sent you a packing, or so much as slighted you?
When did you ever find that my Lady Dulcinea del Toboso
did otherwise than she should do, with either Moor or
Christian? Why, there’s the Point, cry’d Don Quixote; in
this consists the singular Perfection of my Undertaking;
For, mark me, Sancho, for a Knight-Errant to run mad
upon any just Occasion, is neither strange nor
meritorious; no, the Rarity is to run mad without a Cause,
without the least Constraint or Necessity,
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 25
23 At length he wak’d, and with a loud Voice, Blessed be the
Almighty, cry’d he, for this great Benefit he has
vouchsafed to do me! Infinite are his Mercies; they are
greater, and more in Number than the Sins of Men. The
Niece hearkening very attentively to these Words of her
Uncle, and finding more Sense in them than there was in
his usual Talk, at least since he had fallen ill; What do you
say. Sir, said she, has any Thing extraordinary happen’d?
What Mercies are these you mention? Mercies, answer’d
he, that Heaven has this Moment vouchsafed to shew me,
in spite of all my Iniquities. My Judgment is return’d clear
and undisturb’d, and that Cloud of Ignorance is now
remov’d, which the continual Reading of those damnable
Books of Knight-Errantry had cast over my
Understanding. Now | perceive their Nonsense and
Impertinence, and am only sorry the Discovery happens
so late, when | want Time to make Amends by those
Studies that shou’d enlighten my Soul, and prepare me
for Futurity. | find. Niece, my End approaches; but | wou’d
have it such, that though my Life has got me the
Character of a Mad-man, | may deserve a better at my
Death. Dear Child, continu’d he, send for my honest
Friend the Curate, the Batchelor Carrasco, and Master
Nicholas the Barber, for | intend to make my Confession,
and my Will. His Niece was sav’d the Trouble of sending,
for presently they all three came in; which Don Quixote
perceiving, My good Friends, said he, | have happy News
to tell you; | am no longer Don Quixote de la Mancha, but
Alonso Quixano, the same whom the World for his fair
Behaviour has been formerly pleas’d to call the Good. |
now declare my self an Enemy to Amadis de Gaul, and his
whole Generation; all profane Stories of Knight-Errantry,
all Romances | detest. | have a true Sense of the Danger
of reading them, and of all my pass’d Follies, and through
Heaven’s Mercy, and my own Experience, | abhor them.
His three Friends were not a little surprized to hear him
talk at this rate, and concluded some new Frenzy had
possess’d him. What now’, said Sampson to him? What’s
all this to the Purpose, Signor Don Quixote? we have Just
had the News that the Lady Dulcinea is disinchanted; and
now we are upon the point of turning Shepherds, to sing,
and live like Princes, you are dwindl’d down to a Hermit.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, 11, 74
26 If men were all to become even uniformly mad, they
might agree tolerably well with each other.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 27
27 That madness is nothing else but too much appearing
passion may be gathered out of the effects of wine, which
are the same with those of the evil disposition of the
organs... . For the effect of the wine does but remove
dissimulation, and take from them the sight of the
deformity of their passions. For, | believe, the most sober
men, when they walk alone without care and employment
of the mind, would be unwillinig the vanity and
extravagance of their thoughts at that time should be
publicly seen, which is a confession that passions
unguided are for the most part mere madness.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 8
28 Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would
amount to another form of madness.
Pascal. Pensees, VI, 414
29 A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas’d with the danger, when the waves went high.
He sought the storms; hut. for a calm unfit.
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel,159
30 Madmen ... do not appear to me to have lost the faculty
of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very
wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as
men do that argue right from wrong principles. For, by
the violence of their imaginations, having taken their
fancies for realities, they make right deductions from
them. Thus you shall find a distracted man fancying
himself a king, with a right inference require suitable
attendance, respect, and obedience. others who base
thought themselves made of glass, base used the caution
necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes
to pans that a man who is very sober, and of a right
understanding in all other things, may in one particular
be as frantic as any in Bedlam; if either by any sudden
very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one
son of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented
together so powerfully, as to remain united. But there are
degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling
ideas together is in some more, and some less. In short,
herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and
madmen: that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so
make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right
from them; but idiots make very few or no propositions,
and reason scarce at all.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XI, 13
31 The diseases of the mind do in almost every particular
imitate those of the body. For which reason, we hope, that
learned faculty, for whom we have so profound a respect,
will pardon us the violent hands we have been
necessitated to lay on several words and phrases, which
of right belong to them, and without which our
descriptions must have been often unintelligible.
Now there is no one circumstance in which the
distempers of the mind bear a more exact analogy to
those which are called bodily, than that aptness which
body have to a relapse. This is plain in the violent
diseases of ambition and avarice. | have known ambition,
when cured at court by frequent disappointments (which
are the only physic for it), to break out again in a contest
for foreman of the grand jury at an assizes; and have
heard of a man who had so far conquered avarice, as to
give away many a sixpence, that comforted himself, at
last, on his deathbed, by making a crafty and
advantageous bargain concerning his ensuing funeral,
with an undertaker who had married his only child.
In the affair of love, which. out of strict conformity with
the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease, this
proneness to relapse is no less conspiruous.
Fielding, Tom Jones, IV, 12
32 Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder,
strove in overcome it by forcible exertions. He frequently
walked to Birmingham and back again, and tried many
other expedients, but all in vain. His expression
concerning it to me was "I did not then know how to
manage it." His distress became so intolerable, that he
applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his god-
father, and put into his hands a state of his ease, written
in Latin. Or Swinfen was so much struck with the
extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this
paper, that in his zeal for his godson he shewed it to
several people. His daughter, Mrs. Desmoulins. who was
many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson’s house in
London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr.
Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much
offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to
him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for
though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately
betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great
delicacy, which had been entrusted to him in confidence;
and exposed a complaint of young friend and patient,
which, in the superficial opinion of the generality of
mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace.
But let not little men triumph upon knowing that
Johnson was an Hypochondriack, was subject to what the
learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well
treated under the title of "The English Malady." Though
he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore
degraded. The powers of his great mind might be
troubled, and their full exercise suspended at times; but
the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is only
necessary to consider, that, when he was at the very
worst, he composed that state of his own ease, which
shelved an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and
taste, but of judgement. | am aware that he himself was
too ready to call such a complaint by the name of
madness; in conformity with which notion, he has traced
its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the
chapters of his Rasse/as. But there is surely a clear
distinction between a disorder which affects only the
imagination and spirits, while the judgement is sound,
and a disorder by which the judgement itself is impaired.
This distinction was made to me by the late Professor
Gaubius of Leyden, physician to the Prince of Orange, in
a conversation which | had with him several years ago,
and he expanded it thus: "If (said he) a man tells me that
he is grievously disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a
ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at
the same time he is conscious it is a delusion, |
pronounce him to have a disordered imagination; but if a
man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls
to me to look at it, | pronounce him to be mad."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1729)
33 Dr. Johnson and | had a serious conversation by ourselves
on melancholy and madness; which he was, | always
thought, erroneously inclined to confound together.
Melancholy, like "great wit," may be "near allied to
madness"; but there is, in my opinion, a distinct
separation between them. When he talked of madness,
he was to be understood as speaking of those who were
in any great degree disturbed, or as it is commonly
expressed, "troubled in mind." Some of the ancient
philosophers held, that all deviations from right reason
were madness....
Johnson said, "A madman loves to be with people
whom he fears; not as a dog fears the lash; but of whom
he stands in awe." | was struck with the justice of this
observation. To be with those of whom a person, whose
mind is wavering and dejected, stands in awe, represses
and composes an uneasy tumult of spirits, and consoles
him with the contemplation of something steady, and at
least comparatively great.
He added, "Madmen are all sensual in the lower stages
of the distemper. They are eager for gratifications to
sooth their minds, and divert their attention from the
misery which they suffer: but when they grow very ill,
pleasure is too weak for them, and they seek for pain.
Employment, Sir, and hardships, prevent melancholy. |
suppose in all our army in America there was not one
man who went mad."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Sept. 20, 1777)
34 Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet
tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see
the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the
one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity
and insanity.
Melville, Billy Budd
35 Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline
thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become
transfigured into still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy
subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the
unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows
narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.
But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of
Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that
broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect
had perished. That before living agent, now became the
living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his
special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it,
and turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own mad
mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to
that one end, did now possess a thousand-fold more
potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon
any one reasonable object.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLI
36 Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and
intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his
own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on
amid a clashing of frenzies, and whirled them round and
round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his
life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was
sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved
his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening
in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up,
and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among
them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a
wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with
glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his stateroom, as
though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these,
perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms
of some latent weakness, of fright at his own resolve,
were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such
times, Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast
hunter of the White Whale; this Ahab that had gone to
his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to
burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal,
living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the
time dissociated from the characterising mind, which at
other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it
spontaneously sought escape from the scorching
contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it
was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist
unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been
that, in Ahab’s case, yielding up all his thoughts and
fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its
own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods
and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being
of its own; nay, could grimly live and burn, while the
common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-
stricken from the unbidden and unfeathered birth.
Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily
eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room,
was, for the time but a vacated thing, a formless
somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but
without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in
itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created
a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus
makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart
for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLIV
37 Man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all
mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial
thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal
or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
Melville, Moby Dick, XCIII
38 There is something both contemptible and frightful in the
sort of evidence on which, of late years, any person can
be judicially declared unfit for the management of his
affairs; and after his death, his disposal of his property
can be set aside, if there is enough of it to pay the
expenses of litigation— which are charged on the
property itself. All the minute details of his daily life are
pried into, and whatever is found which, seen through the
medium of the perceiving and describing faculties of the
lowest of the low, bears an appearance unlike absolute
commonplace, is laid before the jury as evidence of
insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little, if
at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses; while
the judges, with that extraordinary want of knowledge of
human nature and life which continually astonishes us in
English lawyers, often help to mislead them. These trials
speak volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion
among the vulgar with regard to human liberty. So far
from setting any value on individuality—so far from
respecting the right of each individual to act, in things
indifferent, as seems good to his own judgment and
inclinations, judges and juries cannot even conceive that
a person in a state of sanity can desire such freedom. In
former days, when it was proposed to bum atheists,
charitable people used to suggest putting them ina
madhouse instead: it would be nothing surprising now-a-
days were we to see this done, and the doers applauding
themselves, because, instead of persecuting for religion,
they had adopted so humane and Christian a mode of
treating these unfortunates, not without a silent
satisfaction at their having thereby obtained their
deserts.
Mill, On Liberty, III
39 His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man
usually thinks of, feels, and remembers innumerable
things simultaneously, but has the power and will to
select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to fix
his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away
from the deepest reflections to say a civil word to
Someone who comes in and can then return again to his
own thoughts. But Prince Andrew’s mind was not ina
normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind
were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted
apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images
occupied him simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly
began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had
never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in
the midst of its work it would turn to some unexpected
idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XI, 32
40 Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties,
nations, and ages it is the rule.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 156
41 In the eyes of the general public, the symptoms are the
essence of a disease, and to them a cure means the
removal of the symptoms. In medicine, however, we find
it important to differentiate between symptoms and
disease, and state that the disappearance of the
symptoms is by no means the same as the cure of the
disease. The only tangible element of the disease that
remains after the removal of the symptoms, however, is
the capacity to form new symptoms. Therefore for the
moment let us adopt the lay point of view and regard a
knowledge of the foundation of the symptoms as
equivalent to understanding the disease.
The symptoms—of course we are here dealing with
mental (or psychogenic) symptoms, and mental disease—
are activities which are detrimental, or at least useless, to
life as a whole; the person concerned frequently
complains of them as obnoxious to him or they involve
distress and suffering for him. The principal injury they
inflict lies in the expense of mental energy they entail
and, besides this, in the energy needed to combat them.
Where the symptoms are extensively developed, these
two kinds of effort may exact such a price that the person
suffers a very serious impoverishment in available mental
energy, which consequently disables him for all the
important tasks of life. This result depends principally
upon the amount of energy taken up in this way,
therefore you will see that illness is essentially a practical
conception. But if you look at the matter from a
theoretical point of view and ignore this question of
degree you can very well say that we are all ill, i.e.,
neurotic; for the conditions required for symptom-
formation are demonstrable also in normal persons.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXIII
42 |If we throw a crystal to the ground, it breaks, but it does
not break haphazard; in accordance with the lines of
cleavage it falls into fragments, whose limits were already
determined by the structure of the crystal, although they
were invisible. Psychotics are fissured and splintered
structures such as these. We cannot deny them a
measure of that awe with which madmen were regarded
by the peoples of ancient times. They have turned away
from external reality, but for that very reason they know
more of internal psychic reality and can tell us much that
would otherwise be inaccessible to us.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXX!
43 Every actual animal is somewhat dull and somewhat
mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly
when he might well act, while at other times he will run
off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to
no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we
should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them
off altogether. Not to retain any dulness would mean to
possess untiring attention and universal interests, thus
realising the boast about deeming nothing human alien
to us; while to be absolutely without folly would involve
perfect self-knowledge and self-control. The intelligent
man known to history flourishes within a dullard and
holds a lunatic in leash. He is encased in a protective
Shell of ignorance and insensibility which keeps him from
being exhausted and confused by this too complicated
world; but that integument blinds him at the same time
to many of his nearest and highest interests. He is
amused by the antics of the brute dreaming within his
breast; he gloats on his passionate reveries, an
amusement which sometimes costs him very dear. Thus
the best human intelligence is still decidedly barbarous;
it fights in heavy armour and keeps a fool at court.
Santayana, Life of Reason, I, 2
44 Philosophers have sometimes said that all ideas come
from experience; they never could have been poets and
must have forgotten that they were ever children. The
great difficulty in education is to get experience out of
ideas. Shame, conscience, and reason continually
disallow and ignore what consciousness presents; and
what are they but habit and latent instinct asserting
themselves and forcing us to disregard our midsummer
madness? Idiocy and lunacy are merely reversions to a
condition in which present consciousness is in the
ascendant and has escaped the control of unconscious
forces. we speak of people being "out of their senses,"
when they have in fact fallen back into them; or of those
who have "lost their mind," when they have lost merely
that habitual control over consciousness which prevented
it from flaring into all sorts of obsessions and agonies.
Their bodies having become deranged, their minds, far
from correcting that derangement, instantly share and
betray it. A dream is always simmering below the
conventional surface of speech and reflection. Even in
the highest reaches and serenest meditations of science
it sometimes breaks through. Even there we are seldom
constant enough to conceive a truly natural world;
somewhere passionate, fanciful, or magic elements will
Slip into the scheme and baffle rational ambition.
A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself
or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind.
Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit; they
lapse only when the corporeal frame that sustains them
yields to circumstances and changes its habit. If they are
unstable at all, it is because they ordinarily correspond to
strains and conjunctions which a vigorous body
overcomes, or which dissolve the body altogether. A pain
not incidental to the play of practical instincts may easily
be recurrent, and it might be perpetual if even the worst
habits were not intermittent and the most useless
agitations exhausting. Some respite will therefore ensue
upon pain, but no magic cure. Madness, in like manner, if
pronounced, is precarious, but when speculative enough
to be harmless or not strong enough to be debilitating, it
too may last for ever.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 2
5.7 Will Free Choice
To the question, why a section on will occurs in a chapter on
mind, the answer is that overwhelming preponderance of
the authors who discuss the subject conceive the will asa
mental faculty closely associated with intellect or reason. In
the mediaeval tradition, the will was referred to as the
“intellectual” or “rational appetite.” Other annals as well as
man exhibit the phenomena of the passions; other animals
manifest something akin to voluntary behavior; but in the
predominant opinion only man exercises willpower and acts
voluntarily through free choice, after deliberation and
decision.
In addition to considering the nature of the will as a
faculty, relating it to reason or intellect on the one hand,
and to the passions or emotions on the other, and
distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary behavior,
the quotations below represent a fair sampling of the
opposite voices in the great debate on the freedom of the
will or man’s freedom of choice. Ranged on the affirmative
side, and advancing different arguments in support of their
affirmation, are Lucretius, the Stoics, Aquinas, Descartes, Dr.
Johnson, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, William James, and
Sartre. On the opposite side are the denials of free choice by
Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, and Rousseau. Tolstoy straddles the
fence. The moot question is whether, in the absence of free
choice, there can be any basis for morality, for moral
responsibility, and praise or blame. The opponents of free
will claim there can be and Hume even goes so far as to
maintain that, since a freely chosen act would be like a
chance event, free will is incompatible with moral
responsibility and praise or blame.
The introduction of an omnipotent and omniscient deity
into the picture complicates the matter. The theologians,
from Augustine to Luther and Calvin, attempt to reconcile
free choice on man’s part with predestination and
providence. They are also concerned with the effect of
Original sin upon man’s freedom of choice, as well as with
the indispensability of such freedom as prerequisite to man’s
responsibility for sin. The reader will find related discussions
in Section 20.13 on Sin and Temptation and in Section 20.14
on Redemption and Salvation. For the treatment of other
forms of freedom, the reader should turn to Section 9.4 on
Moral Freedom, to Section 12.3 on Rights Natural and Civil,
and to Section 13.1 on Freedom in Society.
1 Socrates. When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to
go at once to Lachesis; but first of all there came a
prophet who arranged them in order; then he took from
the knees of Lachesis lots and samples of lives, and
having mounted a high pulpit, spoke as follows: “Hear the
word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls,
behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will
not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius;
and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice,
and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue
is free, and aS a man honours or dishonours her he will
have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the
chooser—God is justified." When the Interpreter had thus
spoken he scattered lots indifferently among them all,
and each of them took up the lot which fell near him, all
but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each as he took
his lot perceived the number which he had obtained.
Then the Interpreter placed on the ground before them
the samples of lives; and there were many more lives
than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There
were lives of every animal and of man in every condition.
And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out
the tyrant’s life, others which broke off in the middle and
came to an end in poverty and exile and beggary; and
there were lives of famous men, some who were famous
for their form and beauty as well as for their strength and
success in games, or, again, for their birth and the
qualities of their ancestors; and some who were the
reverse of famous for the opposite qualities. And of
women likewise; there was not, however, any definite
character in them, because the soul, when choosing a
new life, must of necessity become different. But there
was every other quality, and they all mingled with one
another, and also with elements of wealth and poverty,
and disease and health; and there were mean states also.
And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our
human state; and therefore the utmost care should be
taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind of
knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if
peradventure he may be able to learn and may find some
one who will make him able to learn and discern between
good and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere
the better life as he has opportunity. He should consider
the bearing of all these things which have been
mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue; he
should know what the effect of beauty is when combined
with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are
the good and evil consequences of noble and humble
birth, of private and public station, of strength and
weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the
natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation
of them when conjoined; he will then look at the nature of
the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities
he will be able to determine which is the better and
which is the worse; and so he will choose, giving the
name of evil to the life which will make his soul more
unjust, and good to the life which will make his soul more
just; all else he will disregard. For we have seen and know
that this is the best choice both in life and after death. A
man must take with him into the world below an
adamantine faith in truth and right, that there too he may
be undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other
allurements of evil, lest, coming upon tyrannies and
similar villainies, he do irremediable wrongs to others and
suffer yet worse himself; but let him know how to choose
the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as
possible, not only in this life but in all that which is to
come. For this is the way of happiness.
And according to the report of the messenger from the
other world this was what the prophet said at the time:
"Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live
diligently, there is appointed a happy and not
undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses first be
careless, and let not the last despair."
Plato, Republic, X, 617B
2 We deliberate about things that are in our power and can
be done. .. For nature, necessity, and chance are thought
to be causes, and also reason and everything that
depends on man. Now every class of men deliberates
about the things that can be done by their own efforts....
We deliberate not about ends but about means. Fora
doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an
orator whether he shall persuade, nor a statesman
whether he shall produce law and order, nor does any one
else deliberate about his end. They assume the end and
consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and
if it seems to be produced by several means they
consider by which it is most easily and best produced,
while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it
will be achieved by this and by what means this will be
achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the
order of discovery is last...,
The same thing is deliberated upon and is chosen,
except that the object of choice is already determinate,
since it is that which has been decided upon as a result of
deliberation that is the object of choice. For every one
ceases to inquire how he is to act when he htis brought
the moving principle back to himself and to the ruling
part of himself; for this is what chooses... , The object of
choice being one of the things in our own power which is
desired after deliberation, choice will be deliberate desire
of things in our own power; for when we have decided as
a result of deliberation, we desire in accordance with our
deliberation.
We may take it, then, that we have described choice in
outline, and stated the nature of its objects and the fact
that it is concerned with means.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1112a30
3 Men make themselves responsible for being unjust or self-
indulgent, in the one case by cheating and in the other
by spending their time in drinking bouts and the like; for
it is activities exercised on particular objects that make
the corresponding character. This is plain from the case of
people training for any contest or action; they practise
the activity the whole time. Now not to know that it is
from the exercise of activities on particular objects that
states of character are produced is the mark of a
thoroughly senseless person. Again, it is irrational to
suppose that a man who acts unjustly does not wish to be
unjust or a man who acts self-indulgently to be self-
indulgent. But if without being ignorant a man does the
things which will make him unjust, he will be unjust
voluntarily. Yet it does not follow that if he wishes he will
cease to be unjust and will be just. For neither does the
man who is ill become well on those terms. We may
Suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily, through
living incontinently and disobeying his doctors. In that
case it was then open to him not to be ill, but not now,
when he has thrown away his chance, just as when you
have let a stone go it is too late to recover it; but yet it
was in your power to throw it, since the moving principle
was in you. So, too, to the unjust and to the self-indulgent
man it was open at the beginning not to become men of
this kind, and so they are unjust and self-indulgent
voluntarily; but now that they have become so it is not
possible for them not to be so.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1114a4
4 The origin of action—its efficient, not its final cause—is
choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a
view to an end. This is why choice cannot exist either
without reason and intellect or without a moral state; for
good action and its opposite cannot exist without a
combination of intellect and character. Intellect itself,
however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which
aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the
productive intellect, as well, since every one who makes
makes for an end, and that which is made is not an end in
the unqualified sense (but only an end in a particular
relation, and the end of a particular operation)—only that
which is done is that; for good action is an end, and
desire aims at this. Hence choice is either desiderative
reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of
action iS a man.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1139a31
5 There are things which are within our power, and there are
things which are beyond our power. Within our power are
Opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever
affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property,
reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not
properly our own affairs.
Now the things within our power are by nature free,
unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power
are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then,
that if you attribute freedom to things by nature
dependent and take what belongs to others for your own,
you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be
disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But
if you take for your own only that which is your own and
view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no
one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will
find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do
nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will
not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm.
Aiming, therefore, at such great things, remember that
you must not allow yourself any inclination, however
Slight, toward the attainment of the others; but that you
must entirely quit some of them, and for the present
postpone the rest. But if you would have these, and
possess power and wealth likewise, you may miss the
latter in seeking the former; and you will certainly fail of
that by which alone happiness and freedom are procured.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, |
6 You can be unconquerable if you enter into no combat in
which it is not in your own power to conquer. When,
therefore, you see anyone eminent in honors or power, or
in high esteem on any other account, take heed not to be
bewildered by appearances and to pronounce him happy;
for if the essence of good consists in things within our
own power, there will be no room for envy or emulation.
But, for your part, do not desire to be a general, ora
senator, or a consul, but to be free; and the only way to
this is a disregard of things which lie not within our own
power.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XIX
7 What then do we mean when we speak of freedom in
ourselves...
My own reading is that, moving as we do amid adverse
fortunes, compulsions, violent assaults of passion
crushing the soul, feeling ourselves mastered by these
experiences, playing slave to them, going where they
lead, we have been brought by all this to doubt whether
we are anything at all and dispose of ourselves in any
particular.
This would indicate that we think of our free act as one
which we execute of our own choice, in no servitude to
chance or necessity or overmastering passion, nothing
thwarting our will; the voluntary is conceived as an event
amenable to will and occurring or not as our will dictates.
Everything will be voluntary that is produced under no
compulsion and with knowledge; our free act is what we
are masters to perform.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, VIII, 1
8 So | set myself to examine an idea | had heard— namely
that our free-will is the cause of our doing evil, and Your
just judgment the cause of our suffering evil. | could not
clearly discern this. | endeavoured to draw the eye of my
mind from the pit, but | was again plunged into it; and as
often as | tried, so often was | plunged back. But it raised
me a little towards Your light that | now was as much
aware that | had a will as that | had a life. And when |
willed to do or not do anything, | was quite certain that it
was myself and no other who willed, and | came to see
that the cause of my sin lay there.
But what | did unwillingly, it still seemed to me that |
rather suffered than did, and | judged it to be not my
fault but my punishment: though as | held You most just, |
was quite ready to admit that | was being justly punished.
But | asked further: "Who made me? Was it not my
God, who is not only Good but Goodness Itself? What root
reason is there for my willing evil and failing to will good,
which would make it just for me to be punished? Who was
it that set and ingrafted in me this root of bitterness,
since | was wholly made by my most loving God? If the
devil is the author, where does the devil come from? And
if by his own perverse will he was turned from a good
angel into a devil, what weis the origin in him of the
perverse will by which he became a devil, since by the
all-good Creator he was made wholly angel?" By such
thoughts | was cast down again and almost stifled; yet |
was not brought down so far as the hell of that error,
where no man confesses unto You, the error which holds
rather that You suffer evil than that man does it.
Augustine, Confessions, VII, 3
9 Let... perplexing debatings and disputations of the
philosophers go on as they may, we, in order that we may
confess the most high and true God Himself, do confess
His will, supreme power, and prescience. Neither let us be
afraid lest, after all, we do not do by will that which we do
by will, because He, Whose foreknowledge is infallible,
foreknew that we would do it. It was this which Cicero was
afraid of, and therefore opposed foreknowledge. The
Stoics also maintained that all things do not come to pass
by necessity, although they contended that all things
happen according to destiny. What is it, then, that Cicero
feared in the prescience of future things? Doubtless it
was this—that if all future things have been foreknown,
they will happen in the order in which they have been
foreknown; and if they come to pass in this order, there is
a certain order of things foreknown by God; and if a
certain order of things, then a certain order of causes, for
nothing can happen which is not preceded by some
efficient cause. But if there is a certain order of causes
according to which everything happens which does
happen, then by fate, says he, all things happen which do
happen. But if this be so, then is there nothing in our own
power, and there is no such thing as freedom of will.
Augustine, City of God, V, 9
10 There are some things which act not from any choice,
but, as it were, moved and made to act by others; just as
the arrow is directed to the target by the archer. Others
act from some kind of choice, but not from free choice,
such as irrational animals, for the sheep flies from the
wolf by a kind of judgment whereby it considers it to be
hurtful to itself; such a judgment is not a free one, but
implanted by nature. Only an agent endowed with an
intellect can act with a judgment which is free in so far as
it apprehends the common notion of good, from which it
can judge this or the other thing to be good.
Consequently, wherever there is intellect, there is free
choice,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 59, 3
11 Man has free choice. Otherwise counsels, exhortations,
commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would
be in vain....
Free choice is the cause of its own movement, because
by his free choice man moves himself to act. But it does
not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should
be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be
cause of another need it be the first cause. God,
therefore, is the first cause. Who moves causes both
natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural
causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so
by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their
actions of being voluntary, but rather is He the cause of
this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing
according to its own nature.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 83,1
12 Man does not choose of necessity. And this is because
that which is possible not to be, is not of necessity. Now
the reason why it is possible not to choose, or to choose,
may be gathered from a twofold power in man. For man
can will and not will, act and not act; again, he can will
this or that, and do this or that. The reason of this is
seated in the very power of the reason. For the will can
tend to whatever the reason can apprehend as good. Now
the reason can apprehend as good, not only this, namely,
to will or to act, but also this, namely, not to will or not to
act. Again, in all particular goods, the reason can
consider an aspect of some good and the lack of some
good, which has the aspect of evil; and in this respect, it
can apprehend any single one of such goods as to be
chosen or to be avoided. The perfect good alone, which is
Happiness, cannot be apprehended by the reason under
the aspect of evil, or as lacking in any way. Consequently
man wills Happiness of necessity, nor can he will not to
be happy, or to be unhappy. Now since choice is not of
the end, but of the means ... it is not of the perfect good,
which is Happiness, but of other particular goods.
Therefore man chooses not of necessity but freely.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 13, 6
13 Commands and prohibitions should be imposed only
upon one who can do or not do; otherwise they would be
imposed in vain. But prohibitions and commands are
divinely imposed upon man. It is therefore in man's
power to do or not to do; and so he is endowed with free
choice.
No one should be punished or rewarded for something
which it is not in his power to do or not to do. But man is
justly punished and rewarded by God for his deeds.
Therefore man can do and not do; and so he is endowed
with free choice,
Aquinas, On Truths, XXIV, 1
14 "The world is indeed so wholly desert of every virtue,
even as thy words sound to me, and heavy and covered
with sin;
but | pray that thou point the cause out to me, so that
| may see it, and that | may show it to others; for one
places it in the heavens and another here below."
A deep sigh, which grief compressed to "Alas!" he
[Marco] first gave forth, and then began: "Brother, the
world is blind, and verily thou comest from it.
Ye who are living refer every cause up to the heavens
alone, even as if they swept all with them of necessity.
Were it thus, Freewill in you would be destroyed, and it
were not just to have joy for good and mourning for evil.
The heavens set your impulses in motion; | say not all,
but suppose | said it, a light is given you to know good
and evil,
and Freewill, which, if it endure the strain in its first
battlings with the heavens, at length gains the whole
victory, if it be well nurtured.
Ye lie subject, in your freedom, to a greater power and
to a better nature; and that creates in you mind which
the heavens have not in their charge.
Therefore, if the world to-day goeth astray, in you is
the cause, in you be it sought."
Dante, Purgatorio, XVI, 58
15 "Every substantial form, which is distinct from matter and
is in union with it, has a specific virtue contained within
itself
which is not perceived save in operation, nor is
manifested except by its effects, just as life in a plant by
the green leaves.
Therefore man knows not whence the understanding
of the first cognitions may come, nor the inclination to
the prime objects of appetite,
which are in you, even as the instinct in bees to make
honey; and this prime will admits no desert of praise or of
blame.
Now in order that to this will every other may be
related, innate with you is the virtue which giveth
counsel, and ought to guard the threshold of assent.
This is the principle whence is derived the reason of
desert in you, according as it garners and winnows good
and evil loves.
Those who in their reasoning went to the foundation,
perceived this innate freedom, therefore they left ethics
to the world.
Wherefore suppose that every love which is kindled
within you arise of necessity, the power to arrest it is
within you.
By the noble virtue Beatrice understands Freewill, and
therefore, look that thou have this in mind, if she betake
her to speak with thee thereof."
Dante, Purgatorio, XVIII, 49
16 The greatest gift God of his largess made at the creation,
and the most conformed to his own excellence, and which
he most prizeth,
was the will’s liberty, wherewith creatures intelligent,
both all and alone, were and are endowed.
Dante, Paradiso, V, 19
17 Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be
clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must realize
that the basic principle of our freedom is freedom to
choose, which saying many have on their lips but few in
their minds.
Dante, De Monarchia, I, 12
18 For if we believe it to be true that God foreknows and
foreordains all things; that He can not be deceived or
obstructed in His foreknowledge and predestination; and
that nothing happens but at His will (which reason itself
is compelled to grant), then on reason’s own testimony,
there can be no free will in man, or angel, or in any
creature.
Luther, Bondage of the Will
19 Hortensio. There’s small choice in rotten apples.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, I, i, 138
20 Cassius. Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I, 11, 139
21 The faculty of will consists alone in our having the power
of choosing to do a thing or choosing not to do it (that is,
to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun it), or rather it
consists alone in the fact that in order to affirm or deny,
pursue or shun those things placed before us by the
understanding, we act so that we are unconscious that
any outside force constrains us in doing so. For in order
that | should be free it is not necessary that | should be
indifferent as to the choice of one or the other of two
contraries; but contrariwise the more | lean to the one—
whether | recognise clearly that the reasons of the good
and true are to be found in it, or whether God so disposes
my inward thought—the more freely do | choose and
embrace it. And undoubtedly both divine grace and
natural knowledge, far from diminishing my liberty,
rather increase it and strengthen it. Hence this
indifference which | feel, when | am not swayed to one
side rather than to the other by lack of reason, is the
lowest grade of liberty, and rather evinces a lack or
negation in knowledge than a perfection of will: for if |
always recognised clearly what was true and good, |
should never have trouble in deliberating as to what
judgment or choice | should make, and then | should be
entirely free without ever being indifferent.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, IV
22 As to the freedom of the will, a very different account
must be given of it as it exists in God and as it exists in
us. For it is self-contradictory that the will of God should
not have been from eternity indifferent to all that has
come to pass or that ever will occur, because we can form
no conception of anything good or true, of anything to be
believed or to be performed or to be omitted, the idea of
which existed in the divine understanding before God's
will determined Him so to act as to bring it to pass. Nor do
| here speak of priority of time; | mean that it was not
even prior in order, or in nature, or in reasoned relation,
as they say [in the schools], so that that idea of good
impelled God to choose one thing rather than another. , .
. Thus that supreme indifference in God is the supreme
proof of his omnipotence. But as to man, since he finds
the nature of all goodness and truth already determined
by God, and his will cannot bear upon anything else, it is
evident that he embraces the true and the good the more
willingly and hence the more freely in proportion as he
sees the true and the good the more clearly, and that he
is never indifferent save when he does not know what is
the more true or the better, or at least when he does not
see clearly enough to prevent him from doubting about
it. Thus the indifference which attaches to human liberty
is very different from that which belongs to the divine.
Neither does it here matter that the essences of things
are said to be indivisible: for firstly no essence can
belong in a univocal sense both to God and His creature;
and finally indifference does not belong to the essence of
human liberty, since we are free not only when our
ignorance of the right renders us indifferent, but also,
and chiefly, when a clear perception impels us to
prosecute some definite course.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, VI
23 Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water that
hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by
the channel; so likewise in the actions which men
voluntarily do, which, because they proceed from their
will, proceed from liberty, and yet because every act of
man’s will and every desire and inclination proceedeth
from some cause, and that from another cause, ina
continual chain (whose first link is in the hand of God, the
first of all causes), proceed from necessity. So that to him
that could see the connexion of those causes, the
necessity of all men’s voluntary actions would appear
manifest. And therefore God, that seeth and disposeth ail
things, seeth also that the liberty of man in doing what
he will is accompanied with the necessity of doing that
which God will, and no more, nor less. For though men
may do many things which God does not command, nor
is therefore author of them; yet they can have no passion,
nor appetite to anything, of which appetite God’s will is
not the cause. And did not His will assure the necessity of
man's will, and consequently of all that on man’s will
dependeth, the liberty of men would be a contradiction
and impediment to the omnipotence and liberty of God.
And this shall suffice, as to the matter in hand, of that
natural liberty, which only is properly called liberty.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 21
24 It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to
have all one wants.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 379
25 Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy
faults; nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy
Follies. Think not to fasten thy imperfections on the Stars,
and so despairingly conceive thy self under a fatality of
being evil. Calculate thy self within, seek not thy self in
the Moon, but in thine own Orb or Microcosmical
Circumference. Let celestial aspects admonish and
advertise, not conclude and determine thy ways.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, III, 7
26 God. | made him [man] just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such | created all th' Ethereal Powers
And Spirits, both them who stood & them who faild;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,
Where onely what they needs must do, appeard,
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure | from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless
and vain, of freedom both despoild.
Made passive both, had servd necessitie,
Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate;
As if Predestination over-rul'd
Thir will, dispos'd by absolute Decree
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Thir own revolt, not |: if | foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault.
Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 98
27 | should say that human affairs would be much more
happily conducted if it were equally in the power of men
to be silent and to speak; but experience shows over and
over again that there is nothing which men have less
power over than the tongue, and that there is nothing
which they are less able to do than to govern their
appetites, so that many persons believe that we do those
things only with freedom which we seek indifferently; as
the desire for such things can easily be lessened by the
recollection of another thing which we frequently call to
mind; it being impossible, on the other hand, to do those
things with freedom which we seek with such ardour that
the recollection of another thing is unable to mitigate it.
But if, however, we had not found out that we do many
things which we afterwards repent, and that when
agitated by conflicting affects we see that which is better
and follow that which is worse, nothing would hinder us
from believing that we do everything with freedom. Thus
the infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the
breast; the angry boy believes that by free will he wishes
vengeance; the timid man thinks it is with free will he
seeks flight; the drunkard believes that by a free
command of his mind he speaks the things which when
sober he wishes he had left unsaid. Thus the madman,
the chatterer, the boy, and others of the same kind, all
believe that they speak by a free command of the mind,
whilst, in truth, they have no power to restrain the
impulse which they have to speak, so that experience
itself, no less than reason, clearly teaches that men
believe themselves to be free simply because they are
conscious of their own actions, knowing nothing of the
causes by which they are determined: it teaches, too,
that the decrees of the mind are nothing but the
appetites themselves, which differ, therefore, according
to the different temper of the body. For every man
determines all things from his affect; those who are
agitated by contrary affects do not Know what they want,
whilst those who are agitated by no affect are easily
driven hither and thither. All this plainly shows that the
decree of the mind, the appetite, and determination of
the body are coincident in nature, or rather that they are
one and the same thing, which, when it is considered
under the attribute of thought and manifested by that, is
called a decree, and when it is considered under the
attribute of extension and is deduced from the laws of
motion and rest, is called a determination.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Prop. 2, Schol.
28 There being in us a great many uneasinesses, always
soliciting and ready to determine the will, it is natural, as
| have said, that the greatest and most pressing should
determine the will to the next action; and so it does for
the most part, but not always. For, the mind having in
most cases, as is evident in experience, a power to
suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its
desires; and so all, one after another; is at liberty to
consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides,
and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty man
has; and from the not using of it right comes all that
variety of mistakes, errors, and faults which we run into in
the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after
happiness; whilst we precipitate the determination of our
wills, and engage too soon, before due examination. To
prevent this, we have a power to suspend the prosecution
of this or that desire; as every one daily may experiment
in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in
this seems to consist that which is (as | think improperly)
called free-will. For, during this suspension of any desire,
before the will be determined to action, and the action
(which follows that determination) done, we have
opportunity to examine, view, and judge of the good or
evil of what we are going to do; and when, upon due
examination, we have judged, we have done our duty, all
that we can, or ought to do, in pursuit of our happiness;
and it is not a fault, but a perfection of our nature, to
desire, will, and act according to the last result of a fair
examination.... This is so far from being a restraint or
diminution of freedom, that it is the very improvement
and benefit of it; it is not an abridgment, it is the end and
use of our liberty; and the further we are removed from
such a determination, the nearer we are to misery and
Slavery.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXI, 4a-
49
29 Philosophic liberty consists in the free exercise of the will;
or at least, if we must speak agreeably to all systems, in
an opinion that we have the free exercise of our will.
Political liberty consists in security, or, at least, in the
opinion that we enjoy security.
This security is never more dangerously attacked than
in public or private accusations. It is, therefore, on the
goodness of criminal laws that the liberty of the subject
principally depends.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XII, 2
30 It will not require many words to prove, that all mankind
have ever agreed in the doctrine of liberty as well as in
that of necessity, and that the whole dispute, in this
respect also, has been hitherto merely verbal. For what is
meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary actions? We
cannot surely mean that actions have so little connexion
with motives, inclinations, and circumstances, that one
does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from
the other, and that one affords no inference by which we
can conclude the existence of the other. For these are
plain and acknowledged matters of fact. By liberty, then,
we can only mean a power of acting or not acting,
according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we
choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move,
we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally
allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and
in chains. Here, then, is no subject of dispute.
Whatever definition we may give of liberty, we should
be careful to observe two requisite circumstances; first,
that it be consistent with plain matter of fact; secondly,
that it be consistent with itself. If we observe these
circumstances, and render our definition intelligible, | am
persuaded that all mankind will be found of one opinion
with regard to it.
It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a
cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly
examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any
real power which has anywhere a being in nature. But it is
pretended that some causes are necessary, some not
necessary. Here then is the advantage of definitions. Let
any one define a cause, without comprehending, as a
part of the definition, a necessary connexion with its
effect; and let him show distinctly the origin of the idea,
expressed by the definition; and | shall readily give up
the whole controversy. But if the foregoing explication of
the matter be received, this must be absolutely
impracticable. Had not objects a regular conjunction with
each other, we should never have entertained any notion
of cause and effect; and this regular conjunction
produces that inference of the understanding, which is
the only connexion, that we can have any comprehension
of. Whoever attempts a definition of cause, exclusive of
these circumstances, wdll be obliged either to employ
unintelligible terms or such as are synonymous to the
term which he endeavours to define. And if the definition
above mentioned be admitted; liberty, when opposed to
necessity, not to constraint, is the same thing wth
chance; which is universally allowed to have no
existence.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 73-74
31 What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"? it means
"to be able," or assuredly it has no sense. For the will "to
be able " is as ridiculous at bottom as to say that the will
is yellow or blue, round or square. To will is to wish, and to
be free is to be able. Let us note step by step the chain of
what passes in us, without obfuscating our minds by any
terms of the schools or any antecedent principle.
It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must
absolutely make a choice, for it is quite clear that you
either will go or that you will no go. There is no middle
way. It is therefore of absolute necessity that you wish yes
or no. Up to there it is demonstrated that the will is not
free. You wish to mount the horse; why? The reason, an
ignoramus will say, is because | wish it. This answer is
idiotic, nothing happens or can happen without a reason,
a cause; there is one therefore for your wish! What is it?
the agreeable idea of going on horseback which presents
itself in your brain, the dominant idea, the determinant
idea. But, you will say, can
| not resist an idea which dominates me? No, for what
would be the cause of your resistance? None. By your will
you can obey only an idea which will dominate you more.
Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive
your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word
"liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your
will.
You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us, |
answer you that | have not the remotest idea. | do not
know how ideas are made any more than how the world
was made. All that is given to us is to grope for what
passes in our incomprehensible machine.
The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call
free, A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense,
and w hat the scholastics have called will of indifference,
that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera
unworthy of being combated.
Where will be liberty then? in the power to do what
one wills. | wish to leave my study, the door is open, | am
free to leave it.
But, say you, if the door is closed, and | wish to stay at
home, | stay there freely. Let us be explicit. You exercise
then the power that you have of staying; you have this
power, but you have not that of going out.
The liberty about which so many volumes haNX been
written is, therefore, reduced to its accurate terms, only
the power of acting.
In what sense then must one utter the phrase— "Man
is free"? in the same sense that one utters the words,
health, strength, happiness, Man is not always strong,
always healthy, always happy.
A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his
liberty’, his power of action.
The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract
word, a general word, like beauty’, goodness, justice,
These terms do not state that all men are always
beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are not always
free.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Free-Will
32 Dr. Johnson shunned to-night any discussion of the
preplexed question of fate and free will, which |
attempted to agitate. "Sir, (Said he,) we know our will is
free, and there's an end on't."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct. 10,1769)
33 Dr. Mayo. (to Dr. Johnson,) "Pray, Sir, have you read
Edwards, of New England, on Grace!" Johnson. "No, Sir."
Boswell. "It puzzled me so much as to the freedom of the
human will, by stating, with wonderful acute ingenuity’,
our being actuated by a series of motives which we
cannot resist, that the only relief | had was to forget it."
Mayo. "But he makes the proper distinction between
moral and physical necessity’." Boswell. "Alas, Sir, they
come both to the same thing. You may be bound as hard
by chains when covered by leather, as when the iron
appears. The argument for the moral necessity of human
actions is always, | observe, fortified by supposing
universal prescience to be one of the attributes of the
Deity." Johnson. "You are surer that you are free, than you
are of prescience; you are surer that you can lift up your
finger or not as you please, than you are of any
conclusion from a deduction of reasoning. But let us
consider a little the objection from prescience. It is
certain | am either to go home to-night or not; that does
not prevent my freedom." Boswell. "That it is certain you
are either to go home or not, does not prevent your
freedom; because the liberty of choice between the two is
compatible with that certainty. But if one of these events
be certain now you have no future power of volition. If it
be certain you are to go home to-night, you must go
home." Johnson. "If |am well acquainted with a man, |
can judge with great probability how he will act in any
case, without his being restrained by my judging. God
may have this probability increased to certainty." Boswell
"When it is increased to certainty, freedom ceases,
because that cannot be certainly foreknown, which is not
certain at the time; but if it be certain at the time, it isa
contradiction in terms to maintain that there can be
afterwards any contingency dependent upon the exercise
of will or any thing clsc." johnson. "All theory is against
the freedom of the will; all experience for it."—I did not
push the subject any farther. | was glad to find him so
mild in discussing a question of the most abstract nature,
involved with theological tenets, which he generally
would not suffer to be in any degree opposed,
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 15, 1778)
34 A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and
the same.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, III
35 If it were possible to have so profound an insight into a
man’s mental character as shown by internal as well as
external actions as to know all its motives, even the
smallest, and likewise all the external occasions that can
influence them, we could calculate a man’s conduct for
the future with as great certainty as a lunar or solar
eclipse; and nevertheless we may maintain that the man
is free.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
36 If we grant freedom to man, there is an end to the
omniscience of God; for if the Divinity knows how | shall
act, | must act so perforce.
Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (Oct. 12, 1825)
37 The absolute goal, or, if you like, the absolute impulse, of
free mind is to make its freedom its object, i.c, to make
freedom objective as much in the sense that freedom
Shall be the rational system of mind, as in the sense that
this system shall be the world of immediate actuality. In
making freedom its object, mind’s purpose is to be
explicitly, as Idea, what the will is implicitly. The
definition of the concept of the will in abstraction from
the Idea of the will is "the free will which wills the free
will."
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction, 27
38 In... the will is rooted my ability to free myself from
everything, abandon every aim, abstract from everything.
Man alone can sacrifice everything, his life included; he
can commit suicide. An animal cannot; it always remains
merely negative, in an alien destiny to which it merely
accustoms itself.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 5
39 A will which resolves on nothing is no actual will; a
characterless man never reaches a decision.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par, 13
40 Every man, being what he is and placed in the
circumstances which for the moment obtain, but which
on their part also arise by strict necessity, can absolutely
never do anything else than just what at that moment he
does do. Accordingly, the whole course of a man’s life, in
all its incidents great and small, is as necessarily
predetermined as the course of a clock.
Schopenhauer, Free-Will and Fatalism
41 Chance, freewill, and necessity—nowise incompatible—
all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of
necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course—its
every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that;
freewill still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;
and chance, though restrained in its play within the right
lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions modified
by freewill, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by
turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at
events.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLVII
42 We are conscious automata, endowed with free will in the
only intelligible sense of that much-abused term—
inasmuch as in many respects we are able to do as we
like—but none the less parts of the great series of causes
and effects which, in unbroken continuity, composes that
which is, and has been, and shall be—the sum of
existence.
T. H. Huxley, Animal Automatism
43 Correctly conceived, the doctrine called Philosophical
Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which
are present to an individual’s mind, and given likewise
the character and disposition of the individual, the
manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred;
that if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the
inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell
his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any
physical event. This proposition | take to be a mere
interpretation of universal experience, a statement in
words of what every one is internally convinced of. No
one who believed that he knew thoroughly the
circumstances of any case, and the characters of the
different persons concerned, would hesitate to foretell
how all of them would act. Whatever degree of doubt he
may in fact feel arises from the uncertainty whether he
really knows the circumstances, or the character of some
one or other of the persons, with the degree of accuracy
required; but by no means from thinking that if he did
know these things, there could be any uncertainty what
the conduct would be. Nor does this full assurance
conflict in the smallest degree with what is called our
feeling of freedom. We do not feel ourselves the less free
because those to whom we are intimately known are well
assured how we Shall will to act in a particular case. We
often, on the contrary, regard the doubt what our conduct
will be as a mark of ignorance of our character, and
sometimes even resent it as an imputation. The religious
metaphysicians who have asserted the freedom of the
will have always maintained it to be consistent with
divine foreknowledge of our actions; and if with divine,
then with any other foreknowledge. We may be free, and
yet another may have reason to be perfectly certain what
use we Shall make of our freedom.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. VI, 11, 2
44 |f history dealt only with external phenomena, the
establishment of this simple and obvious law would
suffice and we should have finished our argument. But
the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter
cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of attraction or
repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is the
subject of history, says plainly: | am free and am therefore
not subject to the law.
The presence of the problem of man’s free will, though
unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.
All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily
encountered this question. All the contradictions and
obscurities of history and the false path historical science
has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of
that question.
If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man
could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of
disconnected incidents.
If in a thousand years even one man in a million could
act freely, that is, as he chose, it is evident that one
single free act of that man’s in violation of the laws
governing human action would destroy the possibility of
the existence of any laws for the whole of humanity.
If there be a single law governing the actions of men,
free will cannot exist, for then man’s will is subject to that
law.
In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which
from most ancient times has occupied the best human
minds and from most ancient times has been presented
in its whole tremendous significance.
The problem is that regarding man as a subject of
observation from whatever point of view—theological,
historical, ethical, or philosophic—we find a general law
of necessity to which he (like all that exists) is subject.
But regarding him from within ourselves as what we are
conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.
This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite
apart from and independent of reason. Through his
reason man observes himself, but only through
consciousness does he know himself.
Apart from consciousness of self no observation or
application of reason is conceivable.
To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man
must first of all be conscious of himself as living. A man is
only conscious of himself as a living being by the fact
that he wills, that is, is conscious of his volition. But his
will—which forms the essence of his life—man recognizes
(and can but recognize) as free.
If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always
directed by one and the same law (whether he observes
the necessity of taking food, using his brain, or anything
else) he cannot recognize this never-varying direction of
his %vill otherwise than as a limitation of it. Were it not
free it could not be limited, A man’s will seems to him to
be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as
free.
You say: | am not free. But | have lifted my hand and
let it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is
an irrefutable demonstration of freedom.
That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is
not subject to reason.
If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate
and independent source of self-consciousness it would be
subject to reasoning and to experience, but in fact such
subjection does not exist and is inconceivable.
A series of experiments and arguments proves to
every man that he, as an object of observation, is subject
to certain laws, and man submits to them and never
resists the laws of gravity or impermeability once he has
become acquainted with them. But the same series of
experiments and arguments proves to him that the
complete freedom of which he is conscious in himself is
impossible, and that his every action depends on his
organization, his character, and the motives acting upon
him: yet man never submits to the deductions of these
experiments and arguments. Having learned from
experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a
man indubitably believes this and always expects the law
that he has learned to be fulfilled.
But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to
la%«, he does not and cannot believe this.
However often experiment and reasoning may show a
man that under the same conditions and with the same
character he will do the same thing as before, yet when
under the same conditions and with the same character
he approaches for the thousandth time the action that
always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly
convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he
pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however
incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him
that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of
action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without
this irrational conception (which constitutes the essence
of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that however
impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conception
of freedom not only would he be unable to understand
life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment.
He could not live, because all man’s efforts, all his
impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom.
Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and
subordination, strength and weakness, health and
disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure,
repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or
lesser degrees of freedom.
A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of
except as deprived of life.
If the conception of freedom appears to reason to bea
senseless contradiction like the possibility of performing
two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an
effect without a cause, that only proves that
consciousness is not subject to reason.
This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by
all thinkers and felt by everyone without exception, this
consciousness without which no conception of man is
possible constitutes the other side of the question.
Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-
seeing God. What is sin, the conception of which arises
from the consciousness of man’s freedom? That is a
question for theology.
The actions of men are subject to general immutable
laws expressed in statistics. What is man’s responsibility
to society, the conception of which results from the
conception of freedom? That is a question for
jurisprudence.
Man’s actions proceed from his innate character and
the motives acting upon him. What is conscience and the
perception of right and wrong in actions that follows from
the consciousness of freedom? That is a question for
ethics.
Man in connection with the general life of humanity
appears subject to laws which determine that life. But the
Same man apart from that connection appears to be free.
How should the past life of nations and of humanity be
regarded—as the result of the free, or as the result of the
constrained, activity of man? That is a question for
history.
Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of
knowledge—thanks to that most powerful engine of
ignorance, the diffusion of printed matter—has the
question of the freedom of will been put on a level on
which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the
majority of so-called advanced people—that is, the crowd
of ignoramuses—have taken the work of the naturalists
who deal with one side of the question for a solution of
the whole problem.
They say and write and print that the soul and
freedom do not exist for the life of man is expressed by
muscular movements and muscular movements are
conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul and
free will do not exist because at an unknown period of
time we sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all
suspecting that thousands of years ago that same law of
necessity which with such ardor they are now trying to
prove by physiology and comparative zoology was not
merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the
thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that
the role of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to
serve as an instrument for the illumination of one side of
it. For the fact that, from the point of view of observation,
reason and the will are merely secretions of the brain,
and that man following the general law may have
developed from lower animals at some unknown period of
time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted
thousands of years ago by all the religious and
philosophic theories—that from the point of view of
reason man is subject to the law of necessity; but it does
not advance by a hair’s breadth the solution of the
question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the
consciousness of freedom.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, VIII
45 Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man
is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in
no way differs from any other force. The forces of
gravitation, electricity, or chemical affinity are only
distinguished from one another in that they are
differently defined by reason. Just so the force of man’s
free will is distinguished by reason from the other forces
of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,
apart from necessity, that is, apart from the law's of
reason that define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or
heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason, it is
only a momentary undefinable sensation of life.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, X
46 When scientific and moral postulates war thus with each
other and objective proof is not to be had, the only course
is voluntary choice, for scepticism itself, if systematic, is
also voluntary choice. If, meanwhile, the will be
undetermined, it would seem only fitting that the belief
in its indetermination should be voluntarily chosen from
amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's first deed
should be to affirm itself.
William James, Psychology, XXVI
47 Both free will and determinism have been inveighed
against and called absurd, because each, in the eyes of
its enemies, has seemed to prevent the 'imputability’ of
good or bad deeds to their authors. Queer antinomy this!
Free will means novelty, the grafting on to the past of
something not involved therein. If our acts were
predetermined, if we merely transmitted the push of the
whole past, the freewillists say, how could we be praised
or blamed for anything? We should be ‘agents’ only, not
‘principals,’ and where then would be our precious
imputability and responsibility?
But where would it be if we had free will? rejoin the
determinists. If a ‘free’ act be sheer novelty, that comes
not from me, the previous me, but ex nihilo, and simply
tacks itself on to me, how can I, the previous |, be
responsible? How can | have any permanent character
that will stand still long enough for praise or blame to be
awarded? The chaplet of my days tumbles into a cast of
disconnected beads as soon as the thread of inner
necessity is drawn out by the preposterous indeterminist
doctrine....
It may be good ad hominem, but otherwise it is pitiful.
For | ask you, quite apart from other reasons, whether any
man, woman or child, with a sense for realities, ought not
to be ashamed to plead such principles as either dignity
or imputability. Instinct and utility between them can
safely be trusted to carry on the social business of
punishment and praise. If a man does good acts we shall
praise him, if he does bad acts we shall punish him—
anyhow, and quite apart from theories as to whether the
acts result from what was previous in him or are novelties
in a strict sense. To make our human ethics revolve about
the question of ‘merit’ is a piteous unreality—God alone
can know our merits, if we have any. The real ground for
supposing free will is indeed pragmatic, but it has
nothing to do with this contemptible right to punish
which has made such a noise in past discussions of the
subject.
Free will pragmatically means novelties in the world,
the right to expect that in its deepest elements as well as
in its surface phenomena, the future may not identically
repeat and imitate the past. That imitation en masse is
there, who can deny? The general "uniformity of nature"
IS presupposed by every lesser law. But nature may be
only approximately uniform; and persons in whom
knowledge of the world’s past has bred pessimism (or
doubts as to the world’s good character, which become
certainties if that character be supposed eternally fixed)
may naturally welcome free will as a melioristic doctrine.
It holds up improvement as at least possible; whereas
determinism assures us that our whole notion of
possibility is born of human ignorance, and that necessity
and impossibility between them rule the destinies of the
world.
William James, Pragmatism, III
48 The existence of strict causality implies that the actions,
the mental processes, and especially the will of every
individual are completely determined at any given
moment by the state of his mind, taken as a whole, in the
previous moment, and by any influences acting upon him
coming from the external world. We have no reason
whatever for doubting the truth of this assertion. But the
question of free will is not concerned with the question
whether there is such a definite connection, but whether
the person in question is aware of this connection. This,
and this alone, determines whether a person can or
cannot feel free. If a man were able to forecast his own
future solely on the ground of causality, then and then
only we would have to deny this consciousness of
freedom of the will. Such a contingency is, however,
impossible, since it contains a logical contradiction.
Complete knowledge implies that the object
apprehended is not altered by any events taking place in
the knowing subject; and if subject and object are
identical, this assumption does not apply. To put it more
concretely, the knowledge of any motive or of any
activity of will is an inner experience, from which a fresh
motive may spring; consequently such an awareness
increases the number of possible motives. But as soon as
this is recognized, the recognition brings about a fresh
act of awareness, which in its turn can generate yet
another activity of the will. In this way the chain
proceeds, without it ever being possible to reach a motive
which is definitely decisive for any future action; in other
words, to reach an awareness which is not in its turn the
occasion of a fresh act of will. When we look back upon a
finished action, which we can contemplate as a whole,
the case is completely different. Here knowledge no
longer influences will, and hence a strictly causal
consideration of motives and will is possible, at least in
theory.
If these considerations appear unintelligible—if it is
thought that a mind could completely grasp the causes of
its present state, provided it were intelligent enough—
then such an argument is akin to saying that a giant who
is big enough to look down on everybody else should be
able to look down on himself as well. The fact is that no
person, however clever, can derive the decisive motives
of his own conscious actions from the causal law alone;
he requires another law—the ethical law, for which the
highest intelligence and the most subtle self-analysis are
no adequate substitute.
Planck, Universe in the Light of Modem Physics, 6
49 To foresee future objective alternatives and to be able by
deliberation to choose one of them and thereby weight its
chances in the struggle for future existence, measures
our freedom. It is assumed sometimes that if it can be
shown that deliberation determines choice and
deliberation is determined by character and conditions,
there is no freedom. This is like saying that because a
flower comes from root and stem it cannot bear fruit. The
question is not what are the antecedents of deliberation
and choice, but what are their consequences. What do
they do that is distinctive? The answer is that they give
us all (lie control of future possibilities which is open to
us. And this control is the crux of our freedom. Without it,
we are pushed from behind.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, IV, 3
50 We are free when our acts spring from our whole
personality, when they express it, when they have that
indefinable resemblance to it which one sometimes finds
between the artist and his work. It is no use asserting
that we are then yielding to the all-powerful influence of
our character. Our character is still ourselves; and
because we are pleased to split the person into two parts
so that by an effort of abstraction we may consider in
turn the self which feels or thinks and the self which acts,
it would be very strange to conclude that one of the two
selves is coercing the other.
Bergson, Time and Free Will, III
51 Human free will does not exclude but presupposes the
vast and complex dynamism of instincts, tendencies,
psycho-physical dispositions, acquired habits, and
hereditary traits, and it is at the top point where this
dynamism emerges in the world of spirit that freedom of
choice is exercised, to give or withhold decisive efficacy
to the inclinations and urges of nature. It follows from this
that freedom, as well as responsibility, is capable of a
multiplicity of degrees of which the Author of being alone
is judge. It does not follow from this that freedom does
not exist—on the contrary! If it admits of degrees, then it
exists.
Maritain, The Conquest of Freedom
52 It must be made clear that not only particular and partial
goods, offered us by the finite world, but all the concrete
goods which we may love and desire in this life, are thus
the object of the will’s free choice. Even the noblest good,
even the divine good, is thus, and for the same rca.son,
the object of the will’s free choice.
Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, V
53 Human-reality is free because it is not enough. It is free
because it is perpetually wrenched away from itself and
because it has been separated by a nothingness from
what it is and from what it will be. It Is free, finally,
because its present being is itself a nothingness in the
form of the "reflection-reflecting." Man is free because he
is not himself but presence to himself. The being which is
what it is can not be free. Freedom is precisely (he
nothingness which is made-to-be at the heart of man and
which forces human-reality to make itself instead of to be.
As we have seen, for human reality, to be is to choose
oneself; nothing comes to it ger from the outside or from
within which it can receive or accept.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Pt. IV, I, 1
Chapter 6
KNOWLEDGE
Chapter 6 is divided into seven sections: 6.1 The
Characteristics and Conditions of Human Knowledge, 6.2
Experience, 6.3 Truth, 6.4 Error, Ignorance, and the Limits of
Human Knowledge, 6.5 Opinion, Belief, and Faith, 6.6 Doubt
and Skepticism, and 6.7 Reasoning, Demonstration, and
Disputation.
Man is pre-eminently a Knowing animal. As one famous
statement that comes down to us from antiquity puts it, ‘‘all
men by nature desire to know." Knowing, feeling, and doing
—these three, in separation and in combination, round out
the whole orbit of human performance.
After the opening section of the chapter, in which the
most general and persistent questions about knowledge are
raised and discussed, the sections that follow deal with the
contributions and values of experience, with truth as the
good that is attained when we possess knowledge, with error
as the contrary of truth and ignorance as the privation of
knowledge, with opinion and belief as alternatives to
knowledge, or even substitutes for it, with doubt and
Skepticism as checks against unwarranted assertions of
knowledge, and with the ratiocinative process as that is
involved in our effort to know, in the defence of our own
opinions, and in the criticism of the opinions advanced by
others.
The chapter most closely related to this one is, of course,
Chapter 5 on Mind; but the reader will also find relevant
passages in Chapter 17 on Philosophy, Science, and
Mathematics, and some passages in Chapter 19 on Nature
and the Cosmos, particularly Section 19.3 on Cause and
Section 19.4 on Chance.
6.1 The Characteristics and
Conditions of Human Knowledge
On a number of points, the quotations collected here tend to
be in substantial agreement: that knowledge, or the truth
that is attained when we know, is the essential good of the
mind; that it is both good in itself, to be loved for its own
sake, and also good as a means to be used in action and
production; that, while man aspires to know all that is
knowable, human knowledge at its best is imperfect and
limited; and that knowledge is a relation between a knower
and an object known.
Other points made by some of the authors quoted are not
concurred in or mentioned by others, such as the distinction
between that which is more knowable in itself and that
which is more knowable to us; the comparison between
man’s finite or limited knowledge and God's infinite
knowledge; the difference between sensitive and
intellectual knowledge; the difference between simple
apprehensions which assert nothing and so are neither true
nor false and judgments which, affirming or denying
something, are capable of truth and falsity; the difference
between knowledge by acquaintance (or knowledge of) and
knowledge by description (or knowledge about); the
difference between scientific and technical knowledge (or
between know-that and know-how); and the difference
between speculative and practical knowledge (or knowing
what /s the case and knowing what ought to be done or
sought).
Beyond this, the reader will find that the quotations
exhibit a pattern of manifold and intricate disagreements
about the process of knowing itself—how we know whatever
it is that we do know; about the precise nature of the
relationship between knower and known; about the
existential status of the object Known; about the grades of
human knowledge, either in terms of the character of the
objects known or in terms of the degree of certainty or
uncertainty with which something is known; about the
distinction between knowledge and opinion; and about the
limits of human knowledge. Some of these matters, merely
hinted at in the passages quoted here, are more fully
discussed in later sections of this chapter, especially
Sections 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6.
1 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 1:7
2 Persian soldier. 'Tis the sorest of all human ills, to abound
in knowledge and yet have no power over action.
Herodotus, History, IX, 16
3 Socrates. In questions of just and unjust, fair and foul,
good and evil, which are the subjects of our present
consultation, ought we to follow the opinion of the many
and to fear them; or the opinion of the one man who has
understanding? ought we not to fear and reverence him
more than all the rest of the world: and if we desert him
Shall we not destroy and injure that principle in us which
may be assumed to be improved by justice and
deteriorated by injustice?
Plato, Crito, 47B
4 Socrates. What again shall we say of the actual
acquirement of knowledge?—is the body, if invited to
share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper? | mean to
say, have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they
not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate
witnesses? and yet, if even they are inaccurate and
indistinct, what is to be said of the other senses?—for you
will allow that they are the best of them?
Certainly, he [Simmias] replied.
Then when does the soul attain truth?—for in
attempting to consider anything in company with the she
is obviously deceived.
True.
Then must not true existence be revealed to her in
thought, if at all?
Yes.
And thought is best when the mind is gathered into
herself and none of these things trouble her— neither
sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure,—when she
takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do
with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is
aspiring after true being?
Certainly.
And in this the philosopher dishonours the body; his
soul runs away from his body and desires to be alone and
by herself?
That is true.
Well, but there is another thing, Simmias: Is there or is
there not an absolute justice?
Assuredly there is.
And an absolute beauty and absolute good?
Of course.
But did you ever behold any of them with your eyes?
Certainly not.
Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily
sense?—and | speak not of these alone, but of absolute
greatness, and health, and strength, and of the essence
or true nature of everything. Has the reality of them ever
been perceived by you through the bodily organs? or
rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of
their several natures made by him who so orders his
intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception
of the essence of each thing which he considers?
Certainly.
And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who
goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or
intruding in the act of thought sight or any other sense
together with reason, but with the very light of the mind
in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each;
he who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and,
so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion
distracting elements which when they infect the soul
hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge—who, if
not he, is likely to attain to the knowledge of true being?
Plato, Phaedo, 65A
5 Socrates. You have to imagine.,. that there are two ruling
powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual
world, the other over the visible. | do not say heaven, lest
you should fancy that | am playing upon the name. May |
suppose that you have this distinction of the visible and
intelligible fixed in your mind?
Glaucon. | have.
Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal
parts, and divide each of them again in the same
proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to
answer, one to the visible and the other to the
intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect
of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find
that the first section in the sphere of the visible consists
of images. And by images | mean, in the first place,
shadows, and in the second place, reflections in water
and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the like: Do
you understand?
Yes, | understand.
Imagine, now, the other section, of which this is only
the resemblance, to include the animals which we see,
and everything that grows or is made.
Very good.
Would you not admit that both the sections of this
division have different degrees of truth, and that the
copy is to the original as the sphere of opinion is to the
sphere of knowledge?
Most undoubtedly.
Next proceed to consider the manner in which the
sphere of the intellectual is to be divided.
In what manner?
Thus:—There are two subdivisions, in the lower of
which the soul uses the figures given by the former
division as images; the enquiry can only be hypothetical,
and instead of going upwards to a principle descends to
the other end; in the higher of the two, the soul passes
out of hypotheses, and goes up to a principle which is
above hypotheses, making no use of images as in the
former case, but proceeding only in and through the
ideas themselves.
| do not quite understand your meaning, he said.
Then | will try again; you will understand me better
when | have made some preliminary remarks. You are
aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the
kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and the
figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their
several branches of science; these are their hypotheses,
which they and every body are supposed to know, and
therefore they do not deign to give any account of them
either to themselves or others; but they begin with them,
and go on until they arrive at last, and in a consistent
manner, at their conclusion?
Yes, he said, | know.
And do you not know also that although they make
use of the visible forms and reason about them, they are
thinking not of these, but of the ideals which they
resemble; not of the figures which they draw, but of the
absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on—
the forms which they draw or make, and which have
shadows and reflections in water of their own, are
converted by them into images, but they are really
seeking to behold the things themselves, which can only
be seen with the c>x of the mind?
That is true.
And of this kind 1 spoke as the intelligible, although in
the search after it the soul is compelled to use
hypotheses; no! ascending to a first principle, because
she is unable to rise above the region of hypothesis, but
employing the objects of which the shadows below are
resemblances in their turn as images, they having in
relation to the shadows and reflections of them a greater
distinctness, and therefore a higher value.
| understand, he said, that you are speaking of the
prosince of geometry and the sister arts.
And when | speak of the other division of the
intelligible, you will understand me to speak of that other
sort of Knowledge which reason herself attains by the
power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first
principles, but only as hypotheses—that is to say, as
steps and points of departure into a world which is above
hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to
the first principle of the whole; and clinging to this and
then to that which depends on this, by successive steps
she descends again without the aid of any sensible
object, from ideas, through ideas, and in ideas she ends.
| understand you, he replied; not perfectly, for you
seem to me to be describing a task which is really
tremendous; but, at any rate, 1 understand you to say
that knowledge and f)C!ng, which the science of dialectic
contemplates, are clearer than the notions of the arts, as
they are termed, which proceed from hypotheses only:
these are also contemplated by the understanding, and
not by the senses: yet, because they start from
hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who
contemplate them appear to you not to exercise the
higher reason upon them, although when a first principle
is added to them they are cognizable by the higher
reason. And the habit which is concerned with geometry
and the cognate sciences 1 suppose that you would term
understanding and not reason, as being intermediate
between opinion and reason.
You have quite conceived my meaning, | said; and
now, corresponding to these four divisions, let there be
four faculties in the soul—reason answering to the
highest, understanding to the second, faith (or
conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the
last—and let there be a scale of them, and let us suppose
that the several faculties have clearness in the same
degree that their objects have truth.
Plato, Republic, Vl, 509B
6 For everything that exists there are three instruments by
which the knowledge of it is necessarily imparted; fourth,
there is the knowledge itself, and, as fifth, we must count
the thing itself which is known and truly exists. the first is
the name, the second the definition, the third the image,
and the fourth the knowledge. If you wish to learn what |
mean, take these in the ease of one instance, and so
understand them in the ease of all. A circle is a thing
spoken of, and its name is that very word which we have
just uttered. The second thing belonging to it is its
definition, made up of names and verbal forms. For that
which has the name "round," "annular," or "circle," might
be defined as that which has the distance from its
circumference to its centre everywhere equal. Third,
comes that which is drawn and rubbed out again, or
turned on a lathe and broken up—none of which things
can happen to the circle itself—to which the other things
mentioned have reference; for it IS something of a
different order from them. Fourth, comes knowledge,
intelligence and right opinion about these things. Under
this one head we must group everything which has its
existence, not in words nor in bodily shapes, but in souls
— from which it is clear that it is something different from
the nature of the circle itself and from the three things
mentioned before. Of these things intelligence comes
closest in kinship and likeness to the fifth, and the others
are farther distant.
The same applies to straight as well as to circular form,
to colours, to the good, the beautiful, the just, to all
bodies whether manufactured or coming into being in the
course of nature, to fire, water, and all such things, to
every living being, to character in souls, and to all things
done and suffered. For in the case of all these no one, if
he has not some how or other got hold of the four things
first mentioned, can ever be completely a partaker of
knowledge of the fifth. Further, on account of the
weakness of language, these (i.e., the four) attempt to
show what each thing is like, not less than what each
thing is. For this reason no man of intelligence will
venture to express his philosophical views in language,
especially not in language that is unchangeable, which is
true of that which is set down in written characters.
Plato, Seventh Letter
7 It does not appear to be true in all eases that correlatives
come into existence simultaneously. The object of
knowledge would appear to exist before knowledge itself,
for it is usually the ease that we acquire knowledge of
objects already existing; it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to find a branch of knowledge the beginning
of the existence of which was contemporaneous with that
of its object.
Again, while the object of knowledge, if it ceases to
exist, cancels at the same time the knowledge which was
its correlative, the converse of this is not true. It is true
that if the object of knowledge does not exist there can
be no knowledge: for there will no longer be anything to
know. Yet it is equally true that if the knowledge of a
certain object does not exist, the object may nevertheless
quite well exist. Thus, in the case of the squaring of the
circle, if indeed that process is an object of knowledge,
though it itself exists as an object of knowledge, yet the
knowledge of it has not yet come into existence. Again, if
all animals ceased to exist, there would be no knowledge,
but there might yet be many objects of knowledge.
Aristotle, Categories, 7b21
8 Knowledge, as a genus, is explained by reference to
something else, for we mean a knowledge of something.
But particular branches of knowledge are not thus
explained. The knowledge of grammar is not relative to
anything external, nor is the knowledge of music, but
these, if relative at all, are relative only in virtue of their
genera; thus grammar is said to be the knowledge of
something, not the grammar of something; similarly
music is the knowledge of something, not the music of
something.
Thus individual branches of knowledge are not
relative. And it is because we possess these individual
branches of knowledge that we are said to be such and
such. It is these that we actually possess: we are called
experts because we possess knowledge in some
particular branch.
Aristotle, Categories, 11a24
9 There is a difference between what is prior and better
known in the order of being and what is prior and better
known to man. | mean that objects nearer to sense are
prior and better known to man; objects without
qualification prior and better known are those further
from sense. Now the most universal causes are furthest
from sense and particular causes are nearest to sense,
and they are thus exactly opposed to one another.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71b34
10 It is hard to be sure whether one knows or not; for it is
hard to be sure whether one’s knowledge is based on the
basic truths appropriate to each attribute—the differentia
of true knowledge. We think we have scientific
knowledge if we have reasoned from true and primary
premisses. But that is not so: the conclusion must be
homogeneous with the basic facts of the science.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 76a26
11 In the case of all discoveries the results of previous
labours that have been handed down from others have
been advanced bit by bit by those who have taken them
on, whereas the original discoveries generally make an
advance that is small at first though much more useful
than the development which later springs out of them.
For it may be that in everything, as the saying is, ‘the
first start is the main part’: and for this reason also it is
the most difficult; for in proportion as it is most potent in
its influence, so it is smallest in its compass and therefore
most difficult to see: whereas when this is once
discovered, it is easier to add and develop the remainder
in connexion with it.
Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 183b17
12 When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have
principles, conditions, or elements, it is through
acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say
scientific knowledge, is attained. For we do not think that
we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary
conditions or first principles, and have carried our
analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly therefore
in the science of Nature, as in other branches of study,
our first task will be to try to determine what relates to its
principles.
The natural way of doing this is to start from the
things which are more knowable and obvious to us and
proceed towards those which are clearer and more
knowable by nature; for the same things are not
‘knowable relatively to us’ and ‘knowable’ without
qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow
this method and advance from what is more obscure by
nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and
more knowable by nature.
Aristotle, Physics, 184a10
13 All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is
the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from
their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above
all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to
action, but even when we are not going to do anything,
we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The
reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know
and brings to light many differences between things.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a1
14 For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things
are as they are, as they do about self-moving
marionettes, or about the solstices or the
incommensurability of the diagonal of a square with the
side; for it seems wonderful to all who have not yet seen
the reason, that there is a thing which cannot be
measured even by the smallest unit. But we must end in
the contrary and, according to the proverb, the better
state, as is the case in these instances too when men
learn the cause; for there is nothing which would surprise
a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be
commensurable.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983a13
15 It is absurd to seek at the same time knowledge and the
way of attaining knowledge; and it is not easy to get
even one of the two.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 995a13
16 Since men may know the same thing in many way's, we
say that he who recognizes what a thing is by its being so
and so knows more fully than he who recognizes it by its
not being so and so, and in the former class itself one
know-s more fully than another, and he knows most fully
who knows what a thing is, not he who knows its quantity
or quality or what it can by nature do or have done to it.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 996b14
17 That there is no science of the accidental is obvious; for
all science is either of that which is always or of that
which is for the most part. (For how else is one to learn or
to teach another? the thing must be determined as
occurring either always or for the most part, e.g. that
honey-water is useful for a patient in a fever is true for
the most part.) But that which is contrary to the usual law
science will be unable to state, i.e. when the thing does
not happen, e.g. 'on the day of new moon’; for even that
which happens on the day of new moon happens then
either always or for the most part; but the accidental is
contrary to such laws.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1027a19
18 What scientific knowledge is, if we are to speak exactly
and not follow mere similarities, is plain from what
follows. we all suppose that what we know is not even
capable of being otherwise; of things capable of being
otherwise we do not know, when they have passed
outside our observation, whether they exist or not.
Therefore the object of scientific knowledge is of
necessity. Therefore it is eternal; for things that are of
necessity in the unqualified sense are all eternal; and
things that are eternal are ungenerated and
imperishable. Again, every science is thought to be
capable of being taught, and its object of being learned.
And all teaching starts from what is already known, as we
maintain in the Analytics also; for it proceeds sometimes
through induction and sometimes by syllogism. Now
induction is the starting-point which knowledge even of
the universal presupposes, while syllogism proceeds,
from universals. There are therefore starting-points from
which syllogism proceeds, which are not reached by
syllogism; it is therefore by induction that they are
acquired. Scientific knowledge is, then, a state of
Capacity to demonstrate, and has the other limiting
characteristics which we specify in the Analytics, for it is
when a man believes in a certain way and the starting-
points are known to him that he has scientific knowledge,
since if they are not better known to him than the
conclusion, he will have his knowledge only incidentally.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1139b19
19 The fact that men use the language that flows from
knowledge proves nothing; for even men under the
influence of these passions utter scientific proofs and
verses of Empedocles, and those who have just begun to
learn a science can string together its phrases, but do not
yet know it; for it has to become part of themselves, and
that takes time.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1147a17
20 It is one thing ... to remember, another to know. To
remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your
memory, whereas to know, by contrast, is actually to
make each item your own, and not to be dependent on
some original and be constantly looking to see what the
master said,
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 33
21 Now as touching things offered unto idols, w’c know that
we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but
charity edifieth.
And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.
But if any man love God, the same is known of him,
! Corinthians 8:1-3
22 Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.
Plotinus, First Ennead, Il, 4
23 Yet, Lord God of truth, is any man pleasing to You for
knowing such things? Surely’ a man is unhappy even if
he knows all these things but does not know' You; and
that man is happy who knows You even though he knows
nothing of them, and the man who knows both You and
them is not the happier for them but only on account of
You: if Knowing You he glorifies You as You are and gives
thanks and does not become vain in his thoughts. For just
as he is better who knows he possesses a tree and gives
thanks to You for the use it is to him, although he does
not know how many cubits high it is or the width of its
spread, than another man who can measure it and
number its branches but neither possesses it nor knows
and loves Him who created it; so it would be absurd to
doubt that a true Christian— who in some sense
possesses all this world of riches and who having nothing
yet possesses all things by cleaving unto You whom all
things serve—is better though he does not cvxn know the
circles of the Great Bear than one who can measure the
heavens and number the stars and balance the elements,
if in all this he neglects You who have ordered alt things
in measure and number and weight.
Augustine, Confessions, V, 4
24 The knowledge of the creature is, in comparison of the
knowledge of the Creator, but a twilight; and so it dawns
and breaks into morning when the creature is drawn to
the praise and love of the Creator; and night never falls
when the Creator is not forsaken through love of the
creature.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 7
25 Certain it is that, though philosophers disagree regarding
the nature of things, and the mode of investigating truth,
and of the good to which all our actions ought to tend,
yet in these three great general questions all their
intellectual energy is spent. And though there bea
confusing diversity of opinion, every man striving to
establish his own opinion in regard to each of these
questions, yet no one of them all doubts that nature has
some cause, science some method, life some end and
aim. Then, again, there are three things which every
artificer must possess if he is to effect anything—nature,
education, practice. Nature is to be judged by capacity,
education by knowledge, practice by its fruit.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 25
26 In ourselves beholding His image, let us, like that
younger son of the gospel, come to ourselves, and arise
and return to Him from whom by our sin we had
departed. There our being will have no death, our
knowledge no error, our love no mishap.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 28
27 Owing to the liability of the human mind to fall into
mistakes, this very pursuit of knowledge may be a snare
to (man] unless he has a divine Master, whom he may
obey without misgiving, and who may at the same time
give him such help as to perserve his own freedom.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 14
28 | think that it is well to warn studious and able young
men, who fear God and are seeking for happiness of life,
not to venture heedlessly upon the pursuit of the
branches of learning that are in vogue beyond the pale of
the Church of Christ, as if these could secure for them the
happiness they seek; but soberly and carefully to
discriminate among them. And if they find any of those
which have been instituted by men varying by reason of
the varying pleasure of their founders, and unknown by
reason of erroneous conjectures, especially if they involve
entering into fellowship with devils by means of leagues
and covenants about signs, let these be utterly rejected
and held in detestation. Let the young men also withdraw
their attention from such institutions of men as are
unnecessary and luxurious. But for the sake of the
necessities of this life we must not neglect the
arrangements of men that enable us to carry on
intercourse with those around us. | think, however, there
is nothing useful in the other branches of learning that
are found among the heathen, except information about
objects, either past or present, that relate to the bodily
senses, in which are included also the experiments and
conclusions of the useful mechanical arts, except also the
sciences of reasoning and of numbers. And in regard to
all these we must hold by the maxim, "Not too much of
anything"; especially in the case of those which,
pertaining as they do to the senses, are subject to the
relations of space and time.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 39
29 When the student of the Holy Scriptures... shall enter
upon his investigations, let him constantly meditate upon
that saying of the apostle's, "Knowledge puffeth up, but
charity edifieth." For so he will feel that, whatever may be
the riches he brings with him out of Egypt, yet unless he
has kept the passover, he cannot be safe. Now Christ is
our passover sacrificed for us.... Let them remember,
then, that those who celebrated the passover at that time
in type and shadow, when they were ordered to mark
their door-posts with the blood of the lamb, used hyssop
to mark them with. Now this is a meek and lowly herb,
and yet nothing is stronger and more penetrating than its
roots; that being rooted and grounded in love, we may be
able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth,
and length, and depth, and height— that is, to
comprehend the cross of our Lord, the breadth of which is
indicated by the transverse wood on which the hands are
stretched, its length by the part from the ground up to
the cross-bar on which the whole body from the head
downwards is fixed, its height by the part from the cross-
bar to the top on which the head lies, and its depth by
the part which is hidden, being fixed in the earth. And by
this sign of the cross all Christian action is symbolized,
viz., to do good works in Christ, to ding with constancy to
Him, to hope for heaven, and not to desecrate the
sacraments. And purified by this Christian action, shall be
able to know even "the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge."
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 41
30 The brevity of our life, the dullness of our senses, the
torpor of our indifference, the futility of our occupation,
suffer us to know but little: and that little is soon shaken
and then tom from the mind by that traitor to learning,
that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory,
oblivion.
John of Salisbury, Prologue to the Policraticus
31 Our soul possesses two cognitive powers. One is the act
of any corporeal organ, which naturally knows things
existing in individual matter; hence sense knows only the
singular. But there Is another kind of cognitive power in
the soul, called the intellect, and this is not the act of any
corporeal organ. Therefore the intellect naturally knows
natures which have being only in individual matter; not
however as they are in individual matter, but according
as they are abstracted from it by the consideration of the
intellect. Hence it follows that through the intellect we
can understand things of this kind as universal, and this
is beyond the power of sense. Now the angelic intellect
naturally Knows natures not existing in matter; but this is
beyond the natural power of the intellect of our soul in
the state of its present life, united as it is to the body.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 12, 4
32 Each thing is known insofar as its likeness is in the one
who knows. Now this takes place in two ways. For since
things which are like one and the same thing are like
each other, the knowing power can be assimilated to any
knowable object in two ways. In one way it is assimilated
by the object itself, when it is directly informed by its
likeness, and then the object is known in itself. In another
way when informed by a species which resembles the
object; and in this way the knowledge is not of the thing
in itself, but of the thing in its likeness. For the
knowledge of a man in himself differs from the knowledge
of him in his image.
Aquinas, Summa Theological I, 12, 9
33 A thing is said to be comprehended when the end of the
knowledge of it is attained, and this is accomplished
when it is known as perfectly as it is knowable; as, for
instance, a demonstrable proposition is comprehended
when known by demonstration, but not, however, when it
is known by some probable reason.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 14, 3
34 As the Philosopher [Aristotle] says, "one knowledge is
preferable to another, either because it is about a higher
object, or because it is more certain." Hence if the subject
be equally good and sublime, that virtue will be the
greater which "possesses more certain knowledge. But a
virtue which is less certain about a higher and better
object, is preferable to that which is more certain about
an object of inferior degree. Hence the Philosopher says
that it is a great thing to be able to know something
about celestial beings, though it be based on weak and
probable reasoning; and again, that it is better to knowa
little about sublime things, than much about mean
things. Accordingly wisdom, to which knowledge about
God pertains, is beyond the reach of man, especially in
this life, so as to be his possession, for this belongs to
God alone; and yet this little knowledge about God which
we can have through wisdom is preferable to all other
knowledge.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 14, 5
35 Some knowledge is speculative only, some is practical
only, and some is partly speculative and partly practical.
In proof of this it must be observed that knowledge can
be called speculative in three ways. First, on the part of
the things known, which are not operable by the knower;
such is the knowledge of man about natural or divine
things. Secondly, as regards the manner of knowing—as,
for instance, if a builder consider a house by defining and
dividing, and considering what belongs to it in general,
for this is to consider operable things in a speculative
manner, and not as they are operable; for operable
means the application of form to matter, and not the
resolution of the composite into its universal formal
principles. Thirdly, as regards the end; "for the practical
intellect differs in its end from the speculative," as the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says. For the practical intellect is
ordered to the end of the operation, whereas the end of
the speculative intellect is the consideration of truth.
Hence if a builder should consider how a house can be
made, not ordering this to the end of operation, but only
to know (how to do it), this would be only a speculative
consideration as regards the end, although it concerns an
operable thing. Therefore knowledge which is speculative
by reason of the thing itself known, is merely speculative.
But that which is speculative either in its mode or as to
its end is partly speculative and partly practical; and
when it is ordered to an operative end it is simply
practical.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 14, 16
36 The intellect Knows principles naturally; and this
knowledge in man causes the knowledge of conclusions,
which are known by him not naturally, but by discovery,
or by teaching.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 60, 2
37 Knowledge is loved not that any good may come to it but
that it may be possessed.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 60, 3
38 The action of the intellect consists in this—that the
notion of the thing understood is in the one who
understands, while the act of the will consists in this—
that the will is inclined to the thing itself as it is in itself.
And therefore the Philosopher [Aristotle] says in the
Metaphysics that good and evil, which are objects of the
will, are in things, but truth and error, which are objects
of the intellect, are in the mind. When, therefore, the
thing in which there is good is nobler than the soul itself,
in which is the idea understood, by comparison with such
a thing the will is higher than the intellect. But when the
thing which is good is less noble than the soul, then even
in comparison with that thing the intellect is higher than
the will. Therefore the love of God is better than the
knowledge of God; but, on the contrary, the knowledge of
corporeal things is better than the love of them.
Absolutely, however, the intellect is nobler than the will.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 82, 3
39 Material things known must exist in the knower not
materially, but immaterially. The reason of this is because
the act of knowledge extends to things outside the
knower, for we also know’ the things that are outside us.
Now by matter the form of a thing is determined to some
one thing. Therefore it is clear that knowledge is in
inverse ratio to materiality. And consequently things that
are not receptive of forms save materially, have no power
of knowledge whatever—such as plants, as the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says. But the more immaterially a
thing has the form of the thing known, the more perfect is
its knowledge. Therefore the intellect which abstracts the
species not only from matter, but also from the
individuating conditions of matter, has more perfect
knowledge than the senses, which receive the form of the
thing known, without matter indeed, but subject to
material conditions. Moreover, among the senses, sight
has the most perfect knowledge because it is the least
material... while among intellects the more perfect is the
more immaterial.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 84, 2
40 Plato held that naturally man's intellect is filled with all
intelligible species, but that, by being united to the body,
it is hindered from the realization of its act. But this
seems to be wrong. First, because, if the soul has a
natural knowledge of all things, it seems impossible for
the soul so far to forget this natural knowledge as not to
know that it has it. For no man forgets what he knows
naturally; that, for instance, every whole is larger than
the part, and the like. And especially unreasonable does
this seem if we suppose that it is natural to the soul to be
united to the body . , . for it is unreasonable that the
natural operation of a thing be totally hindered by that
which belongs to it naturally. Secondly, the falseness of
this opinion is clearly proved from the fact that if a sense
be wanting, the knowledge of what is apprehended
through that sense is wanting also; for instance, a man
who is born blind can have no knowledge of colours. This
would not be the case if the soul had innate species of all
intelligible things. We must therefore conclude that the
soul does not know corporeal things through innate
species.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 84, 3
41 Good is the cause of love, as being its object. But good is
not the object of the appetite, except as apprehended.
And therefore love demands some apprehension of the
good that is loved.... Accordingly knowledge is the cause
of love for the same reason as good is, which can be
loved only if Known.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 27, 2
42 Something is required for the perfection of knowledge
that is not requisite for the perfection of love. For
knowledge pertains to the reason, whose function
consists in distinguishing things which in reality are
rmited, and in uniting together, after a fashion, things
that are distinct, by comparing one with another.
Consequently the perfection of knowledge requires that
man should know one by one all that is in a thing, such
as its parts, powers, and properties. On the other hand,
love is in the appetitive power, which regards a thing as it
is in itself; therefore it suffices, for the perfection of love,
that a thing be loved according as it is apprehended in
itself. Hence it is, therefore, that a thing is loved more
than it is Known, since it can be loved perfectly, even
without being perfectly known. This is most evident in
regard to the sciences, which some love through having a
certain summary knowledge of them; for instance, thc>’
know that rhetoric is a science that enables man to
persuade others, and this is what they love in rhetoric.
The same applies to the love of God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 27, 2
43 As saith the Philosopher [Aristotle] in the beginning of
the First Philosophy, ‘All men by nature desire to know’;
the reason whereof may be, that each thing, impelled by
its own natural foresight, inclines to its owm perfection;
wherefore, inasmuch as knowledge is the distinguishing
perfection of our soul, wherein consists our distinguishing
blessedness, all of us are naturally subject to the longing
for it.
Dante, Convivio, I, 1
44 Before Noah’s flood the world was highly learned, by
reason men lived a long time, and so attained great
experience and wisdom; now, ere we begin rightly to
come to the true knowledge of a thing, we lie down and
die. God will not have it that we should attain a higher
knowledge of things.
Luther, Table Talk, H160
45 In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality;
those who despise it give evidence enough of their
stupidity. But yet | do not set its value at that extreme
measure that some attribute to it, like Herillus the
philosopher, who placed in it the sovereign good, and
held that it was in its power to make us wise and content.
That | do not believe, nor what others have said, that
knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and that all vice is
produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a
long interpretation.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
46 Leonles. How blest am |
In my just censure, in my true opinion!
Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accursed
In being so blest! There may be in the cup
A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected; but if one present
The abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides.
With violent hefts. | have drunk, and seen the spider.
Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, Il, i, 36
47 The contemplation of God’s creatures and works
produced! (having regard to the works and creatures
themselves) knowledge, but having regard to God, no
perfect knowledge, but wonder which is broken
knowledge.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, |, 3
48 The commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the
commandment over the will: for it is a commandment
over the reason, belief, and understanding of man, which
is the highest part of the mind, and giveth law to the will
itself. For there is no power on earth which setteth up a
throne or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men,
and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and
beliefs, but knowledge and learning.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, VIII, 3
49 Let this be a rule, that all partitions of knowledges be
accepted rather for lines and veins than for sections and
separations; and that the continuance and cntircncss of
knowledge be preserved. For the contrary hereof hath
made particular sciences to become barren, shallow, and
erroneous, while they have not been nourished and
maintained from the common fountain.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, 1X, 1
50 Howbeit (if we will truly consider of it) more worthy it is
to believe than to know as we now know. For in
knowledge man’s mind suffereth from sense; but in belief
it suffereth from spirit, such one as it holdeth for more
authorized than itself, and so suffereth from the worthier
agent. Otherwise it is of the state of man glorified; for
then faith shall cease, and we shall know as we are
known.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XXV, 2
51 The human understanding, when any proposition has
been once laid down (either from general admission and
belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything
else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although
most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the
contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or
gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with
violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the
authority of its first conclusions.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 46
52 How much more exalted will that discovery be, which
leads to the easy discovery of everything else! Yet (to
speak the truth) in the same manner as we are very
thankful for light which enables us to enter on our way, to
practise arts, to read, to distinguish each other, and yet
sight is more excellent and beautiful than the various
uses of light; so is the contemplation of things as they
are, free from superstition or imposture, error or
confusion, much more dignified in itself than all the
advantage to be derived from discoveries.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 129
53 Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move
me: for though | cannot accuse myself that | am either
prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my
course to get. Lastly, | confess that | have as vast
contemplative ends, as | have moderate civil ends: for |
have taken all Knowledge to be my province; and if |
could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with
frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the
other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and
impostures, hath committed so many spoils, | hope |
should bring in industrious observations, grounded
conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries;
the best state of that province.
Bacon, Letter to Lord Burghley (1592)
54 In the subjects we propose to investigate, our inquiries
should be directed, not to what others have thought, nor
to what we ourselves conjecture, but to what we can
clearly and perspicuously behold and with certainty
deduce; for knowledge is not won in any other way.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, III
55 Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be
known of everything, we ought to know a little about
everything. For it is far better to know something about
everything than to know all about one thing. This
universality is the best. If we can have both, still better;
but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former.
And the world feels this and does so; for the world is often
a good judge.
Pascal, Pensées, |, 37
56 Our intellect holds the same position in the world of
thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.
Limited as we are in every way, this state which holds
the mean between two extremes is present in all our
impotence. Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much
sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great
distance or proximity hinders our view. Too great length
and too great brevity of discourse tend to obscurity; too
much truth is paralysing (I Know some who cannot
understand that to take four from nothing leaves
nothing). First principles are too self-evident for us; too
much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are
annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish
to have the wherewithal to overpay our debts.... We feel
neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Excessive
qualities are prejudicial to us and not perceptible by the
senses; we do not feel but suffer them. Extreme youth
and extreme age hinder the mind, as also too much and
too little education. In short, extremes are for us as
though they were not, and we are not within their notice.
They escape us, or we them.
This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable
of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail
within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven
from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to
any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and
if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and
vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural
condition and yet most contrary to our inclination; we
burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure
foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the
Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth
opens to abysses.
Let us, therefore, not look for certainty and stability.
Our reason is always deceived by fickle shadows; nothing
can fix die finite between the two Infinites, which both
enclose and fly from it.
If this be well understood, | think that we shall remain
at rest, each in the state wherein nature has placed him.
As this sphere which has fallen to us as our lot is always
distant from either extreme, what matters it that man
should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he
has it, he but gets a little higher. Is he not always
infinitely removed from the end, and is not the duration
of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it lasts
ten years longer?
In comparison with these Infinites, all finites are equal,
and | see no reason for fixing our imagination on one
more than on another. The only comparison which we
make of ourselves to the finite is painful to us.
Pascal, Pensees, Il, 72
57 We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the
knowledge in the land, to mark and licence it like our
broadcloth and our woolpacks.
Milton, Areopagitica
58 We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the Sun
itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern those
planets that are oft combust, and those stars of brightest
magnitude that rise and set with the Sun, until the
opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place
in the firmament, where they may be seen evening or
morning? The light which we have gained was given us,
not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward
things more remote from our knowledge.
Milton, Areopagitica
59 To be still searching what we know not by what we know,
still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body
is homogeneal and proportional), this is the golden rule
in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the
best harmony in a Church; not the forced and outward
union of cold and neutral, and inwardly divided minds.
Milton, Areopagitica
60 A person who knows anything, by that very fact knows
that he knows, and knows that he knows that he knows,
and so ad infinitum.
Spinoza, Ethics, 11, Prop, 21, Schol.
61 All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but
efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses
reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself excepting
that which conduces to understanding.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 26
62 We do not know that anything is certainly good or evil
excepting that which actually conduces to
understanding, or which can prevent us from
understanding.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop, 27
63 The highest good of the mind is the knowledge of God,
and the highest virtue of the mind is to know God.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 28
64 Faith. There is... knowledge and knowledge. Knowledge
that resteth in the bare speculation of things, and
knowledge that is accompanied with the grace of faith
and love, which puts a man upon doing even the will of
God from the heart: the first of these will serve the Talker,
but without the other the true Christian is not content.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, |
65 He that hawks at larks and sparrows has no less sport,
though a much less considerable quarry, than he that
flies at nobler game: and he is little acquainted with the
subject of this treatise—the understanding—who does
not know that, as it is the most elevated faculty of the
soul, so it is employed with a greater and more constant
delight than any of the other. Its searches after truth are
a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit
makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind
takes in its progress towards Knowledge makes some
discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the
time at least.
For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects
only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased with what it
discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it,
because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself
above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on
scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on
work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he lights on)
not miss the hunter’s satisfaction; every moment of his
pursuit will reward his pains with some delight; and he
will have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when
he cannot much boast of any great acquisition.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Epistle to the
Reader
66 Though the comprehension of our understandings comes
exceeding short of the vast extent of things, yet we shall
have cause enough to magnify the bountiful Author of
our being, for that proportion and degree of knowledge
he has bestowed on us, so far above all the rest of the
inhabitants of this our mansion. Men have reason to be
well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them,
since he hath given them... whatsoever is necessary for
the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and
has put within the reach of their discovery, the
comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads
to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come
of a universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is,
it yet secures their great concernments, that they have
light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their
Maker, and the sight of their own duties. ... It will be no
excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not
attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had
not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us shines
bright enough for all our purposes. The discoveries we
can make with this ought to satisfy us; and we shall then
use our understandings right, when we entertain all
objects in that way and proportion that they are suited to
our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of
being proposed to us; and not peremptorily or
intemperately require demonstration, and demand
certainty, where probability only is to be had, and which
is sufficient to govern all our concernments. If we will
disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know
all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who
would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he
had no wings to fly.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings, Intro.
67 Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath
no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it
alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our
knowledge is only conversant about them.. .. Knowledge
then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the
connexion of and agreement, or disagreement and
repugnancy of any of our ideas. |n this alone it consists.
Where this perception is, there is knowledge, and where
it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe,
yet we always come short of knowledge.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Bk. IV, I, 1-2
68 The knowledge of our own being we have by intuition.
The existence of a God, reason clearly makes known to
us, aS has been shown.
The knowledge of the existence of any other thing we
can have only by sensation: for there being no necessary
connexion of real existence with any idea aman hath in
his memory; nor of any other existence but that of God
with the existence of any particular man: no particular
man can know the existence of any other being, but only
when, by actual operating upon him, it makes itself
perceived by him. For, the having the idea of anything in
our mind, no more proves the existence of that thing,
than the picture of a man evidences his being in the
world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a true
history.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XI, 1
69 We should believe that God has dealt more bountifully
with the sons of men than to give them a strong desire for
that knowledge which he had placed quite out of their
reach.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Intro., 3
70 It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects
of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually
imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by
attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or
lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination—
either compounding, dividing, or barely representing
those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight
| have the ideas of light and colours, with their several
degrees and variations. By touch | perceive hard and soft,
heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these
more and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling
furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and
hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of
tone and composition. And as several of these are
observed to accompany each other, they come to be
marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing.
Thus, for example a certain colour, taste, smell, figure
and consistence having been observed to go together,
are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name
apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree,
a book, and the like sensible things—which as they are
pleasing or disagreeable excite the passions of love,
hatred, joy, grief, and so forth.
But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects
of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or
perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as
willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This
perceiving, active being is what | call mind, spirit, soul, or
myself. By which words | do not denote any one of my
ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein,
they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are
perceived—for the existence of an idea consists in being
perceived.
That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas
formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is
what everybody will allow. And it seems no less evident
that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the
sense, however blended or combined together (that is,
whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise
than in a mind perceiving them.—I think an intuitive
knowledge may be obtained of this by any one That shall
attend to what is meant by the term exists, when applied
to sensible things. The table | write on | say exists, that is,
| see and feel it; and if | were out of my study | should say
it existed—meaning thereby that if | was in my study |
might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does
perceive it. There was an odour, that is, it was smelt;
there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure,
and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that |
can understand by these and the like expressions. For as
to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking
things without any relation to their being perceived, that
seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percepi, nor
is it possible they should have any existence out of the
minds or thinking things which perceive them.
It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst
men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all
sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real,
distinct from their being perceived by the understanding.
But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence
soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet
whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may,
if | mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest
contradiction. For, what are the forementioned objects
but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we
perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it
not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any
combination of them, should exist unperceived?
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 1-4
71 As several gentlemen in these times, by the wonderful
force of genius only, without the least assistance of
learning, perhaps without being well able to read, have
made a considerable figure in the republic of letters; the
modern critics, | am told, have lately begun to assert, that
all kind of learning is entirely useless to a writer; and,
indeed, no other than a kind of fetters on the natural
sprightliness and activity of the imagination, which is
thus weighed down, and prevented from soaring to those
high flights which otherwise it would be able to reach.
This doctrine, | am afraid, is at present carried much
too far: for why should writing differ so much from all
other arts? The nimbleness of a dancing-master is not at
all prejudiced by being taught to move; nor doth any
mechanic, | believe exercise his tools the worse by having
learnt to use them. For my own part, | cannot conceive
that Homer or Virgil would have writ with more fire, if,
instead of being masters of all the learning of their times,
they had been as ignorant as most of the authors of the
present age. Nor do | believe that all the imagination, fire,
and judgment of Pitt, could have produced those orations
that have made the senate of England, in these our
times, a rival in eloguence to Greece and Rome, if he had
not been so well read in the writings of Demosthenes and
Cicero, as to have transferred their whole spirit into his
speeches, and, with their spirit, their knowledge too.
| would not here be understood to insist on the same
fund of learning in any of my brethren, as Cicero
persuades us is necessary to the composition of an orator.
On the contrary, very little reading is, | conceive,
necessary to the poet, less to the critic, and the least of
all to the politician. For the first, perhaps, Byshe’s Art of
Poetry, and a few of our modem poets, may suffice; for
the second, a moderate heap of plays; and, for the last,
an indifferent collection of political journals.
To say the truth, | require no more than that a man
should have some little knowledge of the subject on
which he treats, according to the old maxim of law, Quam
gquisque norit artem in ea se exerceat. With this alone a
writer may sometimes do tolerably well; and, indeed,
without this, all the other learning in the world will stand
him in little stead.
For instance, let us suppose that Homer and Virgil,
Aristotle and Cicero, Thucydides and Livy, could have
met all together, and have clubbed their several talents
to have composed a treatise on the art of dancing: |
believe it will be readily agreed they could not have
equalled the excellent treatise which Mr. Essex hath
given us on that subject, entitled, The Rudiments of
Genteel Education. And, indeed, should the excellent Mr.
Broughton be prevailed on to set fist to paper, and to
complete the above-said rudiments, by delivering down
the true principles of athletics, | question whether the
world will have any cause to lament, that none of the
great writers, either antient or modem, have ever treated
about that noble and useful art.
To avoid a multiplicity of examples in so plain a case,
and to come at once to my point, | am apt to conceive,
that one reason why many English writers have totally
failed in describing the manners of upper life, may
possibly be, that in reality they know nothing of it.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XIV, 1
72 Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from
science his proper food and nourishment: But so narrow
are the bounds of human understanding, that little
satisfaction can be hoped for in this particular, either
from the extent of security or his acquisitions. Man is a
sociable, no less than a reasonable being: But neither can
he always enjoy company agreeable and amusing, or
preserve the proper relish for them. Man is also an active
being; and from that disposition, as well as from the
various necessities of human life, must submit to
business and occupation: But the mind requires some
relaxation, and cannot always support its bent to care
and industry. It seems, then, that nature has pointed out
a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race,
and secretly admonished them to allow none of these
biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for
other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your
passion for science, says she, but let your science be
human, and such as may have a direct reference to action
and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches |
prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive
melancholy which they introduce, by the endless
uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold
reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet
with, when communicated.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings I, 4
73 The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads
through the avenues of science and learning; and
whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way,
or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be
esteemed a benefactor to mankind. And though these
researches may appear painful and fatiguing, it is with
some minds as with some bodies, which being endowed
with vigorous and florid health, require severe exercise,
and reap a pleasure from what, to the generality of
mankind, may seem burdensome and laborious.
Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the
eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever
labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings, I, 6
74 What though these reasonings concerning human nature
seem abstract, and of difficult comprehension? This
affords no presumption of their falsehood. On the
contrary, it seems impossible, that what has hitherto
escaped so many wise and profound philosophers can be
very obvious and easy. And whatever pains these
researches may cost us, we may think ourselves
sufficiently rewarded, not only in point of profit but of
pleasure, if, by that means, we can make any addition to
our stock of knowledge, in subjects of such unspeakable
importance.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings, I, 10
75 Whatever moralists may hold, the human understanding
is greatly indebted to the passions, which, it is universally
allowed, are also much indebted to the understanding. It
is by the activity of the passions that our reason is
improved; for we desire knowledge only because we wish
to enjoy; and it is impossible to conceive any reason why
a person who has neither fears nor desires should give
himself the trouble of reasoning.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
76 Knowledge, for most of those who cultivate it, is only a
kind of money. They value it greatly, but only in
proportion as it is Communicated; it is good only in
commerce. Take from the learned the pleasure of being
listened to, and knowledge would cease to be anything to
them.
Rousseau, La Nouvelle Heloise, X1/
77 There are... many subjects of study which seem but
remotely allied to useful knowledge and of little
importance to happiness or virtue; nor is it easy to
forbear some sallies of merriment or expressions of pity
when we see a man wrinkled with attention and
emaciated with solicitude in the investigation of
questions of which, without visible inconvenience, the
world may expire in ignorance.
Johnson, Rambler No. 83
78 Knowledge always desires increase: it is like fire, which
must first be kindled by some external agent, but which
will afterwards propagate itself.
Johnson, Letter to William Drummond (Aug. 13, 1766)
79 Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes. And pause
awhile from letters, to be wise.
Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 157
80 "Sir, (Said he [Johnson]) a desire of knowledge is the
natural feeling of mankind; and every human being,
whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all
that he has to get knowledge."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 30, 1763)
81 He [Johnson] observed, "All knowledge is of itself of some
value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that |
would not rather know it than not. In the same manner,
all power, of whatever sort, is of itself desirable. A man
would not submit to learn to hem a ruffle, of his wife, or
his wife's maid; but if a mere wish could attain it, he
would rather wish to be able to hem a ruffle."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 14, 1775)
82 Mathematical science affords us a brilliant example, how
far, independently of all experience, we may carry our a
priori knowledge. It is true that the mathematician
occupies himself with objects and cognitions only in so
far as they can be represented by means of intuition. But
this circumstance is easily overlooked, because the said
intuition can itself be given a priori, and therefore is
hardly to be distinguished from a mere pure conception.
Deceived by such a proof of the power of reason, we can
perceive no limits to the extension of our knowledge. The
light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose
resistance it feels, might imagine that her movements
would be far more free and rapid in airless space. Just in
the same way did Plato, abandoning the world of sense
because of the narrow limits it sets to the understanding,
venture upon the wings of ideas beyond it, into the void
space of pure intellect. He did not reflect that he made no
real progress by all his efforts; for he met with no
resistance which might serve him for a support, as it
were, whereon to rest, and on which he might apply his
powers, in order to let the intellect acquire momentum for
its progress. It is, indeed, the common fate of human
reason in speculation, to finish the imposing edifice of
thought as rapidly as possible, and then for the first time
to begin to examine whether the foundation is a solid one
or no. Arrived at this point, all sorts of excuses are sought
after, in order to console us for its want of stability, or
rather, indeed, to enable us to dispense altogether with
so late and dangerous an investigation.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, III
83 All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to
understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which
nothing higher can be discovered in the human mind for
elaborating the matter of intuition and subjecting it to
the highest unity of thought.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
84 It is a maxim universally admitted in geometry, and
indeed in every branch of knowledge, that, in the
progress of investigation, we should proceed from known
facts to what is unknown. In early infancy, our ideas
spring from our wants; the sensation of want excites the
idea of the object by which it is to be gratified. In this
manner, from a series of sensations, observations, and
analyses, a successive train of ideas arises, so linked
together that an attentive observer may trace back toa
certain point the order and connection of the whole sum
of human knowledge.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Pref.
85 Faust. |’'ve studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,
And even, alas! Theology
All through and through with ardour keen!
Here now | stand, poor fool, and see
I'm just as wise as formerly.
Am called a Master, even Doctor too,
And now I’ve nearly ten years through
Pulled my students by their noses to and fro
And up and down, across, about,
And see there’s nothing we can know!
That all but burns my heart right out.
Goethe, Faust, |, 354
86 Wagner. But, ah, the world! the mind and heart of men!
Of these we each would fain know something just the
same.
Faust. Yes, "Know"! Men call it so, but then
Who dares to call the child by its right name?
The few who have some part of it descried,
Yet fools enough to guard not their full hearts, revealing
To riffraff both their insight and their feeling,
Men have of old burned at the stake and crucified.
Goethe, Faust, |, 586
87 Ist Destiny. Knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.
Byron, Manfred, II, iv, 431
88 It is... the wish for rational insight, not the ambition to
amass a mere heap of acquirements, that should be
presupposed in every case as possessing the mind of the
learner in the study of science.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
89 Knowledge is the knowing that we can not know.
Emerson, Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
90 Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers,
Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 141
91 Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
Tennyson, In Memoriam, CXIV
92 What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a
conceit that we know something, which robs us of the
advantage of our actual ignorance?
Thoreau, Walking
93 In science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct,
and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of
the latter.
T. H. Huxley, A Lobster, or The Study of Zoology
94 The nature of our mind leads us to seek the essence or
the why of things. Thus we aim beyond the goal that it is
given us to reach; for experience soon teaches us that we
cannot get beyond the how, i.e., beyond the immediate
cause or the necessary conditions of phenomena.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, Il, 1
95 The nature or very essence of phenomena, whether vital
or mineral, will always remain unknown. The essence of
the simplest mineral phenomenon is as completely
unknown to chemists and physicists to-day as is the
essence of intellectual phenomena or of any other vital
phenomenon to physiologists. That, moreover, is easy to
apprehend; knowledge of the inmost nature or the
absolute, in the simplest phenomenon, would demand
knowledge of the whole universe; for every phenomenon
of the universe is evidently a sort of radiation from that
universe to whose harmony it contributes. In living bodies
absolute truth would be still harder to attain; because,
besides implying knowledge of the universe outside a
living body, it would also demand complete knowledge of
the Organism which, as we have long been saying, iS a
little world (microcosm) in the great universe
(macrocosm). Absolute knowledge could, therefore, leave
nothing outside itself; and only on condition of knowing
everything could man be granted its attainment. Man
behaves as if he were destined to reach this absolute
knowledge; and the incessant why which he puts to
nature proves it. Indeed, this hope, constantly
disappointed, constantly reborn, sustains and always will
sustain successive generations in the passionate search
for truth.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, Il, 1
96 The communication of knowledge certainly is either a
condition or the means of that sense of enlargement or
enlightenment, of which at this day we hear so much in
certain quarters: this cannot be denied; but next, it is
equally plain, that such communication is not the whole
of the process. The enlargement consists, not merely in
the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas
hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind’s energetic and
simultaneous action upon and towards and among those
new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action of
a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the
matter of our acquirements; it is a making the objects of
our knowledge subjectively our own, or, to use a familiar
word, it is a digestion of what we receive, into the
substance of our previous state of thought; and without
this no enlargement is said to follow. There is no
enlargement, unless there be a comparison of ideas one
with another, as they come before the mind, anda
systematizing of them. We feel our minds to be growing
and expanding then, when we not only learn, but refer
what we learn to what we know already. It is not Ae mere
addition to our knowledge that is the illumination; but
the locomotion, the movement onwards, of that mental
centre, to which both what we know, and what we are
learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements,
gravitates. And therefore a truly great intellect, and
recognized to be such by the common opinion of
mankind, such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St.
Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe (I purposely take
instances within and without the Catholic pale, when |
would speak of the intellect as such), is one which takes a
connected view of old and new, past and present, far and
near, and which has an insight into the influence of all
these one on another; without which there is no whole,
and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of
things, but also of their mutual and true relations;
knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement, but as
philosophy.
Newman, Idea of a University, Discourse VI
97 It is as easy by taking thought to add a cubit to one’s
stature, as it is to produce an idea acceptable to any of
the Muses by merely straining for it, before it is ready to
come. We haunt in vain the sacred well and throne of
Mnemosyne; the deeper workings of the spirit take place
in their own slow way, without our connivance. Let but
their bugle sound, and we may then make our effort, sure
of an oblation for the altar of whatsoever divinity its savor
gratifies. Beside this inward process, there is the
operation of the environment, which goes to break up
habits destined to be broken up and so to render the
mind lively. Everybody knows that the long continuance
of a routine of habit make us lethargic, while a succession
of surprises wonderfully brightens the ideas. Where there
iS a motion, where history is a-making, there is the focus
of mental activity, and it has been said that the arts and
sciences reside within the temple of Janus, waking when
that is open, but slumbering when it is closed.
C. S. Peirce, Evolutionary Love
98 Better know nothing than half-know many things!
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, IV, 64
99 The psychologist's attitude towards cognition ... is a
thorough-going dualism. \t supposes two elements, mind
knowing and thing known, and treats them as irreducible.
Neither gets out of itself or into the other, neither in any
way is the other, neither makes the other. They just stand
face to face in a common world, and one simply knows, or
is Known unto, its counterpart. This singular relation is
not to be expressed in any lower terms, or translated into
any more intelligible name. Some sort of signal must be
given by the thing to the mind’s brain, or the knowing
will not occur—we find as a matter of fact that the mere
existence of a thing outside the brain is not a sufficient
cause for our knowing it; it must strike the brain in some
way, as well as be there, to be known. But the brain being
struck, the knowledge is constituted by a new
construction that occurs altogether in the mind. The
thing remains the same whether known or not. And when
once there, the knowledge may remain there, whatever
becomes of the thing.
William James, Psychology, VIII
100 There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and
practically distinguishable; we may call them
respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-
about. ... | am acquainted with many people and things,
which | know very little about, except their presence in
the places where | have met them. | Know the color blue
when | see it, and the flavor of a pear when | taste it! |
know an inch when | move my finger through it; a second
of time, when | feel it pass; an effort of attention when |
make it; a difference between two things when | notice it;
but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes
them what they are, | can say nothing at all. | cannot
impart acquaintance with them to any one who has not
already made it himself. | cannot describe them, make a
blind man guess what blue is like, define to a child a
syllogism, or tell a philosopher in just what respect
distance is just what it is, and differs from other forms of
relation. At most, | can say to my friends, Go to certain
places and act in certain ways, and these objects will
probably come. All the elementary natures of the world,
its highest genera, the simple qualities of matter and
mind, together with the kinds of relation that subsist
between them, must either not be known at all, or Known
in this dumb way of acquaintance without knowledge-
about In minds able to speak at all there is, it is true,
some knowledge about everything. Things can at least be
classed, and the times of their appearance told. But in
general, the less we analyze a thing, and the fewer of its
relations we perceive, the less we know about it and the
more our familiarity with it is of the acquaintance-type.
The two kinds of knowledge are, therefore, as the human
mind practically exerts them, relative terms. That is, the
same thought of a thing may be called knowledge-about
it in comparison with a simpler thought, or acquaintance
with it in comparison with a thought of it that is more
articulate and explicit still.
The grammatical sentence expresses this. Its "subject"
stands for an object of acquaintance which, by the
addition of the predicate, is to gel something known
about it. We may already know a good deal, when we
hear the subject named—its name may have rich
connotations. But, Know we much or little then, we know
more still when the sentence is done. We can relapse at
will into a mere condition of acquaintance with an object
by scattering our attention and staring at it in a vacuous
trance-like way. we can ascend to knowledge about it by
rallying our wits and proceeding to notice and analyze
and think. What we are only acquainted with is only
present to our minds; we have it, or the idea of it. But
when we know about it, we do more than merely have it;
we seem, as we think over its relations, to subject it toa
sort of treatment and to operate upon it with our thought.
The words feeling and thought give voice to the
antithesis. Through feelings we become acquainted with
things, but only by our thoughts do we know about them.
Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition,
thoughts the developed tree. The minimum of
grammatical subject, of objective presence, of reality
known about, the mere beginning of knowledge, must be
named by the word that says the least. Such a word is the
interjection, as /o! there! ecce! voila! or the article or
demonstrative pronoun introducing the sentence, as the,
it, that.
William James, Psychology, VIII
101 Common sense appears ... as a perfectly definite stage
in our understanding of things, a stage that satisfies in an
extraordinarily successful way the purposes for which we
think. ‘Things’ do exist, even when we do not see them.
Their ‘kinds’ also exist. Their ‘qualities’ are what they act
by, and are what we act on; and these also exist. These
lamps shed their quality of light on every object in this
room. we intercept it on its way whenever we hold up an
Opaque screen. It is the very sound that my lips emit that
travels into your cars. It is the sensible heat of the fire
that migrates into the water in which we boil an egg; and
we can change the heat into coolness by dropping ina
lump of ice. At this stage of philosophy all non-European
men without exception have remained. It suffices for all
the necessary practical ends of life; and, among our race
even, it is only the highly sophisticated specimens, the
minds debauched by learning, as Berkeley calls them,
who have ever even suspected common sense of not
being absolutely true.
But when we look back, and speculate as to how the
common-sense categories may have achieved their
wonderful supremacy, no reason appears why it may not
have been by a process just like that by which the
conceptions due to Democritus, Berkeley, or Darwin,
achieved their similar triumphs in more recent times. In
other words, they may have been successfully discovered
by prehistoric geniuses whose names the night of
antiquity has covered up; they may have been verified by
the immediate facts of experience which they first fitted;
and then from fact to fact and from man to man they may
have spread, until all language rested on them and we
are now incapable of thinking naturally in any other
terms. Such a view would only follow the rule that has
proved elsewhere so fertile, of assuming the vast and
remote to conform to the law’s of formation that we can
observe at work in the small and near.
William James, Pragmatism, V
102 | maintain that the notion of ‘mere knowledge’ is a high
abstraction which we should dismiss from our minds.
Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of
emotion and purpose. Also we must remember that there
are grades in the generality of ideas. Thus a general idea
occurs in history in special forms determined by peculiar
circumstances of race and of stage of civilization. The
higher generalities rarely receive any accurate verbal
expression.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, |, 1
103 It is unconsciously assumed, as a premiss for a reductio
ad absurdum of the analytic view, that, if A and B are
immediate data, and A differs from B, then the fact that
they differ must also be an immediate datum. It is
difficult to say how this assumption arose, but | think it is
to be connected with the confusion between
“acquaintance” and "knowledge about." Acquaintance,
which is what we derive from sense, does not,
theoretically at least, imply even the smallest "knowledge
about," i.e. it does not imply knowledge of any
proposition concerning the object with which we are
acquainted. It is a mistake to speak as if acquaintance
had degrees: there is merely acquaintance and non-
acquaintance. When 'vc speak of Ijccom-ing "better
acquainted," as for instance with a person, what we must
mean is, becoming acquainted with more parts of a
certain whole; but the acquaintance with each part is
either complete or non-existent. Thus it is a mistake to
say that if we were perfectly acquainted with an object
we should know all about it. "Knowledge about" is
knowledge of propositions, which is not involved
necessarily in acquaintance with the constituents of the
propositions. To know that two shades of colour are
different is knowledge about them; hence acquaintance
with the two shades does not in any way necessitate the
knowledge that they are different.
Russell, Theory of Continuity
104 From the point of view of knowledge, though not of
logic, there is an important difference between positive
and negative general propositions, namely that some
general negative propositions seem to result from
observation as directly as "This is not blue". ... In Through
the Looking Glass, the king says to Alice, "Who do you
see coming along the road?" and she replies, "I see
nobody coming," to which the king retorts, "What good
eyes you must have! It’s as much as | can do to see
somebody by this light." The point, for us, is that "I see
nobody" is 710/ equivalent to "| do not see somebody."
The latter statement is true if my eyes are shut, and
affords no evidence that there is not somebody; but when
| say, "| see nobody," | mean, "I see, but | do not see
somebody," which is prima-facie evidence that there is
not somebody. Such negative judgments are just as
important as positive judgments in building up our
empirical knowledge.
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 10
105 Are there general facts? We may restate this question in
the following form: Suppose | Knew the truth or falsehood
of every sentence not containing the word "all" or the
word "some" or an equivalent of either of these words;
what, then, should | not know? Would what | should not
know be only something about my knowledge and belief,
or would it be something that involves no reference to
knowledge or belief? | am supposing that | can say.
"Brown is here," "Jones is here," "Robinson is here," but
not "Some men are here," still less "Exactly three men are
here" or "Every man here is called ‘Brown’ or ‘Jones’ or
‘Robinson.’ " And 1 am supposing that though | know the
truth or falsehood of every sentence of a certain sort, | do
not know that my knowledge has this completeness. If |
knew my list to be complete | could infer that there are
three men here, but. as it is, | do not know that there are
no others.
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 10
106 It is clear that knowledge is a sub-class of true beliefs:
every ease of knowledge is a ease of true belief, but not
vice versa. It is very easy to give examples of true beliefs
that are not knowledge. There is the man who looks at a
clock which is not going, though he thinks it is, and who
happens to look at it at the moment when it is right; this
man acquires a true belief as to the time of day, but
cannot be said to have knowledge. There is the man who
believes, truly, that the last name of the Prime Minister in
1906 began with a B, but who believes this because he
thinks that Balfour was Prime Minister then, whereas in
fact it was Campbell Bannerman. There is the lucky
optimist who, having bought a ticket for a lottery, has an
unshakable conviction that he will win, and, being lucky,
does win. Such instances can be multiplied indefinitely,
and show that you cannot claim to have known merely
because you turned out to be right.
What character in addition to truth must a belief have
in order to count as knowledge? ITic plain man would say
there must be sound evidence to support the belief. As a
matter of common sense this is right in most of the eases
in which doubt arises in practice, but if intended asa
complete account of the matter it is very inadequate.
"Evidence" consists, on the one hand, of certain matters
of fact that are accepted as indubitable, and, on the other
hand, of certain principles by means of which inferences
are drawn from the matters of fact. It is obvious that this
process is unsatisfactory unless we know the matters of
fact and the principles of inference not merely by means
of evidence, for otherwise we become involved ina
vicious circle or an endless regress. We must therefore
concentrate our attention on the matters of fact and the
principles of inference. We may then say that what is
known consists, first, of certain matters of fact and
certain principles of inference, neither of which stands in
need of extraneous evidence, and secondly, of all that
can be ascertained by applying the principles of
inference to the matters o! fact. Traditionally, the mat-ten
of fact are those given in perception and memory', while
the principles of inference are those of deductive and
inductive logic.
There are various unsatisfactory features in this
traditional doctrine, though | am not at all sure that, in
the end, we can substitute anything very much better.
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 11
107 It is difficult to define knowledge, difficult to decide
whether we have any knowledge, and difficult, even if it
is conceded that we sometimes have knowledge, to
discover whether we can ever know that we have
knowledge in this or that particular case.
Russell, Analysis of Mind, XIII
108 Knowing always has a particu/ar purpose, and its
solution must be a function of its conditions in
connection with additional ones which are brought to
bear. Every reflective knowledge, in other words, has a
specific task which is set by a concrete and empirical
situation, so that it can perform that task only by
detecting and remaining faithful to the conditions in the
situation in which the difficulty arises, while its purpose is
a reorganization of its factors in order to get unity.
So far, however, there is no accomplished knowledge,
but only knowledge coming to be— learning, in the
classic Greek conception. Thinking gets no farther, as
thinking, than a statement of elements constituting the
difficulty at hand and a statement—a propounding, a
proposition--of a method for resolving them. In fixing the
framework of every reflective situation, this state of
affairs also determines the further step which is needed if
there is to be knowledge—knowledge in the eulogistic
sense, as distinct from opinion, dogma, and guesswork, or
from what casually passes current as knowledge. Overt
action is demanded if the worth or validity of the
reflective considerations is to be determined. Otherwise,
we have, at most, only a hypothesis that the conditions of
the difficulty are such and such, and that the way to go at
them so as to get over or through them is thus and so.
This way must be tried in action; it must be applied,
physically, in the situation. By finding out what then
happens, we test our intellectual findings—our logical
terms or projected metes and bounds. If the required
reorganization is effected, they are confirmed, and
reflection (on that topic) ceases; if not, there is
frustration, and inquiry continues. That all knowledge, as
issuing from reflection, is experimental (in the literal
physical sense of experimental) is then a constituent
proposition of this doctrine.
Upon this view, thinking, or knowledge-getting, is far
from being the armchair thing it is often supposed to be.
The reason it is not an armchair thing is that it is not an
event going on exclusively within the cortex or die cortex
and vocal organs. It involves the explorations by which
relevant data are procured and the physical analyses by
which they are refined and made precise; it comprises the
readings by which information is got hold of, the words
which are experimented with, and the calculations by
which the significance of entertained conceptions or
hypotheses is elaborated. Hands and feet, apparatus and
appliances of all kinds are as much a part of it as changes
in the brain. Since these physical operations (including
the cerebral events) and equipments are a part of
thinking, thinking is mental, not because of a peculiar
stuff which enters into it or of peculiar non-natural
activities which constitute it, but because of what
physical acts and appliances do: the distinctive purpose
for which they are employed and die distinctive results
which they accomplish.
Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic, Introduction, 2
109 Let me... call attention to an ambiguity in the term
"knowledge." The statement that all knowledge involves
reflection—or, more concretely, that il denotes an
inference from evidence—gives offense to many; it seems
a departure from fact as well as a wilful limitation of the
word "knowledge." | have... endeavored to mitigate the
obnoxiousness of the doctrine by referring to "knowledge
which is intellectual or logical in character." Lest this
expression be regarded as a futile evasion of a real issue,
| shall now be more explicit.
It may well be admitted that there is a real sense in
which knowledge (as distinct from thinking or inquiring
with a guess attached) does not come into existence till
thinking has terminated in the experimental act which
fulfils the specifications set forth in thinking. But what is
also true is that the object thus determined is an object of
knowledge only because of the thinking which has
preceded it and to which it sets a happy term. To run
against a hard and painful stone is not of itself, | should
say, an act of knowing; but if running into a hard and
painful thing is an outcome predicted after inspection of
data and elaboration of a hypothesis, then the hardness
and the painful bruise which define the thing as a stone
also constitute it emphatically an object o! knowledge. In
short, the object of knowledge in the strict sense is its
objective; and this objective is not constituted till it is
reached. Now this conclusion—as the word denotes—is
thinking brought to a close, done with. If the reader does
not find this statement satisfactory, he may, pending
further discussion, at least recognize that the doctrine set
forth has no difficulty in connecting knowledge with
inference, and at the same time admitting that
knowledge in the emphatic sense does not exist till
inference has ceased. Seen from this point of view, so-
called immediate knowledge or simple apprehension or
acquaintance-knowledge represents a critical skill, a
certainty of response which has accrued in consequence
of reflection. A like sureness of footing apart from prior
investigations and testings is found in instinct and habit.
| do not deny that these may be better than knowing, but
| see no reason for complicating an already too confused
situation by giving them the name "knowledge" with its
usual intellectual implications. From this point of view,
the subject-matter of knowledge is precisely that which
we do not think of, or mentally refer to in any way, being
that which is taken as matter of course, but it is
nevertheless knowledge in virtue of the inquiry which has
led up to it.
Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic, Intro., 2
110 Knowledge becomes relative, as soon as the intellect is
made a kind of absolute.—We regard the human intellect,
on the contrary, as relative to the needs of action.
Postulate action, and the very form of the intellect can be
deduced from it. This form is therefore neither irreducible
nor inexplicable. And, precisely because it is not
independent, knowledge cannot be said to depend on it:
knowledge ceases to be a product of the intellect and
becomes, in a certain sense, part and parcel of reality.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, II
111 In order to Know an object, | must know not its external
but all its internal qualities.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, 2.01231
112 Only if there are objects can there be a fixed form of the
world.
The fixed, the existent and the object are one.
The object is the fixed, the existent; the configuration
is the changing, the variable.
The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact.
In the atomic fact objects hang one in another, like the
members of a chain.
In the atomic fact the objects are combined ina
definite way.
The way in which objects hang together in the atomic
fact is the structure of the atomic fact.
The form is the possibility of the structure.
The structure of the fact consists of the structures of
the atomic facts.
The totality of existent atomic facts is the world.
The totality of existent atomic facts also determines
which atomic facts do not exist.
The existence and non-existence of atomic facts is the
reality.
(The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive
fact, their non-existence a negative fact.)
Atomic facts are independent of one another.
From the existence or non-existence of an atomic fact
we cannot infer the existence or nonexistence of another.
The total reality is the world.
We make to ourselves pictures of facts.
The picture presents the facts in logical space, the
existence and non-existence of atomic facts.
The picture is a model of reality.
To the objects correspond in the picture the elements
of the picture.
The elements of the picture stand, in the picture, for
the objects.
The picture consists in the fact that its elements are
combined with one another in a definite way.
The picture is a fact.
That the elements of the picture are combined with
one another in a definite way, represents that the things
are so combined with one another.
This connexion of the elements of the picture is called
its structure, and the possibility of this structure is called
the form of representation of the picture.
The form of representation is the possibility that the
things are combined with one another as are the
elements of the picture.
Thus the picture is linked wth reality; it reaches up to
it.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2.026-
2.1512
113 Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to
devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is
recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an
embrace. It is an advance on sensation precisely because
it is representative.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 3
114 Superstition, and sometimes philosophy, accepts
imagination as a truer avenue to knowledge than is
contact with things; but this is precisely what | endeavour
to avoid by distinguishing matter, or the substance of
dynamic things, from essence, or the direct datum,
sensuous or intelligible, or intuition. Intuition represents
the free life of the mind, the poetry native to it, which |
am far from despising; but this is the subjective or ideal
element in thought which we must discount if we are
anxious to possess true knowledge.
Santayana, Realms of Being, Intro.
115 The enormous infusion of error that sense, passion, and
language bring with them into human knowledge is
therefore less misleading than might be supposed.
Knowledge is not truth, but a view or expression of the
truth; a glimpse of it secured by some animal with special
organs under special circumstances. A lover of paradox
might say that to be partly wrong is a condition of being
partly right; or more soberly, that to be partial is, for
knowledge, a condition of existing at all. To be partial and
also to be relative: so that all the sensuous colour and
local perspective proper to human views, and all the
moral bias pervading them, far from rendering knowledge
impossible, supply instruments for exploration, divers
sensitive centres and divers inks, whereby in divers ways
the facts may be recorded.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, VII
116 The love of knowledge belongs to the essence of spirit.
Far from being, as Baconian pragmatism would have it, a
love of power, it is a love of imagination; only that
imagination needs to be fed by contact with external
things and by widening vital rhythms. When the great
explorers sailed in search of gold and of spices,
imagination within them was dreaming of the wonders
they might find, and of the splendours they might display
at home after their return. The voyage too would be
something glorious, to be described in fabulous books
and woven into tapestries. This is a healthy love of
knowledge, grounded on animal quests, but issuing in
Spiritual entertainment. Had the world turned out to be
very small and handy, and the science of it as simple as it
seemed to Descartes, spirit would have suffered no
disappointment; there would have been more than
matter enough for all the wit of man. Perhaps the
environing blank would have positively helped to frame
in the picture, and make it easier for a religion of the
heart to understand and envelop existence.
There is a Snare, however, in the very essence of
knowledge in that it has to be a form of faith, and faith is
something psychic rather than spiritual: an expectation
and hope addressed to things not seen, because they
would match potentialities in the soul. Actual belief (the
expectation or affirmation in it) is a state of the spirit; but
Spirit could never fall into that state or maintain that
assertiveness by a purely spiritual insight, since intuition
is of the given and spirit is pure actuality. In knowledge,
as distinguished from intuition, Acre is therefore a
postulating element, an element of hunger unsatisfied;
the datum hangs in the air, not being accepted for what
it is, but taken as an index to a dynamic object that is
perhaps nonexistent. This adventurous intent, this sense
of the ulterior and potential, strains the spirit, spoils
intuition, and opens the door to doubt, argument, error,
and presumption. Faith belongs to earth and to
purgatory: in heaven it would be a lapse into distraction.
Santayana, Realm of Spirit, VII
6.2 Experience
Although it is a term that no one can avoid using,
experience is seldom defined by those who use it. It would
appear to be co-extensive with consciousness—the flow of
experience from moment to moment being identical with
what William James called "the stream of consciousness." It
would appear to be impossible to be a sentient or conscious
being and not to have experience at every waking moment
and even when one's sleep is interrupted by dreams. To
understand this much about experience is to recognize how
much of what we know is somehow born of experience, and
also to realize how special is the knowledge that some
philosophers call transcendental because it is independent
of and goes beyond experience.
A few of the writers quoted—namely, Aristotle, Hobbes,
and Harvey—use the word "experience" in a more restricted
sense. They point out that from repeated perceptions,
memories are generated; and that from many memories,
experience emerges. It is in this sense of the term that a
man of experience about certain matters is said to have
competence to judge about such mat-ters, a competence
comparable to, though perhaps inferior to, that of the artist
or scientist with respect to the same matters. The latter, it is
noted, have a knowledge based on experience that they can
teach others, whereas the expertness of the man of
experience is not similarly conveyable to others.
The value of experience is differently appraised in
relation to different kinds of knowledge; it is of much less
utility, or much less experience is needed, in mathematics,
for example, than in ethics or politics. That is why, as some
writers point out, young men with little experience can
become experts in certain fields of learning, whereas in
others we prefer to listen to older men and women whose
counsel or wisdom reflects long and varied experience.
The human appetite for experience would appear to be as
insatiable as the desire for knowledge. This craving for every
variety of experience is celebrated by the poets, and
especially by Goethe in his characterization of Faust’s
search for the uniquely satisfying experience in which he
will gladly come to rest. For the poets, as the quotations
indicate, experience is more likely to be valued for its own
Sake and not merely as a factor indispensable to the
attainment of knowledge.
Two other points should be noted, especially for their
bearing on the relationship between experience and
knowledge. One is that experience, however indispensable it
may be as a source of knowledge, is never by itself a form of
knowledge. The other is a point to which Francis Bacon first
called explicit attention; namely, that scientific method is a
systematic effort to obtain and control experience by
carefully planned observations. Philosophers may appeal to
experiences that they have in common with other men; only
scientists "manufacture" the special experiences they amass
and interpret for their own purposes. The reader will find
more detailed discussion of this point in Section 17.2.
1 A man that hath traveled knoweth many things; and he
that hath much experience will declare wisdom. He that
hath no experience knoweth little: but he that hath
traveled is full of prudence. When | traveled, | saw many
things; and | understand more than | can express.
Ecclesiasticus 34:9-11
2 Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that
man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer,
harried for years on end, after he plundered the
stronghold on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands and learned the minds of many
distant men, and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only to save his
life, to bring his shipmates home.
Homer, Odyssey, I, 1
3 On their road to Susa they presented themselves before
Hydarnes. This Hydarnes was a Persian by birth, and had
the command of all the nations that dwelt along the sea-
coast of Asia, He accordingly showed them hospitality,
and invited them to a banquet, where, as they feasted, he
said to them: —
“Men of Lacedaemon, why will ye not consent to be
friends with the king? Ye have but to look at me and my
fortune to see that the king knows well how to honour
merit. In like manner ye yourselves, were ye to make your
submission to him, would receive at his hands, seeing
that he deems you men of merit, some government in
Greece."
"Hydarnes," they answered, "thou art a onesided
counsellor. Thou hast experience of half the matter; but
the other half is beyond thy knowledge. A slave’s life
thou understandest; but, never having tasted liberty,
thou canst not tell whether it be sweet or no. Ah! hadst
thou known what freedom is, thou wouldst have bidden
us fight for it, not with the spear only, but with the battle-
axe."
So they answered Hydarnes.
Herodotus, History, Vil, 135
4 Socrates. Well, then, if you and I, Callicles, were intending
to set about some public business, and were advising one
another to undertake buildings, such as walls, docks or
temples of the largest size, ought we not to examine
ourselves, first, as to whether we know or do not know
the art of building, and who taught us?~ -~ would not that
be necessary, Callicles?
Callicles. True.
Soc. In the second place, we should have to consider
whether we had ever constructed any private house,
either of our own or for our friends, and whether this
building of ours was a success or not; and if upon
consideration we found that we had had good and
eminent masters, and had been successful in
constructing many fine buildings, not only with their
assistance, but without them, by our own unaided skill—-
in that case prudence would not dissuade us from
proceeding to the construction of public works. But if we
had no master to show, and only a number of worthless
buildings or none at all, then, surely, it would be
ridiculous in us to attempt public works, or to advise one
another to undertake them. Is not this true?
Cal. Certainly.
Soc. And does not the same hold in all other cases? If
you and | were physicians, and were advising one another
that we were competent to practise as state-physicians,
should | not ask about you, and would you not ask about
me, Well, but how about Socrates himself, has he good
health? and was any one else ever known to be cured by
him, whether slave or freeman? And | should make the
Same enquiries about you. And if we arrived at the
conclusion that no one, whether citizen or stranger, man
or woman, had ever been any the better for the medical
Skill of either of us, then, by Heaven, Callieles, what an
absurdity to think that we or any human being should be
So silly as to set up as state-physicians and advise others
like ourselves to do the same, without having first
practised in private, whether successfully or not, and
acquired experience of the art! Is not this, as they say, to
begin with the big jar when you are learning the potter’s
art; which is a foolish thing?
Plato, Gorgias, 514A
5 Socrates. Bear in mind the whole business of the
midwives, and then you will see my meaning better:—No
woman, as you are probably aware, who is still able to
conceive and bear, attends other women, but only those
who are past bearing.
Theaetetus. Yes, | know.
Soc. The reason of this is said to be that Artemis —the
goddess of childbirth—is not a mother, and she honours
those who are like herself; but she could not allow the
barren to be mid wives, because human nature cannot
know the mystery of an art without experience; and
therefore she assigned this office to those who are too old
to bear.
Plato, Theaetetus, 149A
6 The animals other than man live by appearances and
memories, and have but little of connected experience;
but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now
from memory experience is produced in men; for the
several memories of the same thing produce finally the
capacity for a single experience. And experience seems
pretty much like science and art, but really science and
art come to men through experience; for ‘experience
made art’, as Polus says, ‘but inexperience luck’.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980b25
7 With a view to action experience seems in no respect
inferior to art, and men of experience succeed even
better than those who have theory without experience.
(The reason is that experience is knowledge of
individuals, art of univcrsals, and actions and productions
are all concerned with the individual; for the physician
does not cure man, except in an incidental way, but
Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such
individual name, who happens to be a man. If, then, a
man has the theory without the experience, and
recognizes the universal but does not know the individual
included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the
individual that is to be cured.) But yet we think that
knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than
to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than
men of experience (which implies that Wisdom depends
in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the
former know the cause, but the latter do not. For men of
experience know that the thing is so, but do not know
why, while the others know the ‘why’ and the cause.
Hence we think also that the master-workers in each craft
are more honourable and know in a truer sense and are
wiser than the manual workers, because they know the
causes of the things that are done (we think the manual
workers are like certain lifeless things which act indeed,
but act without knowing what they do, as fire burns,—but
while the lifeless things perform each of their functions
by a natural tendency, the labourers perform them
through habit); thus we view them as being wiser not in
virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for
themselves and knowing the causes. And in general it is
a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does
not know, that the former can teach, and therefore we
think art more truly knowledge than experience is; for
artists can teach, and men of mere experience cannot.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 98la13
8 While young men become geometricians and
mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is
thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be
found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not
only with universal but with particulars, which become
familiar from experience, but a young man has no
experience, for it is length of time that gives experience;
indeed one might ask this question too, why a boy may
become a mathematician, but not a philosopher or a
physicist. It is because the objects of mathematics exist
by abstraction, while the first principles of these other
subjects come from experience, and because young men
have no conviction about the latter but merely use the
proper language, while the essence of mathematical
objects is plain enough to them?
Aristotle, Ethics, 1142a12
9 We ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and
opinions of experienced and older people or of people of
practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for
because experience has given them an eye they see
aright.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1143b11
10 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
| Thessalonians 5:21
11 Medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease, and
music, to create harmony, must investigate discord; and
the supreme arts of temperance, of justice, and of
wisdom, as they are acts of judgment and selection,
exercised not on good and just and expedient only, but
also on wicked, unjust, and inexpedient objects, do not
give their commendations to the mere innocence whose
boast is its inexperience of evil, and whose truer name is,
by their award, simpleness and ignorance of what all men
who live aright should know. The ancient Spartans, at
their festivals, used to force their Helots to swallow large
quantities of raw wine, and then to expose them at the
public tables, to let the young men see what it is to be
drunk.
Plutarch, Demetrius
12 The object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible
to obtain. Consequently a thing may be a cause of hope
either because it makes something possible to a man or
because it makes him think something possible. In the
first way hope is caused by everything that increases a
1
WJ
man’s power; for instance riches, strength, and, among
others, experience, for by experience man acquires the
possibility of getting something easily, and the result of
this is hope. Therefore Vegetius says: "No one fears to do
that which he is sure of having learnt well."
In the second way, hope is caused by everything that
makes man think that something is possible for him; and
thus both teaching and persuasion may be a cause of
hope. And in this way also experience is a cause of hope,
in so far as it makes him consider something possible
which before his experience he looked upon as
impossible. However, in this way, experience can cause a
lack of hope, because just as it makes a man think
possible what he had previously thought impossible, so,
conversely, experience makes a man consider as
impossible that which hitherto he had thought possible.
Accordingly experience causes hope in two ways, despair
in one way; and for this reason we may Say rather that it
causes hope.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 40, 5
"| [Odysseus] departed from Circe, who beyond a year
detained me there near Gaeta, ere AEneas thus had
named it,
neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my
aged father, nor the due love that should have cheered
Penelope,
could conquer in me the ardour that | had to gain
experience of the world, and of human vice and worth;
| put forth on the deep open sea, with but one ship,
and with that small company, which had not deserted
me.
Both the shores | saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco;
and saw Sardinia and the other isles which that sea
bathes round.
land my companions were old and tardy, when we
came to that narrow pass, where Hercules assigned his
landmarks
to hinder man from venturing farther; on the right
hand, | left Seville; on the other, had already left Ceuta.
‘O brothers!’ | said, ‘who through a hundred thousand
dangers have reached the West, deny not, to this the
brief vigil of your senses that remains, experience of the
un-peopled world behind the Sun.
Consider your origin: ye were not formed to live like
brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.’ With this
brief soeech | made my companions so eager for the
voyage, that | could hardly then have checked them;
and, turning the poop towards morning, we of our oars
made wings for the foolish flight, always gaining on the
left.
Night already saw the other pole, with all its stars; and
ours so low, that it rose not from the ocean floor.
Five times the light beneath the Moon had been
rekindled and quenched as oft, since we had entered on
the arduous passage,
when there appeared to us a Mountain, dim with
distance; and to me it seemed the highest | had ever
seen.
We joyed, and soon our joy was turned to grief: for a
tempest rose from the new land, and struck the forepart
of our ship.
Three times it made her whirl round with all the
waters; at the fourth, made the poop rise up and prow go
down, as pleased Another, till the sea was closed above
us."
Dante, Inferno, XXVI, 91
14 "Now listen, Troilus," replied his friend [Pandar],
"Perhaps | am a fool, yet it is so,
That folly oft can helpful counsel lend,
Whereby the wise the better way may know.
For | myself have seen a blind man go,
Where he would fall who sees both far and wide;
Sometimes a fool can be the safest guide.
"A whetstone is no carving instrument.
And yet it maketh sharp the carving tool;
And if you see my efforts wrongly spent,
Eschew that course and learn out of my school;
For thus the wise may profit by the fool,
And edge his wit, and grow more keen and wary,
For wisdom shines opposed to its contrary.
“For how might sweetness ever have been known
To him who never tasted bitterness?
Felicity exists for those alone
Who first have suffered sorrow and distress;
Thus white by black, honor by shame’s excess,
More brightly shines by what the other seems,
As all men see and as the wise man deems.
"By opposites does one in wisdom grow,
And though | have in love vain effort made.
Then all the better | thereby should know
To guide thee on thy path when thou hast strayed.
Spurn not with scorn, therefore, my proffered aid,
For | desire nothing but to share
Thy grief, and make it easier to bear."
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 90-93
15 Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince
are accustomed to come before him with such things as
they hold most precious, or in which they see him take
most delight: whence one often secs horses, arms, cloth
of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented
to princes, worthy of their greatness.
Desiring therefore to present myself to your
Magnificence [Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici] with some
testimony of my devotion towards you, | have not found
among my possessions anything which | hold more dear
than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions
of great men, acquired by long experience in
contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity;
which, having reflected upon it with great and prolonged
diligence, | now send, digested into a little volume, to
your Magnificence.
And although | may consider this work unworthy of
your countenance, nevertheless | trust much to your
benignity that it may be acceptable, seeing that it is not
possible for me to make a better gift than to offer you the
opportunity of understanding in the shortest time all that
| have learnt in so many years, and with so many troubles
and dangers; which work | have not embellished with
swelling or magnificent words, nor stuffed with rounded
periods, nor with any extrinsic allurements or adornments
whatever, with which so many are accustomed to load
and embellish their works; for | have wished either that
no honour should be given it, or else that the truth of the
matter and the weightiness of the theme shall make it
acceptable.
Machiavelli, Prince, Dedication
16 There is no desire more natural than the desire for
knowledge. We try all the ways that can lead us to it.
When reason fails us, we use experience .., which isa
weaker and less dignified means. But truth is so great a
thing that we must not disdain any medium that will lead
us to it. Reason has so many shapes that we know not
which to lay hold of; experience has no fewer. The
inference that we try to draw from the resemblance of
events is uncertain, because they are always dissimilar:
there is no quality so universal in this aspect of things as
diversity and variety.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
17 Whatever may be the fruit we can reap from experience,
what we derive from foreign examples will hardly be
much use for out education, if we make such little profit
from the experience we have of ourselves, which is more
familiar to us, and certainly sufficient to inform us of what
we need.
| study myself more than any other subject. That is my
metaphysics, that is my physics.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
18 Antonio. Tell me, Panthino, what sad talk was that
Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister?
Panthino. "Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son.
Ant. Why, what of him?
Pan. He wonder’d that your lordship
Would suffer him to spend his youth at home,
While other men, of slender reputation.
Put forth their sons to seek preferment out:
Some to the wars, to try their fortune there;
Some to discover islands far away;
Some to the studious universities.
For any or for all these exercises
He said that Proteus your son was meet,
And did request me to importune you
To let him spend his time no more at home,
Which would be great impeachment to his age.
In having known no travel in his youth.
Ant. Nor need’st thou much importune me to that
Whereon this month | have been hammering.
| have consider’d well his loss of time
And how he cannot be a perfect man,
Not being tried and tutor’d in the world:
Experience is by industry achieved
And perfected by the swift course of time.
Then tell me, whither were | best to send him?
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, tii, 1
19 Rosalind. To have seen much and to have nothing, is to
have rich eyes and poor hands. ... | had rather have a fool
to make me merry than experience to make me sad.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV, 1, 23
20 Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence,
and a kind of adoration of the mind and understanding of
man; by means whereof, men have withdrawn
themselves too much from the contemplation of nature,
and the observations of experience, and have tumbled up
and down in their own reason and conceits. Upon these
intellectualists, which are notwithstanding commonly
taken for the most sublime and divine philosophers,
Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying, "Men sought truth
in their own little worlds, and not in the great and
common world"; for they disdain to spell, and so by
degrees to read in the volume of God’s works: and
contrariwise by continual meditation and agitation of wit
do urge and, as it were, invocate their own spirits to
divine and give oracles unto them, whereby they are
deservedly deluded.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, V, 6
21 The foundations of experience (our sole resource) have
hitherto failed completely or have been very weak; nor
has a store and collection of particular facts, capable of
informing the mind or in any way satisfactory, been
either sought after or amassed. On the contrary, learned,
but idle and indolent, men have received some mere
reports of experience, traditions as it were of dreams, as
establishing or confirming their philosophy, and have not
hesitated to allow them the weight of legitimate
evidence. So that a system has been pursued in
philosophy with regard to experience resembling that of a
kingdom or state which would direct its councils and
affairs according to the gossip of city and street
politicians, instead of the letters and reports of
ambassadors and messengers worthy of credit. Nothing is
rightly inquired into, or verified, noted, weighed, or
measured, in natural history; indefinite and vague
observation produces fallacious and uncertain
information. If this appear strange, or our complaint
somewhat too unjust (because Aristotle himself, so
distinguished a man and supported by the wealth of so
great a king, has completed an accurate history of
animals, to which others with greater diligence but less
noise have made considerable additions, and others
again have composed copious histories and notices of
plants, metals, and fossils), it will arise from a want of
sufficiently attending to and comprehending our present
observations; for a natural history compiled on its own
account, and one collected for the mind’s information as
a foundation for philosophy, are two different things.
They differ in several respects, but principally in this: the
former contains only the varieties of natural species
without the experiments of mechanical arts; for as in
ordinary life every person’s disposition, and the
concealed feelings of the mind and passions are most
drawn out when they are disturbed—so the secrets of
nature betray themselves more readily when tormented
by art than when left to their own course. We must begin,
therefore, to entertain hopes of natural philosophy then
only, when we have a better compilation of natural
history, its real basis and support.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 98
22 AS soon as age permitted me to emerge from the control
of my tutors, | entirely quitted the study of letters. And
resolving to seek no other science than that which could
be found in myself, or at least in the great book of the
world, | employed the rest of my youth in travel, in seeing
courts and armies, in intercourse with men of diverse
temperaments and conditions, in collecting varied
experiences, in proving myself in the various
predicaments in which | was placed by fortune, and under
all circumstances bringing my mind to bear on the things
which came before it, so that | might derive some profit
from my experience. For it seemed to me that | might
meet with much more truth in the reasonings that each
man makes on the matters that specially concern him,
and the issue of which would very soon punish him if he
made a wrong judgment, than in the case of those made
by aman of letters in his study touching speculations
which lead to no result, and which bring about no other
consequences to himself excepting that he will be all the
more vain the more they are removed from common
sense, since in this case it proves him to have employed
so much the more ingenuity and skill in trying to make
them seem probable. And | always had an excessive
desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in
order to see clearly in my actions and to walk with
confidence in this life.
It is true that while | only considered the manners of
other men | found in them nothing to give me settled
convictions; and | remarked in them almost as much
diversity as | had formerly seen in the opinions of
philosophers. So much wzis this the case that the
greatest profit which | derived from their study was that,
in seeing many things which, although they seem to us
very extravagant and ridiculous, were yet commonly
received and approved by other great nations, | learned
to believe nothing too certainly of which | had only been
convinced by example and custom. Thus little by little |
was delivered from many errors which might have
obscured our natural vision and rendered us less capable
of listening to Reason. But after | had employed several
years in thus studying the book of the world and trying to
acquire some experience, | one day formed the resolution
of also making myself an object of study and of
employing all the strength of my mind in choosing the
road | should follow. This succeeded much better, it
appeared to me, than if | had never de-parted either from
my country' or my books.
Descartes, Disamrst on Melhod] |
23 As much experience is prudence, so is much science
sapience. For though we usually have one name of
wisdom for them both; yet the Latins did always
distinguish between prudentia and sapi/entia; ascribing
the former to experience, the latter to science. But to
make their difference appear more clearly, let us suppose
one man endued with an excellent natural use and
dexterity in handling his arms; and another to have
added to that dexterity’ an acquired science of where he
can offend, or be offended by his adversary, in every
possible posture or guard: the ability of the former would
be to the ability of the latter, as prudence to sapience;
both useful, but the latter infallible. But they that,
trusting only to the authority of books, follow the blind
blindly, are like him that, trusting to the false rules of a
master of fence, ventures presumptuously upon an
adversary that either kills or disgraces him.
The signs of science are some certain and infallible;
some, uncertain. Certain, when he that pretendeth the
science of anything can teach the same; that is to say,
demonstrate the truth thereof perspicuously to another:
uncertain, when only some particular events answer to
his pretence, and upon many occasions prove so as he
says they must. Signs of prudence are all uncertain;
because to observe by experience, and remember all
circumstances that may alter the success, is impossible,
But in any business, whereof a man has not infallible
science to proceed by, to forsake his own natural
judgment, and be guided by general sentences read in
authors, and subject to many exceptions, is a sign of
folly, and generally scorned by the name of pedantry.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 5
24 Two things instruct man about his whole nature; instinct
and experience.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 396
25 Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white
paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:—How
comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast
store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has
painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has
it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this |
answer, in one word, from experience. In that all our
knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives
itself. Our observation employed either, about external
sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our
minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that
which supplies our understandings with all the materials
of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge,
from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have,
do spring.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. n, 1,2
26 When it is asked, What is the nature of all our reasonings
concerning matter of fact? the proper answer seems to
be, that they are founded on the relation of cause and
effect. When again it is asked, What is the foundation of
all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that
relation? it may be replied in one word. Experience. But if
we still carry on our sifting humour, and ask, What is the
foundation of all conclusions from experience? this
implies a new question, which may be of more difficult
solution and explication. ... | say then, that, even after ve
have experience of the operations of cause and effect,
our conclusions from that experience are not founded on
reasoning, or any process of the understanding. .,.
All reasonings may be divided into two kinds, namely,
demonstrative reasoning, or that concerning relations of
ideas, and moral reasoning, or that concerning matter of
fact and existence. That there are no demonstrative
arguments in the case seems evident; since it implies no
contradiction that the course of nature may change, and
that an object, seemingly like those which we have
experienced, may be attended with different or contrary
effects. May | not clearly and distinctly conceive that a
body, falling from the clouds, and which, in all other
respects, resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or
feeling of fire? Is there any more intelligible proposition
than to affirm, that all the trees will flourish in December
and January, and decay in May and June? Now whatever
is intelligible, and can be distinctly conceived, implies no
contradiction, and can never be proved false by any
demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori.
If we be, therefore, engaged by arguments to put trust
in past experience, and make it the standard of our future
judgement, these arguments must be probable only, or
such as regard matter of fact and real existence,
according to the division above mentioned. But that
there is no argument of this kind, must appear, if our
explication of that species of reasoning be admitted as
solid and satisfactory. We have said that all arguments
concerning existence are founded on the relation of
cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is
derived entirely from experience; and that all our
experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition
that the future will be conformable to the past. To
endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last supposition by
probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence,
must be evidently going in a circle, and taking that for
granted, which is the very point in question.
In reality, all arguments from experience are founded
on the similarity which we discover among natural
objects, and by which we are induced to expect effects
similar to those which we have found to follow from such
objects. And though none but a fool or madman will ever
pretend to dispute the authority of experience, or to
reject that great guide of human life, it may surely be
allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least
as to examine the principle of human nature, which gives
this mighty authority to experience, and makes us draw
advantage from that similarity which nature has placed
among different objects. From causes which appear
similar we expect similar effects. This is the sum of all our
experimental conclusions. Now it seems evident that, if
this conclusion were formed by reason, it would be as
perfect at first, and upon one instance, as after ever so
long a course of experience. But the case is far
otherwise....
And it is certain we here advance a very intelligible
proposition at least, if not a true one, when we assert
that, after the constant conjunction of two objects—heat
and flame, for instance, weight and solidity—we are
determined by custom alone to expect the one from the
appearance of the other. This hypothesis seems even the
only one which explains the difficulty, why we draw, from
a thousand instances, an inference which we are not able
to draw from one instance, that is, in no respect, different
from them. Reason is incapable of any such variation. The
conclusions which it draws from considering one circle
are the same which it would form upon surveying all the
circles in the universe. But no man, having seen only one
body move after being impelled by another, could infer
that every other body will move after a like impulse. All
inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of
custom, not of reasoning.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 28-V, 36
27 The general observations treasured up by a course of
experience, give us the clue of human nature, and teach
us to unravel all its intricacies. Pretexts and appearances
no longer deceive us. Public declarations pass for the
specious colouring of a cause. And though virtue and
honour be allowed their proper weight and authority, that
perfect disinterestedness, so often pretended to, is never
expected in multitudes and parties; seldom in their
leaders; and scarcely even in individuals of any rank or
station. But were there no uniformity m human actions,
and were every experiment which we could form of this
kind irregular and anomalous, it were impossible to
collect any general observations concerning mankind;
and no experience, however accurately digested by
reflection, would ever serve to any purpose. Why is the
aged husbandman more skilful in his calling than the
young beginner but because there is a certain uniformity
in the operation of the sun, rain, and earth towards the
production of vegetables; and experience teaches the old
practitioner the rules by which this operation is governed
and directed.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 65
28 She [Mrs. Western] was, moreover, excellently well-skilled
in the doctrine of amour, and knew better than anybody
who and who were together; a knowledge which she the
more easily attained, as her pursuit of it was never
diverted by any affairs of her own; for either she had no
inclinations, or they had never been solicited; which last
is indeed very probable; for her masculine person, which
was near six foot high, added to her manner and learning,
possibly prevented the other sex from regarding her,
notwithstanding her petticoats, in the light of a woman.
However, as she had considered the matter scientifically,
she perfectly well knew, though she had never practised
them, all the arts which fine ladies use when they desire
to give encouragement, or to conceal liking, with all the
long appendage of smiles, ogles, glances, &c., as they are
at present practised in the beau-monde. To sum the
whole, no species of disguise or affectation had escaped
her notice; but as to the plain simple workings of honest
nature, as she had never seen any such, she could know
but little of them.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VI, 2
29 Whose assistance shall | invoke to direct my pen?
First, Genius; thou gift of Heaven; without whose aid in
vain we struggle against the stream of nature.... And
thou, almost the constant attendant on true genius,
Humanity, bring all thy tender sensations.... And thou, O
Learning! (for without thy assistance nothing pure,
nothing correct, can genius produce) do thou guide my
pen.... Lastly, come Experience, long conversant with the
wise, the good, the learned, and the polite. Nor with them
only, but with every kind of character, from the minister
at his levee, to the bailiff in his sounging-house; from the
dutchess at her drum, to the landlady behind her bar.
From thee only can the manners of mankind be known; to
which the recluse pedant, however great his parts or
extensive his learning may be, hath ever been a stranger.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XIII, 1
30 1 mentioned Dr. Adam Smith’s book on The Wealth of
Nations, which was just published, and that Sir John
Pringle had observed to me, that Dr. Smith, who had
never been in trade, could not be expected to write well
on that subject any more than a lawyer upon physick.
Johnson. "He is mistaken, Sir: a man who has never been
engaged in trade himself may undoubtedly write well
upon trade, and there is nothing which requires more to
be illustrated by philosophy than trade does. As to mere
wealth, that is to say, money, it is clear that one nation or
one individual cannot increase its store but by making
another poorer: but trade procures what is more valuable,
the reciprocation of the peculiar advantages of different
countries. A merchant seldom thinks but of his own
particular trade. To write a good book upon it, a man must
have extensive views. It is not necessary to have
practised, to write well upon a subject." | mentioned law
as a Subject on which no man could write well without
practice. Johnson. "Why, Sir, in England, where so much
money is to be got by the practice of the law, most of our
writers upon it have been in practice; though Blackstone
had not been much in practice when he published his
Commentaries. But upon the Continent, the great writers
on law have not all been in practice: Grotius, indeed, was;
but Puffendorf was not, Burlamaqui was not."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 16, 1776)
31 It was a very remarkable circumstance about Johnson,
whom shallow observers have supposed to have been
ignorant of the world, that very few men had seen greater
variety of characters; and none could observe them
better, as was evident from the strong, yet nice portraits
which he often drew.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 5, 1776)
32 Under these melancholy circumstances [the invasion of
the Germans], an inexperienced youth was appointed to
save and to govern the provinces of Gaul, or rather, as he
expresses it himself, to exhibit the vain image of Imperial
greatness. The retired scholastic education of Julian, in
which he had been more conversant with books than with
arms, with the dead than with the living, left him in
profound ignorance of the practical arts of war and
government; and when he awkwardly repeated some
military exercise which it was necessary for him to learn,
he exclaimed with a sigh, "O Plato, Plato, what a task for
a philosopher!"
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIX
33 The experience of past faults, which may sometimes
correct the mature age of an individual, is seldom
profitable to the successive generations of mankind. The
nations of antiquity, careless of each other’s safety, were
separately vanquished and enslaved by the Romans. This
awful lesson might have instructed the barbarians of the
West to oppose, with timely counsels and confederate
arms, the unbounded ambition of Justinian. Yet the same
error was repeated, the same consequences were felt.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLI
34 That all our knowledge begins with experience there can
be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of
cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise
than by means of objects which affect our senses, and
partly of themselves produce representations, partly
rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to
compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to
convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into
a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In
respect of time, therefore, no Knowledge of ours is
antecedent to experience, but begins with it.
But, though all our knowledge begins with experience,
it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.
For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical
knowledge is a compound of that which we receive
through impressions, and that which the faculty of
cognition supplies from itself (Sensuous impressions
giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot
distinguish from the original element given by sense, till
long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in
separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires
close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight,
whether there exists a Knowledge altogether
independent of experience, and even of all sensuous
impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in
contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its
sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.
But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite
enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the
question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge
which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say,
that this or that may be known a priori, because we do
not derive this knowledge immediately from experience,
but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself
borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his
house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have
fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the
experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he
could not know even this much. For, that bodies are
heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their
supports are taken away, must have been known to him
previously, by means of experience.
By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in
the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this
or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of
all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or
that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through
experience. Knowledge a priori is that with which no
empirical element is mixed up. For example, the
proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition
a priori, but impure, because change is a conception
which can only be derived from experience.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, |
35 One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Wordsworth, The Tables Turned
36 No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; | simply
experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.
Emerson, Circles
37 The years teach much which the days never know.
Emerson, Experience
38 | cannot rest from travel; | will drink
Life to the lees. All times | have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That love me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. | am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have | seen and known,—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
1 am a part of all that | have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when | move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unbumish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Tennyson, Ulysses
39 All languages and literatures are full of general
observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to
conduct oneself in it; observations which everybody
knows, which everybody repeats, or hears with
acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of which
most people first truly learn the meaning when
experience, generally of a painful kind, has made it a
reality to them. How often, when smarting under some
unforeseen misfortune or disappointment, does a person
call to mind some proverb or common saying, familiar to
him all his life, the meaning of which, if he had ever
before felt it as he does now, would have saved him from
the calamity. There are indeed reasons for this, other than
the absence of discussion; there are many truths of which
the full meaning cannot be realised until personal
experience has brought it home. But much more of the
meaning even of these would have been understood, and
what was understood would have been far more deeply
impressed on the mind, if the man had been accustomed
to hear it argued pro and con by people who did
understand it.
Mill, On Liberty, II
40 Experience must be consulted in order to learn from it
under what circumstances arguments from it will be
valid. We have no ulterior test to which we subject
experience in general; but we make experience its own
test.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, IV, 2
41 Kutuzov looked round. He was listening to the general’s
report—which consisted chiefly of a criticism of the
position at Tsarevo-Zaymishche—as he had listened to
Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the
discussion at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently
listened only because he had ears which, though there
was a piece of tow in one of them, could not help hearing;
but it was evident that nothing the general could say
would surprise or even interest him, that he knew all that
would be said beforehand, and heard it all only because
he had to, as one has to listen to the chanting of a service
of prayer. All that Denisov had said was clever and to the
point. What the general was saying was even more clever
and to the point, but it was evident that Kutuzov
despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of
something else that would decide the matter—
something independent of cleverness and knowledge.
Prince Andrew watched the commander in chiefs face
attentively, and the only expression he could see there
was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the
feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to
observe propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised
cleverness and learning and even the patriotic feeling
shown by Denisov, but despised them not because of his
own intellect, feelings, or Knowledge— he did not try to
display any of these—but because of something else. He
despised them because of his old age and experience of
life.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 15
42 Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night.
He often fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at
night, lying on his bed without undressing, he generally
remained awake thinking.
So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy,
scarred head on his plump hand, with his one eye open,
meditating and peering into the darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor
and had more influence than anyone else on the staff,
had begun to avoid him, Kutuzov was more at ease as to
the possibility of himself and his troops being obliged to
take part in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of
the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which
Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have
some effect on others too.
“They must understand that we can only lose by
taking the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors,
my champions," thought Kutuzov. He knew that an apple
should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself
when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the
tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an
experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was
wounded, and wounded as only the whole strength of
Russia could have wounded it, but whether it was
mortally wounded or not was still an undecided question.
Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been
sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was
almost sure that the wound was mortal- But he needed
further proofs and it was necessary to wait.
“They want to run to see how they have wounded it.
Wait and we shall see! Continual maneuvers, continual
advances!" thought he. "What for? only to distinguish
themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are like children
from whom one can’t get any sensible account of what
has happened because they all want to show how well
they can fight. But that’s not what is needed now.
"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to
me! It seems to them that when they have thought of two
or three contingencies" (he remembered the general plan
sent him from Petersburg) "they have foreseen
everything. But the contingencies are endless."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIII, 17
43 If the realm of human knowledge were confined to
abstract reasoning, then having subjected to criticism the
explanation of "power" that Juridical science gives us,
humanity would conclude that power is merely a word
and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena
man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by
which he verifies his reflections. And experience tells us
that power is not merely a word but an actually existing
phenomenon.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, V
44 We should be careful to get out of an experience only the
wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the
cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit
down on a hot stove-lid again— and that is well; but also
she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, X1
45 My experience is what | agree to attend to. Only those
items which | notice shape my mind—without selective
interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives
accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and
foreground—intelligible perspective, in a word. It varies
in every creature, but without it the consciousness of
every creature would be a gray chaotic
indiscriminateness, impossible for us even to conceive.
William James, Psychology, XI
46 In logic a concept is unalterable; but what are popularly
called our "conceptions of things" alter by being used.
The aim of "Science" is to attain conceptions so adequate
and exact that we shall never need to change them.
There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between
the tendency' to keep unchanged, and the tendency to
renovate, its ideas. Our education is a ceaseless
compromise between the conservative and the
progressive factors. Every new experience must be
disposed of under some old head. The great point is to
find the head which has to be least altered to take it in.
Certain Polynesian natives, seeing horses for the first
time, called them pigs, that being the nearest head. My
child of two played for a week with the first orange that
was given him, calling it a "ball." He called the first whole
eggs he saw "potatoes," having been accustomed to see
his "eggs" broken into a glass, and his potatoes without
the skin. A folding pocket-corkscrew he unhesitatingly
called "bad-scissors." Hardly any one of us can make new
heads easily when fresh experiences come. Most of us
grow more and more enslaved to the stock conceptions
with which we have once become familiar, and less and
less capable of assimilating impressions in any but the
old ways. Old-fogyism, in short, is the inevitable terminus
to which life sweeps us on. Objects which violate our
established habits of "apperception" are simply not taken
account of at all; or, if on some occasion we are forced by
dint of argument to admit their existence, twenty-four
hours later the admission is as if it were not, and every
trace of the unassimilable truth has vanished from our
thought. Genius, in truth, means little more than the
faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James, Psychology, XIX
47 These are the most prominent of the tendencies which
are worthy of being called instinctive in the human
species. It will be observed that no other mammal, not
even the monkey, shows so large an array. |In a perfectly-
rounded development, every one of these instincts would
start a habit toward certain objects and inhibit a habit
toward certain others. Usually this is the case; but, in the
one-sided development of civilized life, it happens that
the timely age goes by in a sort of starvation of objects,
and the individual then grows up with gaps in his psychic
constitution which future experiences can never fill.
Compare the accomplished gentleman with the poor
artisan or tradesman of a city: during the adolescence of
the former, objects appropriate to his growing interests,
bodily and mental, were offered as fast as the interests
awoke, and, aS a consequence, he is armed and equipped
at every angle to meet the world. Sport came to the
rescue and completed his education where real things
were lacking. He has tasted of the essence of every side
of human life, being sailor, hunter, athlete, scholar,
fighter, talker, dandy, man of affairs, etc., all in one. Over
the city poor boy’s youth no such golden opportunities
were hung, and in his manhood no desires for most of
them exist. Fortunate it is for him if gaps are the only
anomalies his instinctive life presents; perversions are
too often the fruit of his unnatural bringing up.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
48 Consciousness flickers; and even at its brightest, there is
a small focal region of clear illumination, and a large
penumbral region of experience which tells of intense
experience in dim apprehension. The simplicity of clear
consciousness is no measure of the complexity of
complete experience. Also this character of our
experience suggests that consciousness is the crown of
experience, only occasionally attained, not its necessary
base.
Whitehead, Process and Reality, Ill, 5
49 | feel that the concept of ‘experience’ has been very
much over-emphasized, especially in the Idealist
philosophy, but also in many forms of empiricism. | found,
when | began to think about theory of knowledge, that
none of the philosophers who emphasize ‘experience’
tells us what they mean by the word. They seem willing
to accept it as an indefinable of which the significance
should be obvious. They tend to think that only what is
experienced can be known to exist and that it is
meaningless to assert that some things exist although we
do not know them to exist. 1 think that this sort of view
gives much too much importance to knowledge, or at any
rate to something analogous to knowledge. | think also
that those who profess such views have not realized all
their implications. Few philosophers seem to understand
that one may know a proposition of the form ‘All A is B’ or
‘There are A's' without knowing any single A individually.
If you are on a pebbly beach you may be quite sure that
there are pebbles on the beach that you have not seen or
touched. Everybody, in fact, accepts innumerable
propositions about things not experienced, but when
people begin to philosophize they seem to think it
necessary to make themselves artificially stupid. | will
admit at once that there are difficulties in explaining how
we acquire knowledge that transcends experience, but |
think the view that we have no such knowledge is utterly
untenable.
Russell, My Philosophical Development, X1
50 To place knowledge where it arises and operates in
experience is to Know that, as it arose because of the
troubles of man, it is confirmed in reconstructing the
conditions which occasioned those troubles. Genuine
intellectual integrity is found in experimental knowing.
Until this lesson is fully learned, it is not safe to dissociate
knowledge from experiment nor experiment from
experience.
Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic, Introduction, 7
51 Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of
nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from
nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.
Neither logical reasoning nor the passive accumulation of
any number of observations—which the ancients called
experience—suffices to lay hold of them. Active
experimentation must force the apparent facts of nature
into forms different to those in which they familiarly
present themselves; and thus make them tell the truth
about themselves, as torture may compel an unwilling
witness to reveal what he has been concealing. Pure
reasoning as a means of arriving at truth is like the spider
who spins a web out of himself. The web is orderly and
elaborate, but it is only a trap. The passive accumulation
of experiences—the traditional empirical method—is like
the ant who busily runs about and collects and piles up
heaps of raw materials. True method, that which Bacon
would usher in, is comparable to the operations of the
bee who, like the ant, collects material from the external
world, but unlike that industrious creature attacks and
modifies the collected stuff in order to make it yield its
hidden treasure.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, II
52 We always live at the time we live and not at some other
time, and only by extracting at each present time the full
meaning of each present experience are we prepared for
doing the same thing in the future. This is the only
preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.
Dewey, Experience and Education, III
53 There is no discipline in the world so severe as the
discipline of experience subjected to the tests of
intelligent des’clopment and direction.
Dewey, Experience and Education, VIII
54 We should do well to remember that crude experience
knows nothing of the distinction between subject and
object. This distinction is a division in things, a contrast
established between masses of images which show
different characteristics in their modes of existence and
relation. If this truth is overlooked, if subject and object
are made conditions of experience instead of being, like
body and mind, its contrasted parts, the revenge of fate
iS quick and ironical; either subject or object must
immediately collapse and evaporate altogether. All
objects must become modifications of the subject or all
subjects aspects or fragments of the object. , . . Reflection
must .., separate them, if knowledge (that is, ideas with
eventual application and practical transcendence) is to
exist at all. In other words, action must be adjusted to
certain elements of experience and not to others, and
those chiefly regarded must have a certain interpretation
put upon them by trained apperception. The rest must be
treated as moonshine and taken no account of except
perhaps in idle and poetic revery. In tills way crude
experience grows reasonable and appearance becomes
knowledge of reality.
Santayana, Life of Reason, I, 6
55 April 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in
order. She prays now, she says, that | may learn in my
own life and away from home and friends what the heart
is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! | go
to encounter for the millionth time the reality of
experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the
uncreated conscience of my race.
Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, V
6.3 Truth
Though it is not included among the passages here quoted,
a memorable statement by Josiah Royce provides an apt
introduction to the subject under consideration. "A liar,"
Professor Royce once said, "is aman who willfully misplaces
his ontological predicates"—a man who, believing that
something is the case, declares in speech that it is not the
case; or believing that something is not the case, declares
that it is. Accordingly, it is impossible to prevaricate in
speech unless one thinks that one has the truth about the
matter in question. When is anyone in that state of mind?
Aristotle’s answer to that question, in a famous passage
quoted below, provides the basis for Royce’s remark. We
possess the truth mentally, he said, when we think that that
which is, /s, or that that which is not, is not. Falsity in the
mind, like prevarication in speech, consists in thinking that
which is, is not, or that which is not, /s.
This classic definition of truth is acceptable only to those
who affirm the existence of a reality independent of the
knowing mind—a reality to which the mind can conform or
fail to conform. In the absence of the possibility of a
correspondence between tile mind and an independent
reality that it attempts to know, truth for the mind would
have to consist in the internal coherence and consistency of
its own thoughts. But even for those who hold that an
independent reality provides the ultimate test of the minds
claim to possessing the truth, consistency— the avoidance
of contradiction—is also of critical importance.
The question, What is truth?, to be answered by one or
another definition of it, must never be confused with the
question, How can we tell whether a particular statement
under consideration is true or false? Answering the latter
question, many of the philosophers quoted formulate
different sets of criteria for discriminating between the true
and the false; as, for example, William James and John
Dewey in their promulgation of what came to be called "the
pragmatic theory of truth," which, while it did not exclude
the criterion of internal consistency, stressed the point that
our best assurance of the truth of a statement comes from
our finding that it works successfully when put into practice.
"The true," said James, "is the expedient in the way of our
thinking."
In addition to offering definitions of truth itself and
enumerating the criteria for determining whether a
particular statement is true or false, the passages here
collected discuss the unity of Truth with a capital T as
contrasted with the multiplicity of truths; the immutability
of whatever is true in and of itself as against the mutability
of the human mind’s claims to knowing what is true and
false; the difference between the truth of true statements
about what is the case and the truth of true statements
about what ought to be done or sought; the moral obligation
to pursue and love the truth, and to be unswerving in one’s
adherence to it, a higher loyalty even than the one we owe
to our friends; the necessity of complete freedom of
expression and discussion for the cooperative pursuit of
truth; and the acknowledgment of human fallibility in that
pursuit.
The extent of that fallibility and the proneness of the
human mind to error are discussed in Section 6.4 and points
there made are further developed in Sections 6.5 and 6.6,
where the questioning of human opinions and beliefs leads
to skeptical doubts about the human mind’s ability ever to
get at the truth.
1 Truth lies at the bottom of a well.
Democritus (qu. by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the
Philosophers)
2 Socrates. Protagoras... says that man is the measure of all
things, and that things are to me as they appear to me,
and that they are to you as they appear to you. Do you
agree with him, or would you say that things havea
permanent essence of their own?
Hermogenes. There have been times, Socrates, when |
have been driven in my perplexity to take refuge with
Protagoras; not that | agree with him at all...
Soc. But if Protagoras is right, and the truth is that
things are as they appear to any one, how can some of us
be wise and some of us foolish?
Her. Impossible.
Soc. And if, on the other hand, wisdom and folly are
really distinguishable, you will allow, | think, that the
assertion of Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what
appears to each man is true to him, one man cannot in
reality be wiser than another.
Her. He cannot.
Soc. Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus,
that all things equally belong to all men at the same
moment and always; for neither on his view can there be
some good and other bad, if virtue and vice are always
equally to be attributed to all.
Her. There cannot.
Soc. But if neither is right, and things are not relative
to individuals, and all things do not equally belong to all
at the same moment and always, they must be supposed
to have their own proper and permanent essence: they
are not in relation to us, or influenced by us, fluctuating
according to our fancy, but they are independent, and
maintain to their own essence the relation prescribed by
nature.
Her. | think, Socrates, that you have said the truth.
Plato, Cratylus, 386A
3 Of the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever a
theme of large and more than mortal discourse, let me
speak briefly, and in a figure. And let the figure be
composite—a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now
the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all
of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other
races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a
pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and
the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving
of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him. |
will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal
differs from the immortal creature. The soul in her totality
has the care of inanimate being everywhere, and
traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing:—
when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and
orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul,
losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles
on the solid ground—there, finding a home, she receives
an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved, but is
really moved by her power; and this composition of soul
and body is called n living and mortal creature. For
immortal no such union can be reasonably believed to
be; although fancy, not having seen nor surely known the
nature of God, may imagine an immortal creature having
both a body and also a soul which are united throughout
all lime. Let that, however, be as God wills, and be spoken
of acceptably to him. And now let us ask the reason why
the soul loses her wings!
The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin
to the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and
carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper
region, which is the habitation of the gods. The divine is
beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the
wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when
fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good,
wastes and falls away. Zeus, the mighty lord, holding the
reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven,
ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him
the array of gods and demigods, marshalled in eleven
bands; Hestia alone abides at home in the house of
heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned among the
princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see
many blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are
man> ways to and fro, along which the blessed gods are
passing, every one doing his own work; he may follow
who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the celestial
choir. But when they go to banquet and festival, then
they move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven.
The chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein,
glide rapidly; but the others labour, for the vicious steed
goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the earth
when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:—and
this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the
soul. For the immortals, when they are at the end of their
course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven,
and the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and
they behold the things beyond. But of the heaven which
is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever
will sing worthily? It is such as | will describe; for | must
dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There
abides the very being with which true knowledge is
concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence,
visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine
intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure
knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is
capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at
beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is
replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the
worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the
revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and
knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of
relation, which men call existence, but knowledge
absolute in existence absolute; and beholding the other
true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them,
she passes down into the interior of the heavens and
returns home; and there the charioteer putting up his
horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to cat and nectar
to drink.
Such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that
which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head
of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried
round in the resolution, troubled indeed by the steeds,
and with difficulty beholding true being; while another
only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by
reason of the unrulincss of the steeds. The rest of the
souls are also longing after the upper world and they all
follow, but not being strong enough they are carried
round below the surface, plunging, treading on one
another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion
and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of
them are lamed or have their wings broken through the
ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a
fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true
being, go away, and feed upon opinion. the reason why
the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the
plain of truth is that pasturage is found there, which is
suited to the highest pan of the soul; and the wing on
which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a
law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of
truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until
the next period, and if attaining always is always
unharmed. But w hen she is unable to follow, and fails to
behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath
the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings
fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law
ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into
any other animal, but only into nun; and the soul which
has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a
philosopher, or artist, or some musical and losing nature;
that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be
some righteous king or warrior chief; the soul which is of
the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or
trader; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils, ora
physician; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet or
hierophant; to the sixth the character of a poet or some
other imitative artist will be assigned; to the seventh the
life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a
sophist or demagogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant;—all
these are states of probation, in which he who does
righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously,
deteriorates his lot.
Plato, Phaedrus, 246A
4 | cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:—Let us
assume that what you Say is true.
Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute
the truth; for Socrates is easily refuted.
Plato, Symposium, 201B
5 Socrates. | would ask you to be thinking of the truth and
not of Socrates: agree with me, if | Seem to you to be
speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and
main, that | may not deceive you as well as myself in my
enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you
before | die.
Plato, Phaedo, 91A
6 Socrates. | should not like to have my words repeated to
the tragedians and the rest of the imitative tribe—but |
do not mind saying to you, that all poetical imitations are
ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the
knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to
them....| have always from my earliest youth had an
awe and love of Homer, which even now makes the words
falter on my lips, for he is the great captain and teacher
of the whole of that charming tragic company; but a man
is not to be reverenced more than the truth.
Plato, Republic, X, 595A
7 Athenian Stranger. The greatest and highest truths have
no outward image of themselves visible to man, which he
who wishes to satisfy the soul of the enquirer can adapt
to the eye of sense, and therefore we ought to train
ourselves to give and accept a rational account of them;
for immaterial things, which are the noblest and greatest,
are shown only in thought and idea, and in no other way.
Plato, Statesman, 286A
8 As there are in the mind thoughts which do not involve
truth or falsity, and also those which must be either true
or false, so it is in speech. For truth and falsity imply
combination and separation. Nouns and verbs, provided
nothing is added, are like thoughts without combination
or separation; ‘man’ and ‘white’, as isolated terms, are
not yet either true or false.
Aristotle, On Interpretation, 16a10
9 The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later
a thousandfold.
Aristotle, On the Heavens, 271b9
10 To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is
necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the
dispute.
Aristotle, On the Heavens, 279b11
11 The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in
another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact
that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while,
on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every
one says something true about the nature of things, and
while individually we contribute little or nothing to the
truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is
amassed. Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the
proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this
respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can havea
whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows
the difficulty of it.
Perhaps, too, as difficulties are of two kinds, the cause
of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us. For as
the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason
in our soul to the things which are by nature most
evident of all.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 993a30
12 It is right... that philosophy should be called knowledge
of the truth. For the end of theoretical knowledge is truth,
while that of practical knowledge is action (for even if
they consider how things are, practical men do not study
the eternal, but what is relative and in the present). Now
we do not know a truth without its cause; and a thing has
a quality in a higher degree than other things if in virtue
of it the similar quality belongs to the other things as well
(e.g. fire is the hottest of things; for it is the cause of the
heat of all other things); so that that which causes
derivative truths to be true is most true. Hence the
principles of eternal things must be always most true (for
they are not merely sometimes true, nor is there any
cause of their being, but they themselves are the cause
of the being of other things), so that as each thing is in
respect of being, so is it in respect of truth.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 993b19
13 Of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one
predicate. This is clear, in the first place, if we define
what the true and the false are. To say of what is that it is
not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of
what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true;
so that he who says of anything that it is, or that it is not,
will say either what is true or what is false; but neither
what is nor what is not is said to be or not to be.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1011b24
14 It would perhaps be thought to be better, indeed to be
our duty, for the sake of maintaining the truth even to
destroy what touches us closely, especially as we are
philosophers or lovers of wisdom; for, while both are dear,
piety requires us to honour truth above our friends.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1096a13
15 The man who loves truth, and is truthful where nothing is
at stake, will still more be truthful where something is at
stake; he will avoid falsehood as something base, seeing
that he avoided it even for its own sake; and such a man
is worthy of praise. He inclines rather to understate the
truth; for this seems in better taste because
exaggerations are wearisome.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1127b3
16 The states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by
way of affirmation or denial are five in number, i.e. art,
scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic
wisdom, intuitive reason; we do not include judgement
and opinion because in these we may be mistaken.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1139b16
17 Those who object that that at which all things aim is not
necessarily good are, we may surmise, talking nonsense.
For we say that that which every one thinks really is so;
and the man who attacks this belief >vill hardly have
anything more credible to maintain instead.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1172b35
18 Nature has instilled in our minds an insatiable desire to
see truth.
Cicero, Disputations, |, 19
19 We don’t believe a liar even when he tells the truth.
Cicero, Divination, II, 71
20 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye
continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free.
John 8:31-32
21 Pilate therefore said unto him. Art thou a king then? Jesus
answered, Thou sayest that | am a king. To this end was |
born, and for this cause came | into the world, that |
should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of
the truth heareth my voice.
Pilate saith unto him. What is truth? And when he had
said this, he went out again unto the Jew's, and saith
unto them, | find in him no fault at all.
John 18:37-38
22 Am | therefore become your enemy, because | tell you
the truth?
Galatians 4:16
23 A liar ought to have a good memory.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, IV, 2
24 Veritable truth is not accordance with an external; it is
self-accordance; it affirms and is nothing other than itself
and is nothing other; it is at once existence and self-
affirmation.
Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, V, 2
25 And | looked upon other things, and | saw that they owed
their being to You, and that all finite things are in You: hut
in a different manner, being in You not as in a place, but
because You are and hold all things in the hand of Your
truth, and all things are true inasmuch as they are: nor is
falsehood anything, save that something b thought to be
which is not.
Augustine, Confessions, 15
26 | have met many who wished to deceive, but not one who
wished to be deceived.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 23
27 Why does truth call forth hatred? Why is Your servant
treated as an enemy by those to whom he preaches the
truth, if happiness is loved, which is simply joy in truth?
Simply because truth is loved in such a way that those
who love some other thing want it to be the truth, and,
precisely because they do not wish to be deceived, are
unwilling to be convinced that they are deceived. Thus
they hate the truth for the sake of that other thing which
they love because they take it for truth. They love truth
when it enlightens them, they hate truth when it accuses
them. Because they do not wish to be deceived and do
wish to deceive, they love truth when it reveals itself, and
hate it when it reveals them. Thus it shall reward them as
they deserve: those who do not wish to be revealed by
truth, truth will unmask against their will, but it will not
reveal itself to them. Thus, thus, even thus, does the
human mind, blind and inert, vile and ill-oehaved, desire
to keep itself concealed, yet desire that nothing should
be concealed from itself. But the contrary happens to it—
it cannot He hidden from truth, but only truth from it.
Even so, for all its worthlessness, the human mind would
rather find its joy in truth than falsehood. So that it shall
be happy if, with no other thing to distract, it shall one
day come to rejoice in that sole Truth by which all things
are true.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 23
28 Lying is wrong even to save chastity.
Augustine, On Lying, VIl, 10
29 He who says that some lies are just, must be judged to
say no other than that some sins are just, and therefore
some things are just which are unjust: than which what
can be more absurd?
Augustine, To Consentius, Against Lying, 18
30 "If any man makes search for truth with all his
penetration, and would be led astray by no deceiving
paths, let him turn upon himself the light of an inward
gaze, let him bend by force the long-drawn wanderings of
his thoughts into one circle; let him tell surely to his soul,
that he has, thrust away within the treasures of his mind,
all that he labours to acquire without. Then shall that
truth, which now was hid in error’s darkening cloud, shine
forth more clear than Phaebus’s self. For the body, though
it brings material mass which breeds forgetfulness, has
never driven forth all light from the mind. The seed of
truth does surely cling within, and can be roused as a
Spark by the fanning of philosophy. For if it is not so, how
do ye men make answers true of your own instinct when
teachers question you? Is it not that the quick spark of
truth lies buried in the heart’s low depths? And if the
Muse of Plato sends through those depths the voice of
truth, each man has not forgotten and is but reminding
himself of what he learns."
When she [Philosophy] made an end, | said, "| agree
very strongly with Plato; for this is the second time that
you have reminded me of these thoughts. The first time |
had lost them through the material influence of the body;
the second, when overwhelmed by this weight of
trouble."
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, III
31 As the good denotes that towards which the appetite
tends, so the true denotes that towards which the
intellect tends. Now there is this difference between the
appetite and the intellect, or any knowledge whatsoever,
that knowledge is according as the thing known is in the
knower, whilst appetite is according as the desirer tends
towards the thing desired. Thus the term of the appetite,
namely good, is in the thing desirable, and the term of
knowledge, namely true, is in the intellect itself.
Now as good exists in a thing so far as that thing is
related to the appetite—and hence the aspect of
goodness passes on from the desirable thing to the
appetite, according as the appetite is called good if the
thing desired is good, so, since the true is in the intellect
in so far as it is conformed to the thing understood, the
aspect of the true must pass from the intellect to the
thing understood, so that also the thing understood is
said to be true in so far as it has some relation to the
intellect.
Now a thing understood may be in relation to an
intellect either essentially or accidentally. It is related
essentially to an intellect on which it depends as regards
its being, but accidentally to an intellect by which it is
knowable; even as we may Say that a house is related
essentially to the intellect of the architect, but
accidentally to the intellect upon which it does not
depend.
Now we do not judge of a thing by what is in it
accidentally, but by what is in it essentially. Hence,
everything is said to be true absolutely in so far as it is
related to the intellect from which it depends; and thus it
is that artificial things are said to be true as being related
to our intellect. For a house is said to be true that
expresses the likeness of the form in the architect’s mind,
and words are said to be true so far as they are the signs
of truth in the intellect. In the same way natural things
are said to be true in so far as they express the likeness of
the species that are in the divine mind. For a stone is
called true, because it expresses the nature proper to a
stone, according to the preconception in the divine
intellect. Thus, then, truth is principally in the intellect,
and secondarily in things according as they are related to
the intellect as their principle.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 16, 1
32 Truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends
a thing as it is, and in things according as they have
being conformable to an intellect. This is to the greatest
degree found in God. For His being is not only conformed
to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect, and
His act of understanding is the measure and cause of
every other being and of every other intellect, and He
Himself is His own being and act of understanding. And
so it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is
truth itself, and the supreme and first truth.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 16, 5
33 Truth and good include one another; for truth is
something good, otherwise it would not be desirable; and
good is something true, otherwise it would not be
intelligible. Therefore Just as the object of the appetite
may be something true, as having the aspect of good, for
example, when some one desires to know the truth, so
the object of the practical intellect is good directed to
operation, and under the aspect of truth. For the practical
intellect knows truth, just as the speculative, but it
directs the known truth to operation.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 79, 11
34 No one envies another the knowledge of truth, which can
be known entirely by many except perhaps one may envy
another his superiority in the knowledge of it.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 28, 4
35 Being and truth in the universal cannot be the object of
hatred because disagreement is the cause of hatred, and
agreement is the cause of love, while being and truth are
common to all things. But nothing hinders some
particular being or some particular truth being an object
of hatred, in so far as it is considered as something
contrary and repugnant...
Now it may happen in three ways that some particular
truth is repugnant or contrary to the good we love. First,
according as truth is in things as in its cause and origin.
And thus man sometimes hates a particular truth when
he wishes that what is true were not true. Secondly,
according as truth is in man’s knowledge, which hinders
him from gaining the object loved; such is the case of
those who wish not to know the truth of faith, that they
may sin freely.... Thirdly, a particular truth is hated as
something repugnant according as it is in the intellect of
another man; as, for instance, when a man wishes to
remain indolent in his sin, he hates that anyone should
know the truth about his sin.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 29, 5
36 The greatest of all pleasures consists in the
contemplation of truth. Now every pleasure assuages
pain as stated above. Hence the contemplation of truth
assuages pain or sorrow, and the more so the more
perfectly one is a lover of wisdom.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 38, 4
37 A small error in the beginning is a great one in the end.
Aquinas, Concerning Being and Essence, Intro.
38 True expresses the correspondence of being to the
knowing power, for all Knowing is produced by an
assimilation of the knower to the thing known, so that
assimilation is said to be the cause of knowledge.
Similarly, the sense of sight knows a color by being
informed with a species of the color.
The first reference of being to the intellect, therefore,
consists in its agreement with the intellect. This
agreement is called "the conformity of thing and
intellect." In this conformity is fulfilled the formal
constituent of the true, and this is what the true adds to
being, namely, the conformity or equation of thing and
intellect. As we said, the knowledge of a thing is a
consequence of this conformity; therefore, it is an effect
of truth, even though the fact that the thing is a being is
prior to its truth.
Aquinas, On Truth, I, 1
39 And the Friar: "| heard once at Bologna many of the
Devil’s vices told; amongst which, | heard that he is a liar
and the father of lies."
Dante, Inferno, XXIII, 143
4O But first, | pray you, of your courtesy,
You'll not ascribe it to vulgarity
Though | speak plainly of this matter here,
Retailing you their words and means of cheer;
Nor though | use their very terms, nor lie.
For this thing do you know as well as |:
When one repeats a tale told by a man,
He must report, as nearly as he can,
Every least word, if he remember it,
However rude it be, or how unfit;
Or else he may be telling what’s untrue.
Embellishing and fictionizing too.
He may not spare, although it were his brother;
He must as well say one word as another.
Christ spoke right broadly out, in holy writ,
And, you know well, there’s nothing low in it.
And Plato says, to those able to read:
“The word should be the cousin to the deed."
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: The Prologue
41 As thus: You know that each evangelist
Who tells the passion of Lord Jesus Christ
Says not in all things as his fellows do,
But nonetheless, each gospel is all true,
And all of them accord in their essence,
Howbeit there’s in telling difference.
For some of them say more and some say less
When they His piteous passion would express;
| mean now Mark and Matthew, Luke and John;
Yet, without doubt, their meaning is all one.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Prologue to Melibeus
42 Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages,
but truth goes a begging.
Luther, Table Talk, H53
43 Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory
should not meddle with lying.... Now liars either invent
everything out of whole cloth, or else disguise and alter
something fundamentally true. When they disguise and
change a story, if you put them back onto it often enough
they find it hard not to get tangled up. For since the thing
as it is has become lodged first in the memory and has
imprinted itself there by way of consciousness and
knowledge, it is difficult for it not to present itself to the
imagination, dislodging the falsehood, which cannot have
so firm and secure a foothold. Likewise, the
circumstances that were learned first, slipping into the
mind every moment, tend to weaken the memory of the
false or corrupted parts that have been added. In what
liars invent completely, inasmuch as there is no contrary
impression which clashes with the falsehood, they seem
to have the less reason to fear making a mistake.
Nevertheless even this, since it is an empty thing without
a grip, is prone to escape any but a very strong memory.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 9, Of Liars
44 |f falsehood, like truth, had only one face, we would be in
better shape. For we would take as certain the opposite of
what the liar said. But the reverse of truth has a hundred
thousand shapes and a limitless field.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 9, Of Liars
45 How many arts there are that profess to consist of
conjecture more than of knowledge, that do not decide
on the true and the false and merely follow what seems to
be! There are, they say, both a true and a false, and there
is in us the means to seek it, but not to test it by a
touchstone. we are much better if we let ourselves be led
without inquisitiveness in the way of the world. A soul
guaranteed against prejudice is marvelously advanced
toward tranquility. People who judge and check their
judges never submit to them as they ought. How much
more docile and easily led, both by the laws of religion
and by political laws, are the simple and incurious minds,
than those minds that survey divine and human causes
like pedagogues!
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 12, Apology for Raymond
Sebond
46 If the human grip was capable and firm enough to grasp
(he truth by our own means; these means being common
to all men, this truth would be bandied from hand to
hand, from one man to another; and at least there would
be one thing in the world, out of all there are, that would
be believed by all men with universal consent. But this
fact, that no proposition can be seen which is not
debated and controverted among us, or which may not
be, well shows that our natural judgment does not grasp
very clearly what it grasps. For my judgment cannot
make my companion’s judgment accept it; which is a sign
that | have grasped it by some other means than by a
natural power that is in me and in all men.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
47 Truth is the first and fundamental part of virtue. We must
love it for itself. He who tells the truth because he has
some external obligation to do so and because it serves
him, and who does not fear to tell a lie when it is not
important to anybody, is not sufficiently truthful.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 17, Of Presumption
48 The way of truth is one and simple; that of private profit
and the advantage of one’s personal business is double,
uneven, and random.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 1, The Useful and the Honorable
49 Truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at
any time and in any way; its use, noble as it is, has its
circumscriptions and limits. It often happens, as (he world
goes, that people blurt it out into a prince’s car not only
fruitlessly, but harmfully, and even unjustly. And no one
will make me believe that a righteous remonstrance
cannot be applied wrongfully, and that the interest of the
substance must not often yield to the interest of the form.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
50 Launce/ot. Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid
long.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, II, ti, 82
51 Hotspur. | can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil By
telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, Ill, 1, 58
52 Polonius. See you now;
Your bail of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias.
By indirections find directions out.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, i, 62
53 Fool. Truth's dog must to kennel; he must be whipped
out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.
Shakespeare, Lear, I, iv, 124
54 | thank thee for thy Good-will, dear Sancho, repy’d Don
Quixote: But | assure thee, that all these seeming
Extravagancies that | must run through, are no Jests: Far
from it, they must be all perform’d seriously and
solemnly; for otherwise we should transgress the Laws of
Chivalry, that forbid us to tell Lyes upon the Pain of
Degradation; now to pretend to do one Thing, and effect
another, is an Evasion, which | esteem to be as bad as
Lying. Therefore the Blows which | must give my self on
the Head, ought to be real, substantial, sound ones,
without any Trick, or mental Reservation; for which
Reason | would have thee leave me some Lint and Salve,
since Fortune has depriv’d us of the Sovereign Balsam
which we lost.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 25
55 With regard to authority, it is the greatest weakness to
attribute infinite credit to particular authors, and to
refuse his own prerogative to time, the author of all
authors, and, therefore, of all authority. For truth is rightly
named the daughter of time, not of authority.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 84
56 This same truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth
not shew’ the masques and mummeries and triumphs of
the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights.
Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that
sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a
diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights.
A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.
Bacon, Of Truth
57 How’soever these things are thus in men’s depraved
judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth
judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is
the love-making or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth,
which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which
is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human
nature.
Bacon, Of Truth
58 It were far better never to think of investigating truth at
all, than to do so without a method.... Moreover by a
method | mean certain and simple rules, such that, if a
man observe them accurately, he shall never assume
what is false as true, and will never spend his mental
efforts to no purpose, but will always gradually increase
his Knowledge and so arrive at a true understanding of all
that does not surpass his powers.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, IV
59 Having but one truth to discover in respect to each
matter, whoever succeeds in finding it knows in its regard
as much as can be known.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, I!
60 Having remarked that there was nothing at all in the
statement "/ think, therefore | am" which assures me of
having thereby made a true assertion, excepting that |
see very clearly that to think it is necessary to be, | came
to the conclusion that | might assume, as a general rule,
that the things which we conceive very clearly and
distinctly are all true.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, IV
61 From the very fact that anyone girds himself up for an
attack upon the truth, he makes himself less capable of
perceiving the truth itself, since he withdraws his mind
from the consideration of those reasons that tend to
convince him of it, in order to discover others that have
the opposite effect.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, I
62 When two names are joined together into a consequence,
or affirmation, as thus, A man Is a living creature; or thus.
If he be a man, he Is a living creature; if the latter name
living creature signify all that the former name man
signifieth, then the affirmation, or consequence, is true;
otherwise fa/se. For true and false are attributes of
speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is
neither truth nor falsehood. Error there may be, as when
we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has
not been; but in neither case can a man be charged with
untruth.
Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering
of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise
truth had need to remember what every name he uses
stands for, and to place it accordingly; or else he will find
himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime twigs; the
more he struggles, the more belimed.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 4
63 Every man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to
take up the Gauntlet in the cause of Verity: Many, from
the ignorance of these Maximes, and an inconsiderate
Zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the Troops of
Error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth: A
man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City,
and yet be forced to surrender; his therefore far better to
enjoy her with peace, than to hazzard her on a battle.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 6
64 It is a strange and tedious war when violence attempts to
vanquish truth. All the efforts of violence cannot weaken
truth, and only serve to give it fresh vigour. All the lights
of truth cannot arrest violence, and only serve to
exasperate it. When force meets force, the weaker must
succumb to the stronger; when argument is opposed to
argument, the solid and the convincing triumphs over the
empty and the false; but violence and verity can make no
impression on each other. Let none suppose, however,
that the two are, therefore, equal to each other; for there
is this vast difference between them, that violence has
only a certain course to run, limited by the appointment
of Heaven, which overrules its effects to the glory of the
truth which it assails; whereas verity endures forever and
eventually triumphs over its enemies, being eternal and
almighty as God himself.
Pascal, Provincial Letters, X1I
65 We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from
charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must
neither love nor worship; and still less must we love or
worship its opposite, namely, falsehood.
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 582
66 Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so
established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot
know it.
Pascal, Pensées, XIV, 864
67 Whatever the weight of antiquity, truth should always
have the advantage, even when newly discovered, since
it is always older than every opinion men have held
about it, and only ignorance of its nature could imagine it
began to be at the time it began to be known.
Pascal, Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum
68 It is a disease natural to man to believe that he possesses
the truth directly, and this is the reason he is always
inclined to deny whatever he cannot understand.
Whereas in fact he naturally knows nothing but error and
should accept as true only those things whose
contradictory appears to him to be false. Consequently,
whenever a proposition is inconceivable, we must
suspend our judgment and not deny it for that reason,
but examine its contradictory; and if we find this
manifestly false, we may boldly affirm the original
statement, however incomprehensible it is.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
69 | see indeed that truth is the same at Toulouse and at
Paris.
Pascal, Letter to Fermat (July 29,1654)
70 Thus while he spake, each passion dimm'd his
[Satan's] face
Thrice chang'd with pale, ire, envie and despair,
Which marrd his borrow'd visage, and betraid
Him counterfet, if any eye beheld.
For heav’nly mindes from such distempers foule
are ever cleer. Whereof hee soon aware,
Each perturbation smooth'd with outward calme,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practisd falshood under saintly shew,
Deep malice to conceale, couch't with revenge.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 114
71 Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk.
Milton, Paradise Regained, |, 478
72 And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to
play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do
injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her
strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew
Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?
Milton, Areopagitica
73 For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the
Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor
licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and
the defences that error uses against her power. Give her
but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then
she speaks not true.
Milton, Areopagitica
74 He who has a true idea knows at the same time that he
has a true idea, nor can he doubt the truth of the thing....
For no one who has a true idea is ignorant that a true
idea involves the highest certitude; to have a true idea
signifying just this, to know a thing perfectly or as well as
possible. No one, in fact, can doubt this, unless he
supposes an idea to be something dumb, like a picture on
a tablet, instead of being a mode of thought, that is to
say, intelligence itself. Moreover, | ask who can know that
he understands a thing unless he first of all understands
that thing? that is to say, who can know that he is certain
of anything unless he is first of all certain of that thing?
Then, again, what can be clearer or more certain than a
true idea as the standard of truth? Just as light reveals
both itself and the darkness, so truth is the standard of
itself and of the false. | consider what has been said to be
a sufficient answer to the objection that if a true idea is
distinguished from a false idea only in so far as it is said
to agree with that of which it is the idea, the true idea
therefore has no reality nor perfection above the false
idea (since they are distinguished by an external sign
alone), and consequently the man who has true ideas will
have no greater reality or perfection than he who has
false ideas only. | consider, loo, that | have already replied
to those who inquire why men have false ideas, and how
a man can certainly know that he has ideas which agree
with those things of which they are the ideas. For with
regard to the difference between a true and a false idea,
it is evident. . . that the former is related to the latter as
being is to non-being. ,.. With regard to., . how aman
can know that he has an idea which agrees with (hat of
which it is the idea—l have shown almost more times
than enough that he knows it simply because he has an
idea which agrees with that of which it is the idea, that is
to say, because truth is its own standard. We must
remember, besides, that our mind, in so far as it truly
perceives things, is a part of the infinite intellect of Cod,
and therefore it must be that the clear and distinct ideas
of (be mind are as true as those of God.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Prop. 43; Schol.
75 For Truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be lov’d needs only to be seen.
Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, |, 33
76 There are... two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and
those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their
opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and
their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, its
reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more
simple ideas and truths, until we come to those which are
primary.
Leibniz, Monadology, 33
77 the truth certainly would do well enough if she were once
left to shift for herself. She .seldom has received anti, |
fear, never will receive much assistance from the power
of great men, to whom .she is but rarely known and more
rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she
any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds
of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of
foreign and borrowed succours. But if Truth makes not her
way into the understanding by her own light, she win be
but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add
to her.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
7B The imputation of Novelty is a terrible charge amongst
those who judge of men's heads, as they do of their
perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right
but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it
by vote anywhere at its first appearance: new opinions
are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any
other reason but because they are not already common.
But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly
brought out of the mine. It Is trial and examination must
give it price, and not any antique fashion; and though it
be not yet current by the public stamp, yet it may, for all
that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less
genuine.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Dedication
79 Though, in compliance with the ordinary way of
speaking, | have shown in what sense and upon what
ground our ideas may be sometimes called true or false;
yet if we will look a little nearer into the matter, in all
cases where any idea is called true or false, it is from
some judgment that the mind makes, or is supposed to
make, that is true or false. For truth or falsehood, being
never without some affirmation or negation, express or
tacit, it is not to be found but where signs are joined or
separated, according to the agreement or disagreement
of the things they stand for. The signs we chiefly use are
either ideas or words; wherewith we make either mental
or verbal propositions. Truth lies in so joining or
separating these representatives, as the things they
stand for do in themselves agree or disagree; and
falsehood in the contrary.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Bk. Il, XXXII,
19
80 He that would seriously set upon the search of truth
ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of
it. For he that loves it not will not take much pains to get
it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. There is
nobody in the commonwealth of learning who does not
profess himself a lover of truth: and there is not a rational
creature that would not take it amiss to be thought
otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, that
there are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even
amongst those who persuade themselves that they are
so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is
worth inquiry: and | think there is one unerring mark of it,
viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater
assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain,
receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for
truth’s sake, but for some other bye-end.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XIX, 1
81 He must surely be either very weak, or very little
acquainted with the sciences, who shall reject a truth
that is capable of demonstration, for no other reason but
because it is newly known, and contrary to the prejudices
of mankind.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Pref.
82 My master heard me with great appearances of
uneasiness in his countenance; because doubting or not
believing, are so little known in this country, that the
inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under
such circumstances. And | remember in frequent
discourses with my master concerning the nature of
manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to
talk of /ying and false representation, it was with much
difficulty that he comprehended what | meant; although
he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued
thus; that the use of soeech was to make us understand
one another, and to receive information of facts; now if
any one said the thing which war not, these ends were
defeated; because | cannot properly be said to
understand him; and | am so far from receiving
information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance;
for |am led to believe a thing black, when it is white; and
short, when it is jong. And these were all the notions he
had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well
understood, and so universally practised among human
creatures.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 4
83 He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he
undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more
to maintain that one.
Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects
84 There are certain times when most people are ina
disposition of being informed, and ’tis incredible what a
vast good a little truth might do, spoken in such seasons.
Pope, Letter to William Wycherley (June 23, 1705)
85 ‘Tis certain we cannot take pleasure in any discourse,
where our judgment gives no assent to those images
which are presented to our fancy. The conversation of
those, who have acquir’d a habit of lying, tho’ in affairs of
no moment, never gives any satisfaction; and that
because those ideas they present to us, not being
attended with belief, make no impression upon the mind.
Poets themselves, tho’ liars by profession, always
endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions; and
where that is totally neglected, their performances,
however ingenious, will never be able to afford much
pleasure. In short, we may observe, that even when ideas
have no manner of influence on the will as passions, truth
and reality are still requisite, in order to make them
entertaining to the imagination.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, I/l, 10
86 Reason is the discovery of truth or falshood. Truth or
falshood consists in an agreement or disagreement either
to the rea/ relations of ideas, or to rea/ existence and
matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of
this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being
true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. III, |, 1
87 Mr. Allworthy rightly observed, that there was a great
difference between being guilty of a falsehood to excuse
yourself, and to excuse another.
Fielding, Tom Jones, IIl, 5
88 The elegant Lord Shaftesbury somewhere objects to
telling too much truth: by which it may be fairly inferred,
that, in some cases, to lie is not only excusable, but
commendable.
And surely there are no persons who may so properly
challenge a right to this commendable deviation from
truth, as young women in the affair of love; for which
they may plead precept, education, and above all, the
sanction, nay, | may say the necessity of custom, by
which they are restrained, not from submitting to the
honest impulses of nature (for that would be a foolish
prohibition), but from owning them.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XIII, 12
89 Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting fora
better definition, as—"a statement of the facts as they
are."
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Truth
90 There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all
occasions.
Voltaire, Letter to Cardinal de Bernis (Apr, 23, mi)
91 Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is
quite ripe.
Voltaire, Letter to Countess de Barcewitz (Dec. 24, 1761)
92 Between falsehood and useless truth there is little
difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no
man rich, so Knowledge which he cannot apply will make
no man wise.
Johnson, Idler No. 84
93 "Pilgrimage," said Imlac, "like many other acts of piety,
may be reasonable or superstitious, according to the
principles upon which it is performed. Long journeys in
search of truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is
necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where
it is honestly sought."
Johnson, Rasselas, XI
94 Goldsmith. "There are people who tell a hundred political
lies every day, and are not hurt by it. Surely, then, one
may tell truth with safety'. Johnson. "Why, Sir, in the first
place, he w’ho tells a hundred lies has disarmed the force
of his Hes. But besides; a man had rather have a hundred
lies told of him, than one truth which he does not wish
should be told," Goldsmith. "For my part, I'd tell truth,
and shame the devil," Johnson. "Yes, Sir; but the devil will
be angry’. | wish to shame the devil as much as you do,
but | should choose to be out of the reach of his claws."
Goldsmith. "His claws can do you no harm, when you
have the shield of truth."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 15, 1773)
95 Johnson. Nobody has a right to put another under such a
difficulty, that he must either hurt the person by telling
the truth, or hurt himself by telling what is not true.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 25, 1778)
96 We talked of the casuistical question. Whether it was
allowable at any time to depart from Truth? Johnson. "The
general rule is, that Truth should never be violated,
because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of
life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith;
and occasional inconveniences should be willingly
suffered that we may preserve it. There must, however,
be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should
ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him what
is not true, because you are under a previous obligation
not to betray a man to a murderer.... But | deny the
lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of
alarming him. You have no business with consequences;
you are to tell the truth. Besides, you are not sure what
effect your telling him that he is in danger may have. It
may bring his distemper to a crisis, and that may cure
him. Of all lying, | have the greatest abhorrence of this,
because | believe it has been frequently practised on
myself."
| cannot help thinking that there is much weight in the
opinion of those who have held, that Truth, as an eternal
and immutable principle, ought, upon no account
whatever, to be violated, from supposed previous or
superiour obligations, of which every man being to judge
for himself, there is great danger that we too often, from
partial motives, persuade ourselves that they exist; and
probably whatever extraordinary instances may
sometimes occur, where some evil may be prevented by
violating this noble principle, it would be found that
human happiness would, upon the whole, be more
perfect were Truth universally preserved.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 13, 1784)
97 The protestant and philosophic readers of the present
age will incline to believe that, in the account of his own
conversion, Constantine attested a wilful falsehood by a
solemn and deliberate perjury. They may not hesitate to
pronounce that, in the choice of a religion, his mind was
determined only by a sense of interest; and that ... he
used the altars of the church as a convenient footstool to
the throne of the empire. A conclusion so harsh and so
absolute is not, however, warranted by our knowledge of
human nature, of Constantine, or of Christianity. In an age
of religious fervour the most artful statesmen are
observed to feel some part of the enthusiasm which they
inspire; and the most orthodox saints assume the
dangerous privilege of defending the cause of truth by
the arms of deceit and falsehood. Personal interest is
often the standard of our belief, as well as of our practice;
and the same motives of temporal advantage which
might influence the public conduct and professions of
Constantine would insensibly dispose his mind to
embrace a religion so propitious to his fame and fortunes.
His vanity was gratified by the flattering assurance that
he had been chosen by Heaven to reign over the earth:
success had justified his divine title to the throne, and
that title was founded on the truth of the Christian
revelation. As real virtue is sometimes excited by
undeserved applause, the specious piety of Constantine,
if at first it was only specious, might gradually, by the
influence of praise, of habit, and of example, be matured
into serious faith and fervent devotion.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX
98 It is a humiliating consideration for human reason that it
is incompetent to discover truth by means of pure
speculation, but, on the contrary, stands in need of
discipline to check its deviations from the straight path
and to expose the illusions which it originates. But, on
the other hand, this consideration ought to elevate and
to give it confidence, for this discipline is exercised by
itself alone, and it is subject to the censure of no other
power. The bounds, moreover, which it is forced to set to
its speculative exercise, form likewise a check upon the
fallacious pretensions of opponents; and thus what
remains ol its possessions, after these exaggerated claims
have been disallowed, is secure from attack or
usurpation. The greatest, and perhaps the only, use of all
philosophy of pure reason is, accordingly, of a purely
negative character. It is not an organon for the extension,
but a discipline for the determination, of the limits of its
exercise; and without laying claim to the discovery of
new truth, it has the modest merit of guarding against
error.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
99 Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not
be believ'd.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 10
100 Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention
of communicating, truth.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1X
101 And, after all, what is a lie? ’T is but
The truth in masquerade; and | defy
Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put
A fact without some leaven of a lie.
Byron, Don Juan, XI, 37
102 'Tis strange,—but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!
Byron, Don Juan, XIV, 101
103 Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it
makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been
simple. This is so partly because it then takes
unobstructed possession of the hearer's whole soul, and
leaves him no by-thought to distract him; partly, also,
because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or
cheated by the arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of
what is said comes from the thing itself.
Schopenhauer, Some Forms of Literature
104 If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling
you a lie, look as though you believed every word he said.
This will give him courage to go on; he will become more
vehement in his assertions and in the end betray himself.
Schopenhauer, Our Relation to Others
105 The true must essentially be regarded as in conflict with
this world; the world has never been so good, and will
never become so good, that the majority will desire the
truth, or have the true conception of it in such a way that
its proclamation must consequently immediately gain the
support of everyone. No, he who will proclaim some truth
in truth, must prepare himself in some other way than by
the help of such a foolish expectation; he must be willing
essentially to relinquish the immediate.
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, II, 10
106 Truth is such a fly-away, such a sly-boots, so
untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is
as bad to catch as light.
Emerson, Literary Ethics
107 The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. we know
truth when we see it, let sceptic and scoffer say what
they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have
spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know
it is truth, and not an error of your own?’ We know truth
when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are
awake that we are awake.... We are wiser than we know.
Emerson, The Over-Soul
108 God offers to every mind its choice between truth and
repose. Take which you please—you can never have both.
Emerson, Intellect
109 "Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was that,
shipmates? To preach the truth to the face of Falsehood!
That was it!
"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to
that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him
whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him
who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has
brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please
rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is
more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this
world, courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would not
be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe
to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching
to others is himself a castaway!"
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment;
then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in
his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,
—"but oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every
woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that
delight, than the botton of the woe is deep. Is not the
maintruck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him
— a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the
proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands
forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose
strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base
treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is
to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kill, burns,
and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the
robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant
delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but
the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight
is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of
the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of
the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be
his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final
breath—O Father!— chiefly known to me by Thy rod—
mortal or immortal, here | die. | have striven to be Thine,
more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is
nothing; | leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he
should live out the lifetime of his God?"
Melville, Moby Dick, IX
110 The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot
so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having
less to do with fable than with fact. Truth
uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges;
hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less
finished than an architectural finial.
Melville, Billy Budd
111 The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less
true, though they may not recommend themselves to the
sense which is most common among Englishmen and
Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends
itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the
wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some
expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely
sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic.
Thoreau, Walking
112 No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so
well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the
most part, we are not where we are, but in a false
position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose
a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two
cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get
out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case
that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought.
Any truth is better than make-believe.
Thoreau, Walden: Conclusion
113 If some great Power would agree to make me always
think what is true and do what is right, on condition of
being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every
morning before | got out of bed, | should instantly close
with the offer.
T. H. Huxley, Descartes’ "Discourse on Method"
114 History warns us... that it is the customary fate of new
truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
T. H. Huxley, The Coming of Age of "The Origin of
Species"
115 Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is
powerless against truth.
T. H. Huxley, Administrative Nihilism
116 It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as
truth, has any inherent power denied to error of
prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are
not more zealous for truth than they often are for error,
and a sufficient application of legal or even of social
penalties will generally succeed in stopping the
propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has
consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be
extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the
course of ages there will generally be found persons to
rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on
a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes
persecution until it has made such head as to withstand
all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Mill, On Liberty, II
117 No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise,
that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to
whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even
by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation,
thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who
only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to
think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great
thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the
contrary, it is as much and even more indispensable to
enable average human beings to attain the mental
stature which they are capable of. There have been, and
may again be, great individual thinkers in a general
atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been,
nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually
active people. Where any people has made a temporary
approach to such a character, it has been because the
dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended.
Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not
to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest
questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be
closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale
of mental activity which has made some periods of
history so remarkable.
Mill, On Liberty, II
118 On every subject on which difference of opinion is
possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck
between two sets of conflicting reasons.
Mill, On Liberty, II
119 Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much
a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites,
that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and
impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to
correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process
of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile
banners.
Mill, On Liberty, II
120 The essence of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie
may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on
a syllabic, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar
significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of lies are
worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly
worded; so that no form of blinded conscience is so far
sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived,
because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead
of utterance; and, finally, according to Tennyson’s deep
and trenchant line, "A lie which is half a truth is ever the
worst of lies."
Ruskin, Modem Painters, Pt. 1X, 7
121 "I should never dare to say that | Know the truth," said
the Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by
their precision and firmness. "No one can attain to truth
by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the
cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our
forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared
which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God,"
he added, and closed his eyes.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, V, 2
122 If we would only stop lying, if we would only testify to
the truth as we see it, it would turn out at once that there
are hundreds, thousands, even millions of men just as we
are, who see the truth as we do, are afraid as we are of
seeming to be singular by confessing it, and are only
waiting, again as we are, for some one to proclaim it.
Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
123 The person who confesses that there is such a thing as
truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by
this, that if acted on it should, on full consideration, carry
us to the point we aim at and not astray, and then,
though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and
seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed.
C. S. Peirce, Fixation of Belief
124 Truths, on the average, have a greater tendency to get
believed than falsities have. Were it otherwise,
considering that there are myriads of false hypotheses to
account for any given phenomenon, against one sole true
one (or if you will have it so, against every true one), the
first step toward genuine knowledge must have been
next door to a miracle.
C, S. Peirce, What Pragmatism Means
125 You don’t know about me without you have read a book
by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that
ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain,
and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he
stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. |
never seen anybody but lied one time or another.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, 1
126 One of the most striking differences between a cat and
a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, VII
127 When in doubt tell the truth.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, I!
128 The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying
to others is relatively the exception.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LV
129 Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of
good is revealed to any single observer, although each
observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the
peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and
sickrooms have their special revelations. It is enough to
ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own
opportunities and make the most of his own blessings,
without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.
William James, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings
130 Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a
truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other
—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in
which our social system backs us up? we want to havea
truth; we want to believe that our experiments and
studies and discussions must put us in a continually
better and better position towards it; and on this line we
agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a Pyrrhonistic
Skeptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a
reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition
against another—we willing to go in for life upon a trust
or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to
make.
William James, The Will to Believe
131 The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be
good in the way of belief and good, too, for definite,
assignable reasons. Surely you must admit this, that if
there were no good for life in true ideas, or if the
knowledge of them were positively disadvantageous and
false ideas the only useful ones, then the current notion
that truth is divine and precious, and its pursuit a duty,
could never have grown up or become a dogma. Ina
world like that, our duty would be to shun truth, rather.
But in this world, just as certain foods are not only
agreeable to our taste, but good for our teeth, our
stomach, and our tissues; so certain ideas are not only
agreeable to think about, or agreeable as supporting
other ideas that we are fond of, but they are also helpful
in life’s practical struggles. If there be any life that it is
really better we should lead, and if there be any idea
which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then
it would be really better for us to believe in that idea,
unless, indeed, belief in it incidentally clashed with other
greater vital benefits.
"What would be better for us to believe!" This sounds
very like a definition of truth. It comes very near to
saying "what we ought to believe"; and in that definition
none of you would find any oddity. Ought we ever not to
believe what it is better for us to believe? And can we
then keep the notion of what is better for us, and what is
true for us, permanently apart?
Pragmatism says no, and | fully agree with her.
William James, Pragmatism, II
132 New truths thus are resultants of new experiences and
of old truths combined and mutually modifying one
another. And since this is the case in the changes of
opinion of today, there is no reason to assume that it has
not been so at all times. It follows that very ancient
modes of thought may have survived through all the later
changes in men’s opinions. The most primitive ways of
thinking may not yet be wholly expunged. Like our five
fingers, our ear bones, our rudimentary caudal
appendage, or our other ‘vestigial’ peculiarities, they
may remain as indelible tokens of events in our race
history. Our ancestors may at certain moments have
struck into ways of thinking which they might
conceivably not have found. But once they did so, and
after the fact, the inheritance continues. When you begin
a piece of music in a certain key, you must keep the key
to the end. You may alter your house ad libitum, but the
ground plan of the first architect persists—you can make
great changes, but you cannot change a Gothic church
into a Doric temple. You may rinse and rinse Ac bottle,
but you can’t get the taste of the medicine or whiskey
that first filled it wholly out.
My thesis now is this, that our fundamental ways of
thinking about things are discoveries of exceedingly
remote ancestors, which have been able to preserve
themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent
time. They form one great stage of equilibrium in the
human mind’s development, the stage of common sense.
Other stages have grafted themselves upon this stage,
but have never succeeded in displacing it.
William James, Pragmatism, V
133 Pragmatism... asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or
belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will
its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the
truth be realized? What experiences will be different from
those which would obtain if the belief were false? What,
in short, is the truth’s cash value in experiential terms?"
The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees
the answer: True ideas are those that we can assimilate,
validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those
that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes
to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of
truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
William James, Pragmatism, VI
134 'The true,’ to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in
the way of our thinking, just as 'the right’ is only the
expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in
almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on
the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the
experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther
experiences equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we
know, has ways of boiling over, and making us correct our
present formulas.
The ‘absolutely’ true, meaning what no farther
experience will ever alter, is that ideal vanishing point
toward which we imagine that all our temporary truths
will some day converge. It runs on all fours with the
perfectly wise man, and with the absolutely complete
experience; and, if these ideals are ever realized, they
will all be realized together. Meanwhile we have to live
today by what truth we can get today, and be ready
tomorrow to call it falsehood. Ptolemaic astronomy.
Euclidean space, Aristotelian logic, scholastic
metaphysics, were expedient for centuries, but human
experience has boiled over those limits, and we now call
these things only relatively true, or true within those
borders of experience. ‘Absolutely’ they are false; for we
know that those limits were casual, and might have been
transcended by past theorists just as they are by present
thinkers.
William James, Pragmatism, VI
135 The Truth: what a perfect idol of the rationalistic mind! |
read in an old letter—from a gifted friend who died too
young—these words: "In everything, in science, art,
morals, and religion, there must be one system that is
right and every other wrong." How characteristic of the
enthusiasm of a certain stage of youth! At twenty-one we
rise to such a challenge and expect to find the system. It
never occurs to most of us even later that the question
“what is the truth?" is no real question (being irrelative to
all conditions) and that the whole notion of the truth is an
abstraction from the fact of truths in the plural, a mere
useful summarizing phrase like the Latin Language or the
Law.
William James, Pragmatism, VII
136 The search for truth should be the goal of our activities;
it is the sole end worthy of them. Doubtless we should
first bend our efforts to assuage human suffering, but
why? Not to suffer is a negative ideal more surely
attained by the annihilation of the world. If we wish more
and more to free man from material cares, it is that he
may be able to employ the liberty obtained in the study
and contemplation of truth.
But sometimes truth frightens us. And in fact we know
that it is sometimes deceptive, that it is a phantom never
showing itself fora moment except to ceaselessly flee,
that it must be pursued further and ever further without
ever being attained. Yet to work one must stop, as some
Greek, Aristotle or another, has said. We also know how
cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is
not more consoling, yea, even more bracing, for illusion it
is which gives confidence. When it shall have vanished,
will hope remain and shall we have the courage to
achieve? Thus would not the horse harnessed to his
treadmill refuse to go, were his eyes not bandaged? And
then to seek truth it is necessary to be independent,
wholly independent. If, on the contrary, we wish to act, to
be strong, we should be united. This is why many of us
fear truth; we consider it a cause of weakness. Yet truth
should not be feared, for it alone is beautiful.
When | speak here of truth, assuredly | refer first to
scientific truth; but | also mean moral truth, of which
what we call justice is only one aspect. It may seem that |
am misusing words, that | combine thus under the same
name two things having nothing in common; that
scientific truth, which is demonstrated, can in no way be
likened to moral truth, which is felt. And yet | can not
separate them, and whosoever loves the one can not help
loving the other. To find the one, as well as to find the
other, it is necessary to free the soul completely from
prejudice and from passion; it is necessary to attain
absolute sincerity. These two sorts of truth when
discovered give the same joy; each when perceived
beams with the same splendor, so that we must see it or
close our eyes. Lastly, both attract us and flee from us;
they are never fixed: when we think to have reached
them, we find that we have still to advance, and he who
pursues them is condemned never to know repose. It
must be added that those who fear the one will also fear
the other; for they are the ones who in everything are
concerned above all with consequences. In a word, | liken
the two truths, because the same reasons make us love
them and because the same reasons make us fear them.
Poincare, Value of Science, Intro.
137 Truth telling is not compatible with the defence of the
realm.
Shaw, Heartbreak House, Pref.
138 Keegan. My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the
funniest joke in the world.
Shaw, John Bull's Other Island, II
139 Truth is a qualification which applies to Appearance
alone. Reality is just itself, and it is nonsense to ask
whether it be true or false. Truth is the conformation of
Appearance to Reality. This conformation may be more or
less, also direct or indirect. Thus Truth is a generic quality
with a variety of degrees and modes. In the Law-Courts,
the wrong species of Truth may amount to perjury. For
example, a portrait may be so faithful as to deceive the
eye. Its very truthfulness then amounts to deception. A
reflexion in a mirror is at once a truthful appearance and
a deceptive appearance. The smile of a hypocrite is
deceptive, and that of a philanthropist may be truthful.
But both of them were truly smiling.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XVI, 2
140 Every belief which is not merely an impulse to action is
in the nature of a picture, combined with a yes-feeling or
a no-feeling; in the case of a yes-feeling it is "true" if
there is a fact having to the picture the kind of similarity
that a prototype has to an image; in the case of a no-
feeling it is "true" if there is no such fact, A belief which is
not true is called "false."
This is a definition of "truth" and "falsehood."
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 11
141 The most mordant verities are heard at last, after the
interests they injure and the emotions they rouse have
exhausted their frenzy.
Freud, Future of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
142 The simplest explanation is not always the right one,
truth is very often not simple.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXX
143 The ordinary man knows only one truth —truth in the
ordinary sense of the word. What may be meant by a
higher, or a highest, truth, he cannot imagine. Truth
seems to him as little capable of having degrees as
death, and the necessary leap from the beautiful to the
true is one that he cannot make. Perhaps you will agree
with me in thinking that he is right in this.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
144 For ordinary purposes, that is for practical purposes, the
truth and the realness of things are synonymous. We are
all children who say "really and truly." A reality which is
taken in organic response so as to lead to subsequent
reactions that are off the track and aside from the mark,
while it is, existentially soeaking, perfectly real, is not
good reality. It lacks the hallmark of value. Since it isa
certain kind of object which we want, one which will be as
favorable as possible to a consistent and liberal or
growing functioning, it is this kind, the true kind, which
for us monopolizes the title of reality. Pragmatically,
teleologically, this identification of truth and "reality" is
sound and reasonable: rationalistically, it leads to the
notion of the duplicate versions of reality, one absolute
and static because exhausted; the other phenomenal and
kept continually on the jump because otherwise its own
inherent nothingness would lead to its total annihilation.
Since it is only genuine or sincere things, things which
are good for what they lay claim to in the way of
consequences, which we want or are after, morally they
alone are "real."
Dewey, Practical Character of Reality
145 To generalize the recognition that the true means the
verified and means nothing else places upon men the
responsibility for surrendering political and moral
dogmas, and subjecting to the test of consequences their
most cherished prejudices. Such a change involves a
great change in the seat of authority and the methods of
decision in society.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, VI
146 An a priori true thought would be one whose possibility
guaranteed its truth.
We could only know a priori that a thought is true if its
truth was to be recognized from the thought itself
(without an object of comparison).
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.04-3.05
147 What is the function of philosophy? To disclose the
absolute truth? But is it credible that the absolute truth
should descend into the thoughts of a mortal creature,
equipped with a few special senses and with a biassed
intellect, a man lost amidst millions of his fellows and a
prey to the epidemic delusions of the race? Possession of
the absolute truth is not merely by accident beyond the
range of particular minds; it is incompatible with being
alive, because it excludes any particular station, organ,
interest, or date of survey: the absolute truth is
undiscoverable just because it is not a perspective,
Perspectives are essential to animal apprehension; an
observer, himself a part of the world he observes, must
have a particular station in it; he cannot be equally near
to everything, nor internal to anything but himself; of the
rest he can only take views, abstracted according to his
sensibility and foreshortened according to his interests.
Those animals which | was supposing endowed with an
adequate philosophy surely do not possess the absolute
truth. They read nature in their private idioms. Their
imagination, like the human, is doubtless incapable of
coping with all things at once, or even with the whole of
anything natural. Mind was not created for the sake of
discovering the absolute truth. The absolute truth has its
own intangible reality, and scorns to be known.
Santayana, Realms of Being, Pref.
148 Not the assertion as a psychological fact is true, but
only that which it asserts: and the difference in quality
and value between true ideas and false ideas, taken as
states of mind, is a moral difference: the true ideas being
safer and probably clearer and more humorous than the
false, and marking a success on the mind’s part in
understanding the world, whereas false ideas would mark
a failure.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, V
149 Truth is .., not discoverable at all without some vital
moral impulse prompting to survey it, and some
rhetorical or grammatical faculty, synthesizing that
survey and holding it up to attention in the form of a
recognizable essence. Dramatic myth, however poetical it
may be or merely analogous to the facts, in that at least it
responds to the facts reflectively, has entered the arena
of truth; it is more cognitive, more intelligent, and more
useful than a mechanical record of those facts without
any moral synthesis. | think it very doubtful whether, if
religion and poetry should dry up altogether, mankind
would be nearer the truth; or whether science would gain
anything by correcting its philosophical pretensions, for
instance the pretension to truth, in order to become
merely the technology of the mechanical arts. Certainly
nothing would be gained intellectually: and if we
condemned intelligence, as well as imagination, to
ticking like a clock, if not to total silence, we might
outrage human nature too deeply, and provoke a violent
reaction. It is more prudent for the critic of illusion to
consider the truth that myth may possess rather than to
attempt to escape from myth altogether.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, VII
150 The love of truth is often mentioned, the hatred of truth
hardly ever, yet the latter is the commoner. People say
they love the truth when they pursue it, and they pursue
it when unknown: not therefore because of any felt
affinity to it in their souls, but probably because they
need information for practical purposes, or to solve some
conventional riddle. Where known, on the contrary, truth
is almost always dismissed or disguised, because the
aspect of it is hateful. And this apart from any devilish
perversity in the natural man, or accidental vices that
may fear the light. On the contrary, the cause is rather
the natural man’s innocence and courage in thinking
himself the measure of all things. Life imposes selfish
interests and subjective views on every inhabitant of
earth; and in hugging these interests and these views the
man hugs what he initially assumes to be the truth and
the right. So that aversion from the real truth, a sort of
antecedent hatred of it as contrary to presumption, is
interwoven into the very fabric of thought.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, XII
151 There is no difficulty in understanding what is meant by
the notion of truth. What is a true or truthful word? A
word which expresses, as it really is, the speaker’s
thought; a word in conformity with that thought. What,
then, is a true thought? A thought which represents, as it
really is, the thing to which it refers; a thought in
conformity with that thing. We therefore conclude that
truth in the mind consists in its conformity with the thing.
It is impossible to define truth otherwise without lying
to ourselves, without falsifying the notion of truth of
which in practice we make use in the living exercise of
our intelligence, each time that we think.
We may further remark that a thought false in all its
constituents is an impossibility for, being in conformity
with nothing whatsoever, it would be the zero of thought.
If, for instance, | affirm that stones have a soul, this is
undoubtedly a complete error. But it is true that stones
exist, true also that certain beings have a soul; that is to
say, all the constituents which compose this false
thought are not false. Therefore error itself presupposes
truth.
Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, II, 4
152 All views are only probable, and a doctrine of probability
which is not bound to a truth dissolves into thin air. In
order to describe the probable, you must have a firm hold
on the true. Therefore, before there can be any truth
whatsoever, there must be an absolute truth.
Sartre, Existentialism
6.4 Error, Ignorance, and the Limits of
Human Knowledge
The mind that is in error about a certain matter and the
mind that is ignorant of it are both in want of knowledge,
but they do not stand in the same relation to the knowledge
that they lack. To be in error is to claim to know what one
does not know. It is, therefore, an unacknowledged
ignorance of the matter in question, combined with a false
presumption. In contrast, ignorance is simply a privation of
knowledge unaccompanied by any pretension to know.
Hence, from the point of view of the teacher, as Socrates
suggests, ignorance is preferable to error, and especially an
acknowledged ignorance—an explicit recognition that one
does not know.
The passages collected here ring all the changes on these
states of mind and point out their implications not only for
teaching and learning, but also for the development of
knowledge itself. On any point in question, there can bea
multiplicity of errors all opposed to a single truth; and the
sources or causes of error are also multitudinous. Writers
such as Descartes and Bacon, who are concerned with rules
for the proper conduct of the mind’s efforts in seeking
knowledge, therefore undertake to specify the pitfalls and
stumbling blocks that must be avoided in order to steer
clear of error.
Error, manifesting the fallibility of the human mind, and
ignorance, betokening its failure to know, enter into the
consideration of the question concerning the limits of
human knowledge, discussed in a number of the quotations
assembled here. What is the line that divides the unknown
from the unknowable? Is the unknowable unknowable in
itself or only to us because of the weakness of our intellects?
Can the mind establish for itself the boundaries of attainable
knowledge, and safeguard itself against the illusory pursuit
of the unknowable beyond those borders? To questions of
this sort, the writers quoted offer an interesting diversity of
answers.
1 Agamemnon. Delusion is the elder daughter of Zeus, the
accursed
who deludes all; her feet are delicate and they step not
on the firm earth, but she walks the air above men’s
heads
and leads them astray.
Homer, Iliad, XIX, 91
2 Teiresias. All men may err
but error once committed, he’s no fool
nor yet unfortunate, who gives up his stiffness
and cures the trouble he has fallen in.
Stubbornness and stupidity are twins.
Sophocles, Antigone, 1023
3 Ajax. Not knowing anything’s the sweetest life— Ignorance
is an evil free from pain.
Sophocles, Ajax, 554
4 Diotima. Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is
neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with
himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no
want.
Plato, Symposium, 204A
5 Socrates. Do you see, Meno, what advances he [the slave
boy] has made in his power of recollection? He did not
know at first, and he does not know now, what is the side
of a figure of eight feet: but then he thought that he
knew, and answered confidently as if he knew, and had
no difficulty; now he has a difficulty, and neither knows
nor fancies that he knows.
Meno. True.
Soc. Is he not better off in knowing his ignorance?
Men. | think that he is.
Soc. If we have made him doubt, and given him the
“torpedo’s shock,” have we done him any harm?
Men. | think not.
Soc. We have certainly, as would seem, assisted him in
some degree to the discovery of the truth; and now he
will wish to remedy his ignorance, but then he would
have been ready to tell all the world again and again that
the double space should have a double side.
Men. True.
Soc. But do you suppose that he would ever have
enquired into or learned what he fancied that he knew,
though he was really ignorant of it, until he had fallen
into perplexity under the idea that he did not know, and
had desired to know?
Men. | think not, Socrates.
Soc. Then he was the better for the torpedo’s touch?
Men. | think so.
Plato, Meno, 84A
6 Socrates. |am going to explain to you why | have such an
evil name. When | heard the answer, | said to myself,
What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of
his riddle? for | know that | have no wisdom, small or
great. What then can he mean when he says that | am the
wisest of men? And yet he is a god, and cannot lie; that
would be against his nature. After long consideration, |
thought of a method of trying the question. | reflected
that if | could only find a man wiser than myself, then |
might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. | should
say to him, “Here is a man who is wiser than | am; but you
said that | was the wisest.” Accordingly | went to one who
had the reputation of wisdom, and observed him—his
name | need not mention; he was a politician whom |
selected for examination— and the result was as follows:
When | began to talk with him, | could not help thinking
that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise
by many, and still wiser by himself; and thereupon | tried
to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was
not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated
me, and his enmity was shared by several who were
present and heard me. So | left him, saying to myself, as |
went away: Well, although | do not suppose that either of
us knows anything really beautiful and good, | am better
off than he is,—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he
knows; | neither know nor think that | know. In this latter
particular, then, | seem to have slightly the advantage of
him. Then | went to another who had still higher
pretensions to wisdom, and my conclusion was exactly
the same. Whereupon | made another enemy of him, and
of many others besides him.
Then | went to one man after another, being not
unconscious of the enmity which | provoked, and |
lamented and feared this: But necessity was laid upon
me,—the word of God, | thought, ought to be considered
first. And | said to myself, Go | must to all who appear to
know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And | swear
to you, Athenians, by the dog | swear!—for | must tell you
the truth—the result of my mission was just this: | found
that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish;
and that others less esteemed were really wiser and
better. | will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the
"Herculean" labours, as | may call them, which | endured
only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the
politicians, | went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and
all sorts. And there, | said to myself, you will be instantly
detected; now you will find out that you are more
ignorant than they are. Accordingly, | took them some of
the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and
asked what was the meaning of them—thinking that they
would teach me something. Will you believe me? | am
almost ashamed to confess the truth, but | must say that
there is hardly a person present who would not have
talked better about their poetry than they did
themselves. Then | knew that not by wisdom do poets
write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they
are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine
things, but do not understand the meaning of them. The
poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and |
further observed that upon the strength of their poetry
they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other
things in which they were not wise. So | departed,
conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same
reason that | was superior to the politicians.
At last | went to the artisans, for | was conscious that |
knew nothing at all, as | may say, and | was sure that they
knew many fine things; and here | was not mistaken, for
they did know many things of which | was ignorant, and
in this they certainly were wiser than | was. But |
observed that even the good artisans fell into the same
error as the poets;—because they were good workmen
they thought that they also knew all sorts of high
matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their
wisdom; and therefore | asked myself on behalf of the
oracle, whether | would like to be as | was, neither having
their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both;
and | made answer to myself and to the oracle that | was
better off as | was.
Plato, Apology, 2IA
7 Ignorance—defined not as the negation of knowl-edge but
as a positive state of mind—is error produced by
inference,
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 79b23
8 The very limit of human blindness is to glory in being
blind.
Augustine, Confessions, Ill, 3
9 It is clear that as regards its proper object the intellect is
always true; and hence it is never deceived of itself, but
whatever deception occurs must be ascribed to some
lower power, such as the imagination or the like. Hence
we see that when the natural power of judgment is free
we are not deceived by such images, but only when it is
not free, as is the case in sleep.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 94, 4
10 O Juvenal, how truly thou didst say.
The people never know for what they seek,
For what they want seems right in every way,
And clouds of error ever render weak
Their judgments, in what’er they do or speak.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, IV., 29
11 O January, what might it now avail
Could your eyes see as far as ships can sail?
For it's as pleasant, blind, deceived to be
As be deceived while yet a man may see.
Lo, Argus, who was called the hundred-eyed,
No matter how he peered and watched and pried,
He was deceived; and God knows others too
Who think, and firmly, that it is not so.
Oblivion is peace; | say no more.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Merchant’s Talc
12 It may be said with some plausibility that there is an
abecedarian ignorance that comes before knowledge,
and another, doctoral ignorance that comes after
knowledge: an ignorance that knowledge creates and
engenders, just as it undoes and destroys the first.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 54, Of Vain Subtleties
13 Do you want a man to be healthy, do you want him
disciplined and firmly and securely poised? Wrap him in
darkness, idleness, and dullness. We must become like
the animals in order to become wise, and be blinded in
order to be guided.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
14 As by simplicity life becomes pleasanter, so also does it
become better and more innocent, as | was starting to say
a while back. The simple and ignorant, says Saint Paul,
raise themselves to heaven, and take possession of It;
and we, with all our learning, plunge ourselves into the
infernal abyss.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
15 Many abuses are engendered in the world, or, to put it
more boldly, all the abuses in the world are engendered,
by our being taught to be afraid of professing our
ignorance and our being bound to accept everything that
we cannot refute.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 11, Of Cripples
16 Anyone who wants to be cured of ignorance must confess
it.... Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry
its progress, ignorance its end. I’ll go further: There is a
certain strong and generous ignorance that concedes
nothing to knowledge in honor and courage, an
ignorance that requires no less knowledge to conceive it
than does knowledge.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 11, Of Cripples
17 The human soul uses reason, sees many things,
investigates many more; but, however well equipped, it
gets light and the beginnings of knowledge from the
outer senses, as from beyond a barrier—hence the very
many ignorances and foolishnesses whereby our
judgments and our life-actions are confused, so that few
or none do rightly and duly order their acts.
William Gilbert, On the Loadstone, V, 12
18 Messala. O hateful error, melancholy’s child,
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not? O error, soon conceived,
Thou never comest unto a happy birth,
But kill’st the mother that engender’d thee!
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, V, til, 67
19 Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for
distinction’s sake) we have assigned names, calling the
first idols of the tribe, the second idols of the den, the
third idols of the market, the fourth idols of the theatre.
The formation of notions and axioms on the foundation
of true induction is the only fitting remedy by which we
can ward off and expel these idok. It is, however, of great
service to point them out; for the doctrine of idols bears
the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of
the confutation of sophisms does to common logic.
The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature
and the very tribe or race of man; for man’s sense is
falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the
contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the
mind bear reference to man and not to the universe, and
the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which
impart their own properties to different objects, from
which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.
The idols of the den are those of each individual; for
everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race
of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which
intercepts and corrupts the light of nature, either from his
own peculiar and singular disposition, or from his
education and intercourse with others, or from his
reading, and the authority acquired by those whom he
reverences and admires, or from the different impressions
produced on the mind, as it happens to be preoccupied
and predisposed, or equable and tranquil, and the like; so
that the spirit of man (according to its several
dispositions), is variable, confused, and, as it were,
actuated by chance; and Heraclitus said well that men
search for knowledge in lesser worlds, and not in the
greater or common world.
There are also idols formed by the reciprocal
intercourse and society of man with man, which we call
idols of the market, from the commerce and association of
men with each other; for men converse by means of
language, but words are formed at the will of the
generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt
formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.
Nor can the definitions and explanations with which
learned men are wont to guard and protect themselves in
some instances afford a complete remedy; words still
manifestly force the understanding, throw everything
into confusion, and lead mankind into vain and
innumerable controversies and fallacies.
Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men’s
minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of
philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of
demonstration, and these we denominate idols of the
theatre; for we regard all the systems of philosophy
hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought
out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical
worlds.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 39-44
20 The power of will which | have received from God is not of
itself the source of my errors—for it is very ample and
very perfect of its kind—any more than is the power of
understanding; for since | understand nothing but by the
power which God has given me for understanding, there
is no doubt that all that | understand, | understand as |
ought, and it is not possible that | err in this. Whence
then come my errors? They come from the sole fact that
since the will is much wider in its range and compass
than the understanding, | do not restrain it within the
same bounds, but extend it also to things which | do not
understand: and as the will is of itself indifferent to these,
it easily falls into error and sin, and chooses the evil for
the good, or the fake for the true.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, IV
211... perceive that God could easily have created me so
that | never should err, although | still remained free, and
endowed with a limited knowledge, viz., by giving to my
understanding a clear and distinct intelligence of all
things as to which | should ever have to deliberate; or
simply by His engraving deeply in my memory the
resolution never to form a judgment on anything without
having a dear and distinct understanding of it, so that |
could never forget it. And it is easy for me to understand
that, in so far as | consider myself alone, and as if there
were only myself in the world, | should have been much
more perfect than | am, if God had created me so that |
could never err. Nevertheless | cannot deny that in some
sense it is a greater perfection in the whole universe that
certain parts should not be exempt from error as others
are than that all parts should be exactly similar. And |
have no right to complain if God, having placed me in the
world, has not called upon me to play a part that excels
all others in distinction and perfection,
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, lV
22 When a man reckons without the use of words, which
may be done in particular things, as when upon the sight
of any one thing, we conjecture what was likely to have
preceded, or is likely to follow upon it; if that which he
thought likely to follow follows not, or that which he
thought likely to have preceded it hath not preceded it,
this is called error, to which even the most prudent men
are subject. But when we reason in words of general
signification, and fall upon a general inference which is
false; though it be commonly called error, it is indeed an
absurdity, or senseless speech. For error is but a
deception, in presuming that somewhat is past, or to
come; of which, though it were not past, or not to come,
yet there was no impossibility discoverable. But when we
make a general assertion, unless it be a true one, the
possibility of it is inconceivable. And words whereby we
conceive nothing but the sound are those we call absurd,
insignificant, and nonsense. And therefore if a man
should talk to me of a round quadrangle; or accidents of
bread in cheese; or immaterial substances; or of a free
subject, a free will, or any free but free from being
hindered by opposition; | should not say he were in an
error, but that his words were without meaning; that is to
say, absurd.
| have said before... that a man did excel all other
animals in this faculty, that when he conceived anything
whatsoever, he was apt to enquire the consequences of
it, and what effects he could do with it. And now | add
this other degree of the same excellence, that he can by
words reduce the consequences he finds to general rules,
called theorems, or aphorisms; that is, he can reason, or
reckon, not only in number, but in all other things
whereof one may be added unto or subtracted from
another.
But this privilege is allayed by another; and that is by
the privilege of absurdity, to which no living creature is
Subject, but men only. And of men, those are of ail most
subject to it that profess philosophy. For it is most true
that Cicero saith of them somewhere; that there can be
nothing so absurd but may be found in the books of
philosophers. And the reason is manifest. For there is not
one of them that begins his ratiocination from the
definitions or explications of the names they are to use;
which is a method that hath been used only in geometry,
which conclusions have thereby been made indisputable.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 1,5
23 The chief malady of man is restless curiosity’ about
things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad
for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.
Pascal, Pensées, 1, 18
24 Man is only a subject full of error, natural and
ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth.
Everything deceives him. These two sources of truth,
reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in
sincerity, deceive each other in turn. The senses mislead
the Reason with false appearances, and receive from
Reason in their turn the same trickery which they apply
to her; Reason has her revenge. The passions of the soul
trouble the senses, and make false impressions upon
them. They rival each other in falsehood and deception.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 83
25 Satan. One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call'd,
Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidd'n?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord
Envie them that? can it be sin to know,
Can it be death? and do they onely stand
By Ignorance, is that thir happie state.
The proof of thir obedience and thir faith?
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 514
26 Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application
of the wrong names to things. For if a man says that the
lines which are drawn from the centre of the circle to the
circumference are not equal, he understands by the
circle, at all events for the time, something else than
mathematicians understand by it. So when men make
errors in calculation, the numbers which are in their
minds are not those which are upon the paper. As far as
their mind is concerned there is no error, although it
seems as if there were, because we think that the
numbers in their minds are those which are upon the
paper. If we did not think so, we should not believe them
to be in error... . This is the source from which so many
controversies arise—that men either do not properly
explain their own thoughts, or do not properly interpret
those of other people; for, in truth, when they' most
contradict one another, they’ either think the same
things or something different, so that those things which
they suppose to be errors and absurdities in another
person are not so.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Prop. 47, Schol.
27 There is not so contemptible a plant or animal, that does
not confound the most enlarged understanding. Though
the familiar use of things about us take off our wonder,
yet it cures not our ignorance.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, VI, 9
28 Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribe, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day.
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow’ry food.
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n.
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n;
Who secs with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 77
29 We may discover the reason why no philosopher, who is
rational and modest, has ever pretended to assign the
ultimate cause of any natural operation, or to show
distinctly the action of that power, which produces any
single effect in the universe. It is confessed, that the
utmost effort of human reason is to reduce the principles,
productive of natural phenomena, to a greater simplicity,
and to resolve the many particular effects into a few
general causes, by means of reasonings from analogy,
experience, and observation. But as to the causes of
these general causes, we should in vain attempt their
discovery; nor shall we ever be able to satisfy ourselves,
by any particular explication of them. These ultimate
springs and principles are totally shut up from human
curiosity and enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of
parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are
probably the ultimate causes and principles which we
Shall ever discover in nature; and we may esteem
ourselves sufficiently happy, if, by accurate enquiry and
reasoning, we can trace up the particular phenomena to,
or near to, these general principles.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 26
30 To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan;
The tender for another’s pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late.
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
Tis folly to be wise.
Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
31 Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look
down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that
the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a
man, is threefold.
Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight
and transient impressions made by the objects, when the
said organs are not dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto
a sieve, not able to retain what it has received....
Now you must understand that not one of these was
the true cause of the confusion in my uncle Toby’s
discourse; and it is for that very reason 1 enlarge upon
them so long, after the manner of great physiologists—to
shew the world, what it did not arise from.
What it did arise from, | have hinted above, and a
fertile source of obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and
that is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed
the clearest and most exalted understandings.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Il, 2
32 How is reason so precious a gift that we would not lose it
for anything in the world? and how has this reason served
only to make us the most unhappy of all beings?
Whence comes it that loving truth passionately, we
are always betrayed to the most gross impostures?
Why is life still loved by this crowd of Indians deceived
and enslaved by the bonzes, crushed by a Tartar’s
descendants, overburdened with work, groaning in want,
assailed by disease, exposed to every scourge?
Whence comes evil, and why does evil exist?
O atoms of a day! O my companions in infinite
littleness, born like me to suffer everything and to be
ignorant of everything, are there enough madmen among
you to believe that they know all these things? No, there
are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your
nonentity as | render justice to mine. But you are
arrogant enough to want people to embrace your vain
systems; unable to be tyrants over our bodies, you claim
to be tyrants over our souls.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Ignorance
33 Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be
produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless
and torpid for want of attraction; and, without knowing
why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when
we forget.
Johnson, Rasselas, X1
34 A lady once asked him [Johnson] how he came to define
Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an
elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered,
"Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1755)
35 Johnson. Mankind have a great aversion to intelectual
labour; but even supposing knowledge to be easily
attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant
than would lake even a little trouble to acquire it,
Boswell, Life of Johnson (i763)
36 Thus, Sir, | have disposed of this falsehood. But falsehood
has a perennial spring.
Burke, Speech on American Taxation (1774)
37 The consciousness of ignorance—unless this ignorance is
recognized to be absolutely necessary'— ought, instead
of forming the conclusion of my inquiries, to be the
strongest motive to the pursuit of them. All ignorance is
either ignorance of things or of the limits of knowledge. If
my ignorance Is accidental and not necessary, it must
incite me, in the first case, to a dogmatical inquiry
regarding the objects of which | am ignorant; in the
second, to a critical investigation into the bounds of all
possible knowledge. But that my ignorance is absolutely
necessary and unavoidable, and that it consequently
absolves from the duty ol all further investigation, is a
fact which cannot be made out upon empirical grounds—
from observation —but upon critical grounds alone, that
is, by a thoroughgoing investigation into the primary
sources of cognition. It follows that the determination of
the bounds of reason can be made only on a priori
grounds; while the empirical limitation of reason, which is
merely an indeterminate cognition of an ignorance that
can never be completely removed, can take place only a
posteriori. In other words, our empirical knowledge is
limited by that which yet remains for us to know.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
38 It is... quite certain that we can never gel a sufficient
knowledge of organized beings and their inner
possibility, much less get an explanation of them, by
looking merely to mechanical principles of nature.
Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert
that it is absurd for men even to entertain any thought of
so doing or to hope that maybe another Newton may
some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the
genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that no
design has ordered. Such insight we must absolutely
deny to mankind.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 75
39 So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes
which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we,
upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the
wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first
magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended
to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are
ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any
controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this
respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are
not always sure that those who advocate the truth are
influenced by purer principles than their antagonists.
Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition,
and many other motives not more laudable than these,
are apt to operate as well upon those who support as
those who oppose the right side of a question.
Hamilton, Federalist |
40 Though it cannot be pretended that the principles of
moral and political knowledge have, in general, the same
degree of certainty with those of the mathematics, yet
they have much better claims in this respect than, to
judge from the conduct of men in particular situations,
we should be disposed to allow them. The obscurity is
much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the
reasoner than in the subject. Men, upon too many
occasions, do not give their own understandings fair play;
but, yielding to some untoward bias, they entangle
themselves in words and confound themselves in
subtleties.
Hamilton, Federalist 31
41 Faust Oh, happy he who still hopes that he can
Emerge from Error’s boundless sea!
What man knows not, is needed most by man.
And what man knows, for that no use has he.
Goethe, Faust, |, 1064
42 Thai there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity
for Knowledge, this | call a tragedy.
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Ill, 4
43 There are many things of which a wise man might wish to
be ignorant.
Emerson, Demonology
44 So seemed it to me, as | stood at her helm, and for long
hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea.
Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, | but the
better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of
others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me,
capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat
kindred visions in my soul, as soon as | began to yield to
that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come
over me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since
inexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief
standing sleep, | was horribly conscious of something
fatally wrong. The jawbone tiller smote my side, which
leaned against it; in my cars was the low hum of sails,
just beginning to shake in the wind; | thought my eyes
were open; | was half conscious of putting my finger? to
the lids and mechanically stretching them still further
apart. But, spite of all this, | could see no compass before
me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since |
had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp
illumining it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom,
now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness.
Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift,
rushing thing | stood on was not so much bound to any
haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark,
bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me.
Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the
crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some
enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter
with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep | had turned
myself about, and was fronting the ship’s stern, with my
back to her prow and the compass. In an instant | faced
back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up
into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad
and how grateful the relief from this unnatural
hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of
being brought by the lee!
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never
dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to
the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller;
believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all
things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the
skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the
forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least
gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only
true lamp—all others but liars!
Melville, Moby Dick, XCVI
45 It has often and confidendy been asserted, that man’s
origin can never be known: but ignorance more
frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is
those who know little, and not those who know much,
who so positively assert that this or that problem will
never be solved by science.
Darwin, Descent of Man, Intro.
46 So that while it is the summit of human wisdom to learn
the limit of our faculties, it may be wise to recollect that
we have no more right to make denials, than to put forth
affirmatives, about what lies beyond that limit.
T. H. Huxley, Hume, Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics
of Sensation
47 The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking
about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause
of half their errors. A contemporary author has well
spoken of “the deep slumber of a decided opinion.”
But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of
unanimity an indispensable condition of true knowledge?
Is it necessary that some part of mankind should persist
in error to enable any to realise the truth? Does a belief
cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally
receive proposition never thoroughly understood and felt
unless some doubt of it remains? soon as kind have
unanimously accepted a truth, do truth perish within
them? The highest best result of improved intelligence, it
has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and
more in the acknowledgment of all important truths, and
does the intelligence only last as long as it has not
achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by
the very completeness of the victory.
| affirm no such thing. AS mankind improve, the
number of doctrines which are no longer disputed or
doubted will be constantly on the increase: and the well-
being of mankind may almost be measured by the
number and gravity of the truths which have reached the
point of being uncontested. The cessation, on one
question after another, of serious controversy, is one of
the necessary incidents of the consolidation of opinion; a
consolidation as salutary in the case of true opinions, as
it is dangerous and noxious when the opinions are
erroneous.
Mill, On Liberty, II
48 If you want to know whether you are thinking rightly, put
your thoughts into words. In the very attempt to do this
you will find yourselves, consciously or unconsciously,
using logical forms. Logic compels us to throw our
meaning into distinct propositions, and our reasonings
into distinct steps. It makes us conscious of all the
implied assumptions on which we are proceeding, and
which, if not true, vitiate the entire process. It makes us
aware what extent of doctrine we commit ourselves to by
any course of reasoning, and obliges us to look the
implied premises in the face, and make up our minds
whether we can stand to them. It makes our opinions
consistent with themselves and with one another, and
forces us to think clearly, even when it cannot make us
think correctly. It is true that error may be consistent and
systematic as well as truth; but this is not the common
case. It is no small advantage to see clearly the principles
and consequences involved in our opinions, and which
we must either accept, or else abandon those opinions.
We are much nearer to finding truth when we search for it
in broad daylight. Error, pursued rigorously to all that is
implied in it, seldom fails to get detected by coming into
collision with some known and admitted fact.
Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews
49 Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
Browning, The Inn Album, V
50 Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most
gratuitous.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, |, 10
51 Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, II, 13
52 Father Zossima. Of the pride of Satan what | think is this:
it is hard for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore
it is So easy to fall into error and to share it, even
imagining that we are doing something grand and fine.
Indeed, many of the strongest feelings and movements of
our nature we cannot comprehend on earth. Let not that
be a stumbling-block, and think not that it may serve asa
justification to you for anything. For the Eternal Judge
asks of you what you can comprehend and not what you
cannot. You will know that yourself hereafter, for you will
behold all things truly then and will not dispute them. On
earth, indeed, we are, as it were, astray, and if it were not
for the precious image of Christ before us, we should be
undone and altogether lost, as was the human race
before the flood. Much on earth is hidden from us, but to
make up for that we have been given a precious mystic
sense of our living bond with the other world, with the
higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and
feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the
philosophers say that we cannot apprehend the reality of
things on earth.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, Vl, 3
53 | am thankful that the good God created us all ignorant. |
am glad that when we change His plans in this regard we
have to do it at our own risk.
Mark Twain, Letter to the Alta California [San Francisco]
(May 28, 1867)
54 Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate...
metaphysical first principles. Weakness of insight and
deficiencies of language stand in the way inexorably.
Words and phrases must be stretched towards a
generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however
such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities,
they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an
imaginative leap.
There is no first principle which is in itself unknowable,
not to be captured by a flash of insight. But, putting aside
the difficulties of language, deficiency in imaginative
penetration forbids progress in any form other than that
of an asymptotic approach to a scheme of principles, only
definable in terms of the ideal which they should satisfy.
Whitehead, Process and Reality, I, 1
55 Error is not only the absolute error of believing what is
false, but also the quantitative error of believing more or
less strongly than is warranted by the degree of
credibility properly attaching to the proposition believed
in relation to the believer’s knowledge. A man who is
quite convinced that a certain horse will win the Derby is
in error even if the horse does win.
Russell, Human Knowledge, V, 6
56 The proposition that symptoms vanish when their
unconscious antecedents have been made conscious has
been borne out by all subsequent research; although the
most extraordinary and unexpected complications are
met with in attempting to carry this proposition out in
practice. Our therapy does its work by transforming
something unconscious into something conscious and
only succeeds in its work in so far as it is able to effect
this transformation.
Now for a rapid digression, lest you should run the risk
of imagining that this therapeutic effect is achieved too
easily. According to the conclusions we have reached so
far, neurosis would be the result of a kind of ignorance, a
not-knowing of mental processes which should be known.
This would approach very closely to the well-known
Socratic doctrine according to which even vice is the
result of ignorance. Now it happens in analysis that an
experienced practitioner can usually surmise very easily
what those feelings are which have reminded
unconscious in each individual patient. It should not
therefore be a matter of great difficulty to cure the
patient by imparting his knowledge to him and so
relieving his ignorance. At least, one side of the
unconscious meaning of the symptom would be easily
dealt with in this way, although it is true that the other
side of it, the connection between the symptom and the
previous experiences in the patient’s life, can hardly be
divined thus; for the analyst does not Know what the
experiences have been, he has to wait till the patient
remembers them and tells him. But one might find a
substitute even for this in many cases. One might ask for
information about his past life from the friends and
relations; they are often in a position to know what
events have been of a traumatic nature, perhaps they
can even relate some of which the patient is ignorant
because they took place a,t some very early period of
childhood. By a combination of these two means it would
seem that the pathogenic ignorance of the patients
might be overcome in a short time without much trouble.
If only it were sol But we have made discoveries that
we were quite unprepared for at first. There is knowing
and knowing; they are not always the same thing. There
are various kinds of knowing, which psychologically are
not by any means of equal value... . Knowing on the part
of the physician is not the same thing as knowing on the
part of the patient and does not have the same effect.
When the physician conveys his knowledge to the patient
by telling him what he knows, it has effect. No, it would
be incorrect to say that. It does not have the effect of
dispersing the symptoms; but it has a different one, it
sets the analysis in motion, and the first result of this is
often an energetic denial. The patient has learned
something that he did not know before—the meaning of
his symptom—and yet he knows it as little as ever. Thus
we discover that there is more than one kind of
ignorance. It requires a considerable degree of insight
and understanding of psychological matters order to see
in what the difference consists. But the proposition that
symptoms vanish with the acquisition of knowledge of
their meaning remains true, nevertheless. The necessary
condition is that the knowledge must be founded upon
an inner change in the patient which can only come
about by a mental operation directed to that end.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XVIII
57 While the power of thought frees us from servile
subjection to instinct, appetite, and routine, it also brings
with it the occasion and possibility of error and mistake.
In elevating us above the brute, it opens to us the
possibility of failures to which the animal, limited to
instinct, cannot sink.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt, I, Il, 2
6.5 Opinion, Belief, and Faith
The three subjects considered here all tend to bring the
meaning of knowledge into sharper focus. Does the man
who says "I know" signify a different state of mind from the
man who says, of the same matter, "I opine," or "I think," or
‘T believe"? What is the difference? Are there some things of
which we can only say "I think," "I opine," or "I believe," but
not "I know"? Is faith a belief about things that we cannot
know? These and similar questions are dealt with in the
passages quoted below.
Employing the phrase "right opinion" to designate an
opinion that happens to be true, Plato attempts to point out
why it is better to have knowledge than right opinion even
though both put the mind in possession of the truth. In a
similar vein, Aristotle comments on the difference between
knowing the truth of a theorem in geometry because one is
able to demonstrate it and believing or opining that it is true
on the authority of one’s teacher. In subsequent elaborations
of the same insight, knowledge and opinion or belief are
differentiated by the distinction between that which the
mind necessarily affirms and that to which it voluntarily
gives its assent. If | cannot withhold my assent from the
proposition that two plus two makes four, then | know it to
be true; | do not opine or believe it. But if what is proposed
is something that | can voluntarily accept or reject, then my
affirmation or denial of the matter is an act of opinion or
belief, not of knowledge. In geometry, for example, an axiom
commands my assent, but | am free to accept or reject a
postulate which asks me to take something for granted.
As the difference between knowledge, on the one hand,
and opinion or belief, on the other, becomes clearer, the
door to skepticism is opened by doubts concerning the
extent of the area in which men can properly say that they
know. This is countered by giving greater weight or credence
to opinions and beliefs in proportion as they are well
grounded in observed facts or supported by cogent reasons
even though the facts and the reasons do not produce the
certainty of self-evident or of demonstrated truths.
Accordingly, the discussion of opinion and belief becomes
involved with considerations of probability, and with efforts
to ascertain the degree of probability that, for all practical
purposes, iS aS good as certainty.
In common speech, the words "belief" and "faith" are
often used interchangeably, but the word "faith" has a
special and distinct significance when it is employed by
writers in the Judaeo-Christian tradition of Western thought.
The passages quoted here reflecting that tradition set
religious faith apart from the ordinary run of secular beliefs
by confining it to the things that God has explicitly revealed
to men in Sacred Scripture. Having such faith is thought to
be a mark of divine grace. Men may exercise their own will
to believe about other matters, but belief in the articles of
religious faith is a gift that God himself bestows upon them.
Because theology, or at least dogmatic theology, finds its
first principles in the articles of religious faith and then
attempts to explicate what is thus believed, some quotations
dealing with theology are included here.
1 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Psalm 119:105
2 And he said. Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but
understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears
heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart,
and convert, and be healed.
Then said |, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until
the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses
without man, and the land be utterly desolate.
And the Lord have removed men far away, and there
be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
Isaiah 6:9-12
3 Socrates. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere
else, and went to the place and led others thither, would
he not be a right and good guide?
Meno. Certainly.
Soc. And a person who had a right opinion about the
way, but had never been and did not know, might bea
good guide also, might he not?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. And while he has true opinion about that which
the other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he
thinks the truth, as he who knows the truth?
Men. Exactly.
Soc. Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct
action as knowledge; and that was the point which we
omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue,
when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right
action; whereas there is also right opinion.
Men. True.
Soc. Then right opinion is not less useful than
knowledge?
Men. The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has
knowledge will always be right; but he who has right
opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.
Soc. What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has
right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?
Men. | admit the cogency of your argument, and
therefore, Socrates, | wonder that knowledge should be
preferred to right opinion—or why they should ever differ.
Soc. And shall | explain this wonder to you?
Men. Do tell me.
Soc. You would not wonder if you had ever observed
the images of Daedalus; but perhaps you have not got
them in your country?
Men. What have they to do with the question?
Soc. Because they require to be fastened in order to
keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play
truant and run away.
Men. Well, what of that?
Soc. | mean to say that they are not very valuable
possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like
runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great
value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this
is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they
abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run
away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and
therefore they are not of much value until they are
fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of
them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and | have
agreed to call it. But when thq' are bound, in the first
place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the
second place, they are abiding. And this is why
knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true
opinion, because fastened by a chain.
Plato, Meno, 97A
4 Socrates. Seeing... that not only rhetoric works by
persuasion, but that other arts do the same, as in the
case of the painter, a question has arisen which is a very
fair one: Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer, and
about what?—is not that a fair way of putting the
question?
Gorgias. | think so.
Soc. Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, what
is the answer?
Gor. | answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of
persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as | was
just now saying, and about the just and unjust.
Soc. And that, Gorgias, was what | was suspecting to
be your notion; yet | would not have you wonder if by-
and-by | am found repeating a seemingly plain question;
for | ask not in order to confute you, but as | was saying
that the argument may proceed consecutively, and that
we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting
the meaning of one another’s words; | would have you
develop your own views in your own way, whatever may
be your hypothesis.
Gor. | think that you are quite right, Socrates.
Soc. Then let me raise another question; there is such
a thing as "having learned"?
Gor. Yes.
Soc. And there is also "having believed"?
Gor. Yes.
Soc. And is the "having learned" the same as "having
believed," and are learning and belief the same things?
Gor. In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same.
Soc. And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain
in this way:—If a person were to say to you, "Is there,
Gorgias, a false belief as well as a true?"—you would
reply, if 1am not mistaken, that there is.
Gor. Yes.
Soc. Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a
true?
Gor. No.
Soc. No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge
and belief differ.
Gor. Very true.
Soc. And yet those who have learned as well as those
who have believed are persuaded?
Gor. Just so.
Soc. Shall we then assume two sorts of persuasion,—
one which is the source of belief without knowledge, as
the other is of knowledge?
Gor. By all means.
Soc. And which sort of persuasion does rhetoric create
in courts of law and other assemblies about the just and
unjust, the sort of persuasion which gives belief without
knowledge, or that which gives knowledge?
Gor. Clearly, Socrates, that which only gives belief.
Soc. Then rhetoric, as would appear, is the artificer of
a persuasion which creates belief about the just and
unjust, but gives no instruction about them?
Gor. True.
Plato, Gorgias, 454A
5 Things that are true and things that are better are, by their
nature, practically always easier to prove and easier to
believe in.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1355a38
6 Jesus answered and said, | thank thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
babes.
Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.
All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no
man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth
any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal him.
Matthew 11:25-27
7 The disciples came, and said unto him, why speakest thou
unto them in parables?
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given
unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, but to them it is not given.
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he
Shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not,
from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
Therefore speak | to them in parables: because they
seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do
they understand.
And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of E-sai-as, which
saith. By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand;
and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their cars
are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest
at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear
with their cars, and should understand with their heart,
and should be converted, and | should heal them.
But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your cars,
for they hear.
For verily | say unto you, That many prophets and
righteous men have desired to see those things which ye
sec, and have not seen them; and to hear those things
which ye hear, and have not heard them.
Matthew 13:10-17
8 Verily | say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain. Remove hence to
yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be
impossible unto you.
Matthew 17:20
9 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said
with tears, Lord, | believe; help thou mine unbelief.
Mark 9:24
10 For verily | say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto
this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into
the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe
that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he
shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore | say unto you, What things soever ye desire,
when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall
have them.
Mark 11:23-24
11 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen
me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not
seen, and yet have believed.
John 20:29
12 Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have
not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom
they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a
preacher?
And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it
is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach
the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good
things!
But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For E-sai-as
saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God.
Romans 10:13-17
13 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye
should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ
hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
This only would | learn of you. Received ye the Spirit
by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye
now made perfect by the flesh?
Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in
vain.
He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and
worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of
the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted
to him for righteousness.
Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the
same are the children of Abraham.
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify
the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel
unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be
blessed.
So then they which be of faith are blessed %vith
faithful Abraham.
For as many as are of the works of the law are under
the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that
continueth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law to do them.
But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of
God, it is evident; for, The just shall IkK-c by faith.
Galatians 3:1-11
14 | have fought a good fight, | have finished my course, |
have kept the faith.
Il Timothy 4:7
15 Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the
things which we have heard, lest at any time we should
let them slip.
For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and
every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompence of reward;
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation;
which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and
was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;
God also bearing them witness, both with signs and
wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy
Ghost, according to his own will?
Hebrews 2:1-4
16 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
17 We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we
made known unto you the power and coining of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received from God the Father honour and glory,
when there came such a voice to him from the excellent
glory. This is my beloved Son, in whom | am well pleased.
And this voice which came from heaven we heard,
when we were with him in the holy mount.
We have also a more sure word of prophecy;
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light
that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the
day star arise in your hearts.
/1 Peter 1:16-19
18 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him,
to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come
to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his
servant John:
Who bare record of the word of God, and of the
testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.
Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the
words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are
written therein: for the time is at hand.
Revelation 1:1-3
19 | was glad also that the old scriptures of the Law and the
Prophets were set before me now, no longer in that light
in which they had formerly seemed absurd, when |
criticised Your holy ones for thinking this or that which in
plain fact they did not think. And it was a joy to hear
Ambrose who often repeated to his congregation, as if it
were a rule he was most strongly urging upon them, the
text: the /etter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. And he
would go on to draw aside the veil of mystery and lay
open the spiritual meaning of things which taken literally
would have seemed to teach falsehood.
Augustine, Confessions, VI, 4
20 | wanted to be as certain of things unseen as that seven
and three make ten. For | had not reached the point of
madness which denies that even this can be known; but |
wanted to know other things as clearly as this, either
such material things as were not present to my senses, or
spiritual things which | did not know how to conceive
save corporeally. By believing | might have been cured;
for then the eye of my mind would have been clearer and
so might in some way have been directed towards Your
truth which abides for ever and knows no defect. But as
usually happens, the man who has tried a bad doctor is
afraid to trust even a good one, so it was with the health
of my soul, which could not be healed save by believing,
and refused to be healed that way for fear of believing
falsehood. Thus | was resisting Your hands, for You first
prepared for us the medicine of faith and then applied it
to the diseases of the world and gave it such great power.
Augustine, Confessions, VI, 4
211 continued my miserable complaining: "How long, how
long shall | go on saying tomorrow and again tomorrow?
Why not now, why not have an end to my uncleanness
this very hour?"
Such things | said, weeping in the most bitter sorrow
of my heart. And suddenly | heard a voice from some
nearby house, a boy’s voice or a girl’s voice, | do not
know: but it was a sort of sing-song, repeated again and
again, "Take and read, take and read." | ceased weeping
and immediately began to search my mind most carefully
as to whether children were accustomed to chant these
words in any kind of game, and | could not remember
that | had ever heard any such thing. Damming back the
flood of my tears | arose, interpreting the incident as
quite certainly a divine command to open my book of
Scripture and read the passage at which | should open. ...
So | was moved to return to the place where Alypius was
sitting, for | had put down the Apostle’s book there when |
arose. | snatched it up, opened it and in silence read the
passage upon which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in
contention and envy, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ
and make not provision for the flesh in its
concupiscences. {Romans xiii, 13.] | had no wish to read
further, and no need. For in that instant, with the very
ending of the sentence, it was as though a light of utter
confidence shone in all my heart, and all the darkness of
uncertainty vanished away....
Then we went in to my mother and told her, to her
great joy. We related how it had come about: she was
filled with triumphant exultation, and praised You who are
mighty beyond what we ask or conceive: for she saw that
You had given her more than with all her pitiful weeping
she had ever asked. For You converted me to Yourself so
that | no longer sought a wife nor any of this world's
promises, but stood upon that same rule of faith in which
You had shown me to her so many years before. Thus You
changed her mourning into joy, a joy far richer than she
had thought to wish, a joy much dearer and purer than
she had thought to find in grandchildren of my flesh.
Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 12
22 This Mediator, having spoken what He judged sufficient
first by the prophets, then by His own lips, and afterwards
by the apostles, has besides produced the Scripture
which is called canonical, which has paramount
authority, and to which we yield assent in all matters of
which we ought not to be ignorant, and yet cannot know
of ourselves. For if we attain the knowledge of present
objects by the testimony of our own senses, whether
internal or external, then, regarding objects remote from
our own senses, we need others to bring their testimony,
since we cannot know them by our own, and we credit
the persons to whom the objects have been or are
sensibly present. Accordingly, as in the case of visible
objects which we have not seen, we trust those who have
(and likewise with all sensible objects), so in the case of
things which are perceived by the mind and spirit, i.e.,
which are remote from our interior sense, it behoves us to
trust those who have seen them set in that incorporeal
light, or abidingly contemplate them.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 3
23 Men see Him just so far as they die to this world; and so
far as they live to it they see Him not. But yet, although
that light may begin to appear clearer, and not only more
tolerable, but even more delightful, still it is only through
a glass darkly that we are said to sec, because we walk by
faith, not by sight, while we continue to wander as
strangers in this world, even though our conversation be
in heaven.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, II, 7
24 Just as poor as the store of gold and silver and garments
which the people of Israel brought with them out of Egypt
was in comparison with the riches which they afterwards
attained at Jerusalem, and which reached their height in
the reign of King Solomon, so poor is all the useful
knowledge which is gathered from the books of the
heathen when compared with the knowledge of Holy
Scripture. For whatever man may have learnt from other
sources, if it is hurtful, it is there condemned; if it is
useful, it is therein contained. And while every man may
find there all that he has learnt of useful elsewhere, he
will find there in much greater abundance things that are
to be found nowhere else, but can be learnt only in the
wonderful sublimity and wonderful simplicity of the
Scriptures.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 42
25 What | understand | also believe, but | do not understand
everything that | believe; for all which | understand |
know, but | do not know all that | believe. But still | am
not unmindful of the utility of believing many things
which are not known.... And though the majority of things
must remain unknown to me, yet | do know what is the
utility of believing.
Augustine, On the Teacher, XI, 37
26 Although by the revelation of grace in this life we cannot
know of God "what He is," and thus are united to Him as
to one unknown, still we know Him more fully according
as many and more excellent of His effects are
demonstrated to us, and according as we attribute to Him
some things known by divine revelation, to which natural
reason cannot reach, as, for instance, that God is Three
and One.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 12, 13
27 The light of faith makes us see what we believe. For just
as, by the habits of the other virtues, man sees what is
fitting to him in respect of that habit, so, by the habit of
faith, the human mind is directed to assent to such things
as are fitting to a right faith, and not to assent to others.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-Il, 1, 4
28 Unbelievers are in ignorance of things that are of faith,
for neither do they see or know them in themselves, nor
do they know them to be credible. The faithful, on the
other hand, know them, not as by demonstration, but by
the light of faith which makes them see that they ought
to believe them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 1, 5
29 Science and opinion about the same object can certainly
be in different men, as we have stated above about
science and faith. Yet it is possible for one and the same
man to have science and faith about the same thing
relatively, that is, in relation to the subject, but not in the
Same respect. For it is possible for the same person,
about one and the same thing, to Know one thing and to
think another. And, in like manner, one may know by
demonstration the unity of God, and believe that He isa
Trinity, On the other hand, in one and the same man,
about the same thing, and in the same respect, science Is
incompatible with either opinion or faith, yet for different
reasons. Because science is incompatible with opinion
about the same thing absolutely, for the notion of science
demands that what is known should be thought
impossible to be otherwise, but the notion of opinion
demands that the thing of which there is opinion may be
thought possible to be otherwise. Yet that which is held
by faith, on account of the certainty of faith is also
thought impossible to be otherwise; and the reason why
science and faith cannot be about the same object and in
the same respect is because the object of science is
something seen, while the object of faith is the unseen,
as stated above.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 1, 5
30 Whatever is in opposition to faith, whether it consist in a
man’s thoughts, or in outward persecution, increases the
merit of faith, insofar as the will is showm to be more
prompt and firm in believing. Hence the martyrs had
more merit of faith, through not renouncing faith on
account of persecution; and even the wise have greater
merit of faith, through not renouncing their faith on
account of the reasons brought forward by philosophers
or heretics in opposition to faith.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-IIl, 2, 10
31 Other things being equal sight is more certain than
hearing. But if (the authority of) the person from whom
we hear greatly surpasses that of the seer’s sight, hearing
iS more certain than sight. Thus a man of little science is
more certain about what he hears on the authority of an
expert in science, than about what is apparent to him
according to his own reason. And much more is a man
certain about what he hears from God, Who cannot be
deceived, than about what he sees with his own reason,
which can be mistaken.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-/l, 4,8
32 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and argument
of things which are not seen; and this | take to be its
quiddity.
Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 64
33 | believe in one God, sole and eternal, who moveth all the
heaven, himself unmoved, with love and with desire.
And for such belief | have not only proofs physic and
metaphysic, but it is given me likewise by the truth which
hence doth rain
through Moses, through the Prophets and through the
Psalms, through the Gospel and through you who wrote
when the glowing Spirit had made you fosterers.
And | believe in three eternal Persons, and | believe
them one Essence, so One and so Trine as to comport at
once with are and Is.
With the profound divine state whereof | soeak, my
mind is stamped more limes than once by evangelic
teaching.
This the beginning is; this is the spark which then
dilates into a living flame, and like a star in heaven
shineth in me.
Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 130
34 The principal lesson of theology is that Christ can be
known.
Luther. Table Talk, 1333
35 Prior to faith and a knowledge of God, reason is darkness,
but in believers it's an excellent instrument, Just as all
gifts and instruments of nature are evil in godless men,
so they are good in believers. Faith is now furthered by
reason, speech, and eloquence, whereas these were only
impediments prior to faith. Enlightened reason, taken
captive by faith, receives life from faith, for it is slain and
given life again.
Luther, Table Talk, 2938b
36 Faith justifies not as a work, or as a quality, or as
knowledge, but as assent of the will and firm confidence
in the mercy of God. For if faith were only knowledge,
then the devil would certainly be saved because he
possesses the greatest knowledge of God and of all the
works and wonders of from the creation of the world.
Accordingly faith must be understood otherwise than as
knowledge. In part, however, it is assent.
Luther, Table Talk, 4655
37 Little children are saved only by faith without any good
works; therefore faith alone justifies. If God's power be
able to effect that in one, then he is also able to
accomplish it in all; for the power of the child effects it
not, but the power of faith; neither is it done through the
child's weakness or disability; for then that weakness
would be merit of itself, or equivalent to merit. It is a
mischievous thing that we miserable, sinful wretches will
upbraid God, and hit him in the teeth with our works, and
think thereby to be justified before him; but God will not
allow it.
Luther, Table Talk, H304
38 Faith consists in a knowledge of God and of Christ, not in
reverence for the Church.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I!l, 2
39 Faith is a knowledge of the benevolence of God towards
us, and a certain persuasion of his veracity.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I/l, 2
40 The principal hinge on which faith turns is this— that we
must not consider the promises of mercy, which the Lord
offers, as true only to others, and not to ourselves; but
rather make them our own, by embracing them in our
hearts.
Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 2
41 Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility
in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it
seems to me |! once learned that belief was a sort of
impression made on our mind, and that the softer and
less resistant the mind, the easier it was to imprint
something on it.... The more a mind is empty and without
counterpoise, the more easily it gives beneath the weight
of the first persuasive argument.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 27, It Ils Folly
42 Some make the world believe that they believe what they
do not believe. Others, in greater number, make
themselves believe it, being unable to penetrate what it
means to believe.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
43 We must not give God chaff for wheat, as they say. If we
believed in him, | do not say by faith, but with a simple
belief; in fact (and | say it to our great confusion), if we
believed in him just as in any other history, if we knew
him like one of our comrades, we would love him above
all other things, for the infinite goodness and beauty that
shines in him. At least he would march in the same rank
in our affection as riches, pleasures, glory, and our
friends.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
44 the participation that we have in the knowledge of truth,
whatever it may be, has not been acquired by our own
powers. God has taught us that clearly enough by the
witnesses that he has chosen from the common people,
simple and ignorant, to instruct us in his admirable
secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring, it is a pure
present of another’s liberality. It is not by reasoning or by
our understanding that we have received our religion; it
is by external authority and command. The weakness of
our judgment helps us more in this than its strength, and
our blindness more than our clear-sightedness. It is by
the mediation of our ignorance more than of our
knowledge that we are learned with that divine learning.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 12, Apology for Raymond
Sebond
45 Reason does nothing but go astray in everything, and
especially when it meddles with divine things. Who feels
this more evidently than we? For even though we have
given it certain and infallible principles, even though we
light its steps with the holy lamp of the truth which it has
pleased God to communicate to us, nevertheless we see
daily how, when it strays however little from the beaten
path and deviates or wanders from the way traced and
trodden by the Church, immediately it is lost, it grows
embarrassed and entangled, whirling round and floating
in that vast, troubled, and undulating sea of human
opinions, unbridled and aimless. As soon as it loses that
great common highroad it breaks up and disperses onto a
thousand different roads.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
46 | do not at all hate opinions contrary to mine. | am so far
from being vexed to see discord between my judgments
and others’, and from making myself incompatible with
the society of men because they are of a different
sentiment and party from mine, that on the contrary,
since variety is the most general fashion that nature has
followed, and more in minds than bodies, inasmuch -as
minds are of a substance suppler and susceptible of more
forms, | find it much rarer to see our humors and plans
agree. And there were never in the world two opinions
alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most
universal quality is diversity.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 37, Children and Fath».rs
47 | enter into discussion and argument with great freedom
and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds in me a bad soil to
penetrate and take deep roots in. No propositions
astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it
offers with my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so
extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to
the production of the human mind. We who deprive our
Judgment of the right to make decisions look mildly on
opinions different from ours; and if we do not lend them
our judgment, we easily lend them our ears. Where one
scale of the balance is totally empty, | let the other
vacillate under an old woman’s dreams. And it seems to
me excusable if | take rather the odd number than the
even, Thursday rather than Friday; if | am happier to be
twelfth or fourteenth than thirteenth at table; if | would
rather see a hare skirting my path when | travel than
crossing it, and rather give my left foot than my right to
be booted first. All such idle fancies, which are in credit
around us, deserve at least to be listened to. For me they
out%veigh only emptiness, but they do outweigh that.
Popular and chance opinions count in weight for
something, and not nothing, in nature. And he who does
not let himself go that far may perhaps fall into the vice
of obstinacy to avoid that of superstition.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 8, Of the Art of Discussion
48 | honoured our theology and aspired as much as anyone
to reach to heaven, but having learned to regard it asa
most highly assured fact that the road is not less open to
the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the
revealed truths which conduct thither are quite above our
intelligence, | should not have dared to submit them to
the feebleness of my reasonings; and | thought that, in
order to undertake to examine them and succeed in so
doing, it was necessary to have some extraordinary
assistance from above and to be more than a mere man.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, |
49 Though the matters be obscure with which our faith is
said to deal, nevertheless this is understood to hold only
of the fact or matter of which it treats, and it is not meant
that the formal reason on account of which we assent to
matters of faith is obscure: for, on the other hand, this
formal reason consists in a certain internal light, and it is
when God supernaturally fills us with this illumination
that we are confident that what is proposed for our belief
has been revealed by Him, Himself, and that it is clearly
impossible that He should lie: a fact more certain than
any natural light and often indeed more evident than it
on account of the light of grace.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, I
50 The Scripture was written to show unto men the kingdom
of God, and to prepare their minds to become His
obedient subjects, leaving the world, and the philosophy
thereof, to the disputation of men for the exercising of
their natural reason.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 8
51 Faith of supernatural law is not a fulfilling, but only an
assenting to the same; and not a duty that we exhibit to
God, but a gift which God freely giveth to whom He
pleaseth; as also unbelief is not a breach of any of His
laws, but a rejection of them all, except the laws natural.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 26
52 Disputing of God’s nature is contrary to His honour, for it
iS Supposed that in this natural kingdom of God, there is
no other way to know anything but by natural reason;
that is, from the principles of natural science; which are
so far from teaching us anything of God’s nature, as they
cannot teach us our own nature, nor the nature of the
smallest creature living. And therefore, when men out of
the principles of natural reason dispute of the attributes
of God, they but dishonour Him: for in the attributes
which we give to God, we are not to consider the
signification of philosophical truth, but the signification
of pious intention to do Him the greatest honour we are
able.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 31
53 Belief and unbelief never follow men’s commands. Faith
iS a gift of God which man can neither give nor take away
by promise of rewards or menaces of torture.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Ill, 42
54 As for those wingy Mysteries in Divinity, and airy
subtleties in Religion, which have unhing’d the brains of
better heads, they never stretched the Pia Mater of mine.
Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion
for an active faith; the deepest Mysteries ours contains
have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by
Syllogism and the rule of Reason. | love to lose my self in
a mystery, to pursue my Reason to an O altitudo! Tis my
solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those
involved AEnigma’s and riddles of the Trinity, with
Incarnation, and Resurrection. | can answer all the
Objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that
odd resolution | learned of 7ertu/lian, Certum est quia
impossibile est. | desire to exercise my faith in the
difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible objects
is not faith, but perswasion. Some believe the better for
seeing Christ’s Sepulchre; and when they have seen the
Red Sea, doubt not of the Miracle. Now contrarily, | bless
my self and am thankful that | lived not in the days of
Miracles, that | never saw Christ nor His Disciples; | would
not have been one of those /srae/ites that pass’d the Red
Sea, nor one of Christ’s patients on w’hom he wrought his
wonders; then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor
should | enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all
that believe and saw not. ’Tis an easie and necessary
belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: |
believe he was dead, and buried, and rose again; and
desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate
him in his Cenotaphe or Sepulchre. Nor is this much to
believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto
History: they only had the advantage of a bold and noble
Faith, who lived before his coming, who upon obscure
prophesies and mystical Types could raise a belief, and
expect apparent impossibilities.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 9
55 How Shall the dead arise, is no question of my Faith; to
believe only possibilities, is not Faith, but meer
Philosophy.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 48
56 Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the
contrary of what they see. It is above them and not
contrary to them.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 265
57 If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have
no mysterious and supernatural clement. If we offend the
principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and
ridiculous.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 273
58 Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you
will give Him thanks for not having revealed so much of
Himself; and you will also give Him thanks for not having
revealed Himself to haughty sages, unworthy to know so
holy a God.
Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a
humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of
intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have
sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever
opposition they may have to it.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 288
59 the knowledge of God without that of man’s misery
causes pride. The knowledge of man’s misery without
that of God causes despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ
constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find
both God and our misery.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 527
60 We understand nothing of the works of God, if we do not
take as a principle that He has willed to blind some and
enlighten others.
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 566
61 It is a wonderful thing, and worthy of particular attention,
to see this Jewish people existing so many years in
perpetual misery, it being necessary as a proof of Jesus
Christ both that they should exist to prove Him and that
they should be miserable because they crucified Him;
and though to be miserable and to exist are
contradictory, they nevertheless still exist in spite of their
misery. They are visibly a people expressly created to
serve as a witness to the Messiah (Isaiah 43.9; 44.8).
They keep the books, and love them, and do not
understand them. And all this was foretold; that God's
judgments are entrusted to them, but as a sealed book.
Pascal, Pensées, IX, 640-641
62 What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
| may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 22
63 Thou Celestial light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that | may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 51
64 So spake the Seraph Abdie!/ faithful found,
Among the faithless, faithful only hee;
Among innumerable false, unmov’d,
Unshak’n, unseduc’d, unterrifi’d
His Loyal tie he kept, his Love, his Zealc;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind
Though single. From amidst them forth he passd.
Long way through hostile scorn, which he susteind
Superior, nor of violence fear’d aught;
And with retorted scorn his back he turn’d
On those proud Towrs to swift destruction doom’d.
Milton, Paradise Lost, V, 893
65 Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity
will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for
opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
Milton, Areopagitica
66 As in the whole course of my investigation 1 found
nothing taught expressly by Scripture, which does not
agree with our understanding, or which is repugnant
thereto, and as | saw that the prophets taught nothing,
which is not very simple and easily to be grasped by all,
and further, that they clothed their teaching in the style,
and confirmed it with the reasons, which would most
deeply move the mind of the masses to devotion towards
God, | became thoroughly convinced, that the Bible
leaves reason absolutely free, that it has nothing in
common with philosophy, in fact, that Revelation and
Philosophy stand on totally different footings.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, Pref.
67 Scripture does not teach philosophy, but merely
obedience, and ... all it contains has been adapted to the
understanding and established opinions of the multitude.
Those, therefore, who wish to adapt it to philosophy, must
needs ascribe to the prophets many ideas which they
never even dreamed of, and give an extremely forced
interpretation to their words: those on the other hand,
who would make reason and philosophy subservient to
theology, will be forced to accept as Divine utterances
the prejudices of the ancient Jews, and to fill and confuse
their mind therewith. In short, one party will run wild with
the aid of reason, and the other will run wild without the
aid of reason.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, XV
68 Faith is not built on disquisitions vain;
The things we must believe are few and plain.
Dryden, Religio Laici, 431
69 Divine faith itself, when it is kindled in the soul, is
something more than an opinion, and depends not upon
the occasions or the motives that have given it birth; it
advances beyond the intellect, and takes possession of
the will and of the heart, to make us act with zeal and
joyfully as the law of God commands. Then we have no
further need to think of reasons or to pause over the
difficulties of argument which the mind may anticipate.
Leibniz, Theodicy, 29
70 Though everything said in the text be infallibly true, yet
the reader may be, nay, cannot choose but be, very
fallible in the understanding of it. Nor is it to be
wondered, that the \rill of God, when clothed in words,
should be liable to that doubt and uncertainty which
unavoidably attends that sort of conveyance, when even
his Son, whilst clothed in flesh, was subject to all the
frailties and inconveniences of human nature, sin
excepted.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, 1X, 23
71 Though the common experience and the ordinary course
of things have justly a mighty influence on the minds of
men, to make them give or refuse credit to anything
proposed to their belief; yet there is one case, wherein
the strangeness of the fact lessens not the assent to a fair
testimony given of it. For where such supernatural events
are Suitable to ends aimed at by Him who has the power
to change the course of nature, there, under such
circumstances, that may be the fitter to procure belief, by
how much the more they are beyond or contrary to
ordinary observation. This is the proper case of miracles,
which, well attested, do not only find credit themselves,
but give it also to other truths, which need such
confirmation.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XVI, 13
72 Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father
of light and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to
mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within
the reach of their natural faculties: revelation is natural
reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries
communicated by God immediately; which reason
vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives
that they come from God. So that he that takes away
reason to make away for revelation, puts out the light of
both, and does muchwhat the same as if he would
persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive
the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XIX, 4
73 | believe that thousands of men would be orthodox
enough in certain points, if divines had not been too
Curious, or too narrow, in reducing orthodoxy within the
compass of subtleties, niceties, and distinctions, with
little warrant from Scripture and less from reason or good
policy.
Swift, Thoughts on Religion
74 Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the watry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To Be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 99
75 For Modes of Faith, let graceless zealots fight;
His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle iil, 305
76 When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly
false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because
it is of dangerous consequence.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 75
77 Upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian
religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but
even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable
person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to
convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by
faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in
his own person, which subverts all the principles of his
understanding, and gives him a determination to believe
what is most contrary to custom and experience.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, X, 101
78 The universal propensity to believe in an invisible,
intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least
a general attendant of human nature, may be considered
as a kind of mark or stamp, which the Divine workman
has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more
dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other
parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression
of the universal Creator.
Hume, Natural History of Religion, XV
79 Mr. Murray praised the ancient philosophers for the
candour and good humour with which those of different
sects disputed with each other. /ohnson. "Sir, they
disputed with good humour, because they were not in
earnest as to religion. Had the ancients been serious in
their belief, we should not have had their Gods exhibited
in the manner we find them represented in the Poets. The
people would not have suffered it. They disputed with
good humour upon their fanciful theories, because they
were not interested in the truth of them: when a man has
nothing to lose, he may be in good humour with his
opponent. Accordingly you see in Lucian, the Epicurean,
who argues only negatively, keeps his temper; the Stoick,
who has something positive to preserve, grows angry.
Being angry with one who controverts an opinion which
you value, is a necessary consequence of the uneasiness
which you feel. Every man who attacks my belief,
diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and
therefore makes me uneasy; and | am angry with him who
makes me uneasy. Those only who believed in revelation
have been angry at having their faith called in question;
because they only had something upon which they could
rest as matter of fact.”
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 3, 1776)
80 The opinion of a learned Bishop of our acquaintance, as
to there being merit in religious faith, being mentioned;—
Johnson. “Why, yes, Sir, the most licentious man, were
hell open before him, would not take the most beautiful
strumpet to his arms. We must, as the Apostle says, live
by faith, not by sight.”
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 3, 1781)
81 Since ... the most sublime efforts of philosophy can
extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the
hope, or, at most, the probability of a future state, there is
nothing, except a divine revelation that can ascertain the
existence and describe the condition of the invisible
country which is destined to receive the souls of men
after their separation from the body.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
82 Personal interest is often the standard of our belief, as
well as of our practice.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX
83 The most sagacious of the Christian theologians, the
great Athanasius himself, has candidly confessed that,
whenever he forced his understanding to meditate on the
divinity of the Logos, his toilsome and unavailing efforts
recoiled on themselves; that the more he thought, the
less he comprehended; and the more he wrote, the less
capable was he of expressing his thoughts. In every step
of the inquiry we are compelled to feel and acknowledge
the immeasurable disproportion between the size of the
object and the capacity of the human mind. We may
strive to abstract the notions of time, of space, and of
matter, which so closely adhere to all the perceptions of
our experimental knowledge. But as soon as we presume
to reason of infinite substance, of spiritual generation, as
often as we deduce any positive conclusions from a
negative idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity,
and inevitable contradiction.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX!
84 | maintain that all attempts of reason to establish a
theology by the aid of speculation alone are fruitless, that
the principles of reason as applied to nature do not
conduct us to any theological truths, and, consequently,
that a rational theology can have no existence, unless it
is founded upon the lau-s of morality. For all synthetical
principles of the understanding are valid only as
immanent in experience; while the cognition of a
Supreme Being necessitates their being employed
transcendentally, and of this the understanding is quite
incapable. If the empirical law of causality is to conduct
us to a Supreme Being, this being must belong to the
chain of empirical objects—in which case it would be, like
all phenomena, itself conditioned. If the possibility of
passing the limits of experience be admitted, by means of
the dynamical law of the relation of an effect to its cause,
what kind of conception shall we obtain by this
procedure? Certainly not the conception of a Supreme
Being, because experience never presents us with the
greatest of all possible effects, and it is only an effect of
this character that could witness to the existence of a
corresponding cause. If, for the purpose of fully satisfying
the requirements of Reason, we recognize her right to
assert the existence of a perfect and absolutely necessary
being, this can be admitted only from favour, and cannot
be regarded as the result or irresistible demonstration.
The physico-theological proof may add weight to others—
if other proofs there are—by connecting speculation with
experience; but in itself it rather prepares the mind for
theological cognition, and gives it a right and natural
direction, than establishes a sure foundation for theology.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
85 Holding for true, or the subjective validity of a judgement
in relation to conviction (which is, at the same time,
objectively valid), has the three following degrees:
opinion, belief, and knowledge. Opinion is a consciously
insufficient judgement, subjectively as well as objectively.
Belief is subjectively sufficient, but is recognized as being
objectively insufficient. Knowledge is both subjectively
and objectively sufficient. Subjective sufficiency is
termed conviction (for myself); objective sufficiency is
termed certainty (for all). | need not dwell longer on the
explanation of such simple conceptions.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
86 When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a
variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into
different opinions on some of them. When they are
governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they
are so to be called, will be the same.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 50
87 Public opinion... deserves to be as much respected as
despised—despised for its concrete expression and for
the concrete consciousness it expresses, respected for its
essential basis, a basis which only glimmers more or less
dimly in that concrete expression. But in itself it has no
criterion of discrimination, nor has it the ability to extract
the substantive element it contains and raise it to precise
knowledge. Thus to be independent of public opinion is
the first formal condition of achieving anything great or
rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement
is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and
grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due
course will make it one of its own prejudices.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 318
88 Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it
goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must goa
like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain
time that it finds the true point which it can remain at
rest.
Schopenhauer, Further Pathological Observations
89 There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the
wise, even though these thougNts, liable to error as is the
lot of everything human, are often clothed in strange
allegories and myths under the name of religion. So far,
then, it is a matter of indifference whether a man lives
and dies in reliance on his own or another’s thoughts; for
it is never more than human thought, human opinion,
which he trusts. Still, instead of trusting what their own
minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for
trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of
knowledge. And in view of the enormous intellectual
inequality between man and man, it is easy to see that
the thoughts of one mind might appear as in some sense
a revelation to another.
Schopenhauer, Christian System
90 Faith is the highest passion in a man. There are perhaps
many in every generation who do not even reach it, but
no one gets further.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Epilogue
91 Mysticism has not the patience to wait for God’s
revelation.
Kierkegaard, Journals (July II, 1540)
92 We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree
bears apples.
Emerson, Warship
93 The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to
charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature
control the activity of the hands— so commanding that
we find pleasure and honor in obeying.
Emerson, Address to Harvard Divinity School
94 Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.
Tennyson, In Memoriam, Pref.
95 Ahab. If the gods think to speak outright to man, they
will honourably speak outright; not shake their heads,
and give an old wife’s darkling hint.
Melville, Moby Dicky CXXXIlI
96 It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which
the world tolerates is the perception of the truth of the
most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of
date; but any direct revelation, any original thougNhts, it
hates like virtue. The fathers and the mothers of the town
would rather hear the young man or young woman at
their tables express reverence for some old statement of
the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves. They
don’t want to have any prophets born into their families—
damn them! So far as thinking is concerned, surely
Original thinking is the divinest thing. Rather we should
reverently watch for the least motions, the least
scintillations, of thought in this sluggish world, and men
should run to and fro on the occasion more than at an
earthquake. We check and repress the divinity That stirs
within us, to fall down and worship the divinity that is
dead without us. | go to see many a good man or good
woman, so called, and utter freely that thought which
alone it was given to me to utter; but there was a man
who lived a long, long time ago, and his name was Moses,
and another whose name was Christ, and if your thought
does not, or does not appear to, coincide with w-hat they
said, the good man or the good woman has no cars to
hear you. They think they love God! It is only his old
clothes, of which they make scarecrow's for the children.
Where will they come nearer to God than in those very
children?
Thorcau, Journal (Nov. 16, 1851)
97 What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often
extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
T. H. Huxley, On the Natural Inequality of Men, fn. 1
98 There is the greatest difference between presuming an
opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for
contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its
truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our
Opinion is the very condition which justifies us in
assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other
terms can a being with human faculties have any rational
assurance of being right.
Mill, On Liberty, II
99 The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as
disputable, as open to discussion, and requiring
discussion as much as the opinion itself. There is the
same need of an infallible judge of opinions to decide an
Opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be false, unless
the opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending
itself. And it will not do to say that the heretic may be
allowed to maintain the utility or harmlessness of his
opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth. The truth
of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would know
whether or not it is desirable that a proposition should be
believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of
whether or not it is true? In the opinion, not of bad men,
but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth
can be really useful: and can you prevent such men from
urging that plea, when they are charged with culpability
for denying some doctrine which they are told is useful,
but which they believe to be false?
Mill, On Liberty, II
100 Reason ... is subservient to faith, as handling,
examining, explaining, recording, cataloguing, defending
the truths which faith, not reason, has gained for us, as
providing an intellectual expression of supernatural facts,
eliciting what is implicit, comparing, measuring,
connecting each with each, and forming one and all into
a theological system.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pt. 11, VII, 3
101 From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the
fundamental principle of my religion: | Know no other
religion; | cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of
religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream
and a mockery.
Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sun, II
102 Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, V
103 The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now | only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Arnold, Dover Beach
104 That ancient deception which demands faith in what
has no reasonable explanation, is already worn out and
we can no longer return to it.... Man always understands
everything through his reason and not through faith. It
was once possible to deceive him by asserting that he
knows only through faith and not through reason, but as
soon as he knows two faiths and sees men who profess
another faith in the same way that he professes his own,
he is inevitably obliged to decide the matter by reason. ...
In our time the attempts made to infuse spirituality into
man through faith apart from reason, are like attempts to
feed a man otherwise than through his mouth.
Tolstoy, On Life, Appendix III
105 People today live without faith. On the one hand, the
minority of wealthy, educated people, having freed
themselves from the hypnotism of the Church, believe in
nothing. They look upon all faiths as absurdities or as
useful means of keeping the masses in bondage—no
more. On the other hand, the vast majority, poor,
uneducated, but for the most part truly sincere, remain
under the hypnotism of the Church and therefore think
they believe and have faith. But this is not really faith, for
instead of throwing light on man's position in the world it
only darkens it.
Tolstoy, What Is Religion?, VIII
106 Thought in action has for its only possible motive the
attainment of thought at rest; and whatever does not
refer to belief is no part of the thought itself.
And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which
closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our
intellectual life. We have seen that it has just three
properties: First, it is something that we are aware of;
second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and, third, it
involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of
action, or, say for short, a habit. As it appeases the
irritation of doubt, which is the motive for thinking,
thought relaxes, and comes to rest for a moment when
belief is reached. But, since belief is a rule for action, the
application of which involves further doubt and further
thought, at the same time that it is a stopping-place, it is
also a new starting-place for thought. That is why | have
permitted myself to call it thought at rest, although
thought is essentially an action. The final upshot of
thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no
longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental
action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which
will influence future thinking.
G. S, Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear
107 Whoever has theologian blood in his veins has a wrong
and dishonest attitude towards all things from the very
first. The pathos that develops out of this is called faith.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, IX
108 The ‘will of God' (that is to say the conditions for
preserving the power of the priest) has to be known—to
this end a ‘revelation’ is required. In plain words: a great
literary forgery becomes necessary, a ‘Sacred book' is
discovered—it is made public with all hieratic pomp, with
days of repentance and with lamentation over the long
years of ‘sinfulness'.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XXVI
109 The logical reason of man operates in this held of
divinity exactly as it has always operated in Jove or in
patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider
affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical
intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. It finds arguments
for our conviction, for indeed it has to find them. It
amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends
it words and plausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it
cannot now secure it.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XVIII
110 Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the
greatest matters this is most the case.
William James, The Will to Believe
111 So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or
Originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to
have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a
deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a
maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a
scientific exploration or experiment or textbook, that may
not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from
one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough
our faith beforehand in an uncertified result /s the only
thing that makes the result come true. Suppose, for
instance, that you are climbing a mountain, and have
worked yourself into a position from which the only
escape is by a terrible leap. Have faith that you can
successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to its
accomplishment But mistrust yourself, and think of all
the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of
maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all
unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a
moment of despair, you roll in the abyss. In such a case
(and it belongs to an enormous class), the part of wisdom
as well as of courage is to believe what is m the line of
your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled.
Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you
Shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall
be right, for you shall save yourself. You make one or the
other of two possible universes true by your trust or
mistrust,—both universes having been only maybes, in
this particular, before you contributed your act.
William James, Is Life Worth Living?
112 These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of
life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will
help create the fact. The ‘scientific proof that you are
right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or
some stage of being which that expression may serve to
symbolize) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this
hour, or the beings that then and there will represent
them, may then turn to the faint-hearted, who here
decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry
IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory had been
gained: "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! we fought at
Arques, and you were not there."
William James, Is Life Worth Living?
113 It is not disbelief that is dangerous in our society: it is
belief.
Shaw, Androcles and the Lion, Pref.
114 William James accomplished a new advance in
Pragmatism by his theory of the will to believe, or as he
himself later called it, the right to believe. The discovery
of the fundamental consequences of one or another belief
has without fail a certain influence on that belief itself. If
a man cherishes novelty, risk, opportunity and a
variegated esthetic reality, he will certainly reject any
belief in Monism, when he clearly perceives the import of
this system. But if, from the very start, he is attracted by
esthetic harmony, classic proportions, fixity even to the
extent of absolute security, and logical coherence, it is
quite natural that he should put faith in Monism. Thus
William James took into account those motives of
instinctive sympathy which play a greater role in our
choice of a philosophic system than do formal reasonings;
and he thought that we should be rendering a service to
the cause of philosophical sincerity if we would openly
recognize the motives which inspire us. He also
maintained the thesis that the greater part of philosophic
problems and especially those which touch on religious
fields are of such a nature that they are not susceptible of
decisive evidence one way or the other. Consequently he
claimed the right of a man to choose his beliefs not only
in the presence of proofs or conclusive facts, but also in
the absence of all such proof. Above all when he is forced
to choose between one meaning or another, or when by
refusing to choose he has a right to assume the risks of
faith, his refusal is itself equivalent to a choice. The
theory of the will to believe gives rise to
misunderstandings and even to ridicule; and therefore it
is necessary to understand clearly in what way James
used it. We are always obliged to act in any case; our
actions and with them their consequences actually
change according to the beliefs which we have chosen.
Moreover it may be that, in order to discover the proofs
which will ultimately be the intellectual justification of
certain beliefs—the belief in freedom, for example, or the
belief in God—it is necessary to begin to act in
accordance with this belief.
Dewey, Development of American Pragmatism
115 Dogmas are at their best when nobody denies them, for
then their falsehood sleeps, like that of an unconscious
metaphor, and their moral function is discharged
instinctively.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 5
6.6 Doubt and Skepticism
It is not in the sphere of opinion or belief, but rather with
respect to matters about which men claim to have
knowledge, that doubt operates critically. Whatever is a
matter of opinion or belief, even if appraised as highly
probable, is subject to doubt. But when men claim to have
certitude in their knowledge or possession of the truth, they
hold what they affirm or deny to be beyond all reasonable
doubt. It is such certitude that the skeptic challenges by his
doubts.
As the passages collected here plainly show, skepticism is
both an attitude of mind and a systematic method of dealing
with the whole range of human opinions, beliefs, and claims
to knowledge. In its ancient as well as in its modern forms, it
sometimes goes to the extreme of universal doubt. We can
have certainty about nothing, nor can we even validly assert
that one proposition is more probable than another. One
opinion is as good as another; all are equally true or false.
The reader will find among the passages quoted, arguments
against such extreme skepticism that take the form of
reduction to absurdity: the skeptic cannot say that no
statement is true without contradicting himself, for if his
own statement is false, then at least some statements are
true; and if his own statement is true, then it is false that no
statements are true. Should the skeptic refuse to
acknowledge the force of this argument, because he is
willing to embrace self-contradiction, nothing remains to be
said. Conversation between the extreme skeptic and his
Opponent must cease.
In other quotations the reader will find a more moderate
Skepticism recommended as a therapeutic method, seeking
to sift the claims to knowledge and to winnow those that are
valid from those that are without foundation. This is the
method of beginning by doubting everything in order to
come at last to the few things that one cannot doubt, and to
discover from an examination of these the criteria of
certitude. Moderate skepticism also takes the form of
attenuating universal doubt by conceding moral or practical
certitude to the beliefs one must embrace in order to carry
on the conduct of one's life from day to day. The attempt to
maintain a middle position between extreme skepticism, on
the one hand, and extreme dogmatism, on the other, is
sometimes described as being properly critical rather than
skeptical. The reader will discern these nuances of method
in quotations from Descartes, Hume, and Kant; but it is by
reading the passages taken from Montaigne that he will
become acquainted with skepticism as an attitude of mind
that is both tolerant and uncompromising.
In still other passages, the reader will dis. cover the range
of reasons that are offered for the doubt or uncertainty that
generates one or another form of skepticism: mistrust of the
senses based on the illusions and hallucinations to which
they are subject; mistrust of intellectual judgments based on
the fallibility of the intellect and the errors to which it is
prone; mistrust of even widely held opinions or firmly
established beliefs based on the fact that contrary opinions
and beliefs have also been regarded as acceptable or
settled. It will be seen that the opponents of skepticism,
certainly in its extreme form, do not dismiss such doubts as
groundless, but rather try to confine them to the areas in
which they are justified.
1 Socrates. What, according to you and your friend Gorgias,
is the definition of virtue?
Mono. O Socrates, | used to be told, before | knew you,
that you were always doubting yourself and making
others doubt; and now you are casting your spells over
me, and lam simply getting bewitched and enchanted,
and am at my wits’ end. And if | may venture to make a
jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance
and in your power over others to be very like the flat
torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and
touch him, as you have now torpified me, | think. For my
soul and my tongue are really torpid, and | do not know
how to answer you; and though | have been delivered of
an infinite variety of soeeches about virtue before now,
and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as
thought—at this moment | cannot even say what virtue
is. And | think that you are very wise in not voyaging and
going away from home, for if you did in other places as
you do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a
magician.
Soc. You are a rogue, Meno, and had all caught me.
Men. What do you mean, Socrates?
Soc. | can tell why you made a simile about m
Men. Why?
Soc. In order that | might make another simile about
you. For | know that all pretty young gentlemen like to
have pretty similes made about them—as well they may
—but | shall not return the compliment. As to my being a
torpedo, if the torpedo is torpid as well as the cause of
torpidity in others, then indeed | am a torpedo, but not
otherwise; for | perplex others, not because | am clear,
but because | am utterly perplexed myself. And now |
know not what virtue is, and you seem to be in the same
case, although you did once perhaps know before you
touched me.
Plato, Meno, 79B
2 Socrates. Tell me, Theodorus, do you suppose that you
yourself, or any other follower of Protagoras, would
contend that no one deems another ignorant or mistaken
in his opinion?
Theodoras. The thing is incredible, Socrates.
Soc. And yet that absurdity is necessarily involved in
the thesis which declares man to be the measure of all
things.
Theod. How so?
Soc. Why, suppose that you determine in your own
mind something to be true, and declare your opinion to
me; let us assume, as he argues, that this is true to you.
Now, if so, you must either say that the rest of us are not
the judges of this opinion or judgment of yours, or that
we judge you always to have a true opinion? But are
there not thousands upon thousands who, whenever you
form a judgment, take up arms against you and are of an
opposite judgment and opinion, deeming that you judge
falsely?
Theod. Yes, indeed, Socrates, thousands and tens of
thousands, as Homer says, who give me a world of
trouble.
Soc. Well, but are we to assert that what you think is
true to you and false to the ten thousand others?
Theod. No other inference seems to be possible.
Soc. And how about Protagoras himself? If neither he
nor the multitude thought, as indeed they do not think,
that man is the measure of all things, must it not follow
that the truth of which Protagoras wrote would be true to
no one? But if you suppose that he himself thought this,
and that the multitude does not agree with him, you must
begin by allowing that in whatever proportion the many
are more than one, in that proportion his truth is more
untrue than true.
Theod. That would follow if the truth is supposed to
vary with individual opinion.
Soc. And the best of the joke is, that he acknowledges
the truth of their opinion who believe his own opinion to
be false; for he admits that the opinions of all men are
true.
Theod. Certainly.
Soc. And does he not allow that his own opinion is
false, if he admits that the opinion of those who think him
false is true?
Theod. Of course.
Soc. Whereas the other side do not admit that they
speak falsely?
Theod. They do not.
Soc. And he, as may be inferred from his writings,
agrees that this opinion is also true.
Theod. Clearly.
Soc. Then all mankind, beginning with Protagoras, will
contend, or rather, | should say that he will allow, when
he concedes that his adversary has a true opinion—
Protagoras, | say, will himself allow that neither a dog nor
any ordinary man is the measure of anything which he
has not learned—am | not right?
Theod. Yes.
Soc. And the truth of Protagoras being doubted by all,
will be true neither to himself nor to any one else?
Theod. | think, Socrates, that we are running my old
friend too hard.
Plato, Theaetetus, 170B
3 All statements cannot be false nor all true, both because of
many other difficulties which might be adduced as
arising from this position, and because if all are false it
will not be true to say even this, and if all are true it will
not be false to say all are false.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1063b30
4 If aman believe that nothing is known, he knows not
whether this even can be known, since he admits he
knows nothing. | will therefore decline to argue the case
against him who places himself with head where his feet
should be. And yet granting that he knows this, | would
still put this question, since he has never yet seen any
truth in things, whence he knows what knowing and not
knowing severally are, and what it is that has produced
the knowledge of the true and the false and what hzis
proved the doubtful to differ from the certain.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
5 But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good
cheer; it is |; be not afraid.
And Peter answered him and said. Lord, if it be thou,
bid me come unto thee on the water.
And he said. Come. And when Peter was come down
out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid;
and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and
caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith,
wherefore didst thou doubt?
Matthew 14:27-31
6 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Did-y-mus, was not
with them when Jesus came.
The other disciples therefore said unto him. We have
seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except | shall see
in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into
the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, |
will not believe.
John 20:24-25
7 Zeus. What have we left?
Hermes. There is Scepticism. Come along, Pyrrhias,
and be put up. Quick’s the word. The attendance is
dwindling; there will be small competition. Well, who
buys Lot 9?
Ninth Dealer. |. Tell me first, though, what do you
know?
Scepticism. Nothing.
Ninth D. But how's that?
Sc. There does not appear to me to be anything.
Ninth D. Are not we something?
Sc. How do | know that?
Ninth D. And you yourself?
Sc. Of that | am still more doubtful.
Ninth D. Well, you are in a fix! And what have you got
those scales for?
Sc. | use them to weigh arguments in, and get them
evenly balanced. They must be absolutely equal—not a
feather-weight to choose between them; then, and not till
then, can | make uncertain which is right.
Ninth D. What else can you turn your hand to?
Sc. Anything; except catching a runaway.
Ninth D. And why not that?
Sc. Because, friend, everything eludes my grasp.
Ninth D.\ believe you. A slow, lumpish fellow you seem
to be. And what is the end of your knowledge?
Sc. Ignorance. Deafness. Blindness.
Ninth D. What! sight and hearing both gone?
Sc. And with them judgement and perception, and all,
in short, that distinguishes man from a worm.
Ninth D. You are worth money!—-What shall we say for
him?
Her. Four pounds.
Ninth D. Here it is. Well, fellow; so you are mine?
Sc. | doubt it.
Ninth D. Nay, doubt it not! You are bought and paid
for.
Sc. It is a difficult case. ... | reserve my decision.
Ninth D. Now, come along with me, like a good slave.
Sc. But how am | to know whether what you Say is
true?
Ninth D. Ask the auctioneer. Ask my money. Ask the
spectators.
Sc. Spectators? But can we be sure there are any?
Ninth D. Oh, I'll1 send you to the treadmill. That will
convince you with a vengeance that | am your master.
Sc. Reserve your decision.
Ninth D. Too late. It is given.
Her. Stop that Nvrangling and go with your pur-chaser.
Gentlemen, we hope to see you here again to-morrow,
when we shall be offering some lots suitable for plain
men, artisans, and shopkeepers.
Lucian, Sale of Creeds
8 For we are, and know that we are, and delight in our being,
and our knowledge of it. Moreover, in these three things
no true-seeming illusion disturbs us; for we do not come
into contact with these by some bodily sense, as we
perceive the things outside of us—colours, e.g., by
seeing, sounds by hearing, smells by smelling, tastes by
tasting, hard and soft objects by touching—of all which
sensible objects it is the images resembling them but not
themselves which we perceive in the mind and hold in
the memory, and which excite us to desire the objects.
But, without any delusive representation of images or
phantasms, | am most certain that | am and that | know
and delight in this. In respect of these truths, | am not at
all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say,
"What if you are deceived?" For if 1 am deceived, | am.
For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if |am
deceived, by this same token | am. And since | am if | am
deceived, how am | deceived in believing that | am? for it
is certain that | am if | am deceived. Since, therefore, I,
the person deceived, should be, even if | were deceived,
certainly | am not deceived in this knowledge that | am.
And, consequently, neither am | deceived in knowing that
| Know. For, as | know that | am, so | Know this also, that |
know. And when | love these t\vo things, | add to them a
certain third thing, namely, my love, which is of equal
moment. For neither am | deceived in this, that | love,
since in those things which | love | am not deceived;
though even if these were false, it would still be true that
| loved false things. For how could | justly be blamed and
prohibited from loving false things, if it were false that |
loved them? But, since they are true and real, who doubts
that when they are loved, the Jove of them is itself true
and real?
Augustine, City of God, XI, 26
9 Panurge. By the flesh, blood, and body, | swear, reswear,
forswear, abjure, and renounce: he evades and avoids,
shifts and escapes me, and quite slips and winds himself
out of my gripes and clutches.
At these words Gargantua arose, and said, Praised be
the good God in all things, but especially for bringing the
world into the height of refinedness beyond what it was
when | first became acquainted therewith, that now the
most learned and most prudent philosophers are not
ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and
frontispieces of the schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic,
Sceptic, and Ephetic sects. Blessed be the holy name of
God! Veritably, it is like henceforth to be found an
enterprise of much more easy undertaking, to catch lions
by the neck, horses by the mane, oxen by the horns, bulls
by the muzzle, wolves by the tail, goats by the beard, and
flying birds by the feet, than to entrap such philosophers
in their words.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 36
10 Ignorance that knows itself, that judges itself and
condemns itself, is not complete ignorance: to be that, it
must be ignorant of itself. So that the profession of the
Pyrrhonians is to waver, doubt, and inquire, to be sure of
nothing, to answer for nothing. Of the three functions of
the soul, the imaginative, the appetitive, and the
consenting, they accept the first two; the last they
suspend and keep it ambiguous, without inclination or
approbation, however slight, in one direction or the other.
Zeno pictured in a gesture his conception of this
division of the faculties of the soul: the hand spread and
open was appearance; the hand half shut and the fingers
a little hooked, consent; the closed fist, comprehension;
when with his left hand he closed his fist still tighter,
knowledge.
Now this attitude of their Judgment, straight and
inflexible, taking all things in without adherence or
consent, leads them to their Ataraxy, which is a peaceful
and sedate condition of life, exempt from the agitations
we receive through the impression of the opinion and
knowledge we think we have of things. Whence are born
fear, avarice, envy, immoderate desires, ambition, pride,
superstition, love of novelty, rebellion, disobedience,
obstinacy, and most bodily ills. Indeed, they free
themselves thereby from jealousy on behalf of their
doctrine. For they dispute in a very mild manner. They do
not fear contradiction in their discussion. When they say
that heavy things go down, they would be very sorry to
have anyone take their word for it; and they seek to be
contradicted, so as to create doubt and suspension of
judgment, which is their goal. They advance their
propositions only to combat those they think we believe
in...
Is it not an advantage to be freed from the necessity
that curbs others? Is it not better to remain in suspense
than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the
human fancy has produced? Is it not better to suspend
your conviction than to get mixed up in these seditious
and quarrelsome divisions? ...
The Pyrrhonians have kept themselves a wonderful
advantage in combat, having rid themselves of the need
to cover up. It does not matter to them that they are
struck, provided they strike; and they do their work with
everything. If they your proposition is lame; if you win,
theirs is. If they Iwe, they confirm ignorance; if you lose,
you confirm it. If they prove that nothing is known, well
and good; if they do not know how to prove it, just as
good.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
11 Que scais-je? (What do | know?)
Montaigne (his motto)
12 Hamlet. Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt | love.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 116
13 Othello. Make me to see’t; or, at the least, so prove it
That the probation bear no hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!
lago. My noble lord—
Oth. If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Never pray more; abandon all remorse;
On horror’s head horrors accumulate;
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add
Greater than that.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, ili, 364
14 If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in
doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he
Shall end in certainties.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, V, 8
15 The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the
one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods;
when that which is not fully appearing is not collected
into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but
reserved in doubt: the other, that the entry of doubts are
as SO many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge;
insomuch as that which, if doubts had not preceded, a
man should never have advised, but passed it over
without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts
is made to be attended and applied. But both these
commodities do scarcely countervail an inconvenience,
which will intrude itself if it be not debarred; which is,
that when a doubt is once received, men labour rather
how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and
accordingly bend their wits. Of this we see the familiar
example in lawyers and scholars, both which, if they have
once admitted a doubt, it goeth ever after authorized for
a doubt. But that use of wit and knowledge is to be
allowed, which laboureth to make doubtful things certain,
and not those which labour to make certain things
doubtful. Therefore these kalendars of doubts | commend
as excellent things; so that there be this caution used,
that when they be thoroughly sifted and brought to
resolution, they be from thenceforth omitted, decarded,
and not continued to cherish and encourage men in
doubting.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. 11, VIII, 5
16 Our method and that of the sceptics agree in some
respects at first setting out, but differ most widely, and
are completely opposed to each other in their conclusion;
for they roundly assert that nothing can be known; we,
that but a small part of nature can be known, by the
present method; their next step, however, is to destroy
the authority of the senses and understanding, whilst we
invent and supply them with assistance.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 37
17 | consider that | possess no senses; | imagine that body,
figure, extension, movement and place are but the
fictions of my mind. What, then, can be esteemed as
true? Perhaps nothing at all, unless that there is nothing
in the world that is certain.
But how can | know there is not something different
from those things that | have just considered, of which
one cannot have the slightest doubt? Is there not some
God, or some other being by whatever name we call it,
who puts these reflections into my mind? That is not
necessary, for is it not possible that | am capable of
producing them myself? | myself, am | not at least
something? But | have already denied that | had senses
and body. Yet | hesitate, for what follows from that? Am |
so dependent on body and senses that | cannot exist
without these? But | was persuaded that there was
nothing in all the world, that there was no heaven, no
earth, that there were no minds, nor any bodies: was | not
then likewise persuaded that | did not exist? Not at all; of
a surety | my-self did exist since | persuaded myself of
something [or merely because | thought of something].
But there is some deceiver or other, very powerful and
very cunning, who ever employs his ingenuity in
deceiving me. Then without doubt | exist also if he
deceives me, and let him deceive me as much as he will,
he can never cause me to be nothing so long as | think
that | am something. So that after having reflected well
and carefully examined all things, we must come to the
definite conclusion that this proposition: | am, | exist, is
necessarily true each time that | pronounce it, or that |
mentally conceive it.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, II
18 After | have recognised that there is a God—because at
the same time | have also recognised that all things
depend upon Him, and that He is not a deceiver, and
from that have inferred that what | perceive clearly and
distinctly cannot fail to be true—although | no longer pay
attention to the reasons for which | have judged this to be
true, provided that | recollect having clearly and
distinctly perceived it no contrary reason can be brought
forward which could ever cause me to doubt of its truth;
and thus | have a true and certain knowledge of it. And
this same knowledge extends likewise to all other things
which | recollect having formerly demonstrated, such as
the truths of geometry and the like; for what can be
alleged against them to cause me to place them in
doubt?
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, V
19 My statement that the entire testimony of the senses
must be considered to be uncertain, nay, even false, is
quite serious and so necessary for the comprehension of
my meditations, that he who will not or cannot admit
that, is unfit to urge any objection to them that merits a
reply.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, V
20 What astonishes me most is to see that all the world is
not astonished at its own weakness. Men act seriously,
and each follows his own mode of life, not because it is in
fact good to follow’ since it is the custom, but as if each
man knew certainly where reason and justice are. They
find themselves continually deceived, and, by a comical
humility, think it is their own fault and not that of the art
which they claim always to possess. But it is well there
are So many such people in the world, who are not
sceptics for the glory of scepticism, in order to show that
man is quite capable of the most extravagant opinions,
since he is capable of believing that he is not in a state of
natural and inevitable weakness, but, on the contrary, of
natural wisdom.
Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are
some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be
wrong.
Pascal, Pansees, VI, 374
21 As to what is said by Descartes, that we must doubt all
things in which there is the least uncertainty, it would be
preferable to express it by this better and more
expressive precept: We ought to think what degree of
acceptance or dissent everything merits; or more simply,
we ought to inquire after the reasons of any dogma. Thus
the Cartesian wranglings concerning doubt would cease.
Leibniz, Animadversions on Descartes' Principles of
Philosophy
22 If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot
certainly know all things, we shall do much-what as
wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and
perish, because he had no wings to fly.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Intro.
23 As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so
certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any
proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our
own existence. | think, | reason, | feel pleasure and pain:
can any of these be more evident to me than my own
existence? If | doubt of all other things, that very doubt
makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer
me to doubt of that. For if | know | feel pain, it is evident |
have as certain perception of my own existence, as of the
existence of the pain | feel: or if | Know | doubt, | have as
certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting,
as of that thought which | call doubt. Experience then
convinces us, that we have an intuitive knowledge of our
own existence, and an internal infallible perception that
we are. In every act of sensation, reasoning, or thinking,
we are conscious to ourselves of our own being; and, in
this matter, come not short of the highest degree of
certainty.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Bk. IV, IX, 3
24 As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with
a general disposition to all virtues, and have no
conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature,
so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be
wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a
point problematical as with us, where men can argue with
plausibility on both sides of the question; but strikes you
with immediate conviction; as it must needs do where it
is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by passion and
interest. | remember it was with extreme difficulty that |
could bring my master to understand the meaning of the
word opinion, or how a point could be disputable;
because reason taught us to affirm or deny, only where
we are certain; and beyond our knowledge, we cannot do
either. So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and
positiveness in false or dubious propositions, are evils
unknown among the Houyhnhnms. In the like manner,
when | used to explain to him our several systems of
natural philosophy, he would laugh that a creature
pretending to reasons should value it self upon the
knowledge of other peoples conjectures, and in things,
where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no
use. Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of
Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which | mention as the
highest honour | can do that prince of philosophers.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 8
25 The Cartesian doubt... were it ever possible to be
attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not)
would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever
bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any
subject.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings XII, 116
26 The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive
principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and
the occupations of common life. These principles may
flourish and triumph in the schools; where it is, indeed,
difficult, if not impossible, to refute them. But as soon as
they leave the shade, and by the presence of the real
objects, which actuate our passions and sentiments, are
put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our
nature, they vanish like smoke, and leave the most
determined sceptic in the same condition as other
mortals.
The sceptic, therefore, had better keep within his
proper sphere, and display those philosophical
objections, which arise from more profound researches.
Here he seems to have ample matter of triumph; while he
justly insists, that all our evidence for any matter of fact,
which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory, is
derived entirely from the relation of cause and effect;
that we have no other idea of this relation than that of
two objects, which have been frequently conjoined
together; that we have no argument to convince us, that
objects, which have, in our experience, been frequently
conjoined, will likewise, in other instances, be conjoined
in the same manner; and that nothing leads us to this
inference but custom or a certain instinct of our nature;
which it is indeed difficult to resist, but which, like other
instincts, may be fallacious and deceitful. While the
sceptic insists upon these topics, he shows his force, or
rather, indeed, his own and our weakness; and seems, for
the time at least, to destroy all assurance and conviction.
These arguments might be displayed at greater length, if
any durable good or benefit to society could ever be
expected to result from them.
For here is the chief and most confounding objection
to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever
result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour.
we need only ask such a sceptic, What his meaning is?
And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He
is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer. A
Copernican or Ptolemaic, who supports each his different
system of astronomy, may hope to produce a conviction,
which will remain constant and durable, with his
audience. A Stoic or Epicurean display’s principles, which
may not be durable, but which have an effect on conduct
and behaviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his
philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind:
or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to
society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will
acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish,
were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All
discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men
remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature,
unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence. It is
true; so fatal an event is very little to be dreaded. Nature
is always too strong for principle. And though a
Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary
amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings;
the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all
his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in
every point of action and speculation, with the
philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never
concerned themselves in any philosophical researches.
When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to
join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all
his objections are mere amusement, and can have no
other tendency’ than to show the whimsical condition of
mankind, who must act and reason and believe; though
they are not able, by their most diligent enquiry, to
satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these
operations, or to remove the objections, which may be
raised against them.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 126-128
27 There is, indeed, a more mitigated scepticism or
academical philosophy, which may be both durable and
useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this
Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its
undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected
by common sense and reflection. The greater part of
mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and
dogmatical in their opinions; and while they see objects
only on one side, and have no idea of any counterpoising
argument, they throw themselves precipitately into the
principles, to which they are inclined; nor have they any
indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments.
To hesitate or balance perplexes their understanding,
checks their passion, and suspends their action. They are,
therefore, impatient till they escape from a state, which
to them is so uneasy: and they think, that they could
never remove themselves far enough from it, by the
violence of their affirmations and obstinacy of their belief.
But could such dogmatical reasoners become sensible of
the strange infirmities of human understanding, even in
its most perfect state, and when most accurate and
cautious in its determinations; such a reflection would
naturally inspire them with more modesty and reserve,
and diminish their fond opinion of themselves, and their
prejudice against antagonists. The illiterate may reflect
on the disposition of the learned, who, amidst all the
advantages of study and reflection, are commonly still
diffident in their determinations: and if any of the learned
be inclined, from their natural temper, to haughtiness
and obstinacy, a small tincture of Pyrrhonism might abate
their pride, by showing them, that the few advantages,
which they may have attained over their fellows, are but
inconsiderable, if compared with the universal perplexity
and confusion, which is inherent in human nature. In
general, there is a degree of doubt, and caution, and
modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision,
ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 129
28 What danger can ever come from ingenious reasoning
and inquiry? The worst speculative skeptic ever | knew a
much better man than the best superstitious devotee and
bigot.
Hume, Letter to Gilbert Elliot (Mar. 10, 1751)
29 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an
absurd one.
Voltaire, Letter to Frederick the Great (Apr. 6,1767)
30 Talking of those who denied the truth of Christianity, he
[Johnson] said, "It is always easy' to be on the negative
side. If a man were now to deny that there is salt upon
the table, you could not reduce him to an absurdity.
Come, let us try this a little further. | deny that Canada is
taken, and | can support my denial by pretty good
arguments. The French are a much more numerous
people than we; and it is not likely that they would allow
us to take it. ‘But the ministry have assured us, in all the
formality of The Gazette, that it is taken.’— Very true. But
the ministry have put us to an enormous expence by the
war in America, and it is their interest to persuade us that
we have got something for our money.—‘But the fact is
confirmed by thousands of men who were at the taking of
it.'—Ay, but these men have still more interest in
deceiving us. They’ don’t want that you should think the
French have beat them, but that they’ have beat the
French. Now suppose you should go over and find that it
is really taken, that would only satisfy yourself; for when
you come home we will not believe you. We will say, you
have been bribed.—Yet, Sir, notwithstanding all these
plausible objections, we have no doubt that Canada is
really ours. Such is the weight of common testimony. How
much stronger are the evidences of the Christian
religion!"
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 14, 1763)
31 Johnson. "Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain
men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth
will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have
betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which
will yield such people no more milk, and so they’ are
gone to milk the bull. If | could have allowed myself to
gratify my vanity at the expence of truth, what fame
might | have acquired. Every thing which Hume has
advanced against Christianity had passed through my
mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that
after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a
few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human
mind is so limited, that it cannot take in all the parts of a
subject, so that there may be objections raised against
any thing. There are objections against a plenum, and
objections against a vacuum; yet one of them must
certainly be true,"
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 21, 1763)
32 After we came out of the church, we stood talking | or
some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious
sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that
every thing in the universe is merely ideal. | observed,
that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is
impossible to refute it. | never shall forget the alacrity
with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with
mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from
it, “l refute it thus”
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Aug. 6, 1763)
33 When we apply reason to the objective synthesis of
phenomena... reason establishes, with much
plausibility, its principle of unconditioned unity; but it
very soon falls into such contradictions that it is
compelled, in relation to cosmology, to renounce its
pretensions.
For here a new phenomenon of human reason meets
us—a perfectly natural antithetic, which does not require
to be sought for by subtle sophistry, but into which
reason of itself unavoidably falls. It is thereby preserved,
to be sure, from the slumber of a fancied conviction—
which a merely one-sided illusion produces; but it is at
the same time compelled, either, on the one hand, to
abandon itself to a despairing scepticism, or, on the
other, to assume a dogmatical confidence and obstinate
persistence in certain assertions, without granting a fair
hearing to the other side of the question. Either is the
death of a sound philosophy, although the former might
perhaps deserve the title of the euthanasia of pure
reason.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
34 The sceptical errors of this remarkably acute thinker [i.e.,
Hume] arose principally from a defect, which was
common to him with the dogmatists, namely, that he had
never made a systematic review of all the different kinds
of a priori synthesis performed by the understanding.
Had he done so, he would have found, to take one
example among many, that the principle of permanence
was of this character, and that it, as well as the principle
of causality, anticipates experience. In this way he might
have been able to describe the determinate limits of the
a priori operations of understanding and reason. But he
merely declared the understanding to be limited, instead
of showing what its limits were; he created a general
mistrust in the power of our faculties, without giving us
any determinate knowledge of the bounds of our
necessary and unavoidable ignorance; he examined and
condemned some of the principles of the understanding,
without investigating all its powers with the
completeness necessary to criticism. He denies, with
truth, certain powers to the understanding, but he goes
further, and declares it to be utterly inadequate to the a
priori extension of knowledge, although he has not fully
examined all the powers which reside in the faculty; and
thus the fate which always overtakes scepticism meets
him too. That is to say, his own declarations are doubted,
for his objections were based upon facta, which are
contingent, and not upon principles, which can alone
demonstrate the necessary invalidity of all dogmatical
assertions.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
35 He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall ne’er get out.
He who respects the Infant’s faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death.
Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 87
36 Mephistopheles. | am the Spirit that denies!
And rightly too; for all that doth begin
Should rightly to destruction run;
"Twere better then that nothing were begun.
Goethe, Faust, |, 1338
37 Dogmatist. I'll not let screams lead me to war
With doubts and critic-cavils.
The Devil must be something, or
Else how could there be devils?
Idealist. For once, as | see phantasy,
It is far too despotic.
In truth, if | be all | see,
Today I’m idiotic.
Realist. This riot makes my torture sheer
And greatly irks me surely;
For the first time I’m standing here
On my feet insecurely.
Supernaturalist. With much delight | join this crew
And share with them their revels;
For that there are good spirits too
| argue from these devils.
Skeptic. They go to track the flamelets out
And think they’re near the treasure.
Devil alliterates with Doubt,
So | am here with pleasure.
Goethe, Faust, |, 4343
38 The arrogant declamations current in our time against
philosophy present the singular spectacle, on the one
hand of deriving their justification from the superficiality
to which that study has been degraded, and, on the
other, of being themselves rooted in this element against
which they turn so ungratefully. For by pronouncing the
knowledge of truth a wild-goose chase, this self-styled
philosophizing has reduced all thoughts and all topics to
the same level, just as the despotism of the Roman
Empire abolished the distinction between free men and
Slaves, virtue and vice, honour and dishonour, learning
and ignorance. The result of this levelling process is that
the concepts of what is true, the laws of ethics, likewise
become nothing more than opinions and subjective
convictions. The maxims of the worst of criminals, since
they too are convictions, are put on the same level of
value as those laws; and at the same time any object,
however sorry, however accidental, any material however
insipid, is put on the same level of value as what
constitutes the interest of all thinking men and the bonds
of the ethical world.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Pref.
39 The most dangerous form of scepticism is always that
which least looks like it. The notion that pure thought is
the positive truth for an existing individual, is sheer
scepticism, for this positivencss is chimerical. It is a
glorious thing to be able to explain the past, the whole of
human history; but if the ability to understand the past is
to be the summit of attainment for a living individual,
this positiveness is scepticism, and a dangerous form of
it, because of the deceptive quantity of things
understood.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Il, 3
40 | do not press the skepticism of the materialist. | know
the quadruped opinion will not prevail. 'Tis of no
importance what bats and oxen think. The first dangerous
symptom | report is, the levity of intellect; as if it were
fatal to earnestness to know much. Knowledge is the
knowing that we can not know. The dull pray; the
geniuses are light mockers. How respectable is
earnestness on every platform! but intellect kills it.
Emerson, Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
41 1am the doubter and the doubt,
And | the hymn the Brahmin sings.
Emerson, Brahma
42 You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies.
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
| Know not: one indeed | knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first.
But ever strove to make it true;
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds.
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,
He would not make his judgment blind.
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them; thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own,
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light.
And dwells not in the light alone.
But in the darkness and the cloud.
As over Sinai’s peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
Tennyson, In Memoriam, XCVI
43 Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see
of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest
thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the
open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of
heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,
slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth,
shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in
that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon
the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh!
who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is
all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O
Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the
spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy
apotheosis!
Melville, Moby Dick, XXIII
44 Through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind,
divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog
with a heavenly ray. And for this | thank God; for all have
doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with
them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and
intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination
makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who
regards them both with equal eye.
Melville, Moby Dick, LXXXV
45 Those who were more directly responsible for providing
me with the knowledge essential to the right guidance of
life (and who sincerely desired to do so), imagined they
were discharging that most sacred duty by impressing
upon my childish mind the necessity, on pain of
reprobation in this world and damnation in the next, of
accepting, in the strict and literal sense, every statement
contained in the Protestant Bible. | was told to believe,
and | did believe, that doubt about any of them was a sin,
not less reprehensible than a moral delict. | suppose that,
out of a thousand of my contemporaries, nine hundred, at
least, had their minds systematically warped and
poisoned, in the name of the God of truth, by like
discipline.
T. H. Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, Prologue
46 Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;
While, if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow.
Not vague, mistakable! what’s a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?
And so we stumble at truth’s very test!
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,—we call it black.
Browning, Bishop Blougram's Apology
47 Philosophers of very diverse stripes propose that
philosophy shall take its start from one or another state of
mind in which no man, least of all a beginner in
philosophy, actually is. One proposes that you shall begin
by doubting everything, and says that there is only one
thing that you cannot doubt, as if doubting were "as easy
as lying." Another proposes that we should begin by
observing "the first impressions of sense," forgetting that
our very percepts are the results of cognitive elaboration.
But in truth, there is but one state of mind from which
you can "set out," namely, the very state of mind in
which you actually find yourself at the time you do "set
out"—a state in which you are laden with an immense
mass of cognition already formed, of which you cannot
divest yourself if you would; and who knows whether, if
you could, you would not have made all knowledge
impossible to yourself? Do you call it doubting to write
down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has
nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make
believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality’ out of
you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you
do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at
all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute
ChUCHiet
Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of
and to remember. The first is that a person is not
absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is
"saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self
that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one
reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to
persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is
mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to
remember is that the man’s circle of society (however
widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a
sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of
higher rank than the person of an individual organism. It
is these two things alone that render it possible for you—
but only in the abstract, and in a Pickwickian sense—to
distinguish between absolute truth and what you do not
doubt.
C. S. Peirce, What Pragmatism Means
48 Our belief in truth itself... that there is a truth, and that
our minds and it are made for each other,—what is it but
a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social
system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to
believe that our experiments and studies and discussions
must put us in a continually better and better position
towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our
thinking lives. But if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how
we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly
it cannot. It is just one volition against another,—we
willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which
he, for his part, does not care to make.
William James, Will to Believe
49 Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in
dogma is what education should produce. What it should
produce is a belief that knowledge is attainable ina
measure, though with difficulty; that much of what
passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be
more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be
rectified by care and industry.... Knowledge, like other
good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist
forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility.
Both are mistaken, and their errors, when widespread,
produce social disaster.
Russell, Aims of Education
50 | wish to propose for the reader’s favourable
consideration a doctrine which may, | fear, appear wildly
paradoxical and subversive, the doctrine in question is
this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when
there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. | must,
of course, admit that if such an opinion became common
it would completely transform our social life and our
political system; since both are at present faultless, this
must weigh against it. | am also aware (what is more
serious) that it would tend to diminish the incomes of
clairvoyants, bookmakers, bishops and others who live on
the irrational hopes of those who have done nothing to
deserve good fortune here or hereafter. In spite of these
grave arguments, | maintain that a case can be made out
for my paradox.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, |
51 If one regards oneself as a sceptic, it is well from time to
time to be sceptical about one’s scepticism.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXX
52 The We/tanschauung to which | shall first refer is, as it
were, a counterpart of political anarchism, and may
perhaps have emanated from it. No doubt there have
been intellectual nihilists of this kind before, but at the
present day the theory’ of relativity of modern physics
seems to have gone to their heads. It is true that they
start out from science, but they succeed in forcing it to
cut the ground from under its own feet, to commit
suicide, as it were; they make it dispose of itself by
getting it to refute its own premises. One often has an
impression that this nihilism is only a temporary attitude,
which will only be kept up until this task has been
completed. When once science has been got rid of, some
kind of mysticism, or, indeed, the old religious
Weltanschauung, can spring up in the space that has
been left vacant. According to this anarchistic doctrine,
there is no such thing as truth, no assured knowledge of
the external world. What we give out as scientific truth is
only the product of our own needs and desires, as they
are formulated under varying external conditions; that is
to say, it is illusion once more. Ultimately we find only
what we need to find, and see only what we desire to see.
We can do nothing else. And since the criterion of truth,
correspondence with an external world, disappears, it is
absolutely immaterial what views we accept. All of them
are equally true and false. And no one has a right to
accuse any one else of error.
For a mind which is interested in epistemology, it
would be tempting to enquire into the contrivances and
sophistries by means of which the anarchists manage to
elicit a final product of this kind from science. One would
no doubt be brought up against situations like the one
involved in the familiar example of the Cretan who says
that all Cretans are liars. But | am not desirous, nor am |
capable, of going deeper into this. | will merely remark
that the anarchistic theory only retains its remarkable air
of superiority so long as it is concerned with opinions
about abstract things; it breaks down the moment it
comes in contact with practical life. Now the behaviour of
men is guided by their opinions and knowledge, and the
same scientific spirit which speculates about the
structure of the atom or the origin of man is concerned in
the building of a bridge that will bear its load. If it were
really a matter of indifference what we believed, if there
were no knowledge which was distinguished from among
our opinions by the fact that it corresponds with reality,
then we might just as well build our bridges of cardboard
as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gramme of morphia into
a patient instead of a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a
narcotic instead of ether. But the intellectual anarchists
themselves would strongly repudiate such practical
applications of their theory.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
53 For an answer which cannot be expressed the question
too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be
answered.
Scepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if
it would doubt where a question cannot be asked.
For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a
question only where there is an answer and this only
where something can be said.
We feel that even if a// possible scientific questions be
answered, the problems of life have still not been
touched at all. Of course there is then no question left,
and just this is the answer.
The solution of the problem of life is seen in the
vanishing of this problem.
(Is not this the reason why men to whom after long
doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then
say wherein this sense consisted?)
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.5-6.521
54 Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is
Shameful to surrender it too soon or to the fint comer:
there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly
through a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of
instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for
fidelity and happiness.
Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1X
55 Was the being of truth ,.., denied by the Sophists, or
could they deny it? Yes, if we think only of the truth as
proclaimed by particular opinions. All things said to be
true might be false. Whatsoever depended on argument
might be challenged by an opposed cleverer argument;
whatsoever depended on usage, faith, or preference
might be reversed by a contrary pose; so that ever>' man
remained free to think and do what he liked, and to deny
all authority. This, though with a different moral tone and
intention, was also the position of the Sceptics. They
despised opinion, and collected contradictory arguments
in order to liberate the mind from every pledge and the
heart from every earthly bond. These indomitable
doubters stood firm as rocks in their philosophy; and
even the Sophists were sure of their wisdom and
knowingness in playing their chosen parts in the world.
For both schools, then, there was an unspoken tndh:
namely, that life was a treacherous predicament in which
they found themselves without a reason, and that they
were determined, whether nobly or nimbly, to make the
best of it. Their moral philosophy left the cosmos
problematical, while taking for granted abundant
knowledge of human affairs and human character. If that
age had had a turn for introspection and autobiography,
it might have erected a doctrine of the march of
experience. Trust in memory, in expectation, in the
mutual communication of many minds might have issued
in a system like modern psychologism: the view that all
we see, Say, and think is false, but that the only truth is
that we see, say and think it. If nothing be real except
experience, nothing can be true except biography.
Society must then be conceived as carried on in a literary
medium, with no regard to the natural basis of society. If
the ancients never hit upon such a system of
biographical metaphysics, the reason doubtless was that
they were too intelligent.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, XIII
56 As for the sceptics, who doubt, as least theoretically and
in words, the reliability of our organs of knowledge,
especially of the intellect or reason, it would obviously be
waste of breath to attempt to demonstrate its reliability
to them. For every demonstration rests on some
previously admitted certainty, and it is their very
profession to admit of none. To defend human knowledge
against their attack it is sufficient (i) to show in what that
knowledge consists and how it is attained; (ii) to refute
the arguments they adduce; (iii) to make a reductio ad
absurdum. When they say that they do not know whether
any proposition is true, either they know that this
proposition at any rate is true, in which case they
obviously contradict themselves, or they do not know
whether it is true, in which case they are either saying
nothing whatever, or do not know what they say. The sole
philosophy open to those who doubt the possibility of
truth is absolute silence—even mental. That is to say, as
Aristotle points out, such men must make themselves
vegetables. No doubt reason often errs, especially in the
highest matters, and, as Cicero said long ago, there is no
nonsense in the world which has not found some
philosopher to maintain it, so difficult is it to attain truth.
But it is the error of cowards to mistake a difficulty for an
impossibility.
Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, II, 4
6.7 Reasoning, Demonstration, and
Disputation
The subjects treated in this section relate to subjects treated
in earlier ones: reasoning is involved in the acquisition of
knowledge, in the development of hypotheses or theories,
and in the criticism of opinions or beliefs; demonstration or
proof is regarded, in certain fields of learning (mathematics,
for example), aS a condition pre-requisite to the acceptance
of a conclusion as valid knowledge; disputation or
controversy arises when men attempt to resolve issues
generated by conflicting theories, or conflicting opinions
and beliefs. The reader will also find that the subjects
treated here are relevant to the discussion of philosophy,
science, and mathematics in Chapter 17; and to certain
aspects of the consideration of mind in Chapter 5.
Some of the passages quoted undertake to formulate the
logic of reasoning in rules that determine whether the
reasoning is valid or invalid, such as Aristotle’s rules of the
syllogism; others describe reasoning in psychological rather
than in logical terms, as a process by which the mind passes
from one judgment to another. Different types of reasoning
are distinguished, and fallacies in reasoning are noted. The
difference between deduction and induction is considered in
two ways: on the one hand, as a distinction between two
kinds of reasoning; on the other hand, as a distinction
between a ratiocinative process (deduction) and an intuitive
leap (induction).
The contrast between that which the mind grasps
discursively, through steps of reasoning or ratiocination, and
that which it grasps intuitively, by immediate apprehension,
is involved in a basic thesis concerning demonstration,
advanced in certain of the passages quoted. Reasoning may
be formally valid, in the sense that it does not violate any
logical rules, while at the same time being materially false;
i.e., reaching, from premises that are partly or wholly false, a
conclusion that is false. When the term "demonstration" is
applied, as it is by certain writers, to reasoning that is not
only formally valid but also materially true (the
establishment of a true conclusion from true premises), a
question arises. Does this always require that the truth of
the premises be demonstrated in turn? Or does
demonstration presuppose the existence of indemonstrable
propositions—axioms that cannot be demonstrated, yet the
truth of which can still be Known, intuitively and not by
reasoning? Those who take a strict view of demonstration
argue that it presupposes the indemonstrable.
At the opposite extreme from demonstration is the use of
reasoning in what certain authors call the process of
dialectic or disputation. On many issues reasonable men can
take opposite sides, and when they do, they can marshall
arguments for opposite conclusions. Those who draw a sharp
line between the spheres of Knowledge and opinion, or truth
and probability, place demonstrative reasoning on one side
of this line, and dialectical or disputatious reasoning on the
other.
1 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.
Isaiah 1:18
2 Wrong Logic. Aye, say you so? why | have been half-burst;
do so long
To overthrow his arguments with arguments more strong.
| am the Lesser Logic? True: these Schoolmen call me so,
Simply because | was the first of all mankind to show
How old established rules and laws might contradicted
be:
And this, as you may guess, is worth a thousand pounds
to me,
To take the feebler cause, and yet to win the disputation.
Aristophanes, Clouds, 1031
3 Socrates. When a simple man who has no skill in dialectics
believes an argument to be true which he afterwards
imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then
another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and
great disputers, as you know, come to think at last that
they have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they
alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of
all arguments, or indeed, of all things,... How melancholy,
if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility
of knowledge—that a man should have lighted upon
some argument or other which at first seemed true and
then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming
himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed,
should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from
himself to arguments in general: and for ever afterwards
should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the
knowledge of realities.
Plato, Phaedo, 90A
4 Socrates. First principles, even if they appear certain,
should be carefully considered; and when they are
satisfactorily ascertained, then, with a sort of hesitating
confidence in human reason, you may, | think, follow the
course of the argument.
Plato, Phaedo, 107A
5 Verily, Glaucon, | [Socrates] said, glorious is the power of
the art of contradiction!
Why do you Say so?
Because | think that many a man falls into the practice
against his wall. When he thinks that he is reasoning he
is really disputing, just because he cannot define and
divide, and so know that of which he is speaking; and he
will pursue a merely verbal opposition in the spirit of
contention and not of fair discussion.
Plato, Republic, V, 454A
6 Socrates. That your feelings may not be moved to pity
about our citizens who are now thirty years of age, every
care must be taken in introducing them to dialectic.
Glaucon. Certainly.
There is a danger lest they should taste the dear
delight too early; for youngsters, as you may have
observed, when they first get the taste in their mouths,
argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and
refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like
puppydogs, they rejoice in pulling and tearing at all who
come near them-
Yes, he said, there is nothing which they like better.
And when they have made many conquests and
received defeats at the hands of many, they violently and
speedily get into a way of not believing anything which
they believed before, and hence, not only they, but
philosophy and all that relates to it is apt to have a bad
name with the rest of the world.
Too true, he said.
But when a man begins to get older, he will no longer
be guilty of such insanity; he will imitate the dialectician
who is seeking for truth, and not the eristic, who is
contradicting for the sake of amusement; and the greater
moderation of his character will increase instead of
diminishing the honour of the pursuit.
Plato, Republic, Vil, 539A
7 What | now assert is that at all events we do know by
demonstration. By demonstration | mean a syllogism
productive of scientific knowledge, a syllogism, that is,
the grasp of which is eo /oso such knowledge. Assuming
then that my thesis as to the nature of scientific knowing
is correct, the premisses of demonstrated knowledge
must be true, primary, immediate, better known than and
prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them
as effect to cause. Unless these conditions are satisfied,
the basic truths will not be ‘appropriate’ to the
conclusion. Syllogism there may indeed be without these
conditions, but such syllogism, not being productive of
scientific knowledge, will not be demonstration. The
premisses must be true: for that which is non-existent
cannot be known—we cannot know, c.g. that the
diagonal of a square is commensurate with its side. The
premisses must be primary’ and indemonstrable;
otherwise they will require demonstration in order to be
known, since to have knowledge, if it be not accidental
knowledge, of things which are demonstrable, means
precisely to have a demonstration of them. The premisses
must be the causes of the conclusion, better known than
it, and prior to it; its causes, since we possess scientific
knowledge of a thing only when we know its cause; prior,
in order to be causes; antecedently known, this
antecedent knowledge being not our mere understanding
of the meaning, but knowledge of the fact as well. ... In
saying that the premisses of demonstrated knowledge
must be primary’, | mean that they must be the
‘appropriate’ basic truths, for | identify primary premiss
and basic truth. A ‘basic truth' m a demonstration is an
immediate proposition. An immediate proposition is one
which has no other proposition prior to it.... | call an
immediate basic truth of syllogism a ‘thesis’ when,
though it is not susceptible of proof by the teacher, yet
ignorance of it does not constitute a total bar to progress
on the part of the pupil: one which the pupil must know if
he is to learn anything whatever is an axiom. | call it an
axiom because there are such truths and we give them
the name of axioms par excellence. |f a thesis asumes
one part or the other of an enunciation, i.e. asserts either
the existence or the non-existence of a subject, itis a
hypothesis; if it does not so assert, it is a definition.
Definition /s a ‘thesis’ or a ‘laying something down’, since
the arithmetician lays it down that to be a unit is to be
quantitatively indivisible; but it is not a hypothesis, for to
define what a unit is is not the same as to affirm its
existence.
Now since the required ground of our knowledge—i.e.
of our conviction—of a fact is the possession of such a
syllogism as we call demonstration, and the ground of the
syllogism is the facts constituting its premisses, we must
not only know the primary premisses—some if not all of
them— beforehand, but know them better than the
conclusion.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71b16
8 Reasoning is an argument in which, certain things being
laid down, something other than these necessarily comes
about through them, (a) It is a ‘demonstration’, when the
premisses from which the reasoning starts are true and
primary, or are such that our knowledge of them has
originally come through premisses which are primary and
true: (b) reasoning, on the other hand, is ‘dialectical’, if it
reasons from opinions that are generally accepted. Things
are ‘true’ and ‘primary’ which are believed on the
strength not of anything else but of themselves: for in
regard to the first principles of science it is improper to
ask any further for the why and wherefore of them; each
of the first principles should command belief in and by
itself. On the other hand, those opinions are ‘generally
accepted’ which are accepted by every one or by the
majority or by the philosophers—i.e. by all, or by the
majority, or by the most notable and illustrious of them.
Again (r), reasoning is ‘contentious’ if it starts from
opinions that seem to be generally accepted, but are not
really such, or again if it merely seems to reason from
opinions that are or seem to be generally accepted. For
not every opinion that seems to be generally accepted
actually is generally accepted. For in none of the opinions
which we call generally accepted is the illusion entirely
on the surface, as happens in the case of the principles of
contentious arguments; for the nature of the fallacy in
these is obvious immediately, and as a rule even to
persons with little power of comprehension. So then, of
the contentious reasonings mentioned, the former really
deserves to be called ‘reasoning’ as well, but the other
should be called ‘contentious reasoning’, but not
‘reasoning’, since it appears to reason, but does not really
do so. Further (rf), besides all the reasoning we have
mentioned there are the mis-reasonings that start from
the premisses peculiar to the special sciences, as
happens (for example) in the case of geometry and her
sister sciences. For this form of reasoning appears to
differ from the reasonings mentioned above; the man
who draws a false figure reasons from things that are
neither true and primary, nor yet generally accepted. For
he does not fall within the definition; he does not assume
opinions that are received either by every one or by the
majority or by philosophers—that is to say, by all, or by
most, or by the most illustrious of them—but he conducts
his reasoning upon assumptions which, though
appropriate to the science in question, are not true; for
he effects his mis-reasoning either by describing the
semicircles wrongly or by drawing certain lines in a way
in which they could not be drawn.
The foregoing must stand for an outline survey of the
species of reasoning.
Aristotle, Topics, 100a25
9 You should display your training in inductive reasoning
against a young man, in deductive against an expert. You
should try, moreover, to secure from those skilled in
deduction their premisses, from inductive reasoners their
parallel cases; for this is the thing in which they are
respectively trained. In general, too, from your exercises
in argumentation you should try to carry away either a
syllogism on some subject or a refutation or a proposition
or an objection, or whether some one put his question
properly or improperly (whether it was yourself or some
one else) and the point which made it the one or the
other. For this is what gives one ability, and the whole
object of training is to acquire ability, especially in regard
to propositions and objections. For it is the skilled
propounder and objector who is, speaking generally, a
dialectician....
Do not argue with every one, nor practise upon the
man in the street; for there are some people with whom
any argument is bound to degenerate. For against any
one who is ready to try all means in order to seem not to
be beaten, it is indeed fair to try all means of bringing
about one’s conclusion: but it is not good form.
Wherefore the best rule is, not lightly to engage with
casual acquaintances, or bad argument is sure to result.
For you see how in practising together people cannot
refrain from contentious argument.
It is best also to have ready-made arguments relating
to those questions in which a very small stock will furnish
us with arguments serviceable on a very large number of
occasions. These are those that are universal, and those
in regard to which it is rather difficult to produce points
for ourselves from matters of everyday experience.
Aristotle, Topics, 164a12
10 We must grasp the number of aims entertained by those
who argue as competitors and rivals to the death. These
are five in number, refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism,
and fifthly to reduce the opponent in the discussion to
babbling—i.e. lo constrain him to repeat himself a
number of times; or it is to produce the appearance of
each of these things without the reality. For they choose if
possible plainly to refute the other party, or as the second
best to show that he is committing some fallacy, or asa
third best to lead him into paradox, or fourthly to reduce
him to solecism, i.e. to make the answerer, in
consequence of the argument, to use an ungrammatical
expression; or, as a last resort, to make him repeat
himself.
Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 165b12
11 Precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions,
any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine
and just actions, which political science investigates,
admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that
they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not
by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar
fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for
before now men have been undone by reason of their
wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must
be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with
such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in
outline, and in speaking about things which are only for
the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to
reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit,
therefore, should each type of statement be received; for
it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in
each class of things just so far as the nature of the
subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept
probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand
from a rhetorician scientific proofs.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1094b13
12 Scientific knowledge is judgement about things that are
universal and necessary, and the conclusions of
demonstration, and all scientific knowledge, follow from
first principles (for scientific knowledge involves
apprehension of a rational ground). This being so, the
first principle from which what is scientifically known
follows cannot be an object of scientific knowledge, of
art, or of practical wisdom; for that which can be
scientifically known can be demonstrated, and art and
practical wisdom deal with things that are variable. Nor
are these first principles the objects of philosophic
wisdom, for it is a mark of the philosopher to have
demonstration about some things. If, then, the states of
mind by which we have truth and are never deceived
about things invariable or even variable are scientific
knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and
intuitive reason, and it cannot be any of the three (i.e.
practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, or philosophic
wisdom), the remaining alternative is that it is intuitive
reason that grasps the first principles.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1140b31
13 What things a man must learn in order to be able to
apply the art of disputation, has been accurately shown
by our philosophers; but with respect to the proper use of
the things, we are entirely without practice. Only give to
any of us, whom you please, an illiterate man to discuss
with, and he cannot discover how to deal with the man.
But when he has moved the man a little, if he answers
beside the purpose, he does not know how' to treat him,
but he then either abuses or ridicules him, and says, "He
is an illiterate man; it is not possible to do anything with
him." Now a guide, when he has found a man out of the
road leads him into the right way: he does not ridicule or
abuse him and then leave him. Do you also show this
illiterate man the truth, and you will see that he follows.
But so long as you do not show him the truth, do not
ridicule him, but rather feel your own incapacity.
How then did Socrates act? He used to compel his
adversary in disputation to bear testimony to him, and he
wanted no other witness. Therefore he could say, "I care
not for other witnesses, but | am always satisfied with the
evidence of my adversary, and | do not ask the opinion of
others, but only the opinion of him who is disputing with
me." For he used to make the conclusions drawn from
natural notions so plain that every man saw the
contradiction and withdrew from it.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 12
14 When one of those who were present said, "Persuade me
that logic is necessary," he replied: Do you wish me to
prove this to you? The answer was, "Yes." Then | must use
a demonstrative form of speech. This was granted. How
then will you know if |am cheating you by argument?
The man was silent. Do you sec, said Epictetus, that you
yourself are admitting that logic is necessary, if without it
you cannot know so much as this, whether logic is
necessary or not necessary?
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 25
15 There remain those branches of knowledge which pertain
not to the bodily senses, but to the intellect, among
which The science of reasoning and that of number are
the chief. The science of reasoning is of very great service
in searching into and unravelling all sorts of questions
that come up in Scripture, only in the use of it we must
guard against the love of wrangling and the childish
vanity of entrapping an adversary. For there are many of
what are called sophisms, inferences in reasoning that
are false, and yet so close an imitation of the true, as to
deceive not only dull people, but clever men too, when
they are not on their guard. For example, one man lays
before another with whom he is talking, the proposition,
"What lam, you are not." The other assents, for the
proposition is in part true, the one man being cunning
and the other simple. Then the first speaker adds: "|ama
man"; and when the other has given his assent to this
also, the first draw's his conclusion: "Then you are nota
man." Now of this sort of ensnaring arguments. Scripture,
as | judge, expresses detestation in that place where it is
said, "There is one that showeth wisdom in words, and is
hated"; although, indeed, a style of soeech which is not
intended to entrap, but only aims at verbal
ornamentation more than is consistent with seriousness
of purpose, is also called sophistical.
There are also valid processes of reasoning which lead
to false conclusions, by following out to its logical
consequences the error of the man with whom one is
arguing; and these conclusions are sometimes drawn by
a good and learned man, with the object of making the
person from whose error these consequences result, feel
ashamed of them, and of thus leading him to give up his
error, when he finds that if he wishes to retain his old
opinion, he must of necessity also hold other opinions
which he condemns. For example, the apostle did not
draw true conclusions when he said, "Then is Christ not
risen," and again, "Then is our preaching vain, and your
faith is also vain"; and further on drew other inferences
which are all utterly false; for Christ has risen, the
preaching of those who declared this fact was not in vain,
nor was their faith in vain who had believed it. But all
these false inferences followed legitimately from the
opinion of those who said that there is no resurrection of
the dead. These inferences, then, being repudiated as
false, it follows that since they would be true if the dead
rise not, there will be a resurrection of the dead. As, then,
valid conclusions may be drawn not only from true but
from false propositions, the laws of valid reasoning may
easily be learnt in the schools, outside the pale of the
Church. But the truth of propositions must be inquired
into in the sacred books of the Church.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 31
16 Human intellects obtain their perfection in the
knowledge of truth by a kind of movement and discursive
intellectual operation; that is to say, as they advance
from one known thing to another. But, if from the
knowledge of a Known principle they were straightway to
perceive as known all its consequent conclusions, then
discourse would have no place in them. Such is the
condition of the angels, because in those things which
they first know naturally, they at once behold all things
whatsoever that can be known in them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 58, 3
17 As in the intellect, when reasoning, the conclusion is
compared with the principle, so in the intellect
composing and dividing, the predicate is compared with
the subject. For if our intellect were to see at once the
force of the conclusion in the principle, it would never
understand by discursion and reasoning. In like manner,
if the intellect in apprehending the quiddity of the
subject were at once to have knowledge of all that can be
attributed to, or removed from, the subject, it would
never understand by composing and dividing, but only
by understanding the essence. Thus it is evident that for
the self-same reason our intellect understands by
discursion, and by composing and dividing, namely, that
in the first apprehension of anything newly apprehended
it does not at once grasp all that is virtually contained in
it. And this comes from the weakness of the intellectual
light within us.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 58, 4
18 The discourse of reason always begins from an
understanding and ends at an understanding, because
we reason by proceeding from certain understood
principles, and the discourse of reason is perfected when
we come to understand what we did not know before.
Hence the act of reasoning proceeds from something
previously understood.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-ll, 8, 1
19 Axioms determined upon in argument can never assist in
the discovery of new effects; for the subtilty of nature is
vastly superior to that of argument.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 24
20 There are two ways by which we arrive at the knowledge
of facts, viz, by experience and by deduction. We must
further observe that while our inferences from experience
are frequently fallacious, deduction, or the pure illation of
one thing from another, though it may be passed over, if
it is not seen through, cannot be erroneous when
performed by an understanding that is in the least
degree rational.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, II
21 In reasoning we unite not names but the things signified
by the names; and | marvel that the opposite can occur
to anyone. For who doubts whether a Frenchman and a
German are able to reason in exactly the same way about
the same things, though they yet conceive the words in
an entirely diverse way?
Descartes, Objections and Replies, III
22 All men by nature reason alike, and well, when they have
good principles. For who is so stupid as both to mistake in
geometry, and also to persist in it, when another detects
his error to him?
By this it appears that reason is not, as sense and
memory, born with us; nor gotten by experience only, as
prudence is; but attained by industry: first in apt
imposing of names; and secondly by getting a good and
orderly method in proceeding from the elements, which
are names, to assertions made by connexion of one of
them to another; and so to syllogisms, which are the
connexions of one assertion to another, till we come to a
knowledge of all the consequences of names
appertaining to the subject in hand.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 5
23 Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not
understand the process of reasoning, for they would
understand at first sight and are not used to seek for
principles. And others, on the contrary, who are
accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all
understand matters of feeling, seeking principles and
being unable to see at a glance.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 3
24 When we wish to demonstrate a general theorem, we
must give the rule as applied to a particular case; but if
we wish to demonstrate a particular case, we must begin
with the general rule. For we always find the thing
obscure which we wish to prove and that clear which we
use for the proof; for, when a thing is put forward to be
proved, we first fill ourselves with the imagination that it
is, therefore, obscure and, on the contrary, that what is to
prove it is clear, and so we understand it easily.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 40
25 We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain,
where to submit. He who does not do so understands not
the force of reason. There are some who offend against
these three rules, either by affirming everything as
demonstrative, from want of knowing what demonstration
is; or by doubting everything, from want of knowing
where to submit; or by submitting in everything, from
want of Knowing where they must judge.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 268
26 Permit me to remind you of a universal rule which is
applicable to all the particular subjects in which our
concern is with establishing truth. | do not doubt your
acceptance of it since it is generally admitted by all who
consider things with an open mind and since it
constitutes the chief part of the method of the schools in
dealing with the sciences and that used by seekers after
what is really solid, filling and fully satisfying the mind.
The rule is never to make a decisive judgment, affirming
or denying a proposition, unless what one affirms or
denies satisfies one of the two following conditions:
either that of itself it appear so clearly and distinctly to
sense or to reason, according as it is subject to one or the
other, that the mind cannot doubt its certainty, and that
is what we call a principle or axiom, as, for example, if
equals are added to equals, the results are equal; or that
it be deduced as an infallible and necessary consequence
from such principles or axioms, upon whose certainty
entirely depends that of the consequences correctly
drawn from them, as this proposition, the three angles of
a triangle are equal to two right angles, "which not being
self-evident," is evidently demonstrated as an infallible
consequence of such axioms. Everything satisfying one of
these two conditions is certain and true, and everything
satisfying neither is considered doubtful and uncertain.
We pass decisive judgment on things of the first kind and
leave the rest undecided, calling them, according to their
deserts, now a vision, now a Caprice, occasionally a fancy,
sometimes an idea, and at the most a happy thought;
and since it is rash to affirm them, we incline rather to the
negative, ready however to return to the affirmative if a
convincing demonstration brings their truth to light.
Pascal, Concerning the Vacuum
21 The art which | call the art of persuading, and which is
simply the management of perfect scientific proofs,
consists of three essential parts: defining by clear
definitions the terms to be used; laying down evident
principles or axioms to prove the matter in question;
always mentally substituting in the demonstration, in
place of the things defined, their definitions.
The reason for this method is apparent, since it would
be useless to put forward something capable of proof and
to undertake its demonstration if we had not first clearly
defined all unintelligible terms; and since likewise the
demonstration must be preceded by the granting of the
evident principles required for the demonstration, for if
we do not make sure of the foundation, we can have no
assurance of the building; and since finally while
demonstrating we must mentally substitute the definition
in place of the things defined, for otherwise we could be
led astray by the different meanings encountered in the
terms. It is easy to see that if we observe this method we
are sure to convince, since, with all the terms so defined
that they are understood and entirely free from ambiguity
and with the principles granted, if in the demonstration
we always substitute in thought the definitions in place
of the things defined, the invincible force of the
conclusions cannot fail of its full effect.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
28 How vain .., it is to expect demonstration and certainty
in things not capable of it; and refuse assent to very
rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and
clear truths, because they cannot be made out so
evident, as to surmount every the least (I will not say
reason, but) pretence of doubting. He that, in the
ordinary affairs of life, would admit of nothing but direct
plain demonstration, would be sure of nothing in this
world, but of perishing quickly.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XI, 10
29 As demonstration is the showing the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas by the intervention of one or
more proofs, which have a constant, immutable, and
visible connexion one with another; so probability is
nothing but the appearance of such an agreement or
disagreement by the intervention of proofs, whose
connexion is not constant and immutable, or at least is
not perceived to be so, but is, or appears for the most
part to be so, and is enough to induce the mind to judge
the proposition to be true or false, rather than the
contrary.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XV, 1
30 If the use and end of right reasoning be to have right
notions and a right judgment of things, to distinguish
betwixt truth and falsehood, right and wrong, and to act
accordingly, be sure not to let your sou be bred up iu the
art and formality of disputing, either practicing it himself,
or admiring it in others; unless instead of an able man,
you desire to have him an insignificant wrangler,
Opiniator in discourse, and priding himself in
contradicting others; or, which is worse, questioning
everything, and thinking there is no such thing as truth
to be sought, but only victory, in disputing. There cannot
be anything so disingenuous, so mis-becoming a
gentleman or anyone who pretends to be a rational
creature, as not to yield to plain reason and the
conviction of clear arguments. Is there anything more
consistent with civil conversation, and the end of all
debate, than not to take an answer, though never so full
and satisfactory, but still to go on with the dispute as
long as equivocal sounds can furnish ... a term to wrangle
with on the one side, or a distinction on the other;
whether pertinent or impertinent, sense or nonsense,
agreeing with or contrary to what he had said before, it
matters not For this, in short, is the way and perfection of
logical disputes, that the opponent never takes any
answer, nor the respondent ever yields to any argument.
This neither of them must do, whatever becomes of truth
or knowledge, unless he will pass for a poor baffled
wretch, and lie under the disgrace of not being able to
maintain whatever he has once affirmed, which is the
great aim and glory in disputing. Truth is to be found and
supported by a mature and due consideration of things
themselves, and not by artificial terms and ways of
arguing: these lead not men so much into the discovery
of truth as into a captious and fallacious use of doubtful
words, which is the most useless and most offensive way
of talking, and such as least suits a gentleman or a lover
of truth of anything in the world.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 189
31 Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise.
His pride in Reasoning not in Acting lies.
Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle |, 117
32 The gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms— | mean
in man—for in superior classes of beings, such as angels
and spirits—’tis all done, may it please your worships, as
they tell me, by Intuition;—and beings inferior, as your
worships all know—syllogize by their noses: though there
is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether
at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives
me not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the
same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too:
but that’s neither here nor there--
The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or—the
great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as
logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the
intervention of a third (called the medius terminus); just
aS aman, as Locke well observes, by a yard, finds two
men’s ninepin-alleys to be of the same length, which
could not be brought together, to measure their equality,
by juxtaposition.
Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father
illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle
Toby’s deportment—what great attention he gave to
every word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his
mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated
the length of it— surveying it transversely as he held it
betwixt his finger and his thumb—then foreright—then
this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and
foreshortenings—he would have concluded my uncle
Toby had got hold of the medius terminus, and was
syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each
hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them
before him. This, by the bye, was more than my father
wanted—his aim in all the pains he was at in these
philosophic lectures— was to enable my uncle Toby not to
discuss—but comprehend—to hold the grains and
scruples of learning—not to weigh them. My uncle Toby,
as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one
nor the other.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, III, 40
33 When one has had a good argument about spirit and
matter, one always finishes by not understanding each
other. No philosopher has been able with his own
strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the
first principles of things. Men argue, nature acts.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Soul
34 One of the company took the other side... . This
appeared to me very satisfactory. Johnson did not answer
it; but talking for victory, and determined to be master of
the field, he had recourse to the device which Goldsmith
imputed to him in the witty words of one of Cibber’s
comedies: "There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his
pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end
of it."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct. 26,1769)
35 Johnson having argued for some time with a pertinacious
gentleman; his opponent, who had talked in a very
puzzling manner, happened to say, "I don’t understand
you. Sir": upon which Johnson observed, "Sir, | have
found you an argument; but | am not obliged to find you
an understanding."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 1764)
36 When reason employs conceptions alone, only one proof
of its thesis is possible, if any. When, therefore, the
dogmatist advances with ten arguments in favour of a
proposition, we may be sure that not one of them is
conclusive. For if he possessed one which proved the
proposition he brings forwaird to demonstration—as must
always be the case with the propositions of pure reason—
what need is there for any more?
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
37 Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door where in | went.
With them the seed of Wisdom did | sow.
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that | reaped—
"I came like Water, and like Wind | go."
FitzGerald, Rubaiyat, XXVII-XXVIII
38 When you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only
that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.
T. H. Huxley, On the Method of Zadig
39 There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion
that opinions are worthless because they are badly
argued.
T. H. Huxley, Natural Rights and Political Rights
40 There are two forms of reasoning: first, the investigating
or interrogative form used by men who do not know and
who wish to learn; secondly, the demonstrating or
affirmative form employed by men who know or think
they know, and who wish to teach others.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, I, 2
41 Few persons care to study logic, because everybody
conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of
reasoning already. But | observe that this satisfaction is
limited to one’s own ratiocination, and does not extend to
that of other men.
We come to the full possession of our power of
drawing inferences, the last of all our faculties; for it is
not so much a natural gift as a long and difficult art.
C. S. Peirce, Fixation of Belief
42 The object of reasoning is to find out, from the
consideration of what we already know, something else
which we do not know. Consequently, reasoning is good if
it be such as to give a true conclusion from true
premisses, and not otherwise. Thus, the question of
validity is purely one of fact and not of thinking. A being
the facts stated in the premisses and B being that
concluded, the question is, whether these facts are really
so related that if A were B would generally be. If so, the
inference is valid; if not, not. It is not in the least the
question whether, when the premisses are accepted by
the mind, we feel an impulse to accept the conclusion
also. It is true that we do generally reason correctly by
nature. But that is an accident; the true conclusion would
remain true if we had no impulse to accept it; and the
false one would remain false, though we could not resist
the tendency to believe in it.
C. S. Peirce, Fixation of Belief
43 A friend of the writer gave as proof of the almost human
intelligence of his dog that he took him one day down to
his boat on the shore, but found the boat full of dirt and
water. He remembered that the sponge was up at the
house, a third of a mile distant; but, disliking to go back
himself, he made various gestures of wiping out the boat
and so forth, saying to his terrier, "Sponge, sponge; go
fetch the sponge." But he had little expectation of a
result, since the dog had never received the slightest
training with the boat or the sponge. Nevertheless, off he
trotted to the house, and, to his owner’s great surprise
and admiration, brought the sponge in his jaws.
Sagacious as this was, it required nothing but ordinary
contiguous association of ideas. The terrier was only
exceptional in the minuteness of his spontaneous
observation. Most terriers would have taken no interest in
the boat-cleaning operation, nor noticed what the sponge
was for. This terrier, in having picked those details out of
the crude mass of his boat-experience distinctly enough
to be reminded of them, was truly enough ahead of his
peers on the line which leads to human reason. But his
act was not yet an act of reasoning proper. It might fairly
have been called so if, unable to find the sponge at Ac
house, he had brought back a dipper or a mop instead.
Such a substitution would have shown that, embedded in
the very different appearances of these articles, he had
been able to discriminate the identical partial attribute of
capacity to take up water, and had reflected, "For the
present purpose Aey are identical." This, which the dog
did not do, any man but the very stupidest could not fail
to do.
William James, Psychology, XXII
44 It is very desirable, in instruction, not merely to persuade
the student of the accuracy of important theorems, but to
persuade him in the way which itself has, of all possible
ways, the most beauty. The true interest of a
demonstration is not, as traditional modes of exposition
suggest, concentrated wholly in the result; where this
does occur, it must be viewed as a defect, to be
remedied, if possible, by so generalizing the steps of the
proof that each becomes important in and for itself. An
argument which serves only to prove a conclusion is like
a story subordinated to some moral which it is meant to
teach: for aesthetic perfection no part of Ac whole should
be merely a means.
Russell, Study of Mathematics
45 The proof of self-evident propositions may seem, to Ac
uninitiated, a somewhat frivolous occupation. To this we
might reply that it is often by no means self-evident that
one obvious proposition follows from another obvious
proposition; so that we are really discovering new truths
when we prove what is evident by a method which is not
evident. But a more interesting retort is, that since people
have tried to prove obvious propositions, they have found
that many of them are false. Self-evidence is often a mere
will-o’-the-wisp, which is sure to lead us astray if we take
it as our guide. For instance, nothing is plainer than that
a whole always has more terms than a part, or that a
number is increased by adding one to it. But these
propositions are now known to be usually false. Most
numbers are infinite, and if a number is infinite you may
add ones to it as long as you like without disturbing it in
the least. One of the merits of a proof is that it instils a
certain doubt as to Ac result proved; and when what is
obvious can be proved in some cases, but not in others, it
becomes possible to suppose that in these other cases it
is false.
Russell, Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
46 | have never been able to convince myself of the truth of
the saying that "strife is the father of all things." | think
the source of it was the philosophy of Ac Greek sophists
and that it errs, as does the latter, through the
overestimation of dialectics. It seems to me, on the
contrary, that scientific controversy, so-called, is on Ac
whole quite unfruitful, apart from the fact that it is almost
always conducted in a highly personal manner.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XVI
47 Bacon's conviction of the quarrelsome, self-displaying
character of the scholarship which had come down from
antiquity was of course not so much due to Greek science
itself as to the degenerate heritage of scholasticism in
the fourteenth century, when philosophy had fallen into
the hands of disputatious theologians, full of hairsplitting
argumentativeness and quirks and tricks by which to win
victory over somebody else.
But Bacon also brought his charge against the
Aristotelian method itself. In its rigorous forms it aimed at
demonstration, and in its milder forms at persuasion. But
both demonstration and persuasion aim at conquest of
mind rather than of nature. Moreover they both assume
that some one is already in possession of a truth ora
belief, and that the only problem is to convince some one
else, or to teach. In contrast, his new method had an
exceedingly slight opinion of the amount of truth already
existent, and a lively sense of the extent and importance
of truths still to be attained. It would be a logic of
discovery, not a logic of argumentation, proof and
persuasion. To Bacon, the old logic even at its best was a
logic for teaching the already’ known, and teaching
meant indoctrination, discipling. It was an axiom of
Aristotle that only that which was already known could be
learned, that growth in knowledge consisted simply of
bringing together a universal truth of reason and a
particular truth of sense which had previously been noted
separately. In any case, learning meant growth of
knowledge, and growth belongs in the region of
becoming, change, and hence is inferior to possession of
knowledge in the syllogistic self-revolving manipulation
of what >vas already known—demonstration.
In contrast with this point of view, Bacon eloquently
proclaimed the superiority of discovery of new facts and
truths to demonstration of the old. Now there is only one
road to discovery, and that is penetrating inquiry into the
secrets of nature.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, II
48 Dialectic is the conscience of discourse and has the same
function as morality elsewhere, namely, to endow the
soul with integrity and to perfect it into a monument to
its own radical impulse. But as virtue is a wider thing
than morality, because it includes natural gifts and genial
sympathies, or even heroic sacrifices, So wisdom is a
wider thing than logic. To coherence in thought it adds
docility to facts, and humility even of intellect, so that
the integrity of its system becomes a human virtue, like
the perfect use of a single language, without being an
insult to the nature of things or a learned madness.
Santayana, Realm of Essence, VII
Chapter 7
LANGUAGE
Chapter 7 is divided into two sections: 7.1 The Nature OF
Language and 7.2 The Arts of Language.
The passages included in these two sections tend to
overlap in certain respects, but the primary emphasis in the
quotations assembled in Section 7.1 is on the characteristics
of human speech, its elements and structure, whereas the
primary emphasis in Section 7.2 is on how to put the power
of speech to good use in a variety of ways.
Of all the subjects treated in this book, language,
perhaps more than any other, is thought by many to have
been a major field of speculation, analysis, and research
only in the last hundred years or so. It is in that period that a
variety of sciences bearing the name "linguistics" have been
developed and that related disciplines such as philology,
semantics, and semiotics have come into being or matured.
Beginning less than a half century ago, a dominant school of
Anglo-American thought emerged, calling itself "linguistic
and analytic philosophy." Nevertheless, the reader will find
that an interest in the nature and structure of language and
in the arts of using it effectively begins with the Greeks and
runs throughout the tradition of Western thought.
The matters covered in this chapter are related to
questions touched on in other chapters, especially Chapter 1
on Man, Chapter 5 on Mind, Chapter 6 on Knowledge,
Chapter 8 on Education, Chapter 16 on Art and Aesthetics,
and Chapter 17 on Philosophy. Science, and Mathematics.
7.1 The Nature of Language
The passages assembled here deal with questions about the
origin of language, the conventions of language, the
diversity of languages, the power of words to perform the
function of signs, and the relation of verbal signs to thought
and knowledge, as well as to the objects of thought and
knowledge.
Points are made about the manifold senses in which
words can be used and their modes of ambiguity, about the
distinction between words that name objects of thought or
knowledge and words that play a role in sentences without
naming anything, about the relation of sooken to written
language, about the distinction between proper and
common or general names, about the various uses to which
language can be put, and about the conditions underlying
its effective use for the purpose of communication.
That other animals communicate by sounds or gestures is
acknowledged even by those writers who assert that man
alone possesses a language in which questions can be asked
and statements made in the service of inquiry and thought
quite apart from the purposes of communication between
individuals. Whether it is thought that the difference
between man and other animals is one of kind or degree, it
is universally agreed that the way in which the human
species has developed and employed language is one of its
most distinctive characteristics.
1 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of
the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them
unto Adam to see what he would call them: and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was
the name thereof.
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of
the air, and to every beast of the field.
Genesis 2:19-20
2 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one
speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east,
that they found a plain in the land of Shi-nar; and they
dwelt there.
And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick,
and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone,
and slime had they for morter.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a
name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the
whole earth.
And the Lord came down to see the city and .the
tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they
have all one language; and this they begin to do; and
now nothing will be restrained from them, which they
have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language, that they may not understand one another’s
speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon
the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the
Lord did there confound the language of all the earth:
and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon
the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:1-9
3 Socrates. A name is an instrument of teaching and of
distinguishing natures, as the shuttle is of distinguishing
the threads of the web.
Plato, Cratylus, 388A
4 Socrates. | would recommend you , ,. not to encourage
yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to
find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really
mean when we Say that all things are in motion, and that
to every individual and state what appears, is. In this
manner you will consider whether knowledge and
sensation are the same or different, but you will not
argue, as you were just now doing, from the customary
use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all
sorts of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another.
Plato, Theaetetus, 168A
5 Eleatic Stranger. At present we are only agreed about the
name, but of the thing to which we both apply the name
possibly you have one notion and | another; whereas we
ought always to come to an understanding about the
thing itself in terms of a definition, and not merely about
the name minus the definition
Plato, Sophist, 2I8A
6 No man of intelligence will venture to express his
philosophical views in language, especially not in
language that is unchangeable, which is true of that
which is set down in written characters.
Plato, Seventh Letter
7 Things are said to be named 'equivocally' when, though
they have a common name, the definition corresponding
with the name differs for each. Thus, a real man and a
figure in a picture can both lay claim to the name
‘animal’; yet these are equivocally so named, for, though
they have a common name, the definition corresponding
with the name differs for each. For should any one define
in what sense each is an animal, his definition in the one
case wall be appropriate to that ease only.
On the other hand, things are said to be named
‘univocally' which have both the name and the definition
answering to the name in common. A man and an ox are
both 'animal', and these are univocally so named,
inasmuch as not only the name, but also the definition, is
the same in both cases: for if a man should state in what
sense each is an animal, the statement in the one ease
would be identical with that in the other.
Things are said to be named 'derivatively'. which
derive their name from some other name, but differ from
it in termination. Thus the grammarian derives his name
from the word 'grammar', and the courageous man from
the word ‘courage’.
Aristotle, Categories, lal
8 Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and
written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all
men have not the same writing, so all men have not the
Same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which
these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are
those things of which our experiences are the images.
Aristotle, On Interpretation, 16a4
9 Nature... makes nothing in vain, and man is the only
animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech.
And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure
or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their
nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and
the intimation of them to one another, and no further),
the power of speech is intended to set forth the
expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the
just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that
he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and
unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings
who have this sense makes a family and a state.
Aristotle, Polities, 1253a8
10 Why then should words challenge Eternity,
When greatest men, and greatest actions die?
Use may revive the obsoletest words.
And banish those that now are most in vogue;
Use is the judge, the law, and rule of speech.
Horace, Ars Poetica
111 have ...discovered by observation how | learned to
speak. | did not learn by elders teaching me words in any
systematic way, aS | was soon after taught to read and
write. But of my own motion ... | strove with cries and
various sounds and much moving of my limbs to utter the
feelings of my heart—all this in order to get my own way.
Now | did not always manage to express the right
meanings to the right people. So | began to reflect. (I
observed that) my ciders would make some particular
sound, and as they made it would point at or move
towards some particular thing: and from this 1 came to
realize that the tiling w,as called by the sound they made
when they wished to draw my attention to it. That they
intended this was clear from the motions of their body, by
a kind of natural language common to all races which
consists in facial expressions, glances of the eye,
gestures, and the tones by which the voice expresses the
mind's state—for example whether things are to be
sought, kept, thrown away, or avoided. So, as 1 heard the
Same words again and again properly used in different
phrases, | came gradually to grasp what things they
signified; and forcing my mouth to the same sounds, |
began to use them to express my own wishes. Thus |
learnt to convey what | meant to those about me.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 8
12 All instruction is either about things or about sigas; but
things are learnt by means of signs. 1 now use the word
"thing" in a strict sense to signify that which is never
employed as a sign of anything else: for example, wood,
stone, cattle, and other things of that kind. Not, however,
the wood which we read Moses cast into the bitter waters
to make them sweet, nor the stone which Jacob used as a
pillow, nor the ram which Abraham offered up instead of
his son; for these, though they are things, are also signs
of other things. There are signs of another kind, those
which are never employed except as signs: for example,
words. No one uses words except as signs of something
else; and hence may be understood what | call signs:
those things, to wit, which are used to indicate something
else. Accordingly, every sign is also a thing; for what is
not a thing is nothing at all. Every thing, however, is not
also a sign.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 2
13 When we speak, in order that what we have in our minds
may enter through the ear into the mind of the hearer,
the word which we have in our hearts becomes an
outward sound and is called speech; and yet our thought
does not lose itself in the sound, but remains complete in
itself, and takes the form of speech without being
modified in its own nature by the change.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, I, 13
14 As when | was writing about things, | introduced the
subject with a warning against attending to anything but
what they are in themselves, even though they are signs
of something else, so now, when | come in its turn to
discuss the subject of signs, | lay down this direction, not
to attend to what they are in themselves, but to the fact
that they are signs, that is, to what they signify. For a sign
is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes
on the senses, causes something else to come into the
mind as a consequence of itself: as when we see a
footprint, we conclude that an animal whose footprint
this is has passed by; and when we see smoke, we know
that there is fire beneath; and when we hear the voice of
a living man, we think of the feeling in his mind; and
when the trumpet sounds, soldiers know that they are to
advance or retreat, or do whatever else the state of the
battle requires.
Now some signs are natural, others conventional.
Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or
desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the
knowledge of something else, as, for example, smoke
when it indicates fire. For it is not from any intention of
making it a sign that it is so, but through attention to
experience we come to know that fire is beneath, even
when nothing but smoke can be seen. And the footprint
of an animal passing by belongs to this class of signs.
And the countenance of an angry or sorrowful man
indicates the feeling in his mind, independently of his
will: and in the same way every other emotion of the
mind is betrayed by the tell-tale countenance, even
though we do nothing with the intention of making it
known. This class of signs, however, it is no part of my
design to discuss at present. But as it comes under this
division of the subject, | could not altogether pass it over.
It will be enough to have noticed it thus far.
Conventional signs, on the other hand, are those
which living beings mutually exchange for the purpose of
showing, as well as they can, the feelings of their minds,
or their perceptions, or their thoughts. Nor is there any
reason for giving a sign except the desire of drawing forth
and conveying into another’s mind what the giver of the
sign has in his own mind. We wish, then, to consider and
discuss this class of signs so far as men are concerned
with it, because even the signs which have been given us
of God, and which are contained in the Holy Scriptures,
were made known to us through men— those, namely,
who wrote the Scriptures. The beasts, too, have certain
signs among themselves by which they make known the
desires in their mind. For when the poultry-cock has
discovered food, he signals with his voice for the hen to
run to him, and the dove by cooing calls his mate, or is
called by her in turn; and many signs of the same kind
are matters of common observation. Now whether these
signs, like the expression or the cry of a man in grief
follow the movement of the mind instinctively and apart
from any purpose, or whether they are really used with
the purpose of signification, is another question, and
does not pertain to the matter in hand. And this part of
the subject | exclude from the scope of this work as not
necessary to my present object.
Of the signs, then, by which men communicate their
thoughts to one another, some relate to the sense of
sight, some to that of hearing, a very few to the other
senses. For, when we nod, we give no sign except to the
eyes of the man to whom we wish by this sign to impart
our desire. And some convey a great deal by the motion
of the hands: and actors by movements of all their limbs
give certain signs to the initiated, and, so to speak,
address their conversation to the eyes: and the military
standards and flags convey through the eyes the will of
the commanders. And all these signs are as it were a kind
of visible words. The signs that address themselves to the
car are, aS | have said, more numerous, and for the most
part consist of words. For though the bugle and the flute
and the lyre frequently give not only a sweet but a
significant sound, yet all these signs are very few in
number compared with words. For among men words
have obtained far and away the chief place as a means of
indicating the thoughts of the mind. Our Lord, it is true,
gave a sign through the odour of the ointment which was
poured out upon His feet; and in the sacrament of His
body and blood He signified His will through the sense of
taste; and when by touching the hem of His garment the
woman was made whole, the act was not wanting in
significance. But the countless multitude of the signs
through which men express their thoughts consist of
words. For | have been able to put into words all those
signs, the various classes of which | have briefly touched
upon, but | could by no effort express words in terms of
those signs.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 1-3
15 Because words pass away as soon as they strike upon the
air, and last no longer than their sound, men have by
means of letters formed signs of words. Thus the sounds
of the voice are made visible to the eye, not of course as
sounds, but by means of certain signs.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 4
16 Since according to the Philosopher [Aristotle], words are
signs of ideas, and ideas the similitude of things, it is
evident that words relate to the meaning of things
signified through the medium of the intellectual
conception. It follows therefore that we can give a name
to anything in as far as we can understand it.... Thus...
the idea expressed by the name is the definition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 13, 1
17 A name is communicable in two ways, properly, and by
likeness. It is properly communicable in the sense that its
whole signification can be given to many; by likeness it is
communicable according to some part of the signification
of the name. For instance this name “lion” is properly
communicated to all things of the same nature as lion; by
likeness it is communicable to those who participate in
something lion-like, as for instance by courage, or
strength, and those who thus participate are called lions
metaphorically.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 13, 9
18 If man were by nature a solitary animal the passions of
the soul by which he was conformed to things so as to
have knowledge of them would be sufficient for him; but
since he is by nature a political and social animal it was
necessary that his conceptions be made known to others.
This he does through vocal sound. Therefore there had to
be significant vocal sounds in order that men might live
together. Whence those who speak different languages
find it difficult to live together in social unity.
”
Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's “On Interpretation,
|, 2
19 If man had only sensitive cognition, which is of the here
and now, such significant vocal sounds as the other
animals use to manifest their conceptions to each other
would be sufficient for him to live with others. But man
also has the advantage of intellectual cognition, which
abstracts from the here and now, and as a consequence,
is concerned with things distant in place and future in
time as well as things present according to time and
place. Hence the use of writing was necessary so that he
might manifest his conceptions to those who are distant
according to place and to those who will come in future
time.
Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's “On Interpretation,"
i?
20 Man alone amongst the animals speaks and has gestures
and expression which we call rational, because he alone
has reason in him. And if anyone should say in
contradiction that certain birds talk, as seems to be the
case with some, especially the magpie and the parrot,
and that certain beasts have expression or gestures, as
the ape and some others seem to have, | answer that it is
not true that they speak, nor that they have gestures,
because they have no reason, from which these things
must needs proceed; nor have they the principle of these
things within them, nor do they understand what it is; nor
do they purpose to signify anything by them, but they
merely reproduce what they see and hear. Wherefore,
even as the image of bodies is reproduced by certain
shining things (for instance, a mirror), and the corporeal
image that the mirror displays is not real, so the
semblance of reason, namely the expression and the
speech which the brute beast reproduces or displays, is
not real.
Dante, Convivio, III, 7
21 What we call the vernacular speech is that to which
children are accustomed by those who are about them
when they first begin to distinguish words; or to put it
more shortly, we say that the vernacular speech is that
which we acquire without any rule, by imitating our
nurses. There further springs from this another secondary
speech, which the Romans called grammar. And this
secondary speech the Greeks also have, as well as others,
but not all. Few, however, acquire the use of this speech,
because we can only be guided and instructed in it by
the expenditure of much time, and by assiduous study. Of
these two kinds of speech also, the vernacular is the
nobler, as well because it was the first employed by the
human race, as because the whole world makes use of it,
though it has been divided into forms differing in
pronunciation and vocabulary. It is also the nobler as
being natural to us, whereas the other is rather of an
artificial kind.
Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia, |, 1
22 In a certain bark of the dog the horse knows there is
anger; at a certain other sound of his he is not frightened.
Even in the beasts that have no voice, from the mutual
services we see between them we easily infer some other
means of communication; their motions converse and
discuss. ... Why not; just as well as our mutes dispute,
argue, and tell stories by signs? | have seen some so
supple and versed in this, that in truth they lacked
nothing of perfection in being able to make themselves
understood. Lovers grow angry, are reconciled, entreat,
thank, make assignations, and in fine say everything,
with their eyes. ... What of the hands? We beg, we
promise, call, dismiss, threaten, pray, entreat, deny,
refuse, question, admire, count, confess, repent, fear,
blush, doubt, instruct, command, incite, encourage,
swear, testify, accuse, condemn, absolve, insult, despise,
defy, vex, flatter, applaud, bless, humiliate, mock,
reconcile, commend, exalt, entertain, rejoice, complain,
grieve, mope, despair, wonder, exclaim, are silent, and
what not, with a variation and multiplication that vie with
the tongue. With the head: we invite, send away, avow,
disavow, give the lie, welcome, honor, venerate, disdain,
demand, show out, cheer, lament, caress, scold, submit,
brave, exhort, menace, assure, inquire. What of the
eyebrows? What of the shoulders? There is no movement
that does not speak both a language intelligible without
instruction, and a public language; which means, seeing
the variety and particular use of other languages, that
this one must rather be judged the one proper to human
nature.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
23 As for speech, it is certain that if it is not natural, it is not
necessary. Nevertheless, | believe that a child who had
been brought up in complete solitude, remote from all
association (which would be a hard experiment to make),
would have some sort of speech to express his ideas. And
it is not credible that Nature has denied us this resource
that she has given to many other animals: for what is it
but speech, this faculty we see in them of complaining,
rejoicing, calling to each other for help, inviting each
other to love, as they do by the use of their voice? How
could they not speak to one another? They certainly
speak to us, and we to them. In how many ways do we
not speak to our dogs? And they answer us. We talk to
them in another language, with other names, than to
birds, hogs, oxen, horses; and we change the idiom
according to the species.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
24 Juliet. What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Il, ii, 43
25 Prospero. Abhorred slave.
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! | pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, | endow’d thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.
Caliban. You taught me language; and my profit on’t
Is, | Know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
Shakespeare, Tempest, I, ti, 352
26 Custom is the most certain mistress of language as the
public stamp makes the current money. But we must not
be too frequent with the mint, every day coining, nor
fetch words from the extreme and utmost ages; since the
chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so
vicious in it as to need an interpreter. Words borrowed of
antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not
without their delight sometimes; for they have the
authority of years, and out of their intermission do win
themselves a kind of gracelike newness. But the eldest of
the present, and newest of the past language, is the best.
For what was the ancient language, which some men so
dote upon, but the ancient custom? Yet when | name
custom, | understand not the vulgar custom; for that were
a precept no less dangerous to language than life, if we
should speak or live after the manners of the vulgar: but
that | call custom of speech, which is the consent of the
learned; as custom of life, which is the consent of the
good.
Jonson, Discoveries: Consuetudo
27 Men converse by means of language, but words are
formed at the will of the generality, and there arises from
a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful
obstruction to the mind.
Bacon, Novum Organum, 1,43
28 We may also recognise the difference that exists between
men and brutes. For it is a very remarkable fact that there
are none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting
idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together,
forming of them a statement by which they make known
their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other
animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it
may be, which can do the same. It is not the want of
organs that brings this to pass, for it is evident that
magpies and parrots are able to utter words just like
ourselves, and yet they cannot speak as we do, that is, so
as to give evidence that they think of what they say. On
the other hand, men who, being born, deaf and dumb, are
in the same degree, or even more than the brutes,
destitute of the organs which serve the others for talking,
are in the habit of themselves inventing certain signs by
which they make themselves understood by those who,
being usually in their company, have leisure to learn their
language. And this does not merely show that the brutes
have less reason than men, but that they have none at
all, since it is clear that very little is required in order to
be able to talk. And when we notice the inequality that
exists between animals of the same species, as well as
between men, and observe that some are more capable
of receiving instruction than others, it is not credible that
a monkey or a parrot, selected as the most perfect of its
species, should not in these matters equal the stupidest
child to be found, or at least a child whose mind is
clouded, unless in the case of the brute the soul were of
an entirely different nature from ours. And we ought not
to confound speech with natural movements which
betray passions and may be imitated by machines as well
as be Manifested by animals; nor must we think, as did
some of the ancients, that brutes talk, although we do
not understand their language. For if this were true, since
they have many organs which are allied to our own, they
could communicate their thoughts to us just as easily as
to those of their own race.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, V
29 The most noble and profitable invention of all other was
that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and
their connexion; whereby men register their thoughts,
recall them when they are past, and also declare them
one to another for mutual utility and conversation;
without which there had been amongst men neither
Commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no
more than amongst lions, bears, and wolves. The first
author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam
how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight;
for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this
was sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the
experience and use of the creatures should give him
occasion; and to join them in such manner by degrees as
to make himself understood; and so by succession of
time, so much language might be gotten as he had found
use for.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 4
30 The manner how speech serveth to the remembrance of
the consequence of causes and effects consisteth in the
imposing of names, and the connexion of them.
Of names, some are proper, and singular to one only
thing; as Peter, John, this man, this tree: and some are
common to many things; as man, horse, tree; every of
which, though but one name, is nevertheless the name of
diverse particular things; in respect of all which together,
it is called a universal, there being nothing in the world
universal but names; for the things named are every one
of them individual and singular.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 4 though
31 When a man, upon the hearing of any speech, hath those
thoughts which the words of that speech, and their
connexion, were ordained and constituted to signify, then
he is said to understand it: understanding being nothing
else but conception caused by speech. And therefore if
speech he peculiar to man, as for ought | know it is, then
is understanding peculiar to him also. And therefore of
absurd and false affirmations, in case they be universal,
there can be no understanding; though many think they
understand then, when they do but repeat the words
softly, or con them in their mind.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 4
32 There are... those who go to the absurdity of explaining
a word by the word itself. | know 0 some who have
defined light in this way:"Light is a luminary motion of
luminous bodies, as if we could understand the words
luminary and /uminous without understanding the word
light.
We cannot undertake to define being without falling
into this absurdity, for we cannot define any word without
beginning with these words it is, and thus use the word
defined in the definition.
It is sufficiently clear from this that there are words
incapable of definition. And if nature had not made up for
this defect by giving a like idea to all men, all our
expressions would be confused; whereas we make use of
them with the same assurance and the same certainty we
should have if they had been explained in a perfectly
unambiguous way, because nature itself has given us,
without words, a clearer understanding of them than we
gain through art with all our explanations.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
33 The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the
yet empty cabinet, and the mind by degrees growing
familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the
memory, and names got to them. Afterwards, the mind
proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees
learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind
comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the
materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty.
And the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as
these materials that give it employment increase.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I, |, 15
34 Man ...had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be
fit to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But
this was not enough to produce language; for parrots,
and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate
sounds distinct enough, which yet by no means are
capable of language.
Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further
necessary that he should be able to use these sounds as
signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as
marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they
might be made known to others, and the thoughts of
men’s minds be conveyed from one to another.
But neither was this sufficient to make words so useful
as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of
language, that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless
those signs can be so made use of as to comprehend
several particular things: for the multiplication of words
would have perplexed their use, had every particular
thing need of a distinct name to be signified by. To
remedy this inconvenience, language had yet a further
improvement in the use of genera/ terms, whereby one
word was made to mark a multitude of particular
existences: which advantageous use of sounds was
obtained only by the difference of the ideas they were
made signs of: those names becoming general, which are
made to stand for general ideas, and those remaining
particular, where the /deas they are used for are
particular.
Besides these names which stand for ideas, there be
other words which men make use of, not to signify any
idea, but the want or absence of some ideas, simple or
complex, or all ideas together; such as are nihi/ in Latin,
and in English, /gnorance and barrenness. All which
negative or privative words cannot be said properly to
belong to, or signify no ideas: for then they would be
perfectly insignificant sounds; but they relate to positive
ideas, and signify their absence.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, 1,
35 Because by familiar use from our cradles, we come to
learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly, and have
them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or
settle their significations perfectly; it often happens that
men, even when they would apply themselves to an
attentive consideration, do set their thoughts more on
words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand:
therefore some, not only children but men, speak several
words no otherwise than parrots do, only because they
have learned them, and have been accustomed to those
sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification,
so far is there a constant connexion between the sound
and the idea, and a designation that the one stands for
the other; without which application of them, they are
nothing but so much insignificant noise.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. III, Il, 7
36 It is plain, by what has been said, that genera/ and
universal belong not to the real existence of things; but
are the inventions and creatures of the understanding,
made by it for its own use, and concern only signs,
whether words or ideas. Words are general, as has been
said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so are
applicable indifferently to many particular things; and
ideas are general when they are set up as the
representatives of many particular things: but
universality belongs not to things themselves, which are
all of them particular in their existence, even those words
and ideas which in their signification are general. When
therefore we quit particulars, the generals that rest are
only creatures of our own making; their general nature
being nothing but the capacity they are put into, by the
understanding, of signifying or representing many
particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but
a relation that, by the mind of man, is added to them.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. III, Ill, 11
37 Besides words which are names of ideas in the mind,
there are a great many others that are made use of to
signify the connexion that the mind gives to ideas, or to
propositions, one with another. The mind, in
communicating its thoughts to others, does not only need
signs of the ideas it has then before it, but others also, to
show or intimate some particular action of its own, at that
time, relating to those ideas. This it does several ways; as
Is, and Is not, are the general marks, of the mind,
affirming or denying. But besides affirmation or negation,
without which there is in words no truth or falsehood, the
mind does, in declaring its sentiments to others, connect
not only the parts of propositions, but whole sentences
one to another, with their several relations and
dependencies, to make a coherent discourse.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. III, VII, 1
38 | leave it to be considered, whether it would not be well
for mankind, whose concernment it is to know things as
they are, and to do what they ought, and not to spend
their lives in talking about them, or tossing words to and
fro;— whether it would not be well, | say, that the use of
words were made plain and direct; and that language,
which was given us for the improvement of knowledge
and bond of society, should not be employed to darken
truth and unsettle people’s rights; to raise mists, and
render unintelligible both morality and religion? Or that
at least, if this will happen, it should not be thought
learning or knowledge to do so?
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, X, 13
39 There has been a late deservedly esteemed philosopher
[Locke] who, no doubt, has given [the doctrine of
abstraction] very much countenance, by seeming to
think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the
widest difference in point of understanding betwixt man
and beast.... | readily agree with this learned author, that
the faculties of brutes can by no means attain to
abstraction. But then if this be made the distinguishing
property of that sort of animals, | fear a great many of
those that pass for men must be reckoned into their
number. The reason that is here assigned why we have no
grounds to think brutes have abstract general ideas is,
that we observe in them no use of words or any other
general signs; which is built on this supposition—that the
making use of words implies the having general ideas.
From which it follows that men who use language are able
to abstract or generalize their ideas. That this is the
sense and arguing of the author will further appear by his
answering the question he in another place puts: "Since
all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms?" His answer is: "Words become general by
being made the signs of general ideas."— Essay on
Human Understanding, Ill. iii. 6. But it seems that a word
becomes general by being made the sign, not of an
abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas, any
one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind. For
example, when it is said "the change of motion is
proportional to the impressed force," or that "whatever
has extension is divisible," these propositions are to be
understood of motion and extension in general; and
nevertheless it will not follow that they suggest to my
thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved, or any
determinate direction and velocity, or that | must
conceive an abstract general idea of extension, which is
neither line, surface, nor solid, neither great nor small,
black, white, nor red, nor of any other determinate colour.
It is only implied that whatever particular motion |
consider, whether it be swift or slow, perpendicular,
horizontal, or oblique, or in whatever object, the axiom
concerning it holds equally true. As does the other of
every particular extension, it matters not whether line,
surface, or solid, whether of this or that magnitude or
figure.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction,
11
40 Of late many have been very sensible of the absurd
opinions and insignificant disputes which grow out of the
abuse of words. And, in order to remedy these evils, they
advise well, that we attend to the ideas signified, and
draw off our attention from the words which signify them.
But, how good soever this advice may be they have given
others, it is plain they could not have a due regard to it
themselves, so long as they thought the only immediate
use of words was to signify ideas, and that the immediate
signification of every general name was a determinate
abstract idea.
But, these being known to be mistakes, a man may
with greater ease prevent his being imposed on by words.
He that knows he has no other than particular ideas, will
not puzzle himself in vain to find out and conceive the
abstract idea annexed to any name. And he that knows
names do not always stand for ideas will spare himself
the labour of looking for ideas where there are none to be
had.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction,
23-24
41 We next went to the school of languages, where three
professors sat in consultation upon improving that of
their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting
polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and
participles, because in reality all things imaginable are
but nouns.
The other, was a scheme for entirely abolishing all
words whatsoever: and this was urged as a great
advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For, it is
plain, that every word we speak is in some degree a
diminution of our lungs by corrosion; and consequently
contributes to the shortning of our lives. An expedient
was therefore offered, that since words are only names for
things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry
about them, such things as were necessary to express the
particular business they are to discourse on. And this
invention would certainly have taken place, to the great
ease as well as health of the subject, if the women in
conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate had not
threatned to raise a rebellion, unless they might be
allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the
manner of their forefathers: such constant irreconcileable
enemies to science are the common people. However,
many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new
scheme of expressing themselves by things; which hath
only this inconvenience attending it; that if a man’s
business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be
obliged in proportion to carry a greater bundle of things
upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong
servants to attend him. | have often beheld two of those
sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like
pedlars among us; who, when they met in the streets
would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold
conversation for an hour together; then put up their
implements, help each other to resume their burthens,
and take their leave.
But, for short conversations, a man may carry
implements in his pockets and under his arms, enough to
supply him, and in his house he cannot be at a loss;
therefore the room where company meet who practise
this art, is full of all things ready at hand, requisite to
furnish matter for this kind of artificial converse.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention,
was, that it would serve as an universal language to be
understood in all civilized nations, whose goods and
utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly
resembling, so that their uses might easily be
comprehended. And thus, embassadors would be
qualified to treat with foreign princes or ministers of
State, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Ill, 5
42 This society hath a peculiar cant and jargon of their own,
that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all
their laws are written, which they take special care to
multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very
essence of truth and falshood, of right and wrong; so that
it will take thirty years to decide whether the field, left
me by my ancestors for six generations, belong to me, or
to a stranger three hundred miles off.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 5
43 Jones now declared that they must certainly have lost
their way; but this the guide insisted upon was
impossible; a word which, in common conversation, is
often used to signify not only improbable, but often what
is really very likely, and, sometimes, what hath certainly
happened; and hyperbolical violence like that which is so
frequently offered to the words infinite and eternal; by
the former of which it is usual to express a distance of
half a yard, and by the latter, a duration of five minutes.
And thus it is as usual to assert the impossibility of losing
what is already actually lost. This was, in fact, the case at
present.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XII, 11
44 Words do not constitute an overt act; they remain only in
idea. When considered by themselves, they have
generally no determinate signification; for this depends
on the tone in which they are uttered. It often happens
that in repeating the same words they have not the same
meaning; this depends on their connection with other
things, and sometimes more is signified by silence than
by any expression whatever.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XII, 12
45 There is no such thing as abstract or general ideas,
properly speaking; but ... all general ideas are, in reality,
particular ones, attached to a general term, which recalls,
upon occasion, other particular ones, that resemble, in
certain circumstances, the idea, present to the mind.
Thus when the term Horse is pronounced, we
immediately figure to ourselves the idea of a black ora
white animal, of a particular size or figure: But as that
term is also usually applied to animals of other colours,
figures and sizes, these ideas, though not actually
present to the imagination, are easily recalled; and our
reasoning and conclusion proceed in the same way, as if
they were actually present.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 125, fn.
46 There is no complete language, no language which can
express all our ideas and all our sensations; their shades
are too numerous, too imperceptible. Nobody can make
known the precise degree of sensation he experiences.
One is obliged, for example, to designate by the general
names of "love" and "hate" a thousand loves and a
thousand hates all different from each other; it is the
same with our pleasures and our pains. Thus all
languages are, like us, imperfect.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionay: Languages
47 The first [difficulty] which presents itself is to conceive
how language can have become necessary; for as there
was no communication among men and no need for any,
we can neither conceive the necessity of this invention,
nor the possibility of it if it was not somehow
indispensable. | might affirm, with many others, that
languages arose in the domestic intercourse between
parents and their children. But this expedient would not
obviate the difficulty, and would besides involve the
blunder made by those who, in reasoning on the state of
nature, always import into it ideas gathered in a state of
society.... For to say that the mother dictated to her child
the words he was to use in asking her for one thing or
another, is an explanation of how languages already
formed are taught, but by no means explains how
languages were originally formed.
We will suppose, however, that this first difficulty is
obviated. Let us for a moment then take ourselves as
being on this side of the vast space which must lie
between a pure state of nature and that in which
languages had become necessary, and, admitting their
necessity, let us inquire how they could first be
established. Here we have a new and worse difficulty to
grapple with: for if men need speech to learn to think,
they must have stood in much greater need of the art of
thinking, to be able to invent that of soeaking. And
though we might conceive how the articulate sound of
the voice came to be taken as the conventional
interpreters of our ideas, it would still remain for us to
inquire what could have been the interpreters of this
convention for those ideas, which, answering to no
sensible objects, could not be indicated either by gesture
or voice; so that we can hardly form any tolerable
conjectures about the origin of this art of communicating
our thoughts and establishing a correspondence between
minds.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
48 The first language of mankind, the most universal and
vivid, in a word the only language man needed, before he
had occasion to exert his eloguence to persuade
assembled multitudes, was the simple cry of nature. But
as this was excited only by a sort of instinct on urgent
occasions, to implore assistance in case of danger, or
relief in case of suffering, it could be of little use in the
ordinary course of life, in which more moderate feelings
prevail. When the ideas of men began to expand and
multiply, and closer communication took place among
them, they strove to invent more numerous signs and a
more copious language. They multiplied the inflections of
the voice, and added gestures, which are in their own
nature more expressive, and depend less for their
meaning on a prior determination. Visible and movable
objects were therefore expressed by gestures, and
audible ones by imitative sounds: but, as hardly anything
can be indicated by gestures, except objects actually
present or easily described, and visible actions; as they
are not universally useful—for darkness or the
interposition of a material object destroys their efficacy—
and as besides they rather request than secure our
attention; men at length bethought themselves of
substituting for them the articulate sounds of the voice,
which, without bearing the same relation to any
particular ideas, are better calculated to express them all,
as conventional signs. Such an institution could only be
made by common consent, and must have been effected
in a manner not very easy for men whose gross organs
had not been accustomed to any such exercise. It is also
in itself still more difficult to conceive, since such a
common agreement must have had motives, and speech
seems to have been highly necessary to establish the use
of it.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
49 General ideas cannot be introduced into the mind
without the assistance of words, nor can the
understanding seize them except by means of
propositions. This is one of the reasons why animals
cannot form such ideas, or ever acquire that capacity for
self-improvement which depends on them. When a
monkey goes from one nut to another, are we to conceive
that he entertains any general idea of that kind of fruit,
and compares its archetype with the two individual nuts?
Assuredly he does not; but the sight of one of these nuts
recalls to his memory the sensations which he received
from the other, and his eyes, being modified after a
certain manner, give information to the palate of the
modification it is about to receive. Every general idea is
purely intellectual; if the imagination meddles with it
ever so little, the idea immediately becomes particular. It
you endeavour to trace in your mind the image of a tree
in general, you never attain to your end. In spite of all
you can do, you will have to see it as great or little, bare
or leafy, light or dark, and were you capable of seeing
nothing in it but what is common to all trees, it would no
longer be like a tree at all. Purely abstract beings are
perceivable in the same manner, or are only conceivable
by the help of language. The definition of a triangle alone
gives you a true idea of it: the moment you imagine a
triangle in your mind, it is some particular triangle and
not another, and you cannot avoid giving it sensible lines
and a coloured area. We must then make use of
propositions and of language in order to form general
ideas. For no sooner does the imagination cease to
operate than the understanding proceeds only by the
help of words. If then the first inventors of speech could
give names only to ideas they already had, it follows that
the first substantives could be nothing more than proper
names.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
50 For myself, | am so aghast at the increasing difficulties
which present themselves, and so well convinced of the
almost demonstrable impossibility that languages should
owe their original institution to merely human means,
that | leave, to any one who will undertake it, the
discussion of the difficult problem, which was most
necessary, the existence of society to the invention of
language, or the invention of language to the
establishment of society.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
51 Talking of the origin of language; Johnson. "It must have
come by inspiration. A thousand, nay, a million of
children could not invent a language. While the organs
are pliable, there is not understanding enough to form a
language; by the time that there is understanding
enough, the organs become stiff. We know that after a
certain age we cannot learn to pronounce a new
language. No foreigner, who comes to England when
advanced in life, ever pronounces English tolerably well;
at least such instances are very rare. When | maintain
that language must have come by inspiration, | do not
mean that inspiration is required for rhetorick, and all the
beauties of language; for when once man has language,
we can conceive that he may gradually form
modifications of it. | mean only that inspiration seems to
me to be necessary to give man the faculty of speech; to
inform him that he may have speech; which | think he
could no more find out without inspiration, than cows or
hogs would think of such a faculty."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 18, 1783)
52 So sensible were the Romans of the influence of language
over national manners, that it was their most serious care
to extend, with the progress of their arms, the use of the
Latin tongue. The ancient dialects of Italy, the Sabine,
the Etruscan, and the Venetian, sunk into oblivion; but in
the provinces, the east was less docile than the west, to
the voice of its victorious preceptors. This obvious
difference marked the two portions of the empire with a
distinction of colours, which, though it was in some
degree concealed during the meridian splendour of
prosperity, became gradually more visible as the shades
of night descended upon the Roman world. The western
countries were civilised by the same hands which
subdued them. As soon as the barbarians were reconciled
to obedience, their minds were opened to any new
impressions of knowledge and politeness. The language
of Virgil and Cicero, though with some inevitable mixture
of corruption, was so universally adopted in Africa, Spain,
Gaul, Britain, and Pannonia, that the faint traces of the
Punic or Celtic idioms were preserved only in the
mountains, or among the peasants. Education and study
insensibly inspired the natives of those countries with the
sentiments of Romans; and Italy gave fashions as well as
laws to her Latin provincials. They solicited with more
ardour, and obtained with more facility, the freedom and
honours of the state; supported the national dignity in
letters and in arms; and, at length, in the person of
Trajan, produced an emperor whom the Scipios would not
have disowned for their countryman. The situation of the
Greeks was very different from that of the Barbarians. The
former had been long since civilised and corrupted. They
had too much taste to relinquish their language, and too
much vanity to adopt any foreign institutions. Still
preserving the prejudices after they had lost the virtues
of their ancestors, they affected to despise the
unpolished manners of the Roman conquerors, whilst
they were compelled to respect their superior wisdom
and power. Nor was the influence of the Grecian language
and sentiments confined to the narrow limits of that once
celebrated country. Their empire, by the progress of
colonies and conquest, had been diffused from the
Hadriatic to the Euphrates and the Nile. Asia was covered
with Greek cities, and the long reign of the Macedonian
kings had introduced a silent revolution into Syria and
Egypt. In their pompous courts those princes united the
elegance of Athens with the luxury of the East, and the
example of the court was imitated, at an humble
distance, by the higher ranks of their subjects. Such was
the general division of the Roman empire into the Latin
and Greek languages. To these we may add a third
distinction for the body of the natives in Syria, and
especially in Egypt. The use of their ancient dialects, by
secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked
the improvements of those barbarians. The slothful
effeminacy of the former, exposed them to the contempt;
the sullen ferociousness of the latter, excited the aversion
of the conquerors.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 11
53 The use of letters is the principal circumstance that
distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages
incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that
artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or
corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler
faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or
with materials, gradually forget their powers; the
judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination
languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important
truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate
the immense distance between the man of learning and
the //literate peasant. The former, by reading and
reflection, multiplies his own experience, and lives in
distant ages and remote countries; whilst the latter,
rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of
existence, surpasses, but very little, his fellow-labourer
the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties. The same,
and even a greater, difference will be found between
nations than between individuals; and we may safely
pronounce that, without some species of writing, no
people has ever preserved the faithful annals of their
history, ever made any considerable progress in the
abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable
degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1X
54 Though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each
word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained
currency because for the moment it symbolized the world
to the first soeaker and to the hearer. The etymologist
finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant
picture. Language is fossil poetry.
Emerson, The Poet
55 If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a
genealogical arrangement of the races of man would
afford the best classification of the various languages
now spoken throughout the world; and if all extinct
languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing
dialects, were to be included, such an arrangement would
be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some
ancient languages had altered very little and had given
rise to few new languages, whilst others had altered
much owing to the spreading, isolation, and state of
civilisation of the several co-descended races, and had
thus given rise to many new dialects and languages, The
various degrees of difference between the languages of
the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups
subordinate to groups; but the proper or even the only
possible arrangement would still be genealogical; and
this would be strictly natural, as it would connect
together all languages, extinct and recent, by the closest
affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each
tongue.
Darwin, Origin of Species, XIV
56 The habitual use of articulate language is... peculiar to
man; but he uses, in common with lower animals,
inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by
gestures and the movements of the muscles of the face.
This especially holds good with the more simple and vivid
feelings, which are but little connected with our higher
intelligence. Our cries of pain, fear, surprise, anger,
together with their appropriate actions, and the murmur
of a mother to her beloved child are more expressive than
any words. That which distinguishes man from the lower
animals is not the understanding of articulate sounds, for,
as every one knows, dogs understand many words and
sentences. In this respect they are at the same stage of
development as infants, between the ages of ten and
twelve months, who understand many words and short
sentences, but cannot yet utter a single word. It is not the
mere articulation which is our distinguishing character,
for parrots and other birds possess this power. Nor is it
the mere capacity of connecting definite sounds with
definite ideas; for it is certain that some parrots, which
have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words
with things, and persons with events. The lower animals
differ from man solely in his almost infinitely larger power
of associating together the most diversified sounds and
ideas; and this obviously depends on the high
development of his mental posters.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 3
57 Language is an an, like brewing or baking.. . It certainly is
not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 3
58 With respect to the origin of articulate language ... |
cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the
imitation and modifincation of various natural founds, the
voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries,
aided by signs and gestures.
Darwin, Descent of Man, |, 3
59 A great stride in the development of the intellect will
have followed, as soon at the half-art and half-instinct of
language came into use; for the continued use of
language will have reacted on the brain and produced an
inherited effect; and this again will have reacted on the
improvement of language. As Mr. Chauncey Wright has
well remarked, the largeness of the brain in man
relatively to his body, compared with the lower animals,
may be attributed in chief part to the early use of some
simple form of language.—-that wonderful engine which
affixes signs to all sorts of objects and qualities, and
excites trains of thought which would never arise from
the mere impression of the senses, or if they did arise
could not be followed out. The higher intellectual powers
of man, such as those of ratiocination, abstraction, self-
consciousness, etc., probably follow from the continued
improvement and exercise of the other menial faculties.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I/1,21
60 "Why, Huck, doan' de Trench people talk dc same way we
does?"
"No, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said—
not a single word."
"Well, now, | be ding-busted! How do dat come?"
"| don't know; but it's so. | got some of their jabber out
of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say
Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?"
"| wouldn’ think nuffn; I’d take cn bust him over dc
head—dat is, ef he warn't white. | wouldn’t 'low no nigger
to call me dat."
"Shucks, It ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying,
do you know how to talk French?"
"Well, den, why couldn't he say it?"
"Why, he /s a-saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s way of
saying it."
"Well, it’s a blame’ ridicklous way, en | doan' want to
hear no mo' 'bout it. Dey ain' no sense in it."
"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?"
"No, a cat don’t."
"Well, does a cow?"
"No, a cow don’t, nuther."
"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?"
"No, dey don't."
"It’s natural and right for 'em to talk different from
each other, ain’t it?"
"Course."
"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to
talk different from us?"
"Why, mos’ sholy it is."
"Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right fora
Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that."
"Is a cat a man, Huck?"
"No."
"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a
man. IS a cow a man?—er is a cow a Cat?"
"No, she ain’t either of them."
"Well. den, she ain' got no business to talk like either
one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?"
"Yes."
"Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a
man? You answer me dat!"
| see it warn't no use wasting words—you can’t learn a
nigger to argue- So | quit.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, XIV
61 Language was originally made by men who were not
psychologist, and most men to-day employ almost
exclusively the vocabulary of outward things. The
cardinal passions of our life, anger, love, fear, hate, hope,
and the most comprehensive divisions of our intellectual
activity, to remember, expect, think, know, dream, with
the broadest genera of aesthetic feeling, joy, sorrow,
pleasure, pain, are the only facts of a subjective order
which this vocabulary deigns to note by special words.
The elementary qualities of sensation, bright, loud, red,
blue, hot, cold, are, it is true, susceptible of being used in
both an objective and a subjective sense. They stand for
outer qualities and for the feelings which these arouse.
But the objective sense is the original sense; and still
today we have to describe a large number of sensations
by the name of the object from which they have most
frequently been got. An orange color, an odor of violets, a
cheesy taste, a thunderous sound, a fiery smart, etc., will
recall what | mean. This absence of a special vocabulary
for subjective facts hinders the study of all but the very
coarsest of them. Empiricist writers are very fond of
emphasizing one great set of delusions which language
inflicts on the mind. Whenever we have made a word,
they say, to denote a certain group of phenomena, we are
prone to suppose a substantive entity existing beyond
the phenomena, of which the word shall be the name. But
the lack of a word quite as often leads to the directly
opposite error. We are then prone to suppose that no
entity can be there; and so we come to overlook
phenomena whose existence would be patent to us all,
had we only grown up to hear it familiarly recognized in
speech. It is hard to focus our attention on the nameless,
and so there results a certain vacuousness in the
descriptive parts of most psychologies.
But a worse defect than vacuousness comes from the
dependence of psychology on common speech. Naming
our thought by its own objects, we almost all of us
assume that as the objects are, so the thought must be.
The thought of several distinct things can only consist of
several distinct bits of thought, or "ideas"; that of an
abstract or universal object can only be an abstract or
universal idea. As each object may come and go, be
forgotten and then thought of again, it is held that the
thought of it has a precisely similar independence, self-
identity, and mobility. The thought of the object’s
recurrent identity is regarded as the identity of its
recurrent thought; and the perceptions of multiplicity, of
coexistence, of succession, are severally conceived to be
brought about only through a multiplicity, a coexistence,
a succession, of perceptions. The continuous flow of the
mental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a
brickbat plan of construction, is preached for the
existence of which no good introspective grounds can be
brought forward, and out of which presently grow all sorts
of paradoxes and contradictions, the heritage of woe of
students of the mind.
These words are meant to impeach the entire English
psychology derived from Locke and Hume, and the entire
German psychology derived from Herbart, so far as they
both treat "ideas" as separate subjective entities that
come and go.
William James, Psychology, VII
62 The opinion so stoutly professed by many, that language
is essential to thought, seems to have this much of truth
in it, that all our inward images tend invincibly to attach
themselves to something sensible, so as to gain in
corporeity and life. Words serve this purpose, gestures
serve it, stones, straws, chalk-marks, anything will do. As
soon as any one of these things stands for the idea, the
latter seems to be more real.
William James, Psychology, XXI
63 Language is a system of signs, different from the things
signified, but able to suggest them....
No doubt brutes have a number of such signs. When a
dog yelps in front of a door, and his master,
understanding his desire, opens it, the dog may, after a
certain number of repetitions, get to repeat in cold blood
a yelp which was at first the involuntary interjectional
expression of strong emotion. The same dog may be
taught to "beg" for food, and afterwards come to do so
deliberately when hungry. The dog also learns to
understand the signs of men, and the word "rat" uttered
to a terrier suggests exciting thoughts of the rat-hunt. If
the dog had the varied impulse to vocal utterance which
some other animals have, he would probably repeat the
word "rat" whenever he spontaneously happened to think
of a rat-hunt—he no doubt does have it as an auditory
image, just as a parrot calls out different words
spontaneously from its repertory, and having learned the
name of a given dog will utter it on the sight of a different
dog. In each of these separate cases the particular sign
may be consciously noticed by the animal, as distinct
from the particular thing signified, and will thus, so far as
it goes, be a true manifestation of language. But when we
come to man we find a great difference. He has a
deliberate intention to apply a sign to everything. The
linguistic impulse is with him generalized and systematic.
For things hitherto unnoticed or unfelt, he desires a sign
before he has one. Even though the dog should possess
his "yelp" for this thing, his "beg" for that, and his
auditory image "rat" for a third thing, the matter with him
rests there. If a fourth thing interests him for which no
sign happens already to have been learned, he remains
tranquilly without it and goes no further. But the man
postulates it, its absence irritates him, and he ends by
inventing it. This general purpose constitutes, | take it,
the peculiarity of human speech, and explains its
prodigious development.
How, then, does the general purpose arise? It arises as
soon as the notion of a sign as such, apart from any
particular import, is born; and this notion is born by
dissociation from the outstanding portions of a number of
concrete cases of signification, The "yelp," the "beg," the
"rat," differ as to their several imports and natures. They
agree only in so far as they have the same use —to be
signs, to stand for something more important than
themselves. The dog whom this similarity could strike
would have grasped the sign per se as such, and would
probably thereupon become a general sign-maker, or
speaker in the human sense. But how can the similarity
strike him? Not without the juxtaposition of the similars
(in virtue of the law we have laid down, that in order to
be segregated an experience must be repeated with
varying concomitants)-—not unless the "yelp" of the dog
at the moment it occurs reca//s to him his "beg," by the
delicate bond of their subtle similarity of use—not till
then can this thought flash through his mind: "Why, yelp
and beg, in spite of all their unlikeness, are yet alike in
this: that they are actions, signs, which lead to important
boons. Other boons, any boons, may then be got by other
signs!" This reflection made, the gulf is passed. Animals
probably never make it, because the bond of similarity is
not delicate enough. Each sign is drowned in /ts import,
and never awakens other signs and other imports in
juxtaposition. The rat-hunt idea is too absorbingly
interesting in itself to be interrupted by anything so
uncontiguous to it as the idea of the "beg for food," or of
"the door-open yelp," nor in their turn do these awaken
the rat-hunt idea.
In the human child, however, these ruptures of
contiguous association are very soon made; far off cases
of sign-using arise when we make a sign now; and soon
language is launched. The child in each case makes the
discovery for himself. No one can help him except by
furnishing him with the conditions. But as he is
constituted, the conditions will sooner or later shoot
together into the result.
William James, Psychology, XXII
64 A language is not a universal mode of expressing all
ideas whatsoever. It is a limited mode of expressing such
ideas as have been frequently entertained, and urgently
needed, by the group of human beings who developed
that mode of speech. It is only during a comparatively
short period of human history that there has existed any
language with an adequate stock of general terms. Such
general terms require a permanent literature to define
them by their mode of employment.
The result is that the free handling of general ideas is
a late acquirement. | am not maintaining that the brains
of men were inadequate for the task. The point is that it
took ages for them to develop first the appliances and
then the habits which made generality of thought
possible and prevalent. For ages, existing languages
must have been ready for development. If men had been
in contact with a superior race, either personally or by a
survival of their literature, a process which requires
scores or even hundreds of generations might have been
antedated, so as to have been effected almost at once.
Such, in fact, was the later history of the development of
the races of Northern Europe. Again, a social system
which encourages developments of thought can procure
the advent. This is the way in which the result was first
obtained. Society and language grew together.
Whitehead, Religion in the Making, I, 5
65 It is natural to think of the meaning of a word as
something conventional. This, however, is only true %vith
great limitations. A new word can be added to an existing
language by a mere convention, as is done, for instance,
with new scientific terms. But the basis of a language is
not conventional, either from the point of view of the
individual or from that of the community. A child learning
to speak is learning habits and associations which are
just as much determined by the environment as the habit
of expecting dogs to bark and cocks to crow. The
community that speaks a language has learnt it, and
modified it by processes almost all of which are not
deliberate, but the results of causes operating according
to more or less ascertainable laws. If we trace any Indo-
European language back far enough, we arrive
hypothetically (at any rate according to some authorities)
at the stage when language consisted only of the roots
out of which subsequent words have grown. How these
roots acquired their meanings is not Known, but a
conventional origin is clearly just as mythical as the
social contract by which Hobbes and Rousseau supposed
civil government to have been established. We can
hardly suppose a parliament of hitherto speechless elders
meeting together and agreeing to calla cow acow anda
wolf a wolf. The association of words with their meanings
must have grown up by some natural process, though at
present the nature of the process is unknown.
Russell, Analysis of Mind, X
66 The essence of language lies, not in the use of this or
that special means of communication, but in the
employment of fixed associations (however these may
have originated) in order that something now sensible—a
spoken word, a picture, a gesture, or what not—may call
up the "idea" of something else. Whenever this is done,
what is now sensible may be called a "sign" or "symbol,"
and that of which it is intended to call up the "idea" may
be called its "meaning." This is a rough outline of what
constitutes "meaning."
Russell, Analysis of Mind, X
67 Language has two interconnected merits: first, that it is
social, and second, that it supplies public expression for
"thoughts" which would otherwise remain private.
Without language, or some pre-linguistic analogue, our
knowledge of the environment is confined to what our
own senses have shown us, together with such inferences
as our congenital constitution may prompt; but by the
help of speech we are able to know what others can
relate, and to relate what is no longer sensibly present
but only remembered. When we see or hear something
which a companion is not seeing or hearing, we can often
make him aware of it by the one word "look" or "listen," or
even by gestures. But if half an hour ago we saw a fox, it
is not possible to make another person aware of this fact
without language. This depends upon the fact that the
word "fox" applies equally to a fox seen or a fox
remembered, so that our memories, which in themselves
are private, are represented to others by uttered sounds,
which are public. Without language, only that part of our
life which consists of public sensations would be
communicable, and that only to those so situated as to
be able to share the sensations in question.
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 1
68 Language serves not only to express thoughts, but to
make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
It is sometimes maintained that there can be no thought
without language, but to this view | cannot assent: | hold
that there can be thought, and even true and false belief,
without language. But however that may, it cannot be
denied that all fairly elaborate thoughts require words. |
can know, in a sense, that | have five fingers without
knowing the word "five," but | cannot know that the
population of London is about eight millions unless | have
acquired the language of arithmetic, nor can | have any
thought at all closely corresponding to what is asserted in
the sentence; "The ratio of the circumference of a circle
to the diameter is approximately 3.14159." Language,
once evolved, acquires a kind of autonomy: we can know,
especially in mathematics, that a sentence asserts
something true, although what it asserts is too complex
to be apprehended even by the best minds.
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 1
69 | think the elementary uses of a word may be
distinguished as indicative, imperative, and interrogative.
When a child sees his mother coming, he may say,
"Mother"; this is the indicative use. When he wants her,
he calls, "Mother!"; this is the imperative use. When she
dresses up as a witch and he begins to pierce the
disguise, he may say, "Mother?" This is the interrogative
use. The indicative use must come first in the acquisition
of language, since the association of word and object
signified can only be created by the simultaneous
presence of both. But the imp>crativc use very quickly
follows. This is relevant in considering what we mean by
"thinking of" an object It is obvious that the child who
has just learned to call his mother has found verbal
expression for a state in which he had often been
previously, that this state was associated with his mother,
and that it has now become associated with the word
"Mother." Before language, his state was only partially
communicable; an adult, hearing him cry, could know
that he wanted something, but had to guess what it was.
But the fact that the word "Mother!" expresses his state
shows that even before the acquisition of language his
state had a relation to his mother, namely, the relation
called "thinking of." This relation is not created by
language, but antedates it. What language does is to
make it communicable.
Russell, Human Knowledge, II, 2
70 When one has familiarized oneself with the extensive
employment of symbolism for the representation of
sexual material in dreams, one naturally asks oneself
whether many of these symbols have not a permanently
established meaning, like the signs in shorthand; and one
even thinks of attempting to compile a new dream-book
on the lines of the cipher method. In this connection it
should be noted that symbolism does not appertain
especially to dreams, but rather to the unconscious
imagination, and particularly to that of the people, and it
is to be found in a more developed condition in folklore,
myths, legends, idiomatic phrases, proverbs, and the
current witticisms of a people than in dreams. We should
have, therefore, to go far beyond the province of dream-
interpretation in order fully to investigate the meaning of
symbolism, and to discuss the numerous problems—for
the most part still unsolved—which are associated with
the concept of the symbol. We shall here confine
ourselves to saying that representation by a symbol
comes under the heading of the indirect representations,
but that we are warned by all sorts of signs against
indiscriminately closing symbolic representation with the
other modes of indirect representation before we have
clearly conceived its distinguishing characteristics. Ina
number of cases, the common quality shared by the
symbol and the thing which it represents is obvious; in
others, it is concealed; in these latter cases the choice of
the symbol appears to be enigmatic. And these are the
very cases that must be able to elucidate the ultimate
meaning of the symbolic relation; they point to the fact
that it is of a genetic nature. What is today symbolically
connected was probably united, in primitive times, by
conceptual and linguistic identity. The symbolic
relationship seems to be a residue and reminder of a
former identity. It may also be noted that in many cases
the symbolic identity c-x-tends beyond the linguistic
identity.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, VI, E
71 There is a specially close relation between true symbols
and sexuality.
An important clue in this connection has recently been
given to us in the view expressed by a philologist (H.
Sperber, of Upsala, who works independently of psycho-
analysis), that sexual needs have had the largest share in
the origin and development of language. He says that the
first sounds uttered were a means of communication, and
of summoning the sexual partner, and that, in the later
development, the elements of speech were used as an
accompaniment to the different kinds of work carried on
by primitive man. This work was performed by associated
efforts, to the sound of rhythmically repeated utterances,
the effect of which was to transfer a sexual interest to the
work. Primitive man thus made his work agreeable, so to
speak, by treating it as the equivalent of and substitute
for sexual activities. The word uttered during the
communal work had therefore two meanings, the one
referring to the sexual act, the other to the labour which
had come to be equivalent to it. In time the word was
dissociated from its sexual significance and its
application confined to the work. Generations later the
same thing happened to a new word with a sexual
signification, which was then applied to a new form of
work. In this way a number of root-words arose which
were all of sexual origin but had all lost their sexual
meaning. If the statement here outlined be correct, a
possibility at least of understanding dream-symbolism
opens out before us. We should comprehend why it is
that in dreams, which retain something of these primitive
conditions, there is such an extraordinarily large number
of sexual symbols; and why weapons and tools in general
stand for the male, and materials and things worked on
for the female. The symbolic relations would then be the
survival of the old identity in words; things which once
had the same name as the genitalia could now appear in
dreams as symbolizing them.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, X
72 Things come and go; or we come and go, and either way
things escape our notice. Our direct sensible relation to
things is very limited. The suggestion of meanings by
natural signs is limited to occasions of direct contact or
vision. But a meaning fixed by a linguistic sign is
conserved for future use. Even if the thing is not there to
represent the meaning, the word may be produced so as
to evoke the meaning. Since intellectual life depends on
possession of a store of meanings, the importance of
language as a tool of preserving meanings cannot be
overstated. To be sure, the method of storage is not
wholly aseptic; words often corrupt and modify the
meanings they are supposed to keep intact, but liability
to infection is a price paid by every living thing for the
privilege of living.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt. III, XIII, 1
73 As is often said, grammar expresses the unconscious
logic of the popular mind. The chief intellectual
Classifications that constitute the working capital of
thought have been built up for us by our mother tongue.
Our very lack of explicit consciousness in using language
that we are employing the intellectual systematizations
of the race shows how thoroughly accustomed we have
become to its logical distinctions and groupings.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt. III, XIII, 1
74 Instruction always runs the risk of swamping the pupil’s
own vital, though narrow, experience under masses of
communicated material. The instructor ceases and the
teacher begins at the point where communicated matter
stimulates into fuller and more significant life that which
has entered by the strait and narrow gate of sense-
perception and motor activity. Genuine communication
involves contagion; its name should not be taken in vain
by terming communication that which produces no
community of thought and purpose between the child
and the race of which he is the heir.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt. Ill, XVI, 3
7.2 The Arts of Language
Among the categories of art to which attention is called in
the first section of Chapter 16 on Art and Aesthetics is the
group of arts traditionally called "the seven liberal arts,"
divided into the trivium, or the three arts of grammar, logic,
and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, or the four arts of
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The
contemporary reader will immediately recognize the first
three as arts of language; the reader would probably
understand the second four better if they were referred to as
the mathematical arts of calculation and measurement.
Many of the passages quoted in this section recommend
steps to be taken to make speech serve more effectively as
an instrument of communication or of thought. They call
attention to the fallacies or faults to be avoided by a
careless or uncritical use of words. They propose remedies
for the misuse and abuse of language.
Still other passages consider ways of making speech
more effective as a means of persuasion, and touch on
questions of style, both rhetorical and poetical. The fact that
there are more passages that deal with rhetorical
considerations than with the rules of grammar or logic is to
be explained by the much more technical character of the
latter, the treatment of which would be inappropriate in a
book of this kind.
The liberal arts, especially the arts of language, are
sometimes referred to as the arts of learning—the arts of
teaching and being taught. It is not surprising, therefore,
that certain matters covered in this section should be
related to matters covered in Chapter 8 on Education,
especially its third section, on teaching and learning. Since
the liberal arts, especially logic, are involved in the process
of inquiry and the formulation of knowledge, it is also the
case that things touched on in this section are related to
matters covered in Chapter 6 on Knowledge, Chapter 16 on
Art and Aesthetics, and Chapter 17 on Philosophy, Science,
and Mathematics.
1 Hecuba. Why
do we make so much of knowledge, struggle so hard
to get some little skill not worth the effort?
But persuasion, the only art whose power
is absolute, worth any price we pay,
we totally neglect. And so we fail;
we lose our hopes.
Euripides, Hecuba, 815
2 Socrates. | wish Protagoras either to ask or answer as he is
inclined; but | would rather have done with poems and
odes, if he does not object, and come back to the
question about which | was asking you at first,
Protagoras, and by your help make an end of that. The
talk about the poets seems to me like a commonplace
entertainment to which a vulgar company have recourse;
who, because they are not able to converse or amuse one
another, while they are drinking, with the sound of their
own voices and conversation, by reason of their stupidity,
raise the price of flute-girls in the market, hiring fora
great sum the voice of a flute instead of their own breath,
to be the medium of intercourse among them: but where
the company are real gentlemen and men of education,
you will see no flute-girls, nor dancing-girls, nor harp-
girls; and they have no nonsense or games, but are
contented with one another’s conversation, of which their
own voices are the medium, and which they carry on by
turns and in an orderly manner, even though they are
very liberal in their potations. And a company like this of
ours, and men such as we profess to be, do not require
the help of another’s voice, or of the poets whom you
cannot interrogate about the meaning of what they are
saying; people who cite them declaring, some that the
poet has one meaning, and others that he has another,
and the point which is in dispute can never be decided.
This sort of entertainment they decline, and prefer to talk
with one another, and put one another to the proof in
conversation. And these are the models which | desire
that you and | should imitate. Leaving the poets, and
keeping to ourselves, let us try the mettle of one another
and make proof of the truth in conversation. If you have a
mind to ask, | am ready to answer; or if you would rather,
do you answer, and give me the opportunity of resuming
and completing our unfinished argument.
Plato, Protagoras, 347A
3 Socrates. The composers of speeches... always appear to
me to be very extraordinary men... and their art is lofty
and divine, and no wonder. For their art is a part of the
great art of enchantment, and hardly, if at all, inferior to
it: and whereas the art of the enchanter is a mode of
charming snakes and spiders and scorpions, and other
monsters and pests, this art of theirs acts upon dicasts
and ecclesiasts and bodies of men, for the charming and
pacifying of them.
Plato, Euthydemus, 289B
4 Socrates. Every discourse ought to be a living creature,
having a body of its own and a head and feet; there
should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one
another and to the whole.
Plato, Phaedrus, 264B
5 It is useful to have examined the number of meanings of a
term both for clearness’ sake (for a man is more likely to
know what it is he asserts, if it has been made dear to
him how many meanings it may have), and also with a
view to ensuring that our reasonings shall be in
accordance with the actual facts and not addressed
merely to the term used. For as long as it is not clear in
how many senses a term is used, it is possible that the
answerer and the questioner are not directing their minds
upon the same thing: whereas when once it has been
made clear how many meanings there are, and also upon
which of them the former directs his mind when he makes
his assertion, the questioner would then look ridiculous if
he failed to address his argument to this. It helps us also
both to avoid being misled and to mislead by false
reasoning: for if we know the number of meanings of a
term, we Shall certainly never be misled by false
reasoning, but shall know if the questioner fails to
address his argument to the same point; and when we
ourselves put the questions we shall be able to mislead
him, if our answerer happens not to know the number of
meanings of our terms.
Aristotle, Topics, 108a18
6 We ought to use our terms to mean the same things as
most people mean by them, but when we ask what kind
of things are or are not of such and such a kind, we
should not here go with the multitude: e.g. it is right to
call ‘healthy’ whatever tends to produce health, as do
most men: but in saying whether the object before us
tends to produce health or not, we should adopt the
language no longer of the multitude but of the doctor.
Aristotle, Topics, 110a17
7 It is impossible in a discussion to bring in the actual things
discussed: we use their names as symbols instead of
them; and therefore we suppose that what follows in the
names, follows in the things as well, just as people who
calculate suppose in regard to their counters. But the two
cases (names and things) are not alike. For names are
finite and so is the sum-total of formulae, while things are
infinite in number. Inevitably, then, the same formulae,
and a single name, have a number of meanings.
Accordingly just as, in counting, those who are not clever
in manipulating their counters are taken in by the
experts, in the same way in arguments too those who are
not well acquainted with the force of names misreason
both in their own discussions and when they listen to
others. For this reason, then, and for others to be
mentioned later, there exists both reasoning and
refutation that is apparent but not real.
Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 165a5
8 An incisive argument is one which produces the greatest
perplexity: for this is the one with the sharpest fang.
Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 182b32
9 Rhetorical study, in its strict sense, is concerned with the
modes of persuasion. Persuasion is clearly a sort of
demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when
we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1355a3
10 It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of
being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of
being unable to defend himself with speech and reason,
when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a
human being than the use of his limbs. And if it be
objected that one who uses such power of speech
unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may
be made in common against all good things except
virtue, and above all against the things that are most
useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man
can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these,
and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.
It is clear, then, that rhetoric is not bound up with a
single definite class of subjects, but is as universal as
dialectic; it is clear, also, that it is useful. It is clear,
further, that its function is not simply to succeed in
persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming
as near such success as the circumstances of each
particular case allow. In this it resembles all other arts.
For example, it is not the function of medicine simply to
make a man quite healthy, but to put him as far as may
be on the road to health; it is possible to give excellent
treatment even to those who can never enjoy sound
health. Furthermore, it is plain that it is the function of
one and the same art to discern the real and the apparent
means of persuasion, just as it is the function of dialectic
to discern the real and the apparent syllogism. What
makes a man a ‘sophist’ is not his faculty, but his moral
purpose. In rhetoric, however, the term ‘rhetorician’ may
describe either the speaker’s knowledge of the art, or his
moral purpose. In dialectic it is different; a manisa
‘sophist’ because he has a certain kind of moral purpose,
a ‘dialectician’ in respect, not of his moral purpose, but of
his faculty
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1355a39
11 Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in
any given case the available means of persuasion. This is
not a function of any other art. Every other art can
instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-
matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and
unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes,
arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the
other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the
p>ower of observing the means of persuasion on almost
any subject presented to us; and that is why we say that,
in its technical character, it is not concerned with any
special or definite class of subjects,
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1355b26
12 Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word
there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the
personal character of the speaker; the second on putting
the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on
the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the
speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s
personal character when the speech is so spoken as to
make us think him credible. We believe good men more
fully and more readily than others... . This kind of
persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what
the speaker says, not by what people think of his
character before he begins to speak.... His character may
almost be called the most effective means of persuasion
he possesses. Secondly, persuasion may come through
the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our
judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the
Same as when we are pained and hostile... . Thirdly,
persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we
have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the
persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1356a1
13 The duty of rhetoric is to deal vith such matters as we
deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in
the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glancea
complicated argument, or follow a long chain of
reasoning. The subjects of our deliberation are such as
seem to present us with alternative possibilities: about
things that could not have been, and cannot now or in
the future be, other than they are, nobody who takes
them to be of this nature wastes his time in deliberation.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1356b40
14 There are three divisions of oraloty—(1) political, (2)
forensic, and (3) the ceremonial oratory of display.
Political speaking urges us either to do or not to do
something: one of these two courses is always taken by
private counsellors, as well as by men who address public
assemblies. Forensic speaking either attacks or defends
somebody: one or other of these two things must always
be done by the parties in a case. The ceremonial oratory
of display either praises or censures somebody. These
three kinds of rhetoric refer to three different kinds of
time. The political orator is concerned with the future: it
is about things to be done hereafter that he advises, for
or against. The party in a case at law is concerned with
the past; one man accuses the other, and the other
defends himself, with reference to things already done.
The ceremonial orator is, properly soeaking, concerned
with the present, since all men praise or blame in view of
the state of things existing at the time, though they often
find it useful also to recall the past and to make guesses
at the future.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1358b6
15 Since rhetoric exists to affect the giving of decisions—the
hearers decide between one political soeaker and
another, and a legal verdict is a decision—the orator must
not only try to make the argument of his speech
demonstrative and worthy of belief; he must also make
his own character look right and put his hearers, who are
to decide into the right frame of mind. Particularly in
political oratory, but also in lawsuits, it adds much to an
orator’s influence that his own character should look right
and that he should be thought to entertain the right
feelings towards his hearers; and also that his hearers
themselves should be in just the right frame of mind.
That the orator’s own character should look right is
particularly important in political speaking: that the
audience should be in the right frame of mind, in
lawsuits. When people are feeling friendly and placable,
they think one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry
or hostile, they think either something totally different or
the same thing with a different intensity: when they feel
friendly to the man who comes before them for
judgement, they regard him as having done little wrong,
if any; when they fed hostile, they take the opposite view.
Again, if they are eager for, and have good hopes of, a
thing that will be pleasant if it happens, they think that it
certainly will happen and be good for them: whereas if
they are indifferent or annoyed, they do not think so.
There are three things which inspire confidence in the
orator’s own character—The three, namely, that induce
us to believe a thing apart from any proof of it: good
sense, good moral character, and goodwill. False
statements and bad advice are due to one or more of the
following three causes. Men either form a false opinion
through want of good sense; or they form a true opinion,
but because of their moral badness do not say what they
really think; or finally, they are both sensible and upright,
but not well disposed to their hearers, and may fail in
consequence to recommend what they know to be the
best course. These are The only possible cases. It follows
that anyone who is thought to have all three of these
good qualities v%ill inspire trust in his audience. The way
to make ourselves thought to be sensible and morally
good must be gathered from the analysis of goodness
already given: the way to establish your own goodness is
the same as The way to establish that of others.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1377b21
16 The use of persuasive speech is to lead to decisions.
(When we know a thing, and have decided about it, there
is no further use in speaking about it.) This is so even if
one is addressing a single person and urging him to do or
not to do something, as when we scold a man for his
conduct or try to change his views: the single person is as
much your ‘judge’ as if he were one of many; we may Say,
without qualification, that any one is your judge whom
you have to persuade. Nor does it matter whether we are
arguing against an actual opponent or against a mere
proposition; in the latter case we still have to use speech
and overthrow the opposing arguments, and we attack
these as we should attack an actual opponent,
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1391b8
17 Simplicity... makes the uneducated more effective than
the educated when addressing popular audiences....
Educated men lay down broad general principles;
uneducated men argue from common knowledge and
draw obvious conclusions.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1395b27
18 The right thing in speaking really is that we should be
satisfied not to annoy our hearers, without trying to
delight them: we ought in fairness to fight our case with
no help beyond the bare facts: nothing, therefore, should
matter except the proof of those facts. Still, as has been
already said, other things affect the result considerably,
owing to the defects of our hearers. The arts of language
cannot help having a small but real importance, whatever
it is we have to expound to others: the way in which a
thing is said does affect its intelligibility. Not, however, so
much importance as people think. All such arts are
fanciful and meant to charm the hearer. Nobody uses fine
language when teaching geometry.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1404a3
19 Style to be good must be clear, as is proved by the fact
that speech which fails to convey a plain meaning will fail
to do just what speech has to do. It must also be
appropriate, avoiding both meanness and undue
elevation; poetical language is certainly free from
meanness, but it is not appropriate to prose. Clearness is
secured by using the words (nouns and verbs alike) that
are current and ordinary. Freedom from meanness, and
positive adornment too, are secured by using the other
words mentioned in the Art of Poetry. Such variation from
what is usual makes the language appear more stately.
People do not feel towards strangers as they do towards
their own countrymen, and the same thing is true of their
feeling for language. It is therefore well to give to
everyday speech an unfamiliar air: people like what
strikes them, and are struck by what is out of the way. In
verse such effects are common, and there they are fitting:
the persons and things there spoken of are comparatively
remote from ordinary life. In prose passages they are far
less often fitting because the subject-matter is less
exalted. Even in poetry, it is not quite appropriate that
fine language should be used by a Slave or a very young
man, or about very trivial subjects: even in poetry the
style, to be appropriate, must sometimes be toned down,
though at other times heightened. We can now see that a
writer must disguise his art and give the impression of
speaking naturally and not artificially, Naturalness is
persuasive, artificiality is the contrary for our hearers are
prejudiced and think we have some design against them,
as if we were mixing their wines for them.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1404b2
20 Prose-writers must... pay specially careful attention to
metaphor, because their other resources are scantier than
those of poets. Metaphor, moreover, gives style clearness,
charm, and distinction as nothing else can: and it is nota
thing whose use can be taught by one man to another.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1405a5
21 The foundation of good style is correctness of language,
which falls under five heads. (1) First, the proper use of
connecting words, and the arrangement of them in the
natural sequence which some of them require.. , . (2) The
second lies in calling things by their own special names
and not by vague general ones, (3) The third is to avoid
ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be
ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are
pretending to mean something. Such people are apt to
put that sort of thing into verse. ... (4) A fourth rule is to
observe Protagoras’ classification of nouns into male,
female, and inanimate; for these distinctions also must
be correctly given... . (5) A fifth rule is to express
plurality, fewness, and unity by the correct wording....
It is a general rule that a written composition should
be easy to read and therefore easy to deliver. This cannot
be so where there are many connecting words or clauses,
or where punctuation is hard.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1407a19
22 An author can hold correct opinions and yet not be able
to express them in polished style. To put one’s thoughts
on paper without being able to organize them or to
express them clearly, or without being able to hold the
reader with some kind of charm, means one is making an
inexcusable misuse of both his leisure and his pen.
Cicero, Disputations, |, 3
23 Speech has a great deal to do with gaining propriety, and
it has a double function. The first is oratory and the
second is conversation. Oratory is the type of speech
used in pleading court cases, addressing public
assemblies, and in the Senate. Conversation finds its
place in social gatherings, informal discussions, and in
speaking with friend. It should also play a role in dinners.
Rhetoricians lay down the rules for oratory, but there are
no rules for conversation. | don’t really Know why there
shouldn’t be. Where there are students to learn, teachers
will be found. But there is no one who makes
conversation a subject of study, while pupils surround
rhetoricians everywhere. Yet the same rules that we apply
to words and sentences in rhetoric would work equally
well in conversation.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 37
24 Conversation, in which the Socratics are the best models,
ought to have the following qualities. It should be casual
and not in the least dogmatic. It should be flavored with
wit. The conversationalist should not hinder others from
talking by monopolizing the conversation. In a general
conversation he should be willing to let each person have
his turn. He should pay attention, in the first place, to
what the subject of the conversation is. If it is solemn, he
should treat it seriously; if it is light, with humor. And
above all, he should be careful lest his remarks give away
some defect in his character. This is most likely to
happen, when people, in jest or in earnest, delight in
malicious and slanderous gossip behind someone’s back,
or set out to damage their reputations.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 37
25 Neither can embellishments of language be found
without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can
thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.
Cicero, De Oratore, Ill, 6
26 Nobody ever admired an orator for merely speaking good
Latin; if he speaks otherwise, they ridicule him; and not
only do not think him an orator, but not even a man. Nor
has any one ever extolled a speaker for merely speaking
in such a manner that those who were present
understood what he said; though every one has despised
him who was not able to do so. Whom then do men
regard with awe? What speaker do they behold with
astonishment? At whom do they utter exclamations?
Whom do they consider as a deity, if | may use the
expression, amongst mortals? Him who speaks distinctly,
explicitly, copiously, and luminously, both as to matter
and words; who produces in his language a sort of rhythm
and harmony; who speaks, as | call it, gracefully. Those
also who treat their subject as the importance of things
and persons requires, are to be commended for that
peculiar kind of merit, which | term aptitude and
congruity....On my authority, therefore, deride and
despise all those who imagine that from the precepts of
such as are now called rhetoricians they have gained all
the powers of oratory, and have not yet been able to
understand what character they hold, or what they
profess; for indeed, by an orator everything that relates
to human life, since that is the field on which his abilities
are displayed, and is the subject for his eloquence,
should be examined, heard, read, discussed, handled,
and considered; since eloquence is one of the most
eminent virtues; and though all the virtues are in their
nature equal and alike, yet one species is more beautiful
and noble than another; as is this power, which,
comprehending a knowledge of things, expresses the
thoughts and purposes of the mind in such a manner,
that it can impel the audience whithersoever it inclines
its force; and, the greater is its influence, the more
necessary it is that it should be united with probity and
eminent judgment; for if we bestow the faculty of
eloquence upon persons destitute of these virtues, we
Shall not make them orators, but give arms to madmen.
Cicero, De Oratore, III, 14
27 A speech, then, is to be made becoming in its kind, with
a sort of complexion and substance of its own; for that it
be weighty, agreeable, savoring of erudition and liberal
knowledge, worthy of admiration, polished, having
feeling and passion in it, as far as is required, are
qualities not confined to particular members, but are
apparent in the whole body; but that it be, as it were,
strewed with flowers of language and thought, is a
property which ought not to be equally diffused
throughout the whole speech, but at such intervals, that,
as in the arrangement of ornaments, there may be certain
remarkable and luminous objects disposed here and
there. Such a kind of eloquence, therefore, is to be
chosen, as is most adapted to interest the audience, such
as may not only delight, but delight without satiety.
Cicero, De Oratore, IIl, 25
28 As in most things, so in language, Nature herself has
wonderfully contrived, that what carries in it the greatest
utility, should have at the same time either the most
dignity, or, as if often happens, the most beauty.
Cicero, De Oratore, Ill, 45
29 This orator of ours is so to be finished as to his style and
thoughts in general, that, as those who study fencing and
polite exercises, not only think it necessary to acquire a
Skill in parrying and striking, but also grace and elegance
of motion, so he may use such words as are Suited to
elegant and graceful composition, and such thoughts as
contribute to the impressiveness of language.
Cicero, De Oratore, III, 52
30 The best orator is the one whose address instructs,
delights, and moves the minds of the hearers. The orator
is obliged to instruct, while pleasure is a gratuity granted
to the audience. But to stir the emotions is indispensable.
Cicero, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, |
31 The difference between the orator and the dialectician is
as great as that between two rivers of an opposite
character. Streams that flow between high banks and at
full flood have greater force than shallow brooks with
water struggling against the opposition of pebbles.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XII, 2
32 As loose and incontinent livers are seldom fathers of
many children, so loose and incontinent talkers seldom
originate many sensible words.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
33 Rhetoric... is... the government of the souls of men, and...
her chief business is to address the affections and
passions, which are as it were the strings and keys to the
soul, and require a skilful and careful touch to be played
on as they should be.
Plutarch, Pericles
34 The most eloquent of public soeakers [Demosthenes], in
his oration against Midias, allows that Alcibiades, among
other perfections, was a most accomplished orator. If,
however, we give credit to Theophrastus, who of all
philosophers was the most curious inquirer, and the
greatest lover of history, we are to understand that
Alcibiades had the highest capacity for inventing, for
discerning what was the right thing to be said for any
purpose, and on any occasion; but aiming not only at
saying what was required, but also at saying it well, in
respect, that is, of words and phrases, when these did not
readily occur, he would often pause in the middle of his
discourse for want of the apt word, and would be silent
and stop till he could recollect himself, and had
considered what to Say.
Plutarch, Alcibiades
35 Extemporaneous speeches are deft and facile to
abundance, but those who make them know neither
w’here to begin nor where to stop.
Plutarch, Education of Children
36 This faculty of speaking and of ornamenting words, if
there is indeed any such peculiar faculty, what else does
it do, when there happens to be discourse about a thing,
than to ornament the words and arrange them as
hairdressers do the hair? But whether it is better to speak
or to be silent, and better to speak in this way or that
way, and whether this is becoming or not becoming, and
the season for each and the use, what else tells us than
the faculty of the will?
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 23
37 From Alexander the grammarian [I learned] to refrain
from fault-finding, and not in a reproachful way to chide
those who uttered any barbarous or solecistic or strange-
sounding expression; but dexterously to introduce the
very expression which ought to have been used, and in
the way of answer or giving confirmation, or joining in an
inquiry about the thing itself, not about the word, or by
some other fit suggestion.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, |, 10
38 The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know
that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar
terms; accordingly we employ those terms which the bulk
of people are accustomed to use.
Galen, Natural Faculties, |, 1
39 We... are not to suppose that when certain rhetoricians
pour ridicule upon that which they are quite incapable of
refuting, without any attempt at argument, their words
are really thereby constituted rhetoric. For rhetoric
proceeds by persuasive reasoning; words without
reasoning are buffoonery rather than rhetoric.
Galen, Natural Faculties, |, 16
40 A thing [is] not bound to be true because uttered
eloquently, nor false because the utterance of the lips is
ill-arranged; but ... on the other hand a thing is not
necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because
spoken magnificently. For it is with wisdom and folly as
with wholesome and unwholesome food: just as either
kind of food can be served equally well in rich dishes or
simple, so plain or beautiful language may clothe either
wisdom or folly indifferently.
Augustine, Confessions, V, 6
41 The art of rhetoric being available for the enforcing either
of truth or falsehood, who will dare to say that truth in the
person of its defenders is to take its stand unarmed
against falsehood? For example, that those who are
trying to persuade men of what is false are to know how
to introduce their subject, so as to put the hearer into a
friendly, or attentive, or teachable frame of mind, while
the defenders of the truth shall be ignorant of that art?
That the former are to tell their falsehoods briefly, clearly,
and plausibly, while the latter shall tell the truth in such
a way that it is tedious to listen to, hard to understand,
and, in fine, not easy to believe it? That the former are to
oppose the truth and defend falsehood with sophistical
arguments, while the latter shall be unable either to
defend what is true, or to refute what is false? That the
former, while imbuing the minds of their hearers with
erroneous opinions, are by their power of speech to awe,
to melt, to enliven, and to rouse them, while the latter
Shall in defence of the truth be sluggish, and frigid, and
somnolent? Who is such a fool as to think this wisdom?
Since, then, the faculty of eloquence is available for both
sides, and is of very great service in the enforcing either
of wrong or right, why do not good men study to engage
it on the side of truth, when bad men use it to obtain the
triumph of wicked and worthless causes, and to further
injustice and error?
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, IV, 2
42 We must beware of the man who abounds in eloquent
nonsense, and so much the more if the hearer is pleased
with what is not worth listening to, and thinks that
because the speaker is eloquent what he says must be
true. And this opinion is held even by those who think
that the art of rhetoric should be taught: for they confess
that "though wisdom without eloquence is of little service
to states, yet eloquence without wisdom is frequently a
positive injury, and is of service never."
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, IV, 5
43 Let the language devoted to truth be plain and simple.
Who speaks carefully unless he wants to speak
affectedly? [Seneca]. The elequence that diverts us to
itself harms its content.
As in dress it is pettiness to seek attention by some
peculiar and unusual fashion, so in language the search
for novel phrases and little-known words comes from a
childish and pedantic ambition. Would that | might use
only those that are used in the markets of Paris!
Aristophanes the grammarian did not know what he was
talking about when he criticized Epicurus for the
simplicity of his words and the aim of his oratorical art,
which was simply lucidity of speech. The imitation of
speech, because of its facility, may be quickly picked up
by a whole people; the imitation of judgment and
invention does not come so fast.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
44 My language has no case or polish; it is harsh and
disdainful, with a free and unruly disposition. And | like it
that way, if not by judgment, then by inclination. But |
am quite conscious that sometimes | let myself go too far,
and that in the effort to avoid art and affectation, | fall
back into them in another direction:
| strive to be concise.
And grow' obscure.
Horace
Plato says that length and brevity are properties which
neither decrease nor increase the worth of style.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 17, Of Presumption
45 Handling and use by able minds give value toa
language, not so much by innovating as by filling it out
with more vigorous and varied services, by stretching and
bending it. They do not bring to it new words, but they
enrich their own, give more weight and depth to their
meaning and use; they teach the language
unaccustomed movements, but prudently and shrewdly.
And how little this gift is given to all is seen in so many
French writers of our time. They are bold and disdainful
enough not to follow the common road, but vs-ant of
invention and of discretion ruins them. There is nothing
to be seen in them but a wretched affectation of
originality, cold and absurd disguises which instead of
elevating the substance bring it down. Provided they can
strut gorgeously in their novelty, they care nothing about
effectiveness. To seize a new word they abandon the
ordinary one, which is often stronger and more sinewy.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
46 | do not avoid any [figures of soeech] that are used in the
streets of France; those who would combat usage with
grammar make fools of themselves.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 5, On Some Verses of Virgil
47 The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my
Opinion, is discussion. | find it sweeter than any other
action of our life; and that is the reason why, if | were
right now forced to choose, | believe 1 would rather
consent to lose my sight than my hearing or speech....
The study of books is a languishing and feeble activity
that gives no heat, whereas discussion teaches and
exercises us at the same time. If | discuss with a strong
mind and a stiff jouster, he presses on my flanks, prods
me right and left; his ideas launch mine. Rivalry, glory,
competition, push me and lift me above myself. And
unison is an altogether boring quality in discussion.
As our mind is strengthened by communication with
vigorous and orderly minds, so it is impossible to say
how’ much it loses and degenerates by our continual
association and frequentation with mean and sickly
minds. There is no contagion that spreads like that one. |
know by enough experience how much it is worth per
yard. | love to argue and discuss, but in a small group and
for my own Sake. For to serve as a spectacle to the great
and make a competitive parade of one's wit and chatter
iS an occupation that | find very unbecoming to a man of
honor.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 8, Of the Art of Discussion
48 Truly, Sancho, said Don Quixote, thy Simplicity lessens,
and thy Sense improves every Day. And good Reason
why, quoth Sancho; some of your Worship's Wit must
needs stick to me; for your dry unkindly Land, with good
dunging and tilling, will in time yield a good Crop. |
mean, Sir, that the Dung and Muck of your Conversation
being thrown on the barren Ground of my Wit, together
with the Time | ha’ served your Worship, and kept you
Company; which is, as a body may say, the Tillage; | must
needs bring forth blessed Fruit at last, so as not to shame
my Master, but keep in the Paths of good Manners, which
you have beaten into my sodden Understanding,
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 12
49 In the next place, Sancho, said the Knight, do not
overlard your common Discourse with that glut of
Proverbs, which you mix in it continually; for though
Proverbs are properly concise and pithy Sentences, yet as
thou bring’st ’em in, in such a huddle, by the Head and
Shoulders, thou makest ’em look like so many
Absurdities. Alas! Sir, quoth Sancho, this is a Disease that
Heaven alone can cure; for I’ve more Proverbs than will
fill a Book; and when | talk, they crowd so thick and fast
to my Mouth, that they quarrel which shall get out first;
so that my Tongue is forc’d to let ’em out as fast, first
come first serv'd, though nothing to my Purpose. But
henceforwards I'll set a Watch on my Mouth, and let none
fly out, but such as shall befit the Gravity of my Place. For
in a rich Man’s House the Cloth is soon laid; where there’s
Plenty the Guests can’t be empty. A Blot’s no Blot till ’tis
hit. He’s safe who stands under the Bells; you can’t cat
your Cake and have your Cake; and Store’s no Sore.
Go on, go on. Friend, said Don Quixote, thread, tack,
stitch on, heap Proverb on Proverb, out with ’em Man,
spew them out! There’s no body coming. My Mother
whips me, and | whip the Gigg. | warn thee to forbear
foisting in a Rope of Proverbs every where, and thou
blunder'st out a whole Litany of old Saws, as much to the
Purpose as the last Yearns Snow. Observe me, Sancho, |
condemn not the Use of Proverbs; but 'tis most certain,
that such a Confusion and Hodge-podge of ’em, as thou
throw'st out and dragg’st in by the Hair together, make
Conversation fulsom and poor.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Il, 43
50 In all soeech, words and sense are as the body and the
soul. The sense is as the life and soul of language,
without which all words are dead. Sense is wrought out of
experience, the knowledge of human life and actions, or
of the liberal arts.... Words are the people’s, yet there is a
choice of them to be made.... They are to be chose
according to the persons we make speak, or the things
we speak of. Some are of the camp, some of the council-
board, some of the shop, some of the sheepcot, some of
the pulpit, some of the bar, etc. And herein is seen their
elegance and propriety, when we use them fitly and draw
them forth to their just strength and nature by way of
translation or metaphor.
Jonson, Discoveries: Dc Orationis Dignitate
51 Language most shows a man: Speak, that | may see thee.
Jonson, Discoveries: De Stilo
52 Speech that is uttered with labour and difficulty, or
speech that savoureth of the affectation of art and
precepts, or speech that is framed after the imitation of
some pattern of eloquence, though never so excellent; all
this hath somewhat servile, and holding of the subject.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. 1, To the King, 2
53 Let us consider the false appearances that are imposed
upon us by words, which are framed and applied
according to the conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort:
and although we think we govern our words, and
prescribe it well... yet certain it is that words, asa
Tartar’s bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of
the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the
judgement. So as it is almost necessary, in all
controversies and disputations, to imitate the wisdom of
the mathematicians, in setting down in the very
beginning the definitions of our words and terms, that
others may know how we accept and understand them,
and whether they concur with us or no. For it cometh to
pass, for want of this, that we are sure to end there where
we ought to have begun, which is, in questions and
differences about words.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XIV, 11
54 Concerning speech and words, the consideration of them
hath produced the science of grammar. For man still
striveth to reintegrate himself in those benedictions, from
which by his fault he hath been deprived. ... So hath he
sought to come forth of the... general curse which was
the confusion of tongues by the art of grammar; whereof
the use in a mother tongue is small, in a foreign tongue
more; but most in such foreign tongues as have ceased to
be vulgar tongues, and are turned only to learned
tongues. The duty of it is of two natures: the one popular,
which is for the speedy and perfect attaining languages,
as well for intercourse of speech as for understanding of
authors; the other philosophical, examining the power
and nature of words, as they are the footsteps and prints
of reason: which kind of analogy between words and
reason is handled sparism, brokenly though not entirely;
and therefore | cannot report it deficient, though | think it
very worthy to be reduced into a science by itself.
Unto grammar also belongeth, as an appendix, the
consideration of the accidents of words; which are
measure, sound, and elevation or accent, and the
sweetness and harshness of them; whence hath issued
some curious observations in rhetoric, but chiefly poesy,
as we consider it, in respect of the verse and not of the
argument. Wherein though men in learned tongues do tie
themselves to the ancient measures, yet in modem
languages it seemeth to me as free to make new
measures of verses as of dances: for a dance isa
measured pace, aS a verse iS a measured speech. In these
things the sense is better judge than the art.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XVI, 4-5
55 The proofs and demonstrators of logic are toward all men
indifferent and the same; but the proofs and persuasions
of rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors....
Which application, in perfection of idea, ought to extend
so far, that if a man should speak of the same thing to
several persons, he should speak to them all respectively
and several ways.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, XVIII, 5
56 Men imagine that their reason governs words, whilst, in
fact, words react upon the understanding; and this has
rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and
inactive. Words are generally formed in a popular sense,
and define things by those broad lines which are most
obvious to the vulgar mind; but when a more acute
understanding, or more diligent observation is anxious to
vary those lines, and to adapt them more accurately to
nature, words oppose it. Hence the great and solemn
disputes of learned men often terminate in controversies
about words and names, in regard to which it would be
better (imitating the caution of mathematicians) to
proceed more advisedly in the first instance, and to bring
such disputes to a regular issue by definitions. Such
definitions, however, cannot remedy the evil in natural
and material objects, because they consist themselves of
words, and these words produce others; so that we must
necessarily have recourse to particular instances, and
their regular series and arrangement, as we shall mention
when we come to the mode and scheme of determining
notions and axioms.
The idols imposed upon the understanding by words
are of two kinds. They are either the names of things
which have no existence (for as some objects are from
inattention left without a name, so names are formed by
fanciful imaginations which are without an object), or
they are the names of actual objects, but confused, badly
defined, and hastily and irregularly abstracted from
things. Fortune, the primum mobile, the planetary orbits,
the clement of fire, and the like fictions, which owe their
birth to futile and false theories, are instances of the first
kind. And this species of idols is removed with greater
facility, because it can be exterminated by the constant
refutation or the desuetude of the theories themselves.
The others, which are created by vicious and unskilful
abstraction, are intricate and deeply rooted. Take some
word for instance, as moist, and let us examine how far
the different significations of this word are consistent. It
will be found that the word moist is nothing but a
confused sign of different actions admitted of no settled
and defined uniformity. For it means that which easily
diffuses itself over another body; that which is
indeterminable and cannot be brought to a consistency;
that which yields easily in every direction; that which is
easily divided and dispersed; that which is easily united
and collected; that which easily flows and is put in
motion; that which easily adheres to, and wets another
body; that which is easily reduced to a liquid state
though previously solid. When, therefore, you come to
predicate or impose this name, in one sense flame is
moist, in another air is not moist, in another fine powder
is moist, in another glass is moist; so that it is quite clear
that this notion is hastily abstracted from water only, and
common ordinary liquors, without any due verification of
it.
There are, however, different degrees of distortion and
mistake in words. One of the least faulty classes is that of
the names of substances, particularly of the less abstract
and more defined species (those then of chalk and mud
are good, of earth bad); words signifying actions are more
faulty, as to generate, to corrupt, to change; but the most
faulty are those denoting qualities (except the immediate
objects of sense), as heavy, light, rare, dense. Yet in all of
these there must be some notions a little better than
others, in proportion as a greater or less number of things
come before the senses.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 59-60
57 It is good, in discourse and speech of conversation, to
vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with
arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with
telling of opinions, and jest with earnest; for it is a dull
thing to tire, and, as we say now, to jade, any thing too
far.
Bacon, Of Discourse
58 Names have been conferred on things for the most part
by the inexpert, and ... for this reason they do not always
fit the things with sufficient accuracy. ... It is not our part
to change them after custom has accepted them, but
only to permit the emendation of their meanings, when
we perceive that others do not understand them aright.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, V
59 Eloquence is power; because it is seeming prudence.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 10
60 Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way (1)
that those to whom we speak may listen to them without
pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves
interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to
reflection upon it.
It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to
establish between the head and the heart of those to
whom we speak, on the one hand, and, on the other,
between the thoughts and the expressions which we
employ. This assumes that we have studied well the heart
of man so as to know all its powers and, then, to find the
just proportions of the discourse which we wish to adapt
to them. We must put ourselves in the place of those who
are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of the
turn which we give to our discourse in order to see
whether one is made for the other, and whether we can
assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced
to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as
possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify
that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not
enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to
the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or
defect.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 16
61 Eloquence. —lt requires the pleasant and the real; but
the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 25
62 There are some who speak well and write badly. For the
place and the audience warm them, and draw from their
minds more than they think of without that warmth.
Pascal, Pensées, |, 47
63 When we find words repeated in a discourse and, in
trying to correct them, discover that they are so
appropriate that we would spoil the discourse, we must
leave them alone. This is the test; and our attempt is the
work of envy, which is blind, and does not see that
repetition is not in this place a fault; for there is no
general rule.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 48
64 The same meaning changes with the words which
express it. Meanings receive their dignity from words
instead of giving it to them.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 50
65 No matter what we wish to persuade of, we must consider
the person concerned, whose mind and heart we must
know, what principles he admits, what things he loves,
and then observe in the thing in question what relations
it has to these admitted principles or to these objects of
delight. So that the art of persuasion consists as much in
knowing how to please as in knowing how to convince, so
much more do men follow caprice than reason.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
66 It often happens that we imagine that we have in our
minds ideas of things, from supposing, wrongly, that we
have already explained to ourselves the terms of which
we make use. And it is not true, as some Say, or at least it
is very ambiguous, that we cannot speak of anything,
understanding fully what we say, without having an idea
of it. For often we vaguely understand each of the terms,
or we remember that we have formerly understood them;
but as we content ourselves with this blind thought and
as we do not push far enough the analysis of notions, it
happens that unwittingly we fall into the contradiction
which the composite idea may imply.
Leibniz, Thoughts on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas
67 If we had some exact language (like the one called
Adamitic by some) or at least a kind of truly philosophic
writing, in which the ideas were reduced to a kind of
alphabet of human thought, then all that follows
rationally from what is given could be found by a kind of
calculus, just as arithmetical or geometrical problems are
solved.
Such a language would amount to a Cabala of
mystical vocables or to the arithmetic of Pythagorean
numbers or to the Characteristic language of magi, that
is, of the wise,
Leibniz, On the Universal Science: Characteristic, XIV
68 To come back to the representations of ideas by
characters: | think that controversies will never end nor
silence be imposed upon the sects, unless complicated
reasonings can be reduced to simple ca/culations, and
words of vague and uncertain meaning to determinate
characters.
What must be achieved is in fact this: that every
paralogism be recognized as an error of calculation, and
that every sophism, when expressed in this new kind of
notation, appear as a so/ecism or barbarism, to be
corrected easily by the law’s of this philosophical
grammar.
Once this is done, then when a controversy arises,
disputation will no more be needed between two
philosophers than between two computers. It will suffice
that, pen in hand, they sit down to their abacus and
(calling in a friend, if they so wish) say to each other: /et
us Calculate. ... Once this true art of general analysis is
established and taken up by custom, men who
understand it and are experienced in it will under
otherwise equal conditions be as far superior to all others
as the literate is to the illiterate, the learned to the
vulgar, the eminent geometrician to the apprentice, and
the outstanding algebraist to the common calculator.
Provided the required intelligence be applied, anyone
could with this reliable method find out everything that
can be obtained from the available data, with the use of
reason, even by the greatest and most experienced mind.
The only difference remaining would be one of
promptness, which is more important in action than in
meditation and invention. ... lf the invention of the
telescope and the microscope has brought so much light
into the sciences of nature, it will certainly be understood
how much can be achieved by this new instrument
(novum organon) by which the eye of the mind will be
sharpened as much as is in the power of man.
Leibniz, On the Universal Science: Characteristic, XIV
69 The natural languages are of very great value in
reasoning, but full of innumerable equivocations and
unable to function in a calculus: for if they were able to
do this, errors in reasoning could be uncovered from the
very form and construction of the words, namely, as
solecisms and barbarisms. Hitherto only the arithmetical
and the algebraic notations have offered this admirable
advantage. For in these fields all reasoning consists in
the use of characters, and a mental error and an error of
calculation are identical.
Having pondered this matter more deeply, it became
clear to me long ago that all human ideas can be resolved
into a few as their primitives. If characters were assigned
to these primitives, characters for derivative notions
could be formed therefrom, and from these it would
always be possible to discover the primitive notions
which are necessary ingredients; in short, it would be
possible to find correct definitions and values and, hence,
also the properties which are demonstrably implied in the
definitions. Once this is achieved, anyone who in his
reasoning and writing is using characters of this kind, will
either never fall into error or, if he does, he will always
discover his errors himself by the simplest examinations,
as anybody else will; and, moreover, he will find the truth
which is implied in the available data. If these data
should not be sufficient to find what he is searching for,
he would see which experiments and notions would still
be required, to approach truth as closely as the data
permit, either through approximation or through
determining the degree of greater probability. Sophisms
and paralogisms would here be nothing other than what
errors of calculation are in arithmetic and solecisms or
barbarisms in speech.
This characteristic art, of which | conceived the idea,
would contain the true organon of a general science of
everything that is subject matter for human reasoning,
but would be endowed throughout with the
demonstrations of an evident calculus. It will therefore be
necessary to present our characteristic art itself, that is,
the art of using signs in a kind of rigorous calculus, as
generally as possible.
Leibniz, On the Universal Science: Characteristic, XV
70 The words whereby [the mind]. . . signifies what
connexion it gives to the several affirmations and
negations, that it unites in one continued reasoning or
narration, are generally called particles: and it is in the
right use of these that more particularly consists the
clearness and beauty of a good style. To think well, it is
not enough that a man ideas clear and distinct in his
thoughts, nor that he observes the agreement or
disagreement of some of them; but he must think in train,
and observe the dependence of his thoughts and
reasonings upon one another. And to express well such
methodical and rational thoughts, he must have words to
show that connexion, restriction, distinction, opposition,
emphasis etc., he gives to each respective part of his
discourse. To mistake in any of these, is to puzzle instead
of informing hls hearer: and therefore it is, that those
words which are not truly by themselves the names of
any ideas are of such constant and indispensable use in
language, and do much contribute to men’s well
expressing themselves.
They show what relation the mind gives to its own
thoughts. This part of grammar has been perhaps as
much neglected as some others over-diligently
cultivated. It is easy for men to write, one after another,
of cases and genders, moods and tenses gerunds and
supines: in these and the like there has been great
diligence used; and particles themselves, in some
languages, have been, with great show of exactness,
ranked into their several orders. But though prepositions
and conjunctions, etc., are names well Known in
grammar, and the particles contained under them
carefully ranked into their distinct subdivisions; yet he
who would show the right use of particles, and what
significancy and force they have, must take a little more
pains, enter into his own thoughts, and observe nicely
the several postures of his mind in discoursing.
They are all marks of some action or intimation of the
mind. Neither is it enough, for the explaining of these
words, to render them, as is usual in dictionaries, by
words of another tongue which come nearest to their
signification: for what is meant by them is commonly as
hard to be understood in one as another language. They
are all marks of some action or intimation of the mind;
and therefore to understand them rightly, the several
views, postures, stands, turns, limitations, and
exceptions, and several other thoughts of the mind, for
which we have either none or very deficient names, are
diligently to be studied. Of these there is a great variety,
much exceeding the number of particles that most
languages have to express them by: and therefore it is
not to be wondered that most of these particles have
divers and sometimes almost opposite significations.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I/l, VII, 2-4
71 Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment; m the
world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative
speeches and allusion in language hardly be admitted as
an imperfection or abuse of it. | confess, in discourses
where we seek rat e pleasure and delight than
information and improvement, such ornaments as are
borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if
we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that
all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the
artificial and figurative application of words eloquence
hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong
ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the
judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and
therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may
render them in harangues and popular addresses, they
are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or
instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and
knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great
fault, either of the language or person that makes use of
them. What and how various they are, will be superfluous
here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in
the world, will instruct those who want to be informed:
only | cannot but observe how little the preservation and
improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and
concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed
and preferred. It is evident how much men love to
deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful
instrument of error and deceit, has its established
professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in
great reputation: and | doubt not but it will be thought
great boldness, if not brutality, in me to have said thus
much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too
prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken
against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of
deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, X, 34
72 It is not enough that men have ideas, determined ideas,
for which they make these signs stand; but they must
also take care to apply their words as near as may be to
such ideas aS common use has annexed them to. For
words, especially of languages already framed, being no
man’s private possession, but the common measure of
commerce and communication, it is not for any one at
pleasure to change the stamp they are current in, nor
alter the ideas they are affixed to; or at least, when there
is a necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice of it.
Men’s intentions in speaking are, or at least should be, to
be understood; which cannot be without frequent
explanations, demands, and other the like incommodious
interruptions, where men do not follow common use.
Propriety of speech is that which gives our thoughts
entrance into other men’s minds with the greatest case
and advantage: and therefore deserves some part of our
care and study, especially in the names of moral words.
The proper signification and use of terms is best to be
learned from those who in their writings and discourses
appear to have had the clearest notions, and applied to
them their terms with the exactest choice and fitness.
This way of using a man’s words, according to the
propriety of the language, though it have not always the
good fortune to be understood; yet most commonly
leaves the blame of it on him who is so unskilful in the
language he speaks, as not to understand it when made
use of as it ought to be.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I/l, XI, 11
73 In the ordinary affairs of life, any phrases may be
retained, so long as they excite in us proper sentiments,
or dispositions to act in such a manner as is necessary for
our well-being, how false soever they may be if taken ina
strict and speculative sense. Nay, this is unavoidable,
since, propriety being regulated by custom, language is
suited to the received opinions, which are not always the
truest. Hence it is impossible, even in the most rigid,
philosophic reasonings, so far to alter the bent and
genius of the tongue we speak, as never to give a handle
for cavillers to pretend difficulties and inconsistencies.
But, a fair and ingenuous reader will collect the sense
from the scope and tenor and connexion of a discourse,
making allowances for those inaccurate modes of speech
which use has made inevitable.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 52
74 --And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?--
Oh, against all rule, my Lord,—most ungrammatically!
betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should
agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a
breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;—
and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship
knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in
the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and three fifths
by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time. --Admirable
grammarian!-- But in suspending his voice—-was the
sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of attitude
or countenance fill up the chasm?—Was the eye silent?
Did you narrowly look? --| looked only at the stopwatch,
my Lord. --Excellent observer!
And what of this new book the whole world makes
such a rout about? --Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my Lord, --
quite an irregular thing!— not one of the angles at the
four corners was a right angle. 1 had my rule and
compasses, etc., my Lord, in my pocket.-- Excellent critic!
--And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at—
upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it,
and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu’s
—'tis out, my Lord, in every one of its dimensions.--
Admirable connoisseur!
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Ill, 12
75 Now before | venture to make use of the word Nose a
second time—to avoid all confusion in what will be said
upon it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be
amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all
possible exactness and precision, what | would willingly
be understood to mean by the term: being of opinion,
that 'tis owing to the negligence and perverseness of
writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else—
that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear
and demonstrative as those upon a Will 0’ the Wisp, or
any other sound part of philosophy, and natural pursuit;
in order to which, what have you to do, before you set
out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of
judgment—but to give the world a good definition, and
stand to it, of the main word you have most occasion for
—changing it. Sir, as you would a guinea, into small coin?
—which done—let the father of confusion puzzle you, if
he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or
your reader’s head, if he knows how.
In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as
this | am engaged in—the neglect is inexcusable; and
Heaven is witness, how the world has revenged itself
upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal
strictures—and for depending so much as | have done, all
along, upon the cleanliness of my readers’ imaginations...
therefore
| define a nose as follows—intreating only beforehand,
and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of
what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love
of God and their own souls, to guard against the
temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him
by no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds,
than what | put into my definition—For by the word Nose,
throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every
other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs—|
declare, by that word | mean a nose, and nothing more, or
less.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, III, 31
76 Let it be considered how many ideas we owe to the use of
speech; how far grammar exercises the understanding
and facilitates its operations. Let us reflect on the
inconceivable pains and the infinite space of time that
the first invention of languages must have cost. To these
reflections add what preceded, and then judge how many
thousand ages must have elapsed in the successive
development in the human mind of those operations of
which it is capable.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
77 Wise men, if they try to speak their language to the
common herd instead of its own, cannot possibly make
themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of
ideas which it is impossible to translate into popular
language. Conceptions that are too general and objects
that are too remote are equally out of its range.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 7
78 At Mr. Thrale’s, in the evening, he [Johnson] repeated his
usual paradoxical declamation against action in publick
speaking. "Action can have no effect upon reasonable
minds. It may augment noise, but it never can enforce
argument If you speak to a dog, you use action; you hold
up your hand thus, because he is a brute; and in
proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will
have the less influence upon them," Mrs. Thrale. "What
then. Sir, becomes of Demosthenes’s saying? ‘Action,
action, action!’ " Jjohnson. "Demosthenes, Madam, spoke
to an assembly of brutes- to a barbarous people."
| thought it extraordinary, that he should deny the
power of rhetorical action upon human nature, when it is
proved by innumerable facts in all stages of society.
Reasonable beings are not solely reasonable. They have
fancies which may be pleased, passions which may be
roused.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 3,1773)
79 Johnson was at all times jealous of infractions upon the
genuine English language, and prompt to repress
colloquial barbarisms; such as, pledging myself, for
undertaking; line, for department, or branch, as, the civil
line, the banking line. He was particularly indignant
against the almost universal use of the word /dea in the
sense of notion or opinion, when it is clear that /dea can
only signify something of which an image can be formed
in the mind. We may have an /dea or image of a
mountain, a tree, a building; but we cannot surely have
an idea or image of an argument or proposition. Yet we
hear the sages of the law' "delivering their ideas upon
the question under consideration"; and the first speakers
in parliament "entirely coinciding in the /dea which has
been ably stated by an honourable member";—or
"reprobating an /dea unconstitutional, and fraught with
the most dangerous consequences to a great and free
country." Johnson caUVed this "modem cant."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Sept. 23, 1777)
80 Talking of conversation, he [Johnson] said, "There must,
in the first place, be knowledge, there must be materials;
in the second place, there must be a command of words;
in the third place, there must be imagination, to place
things in such vie\vs as they are not commonly seen in;
and in the fourth place, there must be presence of mind,
and a resolution that is not to be overcome by failures:
this last is an essential requisite; for want of it many
people do not excel in conversation."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 21, 1783)
81 The arts of persuasion, so diligently cultivated by the first
Caesars, were neglected by the military ignorance and
Asiatic pride of their successors, and, if they
condescended to harangue the soldiers, whom they
feared, they treated with silent disdain the senators,
whom they despised.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXII
82 General logic... resolves the whole formal business of
understanding and reason into its elements, and exhibits
them as principles of all logical judging of our cognitions.
This part of logic may, therefore, be called analytic, and is
at least the negative test of truth, because all cognitions
must first of all be estimated and tried according to these
laws before we proceed to investigate them in respect of
their content, in order to discover whether they contain
positive truth in regard to their object. Because, however,
the mere form of a cognition, accurately as it may accord
with logical laws, is insufficient to supply us with material
(objective) truth, no one, by means of logic alone, can
venture to predicate anything of or decide concerning
objects, unless he has obtained, independently of logic,
well-grounded information about them, in order
afterwards to examine, according to logical laws, into the
use and connection, in a cohering whole, of that
information, or, what is still better, merely to test it by
them. Notwithstanding, there lies so seductive a charm in
the possession of a specious art like this—an art which
gives to all our cognitions the form of the understanding,
although with respect to the content thereof we may be
sadly deficient— that general logic, which is merely a
canon of judgement, has been employed as an organon
for the actual production, or rather for the semblance of
production, of objective assertions, and has thus been
grossly misapplied. Now general logic, in its assumed
character of organon, is called d/a/ectic.
Different as are the significations in which the
ancients used this term for a science or an art, we may
safely infer, from their actual employment of it, that with
them it was nothing else than a logic of illusion—a
sophistical art for giving ignorance, nay, even intentional
sophistries, the colouring of truth, in which the
thoroughness of procedure which logic requires was
imitated, and their topic employed to cloak the empty
pretensions. Now it may be taken as a Safe and useful
warning, that general logic, considered as an organon,
must always be a logic of illusion, that is, be dialectical,
for, as it teaches us nothing whatever respecting the
content of our cognitions, but merely the formal
conditions of their accordance with the understanding,
which do not relate to and are quite indifferent in respect
of objects, any attempt to employ it as an instrument
(Organon) in order to extend and enlarge the range of our
knowledge must end in mere prating; any one being able
to maintain or oppose, with some appearance of truth,
any single assertion whatever.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Logic,
Intro.
83 Despite the great wealth of words which Europe-an
languages possess, the thinker finds himself often at a
loss for an expression exactly suited to his conception, for
want of which he is unable to make himself intelligible
either to others or to himself. To coin new words is a
pretension to legislation in language which is seldom
successful; and, before recourse is taken to so desperate
an expedient, it is advisable to examine the dead and
learned languages, with the hope and the probability that
we may there meet with some adequate expression of the
notion we have in our minds. In this case, even if the
original meaning of the word has become somewhat
uncertain, from carelessness or want of caution on the
part of the authors of it, it is always better to adhere to
and confirm its proper meaning—even although it may be
doubtful whether it was formerly used in exactly this
sense—than to make our labour vain by want of sufficient
care to render ourselves intelligible.
For this reason, when it happens that there exists only
a single word to express a certain conception, and this
word, in its usual acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to
the conception, the accurate distinction of which from
related conceptions is of great importance, we ought not
to employ the expression improvidently, or, for the sake
of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for
other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary,
carefully to preserve its peculiar signification, as
otherwise it easily happens that when the attention of
the reader is no longer particularly attracted to the
expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of other
words of very different import, the thought which it
conveyed, and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
84 That the strictest laws of honesty should be observed in
the discussion of a purely speculative subject is the least
requirement that can be made. If we could reckon with
security even upon so little, the conflict of speculative
reason regarding the important questions of God,
immortality, and freedom, would have been either
decided long ago, or would very soon be brought to a
conclusion. But, in general, the uprightness of the
defence stands in an inverse ratio to the goodness of the
cause; and perhaps more honesty and fairness are shown
by those who deny than by those who uphold these
doctrines.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
85 The arts of speech are rhetoric and poehy. Rhetoric is the
art of transacting a serious business of the understanding
as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of
conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a
serious business of the understanding.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 51
86 The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity,
therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be
distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by
words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them. But
no language is So copious as to supply words and phrases
for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include
many equivocally denoting different ideas. Hence it must
happen that however accurately objects may be
discriminated in themselves, and however accurately the
discrimination may be considered, the definition of them
may be rendered inaccurate by the inaccuracy of the
terms in which it is delivered. And this unavoidable
inaccuracy must be greater or less, according to the
complexity and novelty of the objects defined. When the
Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in
their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be,
is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium
through which it is communicated.
Here, then, are three sources of vague and incorrect
definitions: indistinctness of the object, imperfection of
the organ of conception, inadequateness of the vehicle of
ideas. Any one of these must produce a certain degree of
obscurity,
Madison, Federalist 37
87 Grammar, in its extended and consistent form, is the
work of thought, which makes its categories distinctly
visible therein.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Intro., 3
88 Consider for a moment what grammar is. It is the most
elementary part of logic. It is the beginning of the
analysis of the thinking process. The principles and rules
of grammar are the means by which the forms of
language are made to correspond with the universal
forms of thought. The distinctions between the various
parts of soeech, between the cases of nouns, the moods
and tenses of verbs, the functions of particles, are
distinctions in thought, not merely in words. Single nouns
and verbs express objects and events, many of which can
be cognized by the senses: but the modes of putting
nouns and verbs together express the relations of objects
and events, which can be cognized only by the intellect;
and each different mode corresponds to a different
relation. The structure of every sentence is a lesson in
logic.
Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews
89 The things that words mean differ more than words do.
There are different sorts of words, distinguished by the
grammarians; and there are logical distinctions, which
are connected to some extent, though not so closely as
was formerly supposed, with the grammatical distinctions
of parts of speech. It is easy, however, to be misled by
grammar, particularly if all the languages we know
belong to one family. In some languages, according to
some authorities, the distinction of parts of soeech does
not exist; in many languages it is widely different from
that to which we are accustomed in the Indo-European
languages These facts have to be borne in mind if we are
to avoid giving metaphysical importance to mere
accidents of our own speech.
Russell, Analysis of Mind, X
90 In psycho-analytic treatment nothing happens but an
exchange of words between the patient and the
physician. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences
and present impressions, complains, and expresses his
wishes and his emotions. The physician listens, attempts
to direct the patient’s thought-processes, reminds him,
forces his attention in certain directions, gives him
explanations and observes the reactions of
understanding or denial thus evoked. The patient’s
unenlightened relatives—people of a kind to be
impressed only by something visible and tangible,
preferably by the sort of action that may be seen ata
cinema—never omit to express their doubts of how "mere
talk can possibly cure anybody." Their reasoning is of
course as illogical as it is inconsistent. For they are the
Same people who are always convinced that the
sufferings of neurotics are purely "in their own
imagination." Words and magic were in the beginning
one and the same thing, and even today words retain
much of their magical power. By words one of us can give
to another the greatest happiness or bring about utter
despair; by words the teacher imparts his knowledge to
the student; by words the orator sweeps his audience
with him and determines its judgments and decisions.
Words call forth emotions and are universally the means
by which we influence our fellow-creatures. Therefore let
us not despise the use of words in psycho-therapy.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, |
91 Imagine that you had undertaken to replace a political
leading article in a newspaper by a series of illustrations;
you would have to abandon alphabetic characters in
favour of hieroglyphics. The people and concrete objects
mentioned in the article could be easily represented,
perhaps even more satisfactorily, in pictorial form; but
you would expect to meet with difficulties when you
came to the portrayal of all the abstract words and all
those parts of speech which indicate relations between
the various thoughts, e.g., particles, conjunctions, and so
forth. With the abstract words you would employ all
manner of devices: for instance, you would try to render
the text of the article into other words, more unfamiliar
perhaps, but made up of parts more concrete and
therefore more capable of such representation. This will
remind you of the fact that most abstract words were
Originally concrete, their original significance having
faded; and therefore you will fall back on the original
concrete meaning of these words wherever possible. So
you will be glad that you can represent the possessing of
an object as a literal, physical sitting upon it
(possess= potis+ sedeo). This is Just how the dream-work
proceeds. In such circumstances you can hardly demand
great accuracy of representation, neither will you quarrel
with the dream-work for replacing an clement which is
difficult to reduce to pictorial form, such as the idea of
breaking marriage vows, by some other kind of breaking,
e.g., that of an arm or leg. In this way you will to some
extent succeed in overcoming the awkwardness of
rendering alphabetic characters into hieroglyphs.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, X1
92 The Chinese language, both spoken and written,
nxcecdingly ancient but is still used today by four
hundred million people. Don’t suppose that | understand
it at all; | only obtained some information about it
because | hoped to find in it analogies to the kinds of
indefiniteness occurring in dreams; nor was |
disappointed in my expectation, for Chinese is so full of
uncertainties as positively to terrify one. As is well known,
it consists of a number of syllabic sounds which are
pronounced singly or doubled in combination. One of the
chief dialects has about four hundred of these sounds,
and since the vocabulary of this dialect is estimated at
somewhere about four thousand words it is evident that
every sound has an average of ten different meanings—
some fewer, but some all the more. For this reason there
are a whole series of devices to escape ambiguity, for the
context alone will not show which of the ten possible
meanings of the syllable the speaker wishes to convey to
the hearer. Amongst these devices is the combining of
two sounds into a single word and the use of four
different "tones" in which these syllables may be spoken.
For purposes of our comparison a still more interesting
fact is that this language is practically without grammar:
it is impossible to say of any of the one-syllable words
whether it is a noun, a verb or an adjective; and, further
there are no inflections to show gender, number, case,
tense or mood. The language consists, as we may Say, of
the raw material only; Just as our thought-language is
resolved into its raw material by the dream-work omitting
to express the relations in it. Wherever there is any
uncertainty in Chinese the decision is left to the
intelligence of the listener, who is guided by the context.
| made a note of a Chinese saying which literally
translated runs thus: "Little what sec, much what
wonderful." This is simple enough to understand. It may
mean: "The less a man has seen, the more he finds to
wonder at," or "There is much to wonder at for the man
who has seen little." Naturally there is no occasion to
choose between these two translations which differ only
in grammatical construction. We are assured that in spite
of these uncertainties the Chinese language is a quite
exceptionally good medium of expression; so it is clear
that indefiniteness does not necessarily lead to
ambiguity.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XV
Chapter 8
EDUCATION
Chapter 8 is divided into three sections: 8.1 The Ends and
Means of Education, 8.2 Habit, and 8.3 The Arts of Teaching
and Learning.
Education, broadly conceived, covers much more than
schooling, or the period in which the young are under
tutelage. It embraces every activity by which an individual
grows mentally, morally, and spiritually. Whatever
contributes to the development of a human person or the
fulfillment of his potentialities should be regarded as
educative.
The development may b& an improvement of the
person’s mind through acquired knowledge or skill; it may
be an improvement of his character; it may be an
improvement in the use of his body. For that improvement to
be a stable and relatively permanent acquisition, and nota
momentarily transient one, it must become habitual. That is
why the subject of Section 8.2— habit and habit formation—
IS an important consideration in this chapter.
What is called formal or organized education, the kind
that takes place in institutions of learning—schools at any
level—usually involves teaching as well as learning, but
even during the years of formal schooling, and certainly
thereafter, there is much learning without teachers. This
situtation is reflected in an ambiguity in the word "learning."
As a verb, the word connotes an activity of the pupil or
student whereby he learns, usually under the guidance of an
instructor. But as a noun, the word often refers to what has
been or can be learned—and by extension to the whole
range of things that men can know: the world of learning.
Human beings who are at home in that world are ordinarily
called learned, and they are usually conceived as no longer
needing to be instructed, although even here there is an
ambiguity, for the childlike innocence of the learned has
often been noted and described.
Texts having to do with learning in the latter sense of the
word will be found in Section 8.1, for in this sense of the
word learning is the end, or an end, of education. Quotations
having to do with learning in the former sense—where it
refers to a process ordinarily undergone by students in
schools—will be found in Section 8.3.
Education as a process of human improvement is
intimately related to subjects treated in other chapters,
especially Chapter 1 on Man, Chapter 5 on Mind, Chapter 6
on Knowledge, Chapter 7 on Language, Chapter 9 on Ethics,
and Chapter 16 on Art and Aesthetics.
8.1 The Ends and Means of Education
That the goal of education is the improvement of human
beings can hardly be disputed; but that does not preclude
wide differences of opinion about what constitutes such
improvement and what factors or devices contribute to it.
The quotations here assembled conceive the educative
process differently according as they define in a different
manner the end it should be designed to achieve and
outline different programs for accomplishing it. Associated
with these differences are differences in the way that the
ideal of an educated man is portrayed.
Some of the passages quoted get down to the nuts and
bolts of specific programs of instruction—the order of
studies, the materials of learning, in short, the content of the
curriculum. Some are concerned with the order of learning
and with the stages or periods into which the whole process
of education should be divided. Still others deal with the
responsibility of the family and the state for the education of
the young.
For the most part, the education of the young, under the
tutelage of teachers, occupies the center of attention; but
there are passages that concern themselves with education
as the process of a lifetime, begun in school but not
concluded there. Closely related to these are the
biographical quotations in which men look back upon their
early training and evaluate it in the light of what they have
learned much later in life.
There are also quotations, for the most part written by
very learned men, about the life of the scholar. It is
interesting to note that many of these are uncomplimentary.
The scholar or man of learning is often viewed as simple or
vain, as hindered by the very weight of his learning from
leading a normal, happy, successful life. Such
animadversions are not universal, however, and there are
texts that laud the scholar and recommend his way of life as
the best of all.
1 Socrates. Indeed, Lysimachus, | should be very wrong in
refusing to aid in the improvement of anybody. And if |
had shown in this conversation that | had a knowledge
which Nicias and Laches have not, then | admit that you
would be right in inviting me to perform this duty; but as
we are all in the same perplexity, why should one of us be
preferred to another? | certainly think that no one should;
and under these circumstances, let me offer you a piece
of advice (and this need not go further than ourselves). |
maintain, my friends, that every one of us should seek
out the best teacher whom he can find, first for ourselves,
who are greatly in need of one, and then for the youth,
regardless of expense or anything. But | cannot advise
that we remain as we are. And if any one laughs at us for
going to school at our age, | would quote to them the
authority of Homer, who says, that "Modesty is not good
for a needy man." Let us, then, regardless of what may be
said of us, make the education of the youths our own
education.
Plato, Laches, 200B
2 Socrates. Calculation and geometry and all the other
elements of instruction, which are a preparation for
dialectic, should be presented to the mind in childhood....
That is a very rational notion, he [Glaucon] said.
Do you remember that the children, too, were to be
taken to see the battle on horseback; and that if there
were no danger they were to be brought close up and,
like young hounds, have a taste of blood given them?
Yes, | remember.
The same practice may be followed, | said, in all these
things—labours, lessons, dangers—and he who is most at
home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select
number.
At what age?
At the age when the necessary gymnastics are over:
the period whether of two or three years which passes in
this sort of training is useless for any other purpose; for
sleep and exercise are unpropitious to learning; and the
trial of who is first in gymnastic exercises is one of the
most important tests to which our youth are subjected.
Certainly, he replied.
After that time those who are selected from the class
of twenty years old will be promoted to higher honour,
and the sciences which they learned without any order in
their early education will now be brought together, and
they will be able to see the natural relationship of them
to one another and to true being.
Yes, he said, that is the only kind of Knowledge which
takes lasting root.
Yes, | said; and the capacity for such knowledge is the
great criterion of dialectical talent: the comprehensive
mind is always the dialectical.
| agree with you, he said.
These, | said, are the points which you must consider;
and those who have most of this comprehension, and who
are more steadfast in their learning, and in their military
and other appointed duties, when they have arrived at
the age of thirty will have to be chosen by you out of the
select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will
have to prove them by the help of dialectic, in order to
learn which of them is able to give up the use of sight
and the other senses, and in company with truth to attain
absolute being....
Suppose, | said, the study of philosophy to take the
place of gymnastics and to be continued diligently and
earnestly and exclusively for twice the number of years
which were passed in bodily exercise—will that be
enough?
Would you Say six or four years? he asked.
Say five years, | replied; at the end of the time they
must be sent down again into the den and compelled to
hold any military or other office which young men are
qualified to hold: in this way they will get their
experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of
trying whether when they are drawn all manner of ways
by temptation, they will stand firm or flinch.
And how long is this stage of their lives to last?
Fifteen years, | answered; and when they have
reached fifty years of age, then let those who still survive
and have distinguished themselves in every action of
their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at last
to their consummation; the time has now arrived at which
they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light
which lightens all things, and behold the absolute good;
for that is the pattern according to which they are to
order the State and the lives of individuals, and the
remainder of their own lives also; making phi-losophy
their chief pursuit, but, when their turn comes, toiling
also at politics and ruling for the public good, not as
though they were performing some heroic action, but
simply as a matter of duty; and when they have brought
up in each generation others like themselves and left
them in their place to be governors of the State, then
they will depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell
there; and the city will give them public memorials and
sacrifices and honour them, if the Pythian oracle consent,
as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and
divine.
You are a sculptor, Socrates, and have made statues of
our governors faultless in beauty.
Yes, | said, Glaucon, and of our governesses too; for
you must not suppose that what | have been saying
applies to men only and not to women as far as their
natures can go.
Plato, Republic, Vil, 536B
3 Athenian Stranger. Any one who would be good at
anything must practise that thing from his youth
upwards, both in sport and earnest, in its several
branches: for example, he who is to be a good builder,
should play at building children’s houses; he who is to be
a good husbandman, at tilling the ground; and those who
have the care of their education should provide them
when young with mimic tools. They should learn
beforehand the knowledge which they will afterwards
require for their art. For example, the future carpenter
should learn to measure or apply the line in play; and the
future warrior should learn riding, or some other exercise,
for amusement, and the teacher should endeavour to
direct the children’s inclinations and pleasures, by the
help of amusements, to their final aim in life. The most
important part of education is right training in the
nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be guided
to the love of that sort of excellence in which when he
grows up to manhood he will have to be perfected. Do
you agree with me thus far?
Cleinias. Certainly.
Ath. Then let us not leave the meaning of education
ambiguous or ill-defined. At present, when we speak in
terms of praise or blame about the bringing-up of each
person, we call one man educated and another
uneducated, although the uneducated man may be
sometimes very well educated for the calling of a retail
trader, or of a captain of a ship, and the like. For we are
not speaking of education in this narrower sense, but of
that other education in virtue from youth upwards, which
makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of
citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how
to obey. This is the only education which, upon our view,
deserves the name; that other sort of training, which
aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or
mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is
mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called
education at all. But let us not quarrel with one another
about a word, provided that the proposition which has
just been granted hold good: to wit, that those who are
rightly educated generally become good men. Neither
must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first
and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have, and
which, though liable to take a wrong direction, is capable
of reformation. And this work of reformation is the great
business of every man while he lives.
Plato, Laws, |, 643A
4 Athenian Stranger. | mean by education that training
which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of
virtue in children;—when pleasure, and friendship, and
pain, and hatred, are rightly implanted in souls not yet
capable of understanding the nature of them, and who
find them, after they have attained reason, to be in
harmony with her. This harmony of the soul, taken as a
whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of
pleasure and pain, which leads you always to hate what
you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from
the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off;
and, in my view, will be rightly called education.
Plato, Laws, Il, 653A
5 Every systematic science, the humblest and the noblest
alike, seems to admit of two distinct kinds of proficiency;
one of which may be properly called scientific knowledge
of the subject, while the other is a kind of educational
acquaintance with it. For an educated man should be
able to form a fair off-hand judgement as to the goodness
or badness of the method used by a professor in his
exposition. To be educated is in fact to be able to do this;
and even the man of universal education we deem to be
such in virtue of his having this ability. It will, however, of
course, be understood that we only ascribe universal
education to one who in his own individual person is thus
critical in all or nearly all branches of knowledge, and not
to one who has alike ability merely in some special
subject. For it is possible for a man to have this
competence in some one branch of knowledge without
having it in all.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 639a1
6 Moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it
is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and
on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones.
Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular
way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to
delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought;
for this is the right education.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1104b9
7 The legislator should direct his attention above all to the
education of youth; for the neglect of education does
harm to the constitution. The citizen should be moulded
to suit the form of government under which he lives. For
each government has a peculiar character which
originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The
character of democracy creates democracy, and the
character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the
better the character, the better the government....
And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest
that education should be one and the same for all, and
that it should be public, and not private.... The training in
things which are of common interest should be the same
for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the
citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the
state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the
care of each part is inseparable from the care of the
whole.
Aristotle, Politics, 1337b9
8 That education should be regulated by law and should be
an affair of state is not to be denied, but what should be
the character of this public education, and how young
persons should be educated, are questions which remain
to be considered. As things are, there is disagreement
about the subjects. For mankind are by no means agreed
about the things to be taught, whether we look to virtue
or the best life. Neither is it clear whether education is
more concerned with intellectual or with moral virtue.
The existing practice is perplexing; no one knows on
what principle we should proceed—should the useful in
life, or should virtue, or should the higher knowledge, be
the aim of our training; all three opinions have been
entertained. Again, about the means there is no
agreement; for different persons, starting with different
ideas about the nature of virtue, naturally disagree about
the practice of it.
Aristotle, Politics, 1337a33
9 Nature herself... requires that we should be able, not only
to work well, but to use leisure well; for... the first
principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but
leisure is better than occupation and is its end; and
therefore the question must be asked, what ought we to
do when at leisure? Clearly we ought not to be amusing
ourselves, for then amusement would be the end of life,. .
. It is clear then that there are branches of learning and
education which we must study merely with a view to
leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be
valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of
knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed
necessary, and exist for the sake of other things.
Aristotle, Politics, 1337a31
10 What greater or more beneficial service can | render the
republic than to teach and train the youth, considering
how far astray our young men have gone because of the
prevailing moral looseness. The greatest effort will be
needed to restore them and to point them in the right
direction.
Cicero, Divination, II, 2
11 If you want a man to keep his head when the crisis comes
you must give him some training before it comes.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 18
12 Why ‘liberal studies’ are so called is obvious: it is
because they are the ones considered worthy of a free
man. But there is really only one liberal study that
deserves the name—because it makes a person free—and
that is the pursuit of wisdom. Its high ideals, its
steadfastness and spirit make all other studies puerile
and puny in comparison.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 88
13 A father should, as soon as his son is born, conceive the
greatest possible hopes for the child’s future. He will
thereby grow the more solicitous about his improvement
from the very beginning. For it is an assertion without
foundation that claims that "to very few people is granted
the faculty of comprehending what is imparted to them,
and that most, through dulness of understanding, lose
their labour and their time." On the contrary, you will find
that the greater number of men are both ready in
apprehending and quick in learning, since such a faculty
is natural to man. As birds are born to fly, horses to run,
and wild beasts to show fierceness, so to us peculiarly
belong activity and sagacity of understanding. Therefore
the mind is considered to be a gift from heaven. Dull and
unteachable persons are no more produced in the course
of nature than are persons marked by deformity or
monstrosity. Such are certainly few, A simple proof of this
assertion is that among boys, most of them show good
promise. And if it turns out that this promise never
materializes, it is not usually for lack of latent ability, but
because care was never taken in nurturing it. You may
respond that some surpass others in ability. | grant this to
be true, in that some accomplish more and others less.
But there is no one who does not gain by some studying.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1,1
14 When a wise man like Numa had received the
sovereignty over a new and docile people, was there
anything that would better deserve his attention than the
education of children, and the training up of the young,
not to, contrariety and discordance of character, but to
the unity of the common model of virtue, to which from
their cradle they should have been formed and moulded?
One benefit among many that Lycurgus obtained by his
course was the permanence which it secured to his laws.
The obligation of oaths to preserve them would have
availed but little, if he had not, by discipline and
education, infused them into the children’s characters,
and imbued their whole early life with a love of his
government.
Plutarch, Lycurgus and Numa Compared
15 Ingenious men have long observed a resemblance
between the arts and the bodily senses. And they were
first led to do so, | think, by noticing the way in which,
both in the arts and with our senses, we examine
opposites. Judgment once obtained, the use to which we
put it differs in the two cases. Our senses are not meant
to pick out black rather than white, to prefer sweet to
bitter, or soft and yielding to hard and resisting objects;
all they have to do is to receive impressions as they
occur, and report to the understanding the impressions
as received. The arts, on the other hand, which reason
institutes expressly to choose and obtain some suitable,
and to refuse and get rid of some unsuitable object, have
their proper concern in the consideration of the former;
though, in a casual and contingent way, they must also,
for the very rejection of them, pay attention to the latter..
In the same manner, it seems to me likely enough that
we Shall be all the more zealous and more zealous to
read, observe, and imitate the better lives, if we are not
left in ignorance of the blameworthy and the bad.
Plutarch, Demetrius
16 Socrates, the great sage of antiquity, used to say, and
very aptly, that if such a thing were possible he would
ascend to the loftiest height of the city and cry out;
"Where, mankind are you heading? Upon the acquisition
of money you bestow every zeal, but of your sons, to
whom you will leave this money, you take little thought."
For my part | should add that the procedure of such
fathers is very like that of a man who would take thought
for his shoe but neglect his foot. But many fathers reach
such a pitch in their love of money as well as hatred of
children that to avoid paying a larger stipend they
choose as teachers for their children men worth nothing
at all, shopping for ignorance at bargain prices. On this
point Aristippus very neatly and with great cleverness
made a jesting remark to a father who had no sense and
no brains. When the man asked him his price for
educating his son, he replied "A thousand drachmas." "By
Heracles," the man said, "what an exorbitant figure! | can
buy a Slave for a thousand." "Then you will have two
Slaves," Aristippus retorted, "your son and the fellow you
buy."
Plutarch, Education of Children
17 Education is the learning how ... to distinguish that of
things some are in our power, but others are not; in our
power are will and all acts which depend on the will;
things not in our power are the body, the parts of the
body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country,
and, generally, all with whom we live in society.
Epictetus, Discourses, |, 22
18 We must not believe the many, who Say that free persons
only ought to be educated, but we should rather believe
the philosophers, who say that the educated only are
free.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 1
19 The carpenter does not come and say, "Hear me talk
about the carpenter’s art"; but having undertaken to
build a house, he makes it, and proves that he knows the
art. You also ought to do something of the kind; eat like a
man, drink like a man, dress, marry, beget children, do
the office of a citizen, endure abuse, bear with an
unreasonable brother, bear with your father, bear with
your son, neighbour, companion. Show us these things
that we may see that you have in truth learned
something from the philosophers.
Epictetus, Discourses, I/l, 21
20 My parents seemed to be amused at the torments
inflicted upon me as a boy by my masters, though | was
no less afraid of my punishments or zealous in my
prayers to You for deliverance. But in spite of my terrors |
still did wrong, by writing or reading or studying less than
my set tasks. It was not, Lord, that | lacked mind or
memory, for You had given me as much of these as my
age required; but the one thing | revelled in was play;
and for this | was punished by men who after all were
doing exactly the same things themselves. But the idling
of men is called business; the idling of boys, though
exactly like, is punished by those same men: and no one
pities either boys or men. Perhaps an unbiased observer
would hold that | was rightly punished as a boy for
playing with a ball: because this hindered my progress in
studies— studies which would give me the opportunity as
a man to play at things more degraded. And what
difference was there between me and the master who
flogged me? For if on some trifling point he had the worst
of the argument with some fellow-master, he was more
torn with angry vanity than | when | was beaten ina
game of ball.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 9
21 A clerk from Oxford was with us also,
Who’d turned to getting knowledge, long ago.
As meagre was his horse as is a rake.
Nor he himself too fat, I'll undertake.
But he looked hollow and went soberly.
Right threadbare was his overcoat; for he
Had got him yet no churchly benefice.
Nor was so worldly as to gain office.
For he would rather have at his bed’s head
Some twenty books, all bound in black and red.
Of Aristotle and his philosophy
Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery.
Yet, and for all he was philosopher,
He had but little gold within his coffer;
But all that he might borrow from a friend
On books and learning he would swiftly spend,
And then he’d pray right busily for the souls
Of those who gave him wherewithal for schools.
Of study took he utmost care and heed.
Not one word spoke he more than was his need;
And that was said in fullest reverence
And short and quick and full of high good sense.
Pregnant of moral virtue was his speech;
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: The Prologue
22 We can get along without burgomasters, princes, and
noblemen, but we can’t do without schools, for they must
rule the world.
Luther, Table Talk, 5247
23 He put himself into such a road and way of studying that
he lost not any one hour in the day, but employed all his
time in learning, and honest knowledge. Gargantua
awak’d, then about four o’clock in the morning. Whilst
they were in rubbing of him, there was read unto him
some chapter of the Holy Scripture aloud and clearly,
with a pronunciation fit for the matter, and hereunto was
appointed a young page born in Basche, named
Anagnostes. According to the purpose and argument of
that lesson, he oftentimes gave himself to worship, adore,
pray, and send up his supplications to that good God,
whose word did show his majesty and marvellous
judgment. Then went he into the secret places to make
excretion of his natural digestions. There his master
repeated what had been read, expounding unto him the
most obscure and difficult points. In returning, they
considered the face of the sky, if it was such as they had
observed it the night before, and into what signs the sun
was entering, as also the moon for that day. This done, he
was appareled, combed, curled, trimmed and perfumed,
during which time they repeated to him the lessons of the
day before. He himself said them by heart, and upon
them would ground some practical cases concerning the
estate of man, which he would prosecute sometimes two
or three hours, but ordinarily they ceased as soon as he
was fully clothed. Then for three good hours he had a
lecture read unto him. This done, they went forth, still
conferring of the substance of the lecture, either unto a
field near the university called the Brack, or unto the
meadows where they played at the ball, the long-tennis,
and at the pile trigone, most gallantly exercising their
bodies, as formerly they had done their minds. All their
play was but in liberty, for they left off when they
pleased, and that was commonly when they did sweat
over all their body, or were otherwise weary. Then were
they very well wiped and rubbed, shifted their shirts, and
walking soberly, went to see if dinner was ready. Whilst
they stayed for that, they did clearly and eloquently
pronounce some sentences that they had retained of the
lecture. In the meantime Master Appetite came, and then
very orderly sat they down at table. At the beginning of
the meal, there was read some pleasant history of the
warlike actions of former times, until he had taken a glass
of wine. Then, if they thought good, they continued
reading, or began to discourse merrily together; speaking
first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy and nature of all that
was served in at that table; of bread, of wine, of water, of
salt, of fleshes, fishes, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their
dressing. By means whereof, he learned in a little time all
the passages competent for this, that were to be found in
Pliny, Athenaeus, Dioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen,
Porphyrius, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle,
AElian, and others. Whilst they talked of these things,
many times, to be the more certain, they caused the very
books to be brought to the table, and so well and
perfectly did he in his memory retain the things above
said, that in that time there was not a physician that
knew half so much as he did. Afterwards they conferred of
the lessons read in the morning, and, ending their repast
with some conserve or marmalade of quinces, he picked
his teeth with mastic tooth-pickers, washed his hands and
eyes with fair fresh water, and gave thanks unto God in
some fine canticks, made in praise of the divine bounty
and munificence. This done, they brought in cards, not to
play, but to learn a thousand pretty tricks, and new
inventions, which were all grounded upon arithmetic. By
this means he fell in love with that numerical science,
and every day after dinner and supper he passed his time
in it as pleasantly, as he was wont to do at cards and
dice: so that at last he understood so well both the theory
and practical part thereof, that Tunstal the Englishman,
who had written very largely of that purpose, confessed
that verily in comparison of him he had no skill at all. And
not only in that, but in the other mathematical sciences,
as geometry, astronomy, music, etc. For in waiting on the
concoction, and attending the digestion of his food, they
made a thou-sand pretty instruments and geometrical
figures and did in some measure practice the
astronomical canons.
After this they recreated themselves with singing
musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme or
ground at random, as it best pleased them. In matter of
musical instruments he learned to play upon the lute, the
virginals, the harp, the Allman flute with nine holes, the
violin and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, and
digestion finished, he did purge his body of natural
excrements, then betook himself to his principal study for
three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his
matutinal lectures, as to proceed in the book wherein he
was, as also to write handsomely, to draw and form the
antique and Roman letters. This being done, they went
out of their house, and with them a young gentleman of
Touraine, named the Esquire Gymnast, who taught him
the art of riding. Changing then his clothes, he rode a
Naples courser, Dutch roussin, a Spanish gennet, a
barbed or trapped steed, then a light fleet horse, unto
whom he gave a hundred carieres, made him go the high
Ssaults, bounding in the air, free a ditch with a skip, leap
over a stile or pale, turn short in a ring both to the right
and left hand. There he broke not his lance; for it is the
greatest foolery in the world to say, | have broken ten
lances at tilts or in fight. A carpenter can do even as
much. But it is a glorious and praiseworthy action, with
one lance to break and overthrow ten enemies. Therefore
with a sharp, stiff, strong, and well-steeled lance, would
he usually force up a door, pierce a harness, beat down a
tree, carry away the ring, lift up a cuirassier saddle, with
the mail-coat and gauntlet. All this he did in complete
arms from head to foot. As for the prancing flourishes,
and smacking popisms, for the better cherishing of the
horse, commonly used in riding, none did them better
than he. The voltiger of Ferrara was but as an ape
compared to him. He was singularly skilful in leaping
nimbly from one horse to another without putting foot to
ground, and these horses were called desultories. He
could likewise from either side, with a lance in his hand,
leap on horseback without stirrups, and rule the horse at
his pleasure without a bridle, for such things are useful in
military engagements. Another day he exercised the
battle-axe, which he so dexterously wielded, both in the
nimble, strong, and smooth management of that weapon,
and that in all the feats practiceable by it, that he passed
Knight of arms In the field, and at all essays.
Then tossed he the pike, played with the two-handed
sword, with the back sword, with the Spanish tuck, the
dagger, poniard, armed, unarmed, with a buckler, with a
cloak, with a target Then would he hunt the hart, the
roebuck, the bear, the deer, the wild boar, the hare, the
pheasant, the partridge and the bustard. He played at the
balloon, and made it bound in the air, both with fist and
foot. He wrestled, ran, jumped, not at three steps anda
leap, called the hops, nor at clochepied, called the hare’s
leap, nor yet at the Almanes; for, said Gymnast, these
jumps are for the wars altogether unprofitable, and of no
use: but at one leap he would skip over a ditch, spring
over a hedge, mount six paces upon a wall, ramp and
grapple after this fashion up against a window, of the full
height of a lance. He did swim in deep waters on his
belly, on his back, sideways, with all his body, with his
feet only, with one hand in the air, wherein he held a
book, crossing thus the breadth of the River Seine,
without wetting, and dragging along his cloak with his
teeth, as did Julius Caesar; then with the help of one
hand he entered forcibly into a boat, from whence he cast
himself again headlong into the water, sounded the
depths, hollowed the rocks, and plunged into the pits and
gulfs. Then turned he the boat about, governed it, led it
swiftly or slowly with the stream and against the stream,
stopped it in his course, guided it with one hand, and
with the other laid hard about him with a huge great oar,
hoisted the sail, hied up along the mast by the shrouds,
ran upon the edge of the decks, set the compass in order,
tackled the bowlines, and steered the helm. Coming out
of the water, he ran furiously up against a hill, and with
the same alacrity and swiftness ran down again. He
climbed up trees like a cat, leaped from the one to the
other like a squirrel. He did pull down the great boughs
and branches, like another Milo; then with two sharp well-
steeled daggers, and two tried bodkins, would be run up
by the wall to the very top of a house like a rat; then
suddenly come down from the top to the bottom with
such an even composition of members, that by the fall he
would catch no harm.
He did cast the dart, throw the bar, put the stone,
practise the javelin, the boar spear or partisan, and the
halbert. He broke the strongest bows in drawing, bended
against his breast the greatest cross-bow’s of steel, took
his aim by the eye with the hand-gun, and shot well,
traversed and planted the cannon, shot at but-marks, at
the papgay from below upwards, or to a height from
above downwards or to a descent; then before him
sidewise, and behind him, like the Parthians. They tied a
cable-rope to the top of a high tower, by one end whereof
hanging near the ground he wrought himself with his
hands to the very top; then upon the same tract came
down so sturdily and firm that you could not on a plain
meadow have run with more assurance. They set up a
great pole fixed upon two trees. There would he hang by
his hands, and with them alone, his feet touching at
nothing, would go back and fore along the aforesaid rope
with so great swiftness, that hardly could one overtake
him with running; and then, to exercise his breast and
lungs, he would shout like all the devils in hell. | heard
him once call Eudemon from St. Victor’s gate to
Montmartre. Stentor never had such a voice at the siege
of Troy. Then for the strengthening of his nerves or
sinews, they made him two great sows of lead, each of
them weighing eight thousand and seven hundred
quintals, which they called Alteres. Those he took up from
the ground, in each hand one, then lifted them up over
his head, and held them so without stirring three quarters
of an hour or more, which was an inimitable force. He
fought at barriers with the stoutest and most vigorous
champions; and when it came to the cope, he stood so
sturdily on his feet, that he abandoned himself unto the
strongest, in ease they could remove him from his place,
as Milo was wont to do of old. In whose imitation likewise
he held a pomegranate in his hand, to give it unto him
that could take it from him. The time being thus
bestowed, and himself rubbed, cleansed, wiped and
refreshed with other clothes, he returned fair and softly;
and passing through certain meadow's, or other grassy
places, beheld the trees and plants, comparing them with
what is written of them in the books of the ancients, such
as Theophrast, Dioscorides, Marinus, Pliny, Nicander,
Macer, and Galen, and carried home to the house great
handfuls of them, whereof a young page called Rizotomos
had charge; together with little mattocks, pickaxes,
gnibbing hooks, cabbies, pruning knives, and other
instruments requisite for herborising. Being come to their
lodging, whilst supper was making ready, they repeated
certain passages of that which had been read, and then
sat down at table. Here remark, that his dinner was sober
and thrifty, for he did then cat only to prevent the
gnawings of his stomach, but his supper was copious and
large; for he took then as much as was fit to maintain and
nourish him; which indeed is the true diet prescribed by
the art of good and sound physic, although a rabble of
loggerheaded physicians, muzzled in the brabbling shop
of sophisters, counsel the contrary. During that repast
was continued the lesson read at dinner as long as they
thought good: the rest was spent in good discourse,
learned and profitable. After that they had given thanks,
he set himself to sing vocally, and play upon harmonious
instruments, or otherwise passed his time at some pretty
sports, made with cards and dice, or in practising the
feats of legerdemain with cups and balls. There they staid
some nights in frolicking thus, and making themselves
merry till it was time to go to bed; and on other nights
they would go make visits unto learned men, or to such
as had been travellers in strange and remote countries.
When it was full night before they retired themselves,
they went unto the most open place of the house to see
the face of the sky, and there beheld the comets, if any
were, as likewise the figures, situations, aspects,
oppositions and conjunctions of both the fixed stars and
planets.
Then with his master did he briefly recapitulate, after
the manner of the Pythagoreans, that which he had read,
seen, learned, done and understood in the whole course
of that day.
Then prayed they unto God the Creator, in falling
down before him, and strengthening their faith towards
him, and glorifying him for his boundless bounty; and,
giving thanks unto him for the time that was past, they
recommended themselves to his divine clemency for the
future. Which being done, they went to bed, and betook
themselves to their repose and rest.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, |, 23
24 Since it is philosophy that teaches us to live, and since
there is a lesson in it for childhood as well as for the other
ages, why is it not imparted to children?... They teach us
to live, when life is past. A hundred students have caught
the syphilis before they came to Aristotle’s lesson on
temperance.... Our child is in much more of a hurry: he
owes to education only the first fifteen or sixteen years of
his life; the rest he outs to action. Let us use so short a
time for the necessary teachings. The others are abuses:
away with all those thorny subtleties of dialectics, by
which our lives cannot be amended. Take the simple
teachings of philosophy, know how to choose them and
treat them at the right time; they are easier to
understand than a tale of Boccaccio. A child is capable of
that when he leaves his nurse, much more than of
learning to read and write. Philosophy has lessons for the
birth of men as well as for their decrepitude.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
25 My late father, having made all the inquiries a man can
make, among men of learning and understanding, about
a superlative system of education, became aware of the
drawbacks that were prevalent; and he was told that the
long time we put into learning languages which cost the
ancient Greeks and Romans nothing was the only reason
we could not attain their greatness in soul and in
knowledge. | do not think that that is the only reason. At
all events, the expedient my lather hit upon was this, that
while | was nursing and before the first loosening of my
tongue, he put me in the care of a German, who has since
died a famous doctor in France, wholly ignorant of our
language and very well versed in Latin. This man, whom
he had sent for expressly, and who was very highly paid,
had me constantly in his hands. There were also two
others with him, less learned, to attend me and relieve
him. These spoke to me in no other language than Latin.
As for the rest of my father’s household, it was an
inviolable rule that neither my father himself, nor my
mother, nor any valet or housemaid, should speak
anything in my presence but such Latin words as each
had learned in order to jabber with me.
It is wonderful how everyone profited from this. My
father and mother learned enough Latin in this way to
understand it, and acquired sufficient skill to use it when
necessary, as did also the servants who were most
attached to my service. Altogether, we Latinized
ourselves so much that it overflowed all the way to our
villages on every side, where there still remain several
Latin names for artisans and tools that have taken root by
usage. As for me, | was over six before | understood any
more French or Perigordian than Arabic,
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
26 The ignorance that was naturally in us we have by long
study confirmed and verified. To really learned men has
happened what happens to cars of wheat: they rise high
and lofty, heads erect and proud, as long as they are
empty; but when they are full and swollen with grain in
their ripeness, they begin to grow humble and lower their
horns. Similarly, men who have tried everything and
sounded everything, having found in that pile of
knowledge and store of so many various things nothing
solid and firm, and nothing but vanity, have renounced
their presumption and recognized their natural condition.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
27 Tranio. Mi perdonato, gentle master mine,
| am in all affected as yourself;
Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let’s be no stoics nor no stocks, | pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle’s checks
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have
And practise rhetoric in your common talk;
Music and poesy use to quicken you;
The mathematics and the metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you;
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, I, i, 25
28 Biron. Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun
That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks:
Small have continual plodders ever won
Save base authority from others' books.
These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know nought by fame;
And every godfather can give a name.
Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, I, i, 84
29 Sir, said he, you seem to me to have frequented the
Schools; pray what Science has been your particular
Study? That of Knight-Errantry, answer’d Don Quixote,
which is as good as that of Poetry, and somewhat better
too. | don’t Know what sort of a Science that is, said Don
Lorenzo, nor indeed did | ever hear of it before. 'Tis a
Science answer’d Don Quixote, that includes in itself all
the other Sciences in the World, or at least the greatest
Part of them: Whoever professes it, ought to be learned in
the laws, and understand distributive and commutative
Justice, in order to right all Mankind. He ought to bea
Divine, to give a Reason of his Faith, and vindicate his
Religion by Dint of Argument. He ought to be skill’d in
Physick, especially in the Botanick Part of it, that he may
know the Nature of Simples, and have recourse to those
Herbs that can cure Wounds; for a Knight-Errant must not
expect to find Surgeons in the Woods and Desarts. He
must be an Astronomer, to understand the Motions of the
Celestial Orbs, and find out by the Stars the Hour of the
Night, and the Longitude and Latitude of the Climate on
which Fortune throws him: and he ought to be well
instructed in all the other Parts of the Mathematicks, that
Science being of constant use to a Professor of Arms, on
many Accounts too numerous to be related. | need not
tell you, that all the divine and moral Virtues must center
in his Mind. To descend to less material Qualifications; he
must be able to swim like a Fish, know how to shooe a
Horse, mend a Saddle or Bridle: and returning to higher
Matters, he ought to be inviolably devoted to Heaven and
his Mistress, Chaste in his Thoughts, Modest in Words,
and Liberal and Valiant in Deeds; Patient in Afflictions,
Charitable to the Poor; and finally a Maintainer of Truth,
though it cost him his Life to defend it. These are the
Endowments to constitute a good Knight-Errant; and now,
Sir, be you a Judge, whether the Professors of Chivalry
have an easy Task to perform, and whether such a
Science may not stand in Competition with the most
celebrated and best of those that are taught in Colleges?
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 18
30 Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.
Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring;
for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, in the
judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can
execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one;
but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling
of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend
too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much
for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by
their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect
nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural
abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by
study; and studies themselves do give forth directions
too much at large, except they be bounded in by
experience.
Bacon, Of Studies
31 Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them;
and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use;
but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won
by observation.
Bacon, Of Studies
32 Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics
subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and
rhetoric able to contend.... There is no stond or
impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit
studies: like as diseases of the body may have
appropriate exercises.
Bacon, Of Studies
33 The end of study should be to direct the mind towards
the enunciation of sound and correct judgments on all
matters that come before it.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, |
34 The end ... of learning is to repair the ruins of our first
parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that
knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as
we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true
virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith,
makes up the highest perfection.
Milton, Of Education
35 | call... a complete and generous education, that which
fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously
all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
Milton, Of Education
36 There is nothing by which a person can better show how
much skill and talent he possesses than by so educating
men that at last they will live under the direct authority
of reason.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix IX
37 Children when they come first into it, are surrounded with
a world of new things, which, by a constant solicitation of
their senses, draw the mind constantly to them; forward
to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the
variety of changing objects. Thus the first years are
usually employed and diverted in looking abroad. Men’s
business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is
to be found without; and so growing up in a constant
attention to outward sensations, seldom make any
considerable reflection on what passes within them, till
they come to be of riper years; and some scarce ever at
all.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, |, 8
38 A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full
description of a happy state in this world. He that has
these two has little more to wish for; and he that wants
either of them will be but little the better for anything
else. Men’s happiness or misery is most part of their own
making. He whose mind directs not wisely will never take
the right way; and he whose body is crazy and feeble will
never be able to advance in it. | confess there are some
men’s constitutions of body and mind so vigorous and
well framed by nature that they need not much
assistance from others; but by the strength of their
natural genius they are from their cradles carried towards
what is excellent; and by the privilege of their happy
constitutions are able to do wonders. But examples of this
kind are but few; and | think | may say that of all the men
we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or
evil, useful or not, by their education. 'Tis that which
makes the great difference in mankind.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, |
39 'Tis virtue .., which is the hard and valuable part to be
aimed at in education, and not a forward pertness or any
little arts of shifting. All other considerations and
accomplishments should give way and be postponed to
this. This is the solid and substantial good which tutors
should not only read lectures and talk of, but the labor
and art of education should furnish the mind with and
fasten there, and never cease till the young man had a
true relish of it, and placed his strength, his glory, and his
pleasure in it.
The more this advances, the easier way will be made
for other accomplishments in their turns. For he that is
brought to submit to virtue will not be refractory, or
restive, in anything that becomes him; and therefore |
cannot but prefer breeding of a young gentleman at
home in his father’s sight, under a good governor, as
much the best and safest way to this great and main end
of education, when it can be had, and is ordered as it
should be.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 70
40 He that at any rate procures his child a good mind, well-
principled, tempered to virtue and usefulness, and
adorned wath civility and good breeding, makes a better
purchase for him than if he laid out the money for an
addition of more earth to his former acres. Spare it in toys
and play-games, in silk and ribbons, laces, and other
useless expenses, aS much as you please; but be not
Sparing in so necessary a part as this. ’Tis not good
husbandry to make his fortune rich, and his mind poor.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 90
41 From frequently reflecting upon the course and method
of educating youth in this and a neighbouring kingdom,
with the general success and consequence thereof, | am
come to this determination, that education is always the
worse in proportion to the wealth of and grandeur of the
parents.
Swift, Essay on Modem Education
42 A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain.
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 215
43 The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
With his own tongue still edifies his ears.
And always list’ning to himself appears.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Ill, 612
44 The mere philosopher is a character, which is commonly
but little acceptable in the world, as being supposed to
contribute nothing either to the advantage or pleasure of
society; while he lives remote from communication with
mankind, and is wrapped up in principles and notions
equally remote from their comprehension. On the other
hand, the mere ignorant is still more despised; nor is
anything deemed a surer sign of an illiberal genius in an
age and nation where the sciences flourish, than to be
entirely destitute of all relish for those noble
entertainments. The most perfect character is supposed
to lie between those extremes; retaining an equal ability
and taste for books, company, and business; preserving
in conversation that discernment and delicacy which
arise from polite letters; and in business, that probity and
accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, |, 4
45 Whatever propensity one may have to vice, it is not easy
for an education, with which love has mingled, to be
entirely thrown away.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Dedication
46 From the first moment of life, men ought to begin
learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth
we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought
to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty. If there
are laws for the age of maturity, there ought to be laws
for infancy, teaching obedience to others: and as the
reason of each man is not left to be the sole arbiter of his
duties, government ought the less indiscriminately to
abandon to the intelligence and prejudices of fathers the
education of their children, as that education is of still
greater importance to the State than to the fathers: for,
according to the course of nature, the death of the father
often deprives him of the final fruits of education; but his
country’ sooner or later perceives its effects. Families
dissolve, but the State remains.
Rousseau, Political Economy
47 All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come
to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
Rousseau, Emile, |
48 Education comes to us from nature, from men, or from
things. The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the
education of nature, the use we learn to make of this
growth is the education of men, what we gain by our
experience of our surroundings is the education of things.
Thus we are each taught by three masters. 1/ their
teaching conflicts, the scholar is ill-educated and will
never be at peace with himself; if their teaching agrees,
he goes straight to his goal, he lives at peace with
himself, he is well-educated.
Rousseau, Emile, |
49 Johnson. While learning to read and wi'ritc is a dis-tinaion,
the few who have that distinction may be the less
inclined to work; but when every body learns to read and
write, it is no longer a distinction.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 14, 1772)
50 He [Johnson] allowed very great influence to education. "I
do not deny, Sir, but there is some original difference in
minds; but it is nothing in comparison of what is formed
by education. We may instance the science of numbers,
which all minds are equally capable of attaining; yet we
find a prodigious difference in the powers of different
men, in that respect, after they are grown up, because
their minds have been more or less exercised in it: and |
think the same cause will explain the difference of
excellence in other things, gradations admitting always
some difference in the first principles."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 16, 1776)
51 Though the common people cannot, in any civilised
society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and
fortune, the most essential parts of education, however,
to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a
period of life that the greater part even of those who are
to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire
them before they can be employed in those occupations.
For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can
encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole
body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most
essential parts of education.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
52 A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties
of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a
coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed ina
still more essential part of the character of human nature.
Though the state was to derive no advantage from the
instruction of the inferior ranks of people, it would still
deserve its attention that they should not be altogether
uninstructed. The state, however, derives no
inconsiderable advantage from their instruction. The
more they are instructed the less liable they are to the
delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among
ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful
disorders. An instructed and intelligent people, besides,
are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and
stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more
respectable and more likely to obtain the respect of their
lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to
respect those superiors. They are more disposed to
examine, and more capable of seeing through, the
interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they
are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any
wan-ton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of
government. In free countries, where the safety of
government depends very much upon the favourable
judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it
must surely be of the highest importance that they
should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously
concerning it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
53 Education is the art of making men ethical. It begins with
pupils whose life is at the instinctive Ic\xl and shows
them the way to a second birth, the way to change their
instinctive nature into a second, intellectual, nature, and
makes this intellectual level habitual to them. At this
point the clash between the natural and the subjective
will disappears, the subject’s internal struggle dies away.
To this extent, habit is part of ethical life as it is of
philosophic thought also, since such thought demands
that mind be trained against capricious fancies, and that
these be destroyed and overcome to leave the way clear
for rational thinking. It is true that a man is killed by
habit, i.e. if he has once come to feel completely at home
in life, if he has become mentally and physically dull, and
if the clash between subjective consciousness and mental
activity’ has disappeared; for man is active only in so far
as he has not attained his end and wills to dc\'clop his
potentialities and vindicate himself in struggling to attain
it. When this has been fully achieved, activity and vitality
are at an end, and the result—loss of interest in life—is
mental or physical death.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 151
54 Man has to acquire for himself the position which he
ought to attain; he is not already in possession of it by
instinct. It is on this fact that the child’s right to
education is based. Peoples under patriarchal
government are in the same position as children; they are
fed from central stores and not regarded as self-
subsistent and adults. The services which may be
demanded from children should therefore have education
as their sole end and be relevant thereto; they must not
be ends in themselves, since a child in slavery is in the
most unethical of all situations whatever- One of the chief
factors in education is discipline, the purport of which is
to break down the child’s self-will and thereby eradicate
his purely natural and sensuous self. We must not expect
to achieve this by mere goodness, since it is just the
immediate will which acts on immediate fancies and
Caprices, not on reasons and representative thinking. If
we advance reasons to children, we leave it open to them
to decide whether the reasons are weighty or not, and
thus we make everything depend on their whim. So far as
children are concerned, universality and the substance of
things reside in their parents, and this implies that
children must be obedient. If the feeling of subordination,
producing the longing to grow up, is not fostered in
children, they become forward and impertinent.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par, 174
55 Aman sees a great many things when he looks at the
world for himself, and he sees them from many sides; but
this method of learning is not nearly so short or so quick
as the method which employs abstract ideas and makes
hasty generalizations about everything. Experience,
therefore, will be a long time in correcting preconceived
ideas, or perhaps never bring its task to an end; for
wherever a man finds that the aspect of things seems to
contradict the general ideas he has formed, he will begin
by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial and one-
sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and deny
that it stands in any contradiction at all with his
preconceived notions, in order that he may thus preserve
them uninjured. So it is that many a man carries about a
burden of wrong notions all his life long— crotchets,
whims, fancies, prejudices, which at last become fixed
ideas. The fact is that he has never tried to form his
fundamental ideas for himself out of his own experience
of life, his own way of looking at the world, because he
has taken over his ideas ready-made from other people;
and this it is that makes him—as it makes how many
others!— so shallow and superficial.
Schopenhauer, Education
56 No child under the age of fifteen should recent
instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle
of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other
branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large
views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom
be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties,
judgment is the last to arrive at maturity. The child
should give its attention either to subjects where no error
is possible at all, such as mathematics, or to those in
which there is no particular danger in making a mistake,
such as languages, natural science, history and so on.
Schopenhauer, Education
57 If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest
School can do for us, is still but what the first School
began doing—teach us to read. We learn to read, in
various languages, in various sciences; we learn the
alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place
where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic
knowledge, is the Books themselves! It depends on what
we read, after all manner of Professors have done their
best for us. The true University of these days isa
Collection of Books.
Carlyle, The Hero as Man of Letters
58 Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many
things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to
gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true
dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart,
and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of
Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an
ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his
craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest
becomes a form; the attorney a statute-book; the
mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.
In this distribution of functions the scholar is the
delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking.
In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he
tends to become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot
of other men’s thinking.
In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the theory of his
office is contained. Him Nature solicits with all her placid,
all her monitory pictures; him the past instructs; him the
future invites.
Emerson, The American Scholar
59 Books are good only as far as a boy is ready for them. He
sometimes gets ready very slowly. You send your child to
the schoolmaster, but ’t is the schoolboys who educate
him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of his
tuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop-
windows. You like the strict rules and the long terms; and
he finds his best leading in a by-way of his own, and
refuses any companions but of his own choosing. He
hates the grammar and Gradus, and loves guns, fishing-
rods, horses and boats. Well, the boy is right, and you are
not fit to direct his bringing-up if your theory leaves out
his gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-
rod, horse and boat, are all educators, liberalizers; and so
are dancing, dress and the street talk; and provided only
the boy has resources, and is of a noble and ingenuous
strain, these will not serve him less than the books.
Emerson, Culture
60 One of the benefits of a college education is to show the
boy its little avail.
Emerson, Culture
61 We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and
colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years,
and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of
words, and do not know a thing.
Emerson, New England Reformers
62 At Mr. Wackford Squeers's Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at
the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in
Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished
with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries,
instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics,
orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use
of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing,
arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of
classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No
extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled.
Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, III
63 Perhaps many who watch over the interests of the
community, and are anxious for its welfare, will conclude
that the development of the judgment cannot properly be
included in the general idea of education; that as the
education proposed must, to a very large degree, be of
self, it is so far incommunicable; that the master and the
scholar merge into one, and both disappear; that the
instructor is no wiser than the one to be instructed, and
thus the usual relations of the two lose their power. Still, |
believe that the judgment may be educated to a very
large extent, and might refer to the fine arts, as giving
proof in the affirmative; and though, as respects the
community and its improvement in relation to common
things, any useful education must be of self, | think that
society, aS a body, may act powerfully in the cause. Or it
may still be objected that my experience is imperfect, is
chiefly derived from exercise of the mind within the
precincts of natural philosophy, and has not that
generality of application which can make it of any value
to society at large. | can only repeat my conviction, that
society occupies itself now-a-days about physical
matters, and judges them as common things. Failing in
relation to them, it is equally liable to carry such failures
into other matters of life. The proof of deficient judgment
in one department shows the habit of mind, and the
general want, in relation to others. | am persuaded that
all persons may find in natural things an admirable
school for self-instruction, and a field for the necessary
mental exercise; that they may easily apply their habits
of thought, thus formed, to a social use; and that they
ought to do this, as a duty to themselves and their
generation.
Faraday, Observations on Mental Education
64 As for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if | shall ever deserve
any real repute in that small but high hushed world which
| might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter |
Shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might
rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my
death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find
any precious MSS. in my desk, then here | prospectively
ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; fora
whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Melville, Moby Dick, XXIV
65 The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a
subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following
blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme
—a principle which should never be followed but with
circumspection—to call in a contractor who makes this a
subject of soeculation, and he employs Irishmen or other
operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the
students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves
for it; and for these oversights successive generations
have to pay. | think that it would be better than this, for
the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it,
even to lay the foundation themselves. The student who
secures his coveted leisure and retirement by
systematically shirking any labor necessary to man
obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure,
defrauding himself of the experience which alone can
make leisure fruitful, ‘But,’ says one, ‘you do not mean
that the students should go to work with their hands
instead of their heads?’ | do not mean that exactly, but |
mean something which he might think a good deal like
that; | mean that they should not play life, or study it
merely, while the community supports them at this
expensive game, but earnestly /ive it from beginning to
end. How could youths better learn to live than by at
once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would
exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If | wished
a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for
instance, | would not pursue the common course, which is
merely to send him into the neighborhood of some
professor, where anything is professed and practised but
the art of life;—to survey the world through a telescope or
a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study
chemistry and not learn how his bread is made, or
mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover
new Satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his
eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to
be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him,
while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar.
Which would have advanced the most at the end of a
month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from
the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much
as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had
attended the lecture on metallurgy at the Institute in the
meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his
father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?...
To my astonishment | was informed on leaving college
that | had studied navigation!—why, if | had taken one
turn down the harbor | should have known more about it.
Even the poor student studies and is taught only political
economy, while that economy of living which is
synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely
professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while
he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his
father in debt irretrievably.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
66 Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of
Nature, under which name | include not merely things
and their forces, but men and their ways; and the
fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest
and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.
T. H. Huxley, A Liberal Education
67 From the Factory system budded... the germ of the
education of the future, an education that will, in the
case of every child over a given age, combine productive
labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one
of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production,
but as the only method of producing fully developed
human beings.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, IV, 15
68 When we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to
morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the
business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every
disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances
which favour some opinion different from it. The greatest
orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he
always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not
still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero
practised as the means of forensic success requires to be
imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at
the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case,
knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one
may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally
unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side- if he
does not so much as know what they are he has no
ground for preferring either opinion, rational position for
him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he
contents himself with that, he is either led by authority,
or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to
which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he
should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own
teachers, presented £is they state them, and
accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is
not the way to do justice to the arguments or bring them
into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to
hear them from persons who actually believe them; who
defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for
them. He must know them in their most plausible and
persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the
difficulty which the true view of the subject has to
encounter and dispose of; else he will never really
possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and
removes that difficulty.
Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated
men are in this condition; even of those who can argue
fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true,
but it might be false for anything they know; they have
never thrown themselves into the mental position of
those who think differently from them, and considered
what such persons may have to say; and consequently
they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the
doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not
know those parts of it which explain and justify the
remainder; the considerations which show that a fact
which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable
with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and
not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the
truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of
a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is
it ever really known, but to those who have attended
equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to
see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential
is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and
human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths
do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and
supply them with the strongest arguments which the
most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.
Mill, On Liberty, II
69 A cultivated mind—I do not mean that of a philosopher,
but any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have
been opened, and which has been taught, in any
tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties—finds sources of
inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it; in the
objects of nature, the achievements of art, the
imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways
of mankind, past and present, and their prospects in the
future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all
this, and that too without having exhausted a thousandth
part of it; but only when one has had from the beginning
no moral or human interest in these things, and has
sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.
Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of
things why an amount of mental culture sufficient to give
an intelligent interest in these objects of contemplation,
should not be the inheritance of every one born ina
civilised country.
Mill, Utilitarianism, II
70 It has often been said, and requires to be repeated still
oftener, that books and discourses alone are not
education; that life is a problem, not a theorem; that
action can only be learned in action. A child learns to
write its name only by a succession of trials; and is a man
to be taught to use his mind and guide his conduct by
mere precept? What can be learned in schools is
important, but not all-important. The main branch of the
education of human beings Is their habitual employment,
which must be either their individual vocation or some
matter of general concern, in which they are called to
take a part. The private money-getting occupation of
almost everyone is more or less a mechanical routine; it
brings but few of his faculties into action, while its
exclusive pursuit tends to fasten his attention and
interest exclusively upon himself, and upon his family as
an appendage of himself—making him indifferent to the
public, to the more generous objects and the nobler
interests, and, in his inordinate regard for his personal
comforts, selfish and cowardly. Balance these tendencies
by contrary ones; give him something to do for the
public, whether as a vestryman, a juryman, or an elector;
and in that degree, his ideas and feelings are taken out of
this narrow circle. He becomes acquainted with more
varied business and a larger range of considerations. He
is made to feel that besides the interests which separate
him from his fellow citizens, he has interests which
connect him with them; that not only the common weal is
his weal but that it partly depends upon his exertions.
Whatever might be the case in some other constitutions
of society, the spirit of a commercial people will be, we
are persuaded, essentially mean and slavish wherever
public spirit is not cultivated by an extensive
participation of the people in the business of government
in detail: nor will the desideratum of a general diffusion
of intelligence among either the middle or lower classes
be realized, but by a corresponding dissemination of
public functions, and a voice in public affairs.
Mill, Review of Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"
71 Education ... is one of the subjects which most essentially
require to be considered by various minds, and froma
variety of points of view. For, of all many-sided subjects, it
is the one which has the greatest number of sides. Not
only does it include whatever we do for ourselves, and
whatever is done for us by others, for the express purpose
of bringing us somewhat nearer to the perfection of our
nature; it does more: in its largest acceptation, it
comprehends even the indirect effects produced on
character and on the human faculties, by things of which
the direct purposes are quite different; by laws, by forms
of government, by the industrial arts, by modes of social
life; nay even by physical facts not dependent on human
will; by climate, soil, and local position. Whatever helps
to shape the human being; to make the individual what
he is, or hinder him from being what he is not—is part of
his education. And a very bad education it often is;
requiring all that can be done by cultivated intelligence
and will, to counteract its tendencies.
Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews
72 Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or
merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them
capable and sensible men, they will make themselves
capable and sensible lawyers or physicians. What
professional men should carry away with them from an
University, is not professional knowledge, but that which
should direct the use of their professional knowledge, and
bring the light of general culture to illuminate the
technicalities of a special pursuit. Men may be competent
lawyers without general education, but it depends on
general education to make them philosophic lawyers—
who demand, and are capable of apprehending,
principles, instead of merely cramming their memory with
details. And so of all other useful pursuits, mechanical
included. Education makes a man a more intelligent
shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching
him how to make shoes; it does so by the mental exercise
it gives, and the habits it impresses.
Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews
73 It has always seemed to me a great absurdity that history
and geography should be taught in schools; except in
elementary schools for the children of the labouring
classes, whose subsequent access to books is limited.
Who ever really learnt history and geography except by
private reading? and what an utter failure a system of
education must be, if it has not given the pupil a
sufficient taste for reading to seek for himself those most
attractive and easily intelligible of all kinds of
knowledge? ... Of the mere facts of history, as commonly
accepted, what educated youth of any mental activity
does not learn as much as is necessary, if he is simply
turned loose into an historical library? What he needs on
this, and on most other matters of common information,
is not that he should be taught it in boyhood, but that
abundance of books should be accessible to him.
Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews
74 Health is a good in itself, though nothing came of it, and
is especially worth seeking and cherishing: yet, after all,
the blessings which attend its presence are so great,
while they are so close to it and so redound back upon it
and encircle it, that we never think of it except as useful
as well as good, and praise and prize it for what it does,
as well as for what it is, though at the same time we
cannot point out any definite and distinct work or
production which it can be said to effect. And so as
regards intellectual culture, | am far from denying utility
in this large sense as the end of Education, when | lay it
down, that the culture of the intellect is a good in itself
and its own end; | do not exclude from the idea of
intellectual culture what it cannot but be, from the very
nature of things; | only deny that we must be able to
point out, before we have any right to call it useful, some
art, or business, or profession, or trade, or work, as
resulting from it, and as its real and complete end. The
parallel is exact: As the body may be sacrificed to some
manual or other toil, wnether moderate or oppressive, so
may the intellect be devoted to some specific profession;
and | do not call this the culture of the intellect. Again, as
some member or organ of the body may be inordinately
used and developed, so may memory, or imagination, or
the reasoning faculty; and this again is not intellectual
culture. On the other hand, as the body may be tended,
cherished, and exercised with a simple view to its general
health, so may the intellect also be generally exercised in
order to its perfect state; and this is its cultivation.
Newman, Idea of a University, Discourse VII
75 Culture is indispensably necessary, and culture is
reading; but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with
system. He does a good work who does anything to help
this: indeed, it is the one essential service now to be
rendered to education.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, Pref.
76 Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but
they are more deadly in the long run.
Mark Twain, The Facts Concerning the Recent
Resignation
77 Education in the long run is an affair that works itself out
between the individual student and his opportunities.
Methods of which we talk so much, play but a minor part.
Offer the opportunities, leave the student to his natural
reaction on them, and he will work out his personal
destiny, be it a high one or a low one.
William James, Stanford's Ideal Destiny
78 There are many paths to knowledge already discovered;
and no enlightened man doubts that there are many
more waiting to be discovered. Indeed, all paths lead to
knowledge; because even the vilest and stupidest action
teaches us some-thing about vileness and stupidity, and
may accidentally teach us a good deal more.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
79 In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without by
schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be
lamed and enslaved by them. It is said that if you wash a
cat it will never again wash itself. This may or may not be
true: what is certain is that if you teach a man anything
he will never learn it; and if you cure him of a disease he
will be unable to cure himself the next time it attacks
him. Therefore, if you want to see a cat clean, you throw a
bucket of mud over it, when it will immediately take
extraordinary pains to lick the mud off, and finally be
cleaner than it was before. In the same way doctors who
are up-to-date (say .00005 per cent of all the registered
practitioners, and 20 per cent of the unregistered ones),
when they want to rid you of a disease or a symptom,
inoculate you with that disease or give you a drug that
produces that symptom, in order to provoke you to resist
it as the mud provokes the cat to wash itself.
Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Pref.
80 Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to
beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have
nothing to do with it, A merely well-in-formed man is the
most useless bore on God’s earth. What we should aim at
producing is men who possess both culture and expert
knowledge in some special direction. Their expert
knowledge will give them the ground to start from, and
their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as
high as art. We have to remember that the valuable
intellectual development is self-development, and that it
mostly takes place between the ages of sixteen and
thirty. As to training, the most important part is given by
mothers before the age of twelve.
Whitehead, Aims of Education
81 There is only one subject-matter for education, and that
is Life in all its manifestations. Instead of this single
unity, we offer children—Algebra, from which nothing
follows; Geometry, from which nothing follows; Science,
from which nothing follows; History, from which nothing
follows; a Couple of Languages, never mastered; and
lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by plays
of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short
analyses of plot and character to be in substance
committed to memory. Can such a list be said to
represent Life, as it is known in the midst of the living of
it? The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table
of contents which a deity might run over in his mind
while he was thinking of creating a world, and had not
yet determined how to put it together.
Whitehead, Aims of Education
82 The merit of this study [of Roman history] in the
education of youth is its concreteness, its inspiration to
action, and the uniform greatness of persons, in their
characters and their staging. Their aims were great, their
virtues were great, and their vices were great. They had
the saving merit of sinning with cart-ropes. Moral
education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of
greatness. If we are not great, it does not matter what we
do or what is the issue. Now the sense of greatness Is an
immediate intuition and not the conclusion of an
argument. It is permissible for youth in the agonies of
religious conversion to entertain the feeling of being a
worm and no man, so long as there remains the
conviction of greatness sufficient to justify the eternal
wrath of God. The sense of greatness is the groundwork
of morals. We are at the threshold of a democratic age,
and it remains to be determined whether the equality of
man is to be realised on a high level or a low level. There
was never a time in which it was more essential to hold
before the young the vision of Rome: in itself a great
drama, and with issues greater than itself.
Whitehead, The Place of Classics in Education
83 Education is, as a rule, the strongest force on the side of
what exists and against fundamental change: threatened
institutions, while they are still powerful, possess
themselves of the educational machine, and instill a
respect for their own excellence into the malleable minds
of the young. Reformers retort by trying to oust their
opponents from their position of vantage. The children
themselves are not considered by either party; they are
merely so much material, to be recruited into one army or
the other. If the children themselves were considered,
education would not aim at making them belong to this
party or that, but at enabling them to choose intelligently
between the parties; it would aim at making them able to
think, not at making them think what their teachers
think. Education as a political weapon could not exist if
we respected the rights of children. If we respected the
rights of children, we should educate them so as to give
them the knowledge and the mental habits required for
forming independent opinions; but education as a
political institution endeavors to form habits and to
circumscribe knowledge in such a way as to make one set
of opinions inevitable.
Russell, Education
84 The joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the
young than in grown men and women. Among children it
IS very common, and grows naturally out of the period of
make-believe and fancy. It is rare in later life because
everything is done to kill it during education.
Russell, Education
85 A community of men and women possessing vitality,
courage, sensitiveness, and intelligence, in the highest
degree that education can produce, would be very
different from anything that has hitherto existed. Very
few people would be unhappy. The main causes of
unhappiness at present are: ill-health, poverty, and an
unsatisfactory sex-life. All of these would become very
rare. Good health could be almost universal, and even old
age could be postponed. Poverty, since the industrial
revolution, is only due to collective stupidity.
Sensitiveness would make people wish to abolish it,
intelligence would show them the way, and courage
would lead them to adopt it. (A timid person would rather
remain miserable than do anything unusual.) Most
people’s sex-life, at present, is more or less
unsatisfactory. This is partly due to bad education, partly
to persecution by the authorities and Mrs. Grundy. A
generation of women brought up without irrational sex
fears would soon make an end of this. Fear has been
thought the only way to make women "virtuous," and
they have been deliberately taught to be cowards, both
physically and mentally. Women in whom love is cramped
encourage brutality and hypocrisy in their husbands, and
distort the instincts of their children. One generation of
fearless women could transform the world, by bringing
into it a generation of fearless children, not contorted into
unnatural shapes, but straight and candid, generous,
affectionate, and free. Their ardor would sweep away the
cruelty and pain which we endure because we are lazy,
cowardly, hard-hearted and stupid. It is education that
gives us these bad qualities, and education that must
give us the opposite virtues. Education is the key to the
new world.
Russell, Aims of Education
86 The educability of a young person as a rule comes to an
end when sexual desire breaks out in its final strength.
Educators know this and act accordingly; but perhaps
they will yet allow themselves to be influenced by the
results of psycho-analysis so that they will transfer the
main emphasis in education to the earliest years of
childhood, from the suckling period onward. The little
human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth
or fifth year, and only gradually reveals in later years
what lies buried in him.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXII
87 We may reject knowledge of the past as the end of
education and thereby only emphasize its importance as
a means. When we do that we have a problem that is new
in the story of education: How shall the young become
acquainted with the past in such a way that the
acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the
living present?
Dewey, Experience and Education, |
88 Education as growth or maturity- should be an ever-
present process.
Dewey, Experience and Education, III
89 In its contrast with the ideas both of unfolding of latent
powers from within, and of formation from without,
whether by physical nature or by the cultural products of
the past, the ideal of growth results in the conception
that education is a constant reorganizing or
reconstructing of experience. It has all the time an
immediate end, and so far as activity is educative, it
reaches that end—the direct transformation of the quality
of experience. Infancy, youth, adult life--all stand on the
Same educative level in the sense that what is really
learned at any and every stage of experience constitutes
the value of that experience, and in the sense that it is
the chief business of life at every point to make living
thus contribute to an enrichment of its own perceptible
meaning.
We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is
that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which
adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases
ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.
Dewey, Democracy and Education, VI
90 The only adequate training for occupations is training
through occupations. The principle... that the educative
process is its own end, and that the only sufficient
preparation for later responsibilities comes by making the
most of immediately present life, applies in full force to
the vocational phases of education. The dominant
vocation of all human beings at all times is living—
intellectual and moral growth.
Dewey, Democracy and Education, XXIII
8.2 Habit
The ancient saying that habit is a kind of second nature
explains the significance of habit and habit-formation for the
process of education. If men were born with their natures
perfected, with no room for improvement, with no
potentialities to be realized, they would not need and could
not use education. Precisely because they are born with
room for improvement, they can be and need to be
educated, and this usually takes the form of giving them a
"second nature"—a set of acquired habits that, once they are
well established, operate as smoothly as their original
nature.
Some of the passages quoted deal with the psychology of
habit and habit-formation, and with the conditions under
which habits are acquired, strengthened, weakened, and
changed. Other passages present distinctions among kinds
of habit, especially the difference between habits of mind (of
thought and knowledge) and habits of character (of action
and of emotion). This, of course, has a bearing on the
distinction between intellectual and moral training—the
effort, on the one hand, to form or inculcate good
intellectual habits; and the effort, on the other hand, to
instill good moral habits. The discussion here tends to move
from the domain of psychology to that of ethics, for the
qualification of habits as good and bad introduces the
notions of virtue and vice.
Learning would be fruitless if what is learned were not
retained. One aspect of such retention, especially when the
learning is verbal, is discussed under the head of memory, in
Section 5.3 of Chapter 5 on Mind. The other, and much
broader, aspect is discussed here.
1 Those things which one has been accustomed to for a long
time, although worse than things which one is not
accustomed to, usually give less disturbance; but a
change must sometimes be made to things one is not
accustomed to.
Hippocrates, Aphorisms, Il, 50
2 Socrates. Is not the bodily habit spoiled by rest and
idleness, but preserved for a long time by motion and
exercise?
Theaetetus. True.
Soc. And what of the mental habit? Is not the soul
informed, and improved, and preserved by study and
attention, which are motions; but when at rest, which in
the soul only means want of attention and study, is
uninformed, and speedily forgets whatever she has
learned?
Theaet. True.
Plato, Theaetetus, 153A
3 The effect which lectures produce on a hearer depends on
his habits; for we demand the language we are
accustomed to, and that which is different from this
seems not in keeping but somewhat unintelligible and
foreign because of its unwontedness. For it is the
customary that is intelligible. The force of habit is shown
by the laws, in which the legendary and childish
elements prevail over our knowledge about them, owing
to habit. Thus some people do not listen to a speaker
unless he speaks mathematically, others unless he gives
instances, while others expect him to cite a poet as
witness. And some want to have everything done
accurately, while others are annoyed by accuracy, either
because they cannot follow the connexion of thought or
because they regard it as pettifoggery. For accuracy has
something of this character, so that as in trade so in
argument some people think it mean. Hence one must be
already trained to know how to take each sort of
argument.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 994b31
4 Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral,
intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its
growth to teaching (for which reason it requires
experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as
a result of habit, whence also its name is one that is
formed by a slight variation from the word habit. From
this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in
us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a
habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which
by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to
move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by
throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be
habituated to move down-\vards, nor can anything else
that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave
in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature
do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by
nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we
first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity
(this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by
often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses,
but on the contrary we had them before we used them,
and did not come to have them by using them); but the
virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in
the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to
learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, for
example, men become builders by building and lyre-
players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by
doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts,
brave by doing brave acts....
Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like
activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of
a certain kind; it is because the states of character
correspond to the differences between these. It makes no
small difference, then, whether we form habits of one
kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very
great difference, or rather a// the difference.
Aristotle, 1103a14
5 By abstaining from pleasures we become temperate, and it
is when we have become so that we are most able to
abstain from them; and similarly too in the case of
courage; for by being habituated to despise things that
are terrible and to stand our ground against them we
become brave, and it is when we have become so that we
Shall be most able to stand our ground against them.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1104a33
6 Habit is a kind of second nature.
Cicero, De Finibus, V
7 Every habit and faculty is maintained and increased by
the corresponding actions: the habit of walking by
walking, the habit of running by running. If you would be
a good reader, read; if a writer, write.
Epictetus, Discourses, Il, 18
8 If you would make anything a habit, do it; if you would not
make it a habit, do not do it, but accustom yourself to do
something else in place of it.
Epictetus, Discourses, Il, 18
9 Some habits are infused by God into man, for two reasons.
The first reason is because there are some habits by
which man is well disposed to an end which exceeds the
power of human nature, namely, the ultimate and perfect
happiness of man... And since habits mu$t be in
proportion with that to which man is disposed by them,
therefore it is necessary that those habits, which dispose
to this end, exceed the power of human nature. Hence
such habits can never be in man except by Divine
infusion, as is the case with all gratuitous virtues.
The other reason is, because God can produce the
effects of second causes without these second causes.....
Just as, therefore, sometimes, in order to show His power.
He causes health without its natural cause, but which
nature could have caused, so also, at times, for the
manifestation of His power, He infuses into man even
those habits which can be caused by a natural power.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 51, 4
10 A habit is like a second nature, and yet it falls short of it.
And so it is that while the nature of a thing cannot in any
way be taken away from a thing, a habit is removed,
though with difficulty.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 53, 1
11 The destruction or diminution of a habit results through
cessation from act, in so far, that is, as we cease from
exercising an act which overcame the causes that
destroyed or weakened that habit. For... habits are
destroyed or diminished directly through some contrary
agency. Consequently all habits that are gradually
undermined by contrary agencies which need to be
counteracted by acts proceeding from those habits are
diminished or even destroyed altogether by long
cessation from act, as is clearly seen in the case both of
science and of virtue. For it is evident that a habit ol
moral virtue makes a man ready to choose the mean in
deeds and passions. And when a man fails to make use of
his virtuous habit in order to moderate his own passions
or deeds, the necessary result is that many passions and
deeds occur outside the mode of virtue, by reason of the
inclination of the sensitive appetite and of other external
agencies. Therefore virtue is destroyed or lessened
through cessation from act.—The same applies to the
intellectual habits, which render man ready to judge
rightly of those things that are pictured by his
imagination. Hence when man ceases to make use of his
intellectual habits, strange fancies, sometimes in
opposition to them, arise in his imagination, so that
unless those fancies be, as it were, cut off or kept back by
frequent use of his intellectual habits, man becomes less
fit to judge rightly and sometimes is even wholly
disposed to the contrary’; and thus the intellectual habit
is diminished or even wholly destroyed by cessation from
act.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 53, 3
12 Virtue is a habit by which we work well.
Aquinas, Summa Thelogica, I-Il, 56 ,3
13 Habit is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She
establishes in us, little by little, stealthily, the foothold of
her authority; but having by this mild and humble
beginning settled and planted it with the help of time,
she soon uncovers to us a furious and tyrannical face
against which we no longer have the liberty of even
raising our eyes. We see her at every turn forcing the
rules of nature,
Montaigne, Essays, I, 23, Of Custom
14 | find that our greatest vices take shape from our
tenderest childhood, and that our most important
training is in the hands of nurses. It is a pastime for
mothers to see a child wring the neck of a chicken or
amuse itself by hurting a dog of a cat; and there are
fathers stupid enough to take it as a good omen of a
martial soul when they see a son unjustly striking a
peasant or a lackey who is not defending himself, and as
a charming prank when they see him trick his playmate
by a bit of malicious dishonesty and deceit. Nevertheless
these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny,
and treason; they sprout there, and afterward shoot up
lustily, and flourish mightily in the hands of habit. And it
iS a very dangerous educational policy to excuse our
children for these ugly inclinations on the grounds of
their tender age and the triviality of the subject. In the
first place, it is nature speaking, whose voice then is all
the purer and stronger because it is more tenuous.
Second, the ugliness of cheating does not depend on the
difference between crown pieces and pins: it depends on
itself. | find it much more just to come to this conclusion:
"Why would he not cheat for crowns, since he cheats for
pins?" than, as they do: "It is only for pins, he would
never do it for crowns." Children must be carefully taught
to hate vices for their own sake, and taught the natural
deformity of vices, so that they will shun them not only in
their actions but above all in their heart, so that the very
thought of them may be odious, whatever mask they
wear.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 23, Of Custom
15 Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 23, Of Custom
16 Habit is a second nature, and no less powerful. What my
habit lacks, | hold that | lack. And | would almost as soon
be deprived of life as have it reduced and cut down very
far from the state in which | have lived it for so long.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 10, Of Husbanding Your Will
17 Hamlet Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth cat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
o the next abstinence; the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 160
18 Hamlet. Has this fellow no feeling of his business,
that he sings at grave-making?
Horatio. Custom hath made it in him a property of
easiness.
Ham. 'Tis e'en so. The hand of little employment hath
the daintier sense.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, 1, 73
20 Custom is most perfect when it beginneth in young
years: this we call education; which is, in effect, but an
early custom.
Bacon, Of Custom and Education
20 Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our
lawful and faithful guides in most things that relate solely
to this life; and therefore, by the hourly necessity of
consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit
submission and habitual confidence. Every act of
compliance with their motions facilitates a second
compliance, every new step towards depravity is made
with less reluctance than the former, and thus the
descent to life merely sensual is perpetually accelerated.
Johnson, Rambler No. 7
21 Johnson observed, that the force of our early habits was
so great, that though reason approved, nay, though our
senses relished a different course, almost every man
returned to them. | do not believe there is any
observation upon human nature better founded than this;
and, in many cases, it is a very painful truth; for where
early habits have been mean and wretched, the joy and
elevation resulting from better modes of life must be
damped by the gloomy consciousness of being under an
almost inevitable doom to sink back into a situation
which we recollect with disgust. It surely may be
prevented, by constant attention and unremitting
exertion to establish contrary habits of superiour efficacy.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 18, 1775)
If habit is not a result of resolute and firm principles ever
more and more purified, then, like any jt Cr mechanism of
technically-practical reason, it is neither armed for all
eventualities nor adequately secured against changes
that may be brought about by new allurements.
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, II
23 The habitual practice of ethical living appear, asa
second nature which, put in the place of the initial, purely
natural will, is the soul of custom permeating it through
and through.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 151
24 Habit is everything. Hence to be calm and unruffled is
merely to anticipate a habit; and it is a great advantage
not to need to form it.
Schopenhauer, Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms
25 The force of character is cumulative. AH the foregone
days of virtue work their health into this.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
26 That which is the result of habit affords no presumption
of being intrinsically good.
Mill, Utilitarianism, 1V
27 Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by
any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, VI
28 Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, XV
29 One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme
actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones
to fear.
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 74
30 Habit is... the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most
precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all
within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of
fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone
prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from
being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It
keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through
the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails
the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm
through all the months of snow; it protects us from
invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone.
It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines
of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of
a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for
which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It
keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the
age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism
settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the
young doctor, on the young minister, on the young
counsellor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage
running through the character, the tricks of thought, the
prejudices, the ways of the “shop,” in a word, from which
the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-
sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the
whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the
world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the
character has .set like plaster, and will never soften
again.
William James, Psychology, IV
31 The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the
most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be
endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse
than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by
habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.
Could the young but realize how soon they will become
mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more
heed to their conduct while in the plastic stale. We are
spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be
undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves
its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in
Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh
dereliction by saying, "| won't count this lime!" Well! he
may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it;
but it is being counted none the less. Down among his
nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it,
registering and storing it up to be used against him when
the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in
strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has
its good side as well as its bad one. As we become
permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we
become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts
in the practical and scientific soheres, by so many
separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any
anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the
line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of
the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to
itself. He can with perfect certainty-count on waking up
some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent
ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have
singled out. Silently, between all the details of his
business, the power of judging in all that class of matter
will have built itself up within him as a possession that
will never pass away. Young people should know this truth
in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered
more discouragement and faintheartedness in youths
embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put
together.
William James, Psychology, IV
32 We may Say that an "instinctive" movement is a vital
movement performed by an animal the first time that it
finds itself in a novel situation; or more correctly, one
which it would perform if the situation were novel...
On the other hand, a movement is "learnt," or
embodies a "habit," if it is due to previous experience of
similar situations, and Is not what it would be if the
animal had had no such experience.
Russell, The Analysis of Mind, II
33 The basic characteristic of habit is that every- experience
enacted and undergone modifies the one who acts and
undergoes, while this modification affects, whether we
wish it or not, the quality of subsequent experiences. For
it is a Somewhat different person who enters into them.
The principle of habit so understood obviously goes
deeper than the ordinary- conception of a habit as a more
or less fixed w,ay of doing things, although it includes the
latter as one of its special cases. It covers the formation of
attitudes, attitudes that are emotional and intellectual; it
covers our basic sensitivities and ways of meeting and
responding to all the conditions which we meet in living.
Dewey, Experience and Education, III
34 It is a significant fact that in order to appreciate the
peculiar place of habit in activity we have to betake
ourselves to had habits, foolish idling, gambling,
addiction to liquor and drugs. When we think of such
habits, the union of habit with desire and with propulsive
power is forced upon us. When we think of habits in terms
of walking, playing a musical instrument, typewriting, we
are much given to thinking of habits as technical abilities
existing apart from our likings and as lacking in urgent
impulsion. We think of them as passive tools waiting to
be called into action from without. A bad habit suggests
an inherent tendency to action and also a hold, command
over us. It makes us do things we are ashamed of, things
which we tell ourselves we prefer not to do. It overrides
our formal resolutions, our conscious decisions. When we
are honest with ourselves we acknowledge that a habit
has this power because it is so intimately a part of
ourselves. It has a hold upon us because we are the habit.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, 1, 2
8.3 The Arts of Teaching and Learning
The Greek sophists, we are told, were the first professional
teachers, who performed their services for pay. In replying to
his accusers at his trial, Socrates called attention to the fact
that he never took money for the kind of teaching he did. Yet
many of the passages quoted here and in other sections
dialogues of Plato not only exhibit Socrates as an
extraordinary teacher, but also expound his conception of
teaching it-self. Perhaps the most illuminating passage on
the subject is the one in which Socrates compares himself to
a midwife who does nothing more than help the mother give
birth to offspring. So the teacher helps anyone wishing to
learn give birth to ideas. The primary activity is in the
learner, not the teacher, as it is in the mother, not the mid-
wife.
There are other passages in which education and
medicine, or teaching and healing, are compared. They are
Said to be alike in being arts that cooperate with living
nature rather than make products by transforming inert
matter. Human beings have a natural aptitude for acquiring
knowledge and health without the help of teachers and
physicians, though those who have skill in teaching or
healing can facilitate the natural process.
One of the puzzling questions touched on by several of
the writers quoted here is whether anything that one person
can teach another must itself have been learned by
someone without the aid of a teacher. From an affirmative
answer spring controlling insights about the institutions,
methods, and resources of education.
Another puzzling question is whether, or to what extent,
coercion or punishment should be employed by the teacher
in instructing his pupils. On the one hand, it is asserted that
things learned under duress are not really learned, or at
least not retained. On the other hand, it is pointed out that
some kind of discipline must be maintained by the teacher if
he is to do his job effectively.
Finally, on the side of learning itself, there is the
fundamental distinction proposed by Aquinas—that between
learning by instruction (i.e., with the aid of teachers) and
learning by discovery (i.e., without the aid of teachers). But
if, as other passages in this section suggest, the teacher is
always only an instrumental, and never the principal, cause
of learning, then perhaps all genuine learning is learning by
discovery, involving intense activity on the part of the
learner, whether such discovery is accomplished with the
instrumentality of teachers or not.
1 Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of
medicine, ought to be possessed of the following
advantages: a natural disposition; instruction; a
favorable position for the study; early tuition; love of
labor; leisure. First of all, a natural talent is required; for,
when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but
when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent,
instruction in the art takes place, which the student must
try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an
early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He
must also bring to the task a love of labor and
perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may
bring forth proper and abundant fruits.
Hippocrates, The Law, 2
2 Instruction ... is like the culture of the productions of the
earth. For our natural disposition is, as it were, the soil;
the tenets of our teacher are, as it were, the seed;
instruction in youth is like the planting of the seed in the
ground at the proper season; the place where the
instruction is communicated is like the food imparted to
vegetables by the atmosphere; diligent study is like the
cultivation of the fields; and it is time which imparts
strength to all things and brings them to maturity.
Hippocrates, The Law, 3
3 Socrates. We are enquiring, which of us is skilful or
successful in the treatment of the soul, and which of us
has had good teachers?
Laches. Well but, Socrates; did you never observe that
some persons, who have had no teachers, are more skilful
than those who have, in some things?
Soc. Yes, Laches, | have observed that; but you would
not be very willing to trust them if they only professed to
be masters of their art, unless they could show some
proof of their skill or excellence in one or more works.
La. That is true.
Soc. And therefore, Laches and Nicias, as Lysimachus
and Melesias, in their anxiety to improve the minds of
their sons, have asked our advice about them, we too
should tell them who our teachers were, if we say that we
have had any, and prove them to be in the first place
men of merit and experienced trainers of the minds of
youth and also to have been really our teachers. Or if any
of us says that he has no teacher, but that he has works
of his own to show; then he should point out to them
what Athenians or strangers, bond or free, he is generally
acknowledged to have improved. But if he can show
neither teachers nor works, then he should tell them to
look out for others; and not run the risk of spoiling the
children of friends, and thereby incurring the most
formidable accusation which can be brought against any
one by those nearest to him. As for myself, ... | am the
first to confess that | have never had a teacher of the art
of virtue; although | have always from my earliest youth
desired to have one. But | am too poor to give money to
the Sophists, who are the only professors of moral
improvement; and to this day | have never been able to
discover the art myself, though | should not be surprised
if Nicias or Laches may have discovered or learned it; for
they are far wealthier than | am, and may therefore have
learnt of others. And they are older too; so that they have
had more time to make the discovery. And | really believe
that they are able to educate a man; for unless they had
been confident in their own knowledge, they would never
have spoken thus decidedly of the pursuits which are
advantageous or hurtful to a young man.
Plato, Laches, 185B
4 Socrates. Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals
wholesale or retail in the food of the soul? To me that
appears to be his nature.
Hippocrates. And what, Socrates, is the food of the
soul?
Surely,... knowledge is the food of the soul-and we
must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not
deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers
wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they
praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing
what are really beneficial or hurtful; neither do their
customers know, with the exception of any trainer or
physician who may happen to buy of them. In like
manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge,
and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them
to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all
alike; though | should not wonder, O my friend, if many of
them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul;
and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys
of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If,
therefore, you have understanding of what is good and
evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras or of
any one; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not
hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For
there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in
buying meat and drink: the one you purchase of the
wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other
vessels, and before you receive them into the body as
food, you may deposit them at home and cal! in any
experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten
or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when; and
then the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But
you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them
away in another vessel; when you Nave paid for them you
must receive them into the soul and go your way, either
greatly harmed or greatly benefited; and therefore we
should deliberate and take counsel with our elders; for we
are still young—too young to determine such a matter.
Plato, Protagoras, 313B
5 Meno. How will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you
do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of
enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever
know that this is the thing which you did not know?
Socrates. | Know, Meno, what you mean; but just see
what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue
that a man cannot enquire either about that which he
knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he
knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot;
for he does not know the very subject about which he is
to enquire.
Men. Well, Socrates, and is not the argument sound?
Soc. | think not.
Men. Why not?
Soc. | will tell you why: | have heard from certain wise
men and women who spoke of things divine that—
Men. What did they say?
Soc. They spoke of a glorious truth, as 1 conceive.
Men. What was it? and who were they?
Soc. Some of them were priests and priestesses, who
had studied how they might be able to give a reason of
their profession: there have been poets also, who spoke
of these things by inspiration, like Pindar, and many
others who were inspired. And they say .., that the soul
of man is immortal, and at one time has an end, which is
termed dying, and at another time is born again, but is
never destroyed.... The soul, then, as being immortal, and
having been born again many times, and having seen all
things that exist, whether in this world or in the world
below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder
that she should be able to call to remembrance all that
she ever knc%v about virtue, and about everything; for
as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things,
there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say
learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man
is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all
learning is but recollection. And therefore we ought not to
listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility
of enquiry: for it will make us idle, and is sweet only to
the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active
and inquisitive.
Plato, Meno, 80B
6 Soaates. As little foundation is there for the report that |
am a teacher, and take money; this accusation has no
more truth in it than the other. Although, if a man were
really able to instruct mankind, to receive money for
giving instruction would, in my opinion, be an honour to
him.
Plato, Apology, 19B
7 Socrales. the power and capacity of learning exists in the
soul already; and.., just as the eye was unable to turn
from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the
instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of
the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into
that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of
being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other
words, of the good.
Plato, Republic, Vil, 518B
8 Socrates. Such are the midwives, whose task is a very
important one, but not so important as mine; for women
do not bring into the world at one time real children, and
at another time counterfeits which are with difficulty
distinguished from them; If they did, then the
discernment of the true and false birth would be the
crowning achievement of the art of midwifery—you would
think so?
Theaetetus. Indeed | should.
Soc. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like
theirs; but differs, in that | attend men and not women,
and | look after their souls when they are in labour, and
not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in
thoroughly examining whether the thought which the
mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol ora
noble and true birth. And like the midwives, | am barren,
and the reproach which is often made against me, that |
ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer
them myself, is very just—the reason is, that the god
compels me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to
bring forth. And therefore | am not myself at all wise, nor
have | anything to show which is the invention or birth of
my own soul, but those who converse with me profit.
Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards,
as Our acquaintance ripens, if the god Is gracious to
them, they all make astonishing progress; and this in the
opinion of others as well as in their own. It is quite clear
that they never learned anything from me; the many fine
discoveries to which they cling are of their own making.
But to me and the god they owe their delivery. And the
proof of my words is, that many of them in their
ignorance, either in their self-conceit despising me, or
falling under the influence of others, have gone away too
soon; and have not only lost the children of whom | had
previously delivered them by an ill bringing up, but have
stifled whatever else they had in them by evil
communications, being fonder of lies and shams than of
the truth; and they have at last ended by seeing
themselves, as others see them, to be great fools.
Plato, Theaetetus, 150A
9 | imagine there is nothing to prevent a man in one sense
knowing what he is learning, in another not knowing it.
The strange thing would be, not if in some sense he knew
what he war, learning, but if he were to know it in that
precise sense and manner in which he was learning it.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71b6
10 In general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the
man who does not know, that the former can teach, and
therefore we think art more truly knowledge than
experience is; for artists can teach, and men of mere
experience cannot.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b7
11 Learning proceeds for all in this way—through that which
is less knowable by nature to that which is more
knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from
what is good for each and make what is without
qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start
from what is more kKnowable to oneself and make what is
knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is
knowable and primary for particular sets of people is
often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or
nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which
is barely kKnowable but knowable to oneself, and try to
know what is kKnowable without qualification, passing, as
has been said, by way of those very things which one
does know.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1029b4
12 The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will
make us think and learn all the more.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1153a22
13 The authority wielded by teachers is often a real
hindrance to those who want to learn. Students fail to use
their own judgment and rely on the opinions of their
master to settle issues.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 5
14 Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth
them, | will liken him unto a wise man, which built his
house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for
it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man,
which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and
great was the fall of it.
And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these
sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
For he taught them as one having authority, and not
as the scribes.
Matthew 7:24—29
15 In education, it is most important to lake care that the
child does not come to despise working at lessons for
which he has as yet developed no real appreciation. For
then he will continue to dread them well beyond the
years of childhood. Make his lessons an amusement for
him. Question him on them and praise him for his work.
Let him never be made to feel that he does not Know a
thing. Sometimes, if he is unwilling to learn, teach
someone else first, and he may become envious. Let him
be occasionally competitive and allow him to feel
successful in his attainments. Appeal to his abilities by
offering rewards that are attractive to him.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, I, 1
16 Would that we ourselves did not corrupt the morals of our
children. We enervate their very infancy with luxuries.
That delicacy of education which we call fondness,
weakens all their powers, both of body and mind. What
luxury will he not covet in his manhood, who has crawled
about on purple as a child. He cannot yet articulate his
first words, when he can already distinguish scarlet and
wants his purple finery. we prompt the palate of the child
to develop fine tastes, before we teach him to speak. Our
children grow up riding in sedan chairs. If they touch the
ground, they cling to the hands of attendants who
Support them on each side. we are delighted if they utter
something immodest, Expressions which would not even
be tolerated from the effeminate youths of Alexandria, we
hear from our own young people with a smile and a kiss.
And this is hardly amazing, for we are the ones who have
taught them. They have heard such language from
ourselves. They see our mistresses and our male objects
of affection. Every banquet hall rings with impure songs.
Things that are shameful to talk about are on public
display. From such practices spring habit, and out of habit
character is formed. The unfortunate children learn these
vices before they know that they are vices. Thus they are
made effeminate and luxury-loving. They do not imbibe
immorality from the schools; they carry it to school with
them.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, I, 2
17 There is nothing to prevent a "one pupil-one teacher"
relationship from being put into practice in the classroom.
But even if this situation cannot be developed in school, |
still prefer the daylight of a good school to the dark
solitude of a private education. Every eminent teacher
delights in having a large number of pupils, and he thinks
himself worthy of an even larger hearing than he gels.
But inferior teachers are conscious of their lack of ability
and do not hesitate to fasten themselves on single pupils
if they can get them. But they amount to nothing more
than pedant-babysitters.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, I, 2
18 A good schoolmaster should not encumber himself with a
greater number of pupils than he can adequately handle.
we also feel it vitally important that the teacher be a real
friend to his pupils, so that he will turn his task from a
performance of duty into a labor of love.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, I, 2
19 Narrow-necked vessels reject a great deal of any liquid
that is poured over them, but are filled up with whatever
is gradually poured into them. Likewise, it is for us to
ascertain how much the minds of boys can receive at any
one time. What is too much for their minds to grasp will
not enter at all, because their minds are not sufficiently
expanded to accept it. It is a real advantage for any boy
to have classmates whom he may imitate, and eventually
Surpass. By this means he will gradually come to hope to
reach higher excellence.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1, 2
20 | do not believe that boys should have to suffer corporal
punishment, even though it has long been an accepted
custom. First of all, it is a disgrace and a punishment fit
for slaves, and (if you can imagine it being inflicted at a
later age) an affront. Secondly, if a boy’s disposition is so
abject that he cannot be corrected by reproof, he is only
likely to be hardened, as a slave would be, by a whipping.
And lastly, if the teacher really knows how to be a
disciplinarian, there will not be the least need of any such
chastisement. There currently seems to be so much
negligence among teachers, that boys are not obliged to
do what is right, yet they are punished whenever they
have not done it. But consider, after you have coerced a
boy with punishment, how will you treat him when he has
become a young man to whom a threat of such
punishment is meaningless, but whose studies are even
more difficult? On top of all this, you realize that many
unpleasant things often happen to boys as they are
punished, things which they later recall with shame. Such
shame depresses and enervates the mind, makes them
shun other people, and feel constantly uneasy. Moreover,
if there has been too little care taken in choosing
teachers and tutors of reputable character, | am ashamed
to mention how scandalously unworthy men may abuse
their privilege of inflicting punishment, as well as what
opportunities may be offered to others in the terrors of
unhappy children.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, |, 3
23 Looking upon the instruction and tuition of his youth to
be of greater difficulty and importance than to be wholly
trusted to the ordinary masters in music and poetry, and
the common school subjects ... he [Philip] sent for
Aristotle, the most learned and most celebrated
philosopher of his time, and rewarded him with a
munificence proportionable to and becoming the care he
took to instruct his son. For he repeopled his native city
Stagira, which he had caused to be demolished a little
before, and restored all the citizens, who were in exile or
Slavery, to their habitations.
As a place for the pursuit of their studies and exercise,
he assigned the temple of the Nymphs, near Mieza,
where, to this very day, they show you Aristotle’s stone
seats, and the shady walks which he was wont to
frequent.
It would appear that Alexander received from him not
only his doctrines of morals and of politics, but also
something of those more abstruse and profound theories
which these philosophers, by the very names they gave
them, professed to reserve for oral communications to the
initiated, and did not allow many to become acquainted
with. ...
Doubtless also it was to Aristotle that he owed the
inclination he had, not to the theory only, but likewise to
the practice of the art of medicine. For when any of his
friends were sick, he would often prescribe them their
course of diet, and medicines proper to their disease, as
we may find in his epistles. He was naturally a great lover
of all kin(i of learning and reading; and Onesicritus
informs us that he constantly laid Homer's //iad according
to the copy corrected by Aristotle, called the casket copy,
with his dagger under his pillow, declaring that he
esteemed it a perfect portable treasure of all military
virtue and knowledge....
For a while he loved and cherished Aristotle no less, as
he was wont to say himself, than if he had been his
father, giving this reason for it, that as he had received
life from the one, so the other had taught him to live well.
But afterwards, upon some mistrust of him, yet not so
great as to make him do him any hurt, his familiarity and
friendly kindness to him abated so much of its former
force and affectionateness, as to make it evident he was
alienated from him. However, his violent thirst after and
passion for learning, which were once implanted, still
grew up with him, and never decayed.
Plutarch, Alexander
22 The teachers we select for our children must live lives
immune to scandal, be irreproachable in conduct, and
conversant with respectable society. The fountain and
root of gentlemanliness is the acquisition of traditional
education.
Plutarch, Education of Children
23 The memorizing aspect of learning contributes no small
Share not only to education but also to the practical
conduct of life, for the memory of past deeds provides
examples in taking good counsel for the future.
Plutarch, Education of Children
24 Each schoolboy, in turn, gets up, and, standing, delivers
What he’s just read sitting down, in the most monotonous
singsong.
This is the kind of rehash that kills unfortunate masters.
Juvenal, Satire VII
25 It is no easy task to keep your eye on the students,
Watching the hands and the eyes of the impudent
mischievous devils.
"That’s your job," they say, and your pay, at the end of a
twelve-month.
Equals a jockey’s fee if he’s ridden only one winner.
Juvenal, Satire VII
26 Not even wisdom perhaps is enough to enable a man to
take care of youths: a man must have also a certain
readiness and fitness for this purpose, and a certain
quality of body, and above all things he must have God
to advise him to occupy this office, as God advised
Socrates to occupy the place of one who confutes error,
Diogenes the office of royalty and reproof, and the office
of teaching precepts.
Epictetus, Discourses, III, 21
27 He whose purpose is to know anything better than the
multitude do must far surpass all others both as regards
his nature and his early training. And when he reaches
early adolescence he must become possessed with an
ardent love for truth, like one inspired; neither day nor
night may he cease to urge and strain himself in order to
learn thoroughly all that has been said by the most
illustrious of the Ancients. And when he has learnt this,
then for a prolonged period he must test and prove it,
observing what part of it is in agreement, and what in
disagreement with obvious fact; thus he will choose this
and turn away from that,
Galen, Natural Faculties, I/l, 10
28 | disliked learning and hated to be forced to it. But | was
forced to it, so that good was done to me though it was
not my doing. Short of being driven to it, | certainly
would not have learned. But no one does well against his
will, even if the thing he does is a good thing to do.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 12
29 The drudgery of learning a foreign language sprinkled
bitterness over all the sweetness of the Greek tales. | did
not know a word of the language: and | was driven with
threats and savage punishments to learn. There had been
a time of infancy when | knew no Latin either. Yet | learnt
it without threat or punishment merely by keeping my
eyes and ears open, amidst the Batterings of nurses and
the jesting and pleased laughter of elders leading me on,
| learnt it without the painful pressure of compulsion, by
the sole pressure of my own desire to express what was in
my mind, which would have been impossible unless | had
learnt words: and | learnt them not through people
teaching me but simply through people speaking: to
whom | was striving to utter my own feelings. All this
goes to prove That free curiosity is of more value in
learning than harsh discipline.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 14
30 It is the duty ... of the interpreter and teacher of Holy
Scripture, the defender of the true faith and the opponent
of error, both to teach what is right and to refute what is
wrong, and in the performance of this task to conciliate
the hostile, to rouse the careless, and to tell the ignorant
both what is occurring at present and what is probable in
the future. But once that his hearers are friendly,
attentive, and ready to learn, whether he has found them
so, or has himself made them so, the remaining objects
are to be carried out in whatever way the case requires. If
the hearers need teaching, the matter treated of must be
made fully known by means of narrative. On the other
hand, to clear up points that are doubtful requires
reasoning and the exhibition of proofs. If, however, the
hearers require to be roused rather than instructed, in
order that they may be diligent to do what they already
know, and to bring their feelings into harmony with the
truths they admit greater vigour of speech is needed.
Here entreaties and reproaches, exhortations and
upbraidings and all the other means of rousing the
emotions, are necessary.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, lV 4
31 To strive about words is not to be careful about the way
to overcome error by truth, but to be anxious that your
mode of expression should be preferred to that of
another. The man who does not strive about words,
whether he speak quietly, temperately, or vehemently,
uses words with no other purpose than to make the truth
plain, pleasing, and effective.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, IV, 28
32 Do teachers profess that it is their thoughts which are
perceived and grasped by the students, and not the
sciences themselves which they convey through
Speaking? For who is so stupidly curious as to send his
son to school in order that he may learn what the teacher
thinks? But all those sciences which they profess to
teach, and the science of virtue itself and wisdom,
teachers explain through words. Then those who are
called pupils consider within themselves whether what
has been explained has been said truly; looking of course
to that interior truth, according to the measure of which
each is able. Thus they learn, and when the interior truth
makes known to them that true things have been said,
they applaud, but without knowing that instead of
applauding teachers they are applauding learners, if
indeed their teachers know what they are saying. But
men are mistaken, so that they call those teachers who
are not, merely because for the most part there is no
delay between the time of speaking and the time of
cognition. And since after the speaker has reminded
them, the pupils quickly learn within, they think that they
have been taught outwardly by him who prompts them.
Augustine, On the Teacher, XIV
33 Progress in knowledge occurs in two ways. First, on the
part of the teacher, be he one or many, who makes
progress in knowledge as time goes on. And this is the
kind of progress that takes place in sciences devised by
man. Secondly, on the part of the learner; thus the
master, who has perfect knowledge of the art, does not
deliver it all at once to his disciple from the very outset,
for he would not be able to take it all in, but he
condescends to the disciple’s capacity and instructs him
little by little.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 1, 7
34 Since there is a twofold way of acquiring knowledge—by
discovery and by being taught—the way of discovery is
the higher, and the way of being taught is secondary.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il, 9, 4
35 Certain seeds of knowledge pre-exist in us, namely, the
first concepts of understanding, which by the light of the
agent intellect are immediately known through the
species abstracted from sensible things. These are either
complex, as axioms, or simple, as the notions of being, of
the one, and so on, which the understanding grasps
immediately. In these general principles, however, all the
consequences are included as in certain seminal
principles. When, therefore, the mind is led from these
general notions to actual knowledge of the particular
things, which it knew previously in general and, as it
were, potentially, then one is said to acquire knowledge.
We must bear in mind, nevertheless, that in natural
things something can pre-exist in potency in two ways. In
one, it is in an active and completed potency, as when an
intrinsic principle has sufficient power to flow into perfect
act. Healing is an obvious example of this, for the sick
person is restored to health by the natural power within
him. The other appears in a passive potency, as happens
when the internal principle does not have sufficient
power to bring it into act. This is clear when air becomes
fire, for this cannot result from any power existing in the
air.
Therefore, when something pre-exists in active
completed potency, the external agent acts only by
helping the internal agent and providing it with the
means by which it can enter into act. Thus, in healing the
doctor assists nature, which is the principal agent, by
strengthening nature and prescribing medicines, which
nature uses as instruments for healing. On the other
hand, when something pre-exists only in passive potency,
then it is the external agent which is the principal cause
of the transition from potency to act. Thus, fire makes
actual fire of air, which is potentially fire.
Knowledge, therefore, pre-exists in the learner
potentially, not, however, in the purely passive, but in the
active, sense. Otherwise, man would not be able to
acquire knowledge independently. Therefore, as there are
two ways of being cured, that is, either through the
activity of unaided nature or by nature with the aid of
medicine, so also there are two ways of acquiring
knowledge. In one way, natural reason by itself reaches
knowledge of unknown things, and this way is called
discovery; in the other way, when someone else aids the
learner’s natural reason, and this is called /earning by
instruction.
Aquinas, On Truth, XI, 1
36 We do not say that a teacher communicates knowledge
to the pupil, as though the knowledge which is in the
teacher is numerically the same as that which arises in
the pupil. It is rather that the knowledge which arises in
the pupil through teaching is similar to that which is in
the teacher.
Aquinas, On Truth, XI, 1
37 A doctor heals in so far as he has health, not actually, but
in the knowledge of his art. But the teacher teaches in so
far as he has knowledge actually. Hence, he who does not
have health actually can cause health in himself because
he has health in the knowledge of his art. However, it is
impossible for one actually to have knowledge and not to
have it, in such a way that he could teach himself.
Aquinas, On Truth, XI, 2
38 Pantagruel. Nature, | am persuaded, did not without a
cause frame our ears open, putting thereto no gate at all,
nor shutting them up with any manner of inclosures, as
she hath done upon the tongue, the eyes, and other such
out-jetting parts of the body. The cause as | imagine, is, to
the end that every day and every night, and that
continually, we may be ready to hear, and by a perpetual
hearing apt to learn. For, of all the senses, it is the fittest
for the reception of the knowledge of arts, sciences, and
disciplines.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 16
39 Our tutors never stop bawling into our ears, as though
they were pouring water into a funnel; and our task is
only to repeat what has been told us. | should like the
tutor to correct this practice, and right from the start,
according to the capacity of the mind he has in hand, to
begin putting it through its paces, making it taste things,
choose them, and discern them by itself; sometimes
clearing the way for him, sometimes letting him clear his
own way. | don’t want him to think and talk alone, | want
him to listen to his pupil speaking in his turn. Socrates,
and later Arcesilaus, first had their disciples speak, and
then they spoke to them. ... It is good that he should have
his pupil trot before him, to judge the child’s pace and
how much he must stoop to match his strength. For lack
of this proportion we spoil everything; and to be able to
hit it right and to go along in it evenly is one of the
hardest tasks that | know; it is the achievement of a lofty
and very strong soul to know how to come down to a
childish gait and guide it.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
40 Let the tutor make his charge pass everything through a
sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority
and trust.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
41 To know by heart is not to know; it is to retain what we
have given our memory to keep. What we know rightly
we dispose of, without looking at the model, without
turning our eyes toward our book. Sad competence, a
purely bookish competence!
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
42 | condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul
which is being trained for honor and liberty. There is a
sort of servility about rigor and constraint; and | hold that
what cannot be done by reason, and by wisdom and tact,
is never done by force.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
43 There is still more intelligence needed to teach others
than to be taught.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
44 The study of books is a languishing and feeble activity
that gives no heat, whereas discussion teaches and
exercises us at the same time.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 8, Of the Art of Discussion
45 As regards the academies, they are established in order
to regulate the studies of the pupils and are concerned
not to have the program of teaching change very often:
in such places, because it is a question of the progress of
the students, it frequently happens that the things which
have to be chosen are not those which are most true but
those which are most easy.
Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, IV, To the
Reader
46 Portia. |t is a good divine that follows his own
instructions: | can easier teach twenty what were good to
be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own
teaching.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, ti, 15
47 Disciples do owe unto masters only a temporary belief
and a suspension of their own judgement till they be fully
instructed, and not an absolute resignation or perpetual
captivity.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, IV, 12
48 There is no defect in the faculties intellectual, but
seemeth to have a proper cure contained in some
studies: as, for example, if a child be bird-wilted, that is,
hath not the faculty of attention, the mathematics giveth
a remedy thereunto; for in them, if the wit be caught
away but a moment, one is new to begin. And as sciences
have a propriety towards faculties for cure and help, so
faculties or powers have a sympathy towards sciences for
excellency or speedy profiting: and therefore it is an
inquiry of great wisdom, what kinds of wits and natures
are most apt and proper for what sciences.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XIX, 2
49 Practise all things chiefly at two several times the one
when the mind is best disposed, the other when it is
worst disposed; that by the one you may gain a great
step, by the other you may work out the knots and stonds
of the mind, and make the middle times the more easy
and pleasant.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XXII, 10
50 But all animals which along with memory have the
faculty of hearing are susceptible of education. Other
creatures, again, live possessed of fancy and memory,
but they have little store of experience; the human kind,
however, have both art and reasoning, Now experience
comes to man through memory; for many memories of
the same thing have the force of a single experience: so
that experience appears to be almost identical with
certain kinds of art and science; and, indeed, men
acquire both art and science by experience: for
experience, as Polus rightly remarks, begets art,
inexperience is waited on by accident.
By this he plainly tells us that no one can truly be
entitled discreet or well-informed, who does not of his
own experience, i.e., from repeated memory, frequent
perception by sense, and diligent observation, know that
a thing is so in fact. Without these, indeed, we only
imagine or believe, and such knowledge is rather to be
accounted as belonging to others than to us. The method
of investigating truth commonly pursued at this time,
therefore, is to be held as erroneous and almost foolish, in
which so many inquire what others have said, and omit to
ask whether the things themselves be actually so or not;
and single universal conclusions being deduced from
several premises, and analogies being thence shaped
out, we have frequently mere verisimilitudes handed
down to us instead of positive truths.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, Intro.
51 When we wish to correct with advantage and to show
another that he errs, we must notice from what side he
views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and
admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on
which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that
he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all
sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything;
but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps
arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see
everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side
he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are
always true.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 9
52 People are generally better persuaded by the reasons
which they have themselves discovered than by those
which have come into the mind of others.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 10
53 Discerning minds know how much difference there is
between two similar remarks, depending upon the place
and accompanying circumstances. Will anyone really
believe that two persons who have read and learned by
heart the same book know it equally well, if one
understands it in such a way that he knows all its
principles, the force of its conclusions, the replies to the
objections that can be made, and the entire organization
of the work, whereas in the other the book is dead words
and seeds which, though the same as those that
produced such fertile trees, have remained dry and
unfruitful in the sterile mind which received them in
vain?
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
54 The usual lazy and short way by chastisement and the
rod, which is the only instrument of government that
tutors generally know or ever think of, is the most unfit of
any to be used in education.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 47
55 Esteem and disgrace are, of all others, the most powerful
incentives to the mind, when once it is brought to relish
them,. If you can once get into children a love of credit,
and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have
put into 'em the true principle, which will constantly work
and incline them to the right.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 56
56 Children are not to be taught by rules which will be
always slipping out of their memories. What you think
necessary for them to do, settle in them by an
indispensable practice, as often as the occasion returns;
and if it be possible, make occasions. This will beget
habits in them which being once established, operate of
themselves easily and naturally, without the assistance of
the memory.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 66
57 God has stamped certain characters upon men's minds,
which like their shapes, may perhaps be a little mended,
but can hardly be totally altered and transformed into the
contrary. He therefore that is about children should well
study their natures and aptitudes, and see by often trials
what turn they easily take, and what becomes them;
observe what their native stock is, how it may be
improved, and what it is fit for: he should consider what
they want, whether they be capable of having it wrought
into them by industry, and incorporated there by
practice; and whether it be worth while to endeavor it.
For in many cases, all that we can do, or should aim at, is
to make the best of what nature has given, to prevent the
vices and faults to which such a constitution is most
inclined, and give it all the advantages it is capable of.
Everyone's natural genius should be carried as far as it
could; but to attempt the putting another upon him will
be but labor in vain; and what is so plastered on will at
best sit but untowardly, and have always hanging to it
the ungracefulness of constraint and affectation.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 66
58 Of all the ways whereby children are to be instructed,
and their manners formed, the plainest, easiest, and most
efficacious, is to set before their eyes the examples of
those things you would have them do or avoid; which,
when they are pointed out to them, in the practice of
persons within their knowledge, with some reflections on
their beauty and unbecomingness, are of more force to
draw or deter their imitation than any discourses which
can be made to them. Virtues and vices can by no words
be so plainly set before their understandings as the
actions of other men will show them, when you direct
their observation, and bid them view this or that good or
bad quality in their practice. And the beauty or
uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding,
will be better learnt and make deeper impressions on
them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or
instructions can be given about them.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 82
59 As the father’s example must teach the child respect for
his tutor, so the tutor’s example must lead the child into
those actions he would have him do. His practice must by
no means cross his precepts, unless he intend to set him
wrong. It will be to no purpose for the tutor to talk of the
restraint of the passions whilst any of his own are let
loose; and he will in vain endeavor to reform any vice or
indecency in his pupil which he allows in himself.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 89
60 In all the whole business of education, there is nothing
like to be less hearkened to, or harder to be well
observed, than what | am now going to Say; and that is,
that children should, from their first beginning to talk,
have some discreet, sober, nay, wise person about them,
whose care it should be to fashion them aright, and keep
them from all ill, especially the infection of bad company,
| think this province requires great sobriety, temperance,
tenderness, diligence, and discretion; qualities hardly to
be found united in persons that are to be had for ordinary
Salaries, nor easily to be found anywhere.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 90
61 The great skill of a teacher is to get and keep the
attention of his scholar; whilst he has that, he is sure to
advance as fast as the learner’s abilities will carry him;
and without that, all his bustle and pother will be to little
or no purpose. To attain this, he should make the child
comprehend, as much as may be, the usefulness of what
he teaches him, and let him see, by what he has learned,
that he can do something which he could not do before;
something which gives him some power and real
advantage above others who are ignorant of it. To this he
should add sweetness in all his instructions, and by a
certain tenderness in his whole carriage make the child
sensible that he loves him and designs nothing but his
good, the only way to beget love in the child, which will
make him hearken to his lessons, and relish what he
teaches him.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 167
62 There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my
father, which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s
soul; and | maintain it, added he, that a man of sense
does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or take
it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which
discovers him.
It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the
governor | make choice of shall neither lisp, or squint, or
wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;—or bite his
Ups, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or pick
it, or blow it with his fingers.
He shall neither walk fast,—or slow, or fold his arms,—
for that is laziness;—or hang them down,—for that is
folly; or hide them in his pocket, for that is nonsense.—
He shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle,—or bite, or
cut his nails, or hawk, or spit, or snift, or drum with his
feet or fingers in company;—nor (according to Erasmus)
Shall he speak to any one in making water,—nor shall he
point to carrion or excrement.-- Now this is all nonsense
again, quoth my uncle Toby to himself.--
| will have him, continued my father, cheerful, facete,
jovial; at the same time, prudent, attentive to business,
vigilant, acute, argute, inventive, quick in resolving
doubts and speculative questions;—he shall be wise, and
judicious, and learned:—And why not humble, and
moderate, and gentle-tempered, and good? said Yorick:—
And why not, cried my uncle Toby, free, and generous,
and bountiful, and brave? He shall, my dear Toby, replied
my father, getting up and shaking him by his hand.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, VI, 5
63 Contrary to the received opinion, a child’s tutor should be
young, as young indeed as a man may well be who is also
wise. Were it possible, he should become a child himself,
that he may be the companion of his pupil and win his
confidence by sharing his games.
Rousseau, Emile, |
64 It is very strange that ever since people began to think
about education they should have hit upon no other way
of guiding children than emulation, jealousy, envy,
vanity, greediness, base cowardice, all the most
dangerous passions, passions ever ready to ferment, ever
prepared to corrupt the soul even before the body is full-
grown. With every piece of precocious instruction which
you try to force into their minds you plant a vice in the
depths of their hearts; foolish teachers think they are
doing wonders when they are making their scholars
wicked in order to teach them what goodness is, and then
they tell us seriously, "Such is man." Yes, such is man, as
you have made him.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
65 In the country of the blind the one-eyed are kings;
| passed for a good master, since all the rest were bad.
Rousseau, Confessions, V
66 Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of
enforcing instructions by means of the rod. "I would
rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terrour to
all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus,
or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or
sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in
itself, A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his
task, and there’s an end on’t; whereas, by exciting
emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the
foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and
sisters hate each other."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1719)
67 Johnson. "In my early years | read very hard. It is a sad
reflection, but a true one, that | Knew almost as much at
eighteen as | do now. My judgement, to be sure, was not
so good; but | had all the facts. | remember very well,
when | was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me,
‘Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a
stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you
will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome
task.’ "
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 21,1763)
68 We talked of the education of children; and | asked him
what he thought was best to teach them first. /johnson.
"Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more
than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir,
you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but
in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are
considering which of two things you should teach your
child first, another boy has learnt them both."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 26,1763)
69 Johnson. The government of a schoolmaster is somewhat
of the nature of military government; that is to say, it
must be arbitrary, it must be exercised by the will of one
man, according to particular circumstances. You must
shew some learning upon this occasion. You must shew,
that a schoolmaster has a prescriptive right to beat; and
that an action of assault and battery cannot be admitted
against him, unless there is some great excess, some
barbarity. This man has maimed none of his boys. They
are all left with the full exercise of their corporeal
faculties. In our schools in England, many boys have
been maimed; yet | never heard of an action against a
schoolmaster on that account. Puffendorf, | think,
maintains the right of a schoolmaster to beat his scholars.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 23, 1772)
70 On Saturday, April 11, he [lohnson] appointed me to
come to him in the evening, when he should be at leisure
to give me some assistance for the defence of Hastie, the
schoolmaster of Campbell-town, for whom | was to appear
in the House of Lords. When | came, | found him unwilling
to exert himself. | pressed him to write down his thoughts
upon the subject. He said, "There’s no occasion for my
writing. I'll talk to you." He was, however, at last
prevailed on to dictate to me, while | wrote as follows:
"The charge is, that he has used immoderate and cruel
correction. Correction, in itself, is not cruel; children,
being not reasonable, can be governed only by fear. To
impress this fear, is therefore one of the first duties of
those who have the care of children. It is the duty of a
parent; and has never been thought inconsistent with
parental tenderness. It is the duty of a master, who is in
his highest exaltation when he is /oco parentis. Yet, as
good things become evil by excess, correction, by being
immoderate, may become cruel. But when is correction
immoderate? When it is more frequent or more severe
than is required ad monendum et docendum, for
reformation and instruction. No severity is cruel which
obstinacy makes necessary; for the greatest cruelty
would be to desist, and leave the scholar too careless for
instruction, and too much hardened for reproof. Locke, in
his treatise of Education, mentions a mother, with
applause, who whipped an infant eight times before she
had subdued it; for had she stopped at the seventh act of
correction, her daughter, says he, would have been
ruined. The degrees of obstinacy in young minds are very
different; as different must be the degrees of persevering
severity. A stubborn scholar must be corrected till he is
subdued. The discipline of a school is military. There must
be either unbounded licence or absolute authority. The
master, who punishes, not only consults the future
happiness of him who is the immediate subject of
correction; but he propagates obedience through the
whole school; and establishes regularity by exemplary
justice. The victorious obstinacy of a single boy would
make his future endeavours of reformation or instruction
totally ineffectual. Obstinacy, therefore, must never be
victorious. Yet, it is well known, that there sometimes
occurs a sullen and hardy resolution, that laughs at all
common punishment, and bids defiance to all common
degrees of pain. Correction must be proportioned to
occasions. The flexible will be reformed by gentle
discipline, and the refractory must be subdued by
harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of
military punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It
must be enforced till it overpowers temptation; till
stubbornness becomes flexible, and perverseness
regular."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr, 11, 1772)
71 Johnson. A child should not be discouraged from reading
any thing that he takes a liking to, from a notion that it is
above his reach. If that be the case, the child will soon
find it out and desist; if not, he of course gains the
instruction; which is so much the more likely to come,
from the inclination with which he takes up the study.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1780)
72 It has been considered as of So much importance that a
proper number of young people should be educated for
certain professions, that sometimes the public and
sometimes the piety of private founders have established
many pensions, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc.,
for this purpose, which draw many more people into
those trades than could otherwise pretend to follow them.
In all Christian countries, | believe, the education of the
greater part of churchmen is paid for in this manner. Very
few of them are educated altogether at their own
expense. The long, tedious, and expensive education,
therefore, of those who are, will not always procure them
a suitable reward, the church being crowded with people
who, in order to get employment, are willing to accept of
a much smaller recompense than what such an education
would otherwise have entitled them to....
[The greater part of] that unprosperous race of men
commonly called men of letters are pretty much in the
situation which lawyers and physicians probably would
be in upon the foregoing supposition. In every part of
Europe the greater part of them have been educated for
the church, but have been hindered by different reasons
from entering into holy orders. They have generally,
therefore, been educated at the public expense, and their
numbers are everywhere so great as commonly to reduce
the price of their labour to a very paltry recompense.
Before the invention of the art of printing, the only
employment by which a man of letters could make
anything by his talents was that of a public or private
teacher, or by communicating to other people the curious
and useful knowledge which he had acquired himself:
and this is still surely a more honourable, a more useful,
and in general even a more profitable employment than
that other of writing for a bookseller, to which the art of
printing has given occasion. The time and study, the
genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify
an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to
what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and
physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher
bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician;
because the trade of the one is crowded with indigent
people who have been brought up to it at the public
expense; whereas those of the other two are encumbered
with very few who have not been educated at their
own....
This inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather
advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may
somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but
the cheapness of literary education is surely an
advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling
inconveniency.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 10
73 In... [some] universities the teacher is prohibited from
receiving any honorary or fee from his pupils, and his
salary constitutes the whole of the revenue which he
derives from his office. His interest is, in this case, set as
directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set it.
It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease
as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the
same, whether he does or does not perform some very
laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as
interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it
altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which
will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless
and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit. If he
is naturally active and a lover of labour, it is his interest
to employ that activity in any way from which he can
derive some advantage, rather than in the performance
of his duty, from which he can derive none.
If the authority to which he is subject resides in the
body corporate, the college, or university, of which he
himself is a member, and which the greater part of the
other members are, like himself, persons who either are
or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a
common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another,
and every man to consent that his neighbour may
neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to
neglect his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater
part of the public professors have, for these many years,
given up altogether even the pretence of teaching.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
74 No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon
lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well
known wherever any such lectures are given. Force and
restraint may, no doubt, be in some degree requisite in
order to oblige children, or very young boys, to attend to
those parts of education which it is thought necessary for
them to acquire during that early period of life; but after
twelve or thirteen years of age, provided the master does
his duty, force or restraint can scarce ever be necessary
to carry on any pan of education. Such is the generosity
of the greater part of young men, that, so far from being
disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their
master, provided he shows some serious intention of
being of use to them, they are generally inclined to
pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the performance
of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the
public a good deal of gross negligence.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
75 In England it becomes every day more and more the
custom to send young people to travel in foreign
countries immediately upon their fearing school, and
without sending them to any university. Our young
people, it is said, generally return home much improved
by their travels. A young man who goes abroad at
seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at one and
twenty, returns three or four years older than he was
when he went abroad; and at that age it is very difficult
not to improve a good deal in three or four years. In the
course of his travels he generally acquires some
knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge,
however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either
to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects he
commonly returns home more conceited, more
unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any
serious application either to study or to business than he
could well have become in so short a time had he lived at
home. By travelling so very young, by spending in the
most frivolous dissipation the most precious years of his
life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his
parents and relations, every useful habit which the earlier
parts of his education might have had some tendency to
form in him, instead of being riveted and confirmed, is
almost necessarily either weakened or effaced. Nothing
but the discredit into which the universities are allowing
themselves to fall could ever have brought into repute so
very absurd a practice as that of travelling at this early
period of life. By sending his son abroad, a father delivers
himself at least for some time, from so disagreeable an
object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going
to ruin before his eyes.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
76 The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy,
except in those happy dispositions where it is almost
superfluous.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1V
77 Although education may furnish, and, as it were, engraft
upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other
minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly
must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we
can prescribe to him with this purpose is, in the absence
or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse. A
physician therefore, a judge or a statesman, may have in
his head many admirable pathological, juridical, or
political rules, in a degree that may enable him to bea
profound teacher in his particular science, and yet in the
application of these rules he may very possibly blunder—
either because he is wanting in natural judgement
(though not in understanding) and, whilst he can
comprehend the general /n abstracto, cannot distinguish
whether a particular case /n concreto ought to rank under
the former; or because his faculty of judgement has not
been sufficiently exercised by examples and real practice.
Indeed, the grand and only use of examples, is to sharpen
the judgement. For as regards the correctness and
precision of the insight of the understanding, examples
are commonly injurious rather than otherwise, because,
as casus in terminis, they seldom adequately fulfil the
conditions of the rule. Besides, they often weaken the
power of our understanding to apprehend rules or laws in
their universality, independently of particular
circumstances of experience; and hence, accustom us to
employ them more as formulae than as principles.
Examples are thus the go-cart of the Judgement, which
he who is naturally deficient in that faculty cannot afford
to dispense with.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic
78 It is not to the history of the science, or of the human
mind, that we are to attend in an elementary treatise: our
only aim ought to be ease and perspicuity and with the
utmost care to keep everything out of view which might
draw aside the attention of the student; it is a road which
we should be continually rendering more smooth, and
from which we should endeavour to remove every
obstacle which can occasion delay.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Pref.
79 Instead of developing the child's own faculties of
discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself,
the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of
the ready-made thoughts of other people.
Schopenhauer, Education
80 The fatal tendency to be satisfied with words instead of
trying to understand things—to learn phrases by heart, so
that they may prove a refuge in time of need—exists, as a
rule, even in children; and the tendency lasts on into
manhood, making the knowledge of many learned
persons to consist in mere verbiage.
Schopenhauer, Education
81 The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it
is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in
choosing the things that should be commited to memory
the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as
lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.
Schopenhauer, Education
82 The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in
the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance... [for making
the difficulties of a question present to the learner’s
consciousness]. They were essentially a negative
discussion of the great question of philosophy and life,
directed with consummate skill to the purpose of
convincing any one who had merely adopted the
common-places of received opinion that he did not
understand the subject—that he as yet attached no
definite meaning to the doctrines he professed; in order
that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put
in the way to obtain a stable belief, resting on a clear
apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of
their evidence. The school disputations of the Middle
Ages had a somewhat similar object. They were intended
to make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion,
and (by necessary correlation) the opinion opposed to it,
and could enforce the grounds of the one and confute
those of the other.
Mill, On liberty, II
83 It is but a poor education that associates ignorance with
ignorance, and leaves them, if they care for knowledge,
to grope their way to it without help, and to do without it
if they do not. What is wanted is, the means of making
ignorance aware of itself, and able to profit by
knowledge; accustoming minds which know only routine
to act upon, and feel the value of, principles: teaching
them to compare different modes of action, and learn, by
the use of their reason, to distinguish the best. When we
desire to have a good school, we do not eliminate the
teacher. The old remark, "as the schoolmaster is, so will
be the school," is as true of the indirect schooling of
grown people by public business as of the schooling of
youth in academies and colleges.
Mill, Representative Government, XV
84 A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he
cannot do, never does all he can.
Mill, Autobiography, |
85 | do not believe that boys can be induced to apply
themselves with vigour, and what is so much more
difficult, perseverance, to dry and irksome studies, by the
sole force of persuasion and soft words. Much must be
done, and much must be learnt, by children, for which
rigid discipline and known liability to punishment are
indispensable as means. It is, no doubt, a very laudable
effort, in modem teaching, to render as much as possible
of what the young are required to learn easy and
interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to
the length of not requiring them to learn anything but
what has been made easy and interesting, one of the
chief objects of education is sacrificed. | rejoice in the
decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of
teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing
habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is
training up a race of men who will be incapable of doing
anything which is disagreeable to them. | do not, then,
believe that fear, as an element in education, can be
dispensed with; but | am sure that it ought not to be the
main element; and when it predominates so much as to
preclude love and confidence on the part of the child to
those who should be the unreservedly trusted advisers of
after-years, and perhaps to seal up the fountains of frank
and spontaneous communicativeness in the child’s
nature, it is an evil for which a large abatement must be
made from the benefits, moral and intellectual, which
may flow from any other part of the education.
Mill, Autobiography, II
86 There is a need for educators who are themselves
educated; superior, noble spirits, wno prove themselves
every moment by what they say and by what they do not
Say: cultures grown ripe and sweet—and not the learned
boors which grammar school and university offer youth
today as ‘higher nurses.’
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: What the Germans Lack
87 Things learned thus in a few hours, on one occasion, for
one purpose, cannot possibly have formed many
associations with other things in the mind. Their brain-
processes are led into by few paths, and are relatively
little liable to be awakened again. Speedy oblivion is the
almost inevitable fate of all that is committed to memory
in this simple way. Whereas, on the contrary, the same
materials taken in gradually, day after day, recurring in
different contexts, considered in various relations,
associated with other external incidents, and repeatedly
reflected on, grow into such a system, form such
connections with the rest of the mind’s fabric, lie of >en
to so many paths of approach, that they remain
permanent possessions. This is the /nte//ectua/ reason
why habits of continuous application should be enforced
in educational establishments. Of course there is no
moral turpitude in cramming. If it led to the desired end
of secure learning it would be infinitely the best method
of study. But it does not; and students themselves should
understand the reason why.
William James, Psychology, XVI
88 As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one’s
education) is the art of skipping, so the art of being wise
is the art of knowing what to overlook. The first effect on
the mind of growing cultivated is that processes once
multiple get to be performed by a single act. Lazarus has
called this the progressive "condensation" of thought. But
in the psychological sense it is less a condensation than a
loss, a genuine dropping out and throwing overboard of
conscious content. Steps really sink from sight. An
advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics in such
masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to
explain to younger mini it is often hard to say which
grows the more perplexed, he or the pupil. In every
university there are admirable investigators who are
notoriously bad lecturers. The reason is that they never
spontaneously see the subject in the minute articulate
way in which the student needs to have it offered to his
slow reception. They grope for the links, but the links do
not come. Bowditch, who translated and annotated
Laplace’s Mecanique celeste, said that whenever his
author prefaced a proposition by the words "it is evident,"
he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him.
William James, Psychology, XXII
89 In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron while
hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil’s interest in each
successive subject before its ebb has come, so that
knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired—a
headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterward
the individual may float. There is a happy moment for
fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in
natural history, and presently dissectors and botanists;
then for initiating them into the harmonies of mechanics
and the wonders of physical and chemical law. Later,
introspective psychology and the metaphysical and
religious mysteries take their turn; and, last of all, the
drama of human affairs and worldly wisdom in the widest
sense of the term. In each of us a saturation-point is soon
reached in all these things; the impetus of our purely
intellectual zeal expires, and unless the topic be one
associated with some urgent personal need that keeps
our wits constantly whetted about it, we settle into an
equilibrium, and live on what we learned when our
interest was fresh and instinctive, without adding to the
store. Outside of their own business, the ideas gained by
men before they are twenty-five are practically the only
ideas they shall have in their lives. They cannot get
anything new. Disinterested curiosity is past, the mental
grooves and channels set, the power of assimilation gone.
If by chance we ever do learn anything about some
entirely new topic we are afflicted with a strange sense of
insecurity, and we fear 10 advance a resolute opinion.
But with things learned in the plastic days of instinctive
curiosity we never lose entirely our sense of being at
home. There remains a kinship, a sentiment of intimate
acquaintance, which, even when we know we have failed
to keep abreast of the subject, flatters us with a sense of
power over it, and makes us feel not altogether out of the
pale.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
90 He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
91 The result of teaching small parts of a large number of
subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas,
not illumined with any spark of vitality. Let the main
ideas which are introduced into a child’s education be
few and important, and let them be thrown into every
combination possible.
Whitehead, Aims of Education
92 The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity,
delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot
postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever
interest attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked
here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in
the pupil, must be exercised here and now; whatever
possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart,
must be exhibited here and now. That is the golden rule
of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.
Whitehead, Aims of Education
93 A man who is to educate really well, and is to make the
young grow and develop into their full stature, must be
filled through and through with the spirit of reverence. It
is reverence towards others that is lacking in those who
advocate machine-made cast-iron systems,... Reverence
requires imagination and vital warmth; it requires most
imagination in respect of those who have least actual
achievement or power. The child is weak and superficially
foolish, the teacher is strong, and in an everyday sense
wiser than the child. The teacher without reverence, or
the bureaucrat without reverence, easily despises the
child for these outward inferiorities.
Russell, Education
94 What makes obedience seem necessary in schools is the
large classes and overworked teachers demanded by a
false economy. Those who have no experience of
teaching are incapable of imagining the expense of spirit
entailed by any really living instruction. They think that
teachers can reasonably be expected to work as many
hours as bank clerks.
Russell, Education
95 A teacher ought to have only as much teaching as can be
done, on most days, with actual pleasure in the work, and
with an awareness of the pupil’s menial needs. the result
would be a relation of friendliness instead of hostility
between teacher and pupil, a realization on the part of
most pupils that education serves to develop their own
lives and is not merely an outside imposition, interfering
with play and demanding many hours of sitting still.
Russell, Education
96 Passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom is easy to
most boy's and girls. It involves no effort of independent
thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows
more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the
favor of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man.
Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in
later life. It causes men to seek a leader, and to accept as
a leader whoever is established in that position.
Russell, Education
97 Let us get a clear idea of what the primary business of
education is. the child has to learn to control its instincts.
To grant it complete freedom, so that it obeys all its
impulses without any restriction, IS impossible. It would
be a very instructive experiment for chi Id-psychologists,
but it would make life impossible for the parents and
would do serious damage to the children themselves, as
would be seen partly at the lime, and partly during
subsequent years. The function of education, therefore is
to inhibit, forbid, and suppress, and it has at all times
carried out this function to admiration. But we have
learnt from analysis that it is this very suppression of
instincts that involves the danger of neurotic illness. You
will remember that we have gone into the question of
how this comes about in some detail. Education has
therefore to steer its way between the Scylla of giving the
instincts free play and the Charybdis of frustrating them.
Unless the problem is altogether insoluble, an optimum of
education must be discovered, which will do the most
good and the least harm. It is a matter of finding out how
much one may forbid, at which times, and by what
methods. And then it must further be considered that the
children have very different constitutional dispositions,
so that the same educational procedure cannot possibly
be equally good for all children. A moment’s
consideration will show us that, so far, education has
fulfilled its function very badly, and has done children
serious injury. If we can find an optimum of education
which will carry out its task ideally, then we may hope to
abolish one of the factors in the aetiology of neurotic
illness, viz., the influence of accidental infantile traumas.
The other factor, the power of a refractory instinctual
constitution, can never be got rid of by education. When,
therefore, one comes to think of the difficult tasks with
which the educator is confronted; when one reflects that
he has to recognize the characteristic constitution of
each child» to guess from small indications what is going
on in its unformed mind, to give him the right amount of
love and at the same time to preserve an effective degree
of authority, then one cannot help saying to oneself that
the only adequate preparation for the profession of
educator is a good grounding in psycho-analysis. The
best thing would be for him to be analysed himself, for,
after all, without personal experience one cannot get a
grasp of analysis. The analysis of teachers and educators
seems to be a more practicable prophylactic measure
than the analysis of children themselves; and there are
not such great obstacles against putting it into practice.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXIV
98 No one would question that a child in a sium tenement
has a different experience from that of a childina
cultured home; that the country lad has a different kind
of experience from the city boy, or a boy on the seashore
one different from the lad who is brought up on inland
prairies. ... A primary responsibility of educators is that
they not only be aware of the general principle of the
shaping of actual experience by environing conditions,
but that they also recognize in the concrete what
surroundings are conducive to having experiences that
lead to growth. Above all, they should know how to utilize
the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to
extract from them all that they have to contribute to
building up experiences that are worthwhile.
Traditional education did not have to face this
problem; it could systematically dodge this responsibility.
The school environment of desks, blackboards, a small
school yard, was supposed to suffice. There was no
demand that the teacher should become intimately
acquainted with the conditions of the local community,
physical, historical, economic, occupational, etc., in order
to utilize them as educational resources. A system of
education based upon the necessary connection of
education with experience must, on the contrary, if
faithful to its principle, take these things constantly into
account. This tax upon the educator is another reason
why progressive education is more difficult to carry on
than was ever the traditional system.
Dewey, Experience and Education, III
99 Almost everyone has had occasion to look back upon his
school days and wonder what has become of the
knowledge he was supposed to have amassed during his
years of schooling, and why it is that the technical skills
he acquired have to be learned over again in changed
form in order to stand him in good stead. Indeed, he is
lucky who does not find that in order to make progress, in
order to go ahead intellectually, he does not have to
unlearn much of what he learned in school These
questions cannot be disposed of by saying that the
subjects were not actually learned, for they were learned
at least sufficiently to enable a pupil to pass
examinations in them. One trouble is that the subject-
matter in question was learned in isolation; it was put, as
it were, in a water-tight compartment. When the question
is asked, then what has become of it, where has it gone to
the right answer is that it is still there in the special
compartment in which it was originally stowed away. If
exactly the same conditions recurred as those under
which it was acquired, it would also recur and be
available. But it was segregated when it was acquired
and hence is so disconnected from the rest of experience
that it is not available under the actual conditions of life.
It is contrary to the law's of experience that learning of
this kind, no matter how thoroughly engrained at the
time, should give genuine preparation.
Dewey, Experience and Education, 111
100 The principle that development of experience comes
about through interaction means that education is
essentially a social process. This quality is realized in the
degree in which individuals form a community’ group. It
is absurd to exclude the teacher from membership in the
group. As the most mature member of the group he has a
peculiar responsibility for the conduct of the interactions
and intercommunications which are the very life of the
group as a community. That children are individuals
whose freedom should be respected while the more
mature person should have no freedom as an individual is
an idea too absurd to require refutation. The tendency to
exclude the teacher from a positive and leading share in
the direction of the activities of the community of which
he is a member is another instance of reaction from one
extreme to another. When pupils were a class rather than
a social group, the teacher necessarily acted largely from
the outside, not as a director of processes of exchange in
which all had a share. When education is based upon
experience and educative experience is seen to bea
social process, the situation changes radically. The
teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but
takes on that of leader of group activities.
Dewey, Experience and Education, 1V
101 That teaching is an art and the true teacher an artist is
a familiar saying. Now the teacher's own claim to rank as
an artist is measured by his ability to foster the attitude
of the artist in those who study with him, whether they be
youth or little children. Some succeed in arousing
enthusiasm, in communicating large ideas, in evoking
energy. So far, well; but the final test is whether the
stimulus thus given to wider aims succeeds in
transforming itself into power, that is to say, into the
attention to detail that ensures mastery over means of
execution. If not, the zeal flags, the interest dies out, the
ideal becomes a clouded memory. Other teachers
succeed in training facility, skill, mastery of the
technique of subjects. Again it is well—so far. But unless
enlargement of mental vision, power of increased
discrimination of final values, a sense for ideas—for
principles—accompanies this training, forms of skill ready
to be put indifferently to any end be the result. Such
modes of technical skill may display themselves,
according to circumstances, as cleverness in serving self-
interest, as docility in carrying out the purposes of others,
or aS unimaginative plodding in nits. To nurture inspiring
aim and executive means into harmony with each other is
at once the difficulty and the reward of the teacher.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt. III, XVI, 2
Chapter 9
ETHICS
Chapter 9 is divided into fifteen sections: 9.1 Moral
Philosophy and Morality, 9.2 Custom, 9.3 Moral Law, 9.4
Moral Freedom, 9.5 Conscience, 9.6 Good and Evil, 9.7 Right
and Wrong, 9.8 Happiness, 9.9 Duty: Moral Obligation, 9.10
Virtue and Vice, 9.11 Courage AND Cowardice, 9.12
Temperance and Intemperance, 9.13 Prudence, 9.14
Honesty, and 9.15 Wisdom and Folly.
An ancient tradition divided philosophy into two principal
domains: one called "speculative" or "theoretical" because it
was concerned with the nature of things, with the order and
structure of the cosmos, and with being and becoming; the
other called "practical" because it was concerned with
action, both on the part of the individual and on the part of
society, and, in the sphere of human action, with what ought
to be sought or ought to be done, not with what exists or
occurs. Practical philosophy was divided into two main
branches, either called "ethics" and "politics," or "moral
philosophy" and "political philosophy." This chapter is
devoted to the persistent themes or topics that have been
discussed from antiquity to the present day by those
concerned with moral or ethical questions.
The opening two sections deal with questions about the
character, scope, and method of ethics or moral philosophy
as a discipline, and questions about the relation of morality
to custom. The next two sections consider subjects that are
treated in other contexts, such as law and freedom; but
here, in Sections 9.3 and 9,4, the treatment is specifically
directed to law and freedom in their moral aspects.
Conscience, which is involved in the application of the moral
law and in the exercise of moral freedom, is treated in
Section 9.5.
Next come the four pivotal issues in moral philosophy,
posed by divergent answers to questions about good and
evil (Section 9.6), right and wrong (Section 9.7), happiness
(Section 9.8), and duty or moral obligation (Section 9.9).
These four sections, the reader will find, contain quotations
that often deal with two or more of the concepts involved in
these issues; the discussion of happiness, for example,
employs the notions of good and evil; and the discussion of
duty or moral obligation cannot avoid considerations of right
and wrong; and there is a cross fire between passages that
emphasize happiness and the good and those that stress
duty and the right.
The chapter concludes with six sections that begin with
the consideration of virtue and vice (Section 9.10) and then
take up particular virtues and vices, such as courage and
cowardice (Section 9.11), temperance and intemperance
(Section 9.12), prudence (Section 9.13), honesty (Section
9.14), and wisdom and folly (Section 9.15). The reader may
query the absence of justice and injustice from this list. In
order to avoid unnecessary duplication, this virtue and vice,
together with the consideration of what is just and unjust in
human conduct, are treated in Section 9.7 along with right
and wrong. Justice and right are also treated in other
contexts in Chapter 12 on Law and Justice. For the
consideration of matters closely related to the subjects of
this chapter, the reader is referred to Chapter 20 on Religion.
9.1 Moral Philosophy and Morality
The reader will find that some writers use the word "ethics"
to name the discipline that other writers call "moral
philosophy." Under whichever name it goes, the subject
matter and problems being considered are substantially the
Same. However, among those who use "ethics" as the name
for it, some will speak of the discipline as "the science of
ethics" but their doing so does not mean that they differ
from those who regard ethics and politics as branches of
moral, practical, or normative philosophy. They are not using
the word "science," as it is used in Section 17.2 on Science
and Scientific Method, to signify a sphere of knowledge or
inquiry that differs in method and subject matter from
philosophy, as that is discussed in Section 17.1 on
Philosophy and Philosophers.
The statement made above that moral philosophy or
ethics is a practical and normative discipline means that its
principles and conclusions are concerned with human action
or conduct, with its ends and means, and that, with regard
to human conduct and its ends and means, the basic
propositions of moral philosophy or ethics prescribe what
ought to be sought and what ought to be done. They do not
simply describe how men do in fact behave, or what goals
they seek and how they seek them.
However, some of the passages quoted below deal with
morals and morality in a descriptive manner, reporting what
general rules of conduct prevail in a particular society or
culture and discussing the difference between the mores —
the established canons of behavior—that exist at one time
and another, or in one place and another. The relativity of
the mores or customary morality is more fully treated in
Section 9.2 on Custom. Other problems touched on here,
such as the relation between knowing what it is right to do
and doing it, or the degree of precision with which moral
problems can be solved, are commented on in subsequent
sections of this chapter. For the consideration of politics as a
related branch of moral philosophy, the reader is referred to
Section 10.2 on The Realm of Politics.
1 The whole account of matters of conduct must be given in
outline and not precisely... the accounts we demand must
be in accordance with the subject-matter; matters
concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for
us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The
general account being of this nature, the account of
particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they
do not fall under any art or precept but the agents
themselves must in each case consider what is
appropriate to the occasion.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1104a2
2 Everything morally right derives from one of four sources:
it concerns either full perception or intelligent
development of what is true; or the preservation of
organized society, where every man is rendered his due
and all obligations are faithfully discharged; or the
greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit; or
order and moderation in everything said and done,
whereby there is temperance and self-control.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 5
3 In theory, there is nothing which draws us away from
following what is taught; but in the matters of life, many
are the things which distract us.
Epictetus, Discourses, |, 26
4 It is not by running hither and thither outside of itself that
the soul understands morality and right conduct: it learns
them of its own nature, in its contact with itself, in its
intellectual grasp of itself, seeing deeply impressed upon
it the images of its primal state.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, VII, 10
5 The moral precepts, distinct from the ceremonial and
judicial precepts, are about things pertaining of their very
nature to good morals. Now since human morals depend
on their relation to reason, which is the proper principle
of human acts, those morals are called good which accord
with reason, and those are called bad which are
discordant from reason. And as every judgment of
speculative reason proceeds from the natural knowledge
of first principles, so every judgment of practical reason
proceeds from principles known naturally... from which
principles one may proceed in various ways to judge of
various matters. For some matters connected with human
actions are so evident that after very little consideration
one is able at once to approve or disapprove of them by
means of these general first principles. But some matters
cannot be the subject of judgment without much
consideration of the various circumstances which all are
not able to do carefully, but only those who are wise, just
as it is not possible for all to consider the particular
conclusions of sciences but only for those who are versed
in philosophy. And lastly there are some matters of which
man cannot judge unless he be helped by Divine
instruction, such as the articles of faith.
It is therefore evident that since the moral precepts
are about matters which concern good morals, and since
good morals are those which are in accord with reason,
and since also every judgment of human reason must be
derived in some way from natural reason, it follows, of
necessity, that all of the moral precepts belong to the law
of nature.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 100, 1
6 Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is
good and evil in the conversation and society of
mankind. Good and evi/ are names that signify our
appetites and aversions, which in different tempers,
customs, and doctrines of men are different: and diverse
men differ not only in their judgement on the senses of
what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell,
hearing, touch, and sight; but also of what is conformable
or disagreeable to reason in the actions of common life.
Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself;
and one time praiseth, that is, calleth good, what another
time he dispraiseth, and calleth evil: from whence arise
disputes, controversies, and at last war. And therefore so
long aS a man is in the condition of mere nature, which is
a condition of war, private appetite is the measure of
good and evil: and consequently all men agree on this,
that peace is good, and therefore also the way or means
of peace, which (as | have shown before) are justice,
gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the
laws of nature, are good; that is to say, moral virtues; and
their contrary vices, evil. Now the science of virtue and
vice is moral philosophy; and therefore the true doctrine
of the laws of nature is the true moral philosophy. But the
writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge
the same virtues and vices; yet, not seeing wherein
consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be
praised as the means of peaceable, sociable, and
comfortable living, place them in a mediocrity of
passions: as if not the cause, but the degree of daring,
made fortitude; or not the cause, but the quantity of a
gift, made liberality.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 15
7 Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of
morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics
will always console me for the ignorance of the physical
sciences.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 67
8 The best thing ... we can do, so long as we lack a perfect
knowledge of our affects, is to conceive a right rule of life,
or sure maxims of life—to commit these latter to memory,
and constantly to apply them to the particular cases
which frequently meet us in life, so that our imagination
may be widely affected by them, and they may always be
ready to hand.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 10, Schol.
9 If natural philosophy in all its parts, by pursuing this
method, shall at length be perfected, the bounds of moral
philosophy will be also enlarged. For so far as we can
know by natural philosophy what is the First Cause, what
power He has over us, and what benefits we receive from
Him, so far our duty towards Him, as well as that towards
one another, will appear to us by the light of Nature. And
no doubt, if the worship of false gods had not blinded the
heathen, their moral philosophy would have gone farther
than to the four cardinal virtues; and instead of teaching
the transmigration of souls, and to worship the Sun and
Moon, and dead heroes, they would have taught us to
worship our true Author and Benefactor, as their
ancestors did under the government of Noah and his sons
before they corrupted themselves.
Newton, Optics, III, 1
10 A good life, in which consist not the least part of religion
and true piety, concerns also the civil government; and in
it lies the safety both of men’s souls and of the
commonwealth. Moral actions belong, therefore, to the
jurisdiction both of the outward and inward court; both of
the civil and domestic governor; | mean both of the
magistrate and conscience. Here, therefore, is great
danger, lest one of these jurisdictions intrench upon the
other, and discord arise between the keeper of the public
peace and the overseers of souls.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
11 Confident | am, that, if men would in the same method,
and with the same indifferency, search after moral as
they do mathematical truths, they would find them have
a stronger connexion one with another, and a more
necessary consequence from our clear and distinct ideas,
and to come nearer perfect demonstration than is
commonly imagined. But much of this is not to be
expected, whilst the desire of esteem, riches, or power
makes men espouse the well-endowed opinions in
fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good
their beauty, or varnish over and cover their deformity.
Nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the
mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the
understanding as a lie.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, III, 20
12 The merit of delivering true general precepts in ethics is
indeed very small. Whoever recommends any moral
virtues, really does no more than is implied in the terms
themselves. That people who invented the word charity,
and used it in a good sense, inculcated more clearly, and
much more efficaciously, the precept. Be charitable, than
any pretended legislator or prophet who should insert
such a maxim in his writings.
Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
13 The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty;
and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice,
and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and
engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other. But
is this ever to be expected from inferences and
conclusions of the understanding, which of themselves
have no hold of the affections, or set in motion the active
powers of men? They discover truths: But where the
truths which they discover are indifferent, and beget no
desire or aversion, they can have no influence on conduct
and behaviour. What is honourable, what is fair, what is
becoming, what is noble, what is generous, takes
possession of the heart, and animates us to embrace and
maintain it. What is intelligible, what is evident, what is
probable, what is true, procures only the cool assent of
the understanding; and gratifying a speculative curiosity,
puts an end to our researches.
Hume, Concerning Principles of Morals, |
14 If morality had naturally no influence on human passions
and actions, ’twere in vain to take such pains to inculcate
it; and nothing wou’d be more fruitless than that
multitude of rules and precepts, with which all moralists
abound. Philosophy is commonly divided into speculative
and practical; and as morality is always comprehended
under the latter division, ‘tis supposed to influence our
passions and actions, and to go beyond the calm and
indolent judgments of the understanding. And this is
confirm’d by common experience, which informs us, that
men are often govern’d by their duties, and are deter’d
from some actions by the opinion of injustice, and
impell’d to others by that of obligation.
Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the
actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be
deriv’d from reason; and that because reason alone, as
we have already prov’d, can never have any such
influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent
actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this
particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not
conclusions of our reason.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. III, |, 1
15
16
It is then certain that compassion is a natural feeling,
which, by moderating the violence of love of self in each
individual, contributes to the preservation of the whole
species. It is this compassion that hurries us without
reflection to the relief of those who are in distress: it is
this which in a state of nature supplies the place of laws,
morals and virtues, with the advantage that none are
tempted to disobey its gentle voice: it is this which will
always prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a weak
child or a feeble old man of the sustenance they may
have with pain and difficulty acquired, if he sees a
possibility of providing for himself by other means: it is
this which, instead of inculcating that sublime maxim of
rational justice, Do to others as you would have them do
unto you, inspires all men with that other maxim of
natural goodness, much less perfect indeed, but perhaps
more useful; Do good to yourself with as little evil as
possible to others. In a word, it is rather in this natural
feeling than in any subtle arguments that we must look
for the cause of that repugnance, which every man would
experience in doing evil, even independently of the
maxims of education. Although it might belong to
Socrates and other minds of the like craft to acquire
virtue by reason, the human race would long since have
ceased to be, had its preservation depended only on the
reasonings of the individuals composing it.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
"| have found," said the prince at his return to Imlac, "a
man who can teach all that is necessary to be known;
who, from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks
down on the scenes of life changing beneath him. He
speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and
conviction closes his periods. This man shall be my future
guide; | will learn his doctrines, and imitate his life."
“Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire
the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but
they live like men."
Johnson, Rasselas, XVIII
17 In every civilised society, in every society where the
distinction of ranks has once been completely
established, there have been always two different
schemes or systems of morality current at the same time;
of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the
other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The
former is generally admired and revered by the common
people: the latter is commonly more esteemed and
adopted by what are called people of fashion. The degree
of disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices
of levity, the vices which are apt to arise from great
prosperity, and from the excess of gaiety and good
humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction
between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the
liberal or loose system, luxury, wanton and even
disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree
of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of
the two sexes, etc., provided they are not accompanied
with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood or
injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of
indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned
altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those
excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and
detestation. The vices of levity are always ruinous to the
common people, and a single week’s thoughtlessness
and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman
for ever, and to drive him through despair upon
committing the most enormous crimes. The wiser and
better sort of the common people, therefore, have always
the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such excesses,
which their experience tells them are so immediately
fatal to people of their condition. The disorder and
extravagance of several years, on the contrary, will not
always ruin a man of fashion, and people of that rank are
very apt to consider the power of indulging in some
degree of excess as one of the advantages of their
fortune, and the liberty of doing so without censure or
reproach as one of the privileges which belong to their
station. In people of their own station, therefore, they
regard such excesses with but a small degree of
disapprobation, and censure them either very slightly or
not at all.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
18 A censor may maintain, he can never restore, the morals
of a state. It is impossible for such a magistrate to exert
his authority with benefit, or even with effect, unless he
is Supported by a quick sense of honour and virtue in the
minds of the people, by a decent reverence for the public
opinion, and by a train of useful prejudices combating on
the side of national manners. In a period when these
principles are annihilated, the censorial jurisdiction must
either sink into empty pageantry, or be converted into a
partial instrument of vexatious oppression.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, X
19 We do not need science and philosophy to know what we
should do to be honest and good, yea, even wise and
virtuous. Indeed we might well have conjectured
beforehand that the knowledge of what every man is
bound to do, and therefore also to know, would be within
the reach of every man, even the commonest.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
20 Morality, and humanity as capable of it, is that which
alone has dignity. Skill and diligence in labour have a
market value; wit, lively imagination, and humour, have
fancy value; on the other hand, fidelity to promises,
benevolence from principle (not from instinct), have an
intrinsic worth. Neither nature nor art contains anything
which in default of these it could put in their place, for
their worth consists not in the effects which spring from
them, not in the use and advantage which they secure,
but in the disposition of mind, that is, the maxims of the
will which are ready to manifest themselves in such
actions, even though they should not have the desired
effect. These actions also need no recommendation from
any subjective taste or sentiment, that they may be
looked on with immediate favour and satisfaction: they
need no immediate propension or feeling for them; they
exhibit the will that performs them as an object of an
immediate respect, and nothing but reason is required to
impose them on the will; not to flatter it into them, which,
in the case of duties, would be a contradiction. This
estimation therefore shows that the worth of such a
disposition is dignity, and places it infinitely above all
value, with which it cannot for a moment be brought into
comparison or competition without as it were violating its
sanctity.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
21 Morality is not properly the doctrine how we should make
ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of
happiness.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. |, Il, 2
22 Morality... must have the more power over the human
heart the more purely it is exhibited. Whence it follows
that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and
virtue are to exercise any influence at all on our souls,
they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their
purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity,
for it is in suffering that they display themselves most
nobly.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 11, Methodology of
Pure Practical Reason
23 The supreme principle of ethics (the doctrine of virtue) is:
"Act on a maxim, the ends of which are such as it might
be a universal law for everyone to have." On this
principle a man is an end to himself as well as others, and
it is not enough that he is not permitted to use either
himself or others merely as means (which would imply
that he might be indifferent to them), but it is in itself a
duty of every man to make mankind in general his end.
The principle of ethics being a categorical imperative
does not admit of proof, but it admits of a justification
from principles of pure practical reason. Whatever in
relation to mankind, to oneself, and others, can be an
end, that is an end for pure practical reason: for this is a
faculty of assigning ends in general; and to be indifferent
to them, that is, to take no interest in them, is a
contradiction; since in that case it would not determine
the maxims of actions (which always involve an end), and
consequently would cease to be practical reasons, Pure
reason, however, cannot command any ends a priori,
except so far as it declares the same to be also a duty,
which duty is then called a duty of virtue.
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, 1X
24 No free communities ever existed without morals, and...
morals are the work of woman.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol, II, Ill, 9
25 A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his
past and future actions or motives, and of approving or
disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that
any of the lower animals have this capacity; therefore,
when a Newfoundland dog drags a child out of the water,
or a monkey faces danger to rescue its comrade, or takes
charge of an orphan monkey, we do not call its conduct
moral. But in the case of man, who alone can with
certainty be ranked as a moral being, actions of a certain
class are called moral, whether performed deliberately,
after a struggle with opposing motives, or impulsively
through instinct, or from the effects of slowly-gained
habit.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 4
26 It was assumed formerly by philosophers of the derivative
school of morals that the foundation of morality lay ina
form of Selfishness; but more recently the "Greatest
happiness principle" has been brought prominently
forward. It is, however, more correct to speak of the latter
principle as the standard, and not as the motive of
conduct. Nevertheless, all the authors whose works | have
consulted, with a few exceptions, write as if there must
be a distinct motive for every action, and that this must
be associated with some pleasure or displeasure. But man
seems often to act impulsively, that is from instinct or
long habit, without any consciousness of pleasure, in the
Same manner as does probably a bee or ant, when it
blindly follows its instincts. Under circumstances of
extreme peril, as during a fire, when a man endeavours to
save a fellow-creature without a moment’s hesitation, he
can hardly feel pleasure; and still less has he time to
reflect on the dissatisfaction which he might
subsequently experience if he did not make the attempt.
Should he afterwards reflect over his own conduct, he
would feel that there lies within him an impulsive power
widely different from a search after pleasure or
happiness; and this seems to be the deeply planted
social instinct.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 4
27 It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of
morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each
individual man and his children over the other men of the
same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-
endowed men and an advancement in the standard of
morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one
tribe over another. A tribe including many members who,
from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism,
fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always
ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for
the common good, would be victorious over most other
tribes; and this would be natural selection. At all times
throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes;
and as morality is one important clement in their success,
the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed
men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 5
28 | regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical
questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense,
grounded on the permanent interests of aman as a
progressive being. Those interests, | contend, authorise
the subjection of individual spontaneity to external
control, only in respect to those actions of each, which
concern the interest of other people. If any one does an
act hurtful to others, there is a prima facte case for
punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not
safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There are
also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he
may rightfully be compelled to perform; such as to give
evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the
common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to
the interest of the society of which he enjoys the
protection; and to perform certain acts of individual
beneficence, such as saving a fellow creature’s life, or
interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage,
things which whenever it is obviously a man’s duty to do,
he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not
doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his
actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly
accountable to them for the injury. The latter case, it is
true, requires a much more cautious exercise of
compulsion than the former. To make any one answerable
for doing evil to others is the rule; to make him
answerable for not preventing evil is, comparatively
speaking, the exception. Yet there are many cases clear
enough and grave enough to justify that exception. In all
things which regard the external relations of the
individual, he is de jure amenable to those whose
interests are concerned, and, if need be, to society as
their protector. There are often good reasons for not
holding him to the responsibility; but these reasons must
arise from the special expediencies of the case: either
because it is a kind of case in which he is on the whole
likely to act better, when left to his own discretion, than
when controlled in any way in which society have it in
their power to control him; or because the attempt to
exercise control would produce other evils, greater than
those which it would prevent. When such reasons as
these preclude the enforcement of responsibility, the
conscience of the agent himself should step into the
vacant judgment seat, and protect those interests of
others which have no external protection; judging himself
all the more rigidly, because the case does not admit of
his being made accountable to the judgment of his fellow
creatures.
Mill, On Liberty, |
29 The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals,
Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that
actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of
happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the
absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation
of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set
up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in
particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and
pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question.
But these supplementary explanations do not affect the
theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded
— namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the
only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable
things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any
other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure
inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of
pleasure and the prevention of pain.
Mill, Utilitarianism, II
30 It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties,
or by what test we may know them; but no system of
ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall bea
feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths
of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly
so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them.
Mill, Utilitarianism, II
31 Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is
not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is
largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however
enlightened, however profound, gives no command over
the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying
principles.
Newman, Idea of a University, Discourse V
32 Then he [Satan] said: "The difference between man and
me? The difference between a mortal and an immortal?
between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse
that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the
difference between Caesar and this?"
| said, "One cannot compare things which by their
nature and by the interval between them are not
comparable."
"You have answered your own question," he said. "I
will expand it. Man is made of dirt—l saw him made. | am
not made of dirt. Man is a museum of diseases, a home of
impurities; he comes today and is gone tomorrow; he
begins as dirt and departs as stench; | am of the
aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral
Sense. You understand? He has the Moral Sense. That
would seem to be difference enough between us, all by
itself."
Mark Twain, Mysterious Stranger, HI
33 There was a question which we wanted to ask Father
Peter, and finally we went there the second evening, a
little diffidently, after drawing straws, and | asked it as
casually as | could, though it did not sound as casual as |
wanted, because | didn’t know how:
"What is the Moral Sense, sir?"
He looked down, surprised, over his great spectacles,
and said, "Why, it is the faculty which enables us to
distinguish good from evil."
It threw some light but not a glare, and | was a little
disappointed, also to some degree embarrassed. He was
waiting for me to go on, so, in default of anything else to
say, | asked, "Is it valuable?"
"Valuable? Heavens! lad, it is the one thing that lifts
man above the beasts that perish and makes him heir to
immortality!"
Mark Twain, Mysterious Stranger, IV
34 | said it was a brutal thing.
"No, it was a human thing [said Satan]. You should not
insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they
have not deserved it," and he went on talking like that.
"It is like your paltry race—always lying, always claiming
virtues which it hasn’t got, always denying them to the
higher animals, which alone possess them. No brute ever
does a cruel thing—that is the monopoly of those with
the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it
innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing
as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of
inflicting it—only man does that. Inspired by that
mongrel Moral Sense of his! A sense whose function is to
distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to
choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage
can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine
cases out of ten he prefers the wrong. There shouldn’t be
any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn’t
be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that
he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades
him to the bottom layer of animated beings and isa
shameful possession."
Mark Twain, Mysterious Stranger, V
35 To be ashamed of one's immorality-- that is a step on the
staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s
morality.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 95
36 All naturalism in morality, that is all hea/thy morality, is
dominated by an instinct of life—some commandment of
life is fulfilled through a certain canon of ‘shall’ and ‘shall
not’, some hindrance and hostile element on life’s road is
thereby removed. Anti~ natural morality, that is virtually
every morality that has hitherto been taught, reverenced
and preached, turns on the contrary precisely against the
instincts of life—it is a now secret, now loud and
impudent condemnation of these instincts. By saying
‘God sees into the heart’ it denies the deepest and the
highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Morality as Anti-Nature
37 An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be
chosen out of several all equally possible. To sustain the
arguments for the good course and keep them ever
before us, to stifle our longing for more flowery ways, to
keep the foot unflinchingly on the arduous path, these
are characteristic ethical energies. But more than these;
for these but deal with the means of compassing interests
already felt by the man to be supreme. The ethical
energy par excellence has to go farther and choose which
interest out of several, equally coercive, shall become
supreme. The issue here is of the utmost pregnancy, for it
decides a man’s entire career. When he debates, Shall |
commit this crime? choose that profession? accept that
office, or marry this fortune?—his choice really lies
between one of several equally possible future
characters. What he shall become is fixed by the conduct
of this moment.... The problem with the man is less what
act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall
now resolve to become.
William James, Psychology, IX
38 It is obvious. , . that the whole idea of good and bad has
some connection with desire. Prima facie, anything that
we all desire is "good," and anything that we all dread is
"bad." If we all agreed in our desires, the matter could be
left there, but unfortunately our desires conflict. If | say
“what | want is good," my neighbour will say "No, what /
want." Ethics is an attempt—though not, | think, a
successful one—to escape from this subjectivity.
Russell, Religion and Science, IX
39 The ideally virtuous man, if we had got rid of asceticism,
would be the man who permits the enjoyment of all good
things whenever there is no evil consequence to
outweigh the enjoyment.
Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, I, 7
40 Morals must be a growing science if it is to be a science
at all, not merely because all truth has not yet been
appropriated by the mind of man, but because life is a
moving affair in which old moral truth ceases to apply.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, III, 7
41 There is a peculiar inconsistency in the current idea that
morals ought to be social. The introduction of the moral
“ought" into the idea contains an implicit assertion that
morals depend upon something apart from social
relations. Morals are social. The question of ought, should
be, is a question of better and worse in social affairs.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, IV, 4
42 Morality comprises two different parts, one of which
follows from the original structure of human society,
while the other finds its explanation in the principle
which explains this structure. In the former, obligation
stands for the pressure exerted by the elements of
society on one another in order to maintain the shape of
the whole; a pressure whose effect is prefigured in each
of us by a system of habits which, so to speak, go to meet
it: this mechanism, of which each separate part is a habit,
but whose whole is comparable to an instinct, has been
prepared by nature. In the second, there is still
obligation, if you will, but that obligation is the force of
an aspiration or an impetus, of the very impetus which
culminated in the human species, in social life, in a
system of habits which bears a resemblance more or less
to instinct: the primitive impetus here comes into play
directly, and no longer through the medium of the
mechanisms it had set up, and at which it had
provisionally halted. In short, to sum up what has gone
before, we should say that nature, setting down the
human species along the line of evolution, intended it to
be sociable, in the same way as it did the communities of
ants and bees; but since intelligence was there, the
maintenance of social life had to be entrusted to an all
but intelligent mechanism: intelligent in that each piece
could be remodelled by human intelligence, yet
instinctive in that man could not, without ceasing to bea
man, reject all the pieces together and cease to accept a
mechanism of preservation. Instinct gave place
temporarily to a system of habits, each one of which
became contingent, their convergence towards the
preservation of society being alone necessary, and this
necessity bringing back instinct with it. The necessity of
the whole, felt behind the contingency of the parts, is
what we call moral obligation in general—it being
understood that the parts are contingent in the eyes of
society only; to the individual, into whom society
inculcates its habits, the part is as necessary as the
whole.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, |
43 A mock feeling and a true feeling are almost
indistinguishable; to decide that | love my mother and
will remain with her, or to remain with her by putting on
an act, amount somewhat to the same thing. In other
words, the feeling is formed by the acts one performs; so,
| cannot refer to it in order to act upon it. Which means
that | can neither seek within myself the true condition
which will impel me to act, nor apply to a system of ethics
for concepts which will permit me to act.... No general
ethics can show you what is to be done; there are no
omens in the world.
Sartre, Existentialism
9.2 Custom
The line between conduct that conforms to moral rules and
conduct that exemplifies customary manners is often
shadowy. The word "mores," which signifies the established
customs of a society or culture, has an obvious etymological
connection with the word "morals." A certain brand of
skepticism about the universality of moral principles derives
from the tendency of sociologists and cultural
anthropologists to identify what they call the "value system"
of a community, and hence its morality, with its mores —its
customary patterns of conduct, its customary standards of
approbation, its customary taboos or prohibitions. Since the
mores differ from community to community and, in a given
community, from one time to another, the conclusion is
easily—but, perhaps, illicithy—reached that morality is
relative to the institutions of a particular society and varies
with the time and place. Quotations taking the opposite
point of view, in defense of universal moral truths, will be
found in Section 9.1 on Moral Philosophy and Morality and in
Section 9.3 on the Moral Law.
The quotations collected here discuss custom as a
conservative force in society, relate social customs to the
stable habits of society’s members, call attention to and
comment on the wide diversity of customs, assess the
authority that attaches to or derives from social conventions,
and discuss the causes and effects of change in customs.
The consideration of established customs as having the
force of law occurs both here and in Section 12.1 on Law and
Lawyers. The effect of custom on standards of taste in the
sphere of art and on the prevalence of certain opinions in
the sphere of thought is touched on here, but it is also
discussed in Section 16.7 on Criticism and the Standards of
Taste and in Section 6.5 on Opinion, Belief, and Faith.
1 If one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in
the world such as seemed to them the best, they would
examine the whole number, and end by preferring their
own; so convinced are they that their own usages far
surpass those of all others.
Herodotus, History, l/l, 38
2 Callicles. Convention and nature are generally at variance
with one another.
Plato, Gorgias, 482B
3 Athenian Stranger. All the matters which we are now
describing are commonly called by the general name of
unwritten customs, and what are termed the laws of our
ancestors are all of similar nature. And the reflection
which lately arose in our minds, that we can neither call
these things laws, nor yet leave them unmentioned, is
justified; for they are the bonds of the whole state, and
come in between the written laws which are or are
hereafter to be laid down; they are just ancestral customs
of great antiquity, which, if they are rightly ordered and
made habitual, shield and preserve the previously
existing written law; but if they depart from right and fall
into disorder, then they are like the props of builders
which slip away out of their place and cause a universal
ruin—one part drags another down, and the fair
superstructure falls because the old foundations are
undermined. Reflecting upon this, Cleinias, you ought to
bind together the new state in every possible way,
omitting nothing, whether great or small, of what are
called laws or manners or pursuits, for by these means a
city is bound together, and all these things are only
lasting when they depend upon one another; and,
therefore, we must not wonder if we find that many
apparently trifling customs or usages come pouring in
and lengthening out our laws.
Plato, Laws, VII, 793A
4 |If you are at Rome live in the Roman style; if you are
elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.
Ambrose, qu. by Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, I, 1
5 Ignorant men who apply the tests of their human minds,
and measure all the conduct of the human race by the
measure of their own custom... are like a man handling
armour and not knowing what piece is meant for what
part of the body and so putting a greave on his head and
a helmet on his feet and complaining that they do not fit.
Augustine, Confessions, III, 7
6 Actions which are against the customs of human societies
are to be avoided according to the variety of such
customs; so that that which is agreed upon by the
custom, or decreed by the law, of state or people, is not
to be violated at the mere pleasure whether of citizen or
alien. For every part is defective that is not in harmony
with the whole.
But when God orders something against the custom or
covenant of a state, though it never had been done it
must be done; and if it was... allowed to lapse, it must be
restored; and if it was not a law before, it must be made a
law now.
Augustine, Confessions, Ill, 8
7 When men unacquainted with other modes of life than
their own meet with the record of such actions, unless
they are restrained by authority, they look upon them as
sins, and do not consider that their own customs either in
regard to marriage, or feasts, or dress, or the other
necessities and adornments of human life, appear sinful
to the people of other nations and other times. And,
distracted by this endless variety of customs, some...
have thought that there was no such thing as absolute
right, but that every nation took its own custom for right;
and that, since every nation has a different custom, and
right must remain unchangeable, it becomes manifest
that there is no such thing as right at all. Such men did
not perceive, to take only one example, that the precept,
"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them," cannot be altered by any diversity of
national customs. And this precept, when it is referred to
the love of God, destroys all vices; when to the love of
one’s neighbour, puts an end to all crimes.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Ill, 14
8 When a thing is done again and again, it seems to proceed
from a deliberate judgment of reason. Accordingly,
custom has the force of a law, abolishes law, and is the
interpreter of law.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 97, 3
9 And what all philosophy cannot implant in the head of the
wisest men, does not custom by her sole ordinance teach
the crudest common herd?
Montaigne, Essays, I, 23, Of Custom
10 The principal effect of the power of custom is to seize and
ensnare us in such a way that it is hardly within our
power to get ourselves back out of its grip and return into
ourselves to reflect and reason about its ordinances. In
truth, because we drink them with our milk from birth,
and because the face of the world presents itself in this
aspect to our first view, it seems that we are born on
condition of following this course. And the common
notions that we find in credit around us and infused into
our soul by our fathers’ seed, these seem to be the
universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that
what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off
the hinges of reason: God knows how unreasonably, most
of the time.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 23, Of Custom
11 Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own
practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of
truth and reason than the example and pattern of the
opinions and customs of the country we live in.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 31, Of Cannibals
12 We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries uS away,
and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the
branches and abandon the trunk and body.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 17, Of Presumption
13 True is, that whilome that good poet sayd.
The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne:
For aman by nothing is so well bewrayd
As by his manners, in which plaine is showne
Of what degree and what race he is growne.
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Bk. VI, III, 1
14 King Henry. Nice customs curtsy to great kings.
Shakespeare, Henry V, V, ti, 291
15 Corin. Those that are good manners at the court are as
ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country
is most mockable at the court.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, ii, 46
16 Polonius. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ili, 70
17 Where a man will plead a title of prescription of custom
he shall say that such custom hath been used from time
whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,
that is as much as to say, no man then alive hath heard
any proof to the contrary.
Sir Edward Coke, Commentary Upon Littleton, 170
18 Men’s thoughts are much according to their inclination;
their discourse and speeches according to their learning
and infused opinions; but their deeds are after as they
have been accustomed. And therefore as Machiavel well
noteth (though in an evil-favoured instance,) there is no
trusting to the force of nature nor to the bravery of words,
except it be corroborate by custom.
Bacon, Of Custom and Education
19 |... recognised in the course of my travels that all those
whose sentiments are very contrary to ours are yet not
necessarily barbarians or savages, but may be possessed
of reason in as great or even a greater degree than
ourselves. | also considered how very different the self-
Same man, identical in mind and spirit, may become,
according as he is brought up from childhood amongst
the French or Germans, or has passed his whole life
amongst Chinese or cannibals. | likewise noticed how
even in the fashions of one’s clothing the same thing that
pleased us ten years ago, and which will perhaps please
us once again before ten years are passed, seems at the
present time extravagant and ridiculous. | thus concluded
that it is much more custom and example that persuade
us than any certain knowledge, and yet in spite of this
the voice of the majority does not afford a proof of any
value in truths a little difficult to discover, because such
truths are much more likely to have been discovered by
one man than by a nation.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, II
20 For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as
much automatic as intellectual; and hence it comes that
the instrument by which conviction is attained is not
demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated!
Proofs only convince the mind. Custom is the source of
our strongest and most believed proofs. It bends the
automaton, which persuades the mind without its
thinking about the matter.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 252
21 Montaigne is wrong. Custom should be followed only
because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or
just. But people follow it for this sole reason, that they
think it Just. Otherwise they would follow it no longer,
although it were the custom; for they will only submit to
reason or justice. Custom without this would pass for
tyranny; but the sovereignty of reason and justice is no
more tyrannical than that of desire. They are principles
natural to man.
It would, therefore, be right to obey laws and customs,
because they are laws; but we should know that there is
neither truth nor justice to introduce into them, that we
know nothing of these, and so must follow what is
accepted. By this means we would never depart from
them. But people cannot accept this doctrine; and, as
they believe that truth can be found, and that it exists in
law and custom, they believe them and take their
antiquity as a proof of their truth, and not simply of their
authority apart from truth. Thus they obey laws, but they
are liable to revolt when these are proved to be valueless;
and this can be shown of all, looked at from a certain
aspect.
Pascal, Pensées, V, 325
22 Ideas that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be so
united in some men’s minds, that it is very hard to
separate them; they always keep in company, and the
one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding,
but its associate appears with it; and if they are more
than two which are thus united, the whole gang, always
inseparable, show themselves together.
This strong combination of ideas, not allied by nature,
the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance;
and hence it comes in different men to be very different,
according to their different inclinations, education,
interests, etc. Custom settles habits of thinking in the
understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and
of motions in the body: all which seems to be but trains of
motions in the animal spirits, which, once set a going,
continue in the same steps they have used to; which, by
often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the
motion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXXII,
5-6
23 How many men have no other ground for their tenets,
than the supposed honesty, or learning, or number of
those of the same profession? As if honest or bookish men
could not err; or truth were to be established by the vote
of the multitude: yet this with most men serves the turn.
The tenet has had the attestation of reverend antiquity; it
comes to me with the passport of former ages, and
therefore | am secure in the reception | give it: other men
have been and are of the same opinion, (for that is all is
said,) and therefore it is reasonable for me to embrace it.
A man may more justifiably throw up cross and pile for his
opinions, than take them up by such measures. All men
are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by
passion or interest, under temptation to it. If we could but
see the secret motives that influenced the men of name
and learning in the world, and the leaders of parties, we
Should not always find that it was the embracing of truth
for its own sake, that made them espouse the doctrines
they owned and maintained. This at least is certain, there
iS not an opinion so absurd, which a man may not receive
upon this ground. There is no error to be named, which
has not had its professors: and a man shall never want
crooked paths to walk in, if he thinks that he is in the
right way, wherever he has the footsteps of others to
follow.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XX, 17
24 Custom ... is the great guide of human life. It is that
principle alone which renders our experience useful to us,
and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of
events with those which have appeared in the past.
Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely
ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is
immediately present to the memory and senses. We
should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to
employ our natural powers in the production of any
effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well
as of the chief part of speculation.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, V, 36
25 Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and
force creates no right, we must conclude that
conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority
among men.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 4
26 Most peoples, like most men, are docile only in youth; <is
they grow old they become incorrigible. When once
customs have become established and prejudices
inveterate, it is dangerous and useless to attempt their
reformation; the people, like the foolish and cowardly
patients who rave at sight of the doctor, can no longer
bear that any one should lay hands on its faults to
remedy them.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 8
27 [The] most important [law] of all... is not graven on
tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the
citizens. This forms the real constitution of the State,
takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay or
die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people
in the ways in which it was meant to go, and insensibly
replaces authority by the force of habit. | am speaking of
morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power
unknown to political thinkers, on which none the less
success in everything else depends. With this the great
legislator concerns himself in secret, though he seems to
confine himself to particular regulations; for these are
only the are of the arch, while manners and morals,
slower to arise, form in the end its immovable keystone.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 12
28 The great art of living easy and happy in society is to
study proper behaviour, and even with our most intimate
friends to observe politeness; otherwise we will insensibly
treat each other with a degree of rudeness, and each will
find himself despised in some measure by the other.
Boswell, London Journal (Dec. |, 1762)
29 Johnson's profound reverence for the Hierarchy made him
expect from bishops the highest degree of decorum; he
was offended even at their going to taverns; "A bishop
(said he,) has nothing to do at a tippling-house. It is not
indeed immoral in him to go to a tavern; neither would it
be immoral in him to whip a top in Grosvenor-square. But,
if he did, | hope the boys would fall upon him, and apply
the whip to him. There are gradations in conduct; there is
morality,—decency,—propriety. None of these should be
violated by a bishop. A bishop should not go to a house
where he may meet a young fellow leading out a wench."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (March 1781)
30 Mere customary life (the watch wound up and going on of
itself) is that which brings on natural death. Custom is
activity without opposition, for which there remains only
a formal duration; in which the fulness and zest that
originally characterized the aim of life are out of the
question—a merely external sensuous existence which
has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object.
Thus perish individuals, thus perish peoples by a natural
death; and though the latter may continue in being, it is
an existence without intellect or vitality; having no need
of its institutions, because the need for them is satisfied
—a political nullity and tedium. In order that a truly
universal interest may arise, the spirit of a people must
advance to the adoption of some new purpose; but
whence can this new purpose originate? It would bea
higher, more comprehensive conception of itself, a
transcending of its principle, but this very act would
involve a principle of a new order, a new national spirit.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
31 No way of thinking or doing, however ancient can be
trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in
silence passes by as true today may turn out to be
falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke ol opinion, which some
had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain
on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you
try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and
new deeds for new.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
32 Nobody denies that people should be so taught and
trained in youth as to know and benefit by the
ascertained results of human experience. But it is the
privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived
at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret
experience in his own way. It is for him to find out what
part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his
own circumstances and character. The traditions and
customs of other people are, to a certain extent, evidence
of what their experience has taught them; presumptive
evidence, and as such, have a claim to his deference: but,
in the first place, their experience may be too narrow; or
they may not have interpreted it rightly. Secondly, their
interpretation of experience may be correct, but
unsuitable to him. Customs are made for customary
circumstances and customary characters; and his
circumstances or his character may be uncustomary.
Thirdly, though the customs be both good as customs,
and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as
custom, does not educate or develop in him any of the
qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a
human being. The human faculties of perception,
judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and
even moral preference, are exercised only in making a
choice. He who does anything because it is the custom
makes no choice. He gains no practice either in
discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and
moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by
being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by
doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than
by believing a thing only because others believe it. If the
grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to the person’s
own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened, but is
likely to be weakened, by his adopting it: and if the
inducements to an act are not such as are consentaneous
to his own feelings and character (where affection, or the
rights of others, are not concerned) it is so much done
towards rendering his feelings and character inert and
torpid, instead of active and energetic.
Mill, On Liberty, III
33 It is important to give the freest scope possible to
uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear
which of these are fit to be converted into customs.
Mill, On Liberty, III
34 A man’s fame, good or bad, and his honor or dishonor,
are names for one of his social selves. The particular
social self of a man called his honor is usually the result
of one of those splittings of which we have spoken. It is
his image in the eyes of his own "set," which exalts or
condemns him as he conforms or not to certain
requirements that may not be made of one in another
walk of life. Thus a layman may abandon a city infected
with cholera; but a priest or a doctor would think such an
act incompatible with his honor. A soldier’s honor requires
him to fight or to die under circumstances where another
man can apologize or run away with no stain upon his
social self. A judge, a statesman, are in like manner
debarred by the honor of their cloth from entering into
pecuniary relations perfectly honorable to persons in
private life. Nothing is commoner than to hear people
discriminate between their different selves of this sort:
"As aman | pity you, but as an official | must show you no
mercy; as a politician | regard him as an ally, but asa
moralist | loathe him"; etc., etc. What may be called
“club-opinion" is one of the very strongest forces in life.
The thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler
must pay his gambling-debts, though he pay no other
debts in the world. The code of honor of fashionable
society has throughout history been full of permissions as
well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either of
which is that so we best serve one of our social selves.
You must not lie in general, but you may He as much as
you please if asked about your relations with a lady; you
must accept a challenge from an equal, but if challenged
by an inferior you may laugh him to scorn: these are
examples of what is meant.
William James, Psychology, X
35 In general, parents and similar authorities follow the
dictates of their own super-egos in the upbringing of
children. Whatever terms their ego may be on with their
super-ego, in the education of the child they are severe
and exacting. They have forgotten the difficulties of their
own childhood, and are glad to be able to identify
themselves fully at last with their own parents, who in
their day subjected them to such severe restraints. The
result is that the super-ego of the child is not really built
up on the model of the parents, but on that of the
parents’ super-ego; it takes over the same content, it
becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the age-long
values which have been handed down in this way from
generation to generation.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXX1
36 The girl thought for a time of what he had said. "I
suppose," she then said, "that even in your country you
have parties, balls and conversazione?"
"Yes," he said, "we have those."
"Then you will know," she went on slowly, "that the
part of a guest is different from that of a host or hostess,
and that people do not want or expect the same things in
the two different capacities?"
"IT think you are right," said Augustus.
“Now God," she said, "when he created Adam and Eve
... arranged it so that man takes, in these matters, the
part of a guest, and woman that of a hostess. Therefore
man takes love lightly, for the honor and dignity of his
house is not involved therein. And you can also, surely,
be a guest to many people to whom you would never
want to be a host. Now, tell me, Count, what does a guest
want?"
"| believe," said Augustus when he had thought for a
moment, "that if we do, as | think we ought to here, leave
out the crude guest, who comes to be regaled, takes what
he wants and goes away, a guest wants first of all to be
diverted, to get out of his daily monotony or worry.
Secondly the decent guest wants to shine, to expand
himself and impress his own personality upon his
surroundings. And thirdly, perhaps, he wants to find some
justification for his existence altogether. But since you
put it so charmingly. Signora, please tell me now: What
does a hostess want?"
"The hostess," said the young lady, "wants to be
thanked."
Isak Dincsen, The Roads Around Pisa, IV
37 The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an
accommodation to the patterns and standards
traditionally handed down in his community. From the
moment of his birth the customs into which he is born
shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can
talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the
time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its
habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its
impossibilities his impossibilities. Every child that is born
into his group will share them with him, and no child born
into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever
achieve the thousandth part. There is no social problem it
is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the
role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and
varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must
remain unintelligible.
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, |
38 Custom did not challenge the attention of social theorists
because it was the very stuff of their own thinking: it was
the lens without which they could not see at all.
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, |
9.3 Moral Law
When the word "law" is used to signify a rule of conduct that
individuals may obey or violate, or a prescribed course of
behavior to which they may or may not conform, such
expressions as "natural law" and "law of nature” are
interchangeable with "moral law." To characterize a law as
natural or as moral is, negatively at least, to say the same
thing; namely, that it represents a rule of conduct which is
not made by a political ruler or ruling body and is not
enforced by the state. On the positive side, the reader will
find that whereas some authors regard the moral law as
based on the needs or tendencies of human nature (and so
they think of it as natural in that sense), other authors
regard it as emanating from the dictates of reason (and so
they think of it as a law of reason rather than as a law of
nature).
For the discussion of rules of conduct that are man-made
and state-enforced, the reader is referred to Section 12.1 on
Law and Lawyers. Quotations both here and in that section
consider the relation of positive law or the law of the state to
the natural moral law or the law of reason. Another body of
law is mentioned here—the law of God or the divine law,
which to the extent that it lays down rules of conduct as
contrasted with prescribing religious rituals or ceremonies
consists of rules that are often identical in substance with
the prescriptions of the natural moral law. The law that,
according to the Old Testament, God gave to Moses includes,
in addition to many ceremonial precepts, the Ten
Commandments, at least six of which prescribe virtuous
conduct or prohibit iniquitous or unrighteous acts.
The reader will find the moral law epitomized in the
golden rule and in the categorical imperative; he will find
some quotations that indicate the connection between the
natural law and natural rights, and some that derive moral
duties or obligations from the basic oughts and ought-nots
of the moral law. For the discussion of these matters in other
contexts, the reader is referred to Section 12.3 on Rights—
Natural and Civil, Section 9.9 on Duty: Moral Obligation, and
Section 20.8 on Worship and Service.
1 And God spake all these words, saying,
| am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or
any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that
is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth:
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve
them: for | the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love
me, and keep my commandments.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh
his name in vain.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shall thou labour, and do all thy work;
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy
God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son,
nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day:
wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and
hallowed it.
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may
be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee.
Thou shah not kill.
Thou shall not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbour.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt
not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor
his maidservant,nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that
is thy neighbour's
Exodus 20:1-17
2 Hecuba. The gods are strong and over them there stands
some absolute, some moral order principle of law more
final still. Upon this moral law the world depends; though
it the gods exist; by it we live, defining good and evil.
Euripides, Hecuba, 799
3 Athenian Stranger. Dealings between man and man
require to be suitably regulated. The principle of them is
very simple: Thou shalt not, if thou canst help, touch that
which is mine, or remove the least thing which belongs to
me without my consent; and may | be of a sound mind,
and do to others as | would that they should do to me.
Plato, Laws, XI, 913A
4 |lf by nature one man desires to promote the welfare of
another man, whoever he may be, only because he is a
fellow human being; then it follows that in accordance
with that same nature, there are some interests all men
have in common. If this is true, we are all subject to the
same law of nature. And if this is true, the law of nature
forbids us to wrong our neighbor.
Cicero, De Officiis, I/l, 6
5 We possess no living image of true law or of genuine
justice. The barest outline is all that we have. Would that
we could be true to even this; for it is drawn from the
models that nature and truth afford.
Cicero, De Officiis, Ill, 17
6 When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature
the things contained in the law, these, having not the
law, are a law unto themselves:
Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts,
their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts
the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.
Romans 2:14-15
7 Do not look around thee to discover other men’s ruling
principles, but look straight to this, to what nature leads
thee, both the universal nature 1 rough the things which
happen to thee, and thy own nature through the acts
which must be done y thee. But every being ought to do
that which is according to its constitution; and all other
things have been constituted for the sake of rational
beings, just as among irrational things the inferior for the
sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one
another.
The prime principle then in man’s constitution is the
social. And the second is not to yield to the persuasions
of the body, for it is the peculiar office of the rational and
intelligent motion to circumscribe itself, and never to be
overpowered either by the motion of the senses or of the
appetites, for both are animal; but the intelligent motion
claims superiority and does not permit itself to be
overpowered by the others. And with good reason, for it is
formed by nature to use all of them. The third thing in the
rational constitution is freedom from error and from
deception. Let then the ruling principle holding fast to
these things go straight on, and it has what is its own.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 55
8 Your law, O Lord, punishes theft; and this law is so written
in the hearts of men that not even the breaking of it blots
it out.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 4
9 Those sins which are against nature, like those of the men
of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and
punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they
should all alike be held guilty by God’s law which did not
make men so that they should use each other thus.
Augustine, Confessions, Ill, 8
10 All those things to which man has a natural inclination
are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and
consequendy as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as
evil, and objects of avoidance. Therefore the order of the
precepts of the natural law is according to the order of
natural inclinations.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 94, 2
11 There is in man an inclination to good, according to the
nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him; thus
man has a natural inclination to know the truth about
God, and to live in society. And in this respect, whatever
pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for
instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those
among whom one has to live, and other such things
regarding the above inclination.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 94, 2
12 A thing is said to belong to the natural law in two ways.
First, because nature inclines there; for example, that one
should not do harm to another. Secondly, because nature
did not bring in the contrary; thus we might say that for
man to be naked is of the natural law, because nature did
not give him clothes, but art invented them. In this sense,
"the possession of all things in common, and uniform
freedom" are said to be of the natural law, because, that
is, the distinction of possessions and slavery were not
brought in by nature, but devised by human reason for
the benefit of human life. Accordingly the law of nature
was not changed in this respect, except by addition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 94, 5
13 As to... common principles, the natural law, in its
universal character, can in no way be blotted out from
men’s hearts. But it is blotted out in the case of a
particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from
applying the common principle to a particular point of
practice, on account of concupiscence or some other
passion.... But as to the other, that is, the secondary
precepts, the natural law can be blotted out from the
human heart, either by evil persuasions, just as in
speculative matters errors occur in respect of necessary
conclusions; or by vicious customs and corrupt habits, as
among some men, theft, and even unnatural vices.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 94, 6
14 The goodness of the human will depends on the eternal
law much more than on human reason. And when human
reason fails we must have recourse to the Eternal Reason.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 19, 4
15 Natural law is a practical first principle in the sphere of
morality; it forbids evil and commands good. Positive law
is a decision that takes circumstances into account and
conforms with natural law on credible grounds. The basis
of natural law is God, who has created this light, but the
basis of positive law is civil authority.
Luther, Table Talk, 3911
16 The moral law... with which | shall begin, being comprised
in two leading articles, of which one simply commands us
to worship God with pure faith and piety, and the other
enjoins us to embrace men with sincere love,—this law, |
say, is the true and eternal rule of righteousness,
prescribed to men of all ages and nations, who wish to
conform their lives to the will of God. For this is his
eternal and immutable will, that he himself be
worshipped by us all, and that we mutually love one
another.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 20
17 Whatsoever men are to take knowledge of for law, not
upon other men’s words, but every one from his own
reason, must be such as is agreeable to the reason of all
men; which no law can be, but the law of nature. The laws
of nature therefore need not any publishing nor
proclamation; as being contained in this one sentence,
approved by all the world, Do not that to another which
thou thinkest unreasonable to be done by another to
thyself.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 26
18 That part of the Scripture which was first law was the Ten
Commandments, written in two tables of stone and
delivered by God Himself to Moses, and by Moses made
known to the people. Before that time there was no
written law of God, who, as yet having not chosen any
people to be His peculiar kingdom, had given no law to
men, but the law ol nature, that is to say, the precepts of
natural reason, written in every man’s own heart.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 42
19 To act absolutely in conformity with virtue is nothing but
acting according to the laws of our own proper nature.
But only in so far as we understand do we act. Therefore,
to act in conformity with virtue is nothing but acting,
living, and preserving our being as reason directs, and
doing so from the ground of seeking our own profit.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 24, Demonst.
20 The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it,
which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law,
teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all
equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in
his life, health, liberty ox possessions; for men being all
the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise
Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into
the world by His order and about His business; they are
His property, whose workmanship they are made to last
during His, not one another’s pleasure. And, being
furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community
of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such
subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy
one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses,
as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one
as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his
station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own
preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much
as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless
it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the
life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the
liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
Locke, II Civil Government, II, 6
211 think there cannot any one moral rule be proposed
whereof a man may not justly demand a reason: which
would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were
innate; or so much as self-evident, which every innate
principle must needs be, and not need any proof to
ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain it
approbation. He would be thought void of common sense
who asked on the one side, or on the other side went to
give areason why “it is impossible for the same thing to
be and not to be.” It carries its own light and evidence
with it, and needs no other proof: he that understands
the terms assents to it for its own sake or else nothing will
ever be able to prevail with him to do it. But should that
most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all
social virtue, “That one should do as he would be done
unto,” be proposed to one who never heard of it before,
but yet is of capacity to understand its meaning; might
he not without any absurdity ask a reason why? And were
not he that proposed it bound to make out the truth and
reasonableness of it to him? Which plainly shows it not to
be innate; for if it were it could neither want nor receive
any proof; but must needs (at least as soon as heard and
understood) be received and assented to as an
unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means
doubt of. So that the truth of all these moral rules plainly
depends upon some other antecedent to them, and from
which they must be deduced; which could not be if either
they were innate or so much as self-evident.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I, Il, 4
22 That God has given a rule whereby men should govern
themselves, | think there is nobody so brutish as to deny.
He has a right to do it; we are his creatures: he has
goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which
is best: and he has power to enforce it by rewards and
punishments of infinite weight and duration in another
life; for nobody can take us out of his hands. This is the
only true touchstone of moral rectitude; and, by
comparing them to this law, it is that men judge of the
most considerable moral good or evil of their actions; that
is, whether, as duties or sins, they are like to procure
them happiness or misery from the hands of the Almighty.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XXVIII,
8
23 The mind of man is so formed by nature that, upon the
appearance of certain characters, dispositions, and
actions, it immediately feels the sentient of approbation
or blame; nor are there any emotions more essential to its
frame and constitution. The characters which engage our
approbation are chiefly such as contribute to the peace
and security of human society; as the characters which
excite blame are chiefly such as tend to Public detriment
and disturbance: Whence it may reasonably be
presumed, that the moral sentiments arise, either
mediately or immediately, from a reflection of these
opposite interests.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 80
24 | assume that there are pure moral laws which determine,
entirely a priori (without regard to empirical motives, that
is, to happiness), the conduct of a rational being, or in
other words, the use which it makes of its freedom, and
that these laws are absolutely imperative (not merely
hypothetically, on the supposition of other empirical
ends), and therefore in all respects necessary. | am
warranted in assuming this, not only by the arguments of
the most enlightened moralists, but by the moral
judgement of every man who will make the attempt to
form a distinct conception of such a law.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
25 | call the world a moral world, in so far as it may be in
accordance with all the ethical laws—which, by virtue of
the freedom of reasonable beings, it can be, and
according to the necessary laws of morality it ought to
be. But this world must be conceived only as an
intelligible world, inasmuch as abstraction is therein
made of all conditions (ends), and even of all
impediments to morality (the weakness or pravity of
human nature). So far, then, it is a mere idea—though
still a practical idea—which may have, and ought to
have, an influence on the world of sense, so as to bring it
as far as possible into conformity with itself. The idea of a
moral world has, therefore, objective reality, not as
referring to an object of intelligible intuition—for of such
an object we can form no conception whatever—but to
the world of sense—conceived, however, as an object of
pure reason in its practical use—and to a corpus
mysticum of rational beings in it, in so far as the /iberum
arbitrium of the individual is placed, under and by virtue
of moral laws, in complete systematic unity both with
itself and with the freedom of all others.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
26 Not only are moral laws with their principles essentially
distinguished from every other kind of practical
knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all
moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part. When
applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from
the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives
laws a prion to him as a rational being. No doubt these
laws require a judgement sharpened by experience, in
order on the one hand to distinguish in what cases they
are applicable, and on the other to procure for them
access to the will of the man and effectual influence on
conduct; since man is acted on by so many inclinations
that, though capable of the idea of a practical pure
reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in
concreto in his life.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, Pref.
27 The moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect
expected from it, nor in any principle of action which
requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect.
For all these effects—agreeableness of one's condition
and even the promotion of the happiness of others—
could have been also brought about by other causes, so
that for this there would have been no need of the will of
a rational being; whereas it is in this alone that the
supreme and unconditional good can be found. The pre-
eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist
in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which
certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as
this conception, and not the expected effect, determines
the will. This is a good which is already present in the
person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for
it to appear first in the result.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
28 There is ... but one categorical imperative, namely, this:
Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same
time will that it should become a universal law.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metapkysic of
Morals, II
29 We are indeed legislative members of a moral kingdom
rendered possible by freedom, and presented to us by
reason as an object of respect; but yet we are subjects in
it, not the sovereign, and to mistake our inferior position
as creatures, and presumptuously to reject the authority
of the moral law, is already to revolt from it in spirit, even
though the letter of it is fulfilled.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
30 That in the order of ends, man (and with him every
rational being) is an end in himself, that is, that he can
never be used merely as a means by any (not even by
God) without being at the same time an end also himself,
that therefore humanity in our person must be holy to
ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the
subject of the moral law, in other words, of that which is
holy in itself, and on account of which and in agreement
with which alone can anything be termed holy. For this
moral law is founded on the autonomy of his will, as a
free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be
able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, Il, 2
31 Two things fill the mind with ever new and in-creasing
admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we
reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral
law within.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, II, Conclusion
32 Imagine a man at the moment when his mind is disposed
to moral feeling! If, amid beautiful natural surroundings,
he is in calm and serene enjoyment of his existence, he
feels within him a need—a need of being grateful for it to
some one. Or, at another time, in the same frame of mind
he may find himself in the stress of duties which he can
only perform and will perform by submitting to a
voluntary sacrifice; then he feels within him a need—a
need of having, in so doing, carried out some command
and obeyed a Supreme Lord, Or he may in some
thoughtless manner have diverged from the path of duty,
though not so as to have made himself answerable to
man; yet words of stern self-reproach will then fall upon
an inward ear, and he will seem to hear the voice of a
judge to whom he has to render account. In a word, he
needs a moral intelligence; because he exists for an end,
and this end demands a Being that has formed both him
and the world with that end in view. It is waste of labour
to go burrowing behind these feelings for motives; for
they are immediately connected with the purest moral
sentiment: gratitude, obedience, and humiliation —that
is, submission before a deserved chastisement—being
special modes of a mental disposition towards duty.... It
may be that such a disposition of the mind is but a rare
occurrence, or, again, does not last long, but rather is
fleeting and of no permanent effect, or, it may be, passes
away without the mind bestowing a single thought upon
the object so shadowed forth, and wthout troubling to
reduce it to clear conceptions. Yet the source of this
disposition is unmistakable. It is the original moral bent
of our nature, as a subjective principle, that will not let us
be satisfied, in our review of the world, with the finality
which it derives through natural causes, but leads us to
introduce into it an underlying supreme Cause governing
nature according to moral laws.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 86
33 The Lord. A good man, though his striving be obscure.
Remains aware that there is one right way.
Goethe, Faust, Prologue in Heaven, 328
34 The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the
presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this
homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem
foolish details, principles that astonish. The child amidst
his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity,
muscular force; and in the game of human life, love, fear,
justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These laws
refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written
out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They elude our
persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each
other’s faces, in each other’s actions, in our own remorse.
The moral traits which are all globed into every virtuous
act and thought—in speech we must sever, and describe
or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars.
Yet, as this sentiment is the essence of all religion, let me
guide your eye to the precise objects of the sentiment....
The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of
the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute
themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not
subject to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is
a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He
who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does
a mean deed is by the action itself contracted. He who
puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at
heart just, then in so far is he God.
Emerson, Address to Harvard Divinity School
35 If, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate,
but acquired, they are not for that reason the less natural.
It is natural to man to speak, to reason, to build cities, to
cultivate the ground, though these are acquired faculties.
The moral feelings are not indeed a part of our nature, in
the sense of being in any perceptible degree present in
all of us; but this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those
who believe the most strenuously in their transcendental
origin. Like the other acquired capacities above referred
to, the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, isa
natural outgrowth from it; capable, like them, in a certain
small degree, of springing up spontaneously; and
susceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high
degree of development. Unhappily it is also susceptible,
by a sufficient use of the external sanctions and of the
force of early impressions, of being cultivated in almost
any direction: so that there is hardly anything so absurd
or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these
influences, be made to act on the human mind with all
the authority of conscience.
Mill, Utilitarianism, III
36 Since man is endowed with intelligence and determines
his own ends, it is up to him to put himself in tune with
the ends necessarily demanded by his nature. This means
that there is, by very virtue of human nature, an order or
a disposition which human reason can discover and
according to which the human will must act in order to
attune itself to the necessary ends of the human being.
The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than
that.
Maritain, Rights of Man and Natural Law, I!
37 Natural law is not a written law. Men know it with greater
or less difficulty, and in different degrees, running the
risk of error here as elsewhere. the only practical
knowledge all men have naturally and infallibly in
common is that we must do good and avoid evil. This is
the preamble and (he principle of natural law; it is not the
law itself. Natural law is the ensemble of things to do and
not to do which follow therefrom in necessary fashion,
and from the simple fact that man Is man, nothing else
being taken into account. That every sort of error and
deviation is possible in the determination of these things
merely proves that our sight is weak and that
innumerable accidents can corrupt our judgment.
Montaigne maliciously remarked that, among certain
peoples, incest and thievery were considered virtuous
acts. Pascal was scandalized by this. We are scandalized
by the fact that cruelty, denunciation of parents, the lie
for the service of the party, the murder of old or sick
people should be considered virtuous actions by young
people educated according to Nazi methods. All this
proves nothing against natural law, any more than a
mistake in addition proves anything against arithmetic,
or the mistakes of certain primitive peoples, for whom the
stars were holes in the tent which covered the world,
prove anything against astronomy.
Maritain, Rights of Man and Natural Law, I!
9.4 Moral Freedom
The image of the man deprived of freedom as one in chains
or behind bars, or as one coerced or intimidated into acting
contrary to his own wishes, typifies the kind of liberty that is
discussed in Section 13.1 on Freedom in Society, but not
here. The man in prison and the slave in chains, the poor
man lacking the means of satisfying his desires and the
oppressed subjects of a tyrant, all these can enjoy the kind
of inner or moral freedom that is discussed here. It is neither
freedom of choice (which is treated in Section 5.7) nor
freedom to do as one wills, but rather the freedom that
consists in being able to will as one ought. It is sometimes
described, negatively, as freedom from the passions,
subjection to which Spinoza characterizes as "human
bondage." It is also described as a liberty that derives from
having the willpower to do one’s duty or to act in conformity
with the moral law.
As the reader will find in the quotations below, moral
freedom takes many forms, varying remarkably as one
passes from the discussion of it by Plato and the Roman
Stoics in antiquity, to what is said on the subject by Spinoza,
Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, or by Freud and Dewey.
However, what is common to them all is the fact that a
man’s possession of moral freedom does not in any way
depend on the outer circumstances of his life or upon his
inherited nature, but upon his acquirement of virtue, or
wisdom or a certain type of moral character, or even, as in
the case of Freud, a certain type of psychological
adjustment. The other element that is common to moral
liberty in all its forms is the moral law or the moral ideal to
which a man can conform only by mastering the
intransigent, recalcitrant, or antagonistic factors in his own
make-up. That is why the morally free man is said to have
achieved self-mastery. The reader is, therefore, referred to
Section 9.3 on Moral Law for materials relevant to moral
freedom.
1 If aman were born so divinely gifted that he could
naturally apprehend the truth, he would have no need of
laws to rule over him; for there is no law or order which is
above knowledge, nor can mind, without impiety, be
deemed the subject or slave of any man, but rather the
lord of all. | soeak of mind, true and free, and in harmony
with nature. But then there is no such mind anywhere, or
at least not much; and therefore we must choose law and
order, which are second best.
Plato, Laws, IX, 875B
2 The most learned men have told us that only the wise man
is free. What is freedom but the ability to live as one will?
The man who lives as he wills is none other than the one
who strives for the right, who does his duty, who plans his
life with forethought, and who obeys the laws because he
knows it is good for him, and not out of fear. Everything
he says, does, or thinks is spontaneous and free. His tasks
and conduct begin and end in himself, because nothing
has so much influence over him as his own counsel and
decision. Even the supreme power of fortune is
submissive to him. The wise poet has reminded us that
fortune is moulded for each man by the manner of his
life. Only the tvise man does nothing against his will, or
with regret and by compulsion. Though this truth
deserves to be discussed at greater length, it is
nevertheless proverbial that no one is free except the
wise. Evil men are nothing but slaves.
Cicero, Paradoxes of the Stoics, V
3 To conclude that the condition of slavery involves a
personas whole being, is an error. The better part of the
man is exempt. The slave-master has at his disposition
only the body of the slave; but the mind is its own
master. It is free and unchained; it is not even the
prisoner of the body. It can use its own powers, follow its
own great aims, and escape into infinity to keep company
with the stars.
Seneca, On Benefits, III, 20
4 Behold the wretched and dismal slavery of him who is in
thrall to pleasures and pains, those utterly capricious and
tyrannical masters. We, however, must escape to
freedom. But this is only possible if we are indifferent to
Fortune. Then we shall attain that one overriding blessing
—the serenity and exhaltation of a firmly anchored mind.
For when error is banished, we shall have the great and
satisfying joy that comes from the discovery of truth, plus
a kind disposition and cheerfulness of mind. The source
of our pleasure in these things will not derive from their
being good, but that they emerge from a good that is
one’s own.
Seneca, On the Happy Life, 1V
5 So far as | am concerned that body is nothing more or less
than a fetter on my freedom. | place it squarely in the
path of fortune, letting her expend her onslaught on it,
not allowing any blow to get through it to my actual self.
For that body is all that is vulnerable about me: within
this dwelling so liable to injury there lives a spirit that is
free. Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never
Shall it drive me to any pretence unworthy of a good
man; never shall | tell a lie out of consideration for this
petty body. | shall dissolve our partnership when this
seems the proper course, and even now while we are
bound one to the other the partnership will not be on
equal terms: the soul will assume undivided authority.
Refusal to be influenced by one’s body assures one’s
freedom.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 65
6 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye
continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free.
John 8:31-32
7 We ourselves alSo were sometimes foolish, disobedient,
deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in
malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
But after that the kindness and love of God our
Saviour toward man appeared.
Not by works of righteousness which we have done,
but according to his mercy he saved us.
Titus 3:3-5
8 No one. .. who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in
fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in
perturbation? "By no means." No one... who is in a state
of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is
delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is
at the same time also delivered from servitude.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 1
9 He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither
subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force;
whose movements to action are not impeded, whose
desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into
that which he would avoid. Who, then, chooses to live in
error? No man. Who chooses to live deceived, liable to
mistake, unjust, unrestrained, discontented, mean? No
man. Not one then of the bad lives as he wishes; nor is
he, then, free. And who chooses to live in sorrow, fear,
envy, pity, desiring and failing in his desires, attempting
to avoid something and falling into it? Not one. Do we
then find any of the bad free from sorrow, free from fear,
who does not fall into that which he would avoid, and
does not obtain that which he wishes? Not one; nor then
do we find any bad man free.
Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 1
10 The man who is not under restraint is free, to whom
things are exactly in that state in which he wishes them
to be; but he who can be restrained or compelled or
hindered, or thrown into any circumstances against his
will, is a slave. But who is free from restraint? He who
desires nothing that belongs to others. And what are the
things which belong to others? Those which are not in our
power either to have or not to have, or to have of a
certain kind or in a certain manner. Therefore the body
belongs to another, the parts of the body belong to
another, possession belongs to another. If, then, you are
attached to any of these things as your own, you will pay
the penalty which it is proper for him to pay who desires
what belongs to another. This road leads to freedom, that
is the only way of escaping from slavery, to be able to say
at last with all your soul
Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O destiny.
The way that 1am bid by you to go.
Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 1
11 Being naturally noble, magnanimous and free, man sees
that of the things which surround him some are free from
hindrance and in his power, and the other things are
Subject to hindrance and in the power of others; that the
things which are free from hindrance are in the power of
the will; and those which are subject to hindrance are the
things which are not in the power of the will. And, for this
reason, if he thinks that his good and his interest be in
these things only which are free from hindrance and in
his own power, he will be free, prosperous, happy, free
from harm, magnanimous, pious, thankful to God for all
things; in no matter finding fault with any of the things
which have not been put in his power, nor blaming any of
them. But if he thinks that his good and his interest are in
externals and in things which are not in the power of his
will, he must of necessity be hindered, be impeded, bea
Slave to those who have the power over things which he
admires and fears; and he must of necessity be impious
because he thinks that he is harmed by God, and he must
be unjust because he always claims more than belongs to
him; and he must of necessity be abject and mean.
Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 7
12 Do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple
dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and
justice; and... give thyself relief from all other thoughts.
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of
thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness
and passionate aversion from the commands of reason,
and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the
portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest how
few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is
able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the
existence of the gods; for the gods on their part will
require nothing more from him who observes these
things.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11, 5
13 Let the part of thy soul which leads and governs be
undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of
pleasure or of pain; and let it not unite with them, but let
it circumscribe itself and limit those affects to their parts.
But when these affects rise up to the mind by virtue of
that other sympathy that naturally exists in a body which
is all one, then thou must not strive to resist the
sensation, for it is natural: but let not the ruling part of
itself add to the sensation the opinion that it is either
good or bad.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 26
14 It is in thy power to live free from all compulsion in the
greatest tranquillity of mind, even if all the world cry out
against thee as much as they choose, and even if wild
beasts tear in pieces the members of this kneaded matter
which has grown around thee. For what hinders the mind
in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in
tranquillity and in a just judgement of all surrounding
things and in a ready use of the objects which are
presented to it, so that the judgement may say to the
thing which falls under its observation: This thou art in
substance (reality), though in men’s opinion thou mayest
appear to be of a different kind; and the use shall say to
that which falls under the hand: Thou art the thing that |
was seeking; for to me that which presents itself is always
a material for virtue both rational and political, andina
word, for the exercise of art, which belongs to man or
God.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 68
15 Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him
who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it
is to persist in thy error.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 16
16 Soul becomes free when it moves, through Intellectual-
Principle, towards The Good; what it does in that spirit is
its free act; Intellectual-Principle is free in its own right.
That principle of Good is the sole object of desire and the
source of self-disposal to the rest, to soul when it fully
attains to Intellectual-Principle by connate possession.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, VIII, 7
17 The wise man is always free; he is always held in honor;
he is always master of the laws. The law is not made for
the just but for the unjust. The just man is a law unto
himself and he does not need to summon the law from
afar, for he carries it enclosed in his heart...
The wise man is free, since one who does as he wishes
is free. Not every wish is good, but the wise man wishes
only that which is good; he hates evil for he chooses what
is good. Because he chooses what is good he is master of
his choice and because he chooses his work is he free.
Then, because he does what he wishes the free man is
wise. The wise man does well everything that he does.
One who does all things well does all things rightly. But
one who does all things rightly does everything without
offense, without blame, without loss and disturbance
within himself. And one who does nearly everything
without giving offense acts blamelessly and acts without
disturbance to himself, without loss. He does not act
unwisely but wisely in all things. One who acts with
wisdom has nothing to fear, for fear lies in sin. WTiene
there is no fear there is liberty; where there is liberty
there is the power of doing what one wishes. Therefore,
only the wise man is free.
Ambrose, Letter to Simplicianus (Benedictine 37)
18 | was bound not with the iron of another’s chains, but by
my own iron will. The enemy held my will; and of it he
made a chain and bound me. Because my will was
perverse it changed to lust, and lust yielded to became
habit, and habit not resisted became necessity. These
were like links hanging one on another—which is why |
have called it a chain— and their hard bondage held me
bound hand and foot. The new will which | now began to
have, by which | willed to worship You freely and to enjoy
You, O God, the only certain Joy, was not yet strong
enough to overcome that earlier will rooted deep through
the years. My two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, one
Spiritual, were in conflict and in their conflict wasted my
soul.
Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 5
19 To the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers
are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue.
Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free;
but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that
not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as
many masters as he has vices.
Augustine, City of God, IV, 3
20 The good will ... is the work of God; for God created him
with it. But the first evil will, which preceded all man’s
evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work
of God to its own works than any positive work. And
therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having God, but
the will itself for their end; so that the will or the man
himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil
tree bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will,
though it be not in harmony with, but opposed to nature,
inasmuch as it is a vice or blemish, yet it is true of it as of
all vice, that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only
in a nature created out of nothing, and not in that which
the Creator has begotten of Himself, as He begot the
Word, by Whom all things were made. For though God
formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself,
and e%’cry earthly material, is absolutely created out of
nothing; and man’s soul, too, God created out of nothing,
and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are
so thoroughly overcome by good that, though they are
permitted to exist for the sake of demonstrating how the
most righteous foresight of God can make a good use
even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the
true and supreme God Himself, and as in every invisible
and visible celestial creature that exists above this murky
atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because
the natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are
natures, are good. And evil is removed, not by removing
any nature, or part of a nature, which had been
introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that
which had been vitiated and depraved. The will,
therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of
vices and sins. Such was it given us by God; and this
being lost by its own fault, can only be restored by Him
Who was able at first to give it. And therefore the truth
sap, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed"; which is equivalent to saying, "If the Son shall
Save you, yc Shall be saved indeed." For He is our
Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 11
21 As, after the resurrection, the body, having become
wholly subject to the spirit, will live in perfect peace to all
eternity; even in this life we must make it an object to
have the carnal habit changed for the better, so that its
inordinate affections may not war against the soul. And
until this shall take place, "the flesh lusteth against the
spirit, and the spirit against the flesh"; the spirit
struggling, not in hatred, but for the mastery, because it
desires that what it loves should be subject to the higher
principle; and the flesh struggling, not in hatred, but
because of the bondage of habit which it has derived
from its parent stock, and which has grown in upon it by a
law of nature till it has become inveterate. The spirit,
then, in subduing the flesh, is working as it were to
destroy the ill-founded peace of an evil habit, and to
bring about the real peace which springs out of a good
habit.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 24
22 Our sensual appetite, where the passions reside, is not
entirely subject to reason; hence at times our passions
forestall and hinder reason’s judgment, at other times
they follow after reason’s judgment, accordingly as the
sensual appetite obeys reason to some extent. But in the
stale of innocence the inferior appetite was wholly
subject to reason, so that in that state the passions of the
soul existed only as consequent upon the judgment of
reason.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 95, 2
23 Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the
passions, but regulates them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 95, 2
24 In spiritual things there is a twofold servitude and a
twofold freedom: for there is the servitude of sin and the
servitude of justice; and there is likewise a twofold
freedom, from sin, and from justice. ..,
Now the servitude of sin or justice consists in being
inclined to evil by a habit of sin, or inclined to good by a
habit of justice: and in like manner freedom from sin is
not to be overcome by the inclination to sin, and freedom
from justice is not to be held back from evil for the love of
justice. Nevertheless, since man, by his natural reason, is
inclined to justice, while sin is contrary to natural reason,
it follows that freedom from sin is true freedom which is
united to the servitude of justice, since they both incline
man to that which is becoming to him. In like manner
true servitude is the servitude of sin, which is connected
with freedom from justice, because man is thereby
hindered from attaining that which is proper to him.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 183, 4
25 It must be observed that so far as men are concerned, in
order that any one attain to a state of freedom or
servitude there is required first of all an obligation ora
release. For the mere fact of serving someone does not
make a man a Slave, since even the free serve.... Nor
again does the mere fact of ceasing to serve make a man
free, as in the case of a runaway slave. But properly
Speaking a man is a Slave if he be bound to serve, and a
man is free if he be released from service. Secondly, it is
required that the above obligation be imposed with a
certain solemnity, even as a certain solemnity is
observed in other matters which among men obtain a
settlement in perpetuity. Accordingly, properly speaking,
one is Said to be in the state of perfection not through
having the act of perfect love, but through binding
himself in perpetuity and with a certain solemnity to
those things that pertain to perfection.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 184, 4
26 One must bear in mind that the sons of God are driven
not as slaves, but as free men. For, since he is free who is
for his own sake, we do that freely which we do of our
very selves. But this is what we do of our will, but what
we do against our will we do not freely but as slaves: be
the violence absolute, as when "the whole principle is
extrinsic, with the sufferer contributing nothing"—for
instance, a man is pushed into motion; or be the violence
mixed with the voluntary—for instance, when one wishes
to do or to suffer what is less contrary to his will to avoid
what is more contrary to it. But the Holy Spirit so inclines
us to act that He makes us act voluntarily, in that He
makes us lovers of God. Therefore, the sons of God are
impelled by the Holy Spirit freely out of love, not slavishly
out of fear.
Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, 22
27 Marco. From his hands who fondly loves her ere she is in
being, there issues, after the fashion of a little child that
sports, now weeping, now laughing,
the simple, tender soul, who knoweth naught save
that, sorung from a joyous maker, willingly she turneth to
that which delights her.
First she tastes the savour of a trifling good; there she
is beguiled and runneth after it, if guide or curb turn not
her love aside.
Wherefore twas needful to put law as a curb, needful
to have a ruler who might discern at least the tower of
the true city.
Laws there are, but who putteth his hand to them?
None; because the shepherd that leads may chew the
cud, but hath not the hoofs divided.
Wherefore the people, that see their guide aiming only
at that good whereof he is greedy, feed on that and ask
no further.
Clearly canst thou see that evil leadership is the cause
which hath made the world sinful, and not nature that
may be corrupted within you.
Dante, Purgatorio, XVI, 85
28 And he [Virgil] to me: "So far as reason sees here, | can
tell thee; from beyond that point, ever await Beatrice, for
‘tis a matter of faith.
Every substantial form, which is distinct from matter
and is in union with it, has a specific virtue contained
within itself
which is not perceived save in operation, nor is
manifested except by its effects, just as life in a plant by
the green leaves.
Therefore man knows not whence the under standing
of the first cognitions may come, nor the inclination to
the prime objects of appetite,
which are in you, even as the instinct in bees to make
honey; and this prime will admits no desert of praise or of
blame.
Now in order that to this will every other may be
related, innate with you is the virtue which giveth
counsel, and ought to guard the threshold of assent.
This is the principle whence is derived the reason of
desert in you, according as it garners and winnows good
and evil loves.
Those who in their reasoning went to the foundation,
perceived this innate freedom, therefore they left ethics
to the world.
Wherefore suppose that every love which is kindled
within you arise of necessity, the power to arrest it is
within you.
Dante, Purgatorio, XVIII, 46
29 A Christian man has no need of any work or of any law in
order to be saved, since through faith he is free from
every law and does all that he does out of pure liberty
and freely, seeking neither benefit nor salvation, since he
already abounds in all things and is saved through the
grace of God because of his faith, and now seeks only to
please God.
Luther, Freedom of a Christian
30 All their (the Thelcmitcs] life was spent not in laws,
statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and
pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought
good: they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a
mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake
them, none did offer to constrain them to cat, drink, nor
to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it
In all their rule, and strictest tic of their order, there was
but this one clause to be observed.
DO WHAT THOU WILT.
Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and
conversant in honest companies, have naturally an
instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous
actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called
honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and
constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn
aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly
were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond
of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved;
for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after
things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.
By this liberty they entered into a vay laudable
emulation, to do all of them what they saw’ did please
one.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruelj |, 57
31 The children of God are liberated by regeneration from
the servitude of sin; not that they have already obtained
the full possession of liberty, and experience no more
trouble from the flesh, but there remains in them a
perpetual cause of contention to exercise them; and not
only to exercise them, but also to make them better
acquainted with their own infirmity. And on this subject
all sound writers are agreed—that there still remains ina
regenerate man a fountain of evil, continually producing
irregular desires, which allure and stimulate him to the
commission of sin.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 3
32 Since it has pleased God to give us some capacity for
reason, so that we should not be, like the animals,
slavishly subjected to the common laws, but should apply
ourselves to them by judgment and voluntary liberty, we
must indeed yield a little to the simple authority of
Nature, but not let ourselves be carried away tyrannically
by her: reason alone must guide our inclinations.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 8, Affection of Fathers
33 True freedom is to have power over oneself for
everything.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 12, Of Physiognomy
34 Hamlet. Blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and | will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, ti, 73
35 The impotence of man to govern or restrain the affects |
call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not
his own master, but is mastered by fortune, in whose
power he is, so that he is often forced to follow the worse,
although he sees the better before him.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Preface
36 It will easily be seen in what consists the difference
between a man who is led by affect or opinion alone and
one who is led by reason. The former, whether he wills it
or not, does those things of which he is entirely ignorant,
but the latter does the will of no one but himself, and
does those things only which he knows are of greatest
importance in life, and which he therefore desires above
all things. | call the former, therefore, a slave, and the
latter free.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 66, Schol.
37 We may say that we are immune from bondage in so far
as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are the
slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are
confused. In this sense we have not all the freedom of
Spirit that were to be desired, and we may say with St.
Augustine that being subject to sin we have the freedom
of a slave. Yet a slave, slave as he is, nevertheless has
freedom to choose according to the state wherein he is,
although more often than not he is under the stern
necessity of choosing between two evils, because a
superior force prevents him from attaining the goods
whereto he aspires. That which in a slave is effected by
bonds and constraint in us is effected by passions, whose
violence is sweet, but none the less pernicious. In truth
we will only that which pleases us: but unhappily what
pleases us now is often a real evil, which would displease
us if we had the eyes of the understanding open.
Nevertheless that evil state of the slave, which is also our
own, does not prevent us, any more than him, from
making a free choice of that which pleases us most, in the
state to which we are reduced, in proportion to our
present strength and knowledge.
Leibniz, Theodicy, 289
38 If through defects that may happen out of the ordinary
course of Nature, any one comes not to such a degree of
reason wherein he might be supposed capable of
knowing the law, and so living within the rules of it, he is
never capable of being a free man, he is never let loose to
the disposure of his own will; because he knows no
bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper guide, but
is continued under the tuition and government of others
all the time his own understanding is incapable of that
charge.
Locke, II Civil Government, VI, 60
39 A man on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of
pain, and divert himself with other contemplations: and
sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our thoughts, as a
hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty
of thinking on other things, which we would rather
choose. But as soon as the mind regains the power to
stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these motions
of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it
thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider
the man as a free agent again.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXI, 12
40 Without liberty, the understanding would be to no
purpose: and without understanding, liberty (if it could
be) would signify nothing. If a man sees what would do
him good or harm, what would make him happy or
miserable, without being able to move himself one step
towards or from it, what is he the better for seeing? And
he that is at liberty to ramble in perfect darkness, what is
his liberty better than if he were driven up and down as a
bubble by the force of the wind? The being acted by a
blind impulse from without, or from within, is little odds.
The first, therefore, and great use of liberty is to hinder
blind precipitancy; the principal exercise of freedom is to
stand still, open the eyes, look about, and take a view of
the consequence of what we are going to do, as much as
the weight of the matter requires.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXI, 69
41 When a man gives himself up to the government of a
ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse
grows headstrong,—farewell cool reason and fair
discretion!
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Il, 5
42 Moral liberty... alone makes [man] truly master of himself;
for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while
obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is
liberty.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 8
43 In vain do we seek freedom under the power of the laws.
The laws! Where is there any law? Where is there any
respect for law? Under the name of law you have
everywhere seen the rule of self-interest and human
passion. But the eternal laws of nature and of order exist.
For the wise man they take the place of positive law; they
are written in the depths of his heart by conscience and
reason; let him obey these laws and be free; for there is
no slave but the evil-doer, for he always does evil against
his will. Liberty is not to be found in any form of
government, she is in the heart of the free man, he bears
her with him everywhere.
Rousseau, Emile, V
44 lt is... the moral law, of which we become directly
conscious (as soon as we trace for ourselves maxims of
the wall), that first presents itself to us, and leads directly
to the concept of freedom, inasmuch as reason presents it
as a principle of determination not to be outweighed by
any sensible conditions, nay, wholly independent of
them.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 1
45 Freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of
following the moral law with unyielding resolution is
independence of inclinations, at least as motives
determining (though not as affecting) our desire, and so
far as |am conscious of this freedom in following my
moral maxims, it is the only source of an unaltered
contentment which is necessarily connected with it and
rests on no special feeling.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. |, Il, 2
46 Virtue ... in so far as it is based on internal freedom,
contains a positive command for man, namely, that he
should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule
(that of reason); and this is a positive precept of
command over himself which is additional to the
prohibition, namely that he should not allow himself to be
governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of
apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of
government into its own hands, the feelings and
inclinations play the master over the man.
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, XVI
47 The laws of freedom, as distinguished from the laws of
nature, are moral laws. So far as they refer only to
external actions and their lawfulness, they are called
Juridical, but if they also require that, as laws, they shall
themselves be the determining principles of our actions,
they are ethical The agreement of an action with juridical
laws is its /egality; the agreement of an action with
ethical laws is its morality. The freedom to which the
former laws refer, can only be freedom in external
practice; but the freedom to which the latter laws refer is
freedom in the internal as well as the external exercise of
the activity of the will in so far as it is determined by laws
of reason. So, in theoretical philosophy, it is said that only
the objects of the external senses are in space, but all the
objects both of internal and external sense are in time;
because the representations of both, as being
representations, so far belong all to the internal sense. In
like manner, whether freedom is viewed in reference to
the external or the internal action of the will, its laws, as
pure practical laws of reason for the free activity of the
will generally, must at the same time be inner principles
for its determination, although they may not always be
considered in this relation.
Kant, General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals, |
48 | am free... when my existence depends upon myself. This
self-contained existence of spirit is none other than self-
consciousness, consciousness of one’s own being. Two
things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the
fact that | know; secondly, what | know. |n self
consciousness these are merged in one; for spirit knows
itse/f. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also
an energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself
actually that which it is potentially.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
49 The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death,
because they are greater than anything he finds in
himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which
they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them
greatly, to fed their passionless splendor, is greater still.
And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow
before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we
absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. To abandon the
struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of
temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things
—this is emancipation, and this is the free man’s worship.
Russell, A Free Man's Worship
50 Anyone who has successfully undergone the training of
learning and recognizing the truth about himself is
henceforth strengthened against the dangers of
immorality, even if his standard of morality should in
some respect deviate from the common one.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXVII
51 One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with
that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides
the locomotive energy, and the rider has the prerogative
of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of
his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the
relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of
the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to
guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to
go.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXX!
52 If we state the moral law ... as the injunction to each self
on every occasion to identify the self with a new growth
that is possible, then obedience to law is one with moral
freedom.
Dewey, Ethics, Pt. 11, XV, 5
53 The office of the moral law is that of a pedagogue, to
protect and educate us in the use of freedom. At the end
of this period of instruction, we are enfranchised from
every servitude, even from the servitude of law, since
Love made us one in spirit with the wisdom that is the
source of Law.
Maritain. Freedom in the Modem World
9.5 Conscience
According to its etymology, the word "conscience," deriving
as it does from conscire, should have almost the same
meaning as "conscious," indicating awareness or knowledge.
But that is not the meaning of the word as it has come to be
used in discourse about moral problems. In that context, it is
used either to signify a sense of right and wrong, whether
innate or acquired; or to signify the inner voice that
determines the judgment an individual makes concerning
what he should or should not do, or approve of, ina
particular case.
Conscience does not displace but rather applies the
principles or rules of the moral law, which is discussed in
Section 9.3. Such principles or rules are universal or general
formulations applicable to a wide variety of individual cases,
some of which clearly fall under the rule and some of which
involve aspects that might make them exceptions to the
rule. Conscience is needed to make the judgment that
considers the principle or rule in relation to this or that
particular case, deciding either that the case calls for
conformity to the rule or that the case justifies dispensation
from it.
One quotation that the reader might expect to find here
—Hamlet’s statement that "conscience doth make cowards
of us all"— has been placed elsewhere because, when it is
read in the context of the whole "To be or not to be" speech,
the meaning is clearly that it is a certain kind of knowledge,
not the moral conscience, that causes us to become
overtimid or overcautious when contemplating suicide.
Among the quotations assembled below, the reader will
find some that discuss freedom of conscience and the right
of private judgment in moral matters. These should be read
in connection with related passages that have been placed
in Section 13.2 on Freedom of Thought and Expression:
Censorship. The reader will also find, in quotations taken
from Freud, the discussion of psychological phenomena that
are related to conscience—remorse and a sense of guilt.
Other passages from Freud on the sense of guilt with be
found in Section 12.4 on Grime and Punishment. In Freud’s
theory of the matter, the reader will learn, the repressive
strictures of the superego represent the voice of conscience.
1 The best audience for the practice of virtue is the approval
of one's own conscience.
Cicero, Disputations, Il, 26
2 Where there is a bad conscience, some circumstance or
other may provide one with impunity, but never with
freedom from anxiety.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 105
3 There is nothing so preoccupied, so distracted, so rent and
tom by so many and such varied passions as an evil
mind. For when it cherishes some dark design, it is
tormented with hope, care and anguish of spirit, and
even when it has accomplished its criminal purpose, it is
racked by anxiety, remorse and the fear of all manner of
punishments.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratorio, XII, 1
4 Conscience is said to witness, to bind, or stir up, and also
to accuse, torment, or rebuke. And all these follow the
application of knowledge or science to what we do, which
application is made in three ways. One way in so far as
we recognize that we have done or not done something:
Thy conscience knoweth that thou hast often spoken evil
of others, and according to this, conscience is said to
witness. In another way, so far as through the conscience
we judge that something should be done or not done,
and in this sense, conscience is said to stir up or to bind.
In the third way, so far as by conscience we judge that
something done is well done or ill done, and in this sense
conscience is said to excuse, accuse, or torment. Now, it
is clear that all these things follow the actual application
of knowledge to what we do.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 79, 13
5 The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature,
are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward
veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and
accepted around him, cannot break loose from them
without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-
satisfaction.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 23, Of Custom
6 King Richard. Conscience is but a word that cowards use.
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
Shakespeare, Richard III, V, iii, 309
7 Macbeth. Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, Ill, ii, 19
8 Another doctrine repugnant to civil society is that
whatsoever a man does against his conscience is sin; and
it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge
of good and evil. For a man’s conscience and his
judgement is the same thing; and as the judgement, so
also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though
he that is subject to no civil law sinneth in all he does
against his conscience, because he has no other rule to
follow but his own reason, yet it is not so with him that
lives in a Commonwealth, because the law is the public
conscience by which he hath already undertaken to be
guided.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 29
9 God. And | will place within them as a guide
My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear,
Light after light well us’d they shall attain,
And to the end persisting, safe arrive.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 194
10 Adam. O Conscience, into what Abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driv’n me; out of which
| find no way, from deep to deeper plung’d!
Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 842
11 A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated
state, and will provide those laws for itself, which the
neglect of legislators hath forgotten to supply.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XVII, 3
12 Surely if there is any thing in this life which a man may
depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is
capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence,
it must be this very thing,— whether he has a good
conscience or no.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Il, 17
13 Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always
suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which
have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good
belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbours, and
where they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other
cause but quietness’ sake,
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Il, 17
14 | need only consult myself with regard to what | wish to
do; what | feel to be right is right, what | feel to be wrong
IS wrong; conscience is the best casuist; and it is only
when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse
to the subtleties of argument.
Rousseau, Emile, 1V
15 There is ... at the bottom of our hearts an innate principle
of justice and virtue, by which, in spite of our maxims, we
judge our own actions or those of others to be good or
evil; and it is this principle that | call conscience.
Rousseau, Emile, 1V
16 Johnson. Conscience is nothing more than a conviction
felt by ourselves of something to be done, or something
to be avoided; and in questions of simple unperplexed
morality, conscience is very often a guide that may be
trusted. But before conscience can determine, the state
of the question is supposed to be completely known. In
questions of law, or of fact, conscience is very often
confounded with opinion. No man’s conscience can tell
him the right of another man; they must be known by
rational investigation or historical enquiry. Opinion, which
he that holds it may call his conscience, may teach some
men that religion would be promoted, and quiet
preserved, by granting to the people universally the
choice of their ministers. But it is a conscience very ill
informed that violates the rights of one man, for the
convenience of another.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 1, 1773)
17 Conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is nota
duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it
Originally within him. To be bound to have a conscience
would be as much as to Say to be under a duty to
recognize duties. For conscience is practical reason
which, in every case of law’, holds before a man his duty
for acquittal or condemnation; consequently it does not
refer to an object, but only to the subject (affecting the
moral feeling by its own act); so that it is an inevitable
fact, not an obligation and duty. When, therefore, it is
said, "This man has no conscience," what is meant is that
he pays no heed to its dictates. For if he really had none,
he would not take credit to himself for anything done
according to duty, nor reproach himself with violation of
duty, and therefore he would be unable even to conceive
the duty of having a conscience.
| pass by the manifold subdivisions of conscience, and
only observe what follows from what has just been said,
namely, that there is no such thing as an erring
conscience. No doubt it is possible sometimes to err in
the objective judgement whether something is a duty or
not; but | cannot err in the subjective whether | have
compared it with my practical (here judicially acting)
reason for the purpose of that judgement: for if | erred |
would not have exercised practical judgement at all, and
in that case there is neither truth nor error.
Unconscientiousness is not want of conscience, but the
propensity not to heed its judgement. But when a man is
conscious of having acted according to his conscience,
then, as far as regards guilt or innocence, nothing more
can be required of him, only he is bound to enlighten his
understanding as to what is duty or not; but when it
comes or has come to action, then conscience speaks
involuntarily and inevitably. To act conscientiously can,
therefore, not be a duty, since otherwise it would be
necessary to have a second conscience, in order to be
conscious of the act of the first.
The duty here is only to cultivate our conscience, to
quicken our attention to the voice of the internal judge,
and to use all means to secure obedience to it, and is
thus our indirect duty.
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, Xll
18 Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon
ourselves in accordance with moral laws. It is not a mere
faculty, but an instinct; and its judgment is not logical,
but judicial. We have the faculty to judge ourselves
logically in terms of laws of morality; we can make such
use as we please of this faculty. But conscience has the
power to summon us against our will before the
judgment-seat to be judged on account of the
righteousness or unrighteousness of our actions. It is thus
an instinct and not merely a faculty of judgment, and it is
an instinct to judge, not in the logical, but in the judicial
sense.
Kant, Lectures on Ethics, Conscience
19 He who has no immediate loathing for what is morally
wicked, and finds no pleasure in what is morally good,
has no moral feeling, and such a man has no conscience.
He who goes in fear of being prosecuted for a wricked
deed, does not reproach himself on the score of the
wickedness of his misdemeanour, but on the score of the
painful consequences which await him; such a one has no
conscience, but only a semblance of it. But he who has a
sense of the wickedness of the deed itself, be the
consequences what they may, has a conscience.
Kant, Lectures on Ethics, Conscience
20 Conscience is the representative within us of the divine
judgment-seat: it weighs our dispositions and actions in
the scales of a law which is holy and pure; we cannot
deceive it, and, lastly, we cannot escape it because, like
the divine omnipresence, it is always with us.
Kant, Lectures on Ethics, Conscience
21 We may speak in a very lofty strain about duty, and talk
of the kind is uplifting and broadens human sympathies,
but if it never comes to anything specific it ends in being
wearisome. Mind demands particularity and is entitled to
it. But conscience is this deepest inward solitude with
oneself where everything external and every restriction
has disappeared—this complete withdrawal into oneself.
As conscience, man is no longer shackled by the aims of
particularity, and consequently in attaining that position
he has risen to higher ground, the ground of the modern
world, which for the first time has reached this
consciousness, reached this sinking into oneself. The
more sensuous consciousness of earlier epochs had
something external and given confronting it, either
religion or law. But conscience knows itself as thinking
and knows that what alone has obligatory force for me is
this that | think.
When we speak of conscience, it may easily be
thought that, in virtue of its form, which is abstract
inwardness, conscience is at this point without more ado
true conscience. But true conscience determines itself to
will what is absolutely good and obligatory and is this
self-determination.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Pars. 136-137
22 Aman could not have anything upon his conscience if
God did not exist, for the relationship between the
individual and God, the God-relationship, is the
conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even
the least thing upon one's conscience, because one is
immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God.
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, I, 3B
23 The conscience really does not, and ought not to
monopolize the whole of our lives, any more than the
heart or the head- It is as liable to disease as any other
part. | have seen some whose consciences, owing
undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as
irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no
peace.
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
24 | fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who
maintain that of all the differences between man and the
lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the
most important.... It is summed up in that short but
imperious word ought, so full of high significance. It is the
most noble of all the attributes of man, leading him
without a moment’s hesitation to risk his life for that of a
fellow-creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply
by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some
great cause.
Darwin, Descent of Man, 1, 4
25 The moral sense follows, firstly, from the enduring and
ever-present nature of the social instincts; secondly, from
man’s appreciation of the approbation and
disapprobation of his fellows; and thirdly, from the high
activity of his mental faculties, with past impressions
extremely vivid; and in these latter respects he differs
from the lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind,
man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards,
and comparing past impressions. Hence after some
temporary desire or passion has mastered his social
instincts, he reflects and compares the now weakened
impression of such past impulses with the ever-present
social instincts; and he then feels that sense of
dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave
behind them, he therefore resolves to act differently for
the future,—and this is conscience.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
26 It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act
ill; it is because their consciences are weak. There is no
natural connection between strong impulses and a weak
conscience. The natural connection is the other way. To
say that one person’s desires and feelings are stronger
and more various than those of another, is merely to say
that he has more of the raw material of human nature,
and is therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but
certainly of more good. Strong impulses are but another
name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but
more good may always be made of an energetic nature,
than of an indolent and impassive one. Those who have
most natural feeling are always those whose cultivated
feelings may be made the strongest. The same strong
susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid
and powerful, are also the source from whence are
generated the most passionate love of virtue, and the
sternest self-control. It is through the cultivation of these
that society both does its duty and protects its interests:
not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made,
because it knows not how to make them.
Mill, On Liberty, III
27 The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of
duty may be, is one and the same—a feeling in our own
mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation
of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises,
in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an
impossibility. This feeling, when disinterested, and
connecting itself with the pure idea of duty, and not with
some particular form of it, or with any of the merely
accessory circumstances, is the essence of Conscience.
Mill, Utilitarianism, III
28 | regard the bad conscience as the serious illness which
man was bound to contract under the stress of the most
radical change which he has ever experienced—that
change, when he found himself finally imprisoned within
the pale of society and of peace.
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, Il, 16
29 What means does civilization make use of to hold in
check the aggressiveness that opposes it, to make it
harmless, perhaps to get rid of it? Some of these
measures we have already come to know, though not yet
the one that is apparently the most important. we can
study it in the evolution of the individual. What happens
in him to render his craving for aggression innocuous?
Something very curious, that we should never have
guessed and that yet seems simple enough. The
aggressiveness is introjected, /nternalized; in fact, it is
sent back where it came from, ie., directed against the
ego. It is there taken over by a part of the ego that
distinguishes itself from the rest as a Super-ego, and now,
in the form of conscience, exercises the same propensity
to harsh aggressiveness against the ego that the ego
would have liked to enjoy against others. The tension
between the strict Ssuper-ego and the subordinate ego we
call the sense of guilt, it manifests itself as the need for
punishment. Civilization, therefore, obtains the mastery
over the dangerous love of aggression in individuals by
enfeebling and disarming it and setting up an institution
within their minds to keep watch over it, like a garrison in
a conquered city.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, VII
30 This increased sensitivity of morals in consequence of ill-
luck has been illustrated by Mark Twain in a delicious
little story: The First Melon | ever Stole. This melon, as it
happened, was unripe. | heard Mark Twain tell the story
himself in one of his lectures. After he had given out the
title, he stopped and asked himself in a doubtful way:
"Was it the first?" This was the whole story.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, VII
9.6 Good and Evil
The terms good and evil are used in other contexts than
those of ethical or moral discourse. According to Genesis,
God surveying his creation judged it to be good, very good.
Similar judgments are made by human artists, expressing
their estimation of the excellence or perfection of the work
produced. In this meaning of the word, beauty, excellence,
or perfection represents a goodness inherent in the very
being of the thing judged good, without regard to its bearing
on human conduct or its value for human life. Such
goodness is sometimes called "ontological," in
contradistinction to the moral goodness of the things that
are good for man or good in his behavior. It is in this
ontological sense that a mouse is said to be more good than
a pearl, though a pearl is more valuable to man.
As the reader will find in the quotations below, the
human good or the good for man is sometimes discussed in
the singular and sometimes spoken of as a class of goods.
The reader will find passages that consider "the Good," or
that assert that the only morally good thing in the whole
world is a good will. On the other hand, the reader will find
enumerations of the variety of goods, discussions of the
order of goods and of the relation of one good to another,
and different classifications of goods, such as the threefold
division of them into external goods, goods of the body, and
goods of the soul.
One distinction that is made by the ancients has great
importance for later discussion. It is the distinction between
the real and the apparent good. While acknowledging that
men always regard as good that which they in fact desire,
Socrates calls attention to the fact that they can be
mistaken in their judgment, for what they desire may in fact
not be good for them or to their advantage. It is generally
admitted that the notion of the good and the notion of the
desirable are correlative, but the question remains whether
we call something good because we desire it; or ought to
desire it, whether we do or not, because it is in fact good for
us; or both. Fundamental differences in the approach to
moral philosophy emerge from different answers to this
question.
The quotations below touch on many other points:
whether pleasure is the only good or just one of the goods;
the goodness of God and the problem of the existence of evil
in the world that He created; our knowledge of good and evil
and the diremption between knowing what is good and
seeking it; the inherent or natural goodness of man and the
sources or origin of his propensities for evil. Other
discussions of the theological aspects of this subject will be
found in Section 20.5 on God and in Section 20.13 on Sin
and Temptation, Psychological aspects of it are treated in
Section 4.4 on Desire and Section 4.7 on Pleasure and Pain;
and also in Section 5.7 on Will: Free Choice. The reader is
also referred to Section 16.6 on Beauty and the Beautiful for
the relation of goodness to beauty; and to Section 11.2 on
Wealth and Poverty for the economic discussion of value and
for the consideration of economic goods. In this chapter.
Section 9.7 on Right and Wrong, Section 9.8 on Happiness,
and Section 9.10 on Virtue and Vice deal with matters
closely related to themes treated here.
1 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold,
it was very good.
Genesis 1:31
2 So | returned, and considered all the oppressions that are
done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were
oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of
their oppressors there was power; but they had no
comforter.
Wherefore | praised the dead which are already dead
more than the living which are yet alive.
Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet
been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
the sun.
Ecclesiastes 4:1—3
3 For all this | considered in my heart even to declare all
this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are
in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred
by all that is before them.
All things come alike to all: there is one event to the
righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the
clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to
him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner;
and he that swearcth, as he that feareth an oath.
This is an evil among all things that are done under
the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the
heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in
their heart while they live, and after that they go to the
dead.
Ecclesiastes 9:1-3
4 Philoctetes. The Gods... find their pleasure in turning back
from Death the rogues and tricksters, but the just and
good they are always sending out of the world.
Sophocles, Philoctetes, 447
5 Hecuba. Goodness can be taught,
and any man who knows what goodness is
knows evil too, because he judges
from the good.
Euripides, Hecuba, 600
6 Chorus Leader. | hate all evil men who plot injustice,
Then trick it out with subterfuge. | would
Prefer as friend a good man ignorant
Than one more clever who is evil too.
Euripides, lon, 832
7 Socrates. The good are like one another, and friends to
one another; and... the bad, as is often said of them, are
never at unity with one another or with themselves; for
they are passionate and restless, and anything which is
at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in
union or harmony with any other thing.
Plato, Lysis, 214B
8 Socrates. No man voluntarily pursues evil, or that which
he thinks to be evil. To prefer evil to good is not in human
nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of
two evils, no one will choose the greater when he may
have the less.
Plato, Protagoras, 358B
9 Meno. Well then, Socrates, virtue, as | take it, is when he,
who desires the honourable, is able to provide it for
himself; so the poet says, and | say too—
Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the
power of attaining them.
Socrates. And does he who desires the honourable
also desire the good?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. Then are there some who desire the evil and
others who desire the good? Do not all men, my dear sir,
desire good?
Men. | think not.
Soc. There are some who desire evil?
Men. Yes.
Soc. Do you mean that they think the evils which they
desire, to be good; or do they know that they are evil and
yet desire them?
Men. Both, | think.
Soc. And do you really imagine, Meno, that a man
knows evils to be evils and desires them
notwithstanding?
Men. Certainly | do.
Soc. And desire is of possession?
Men. Yes, of possession.
Soc. And does he think that the evils will do good to
him who possesses them, or does he know that they will
do him harm?
Men. There are some who think that the evils will do
them good, and others who know that they will do them
harm.
Soc. And, in your opinion, do those who think that
they will do them good know that they are evils?
Men. Certainly not.
Soc. Is it not obvious that those who are ignorant of
their nature do not desire them; but they desire what
they suppose to be goods although they are really evils;
and if they are mistaken and suppose the evils to be good
they really desire goods?
Men. Yes, in that case.
Soc. Well, and do those who, as you Say, desire evils,
and think that evils are hurtful to the possessor of them,
know that they will be hurt by them?
Men. They must know it.
Soc. And must they not suppose that those who are
hurt are miserable in proportion to the hurt which is
inflicted upon them?
Men. How can it be otherwise?
Soc. But are not the miserable ill-fated?
Men. Yes, indeed.
Soc. And does any one desire to be miserable and ill-
fated?
Men. | should say not, Socrates.
Soc. But if there is no one who desires to be miserable,
there is no one, Meno, who desires evil; for what is misery
but the desire and possession of evil?
Men. That appears to be the truth, Socrates, and |
admit that nobody desires evil.
Soc. And yet, were you not saying just now that virtue
is the desire and power of attaining good?
Men. Yes, | did say so.
Soc. But if this be affirmed, then the desire of good is
common to all, and one man is no better than another in
that respect?
Men. True.
Soc. And if one man is not better than another in
desiring good, he must be better in the power of
attaining it?
Men. Exactly.
Soc. Then, according to your definition, virtue would
appear to be the power of attaining good?
Men. | entirely approve, Socrates, of the manner in
which you now view this matter.
Soc. Then let us see whether what you Say is true from
another point of view; for very likely you may be right.
Plato, Meno, 77A
10 Socrates. God, if he be good, is not the author of all
things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few
things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For
few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils,
and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils
the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him....
That God being good is the author of evil to any one is to
be strenuously denied, and not to be said or sung or
heard in verse or prose by any one whether old or young
in any well-ordered commonwealth.
Plato, Republic, Il, 379B
11 Socrates. No one can deny that all percipient beings
desire and hunt after good, and are eager to catch and
have the good about them, and care not for the
attainment of anything which is not accompanied by
good.
Protarchus. That is undeniable.
Soc. Now let us part off the life of pleasure from the
life of wsdom, and pass them in review.
Pro. How do you mean?
Soc. Let there be no wisdom in the life of pleasure, nor
any pleasure in the life of wisdom, for if either of them is
the chief good, it cannot be supposed to want anything,
but if either is shown to want anything, then it cannot
really be the chief good.
Pro. |mpossible.
Soc. And will you help us to test these two lives?
Pro. Certainly.
Soc. Then answer.
Pro. Ask.
Soc. Would you choose, Protarchus, to live all your life
long in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasures?
Pro. Certainly | should.
Soc. Would you consider that there was still anything
wanting to you if you had perfect pleasure?
Pro. Certainly not.
Soc. Reflect; would you not want wisdom and
intelligence and forethought, and similar qualities? would
you not at any rate want sight?
Pro. Why should |? Having pleasure | should have all
things,
Soc. Living thus, you would always throughout your
life enjoy the greatest pleasures?
Pro. | should.
Soc. But if you had neither mind, nor memory, nor
knowledge, nor true opinion, you would in the first place
be utterly ignorant of whether you were pleased or not,
because you would be entirely devoid of intelligence.
Pro. Certainly.
Soc. And similarly, if you had no memory you would
not recollect that you had ever been pleased, nor would
the slightest recollection of the pleasure which you feel at
any moment remain with you; and if you had no true
Opinion you would not think that you were pleased when
you were; and if you had no power of calculation you
would not be able to calculate on future pleasure, and
your life would be the life, not of a man, but of an oyster
or pulmo marinus. Could this be otherwise?
Pro. No.
Soc. But is such a life eligible?
Pro. | cannot answer you, Socrates; the argument has
taken away from me the power of speech.
Soc. We must keep up our spirits;—let us now take the
life of mind and examine it in turn.
Pro. And what is this life of mind?
Soc. | want to know whether any one of us would
consent to live, having wisdom and mind and knowledge
and memory of all things, but having no sense of
pleasure or pain, and wholly unaffected by these and the
like feelings?
Pro. Neither life, Socrates, appears eligible to me, or is
likely, as | Should imagine, to be chosen by any one else,
Soc. What would you say, Protarchus, to both of these
in one, or to one that was made out of the union of the
two?
Pro. Out of the union, that is, of pleasure with mind
and wisdom?
Soc. Yes, that is the life which | mean.
Pro. There can be no difference of opinion; not some
but all would surely choose this third rather than either of
the other two, and in addidon to them.
Soc. But do you see the consequence?
Pro. To be sure | do. The consequence is, that two out
of the three lives which have been proposed are neither
sufficient nor eligible for man or for animal.
Plato, Philebus, 20B
12 Athenian Stranger. Goods are of two kinds: there are
human and there are divine goods, and the human hang
upon the divine; and the state which attains the greater,
at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the
greater, has neither. Of the lesser goods the first is
health, the second beauty, the third strength, including
swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and the
fourth is wealth.... Wisdom is chief and leader of the
divine class of goods, and next follows temperance; and
from the union of these two with courage springs justice,
and fourth in the scale of virtue is courage,
Plato, Laws, |, 631A
13 Athenian Stranger. The goods of which the many speak
are not really good: first in the catalogue is placed health,
beauty next, wealth third; and then innumerable others,
as for example to have a keen eye or a quick ear, and in
general to have all the senses perfect; or, again, to bea
tyrant and do as you like; and the final consummation of
happiness is to have acquired all these things, and when
you have acquired them to become at once immortal...
While to the just and holy all these things are the best of
possessions, to the unjust they are all, including even
health, the greatest of evils.
Plato, Laws, Il, 661A
14 Let us... state, in view of the fact that all knowledge and
every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say
political science aims at and what is the highest of all
goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general
agreement; for both the general run of men and people of
superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify
living well and doing well with being happy; but with
regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do
not give the same account as the wise. For the former
think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure,
wealth, or honour; they differ, however, from one another-
—and often even the same man identifies it with different
things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is
poor; but, conscious of their ignorance, they admire those
who proclaim some great ideal that is above their
comprehension....
To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and
men of the most vulgar type, seem (not without some
ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure;
which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment.
For there are, we may say, three prominent types of life—
that just mentioned, the political, and thirdly the
contemplative life. Now the mass of mankind are
evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life
Suitable to beasts. ... A consideration of the prominent
types of life shows that people of superior refinement and
of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for
this is, roughly speaking, the end of the political life. But
it seems too superficial to be what we are looking for,
since it is thought to depend on those who bestow
honour rather than on him who receives it, but the good
we divine to be something proper to a man and not easily
taken from him....
The life of money-making is one undertaken under
compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are
seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of
something else. And so one might rather take the
aforenamed objects to be ends; for they are loved for
themselves. But it is evident that not even these are
ends; yet many arguments have been thrown away in
support of them.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1095a13
15 Goods have been divided into three classes, and some
are described as external, others as relating to soul or to
body; we call those that relate to soul most properly and
truly goods, and psychical actions and activities we class
as relating to soul. Therefore our account must be sound,
at least according to this view, which is an old one and
agreed on by philosophers. It is correct also in that we
identify the end with certain actions and activities; for
thus it falls among goods of the soul and not among
external goods. Another belief which harmonizes with our
account is that the happy man lives well and does well;
for we have practically defined happiness as a sort of
good life and good action. The characteristics that are
looked for in happiness seem also, all of them, to belong
to what we have defined happiness as being. For some
identify happiness with virtue, some with practical
wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others
with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or
not without pleasure; while others include also external
prosperity. Now some of these views have been held by
many men and men of old, others by a few eminent
persons; and it is not probable that either of these should
be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right
in at least some one respect or even in most respects.
With those who identify happiness with virtue or some
one virtue our account is in harmony; for to virtue
belongs virtuous activity. But it makes, perhaps, no small
difference whether we place the chief good in possession
or in use, in state of mind or in activity. For the state of
mind may exist without producing any good result, as in
a man who is asleep or in some other way quite inactive,
but the activity cannot; for one who has the activity will
of necessity be acting, and acting well and as in the
Olympic Games it is not the most beautiful and the
strongest that are crowned but those who compete. ... So
those who act win, and rightly win, the noble and good
things in life.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1098b13
16 It is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use
Heraclitus’ phrase, but both art and virtue are always
concerned with what is harder; for even the good is
better when it is harder.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1105a8
17 It is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no
easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a
circle is not for every one but for him who knows; so, too,
any one can get angry—that is easy—or give or spend
money; but to do this to the right person, to the right
extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the
right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy;
wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1109a24
18 Those who say that the good is the object of wish must
admit in consequence that that which the man who does
not choose aright wishes for is not an object of wish (for if
it is to be so, it must also be good; but it was, if it so
happened, bad); while those who say the apparent good
is the object of wish must admit that there is no natural
object of wish, but only what seems good to each man.
Now different things appear good to different people,
and, if it so happens, even contrary things.
If these consequences are unpleasing, are we to say
that absolutely and in truth the good is the object of
wish, but for each person the apparent good; that that
which is in truth an object of wish is an object of wish to
the good man, while any chance thing may be so to the
bad man, as in the case of bodies also the things that are
in truth wholesome are wholesome for bodies which are
in good condition, while for those that are diseased other
things are wholesome—or bitter or sweet or hot or heavy,
and so on; since the good man judges each class of
things rightly, and in each the truth appears to him? For
each state of character has its own ideas of the noble and
the pleasant, and perhaps the good man differs from
others most by seeing the truth in each class of things,
being as it were the norm and measure of them. In most
things the error seems to be due to pleasure; for it
appears a good when it is not. We therefore choose the
pleasant as a good, and avoid pain as an evil.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1113a17
19 Evil destroys even itself, and if it is complete becomes
unbearable.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1126a12
20 Those who have done many terrible deeds and are hated
for their wickedness even shrink from life and destroy
themselves. And wicked men seek for people with whom
to spend their days, and shun themselves; for they
remember many a grevious deed, and anticipate others
like them, when they are by themselves, but when they
are with others they forget. And ha\ing nothing lovable in
them they have no feeling of love to themselves.
Therefore also such men do not rejoice or grieve with
themselves; for their soul is rent by faction, and one
element in it by reason of its wickedness grieves when it
abstains from certain acts, while the other part is pleased,
and one draws them this way and the other that, as if
they were pulling them in pieces. If a man cannot at the
same time be pained and pleased, at all events alter a
short time he is pained because he was pleased, and he
could have wished that these things had not been
pleasant to him; for bad men are laden with repentance.
Therefore the bad man does not seem to be amicably
disposed even to himself, because there is nothing in him
to love; so that if to be thus is the height of
wretchedness, we should strain every nerve to avoid
wickedness and should endeavour to be good; for so and
only so can one be either friendly to oneself or a friend to
another.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1166b12
21 Some think that we are made good by nature, others by
habituation, others by teaching. Nature’s part evidently
does not depend on us, but as a result of some divine
causes is present in those who are truly fortunate; while
argument and teaching, we may suspect, are not
powerful with all men, but the soul of the student must
first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble
joy and noble hatred, like earth which is to nourish the
seed. For he who lives as passion directs will not hear
argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he
does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to
change his ways? And in general passion seems to yield
not to argument but to force. The character, then, must
somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving
what is noble and hating what is base.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1179b20
22 Ignorance of good and evil is the most upsetting factor of
human life. Because of mistaken ideas on these two
matters, we are frequently deprived of our greatest
pleasures, and our minds are overcome with anxiety.
Cicero, De Finibus, |, 13
23 Here (in Happy Groves] patriots live, who, for their
country’s good,
In fighting fields, were prodigal of blood:
Priests of unblemish’d lives here make abode
And poets worthy their inspiring god;
And searching wits, of more mechanic parts,
Who grac’d their age with new-invented arts;
Those who to worth their bounty did extend,
And those who knew that bounty to commend.
The heads of these with holy fillets bound,
And all their temples were with garlands crown’d.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
24 The most part of us desire what is evil through our
strangeness to and ignorance of good.
Plutarch, Artaxerxes
25 What a man applies himself to earnestly, that he
naturally loves. Do men then apply themselves earnestly
to the things which are bad? By no means. Well, do they
apply themselves to things which in no way concern
themselves? Not to these either. It remains, then, that
they employ them-selves earnestly only about things
which are good; and if they are earnestly employed about
things, they love such things also.
Epictetus, Discourses, 11, 22
26 The business of the wise and good man is to use
appearances conformably to nature: and as it is the
nature of every soul to assent to the truth, to dissent from
the false, and to remain in suspense as to that which is
uncertain; so it is its nature to be moved toward the
desire of the good, and to aversion from the evil; and with
respect to that which is neither good nor bad it feels
indifferent For as the money-changer is not allowed to
reject Caesar’s coin, nor the seller of herbs, but if you
show the coin, whether he chooses or not, he must give
up what is sold for the coin; so it is also in the matter of
the soul. When the good appears, it immediately attracts
to itself; the evil repels from itself. But the soul will never
reject the manifest appearance of the good, any more
than persons will reject Caesar’s coin.
Epictetus, Discourses, III, 3
27 Seek not the good in things external; seek it in
yourselves: if you do not, you will not find it.
Epictetus, Discourses, I/l, 24
28 As a mark is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so
neither does the nature of evil exist in the world.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XXVII
29 Nothing is evil which is according to nature.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II, 17
30 It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own
badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other
men’s badness, which is impossible.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 71
31 No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good
man ought to be, but be such.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 16
32 Health and freedom from pain; which of these has any
great charm? As long as we possess them, we set no store
upon them. Anything which, present, has no charm and
adds nothing to happiness, which when lacking is desired
because of the presence of an annoying opposite, may
reasonably be called a necessity but not a Good.
Plotinus, First Ennead, IV, 6
33 As necessarily as there is Something after the First, so
necessarily there is a Last: this Last is Matter, the thing
which has no residue of good in it: here is the necessity of
Evil.
Plotinus, First Ennead, VIII, 7
34 The light streaming from the Soul is dulled, is weakened,
as it mixes with Matter which offers Birth to the Soul,
providing the means by which it enters into generation,
impossible to it if no recipient were at hand.
This is the fall of the Soul, this entry into Matter:
thence its weakness: not all the faculties of its being
retain free play, for Matter hinders their manifestation; it
encroaches upon the Soul’s territory and, as it were,
crushes the Soul back; and it turns to evil all that it has
stolen, until the Soul finds strength to advance again.
Thus the cause, at once, of the weakness of Soul and
of all its evil is Matter.
Plotinus, First Ennead, VIII, 11
35 Each several thing must be a separate thing; there must
be acts and thoughts that are our own; the good and evil
done by each human being must be his own; and it is
quite certain that we must not lay any vileness to the
charge of the All.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, I, 4
36 This Universe is good not when the individual is a stone,
but when everyone throws in his own voice towards a
total harmony, singing out a life—thin, harsh, imperfect,
though it be.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, 11, 17
37 If we do not possess good, we cannot bestow it; nor can
we ever purvey any good thing to one that has no power
of receiving good.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, IV, 45
38 To the lowest of things the good is its immediate higher;
each step represents the good to what stands lower so
long as the movement does not tend awry but advances
continuously towards the superior: thus there is a halt at
the Ultimate, beyond which no ascent is possible: that is,
the First Good, the authentic, the supremely sovereign,
the source of good to the rest of things.
Matter would have Forming-ldea for its good, since,
were it conscious, it would welcome that; body would
look to soul, without which it could not be or endure; soul
must look to virtue; still higher stands Intellectual-
Principle; above that again is the principle we call the
Primal. Each of these progressive priors must have act
upon those minors to which they are, respectively, the
good: some will confer order and place, others life, others
wisdom and the good life.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, VII, 25
39 It was by Your gift that | desired what You gave and no
more, by Your gift that those who suckled me willed to
give me what You had given them: for it was by the love
implanted in them by You that they gave so willingly that
milk which by Your gift flowed in the breasts. It was a
good for them that | received good from them, though |
received it not from them but only through them: since
all good things are from You, O God.
Augustine, Confessions, I, 6
40 In goodness of will is our peace.
Augustine, Confessions, XIII, 9
41 Though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not
suppose that there is no difference between the men
themselves, because there is no difference in what they
both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings,
there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though
exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the
same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow
brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the
straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as
the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out
of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of
affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns,
ruins, exterminates the wicked.
Augustine, City of God, I, 8
42 According to the utility each man finds in a thing, there
are various standards of value, so that it comes to pass
that we prefer some things that have no sensation to
some sentient beings. And so strong is this preference,
that, had we the power, we would abolish the latter from
nature altogether, whether in ignorance of the place they
hold in nature, or, though, we know it, sacrificing them to
our own convenience. Who, for example, would not rather
have bread in his house than mice, gold than fleas? But
there is little to wonder at in this, seeing that even when
valued by men themselves (whose nature is certainly of
the highest dignity), more is often given for a horse than
for a slave, for a jewel than for a maid. Thus the reason of
one contemplating nature prompts very different
judgments from those dictated by the necessity of the
needy, or the desire of the voluptuous; for the former
considers what value a thing in itself has in the scale of
creation, while necessity considers how it meets its need.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 16
43 God, the author of natures, not of vices, created man
upright; but man, being of his own will corrupted and
justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned
children. For we all were in that one man, since we all
were that one man, who fell into sin by the woman who
was made from him before the sin... . And thus, from the
bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of
evil, which, with its concatenation of miseries, convoys
the human race from its depraved origin, as froma
corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death,
which has no end, those only being excepted who are
freed by the grace of God.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 14
44 The possession of goodness is by no means diminished
by being shared with a partner either permanent or
temporarily assumed; on the contrary, the possession of
goodness Is increased in proportion to the concord and
charity of each of those who share it. In short, he who is
unwilling to share this possession cannot have it; and he
who is most willing to admit others to a share of it will
have the greatest abundance to himself.
Augustine, City of God, XV, 5
45 Life eternal is the supreme good, death eternal the
supreme evil.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 4
46 He [God] judged it better to bring good out of evil, than
not to permit any evil to exist.
Augustine, Enchiridion, XXVII
47 Good and being are really the same, and differ only
according to reason, which is clear from the following
argument. The essence of good consists in this, that it is
in some way desirable. Hence the Philosopher [Aristotle]
says "The good is what all desire." Now it is clear that a
thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all
desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so
far as itis in act. Therefore it is clear that a thing is good
so far as it is being; for it is being is the actuality of all
things.... Hence it is clear that good and being are the
same really. But good presents the aspect of
desirableness, which being does not present.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 5, 1
48 Non-being is desirable not of itself, but only accidentally
—that is, in so far as the removal of an evil, which can
only be removed by non-being, h desirable. Now the
removal of an evil cannot be desirable except so far as
this evil deprives a thing of some being. Therefore being
is desirable of it-self, and non-being only accidentally, in
so far aS one seeks some being of which one cannot bear
to be deprived; thus even non-being can be spoken of as
relatively good.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1,5,2
49 No being can be spoken of as evil, in so far as it is being,
but only so far as it lacks being. Thus a man is said to be
evil because he lacks the being of virtue; and an eye is
said to be evil because it lacks the power to see well.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 5,3
50 He who has a will is said to be good, so far as he has a
good will, because it is by our will that we employ
whatever powers we may have. Hence a man is said to be
good, not by his good understanding, but by his good
will. Now the will relates to the end as to its proper object.
Thus the saying, "we are because God is good" has
reference to the final cause.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 5, 4
51 The evil which consists in the defect of action is always
caused by the defect of the agent. But in God there is no
defect, but the highest perfection.... Hence, the evil
which consists in defect of action, or which is caused by
defect of the agent, is not reduced to God as to its cause.
But the evil which consists in the corruption of some
things is reduced to God as the cause. And this appears
as regards both natural things and voluntary things. For. .
, some agent, in so far as it produces by its power a form
to which follow corruption and defect, causes by its power
that corruption and defect. But it is manifest that the
form which God chiefly intends in things created is the
good of the order of the universe. Now, the order of the
universe requires... that there should be some things that
can, and do sometimes, fail. And thus God, by causing in
things the good of the order of the universe,
consequently and as it were by accident, causes the
corruptions of things... , But when we read that God
hath not made death, the sense is that God does not will
death for its own sake. Nevertheless the order o! justice
belongs to the order of the universe, and this requires
that penalty should be dealt out to sinners. And so God is
the author of the evil which is penalty, but not of the evil
which is fault, by reason of what is said above.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 49, 2
52 It appears ,. . that there is no one first principle of evil, as
there is one first principle of good.
First, indeed, because the first principle of good is
essentially good.... But nothing can be essentially bad.
For... every being, as such, is good, and... evil can exist
only in good as in its subject.
Secondly, because the first principle of good is the
highest and perfect good which contains beforehand in
itself all goodness... . But there cannot be a supreme evil,
because... although evil always lessens good, yet it never
wholly consumes it; and thus, since good always remains,
nothing can be wholly and perfectly bad. Therefore, the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says that "if the wholly evil could
be, it would destroy itself," because all good being
destroyed (which it need be for something to be wholly
evil), evil itself would be taken away, since its subject is
good.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 49, 3
53 Evil can only have an accidental cause.... Hence
reduction to any per se cause of evil is impossible. And to
say that evil is in the greater number is simply false. For
things which are generated and corrupted, in which alone
can there be natural evil, are the smaller part of the
whole universe. And again, in every species the defect of
nature is in the smaller number. In man alone does evil
appear as in the greater number, because the good of
man as regards the senses is not the good of man as man
—that is, in regard to reason, and more men follow the
senses than the reason.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 49, 3
54 As being is the first thing that falls under the
apprehension absolutely, so good is the first thing that
falls under the apprehension of the practical reason,
which is directed to action; for every agent acts for an
end, which has the aspect of good. Consequently the first
principle in the practical reason is one founded on the
notion of good, namely, that the good is what all desire.
Hence this is the first precept of law, that good is to be
pursued and done, and evil is to be avoided. All other
precepts of the natural law are based upon this, so that
whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as
man’s good belongs to the precepts of the natural law as
something to be done or avoided.
Aquinas, Summa Thealogica, I-Il, 94, 2
55 Generally it may be stated that what people consider to
be good is really bad and most of the things that are
considered to be bad are really good.
Maimonides, Preservation of Youth, III
56 Men, says an old Greek maxim, are tormented by the
opinions they have of things, not by the things
themselves. There would be a great point gained for the
relief of our wretched human lot if someone could prove
this statement true in every case. For if evils have no
entry into us but by our judgment, it seems to be in our
power to disdain them or turn them to good use. If things
give themselves up to our mercy, why shall we not
dispose of them and arrange them to our advantage? If
what we call evil and torment is neither evil nor torment
in itself, if it is merely our fancy that gives it this quality,
it is in us to change it. And having the choice, if no one
forces us, we are strangely insane to tense ourselves for
the course that is more painful to us, and to give
sicknesses, poverty, and slights a bitter and unpleasant
taste if we can give them a good one and if, fortune
furnishing merely the material, it is for us to give it form.
But let us see whether this can be maintained: that what
we Call evil is not evil in itself—or at least, whatever it is,
that it depends on us to give it a different savor anda
different complexion; for all this comes to the same thing.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 14, That the Taste of Good
57 Confidence in the goodness of others is no slight
testimony to one’s own goodness.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 14, That the Taste of Good
58 Antonio. An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, iii, 100
59 Falstaff. lf sack and sugar be a fault, God help the
wicked! if to be old and merry be asin, then many an old
host that | know is damned: if to be fat be to be hated,
then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, Il, iv, 516
60 King Henry. There is some soul of goodness in things evil.
Would men observingly distil it out.
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself.
Shakespeare, Henry V, IV, i, 4
61 Hamlet. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v, 108
62 Hamlet. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 255
63 Pandarus. O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent
despised! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set
a-work, and how ill requited! why should our endeavour
be so loved and the performance so loathed?
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, V, x, 36
64 Gloucester. Here, take this purse, thou whom the
heavens’ plagues
Have humbled to all strokes. That | am wretched
Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man.
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, I, 67
65 Albany. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, ii, 38
66 Lady Macduff. Whither should | fly?
| have done no harm. But | remember now
| am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do | put up that womanly defence.
To say | have done no harm?
Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, ti, 73
67 Antony. But when we in our viciousness grow hard—
O misery' on’t!—the %s'ise gods seel our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgements; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at’s, while we strut
To our confusion.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, II, xiii, 111
68 No more be grieved at that which thou hast done: Roses
have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and
eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker
lives in sweetest bud.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXV
69 Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that
fester smell far worse than weeds.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XCIV
70 We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that
write what men do, and not what they ought to do. For it
is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the
columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the
conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon
his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting,
and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil. For
without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. Nay, an
honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked,
to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of
evil. For men of corrupted minds presuppose that honesty
groweth out of simplicity of manners, and believing of
preachers schoolmasters, and men’s exterior language.
So as except you can make them perceive that you blow
the utmost reaches of their own corrupt opinions they
despise all morality.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk, Il, XXI, 9
71 Whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire,
that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the
object of his hate and aversion, evi//; and of his contempt,
vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and
contemptible are ever used with relation to the person
that useth them: there being nothing simply and
absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to
be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but
from the person of the man, where there is no
Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the person
that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom
men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his
sentence the rule thereof.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 6
72 Evil is easy, and has infinite forms; good is almost
unique. But a certain kind of evil is as difficult to find as
what we call good; and often on this account such
particular evil gets passed off as good. An extraordinary
greatness of soul is needed in order to attain to it as well
as to good.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 408
73 Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when
they do it from religious conviction.
Pascal, Pensées, XIV, 895
74 Nothing is more common than good things; the only
question is how to discern them; it is certain that all of
them are natural and within our reach and even known
by every one. But we do not know how to distinguish
them. This is universal. It is not in things extraordinary
and strange that excellence of any kind is found. We
reach up for it, and we are further away; more often than
not we must stoop. The best books are those whose
readers think they could have written them. Nature,
which alone is good, is familiar and common throughout.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
75 To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heav’n a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
Milton, Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench
76 Satan. To do ought good never will be our task, But ever
to do ill our sole delight.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 159
77 Whence,
But from the Author of all ill could Spring
So deep a malice, to confound the race
Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell
To mingle and involve, done all to spite
The great Creatour?
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 380
78 Such Pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This Flourie Plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus earlie, thus alone; her Heavenly forme
Angelic, but more soft, and Feminine,
Her graceful Innocence, her every Aire
Of gesture or lest action overawd
His Malice, and with rapine sweet bereav'd
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:
That space the Evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remaind
Stupidly good, of enmitie disarm’d
Of guile, of hate, of envie, of revenge;
But the hot Hell that alwayes in him burnes.
Though in mid Heav’n, soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure not for him ordain’d: then soon
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 455
79 Good unknown, sure is not had, or had And yet unknown,
is as not had at all.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 756
80 Samson. Weakness is thy excuse.
And | believe it, weakness to resist
Philistian gold: if weakness may excuse,
What Murtherer, what Traytor, Parricide,
Incestuous, Sacrilegious, but may plead it?
All wickedness is weakness: that plea therefore
With God or Man will gain thee no remission.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 829
81 Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up
together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good
is So involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil,
and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be
discerned, that those confused seeds which were
imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out,
and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from
out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of
good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped
forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which
Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of
knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now
is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence
to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can
apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and
seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish,
and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true
wayfaring Christian.
Milton, Areopagitica
82 If all things have followed from the necessity of the most
perfect nature of God, how is it that so many
imperfections have arisen in nature—corruption, for
instance, of things till they stink; deformity, exciting
disgust; confusion, evil, crime, etc,? But, as | have just
observed, all this is easily answered. For the perfection of
things is to be Judged by their nature and power alone;
nor are they more or less perfect because they delight or
offend the human senses, or because they are beneficial
or prejudicial to human nature,
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Appendix
83 With regard to good and evil, these terms indicate
nothing positive in things considered in themselves, nor
are they anything else than modes of thought, or notions
which we form from the comparison of one thing with
another. For one and the same thing may at the same
time be both good and evil or indifferent. Music, for
example, is good to a melancholy person, bad to one
mourning, while to a deaf man it is neither good nor bad.
But although things are so, we must retain these words.
For since we desire to form for ourselves an idea of man
upon which we may look as a model of human nature, it
will be of service to us to retain these expressions in the
sense | have mentioned. By good, therefore, |
understand... everything which we are certain is a means
by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the
model of human nature we set before us. By evi/, on the
contrary, | understand everything which we are certain
hinders us from reaching that model. Again, | shall call
men more or less perfect or imperfect in so far as they
approach more or less nearly to this same model. For it is
to be carefully observed, that when | say that an
individual passes from a less to a greater perfection and
vice versa, | do not understand that from one essence or
form he is changed into another (for a horse, for instance,
would be as much destroyed if it were changed into a
man as if it were changed into an insect), but rather we
conceive that his power of action, in so far as it is
understood by his own nature, is increased or diminished.
Finally, by perfection generally, | understand... reality;
that is to say, the essence of any object in so far as it
exists and acts in a certain manner, no regard being paid
to its duration. For no individual thing can be said to be
more perfect because for a longer time it has persevered
in existence.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Preface
84 Things then are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure
or pain. That we call good, which is apt to cause or
increase pleasure, or diminish pain in us; or else to
procure or preserve us the possession of any other good
or absence of any evil. And, on the contrary, we name
that evil which is apt to produce or increase any pain, or
diminish any pleasure in us: or else to procure us any
evil, or deprive us of any good.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk, 11, XX, 2
85 As for the mixture of pain or uneasiness which is in the
world, pursuant to the general laws of nature, and the
actions of finite, imperfect spirits, this, in the state we are
in at present, is indispensably necessary to our well-
being. But our prospects are too narrow. We take, for
instance, the idea of some one particular pain into our
thoughts, and account it evil; whereas, if we enlarge our
view, SO as to comprehend the various ends, connexions,
and dependencies of things, on what occasions and in
what proportions we are affected with pain and pleasure,
the nature of human freedom, and the design with which
we are put into the world; we shall be forced to
acknowledge that those particular things which,
considered in themselves, appear to be evil, have the
nature of good, when considered as linked with the whole
system of beings.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 153
86 Absolute good and evil are unknown to us. In this life
they are blended together; we never enjoy any perfectly
pure feeling, nor do we remain for more than a moment in
the same state. The feelings of our minds, like the
changes in our bodies, are in a continual flux. Good and
ill are common to all, but in varying proportions. The
happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he
who enjoys least. Ever more sorrow than joy—this is the
lot of all of us. Man’s happiness in this world is but a
negative state; it must be reckoned by the fewness of his
ills.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
87 "The causes of good and evil," answered Imlac, "are so
various and uncertain, so often entangled with each
other, so diversified by various relations, and so much
subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he
who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of
preference, must live and die inquiring and deliberating."
Johnson, Rasselas, XVI
88 Johnson. If possibility of evil be to exclude good, no good
ever can be done. If nothing is to be attempted in which
there is danger, we must all sink into hopeless inactivity.
The evils that may be feared from this practice arise not
from any defect in the institution, but from the infirmities
of human nature. Power, in whatever hands it is placed,
will be sometimes improperly exerted; yet courts of law
must judge, though they will sometimes judge amiss. A
father must instruct his children, though he himself may
often want instruction. A minister must censure sinners,
though his censure may be sometimes erroneous by want
of judgement, and sometimes unjust by want of honesty.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1776)
89 Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or even
out of it, which can be called good, without qualification,
except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and the
other ta/ents of the mind, however they may be named,
or courage, resolution, perserverance, as qualities of
temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in
many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become
extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to
make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what
is called character, is not good.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
90 A good will is good not because of what it performs or
effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some
proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is,
it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be
esteemed much higher than all that can be brought
about by it in favour of any inclination, nay even of the
sum total of all inclinations.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
91 The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of
good and evi/. For by the former is meant an object
necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by
the latter one necessarily shunned, also according toa
principle of reason.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 2
92 What we call good must be an object of desire in the
judgement of every rational man, and evil an object of
aversion in the eyes of everyone.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 2
93 The evils visited upon us, now by nature, now by the
truculent egoism of man, evoke the energies of the soul,
and give it strength and courage to submit to no such
force, and at the same time quicken in us a sense that in
the depths of our nature there is an aptitude for higher
ends.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 83
94 Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are
necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call
Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil
is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 3
95 The voice of the Devil. All Bibles or sacred codes have
been the causes of the following Errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles; Viz: a
Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, calld Evil, is alone from the Body, &
that Reason, calld Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following
his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are
True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that
calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five
Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and
Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight,
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 4
96 It seems highly probable that moral evil is absolutely
necessary to the production of moral excellence. A being
with only good placed in view may be justly said to be
impelled by a blind necessity. The pursuit of good in this
case can be no indication of virtuous propensities. It
might be said, perhaps, that Infinite Wisdom cannot want
such an indication as outward action, but would foreknow
with certainty whether the being would choose good or
evil. This might be a plausible argument against a state
of trial, but will not hold against the supposition that
mind in this world is in a state of formation. Upon this
idea, the being that has seen moral evil and has felt
disapprobation and disgust at it is essentially different
from the being that has seen only good. They are pieces
of clay that have received distinct impressions; they
must, therefore, necessarily be in different shapes; or,
even if we allow them both to have the same lovely form
of virtue, it must be acknowledged that one has
undergone the further process necessary to give firmness
and durability to its substance, while the other is still
exposed to injury, and liable to be broken by every
accidental impulse. An ardent love and admiration of
virtue seems to imply the existence of something
opposite to it, and it seems highly probable that the same
beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of
character could not be generated without the impressions
of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral
evil.
Malthus, Population, XIX
97 Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.
We are not patiently to submit to it, but to exert ourselves
to avoid it. It is not only the interest but the duty of every
individual to use his utmost efforts to remove evil from
himself and from as large a circle as he can influence,
and the more he exercises himself in this duty, the more
wisely he directs his efforts, and the more successful
these efforts are, the more he will probably improve and
exalt his own mind, and the more completely does he
appear to fulfill the will of his Creator.
Malthus, Population, XIX
98 The Christian doctrine that man is by nature evil is loftier
than the other which takes him to be by nature good.
This doctrine is to be understood as follows in accordance
with the philosophical exegesis of it: As mind, man isa
free substance which is in the position of not allowing
itself to be determined by natural impulse. When man’s
condition is immediate and mentally undeveloped, he is
in a situation in which he ought not to be and from which
he must free himself. This is the meaning of the doctrine
of original sin without which Christianity would not be the
religion of freedom.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 18
99 It is only man who is good, and he is good only because
he can also be evil. Good and evil are inseparable, and
their inseparability is rooted in the fact that the concept
becomes an object to itself, and as object it eo ipso
acquires the character of difference. The evil will wills
something opposed to the universality of the will, while
the good will acts in accordance with its true concept.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 139
100 Individuals, to the extent of their freedom, are
responsible for the depravation and enfeeblement of
morals and religion. This is the seal of the absolute and
sublime destiny of man—that he knows what is good and
what is evil; that his destiny is his very ability to will
either good or evil—in one word, that he is the subject of
moral imputation, imputation not only of evil, but of
good; and not only concerning this or that particular
matter, and all that happens ab extra, but also the good
and evil attaching to his individual freedom. The brute
alone is simply innocent.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
101 This is a deep truth, that evil lies in consciousness: for
the brutes are neither evil nor good; the merely natural
man quite as little.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, Ill, 2
102 In a list of definitions included in the authentic
translation of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this:
“Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature," a
definition which, though savoring of Calvinism, by no
means involves Calvin’s dogma as to total mankind.
Evidently its intent makes it applicable but to individuals.
Not many are the examples of this depravity which the
gallows and jail supply. At any rate, for notable instances,
since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in them, but
invariably are dominated by intellectuality, one must go
elsewhere. Civilization, especially if of the austerer sort, is
auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of
respectability. It has its certain negative virtues serving
as silent auxiliaries. It never allows wine to get within its
guard. It is not going too far to say that it is without vices
or small sins. There is a phenomenal pride in it that
excludes them. It is never mercenary or avaricious. In
short, the depravity here meant partakes nothing of the
sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity.
Though no flatterer of mankind it never speaks ill of it.
But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so
exceptional a nature is this: Though the man’s even
temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a
mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less
in heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption
from that law, having apparently little to do with reason
further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for
effecting the irrational. That is to say: Toward the
accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of
atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will
direct a cool Judgment sagacious and sound. These men
are madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their
lunacy is not continuous, but occasional, evoked by some
Special object; it is protectively secretive, which ts as
much as to Say it is self-contained, so that when,
moreover, most active it is to the average mind not
distinguishable from sanity, and for the reason above
suggested: that whatever its aims may be—and the aim
is never declared—the method and the ouns-ard
proceeding are always perfectly rational.
Now something such a one was Claggart, in whom was
the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious
training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born
with him and innate, in short "a depravity according to
nature."
Melville, Billy Budd
103 Men have a singular desire to be good without being
good for anything, because, perchance, they think
vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
104 Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such as
you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth,
and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. If |
were to preach at ail in this strain, | should say rather. Set
about being good. As if the sun should stop when he has
kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of
the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin
Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window,
inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and making
darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his genial
heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no
mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the
meanwhile too, going about the world in his own orbit,
doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has
discovered, the world going about him getting good....
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from
goodness tainted. It is human, it is dime carrion. If | knew
for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with
the conscious design of doing me good, | should run for
my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African
deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and
nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated,
for fear that | should get some of his good done to me—
some of its virus mingled with my blood. No—in this case
| would rather suffer evil the natural way.
Thoreau, Walden Economy
105 It is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of
thought, to conceive it as implying that people should fix
their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or
society at large. The great majority of good actions are
intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of
individuals, of which the good of the world is made up;
and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on
these occasions travel beyond the particular persons
concerned, except so far as is necessary’ to assure
himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the
rights, that is, the legitimate and authorised
expectations, of any one else.
Mill, Utilitarianism, 11
106 Absolute fiends are as rare as angels, perhaps rarer:
ferocious savages, with occasional touches of humanity,
are however very frequent: and in the wide interval which
separates these from any worthy representatives of the
human species, bow many are the forms and gradations
of animalism and selfishness, often under an outward
varnish of civilisation and even cultivation, living at
peace with the law, maintaining a creditable appearance
to all who are not under their power, yet sufficient often
to make the lives of all who are so, a torment and a
burthen to them!
Mill, Subjection of Women, 11
107 Good is not only good, but reproductive of good; this is
one of its attributes; nothing is excellent, beautiful,
perfect, desirable for its own sake, but it overflows, and
spreads the likeness of itself all around it. Good is prolific;
it is not only good to the eye, but to the taste; it not only
attracts us, but it communicates itself: it excites first our
admiration and love, then our desire and our gratitude,
and that, in proportion to its intenseness and fulness in
particular instances. A great good will impart great good.
Newman, Idea of a University, Discourse VII
108 "I can’s say what | should have done about that,
Godfrey. | should never have married anybody else. But |
wasn’t worth doing wrong for—nothing is in this world.
Nothing is as good as it seems beforehand—not even our
marrying wasn’t, you see." There was a faint sad smile on
Nancy’s face as she said the last words.
George Eliot, Silas Marner, XVIII
109 What is good?—All that heightens the feeling of power,
the will to power, power itself in man.
What is bad?—All that proceeds from weakness.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, I
110 All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their
concomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe to him
who can only recognize them when he thinks them in
their pure and abstract form!
William James, Psychology, IV
111 | find myself willing to take the universe to be really
dangerous and adventurous, without therefore backing
out and crying "no play." | am willing to think that the
prodigal son attitude, open to us as it is in many
vicissitudes, is not the right and final attitude toward the
whole of life. | am willing that there should be real losses
and real losers, and no total preservation of all that is. |
can believe in the ideal as an ultimate, not as an origin,
and as an extract, not the whole. When the cup is poured
off, the dregs are left behind for ever, but the possibility
of what is poured off is sweet enough to accept....
Those puritans who answered "yes" to the question:
are you willing to be damned for God’s glory? were in this
objective and magnanimous condition of mind. The way
of escape from evil on this system is not by getting it
‘aufgehoben' ["compensated"], or preserved in the whole
as an element essential but ‘overcome.’ /t is by dropping
it out altogether, throwing it overboard and getting
beyond it, helping to make a universe that shall forget its
very place and name.
It is then perfectly possible to accept sincerely a
drastic kind of a universe from which the element of
‘seriousness’ is not to be expelled. Whoso does so is, it
seems to me, a genuine pragmatist. He is willing to live
on a scheme of uncertified possibilities which he trusts;
willing to pay with his own person, if need be, for the
realization of the ideals which he frames.
William James, Pragmatism, VIII
112 The method of averting one’s attention from evil, and
living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it
will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far
more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and
within the sphere of its successful operation there is
nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it
breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes;
and even though one be quite free from melancholy one’s
self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is
inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil
facts which it refuses positively to account for area
genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the
best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only
openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, VI-VII
113 If aman cannot look evil in the face without illusion, he
will never Know what it really is, or combat it effectually.
Shaw, Major Barbara, Pref.
114 The common character of all evil is that its realization in
fact involves that there is some concurrent realization of
a purpose towards elimination. The purpose is to secure
the avoidance of evil. The fact of the instability of evil is
the moral order in the world.
Evil, triumphant in its enjoyment, is so far good in
itself; but beyond itself it is evil in its character of a
destructive agent among things greater than itself. In the
summation of the more complete fact it has secured a
descent towards nothingness, in contrast to the
creativeness of what can without qualification be termed
good. Evil is positive and destructive; what is good is
positive and creative.,..
Thus evil promotes its own elimination by destruction,
or degradation, or by elevation. But in its own nature it is
unstable. It must be noted that the state of degradation
to which evil leads, when accomplished, is not in itself
evil, except by comparison with what might have been. A
hog is not an evil beast, but when a man is degraded to
the level of a hog, with the accompanying atrophy of
finer elements, he is no more evil than a hog. The evil of
the final degradation lies in the comparison of what is
with what might have been. During the process of
degradation the comparison is an evil for the man
himself, and at its final stage it remains an evil for
others....
The contrast in the world between evil and good is the
contrast between the turbulence of evil and the "peace
which passeth all understanding." There is a self-
preservation inherent in that which is good in itself. Its
destruction may come from without but not from within.
Good people of narrow sympathies are apt to be
unfeeling and unprogressive, enjoying their egotistical
goodness. Their case, on a higher level, is analogous to
that of the man completely degraded to a hog. They have
reached a state of stable goodness, so far as their own
interior life is concerned. This type of moral correctitude
is, on a larger view, so like evil that the distinction is
trivial.
Whitehead, Religion in the Making, III, 4
115 | will say nothing of how you may appear in your own
eyes, but have you met with so much goodwill in your
superiors and rivals, so much chivalry in your enemies
and so little envy amongst your acquaintances, that you
feel it incumbent on you to protest against the idea of the
part played by egoistic baseness in human nature? Do
you not know how uncontrolled and unreliable the
average human being is in all that concerns sexual life?
Or are you ignorant of the fact that all the excesses and
aberrations of which we dream at night are crimes
actually committed every day by men who are wide
awake? What does psychoanalysis do in this connection
but confirm the old saying of Plato that the good are
those who content themselves with dreaming of what
others, the wicked, actually do?
And now look away from individuals to the great war
still devastating Europe: think of the colossal brutality,
cruelty and mendacity which is now allowed to spread
itself over the civilized world. Do you really believe that a
handful of unprincipled place-hunters and corrupters of
men would have succeeded in letting loose all this latent
evil, if the millions of their followers were not also guilty?
Will you venture, even in these circumstances, to break a
lance for the exclusion of evil from the mental
constitution of humanity?
You will accuse me of taking a one-sided view of war,
and tell me that it has also called out all that is finest and
most noble in mankind, heroism, self-sacrifice, and public
spirit. That is true; but do not now commit the injustice,
from which psycho-analysis has so often suffered, of
reproaching it that it denies one thing because it affirms
another. It is no part of our intention to deny the nobility
in human nature, nor have we ever done anything to
disparage its value. On the contrary, | show you not only
the evil wishes which are censored but also the
censorship which suppresses them and makes them
unrecognizable. We dwell upon the evil in human beings
with the greater emphasis only because others deny it,
thereby making the mental life of mankind not indeed
better, but incomprehensible. If we give up the one-sided
ethical valuation then, we are sure to find the truer
formula for the relation of evil to good in human nature.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, 1X
116 In reality, there is no such thing as eradicating evil
tendencies... . The inmost essence of human nature
consists of elemental instincts, which are common to all
men and aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs.
These instincts in themselves are neither good nor evil.
We but classify them and their manifestations in that
fashion according as they meet the needs and demands
of the human community. It is admitted that all those
instincts which society condemns as evil--let us take as
representatives the selfish and the cruel—-are of this
primitive type.
These primitive instincts undergo a lengthy process of
development before they are allowed to become active in
the adult being. They are inhibited, directed towards
other aims and departments, become commingled, alter
their objects and are to some extent turned back upon
their possessor. Reaction-formations against certain
instincts take the deceptive form of a change in content,
as though egoism had changed into altruism, or cruelty
into pity,...
It is not until all these vicissitudes to which instincts
are subject have been surmounted that what we call the
character of a human being is formed, and this, as we
know, can only very inadequately be classified as good or
bad. A human being is seldom altogether good or bad; he
is usually good in one relation and bad in another, or
good in certain external circumstances and in others
decidedly bad. It is interesting to learn that the existence
of strong bad impulses in infancy is often the actual
condition for an unmistakable inclination towards good in
the adult person. Those who as children have been the
most pronounced egoists may well become the most
helpful and self-sacrificing members of the community;
most of our sentimentalists, friends of humanity,
champions of animals, have been evolved from little
Sadists and animal-tormentors.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, |
117 Good consists in the meaning that is experienced to
belong to an activity when conflict and entanglement of
various incompatible impulses and habits terminate in a
unified orderly release in action. This human good, being
a fulfilment conditioned upon thought, differs from the
pleasures which an animal nature—of course we also
remain animals so far as we do not think—hits upon
accidentally. Moreover there is a genuine difference
between a false good, a spurious satisfaction, and a
"true" good, and there is an empirical test for discovering
the difference.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Ill, 5
118 It would take a good deal of time to become a
misanthrope if we confined ourselves to the observation
of others. It is when we detect our own weaknesses that
we come to pity or despise mankind. The human nature
from which we then turn away is the human nature we
have discovered in the depths of our own being. The evil
is SO well screened, the secret so universally kept, that in
this case each individual is the dupe of all; however
severely we may profess to judge other men, at bottom
we think them better than ourselves. On this happy
illusion much of our social life is grounded.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, |
9.7 Right and Wrong
In ethics or moral philosophy, there is a fundamental
division between two types of problems: on the one hand,
the problem of what is good or evil for the individual man
considered without reference to other men or to the
community in which he lives; on the other hand, the
problem of what is right or wrong in the behavior of one
individual as it affects the lives of others or the welfare of
the community. Unfortunately, this does not give us a rigid
rule for using the words "good" and "right" in a
nonoverlapping way; for it is often said in ordinary discourse
that what is really good for the individual is right for him to
seek, and that the individual who acts rightly toward others
IS a good man or one whose conduct is good. Nevertheless,
the words "right" and "wrong" are most frequently applied to
acts that affect others or the community. Wrongdoing injures
others; conduct is said to be rightful or righteous if it
benefits others or at least avoids injuring them.
Because the words "right" and "wrong" are usually
employed with this connotation, they are often
interchangeable with another pair of terms—"just" and
"unjust." We have, therefore, placed here quotations that
discuss justice and injustice in the conduct of one individual
toward others or toward the community, and along with
them discussions of the just and unjust man, justice asa
moral virtue and injustice as a vice, and considerations of
the question of whether it is better to do injustice or to
suffer it, to wrong others or be wronged by them. The reader
will find that the treatment of Justice and Injustice in Section
12.2 deals mainly with social, political, and economic
justice, not justice as a moral virtue or as a quality of human
acts. The placement here of quotations dealing with justice
as a virtue also explains why the enumeration of the virtues
in the titles of Sections 9.11 through 9.15 omits justice and
injustice.
Other closely related terms appear in the quotations
below, such as righteousness, wickedness, benevolence, and
iniquity. Since it is thought that to wrong another involves
the violation or transgression of one’s rights, the reader
should consult the discussion of Rights—Natural and Civil in
Section 12.3. Since it is also thought that wrongdoing
involves the violation of the moral law and that it is one’s
basic moral obligation or duty to act righteously or in
conformity with the moral law, the reader should consult
Section 9.3 on Moral Law, Section 9.9 on Duty: Moral
Obligation, and Section 20.13 on Sin and Temptation.
1 And David said to Saul, Wherefore hearest thou men’s
words, saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt?
Behold, this day thine eyes have seen how that the
Lord had delivered thee to day into mine hand in the
cave: and some bade me kill thee: but mine eye spared
thee; and | said, | will not put forth mine hand against my
lord; for he is the Lord’s anointed.
Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe
in my hand: for in that | cut off the skirt of thy robe, and
killed thee not, know thou and see that there is neither
evil nor transgression in mine hand, and | have not
sinned against thee; yet thou huntest my soul to take it.
The Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord
avenge me of thee: but mine hand shall not be upon
thee.
As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness
proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be
upon thee.
After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom
dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea.
The Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me
and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me
out of thine hand.
And it came to pass, when David had made an end of
speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy
voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice, and
wept.
And he said to David, Thou art more righteous than I:
for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas | have
rewarded thee evil.
And thou hast shewed this day how that thou hast
dealt well with me: forasmuch as when the Lord had
delivered me into thine hand, thou killedst me not.
For if aman find his enemy, will he let him go well
away? wherefore the Lord reward thee good for that thou
hast done unto me this day.
| Samuel 24:9-19
2 How should man be just with God?
If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one
of a thousand.
He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath
hardened himself against him, and hath prospered?
Which removeth the mountains, and they know not:
which overturneth them in his anger.
Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the
pillars thereof tremble.
Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and
scaleth up the stars.
Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth
upon the waves of the sea.
Which maketh Arc-tu-rus, O-ri-on, and Plei-a-des, and
the chambers of the south.
Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and
wonders without number.
Lo, he goeth by me, and | see him not: he passeth on
also, but | perceive him not.
Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? who will
say unto him, What doest thou?
If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers
do stoop under him.
How much less shall | answer him, and choose out my
words to reason with him?
Whom, though | were righteous, yet would | not
answer, but | would make supplication to ray judge.
If | had called, and he had answered me; yet would |
not believe that he had hearkened unto my voice.
For he breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth
my wounds without cause.
He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me
with bitterness.
If | soeak of strength, lo, he is strong: and if of
judgment, who shall set me a time to plead?
If | justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me:
if | say, |am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.
Though | were perfect, yet would | not Know my soul: |
would despise my life.
This is one thing, therefore | said it, He destroyeth the
perfect and the wicked.
If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial
of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he
covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if not, where,
and who is he?
Job 9:2-24
3 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the
ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in
the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law
doth he meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of
water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf
also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall
prosper.
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which
the wind driveth away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the
way of the ungodly shall perish.
Psalm 1:1-6
4 Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is
in the power of thine hand to do it.
Say not unto thy neighbour. Go, and come again, and
to morrow | will give; when thou hast it by thee.
Devise not evil against thy neighbour, seeing he
dwelleth securely by thee.
Strive not with a man without cause, if he have done
thee no harm.
Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his
ways.
For the froward is abomination to the Lord: but his
secret is with the righteous.
The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but
he blesseth the habitation of the just.
Proverbs 3:27-33
5 Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions
every man to his brother:
And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the
stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil
against his brother in your heart.
Zechariah 7:9-10
6 Chorus. The man who does right, free-willed, without
constraint
Shall not lose happiness
nor be wiped out with all his generation.
But the transgressor, | tell you, the bold man
who brings in confusion of goods unrightly won,
at long last and perforce, when ship toils
under tempest must strike his sail
in the wreck of his rigging.
Aeschylus, Eumenides, 550
7 Chorus. God will not punish the man
Who makes return for an injury:
Deceivers may be deceived.
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 228
8 Athenians at the Congress of the Peloponnesian
Confederacy. Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited
by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like
being cheated by an equal, the second like being
compelled by a superior.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 1, 77
9 Glaucon Now that those who practise justice do so
involuntarily and because they have not the power to be
unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this
kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power
to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire
will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the
just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same
road, following their interest, which all natures deem to
be their good, and are only diverted into the path of
justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are
supposing may be most completely given to them in the
form of such a power as Is said to have been possessed
by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According
to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of
the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an
earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place
where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he
descended into the opening, where, among other
marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors,
at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of
stature, aS appeared to him, more than human, and
having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the
finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds
met together, according to custom, that they might send
their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into
their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and
as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the
collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he
became invisible to the rest of the company and they
began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He
was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he
turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made
several trials of the ring, and always with the same result
—when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible,
when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived
to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the
court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen,
and with her help conspired against the king and slew
him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were
two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them
and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be
of such an iron nature that he would stand fast injustice.
No man would keep his hands off what was not his own
when he could safely take what he liked out of the
market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his
pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would,
and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the
actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust;
they would both come at last to the same point. And this
we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just,
not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good
to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any
one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is
unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is
far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he
who argues as | have been supposing, will say that they
are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this
power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong
or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by
the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they
would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up
appearances with one another from a fear that they too
might suffer injustice. Enough of this.
Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the
just and unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other
way; and how is the isolation to be effected? | answer: Let
the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man
entirely just; nothing is to be taken away from either of
them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work
of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other
distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or
physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and
keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point,
is able to recover himself. So let the unjust make his
unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he
means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is
nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is, to be
deemed just when you are not. Therefore | say that in the
perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect
injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow
him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired
the greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a
false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be
one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come
to light, and who can force his way where force is
required by his courage and strength, and command of
money and friends. And at his side let us place the just
man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as
Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must
be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be
honoured and rewarded, and then we shall not know
whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of
honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in
justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be
imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let
him be the best of men, and let him be thought the
worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we
shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy
and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the
hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When
both have reached the utttermost extreme, the one of
justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given
which of them is the happier of the two.
Socrates. Heavens! my dear Glaucon... how
energetically you polish them up for the decision, first
one and then the other, as if they were two statues.
| do my best, he said. And now that we know what
they are like there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of
life which awaits either of them. This | will proceed to
describe; but as you may think the description a little too
coarse, | ask you to suppose, Socrates, that the words
which follow are not mine. Let me put them into the
mouths of the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you
that the just man who is thought unjust will be scourged,
racked, bound—will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last,
after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled: Then
he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to
be, just.
Plato, Republic, Il, 359A
10 Socrates. And surely... we have explained again and
again how and by virtue of what quality a man will be
just.
Adeimantus. That is very certain.
And is justice dimmer in the individual, and is her form
different, or is she the same which we found her to be in
the State?
There is no difference in my opinion, he said.
Because, if any doubt is still lingering in our minds, a
few commonplace instances will satisfy us of the truth of
what | am saying.
What sort of instances do you mean?
If the case is put to us, must we not admit that the just
State, or the man who is trained in the principles of such
a State, will be less likely than the unjust to make away
with a deposit of gold or silver? Would any one deny this?
No one....
Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege
or theft, or treachery either to his friends or to his
country?
Never.
Neither will he ever break faith where there have been
oaths or agreements?
Impossible.
No one will be less likely to commit adultery, or to
dishonour his father and mother, or to fail in his religious
duties?
No one.
And the reason is that each part of him is doing its
own business, whether in ruling or being ruled?
Exactly so.
Are you Satisfied then that the quality which makes
such men and such states is justice, or do you hope to
discover some other?
Not I, indeed.
Then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion
which we entertained at the beginning of our work of
construction, that some divine power must have
conducted us to a primary form of justice, has now been
verified?
Yes, certainly.
And the division of labour which required the
carpenter and the shoemaker and the rest of the citizens
to be doing each his own business, and not another's,
was a Shadow of justice, and for that reason it was of use?
Clearly.
But in reality justice was such as we were describing,
being concerned however, not with the outward man, but
with the inward, which is the true self and concernment
of man: for the just man does not permit the several
elements within him to interfere with one another, or any
of them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his
own inner life, and is his own master and his own law,
and at peace with himself; and when he has bound
together the three principles within him, which may be
compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the
scale, and the intermediate intervals—when he has
bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has
become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted
nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether
in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or
in some fair of politics or private business; always
thinking and calling that which preserves and co-
operates with this harmonious condition, just and good
action, and the knowledge which presides over it,
wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this
condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion
which presides over it ignorance.
You have said the exact truth, Socrates.
Very good; and if we were to affirm that we had
discovered the just man and the just State, and the
nature of justice in each of them, we should not be telling
a falsehood?
Most certainly not.
Plato, Republic, IV, 442B
11 Athenian Stranger. And now | can define to you clearly,
and without ambiguity, what | mean by the just and
unjust, according to my notion of them:—When anger
and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and
desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any
harm or not—I call all this injustice. But when the opinion
of the best, in whatever part of human nature states or
individuals may suppose that to dwell, has dominion in
the soul and orders the life of every man, even if it be
sometimes mistaken, yet what is done in accordance
therewith, and the principle in individuals which obeys
this rule, and is best for the whole life of man, is to be
called just; although the hurt done by mistake is thought
by many to be involuntary injustice.
Plato, Laws, IX, 863B
12 The one thing which is wholly right and noble is to strive
for that which is most honourable for a man’s self and for
his country, and to face the consequences whatever they
may be.
Plato, Seventh Letter
13 It is only between what is right and what seems right
from habit, that some people are mad enough to see no
difference.
Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, 325a22
14 There being three objects of choice and three of
avoidance, the noble, the advantageous, the pleasant,
and their contraries, the base, the injurious, the painful,
about all of these the good man tends to go right and the
bad man to go wrong, and especially about pleasure.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1104b31
15 Not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for
some have names that already imply badness, e.g. spite,
sShamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery,
theft, murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply
by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the
excesses or deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then,
ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be
wrong. Nor does goodness or badness with regard to such
things depend on committing adultery with the right
woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply
to do any of them is to go wrong. It would be equally
absurd, then, to expect that in unjust, cowardly, and
voluptuous action there should be a mean, an excess,
and a deficiency; for at that rate there would be a mean
of excess and of deficiency, an excess of excess, anda
deficiency of deficiency. But as there is no excess and
deficiency of temperance and courage because what is
intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the
actions we have mentioned there is no mean nor any
excess and deficiency, but however they are done they
are wrong.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1107a9
16 Justice, alone of the virtues, is thought to be ‘another’s
good’, because it is related to our neighbour; for it does
what is advantageous to another, either a ruler or a
copartner. Now the worst man is he who exercises his
wickedness both towards himself and towards his friends,
and the best man is not he who exercises his virtue
towards himself but he who exercises it towards another;
for this is a difficult task. Justice in this sense, then, is not
part of virtue but virtue entire, nor is the contrary
injustice a part of vice but vice entire.
Aristotle, 1130a3
17 It is a good precept that tells us not to do a thing if there
is doubt whether it is right or wrong. Righteousness
shines with its own brilliance. But doubt is a sign that we
are possibly considering a wrong.
Cicero, De Officiis, I, 9
18 While wrong may be committed by force or by treachery,
both ways are bestial. Treachery belongs to the fox and
force to the lion. Both are utterly unworthy of a man. But
treachery is the more contemptible.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 13
19 The man that’s just and resolute of mood
No craze of people’s perverse vote can shake,
Nor frown of threat’ning monarch make
To quit a purposed good.
Horace, Odes, Ill, 3
20 It is a mark of a good way of life that, among other
things, it satisfies and abides; bad behaviour, constantly
changing, not for the better, simply into different forms,
has none of this stability.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 47
21 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and
broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many
there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Matthew 7:13—14
22 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;
but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither cana
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
down, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Matthew 7:17-20
23 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give
place unto wrath: for it is written. Vengeance is mine; |
will repay, saith the Lord.
Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst,
give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of
fire on his head.
Romans 12:19-20
24 Who can hesitate to number among the faults an
affectation which makes one ashamed to do what is
right?
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XII, 5
25 Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men,
but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the
most scarce.
Plutarch, Flamininus
26 In his ordinary language he [Agesilaus] was always
observed to be a great maintainer of justice, and would
commend it as the chief of virtues, saying, that valour
without justice was useless, and if all the world were just,
there would be no need of valour.
Plutarch, Agesilaus
27 A good man does nothing for the sake of appearance, but
for the sake of doing right.
Epictetus, Discourses, III, 24
28 | who have seen the nature of the good that it is
beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of
him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the
same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same
intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, | can
neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on
me what is ugly, nor can | be angry with my kinsman, nor
hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like
hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower
teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to
nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed
and to turn away.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II, 1
29 One thing here is worth a great deal, to pass thy life in
truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to
liars and unjust men.
Marcus Aurclius, Meditations, VI, 47
30 Generally, wickedness does no harm at all to the
universe; and particularly, the wickedness of one man
does no harm to another. It is only harmful to him who
has it in his power to be released from it, aS soon as he
Shall choose.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 55
31 It is owing to the various conditions of men that certain
acts are virtuous for some, as being proportionate and
fitting to them, while they are vicious for others, as being
not proportioned to them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-I| 94 3
32 To his neighbours a man behaves himself well both in
particular and in general. In particular, as to those to
whom he is indebted by paying his debts, and in this
sense is to be taken the commandment about honouring
one’s parents. In general, as to all men by doing harm to
none, either by deed, or by word, or by thought. By deed
harm is done to one’s neighbour sometimes in his person
that is, to his personal existence, and this is forbidden by
the words. Thou shall not kill; sometimes in a person
united to him as to the propagation of offspring, and this
,
is prohibited by the words. Thou shalt not commit
adultery; sometimes in his possessions, which are
directed to both of these, and with regard to this it is
said, Thou shall not steal. Harm done by word is
forbidden when it is said, Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbour, harm done by thought is
forbidden in the words. Thou shalt not covet.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 100, 5
33 If we speak of legal justice, it is evident that it stands
foremost among all the moral virtues, for as much as the
common good transcends the individual good of one
person. In this sense the Philosopher [Aristotle] declares
that the most excellent of the virtues would seem to be
justice, and more glorious than either the evening or the
morning star. But, even if we speak of particular justice, it
excels the other moral virtues for two reasons. The first
reason may be taken from the subject, because justice is
in the more excellent part of the soul, viz. the rational
appetite or will, whereas the other moral virtues are in
the sensitive appetite, whereunto appertain the passions
which are the matter of the other moral virtues. The
second reason is taken from the object, because the other
virtues are commendable in respect of the sole good of
the virtuous person himself, whereas justice is
praiseworthy in respect of the virtuous person being well
disposed towards another, so that justice is somewhat the
good of another person.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 58, 12
34 Every excellence proper to a thing is to be loved in that
thing; as in masculinity to be well bearded, and in
femininity to be well smooth of beard over all the face. As
in a setter, good scent, and in a boarhound, good speed.
And the more proper is the excellence the better is it to
be loved; wherefore, though every virtue is to be loved in
man, that is most to be loved in him which is most
human; and that is justice, which abides only in the
rational or intellectual part, to wit in the will. This is so
much to be loved that. . . they who are its foes, as are
robbers and plunderers, love it; and therefore we see that
its contrary, to wit injustice, is most hated; as treachery,
ingratitude, forgery, theft, rapine, cheating and their
likes.
Dante, Convivio, |, 12
35 Enough is opened to thee now the labyrinth which hid
from thee the living justice of which thou hast made
question so incessantly; for thou didst say: ‘A man is born
upon the bank of Indus and there is none to tell of Christ,
nor none to read, nor none to write;
and all his volitions and his deeds are good so far as
human reason sceth, sinless in life or in discourse.
He dieth unbaptised and without faith; where is that
justice which condemneth him? where is his fault, in that
he not believes?’
Now who art thou who wouldst sit upon the scat to
judge at a thousand miles away with the short sight that
carries but a span?
Truly to him who goeth subtly to work with me, were
not the Scripture over you, there were marvellous ground
for questioning.
O animals of earth, minds gross! the primal Will, good
in itself, never departed from its own self which is the
highest good.
All is just which doth harmonise with it; no created
good draweth it to itself, but it by raying forth giveth rise
to it.
Dante, Paradiso, XIX, 67
36 There are lawful vices, as there are many either good or
excusable actions that are unlawful.
Montaigne, Essays, III, 1, The Useful and the Honorable
37 The King. What stronger breastplate than a heart
untainted!
Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel.
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
Shakespeare, Il Henry VI, Ill, 11, 232
38 Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head,
nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy
ease, your purse in a light. Yet you see how this world
goes.
Gloucester. | see it feelingly.
Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world
goes with no eyes. Look with thine cars: see how yond
justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine car:
change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice,
which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at
a beggar?
Glou. Ay, Sir.
Lear. And the creature run from the cur?
There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a
dog’s obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the
cozener.
Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold.
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none, | say, none; I'll able ’em.
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal the accuser’s lips. Get thee glass eyes;
And, like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, vi, 148
39 The names just and unjust, when they are attributed to
men, signify one thing, and when they are attributed to
actions, another. When they are attributed to men, they
signify conformity, or inconformity of manners, to reason.
But when they are attributed to actions, they signify the
conformity, or inconformity to reason, not of manners, or
manner of life, but of particular actions. A just man
therefore is he that taketh all the care he can that his
actions may be all just; and an unjust man is he that
neglecteth it. And such men are more often in our
language styled by the names of righteous and
unrighteous than just and unjust, though the meaning be
the same. Therefore a righteous man does not lose that
title by one or a few unjust actions that proceed from
sudden passion, or mistake of things or persons, nor does
an unrighteous man lose his character for such actions as
he does, or forbears to do, for fear: because his will is not
framed by the justice, but by the apparent benefit of
what he is to do. That which gives to human actions the
relish of justice is a certain nobleness or gallantness of
courage, rarely found, by which a man scorns to be
beholding for the contentment of his life to fraud, or
breach of promise. This justice of the manners is That
which is meant where justice is called a virtue; and
injustice, a vice.
But the justice of actions denominates men, not just,
but guiltless: and the injustice of the same (which is also
called injury) gives them but the name of guilty.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 15
40 Wrong-doing cannot be conceived of, but under dominion
—that is, where, by the general right of the whole
dominion, it is decided what is good and what evil, and
where no one does anything rightfully, save what he does
in accordance with the general decree or consent. For
that ... is wrong-doing, which cannot lawfully be
committed, or is by law forbidden. But obedience is the
constant will to execute that, which by law is good, and
by the general decree ought to be done.
Yet we are accustomed to call that also wrong, which is
done against the sentence of sound reason, and to give
the name of obedience to the constant will to moderate
the appetite according to the dictate of reason: a manner
of speech which | should quite approve, did human
liberty consist in the licence of appetite, and slavery in
the dominion of reason. But as human liberty is the
greater, the more man can be guided by reason, and
moderate his appetite, we cannot without great
impropriety call a rational life obedience, and give the
name of wrong-doing to that which is, in fact, a weakness
of the mind, not a licence of the mind directed against
itself, and for which a man may be called a slave, rather
than free.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, 11, 19-20
41 We find in history a thousand examples of pusillanimous
or ambitious rulers, who were ruined by their slackness or
their pride; not one who suffered for having been strictly
just. But we ought not to confound negligence with
moderation, or clemency with weakness. To be just, it is
necessary to be severe; to permit vice, when one has the
right and the power to suppress it, is to be oneself
vicious.
Rousseau, Political Economy
42 Right... comprehends the whole of the conditions under
which the voluntary actions of any one person can be
harmonized in reality with the voluntary actions of every
other person, according to a universal law of freedom.
Kant, Introduction to the Science of Right, B
43 The dictum of equity may be put thus: "The strictest right
is the greatest wrong."
Kant, Introduction to the Science of Eighty F
44 "Do wrong to no one." This formula may be rendered so
as to mean: "Do no wrong to any one, even if thou
shouldst be under the necessity, in observing this duty,
to cease from all connection with others and to avoid all
society."
Kant, Division of the Science of Right, A
45 It is not enough to do what is right, but we should
practise it solely on the ground of its being right.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 53
46 Life as the sum of ends has a right against abstract right.
If for example it is only by stealing bread that the wolf
can be kept from the door, the action is of course an
encroachment on someone's property, but it would be
wrong to treat this action as an ordinary theft. To refuse to
allow a man in jeopardy of his life to take such steps for
self-preservation would be to stigmatize him as without
rights, and since he would be deprived of his life his
freedom would be annulled altogether. Many diverse
details have a bearing on the preservation of life, and
when we have our eyes on the future we have to engage
ourselves in these details. But the only thing that is
necessary is to live now, the future is not absolute but
ever exposed to accident. Hence it is only the necessity
of the immediate present which can justify a wrong
action, because not to do the action would in turn be to
commit an offence, indeed the most wrong of all offences,
namely the complete destruction of the embodiment of
freedom.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right Additions, Par. 127
47 Act singly, and what you have already done singly will
justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If | can
be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, | must
have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be
it how it will, do right now.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
48 The only freedom | care about is the freedom to do right;
the freedom to do wrong | am ready to part with on the
cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me.
T. H. Huxley, Descartes’ "Discourse on Method"
49 Speaking in a general way, a person is understood to
deserve good if he does right, evil if he does wrong; and
in a more particular sense, to deserve good from those to
whom he does or has done good, and evil from those to
whom he does or has done evil. The precept of returning
good for evil has never been regarded as a case of the
fulfilment of justice, but as one in which the claims of
justice are waived, in obedience to other considerations.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
50 We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply
that a person ought to be punished in some way or other
for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his
fellowcreatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of
his own conscience. This seems the real turning point of
the distinction between morality and simple expediency.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
51 Prince Andrew. It is not given to man to know what is
right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will
err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right
and wrong.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, V, 11
52 Thou art indeed just, Lord, if | contend
With thee; but, sir, so what | plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all | endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, | wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than | that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leaved how thick! laced they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not | build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
G. M, Hopkins, Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord
53 To talk of intrinsic right and intrinsic wrong is absolutely
nonsensical; intrinsically, an injury, an oppression, an
exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong,
inasmuch as life is essentially (that is, in its cardinal
functions) something which functions by injuring,
oppressing, exploiting, and annihilating, and is
absolutely inconceivable without such a character.
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, II, 11
9.8 Happiness
In the discussion of this pivotal notion, concerning which
there appear to be many disagreements, several points that
have seldom if ever been disputed stand out. One is the fact
that the word "happiness" is generally used to name
something that is desired for its own sake, not as a means to
some end beyond itself. Another is the fact that happiness is
not one good among others, which a man might possess and
still desire many other goods; it is rather the complete good,
or summation of goods. The reader will find this conception
of happiness expressed in Augustine’s "Happy is he who has
all that he desires, provided that he desire nothing amiss,"
and in the statement by Boethius that happiness consists in
the possession in aggregate of all good things.
The understanding of these two points is profoundly
affected by a fundamental difference among the writers
quoted here in their use of the word "happiness." Some of
them use it in an exclusively ethical sense to denote the
quality of a whole human life. When it is thus used,
happiness is not something that can be experienced ata
particular time, or enjoyed at one time and not at another.
Other writers—and most people generally—use the term to
denote a psychological state, a feeling of contentment, joy,
or satisfaction, which can be experienced at one time and
not at another.
Writers who use the word in such totally different senses
may appear to disagree with one another in what they say
about happiness, but, in view of their equivocal use of the
term, they will be only in apparent, not real disagreement.
Thus, for example, Kant, who uses the term "happiness" to
name a feeling of contentment that results from the
satisfaction of whatever desires a person may happen to
have, whether or not one’s desires are themselves morally
sound, may reach the ethical conclusion that persons who
obey the moral law do not seek happiness but rather seek to
deserve it. That conclusion does not really disagree with the
ethical principle enunciated by Aristotle, Augustine, and
others that people should seek happiness conceived as a
whole life made good by the possession of all the goods that
a virtuous person ought to desire.
The reader will find that in most of the quotations from
the poets and the historians as well as from the
philosophers, the word "happiness" is used mainly or
exclusively in the psychological sense in which we tend to
use it in daily life when we say that we feel happy or
miserable. For other quotations that use "joy" and "sorrow"
as synonyms for "happiness" and "misery," the reader is
referred to Chapter 4 on Emotion, Section 4.6 on Joy and
Sorrow; and for the relation of happiness to pleasure and
pain, the reader is referred to Section 4.7 in that chapter.
To avoid misunderstanding certain of the quotations
below from philosophers and theologians, the reader must
keep the other meaning of happiness clearly in mind, the
meaning in which it is not a feeling or emotion, but the
ultimate goal that is achieved by a morally virtuous life. In
this connection, the reader is referred to Section 9.10 on
Virtue and Vice; and is also advised that theologians often
use such terms as "beatitude" or "blessedness"
interchangeably with "happiness." The other term that
appears in discussions of happiness—the term summum
bonum or supreme good—the reader will find in Section 9.6
on Good and Evil; and will find the conception of eternal
happiness, the beatitude of the blessed in heaven, treated in
Section 20.14 on Redemption and Salvation and in Section
20.15 on Heaven and Hell.
1 Agamemnon. Call that man only blest who has in sweet
tranquillity brought his life to close.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 928
2 Solon. Oh! Croesus... thou askedst a question concerning
the condition of man, of one who knows that the power
above us is full of jealousy, and fond of troubling our lot.
A long life gives one to witness much, and experience
much oneself, that one would not choose. Seventy years |
regard as the limit of the life of man. In these seventy
years are contained, without reckoning intercalary
months, twenty-five thousand and two hundred days.
Add an intercalary month to every other year, that the
seasons may come round at the right time, and there will
be, besides the seventy years, thirty-five such months,
making an addition of one thousand and fifty days. The
whole number of the days contained in the seventy years
will thus be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty,
whereof not one but will produce events unlike the rest.
Hence man is wholly accident. For thyself, oh! Craesus, |
see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of
many nations; but with respect to that whereon thou
questionest me, | have no answer to give, until | hear that
thou hast closed thy life happily. For assuredly he who
possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness
than he who has what suffice for his daily needs, unless it
so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in
the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life. For
many of the wealthiest men have been unfavoured of
fortune, and many whose means were moderate have had
excellent luck. Men of the former class excel those of the
latter but in two respects; these last excel the former in
many. The wealthy man is better able to content his
desires, and to bear up against a sudden buffet of
calamity. The other has less ability to withstand these
evils (from which, however, his good luck keeps him
clear), but he enjoys all these following blessings: he is
whole of limb, a stranger to disease, free from misfortune,
happy in his children, and comely to look upon. If, in
addition to all this, he end his life well, he is of a truth the
man of whom thou art in search, the man who may rightly
be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not
happy but fortunate. Scarcely, indeed, can any man unite
all these advantages:-as there is no country which
contains within it all that it needs, but each, while it
possesses some things, lacks others, and the best country
is that which contains the most; so no single human
being is complete in every respect—something is always
lacking. He who unites the greatest number of
advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death,
then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, is, in my
judgment, entitled to bear the name of 'happy.' But in
every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for
oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and
then plunges them into ruin,
Herodotus, History, |, 32
3 Chorus. What man, what man on earth wins more of
happiness than a seeming and after that turning away?
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 1190
4 Chorus. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final
limit of his life secure from pain.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 1529
5 Ist Semichorus. Happy the man who cries Evohe!
stretched out full length and making merry,
for whom the wine keeps flowing,
whose arms are open to his friend!
Lucky man, upon whose bed there blows
the soft bloom of a lovely girl
with gleaming hair, sweet with oil!
who cries: "Who'll open me the door?"
Euripides, Cyclops, 495
6 Chorus. Excess of happiness—it drives
men’s minds awry; in its train
comes on corrupted power.
No man foresees the final stretch of time.
Evil lures him, justice races by,
until he wrecks at last the somber car
that holds his happiness.
Euripides, Heracles, 774
7 Maiden. |\f aman is born and bred in hardships, he fainteth
not under them; but happiness is subject to change, and
to be afflicted after prosperous days is a grievous lot for
mortals.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1119
8 If a person had wealth and all the goods of which we were
just now speaking, and did not use them, would he be
happy because he possessed them?
No indeed, Socrates.
Then, | said, aman who would be happy must not only
have the good things, but he must also use them; there is
no advantage in merely having them?
True.
Well, Cleinias, but if you have the use as well as the
possession of good things, is that sufficient to confer
happiness?
Yes, in my opinion.
And may a person use them either rightly or wrongly?
He must use them rightly.
That is quite true, | said. And the wrong use of a thing
is far worse than the non-use; for the one is an evil, and
the other is neither a good nor an evil. You admit that?
He assented.
Now in the working and use of wood, is not that which
gives the right use simply the knowledge of the
carpenter?
Nothing else, he said.
And surely, in the manufacture of vessels, knowledge
is that which gives the right way of making them?
He agreed.
And in the use of the goods of which we spoke at first
—wealth and health and beauty, is not knowledge that
which directs us to the right use of them, and regulates
our practice about them?
He assented.
Then in every possession and every use of a thing,
knowledge is that which gives a man not only good-
fortune but success?
He again assented.
And tell me, | said, O tell me, what do possessions
profit a man, if he have neither good sense nor wisdom?
Would a man be better off, having and doing many things
without wisdom, or a few things with wisdom? Look at the
matter thus: If he did fewer things would he not make
fewer mistakes? if he made fewer mistakes would he not
have fewer misfortunes? and if he had fewer misfortunes
would he not be less miserable?
Certainly, he said.
And who would do least—a poor man ora rich man?
A poor man.
A weak man or a strong man?
A weak man.
A noble man or a mean man?
A mean man.
And a coward would do less than a courageous and
temperate man?
Yes.
And an indolent man less than an active man?
He assented.
And a slow man less than a quick; and one who had
dull perceptions of seeing and hearing less than one who
had keen ones?
All this was mutually allowed by us.
Then, | said, Cleinias, the sum of the matter appears to
be that the goods of which we spoke before are not to be
regarded as goods in themselves, but the degree of good
and evil in them depends on whether they are or are not
under the guidance of knowledge; under the guidance of
ignorance, they are greater evils than their opposites,
inasmuch as they are more able to minister to the evil
principle which rules them; and when under the guidance
of wisdom and prudence, they are greater goods: but in
themselves they are nothing?
That, he replied, is obvious.
What then is the result of what has been said? Is not
this the result—that other things are indifferent, and that
wisdom is the only good, and ignorance the only evil?
He assented.
Let us consider a further point, | said: Seeing that all
men desire happiness, and happiness, as has been
shown, is gained by a use, and a right use, of the things
of life, and the right use of them, and good fortune in the
use of them, is given by knowledge,—the inference is
that everybody ought by all means to try and make
himself as wise as he can?
Plato, Euthydemus, 280B
9 Socrates. Should we not offer up a prayer first of all to the
local deities?
Phaedrus. By all means.
Soc. Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this
place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the
outward and inward man be at one. May | reckon the wise
to be the wealthy, and may | have such a quantity of gold
as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry. —
Anything more? The prayer, | think, is enough for me,
Phaedr. Ask the same for me, for friends should have
all things in common.
Plato, Phaedrus, 279B
10 We call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final
than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of
something else, and that which is never desirable for the
sake of something else more final than the things that are
desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that
other thing, and therefore we call final without
qualification that which is always desirable in itself and
never for the sake of something else.
Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to
be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the
sake of something else, but honour, pleasure, reason, and
every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if
nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of
them), but we choose them also for the sake of
happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be
happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for
the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than
itself.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1097a30
11 The final good is thought to be self-sufficient. Now by
self-sufficient we do not mean that which is sufficient for
a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also
for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends
and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship. But
some limit must be set to this; for if we extend our
requirement to ancestors and descendants and friends’
friends we are in for an infinite series. Let us examine this
question, however, on another occasion; the self-
sufficient we now define as that which when isolated
makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we
think happiness to be; and further we think it most
desirable of all things, without being counted as one
good thing among others—if it were so counted it would
clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even
the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an
excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more
desirable. Happiness, then, is something final and self-
sufficient, and is the end of action,
Aristotle, Ethics, 1097b8
12 To say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude,
and a clearer account of what it is is still desired. This
might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the
function of man. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor,
or an artist, and in general, for all things that have a
function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to
reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if
he has a function. Have the carpenter then, and the
tanner certain functions or activities, and has man none?
Is he born without a function? Or as eye, hand, foot, and
in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may
one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart
from all these? What then can this be? Life seems to be
common even to plants, but we are seeking what is
peculiar to man. Let us exclude therefore, the life of
nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of
perception, but it also seems to be common even to the
horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then, an
active life of the element that has a rational principle; of
this, one part has such a principle in the sense of being
obedient to one, the other in the sense of possessing one
and exercising thought. And, as ‘life of the rational
element’ also has two meanings, we must state that life
in the sense of activity is what we mean; for this seems to
be the more proper sense of the term. Now if the function
of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a
rational principle, and if we say ‘so-and-so’ and ‘a good
so-and-so’ have a function which is the same in kind, e.g.
a lyre-player and a’ good lyre-player, and so without
qualification in all cases, eminence in respect of
goodness being added to the name of the function (for
the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of
a good lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the case,
[and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of
life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul
implying a rational principle, and the function of a good
man to be the good and noble performance of these, and
if any action is well performed when it is performed in
accordance with the appropriate excellence: if this is the
case,] human good turns out to be activity of soul in
accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one
virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.
But we must add ‘in a complete life’. For one swallow
does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too
one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed
and happy.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1|0O97b22
13 Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives;
must we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we are to lay
down this doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy
when he is dead? Or is not this quite absurd, especially
for us who say that happiness is an activity? But if we do
not call the dead man happy, and if Solon does not mean
this, but that one can then safely call a man blessed as
being at last beyond evils and misfortunes, this also
affords matter for discussion; for both evil and good are
thought to exist for a dead man, as much as for one who
is alive but not aware of them; for example, honours and
dishonours and the good or bad fortunes of children and
in general of descendants. And this also presents a
problem; for though a man has lived happily up to old
age and has had a death worthy of his life, many reverses
may befall his descendants—some of them may be good
and attain the life they deserve, while with others the
opposite may be the case; and clearly too the degrees of
relationship between them and their ancestors may vary
indefinitely. It would be odd, then, if the dead man were
to share in these changes and become at one time happy,
at another wretched; while it would also be odd if the
fortunes of the descendants did not for some time have
some effect on the happiness of their ancestors.
But we must return to our first difficulty; for perhaps
by a consideration of it our present problem might be
solved. Now if we must see the end and only then call a
man happy, not as being happy but as having been so
before, surely this is a paradox, that when he is happy the
attribute that belongs to him is not to be truly predicated
of him because we do not wish to call living men happy,
on account of the changes that may befall them, and
because we have assumed happiness to be something
permanent and by no means easily changed, while a
single man may suffer many turns of fortune’s wheel. For
clearly if we were to keep pace with his fortunes, we
should often call the same man happy and again
wretched, making the happy man out to be a ‘chameleon
and insecurely based’. Or is this keeping pace with his
fortunes quite wrong? Success or failure in life does not
depend on these, but human life, as we said, needs these
as mere additions, while virtuous activities or their
opposites are what constitute happiness or the reverse....
The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy
man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always,
or by preference to everything else, he will be engaged in
virtuous action and contemplation, and he will bear the
chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously, if
he is ‘truly good’ and ‘foursquare beyond reproach’.
Now many events happen by chance, and events
differing in importance; small pieces of good fortune or of
its opposite clearly do not weigh down the scales of life
one way or the other, but a multitude of great events if
they turn out well will make life happier (for not only are
they themselves such as to add beauty to life, but the
way aman deals with them may be noble and good),
while if they turn out ill they crush and maim happiness;
for they both bring pain with them and hinder many
activities. Yet even in these nobility shines through, when
a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not
through insensibility to pain but through nobility and
greatness of soul.
If activities are, as we said, what gives life its
character, no happy man can become miserable; for he
will never do the acts that are hateful and mean. For the
man who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the
chances of life becomingly and always makes the best of
circumstances, as a good general makes the best military
use of the army at his command and a good shoemaker
makes the best shoes out of the hides that are given him;
and so with all other craftsmen. And if this is the case, the
happy man can never become miserable; though he will
not reach blessedness, if he meet with fortunes like those
of Priam.
Nor, again, is he many-coloured and changeable; for
neither will he be moved from his happy state easily or by
any ordinary misadventures, but only by many great
ones, nor, if he has had many great misadventures, will
he recover his happiness in a short time, but if at all, only
in along and complete one in which he has attained
many splendid successes.
Wiry then should we not say that he is happy who is
active in accordance with complete virtue and is
sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some
chance period but throughout a complete life? Or must
we add ‘and who is destined to live thus and die as befits
his life’? Certainly the future is obscure to us, while
happiness, we claim, is an end and something in every
way final. If so, we shall call happy those among living
men in whom these conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled
—but happy men.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1100a10
14 If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is
reasonable that it should be in accordance with the
highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in
us. Whether it be reason or something else that is this
element which is thought to be our natural ruler and
guide and to take thought of things noble and divine,
whether it be itself also divine or only the most divine
clement in us, the activity of this in accordance with its
proper virtue will be perfect happiness. That this activity
is contemplative we have already said.
Now this would seem to be in agreement both with
what we said before and with the truth. For, firstly, this
activity is the best (since not only is reason the best thing
in us, but the objects of reason are the best of knowable
objects); and secondly, it is the most continuous, since
we can contemplate truth more continuously than we can
do anything. And we think happiness has pleasure
mingled with it, but the activity of philosophic wisdom is
admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all
events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures
marvellous for their purity and their enduringness, and it
is to be expected that those who know will pass their time
more pleasantly than those who inquire. And the self-
sufficiency that is sooken of must belong most to the
contemplative activity. For while a philosopher, as well as
a just man or one possessing any other virtue, needs the
necessaries of life, when they are sufficiently equipped
with things of that sort the just man needs people
towards whom and with whom he shall act justly, and the
temperate man, the brave man, and each of the others is
in the same case, but the philosopher, even when by
himself, can contemplate truth, and the better the wiser
he is; he can perhaps do so better if he has fellow-
workers, but still he is the most self-sufficient. And this
activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for
nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while
from practical activities we gain more or less apart from
the action. And happiness is thought to depend on
leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and
make war that we may live in peace. Now the activity of
the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military
affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be
unleisurely. Warlike actions are completely so (for no one
chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of
being at war; any one would seem absolutely murderous
if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring
about battle and slaughter); but the action of the
statesman is also unleisurely, and—apart from the
political action itself—aims at despotic power and
honours, or at all events happiness, for him and his fellow
citizens—a happiness different from political action, and
evidently sought as being different. So if among virtuous
actions political and military actions are distinguished by
nobility and greatness, and these are unleisurely and aim
at an end and are not desirable for their own sake, but
the activity of reason, which is contemplative, seems
both to be superior in serious worth and to aim at no end
beyond itself, and to have its pleasure proper to itself
(and this augments the activity), and the self-sufficiency,
leisureliness, unweariedness (so far as this is possible for
man), and all the other attributes ascribed to the
supremely happy man are evidently those connected
with this activity, it follows that this will be the complete
happiness of man, if it be allowed a complete term of life
(for none of the attributes of happiness in /ncomplete).
But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not
in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as
something divine is present in him; and by so much as
this is superior to our composite nature is its activity
superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of
virtue. If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man,
the life according to it is divine in comparison with
human life: But we must not follow those who advise us,
being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal,
of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make
ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in
accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be
small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth
surpass everything. This would seem, too, to be each man
himself, since it is the authoritative and better part of
him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not
the life of his self but that of something else. And what
we said before will apply now; that which is proper to
each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each
thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is
best and pleasantest since reason more than anything
else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1177a12
15 Certainly no one will dispute the propriety of that
partition of goods which separates them into three
classes, viz. external goods, goods of the body, and goods
of the soul, or deny that the happy man must have all
three. For no one would maintain that he is happy who
has not in him a particle ol courage or temperance or
justice or prudence, who is afraid of every insect which
flutters past him, and will commit any crime, however
great, in order to gratify his lust of meat or drink, who will
sacrifice his dearest friend for the sake of half-a-farthing,
and is as feeble and false in mind as a child or a madman.
These propositions are almost universally acknowledged
as soon as they are uttered, but men differ about the
degree or relative superiority of this or that good. Some
think that a very moderate amount of virtue is enough,
but set no limit to their desires of wealth, property,
power, reputation, and the like. To whom we reply by an
appeal to facts, which easily prove that mankind do not
acquire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods,
but external goods by the help of virtue, and that
happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or
both, is more often found with those who are most highly
cultivated in their mind and in their character, and have
only a moderate share of external goods, than among
those who possess external goods to a useless extent but
are deficient in higher qualities; and this is not only
matter of experience, but, if reflected upon, will easily
appear to be in accordance with reason. For, whereas
external goods have a limit, like any other instrument,
and all things useful are of such a nature that where
there is too much of them they must either do harm, or at
any rate be of no use, to their possessors, every good of
the soul, the greater it is, is also of greater use, if the
epithet useful as well as noble is appropriate to such
subjects. No proof is required to show that the best state
of one thing in relation to another corresponds in degree
of excellence to the interval between the natures of
which we say that these very states are states: so that, if
the soul is more noble than our possessions or our bodies,
both absolutely and in relation to us, it must be admitted
that the best state of either has a similar ratio to the
other. Again, it is for the sake of the soul that goods
external and goods of the body are eligible at all, and all
wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul,
and not the soul for the sake of them.
Let us acknowledge then that each one has just so
much of happiness as he has of virtue and wisdom, and of
virtuous and wise action. God is a witness to us of this
truth, for he is happy and blessed, not by reason of any
external good, but in himself and by reason of his own
nature. And herein of necessity lies the difference
between good fortune and happiness; for external goods
come of themselves, and chance is the author of them,
but no one is just or temperate by or through chance. In
like manner, and by a similar train of argument, the
happy state may be shown to be that which is best and
which acts rightly; and rightly it cannot act without doing
right actions, and neither individual nor state can do
right actions without virtue and wisdom. Thus the
courage, justice, and wisdom of a state have the same
form and nature as the qualities which give the individual
who possesses them the name of just, wise, or temperate.
Aristotle, Politics, 1323a24
16 Because no evil, foolish, or lazy man can enjoy well-
being, it follows that the good, courageous, and wise man
cannot live miserably. Nor can anyone whose virtue and
character merit praise fail to lead a praiseworthy life.
Such a life is not something to be shunned. Yet it would
be shunned if it were miserable. Hence, whatever is
praiseworthy must also be considered happy, prosperous,
and desirable.
Cicero, Paradoxes of the Stoics, II
17 Happy the man, who, studying nature’s laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause—
His mind possessing in a quiet state.
Fearless of Fortune, and resigned to Fate!
And happy too is he, who decks the bowers
Of sylvans, and adores the rural powers—
Whose mind, unmoved, the bribes of courts can sec,
Their glittering baits, and purple slavery—
Nor hopes the people’s praise, nor fears their frown,
Nor, when contending kindred tear the crown,
Will set up one, or pull another down.
Without concern he hears, but hears from far,
Of tumults, and descents, and distant war;
Nor with a superstitious fear is awed,
For what befalls at home, or what abroad.
Nor his own peace disturbs with pity for the poor.
Nor envies he the rich their happy store,
He feeds on fruits, which, of their own accord.
The willing ground and laden trees afford.
From his loved home no lucre him can draw;
The senate’s mad decrees he never saw;
Nor heard, at bawling bars, corrupted law.
Virgil, Georgics, Il
18 The wealthy man thou could’st not rightly choose
As the supremely happy; rightlier goes
The name to him, who wisely knows
The gifts of Heaven to use;
Knows too to face reverse without a sigh,
Nor death before dishonour fears to take;
Ready for dear companions’ sake.
Or native land, to die.
Horace, Odes, IV, 9
19 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain:
and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their’s is the kingdom
of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be
comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called
the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against
you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your
reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you.
Matthew 5:1-12
20 It seems the province of some god to lessen that
happiness which is too great and inordinate, and so to
mingle the affairs of human life that no one should be
entirely free and exempt from calamities.... Those should
think themselves truly blessed to whom fortune has
given an equal share of good and evil.
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus
21 For him that would attain to true happiness, which for the
most part is placed in the qualities and disposition of the
mind, it is...of no other disadvantage to be of a mean,
obscure country, than to be born of a small or plain-
looking woman.
Plutarch, Demosthenes
22 If we crave for the goal that is worthy and fitting for man,
namely, happiness of life—and this is accomplished by
philosophy alone and by nothing else, and philosophy, as
| said, means for us desire for wisdom, and wisdom the
science of the truth in things, and of things some are
properly so called, others merely share the name—it is
reasonable and most necessary to distinguish and
systematize the accidental qualities of things.
Nicomachus, Arithmetic, |, 2
23 Good and evil... are not what vulgar opinion accounts
them; many who seem to be struggling with adversity are
happy; many, amid great affluence, are utterly miserable,
if only the first bear their hard lot with patience, and the
latter make a foolish use of their prosperity.
Tacitus, Annals, VI, 22
24 If thou workest at that which is before thee, following
right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without
allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy
divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it
back immediately; if thou boldest to this, expecting
nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present
activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in
every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live
happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, III, 12
25 To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are
outside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul’s
expression is not in action but in wisdom, ina
contemplative operation within itself; and this, this alone,
is Happiness.
Plotinus, First Ennead, V, 10
26 We [cannot] ask to be happy when our actions have not
earned us happiness; the good, only, are happy; divine
beings are happy only because they are good.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, II, 4
27 Not | alone, or a handful of men besides, but surely all
men whatsoever want to be happy. And unless we knew
the thing with certain knowledge, we could not will it
with so certain a will. Yet notice this: If two men were
asked whether they want to go with the army, it might
happen that one of them would say Yes, and the other No:
but if they were asked whether they wanted to be happy,
each would instantly and without hesitation say Yes—and
the one would have no reason for wanting to go with the
army nor the other for not wanting to go, save to be
happy. May it be that one gets joy from this, one from
that? All agree that they desire happiness, just as they
would agree, if they were asked, that they desire joy: and
indeed they think joy and happiness are the same thing.
One man may get it one way, another another, yet all
alike are striving to attain this one thing, namely that
they may be joyful. It is something that no one can say
that he has had no experience of, which is why he finds it
in his memory and recognizes it when he hears the word
happiness.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 21
28 Philosophy. The trouble of the many and various aims of
mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go
forward by different paths but strive to reach one end,
which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any
man attain, he can desire nothing further. It is that
highest of all good things, and it embraces in itself all
good things: if any good is lacking, it cannot be the
highest good, since then there is left outside it something
which can be desired. Wherefore happiness is a state
which is made perfect by the union of all good things.
This end all men seek to reach, as | said, though by
different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the
minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads
them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, III
29 It is impossible for any created good to constitute man’s
happiness. For happiness is the perfect good, which
quiets the appetite altogether since it would not be the
last end if something yet remained to be desired. Now the
object of the will, that is, of man’s appetite, is the
universal good, just as the object of the intellect is the
universal true. Hence it is evident that nothing can quiet
man’s will except the universal good. This is to be found
not in any creature, but in God alone, because every
creature has goodness by participation. Therefore God
alone can satisfy the will of man.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 2, 8
30 Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else
than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear,
two points must be observed. First, that man is not
perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to
desire and seek; secondly, that the perfection of any
power is determined by the nature of its object. Now "the
object of the intellect is what a thing is, that is, the
essence of a thing," according to the book on the Soul.
Therefore the intellect attains perfection in so far as it
knows the essence of a thing. If therefore an intellect
know the essence of some effect in which it is not
possible to know the essence of the cause, that is, to
know of the cause "what it is," that intellect cannot be
said to reach that cause absolutely, although it may be
able to gather from the effect the knowledge that the
cause is. Consequently, when man knows an effect, and
knows that it has a cause, there naturally remains in man
the desire to know about that cause, "what it is." And this
desire is one of wonder, and causes inquires as is stated
in the beginning of (Aristotle’s] Metaphysics. For
instance, if aman, knowing the eclipse of the sun,
consider that it must be due to some cause, and know not
what that cause is, he wonders about it, and from
wondering proceeds to inquire. Nor does this inquiry
cease until he arrive at a knowledge of the essence of the
cause.
If therefore the human intellect, Knowing the essence
of some created effect, knows no more of God than that
He is, the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach
absolutely the First Cause, but there remains in it the
natural desire to seek the cause. And so it is not yet
perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the
intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First
Cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union
with God as with that object in which alone man’s
happiness consists.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 3, 8
31 A certain participation of Happiness can be had in this
life, but perfect and true Happiness cannot be had in this
life.... Since happiness is a perfect and sufficient good, it
excludes every evil, and fulfils every desire. But in this
life every evil cannot be excluded. For this present life is
subject to many unavoidable evils: to ignorance on the
pan of the intellect, to disordered affection on the part of
the appetite, and to many penalties on the part of the
body.... Likewise neither can the desire for good be
satiated in this life. For man naturally desires the good
which he has to be abiding. Now-the goods of the present
life pass away, since life itself passes away, which we
naturally desire to have, and would wish to hold
abidingly, for man naturally shrinks from death. Therefore
it is impossible to have true Happiness in this life.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 5, 3
32 This definition of Happiness given by some,— Happy is
the man that has all he desires, or, whose every wish is
fulfilled, is a good and adequate definition if it be
understood in a certain way, but an inadequate definition
if understood in another. For if we understand it
absolutely of all that man desires by his natural appetite,
thus it is true that he who has all that he desires, is
happy, since nothing satisfies man’s natural desire
except the perfect good which is Happiness. But if we
understand it of those things that man desires according
to the apprehension of the reason, in this way it does not
pertain to Happiness to have certain things that man
desires; rather does it belong to unhappiness, in so far as
the possession of such things hinders man from having
all that he desires naturally; just as reason also
sometimes accepts as true things that are a hindrance to
the knowledge of truth. And it was through taking this
into consideration that Augustine added so as to include
perfect Happiness,—that "he desires nothing amiss,"
although the first part suffices if rightly understood, that
is to say, that "happy is he who has nil he desires."
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 5, 8
33 [The] beatitudes are most suitably enumerated. To make
this evident it must be observed that happiness has been
held to consist in one of three things: for some have
ascribed it to a sensual life, some to an active life, and
some to a contemplative life. Now these three kinds of
happiness stand in different relations to future
Happiness, by hoping for which we are said to be happy.
Because sensual happiness, being false and contrary to
reason, is an obstacle to future Happiness, while
happiness of the active life is a disposition to future
Happiness, and contemplative happiness, if perfect, is
the very essence of future Happiness, and, if imperfect, is
a beginning of it.
And so Our Lord, in the first place, indicated certain
beatitudes as removing the obstacle of sensual
happiness. For a life of pleasure consists of two things.
First, in the affluence of external goods whether riches or
honours. Man is withdrawn from these by a virtue, so that
he uses them in moderation; and by a gift, in a more
excellent way. so that he despises them altogether. Hence
the first beatitude is: Blessed are the poor in spirit, which
may refer either to the contempt of riches, or to the
contempt of honours, which results from humility.
Secondly, the sensual life consists in following the bent of
one’s passions, whether irascible or concupiscible. Man is
withdrawn from following the irascible passions by a
virtue, so that they are kept within the bounds appointed
by the ruling of reason; and by a gift, in a more excellent
manner, so that man, according to God’s will, is
altogether undisturbed by them. Hence the second
beatitude is: Blessed are the meek. Man is withdrawn
from following the concupiscible passions by a virtue so
that man uses these passions in moderation; and by a
gift, so that, if necessary, he casts them aside altogether;
nay more, so that if need be, lie makes a deliberate
choice of sorrow. Hence the third beatitude is: Blessed
are they that mourn.
Active life consists chiefly in man’s relations with his
neighbour, either by way of duty or by W’ay of
spontaneous benefit. To the former we are disposed by a
virtue, so that we do not refuse to do our duty to our
neighbour, which pertains to justice; and by a gift, so that
we do the same much more heartily, by accomplishing
works of justice with an ardent desire, even as a hungry
and thirsty man cats and drinks with eager appetite.
Hence the fourth beatitude is: Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after justice. With regard to
spontaneous favours we are perfected by a virtue, so that
we give where reason dictates we should give, for
example to our friends or others united to us, which
pertains to the virtue of liberality; and by a gift, so that,
through reverence for God, we consider only the needs of
those on whom we bestow our gratuitous bounty. Hence it
is written: When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not
thy friends nor thy brethren, etc. ... but... call the poor,
the maimed, etc.; which, properly is to have mercy. Hence
the fifth beatitude is: Blessed are the merciful.
Those things which concern the contemplative life are
either final Happiness itself, or some beginning of it, and
so they are included in the beatitudes not as merits, but
as rewards. Yet the effects of the active life, which dispose
man for the contemplative life, are included in the
beatitudes as merits. Now the effect of the active life as
regards those virtues and gifts by which man is perfected
in himself is the cleansing of man’s heart, so that it is not
defiled by the passions. Hence the sixth beatitude is:
Blessed are the clean of heart. But as regards the virtues
and gifts by which man is perfected in relation to his
neighbour, the effect of the active life is peace... The
work of justice shall be peace. Hence the seventh
beatitude is: Blessed are the peacemakers.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 69, 3
34 And she [Francesca] to me: "There is no greater pain than
to recall a happy time in wretchedness; and this thy
teacher knows."
Dante, Inferno, V, 121
35 Pandar. Of fickle fortune’s sharp adversities,
The very worst misfortune of them all,
Is this, to Know and lose all joy and case,
And have but bitter memories to recall.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Il, 233
36 We should have wife, children, goods, and above all
health, if we can; but we must not bind ourselves to them
so strongly that our happiness depends on them. we must
reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to
establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and
solitude. Here our ordinary conversation must be
between us and ourselves, and so private that no outside
association or communication can find a place; here we
must talk and laugh as if without wife, without children,
without possessions, without retinue and servants, so
that, when the time comes to lose them, it will be nothing
new to us to do without them. we have a soul that can be
turned upon itself; it can keep itself company; it has the
means to attack and the means to defend, the means to
receive and the means to give; let us not fear that in this
solitude wx shall stagnate in tedious idleness.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 39, Of Solitude
37 The goods of fortune, even such as they really are still
need taste to enjoy them. It is the enjoying not the
possessing, that makes us happy.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 42, Of the Inequality
38 Even if | should not follow the straight road because of its
straightness, | would follow it because | have found by
experience that when all is said and done it is generally
the happiest and the most useful.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 16, Of Glory
39 Orlando. O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness
through another man’s eyes!
Shakespeare, As You Like It, V, ti, 47
40 Edgar. Yet better thus, and known to be contemn’d,
Than still contemn’d and flatter’d. To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, i, 1
41 Edgar. And worse | may be yet; the worst is not
So long as we can Say, "This is the wont."
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, I, 29
42 Trinculo. Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-
fellows.
Shakespeare, Tempest, II, ii, 42
43 It seems to me right to pause for a while in order to
contemplate God Himself, to ponder at leisure His
marvellous attributes, to consider, and admire, and
adore, the beauty of this light so resplendent, at least as
far as the strength of my mind, which is in some measure
dazzled by the sight, will allow me to do so. For just as
faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life
consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty,
SO we continue to learn by experience that a similar
meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us
to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable
in this life.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, III
44 The felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a
mind satisfied. For there is no such finis u/timus (utmost
aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of
in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man
any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose
senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity isa
continual progress of the desire from one object to
another, the attaining of the former being still but the
way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of
man’s desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant
of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire.
And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all
men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the
assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way,
which ariseth party from the diversity of passions in
diverse men, and partly from the difference of the
knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which
produce the effect desired.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 11
45 In vain we admire the Lustre of any thing seen: that
which is truly glorious is invisible. Paradise was but a part
of the Earth, lost not only to our Fruition but our
Knowledge. And if, according to old Dictates, no Man can
be said to be happy before Death, the happiness of this
Life goes for nothing before it be over, and while we think
ourselves happy we do but usurp that Name. Certainly
true Beatitude groweth not on Earth, nor hath this World
in it the Expectations we have of it. He Swims in Oyl, and
can hardly avoid sinking, who hath such light
Foundations to support him. 'Tis therefore happy that we
have two Worlds to hold on. To enjoy true happiness we
must travel into a very far Countrey, and even out of our
selves; for the Pearl we seek for is not to be found in the
Indian, but in the Empyrean Ocean.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, I/l, 11
46 Live happy in the E/izium of a virtuously composed Mind,
and let Intellectual Contents exceed the Delights wherein
mere Pleasurists place their Paradise. Bear not too slack
reins upon Pleasure, nor let complexion or contagion
betray thee unto the exorbitancy of Delight. Make
Pleasure thy Recreation or intermissive Relaxation, not
thy Diene, Life and Profession. Voluptuousness is as
insatiable as Covetousness. Tranquillity is better than
Jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. Our
hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of
it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad Rencounters in
it, do clamorously tell us we come not into the World to
run a Race of Delight, but to perform the sober Acts and
serious purposes of Man; which to omit were foully to
miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an
uniterable Life, and to have lived in vain.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, III, 23
47 |f our condition were truly happy, we would not need
diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves
happy.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 165
48 Solomon and Job have best known and best spoken of the
misery of man; the former the most fortunate, and the
latter the most unfortunate of men; the former knowing
the vanity of pleasures from experience, the latter the
reality of evils.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 174
49 All men seek happiness. This is without exception.
Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to
this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others
avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with
different views. The will never takes the least step but to
this object. This is the motive of every action of every
man, even of those who hang themselves.
And yet, after such a great number of years, no one
without faith has reached the point to which all
continually look. All complain, princes and subjects,
noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and
weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all
countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.
A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should
certainly convince us of our inability’ to reach the good
by our own efforts. But example teaches us little. No
resemblance is ever so perfect that there is not some
Slight difference; and hence we expect that our hope will
not be deceived on this occasion as before. And thus,
while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us
and, from misfortune to misfortune, leads us to death,
their eternal crown.
What is it, then, that this desire and this inability
proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true
happiness of which there now remain to him only the
mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from
all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help
he does not obtain in things present? But these are all
inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled
by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only
by God Himself.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 425
50 It is.., most profitable to us in life to make perfect the
intellect or reason as far as possible, and in this one thing
consists the highest happiness or blessedness of man; for
blessedness is nothing but the peace of mind which
springs from the intuitive knowledge of God, and to
perfect the intellect is nothing but to understand God,
together with the attributes and actions of God, which
flow from the necessity of His nature. The final aim,
therefore, of a man who is guided by reason, that is to
say, the chief desire by' which he strives to govern all his
other desires, is that by which he is led adequately to
conceive himself and all things which can be conceived
by his intelligence.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix IV
51 Blessedness consists in love towards God, which arises
from the third kind of knowledge, and this love, therefore,
must be related to the mind in so far as it acts.
Blessedness, therefore, is virtue itself, which was the first
thing to be proved. Again, the more the mind delights in
this divine love or blessedness, the more it understands,
that is to say, the greater is the power it has over its
affects, and the less it suffers from affects which are evil.
Therefore, it is because the mind delights in this divine
love or blessedness that it possesses the power of
restraining the lusts; and because the power of man to
restrain the affects is in the intellect alone, no one,
therefore, delights in blessedness because he has
restrained his affects, but, on the contrary, the power of
restraining his lusts springs from blessedness itself.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 42, Demonst.
52 | have finished everything | wished to explain concerning
the power of the mind over the affects and concerning its
liberty. From what has been said we see what is the
strength of the wise man, and how’ much he surpasses
the ignorant who is driven forward by lust alone. For the
ignorant man is not only agitated by external causes in
many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives
also ignorant, as it were, both of God and of things, and
as soon as he ceases to suffer ceases also to be. On the
other hand, the wise man, in so far as he is considered as
such, is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but, being
conscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of
God, and of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys
true peace of soul. If the way which, as | have shown,
leads hither seem very difficult, it can nevertheless be
found. It must indeed be difficult since it is so seldom
discovered; for if salvation lay ready to hand and could
be discovered without great labour, how could it be
possible that it should be neglected almost by
everybody? But all noble things are as difficult as they
are rare.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop, 42, Scholium
53 The love of God enables us to enjoy a foretaste of future
felicity. And although this lo\-c is disinterested, it
constitutes by itself our greatest good and interest, even
though we may not seek these in it and though we may
consider only the pleasure it gives without regard to the
advantage it brings; for it gives us perfect confidence in
the goodness of our Author and Master, which produces
real tranquillity of mind, not as in the ease of the Stoics,
who forcibly school themselves to patience, but through a
present content which also assures to us a future
happiness. And besides the present pleasure it affords,
nothing can be of more advantage for the future than this
love of God, for it fulfils our expectations also and leads
us in the way of supreme happiness, because in virtue of
the perfect order that is established in the universe,
everything is done as well as possible both for the
general good and also for the greatest individual good of
those who believe in it and who are satisfied with the
Divine government. And this belief and satisfaction must
inevitably be the characteristic of those who have
learned to love the Source of all good. It is true that
supreme felicity (by whatever beatific vision, or
knowledge of God, it may be accompanied) can never be
complete, because God, being infinite, cannot be entirely
known. Thus our happiness will never consist (and it is
right that it should not consist) in complete enjoyment,
which would leave nothing more to be desired and would
make our mind [esprit] stupid; but it must consist in a
perpetual progress to new pleasures and new perfections.
Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace, 18
54 As...the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in
a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid
happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not
imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation
of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable
pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest
good, and which, as such, our desires always follows the
more are we free from any necessary determination of our
will to any particular action, and from a necessary
compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and
then appearing preferable good, till we have duly
examined whether it has a tendency to, or be
inconsistent with, our real happiness: and therefore, till
we are as much informed upon this inquiry as the weight
of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we
are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true
happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the
satisfaction of our desires in particular eases.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 11, XXI,
52
55 Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air.
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease.
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where | lie.
Pope, Ode on Solitude
56 "Mankind," said he [Jacques], "must have somewhat
corrupted their nature; for they were not born wolves,
and yet they have become wolves; God has given them
neither cannon of twenty-four pounds, nor bayonets; and
yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one
another, 1 might throw into the account bankrupts; and
the law which seizes on the effects of bankrupts only to
bilk the creditors." "All this was indispensable," replied
the one-eyed doctor, "and private misfortunes constitute
the general good; so that the more private misfortunes
there are, the whole is better."
Voltaire, Candide, IV
57 "If you want nothing {said Imlac], how are you
unhappy?"
"That | want nothing," said the prince, "or that | know
not what | want, is the cause of my complaint; if | had any
known want, | should have a certain wish; that wish
would excite endeavor, and | should not then repine to
see the sun move so slowly towards the western
mountain, or lament when the day breaks, and sleep will
no longer hide me from myself. When | see the kids and
the lambs chasing one another, | fancy that | should be
happy if | had something to pursue. But, possessing all
that | can want, | find one day and one hour exactly like
another, except that the latter is still more tedious than
the former. Let your experience inform me how the day
may now seem as short as in my childhood, while nature
was yet fresh and every moment showed me what | never
had observed before. | have already enjoyed too much;
give me something to desire."
The old man was surprised at this new species of
affliction and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to
be silent. "Sir," said he, "if you had seen the miseries of
the world you would know how to value your present
state." "Now," said the prince, "you have given me
something to desire, | shall long to see the miseries of the
world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness."
Johnson, Rasselas, III
58 | mentioned Hume’s notion, that all who are happy are
equally happy; a little miss with a new gown at a dancing
school ball, a general at the head of a victorious army,
and an orator, after haring made an eloquent speech ina
great assembly. Johnson. "Sir, that all who are happy, are
equally happy, is not true, A peasant and a philosopher
may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy.
Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable
consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for haring
equal happiness with a philosopher."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Feb. 1766)
59 He [Johnson] asserted that the present was never a
happy state to any human being; but that, as every part
of life, of which we are conscious, was at some point of
time a period yet to come, in which felicity was expected,
there was some happiness produced by hope. Being
pressed upon this subject, and asked if he really was of
opinion, that though, in general, happiness was very rare
in human life, a man was not sometimes happy in the
moment that was present, he answered, "Never, but when
he is drunk."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 10, 1775)
60 Happiness alone is, in the view of reason, far from being
the complete good. Reason does not approve of it
(however much inclination may desire it), except as
united with desert. On the other hand, morality alone,
and with it, mere desert, is likewise far from being the
complete good. To make it complete, he who conducts
himself in a manner not unworthy of happiness, must be
able to hope for the possession of happiness. Even
reason, unbiased by private ends, or interested
considerations, cannot judge otherwise, if it puts itself in
the place of a being whose business it is to dispense all
happiness to others.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
61 The notion of happiness is so indefinite that although
every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say
definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes
and wills. The reason of this is that all die elements which
belong to the notion of happiness are altogether
empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience,
and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an
absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and
all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the
most clear-sighted and at the same time most powerful
being (Supposed finite) should frame to himself a definite
conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will
riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not
thereby draw upon his shoulders? Does he will knowledge
and discernment, perhaps it might prove to be only an
eye so much the sharper to show him so much the more
fearfully the evils that are now concealed from him, and
that cannot be avoided, or to impose more wants on his
desires, which already give him concern enough. Would
he have long life? who guarantees to him that h would
not be along misery? would he at least have health? how
often has uneasiness of the body restrained from
excesses into which perfect health would have allowed
one to fall? and so on. In short, he is unable, on any
principle, to determine with certainty what would make
him truly happy; because to do so he would need to be
omniscient. we cannot therefore act on any definite
principles to secure happiness, but only on empirical
counsels, e.g. of regimen, frugality, courtesy, reserve,
etc., which experience teaches do, on the average, most
promote well-being. Hence it follows that the imperatives
of prudence do not, strictly soeaking, command at all,
that is, they cannot present actions objectively as
practically necessary; that they are rather to be regarded
as counsels than precepts of reason, that the problem to
determine certainly and universally what action would
promote the happiness of a rational being is completely
insoluble, and consequently no imperative respecting it is
possible which should, in the strict sense, command to do
what makes happy; because happiness is not an ideal of
reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical
grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define
an action by which one could attain the totality ofa
series of consequences which is really endless.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
62 Pure practical reason does not require that we should
renounce all claim to happiness, but only that the
moment duty is in question we should take no account of
happiness. It may even in certain respects be a duty to
provide for happiness; partly, because (including skill,
wealth, riches) it contains means for the fulfilment of our
duty; partly, because the absence of it (e.g., poverty)
implies temptations to transgress our duty. But it can
never be an immediate duty to promote our happiness,
still less can it be the principle of all duty. Now, as all
determining principles of the will, except the law of pure
practical reason alone (the moral law), are all empirical
and, therefore, as such, belong to the principle of
happiness, they must all be kept apart from the supreme
principle of morality and never be incorporated with it as
a condition; since this would be to destroy all moral worth
just as much as any empirical admixture with geometrical
principles would destroy the certainty of mathematical
evidence, which in Plato’s opinion is the most excellent
thing in mathematics, even surpassing their utility.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
63 The conception of the summum itself contains an
ambiguity which might occasion needless disputes if we
did not attend to it. The summum may mean either the
supreme or the perfect. The former is that condition
which is itself unconditioned, i.e., is not subordinate to
any other; the second is that whole which is not a part of
a greater whole of the same kind. It has been shown in
the Analytic that virtue (as worthiness to be happy) is the
supreme condition of all that can appear to us desirable,
and consequently of all our pursuit of happiness, and is
therefore the supreme good. But it does not follow that it
is the whole and perfect good as the object of the desires
of rational finite beings; for this requires happiness also,
and that not merely in the partial eyes of the person who
makes himself an end, but even in the judgement of an
impartial reason, which regards persons in general as
ends in themselves. For to need happiness, to deserve it,
and yet at the same time not to participate in it cannot
be consistent with the perfect volition of a rational being
possessed at the same time of all power, if, for the sake of
experiment, we conceive such a being. Now inasmuch as
virtue and happiness together constitute the possession
of the summum bonum in a person, and the distribution
of happiness in exact proportion to morality (which is the
worth of the person, and his worthiness to be happy)
constitutes the summum bonum of a possible world;
hence this summum bonum expresses the whole, the
perfect good, in which, however, virtue as the condition is
always the supreme good, since it has no condition above
it; whereas happiness while it is pleasant to the possessor
of it, is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good,
but always presupposes morally right behaviour as its
condition.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, Il, 2
64 Faust. If ever | lay me on a bed of sloth in peace,
That instant let for me existence cease!
If ever with lying flattery you can rule me
So that contented with myself | stay,
If with enjoyment you can fool me,
Be that for me the final day!
That bet | offer!
Mephistopheles. Done!
Faust. Another hand-clasp! There!
If to the moment | shall ever say:
"Ah, linger on, thou art so fair!"
Then may you fetters on me lay,
Then will | perish, then and there!
Then may the death-bell toll, recalling
Then from your service you are free;
The clock may stop, the pointer falling.
And time itself be past for me!
Meph. Consider well, we’ll not forget it.
Goethe, Faust, |, 1692
65 Mephistopheles. To you no goal is set, nor measure.
If you should like to nibble everything,
To snatch up something on the wing,
May all agree with you that gives you pleasure!
Fall to, | say, and don’t be coy.
Faust. You hear indeed, | do not speak of joy.
Life’s wildering whirl be mine, its painfulest enjoyment,
Enamoured hate, and quickening annoyment.
My bosom, of all thirst for knowledge cured,
Shall close itself henceforth against no woe;
Whatever to all mankind is assured,
|, in my inmost being, will enjoy and know,
Seize with my soul the highest and most deep;
Men’s weal and woe upon my bosom heap;
And thus this self of mine to all their selves expanded,
Like them | too at last be stranded.
Goethe, Faust, |, 1760
66 Faust. Spirit sublime, thou gav’st me, gav’st me all
For which | prayed. Thou hast not turned in vain
Thy countenance to me in fire and flame.
Thou gav’st me glorious nature as a royal realm,
The power to feel and to enjoy her. Not
Amazed, cold visits only thou allow’st;
Thou grantest me to look in her deep breast
Even as in the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest past a series of the living
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In silent covert and in air and water.
And when the storm roars screeching through the forest.
When giant fir tree plunges, sweeping down
And crushing neighbouring branches, neighbouring
trunks,
And at its fall the hills, dull, hollow, thunder:
Then leadest thou me to the cavern safe,
Show’st me myself, and my own heart becomes
Aware of deep mysterious miracles.
And when before my gaze the stainless moon
Soothing ascends on high: from rocky walls
And from damp covert float and soar about me
The silvery forms of a departed world
And temper contemplation’s austere joy.
Oh, that for man naught perfect ever is,
| now do feel. Together with this rapture
That brings me near and nearer to the gods,
Thou gav’st the comrade whom | now no more
Can do without, though, cold and insolent.
He lowers me in my own sight, transforms
With but a word, a breath, thy gifts to nothing.
Within my breast he fans with busy zeal
A savage fire for that fair, lovely form.
Thus from desire | reel on to enjoyment
And in enjoyment languish for desire.
Goethe, Faust, |, 3217
67 Serene will be our days and bright.
And happy will our nature be.
When love is an unerring light.
And joy its own security.
Wordsworth, Ode to Duty
68 It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn.—
It forces us in Summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.
Keats, Epistle to John Hamilton Remolds, 82
69 | have reminded the reader that every state of welfare,
every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character;
that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is
the positive clement of existence. It follows, therefore,
that the happiness of any given life is to be measured,
not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which
it has been free from suffering—from positive evil. If this
IS the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy
a happier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a
little more closely.
However varied the forms that human happiness and
misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and shun
the other, the material basis of it all is bodily pleasure or
bodily pain. This basis is very restricted: it is simply
health, food, protection from wet and cold, the
satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the absence of
these things. Consequently, as far as real physical
pleasure is concerned, the man is not better off than the
brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his
nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of
pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind
of pain. But then compared with the brute, how much
stronger are the passions aroused in him! what an
immeasurable difference there is in the depth and
vehemence of his emotions!—and yet, in the one case, as
in the other, all to produce the same result in the end:
namely, health, food, clothing, and so on.
The chief source of all this passion is that thought for
what is absent and future, which, with man, exercises
such a powerful influence upon all he does. It is this that
is the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears—
emotions which affect him much more deeply than could
ever be the case with those present joys and sufferings to
which the brute is confined. In his powers of reflection,
memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a
machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and
his sorrows. But the brute has nothing of the kind;
whenever it is in pain, it is as though it were suffering for
the first time, even though the same thing should have
previously happened to it times out of number. It has no
power of summing up its feelings. Hence its careless and
placid temper: how much it is to be envied! But in man
reflection comes in, with all the emotions to which it
gives rise; and taking up the same elements of pleasure
and pain which are common to him and the brute, it
develops his susceptibility to happiness and misery to
such a degree that, at one moment the man is brought in
an instant to a state of delight that may even prove fatal,
at another to the depths of despair and suicide.
Schopenhauer, Sufferings of the World
70 In a world where all is unstable, and nought can endure,
but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of
change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must
always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat ona
rope—in such a world, happiness is inconceivable. How
can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual Becoming and
never Being is the sole form of existence? In the first
place, aman never is happy, but spends his whole life in
striving after something which he thinks will make him
so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is
only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the
end, and comes into harbour with masts and rigging
gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy
or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a
present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
Schopenhauer, Vanity of Existence
71 A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
FitzGerald, Rubatyat, XII
72 When... it is... positively asserted to be impossible that
human life should be happy, the assertion, if not
something like a verbal quibble, is at least an
exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of
highly pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that
this is impossible. A state of exalted pleasure lasts only
moments, or in some cases, and with some intermissions,
hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of
enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this
the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the
end of life were as fully aware as those who taunt them.
The happiness which they meant was not a life of rapture;
but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and
transitory- pains, many and various pleasures, with a
decided predominance of the active over the passive, and
having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect
more from life than it is capable of bestowing. A life thus
composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to
obtain it, has alwa)-s appeared worthy of the name of
happiness. And such an existence is even now the lot of
many, during some considerable portion of their lives.
The present wretched education, and wretched social
arrangements, are the only real hindrance to its being
attainable by almost all.
Mill, Utilitarianism, II
73 The only proof capable of being given that an object is
visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a
sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the
other sources of our experience. In like manner, |
apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce
that anything is desirable, is that people do actually
desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine
proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice,
acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince
any person that it was so. No reason can be given why
the general happiness is desirable, except that each
person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires
his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have
not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all
which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good:
that each person’s happiness is a good to that person,
and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the
aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title
as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of
the criteria of morality.
Mill, Utilitarianism, IV
74 Grand Inquisitor. But the flock will come together again
and will submit once more, and then it will be once for all.
Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of
weak creatures such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall
persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift
them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall
show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful
children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of
all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle
close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel
at us and will be awestricken before us, and will be proud
at our being so powerful and clever that we have been
able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of
millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath,
their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed
tears like women and children, but they will be just as
ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing,
to happy mirth and childish song. Yes, we shall set them
to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life
like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent
dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak
and helpless, and they will love us like children because
we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin
will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we
allow them to sin because we love them, and the
punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And
we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as
their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins
before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We
Shall allow or forbid them to live uith their wives and
mistresses, to have or not to have children—according to
whether they have been obedient or disobedient—and
they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most
painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they- will bring
to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will
be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from
the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at
present in making a free decision for themselves. And all
will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the
hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we
who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be
thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred
thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the
curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they
will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and
beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But
we Shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall
allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.
Though if there were anything in the other world, it
certainly would not be for such as they.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, V, 5
75 My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough fora
whole lifetime?
Dostoevsky, White Nights
76 While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with
his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that
man is created for happiness, that happiness is within
him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that
all unhappiness arises not from privation but from
superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the
march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth
—that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned
that as there is no condition in which man can be happy
and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he
need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that
suffering and freedom have their limits and that those
limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of
roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he
now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side
growing chilled while the other was warming; and that
when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered
just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that
were covered with sores—his footgear having long since
fallen to pieces. He discovered that when he had married
his wife—of his own free will as it had seemed to him—he
had been no more free than now when they locked him
up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time
he scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw,
and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing
and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder
they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no
great cold, it was always warm walking in the daytime,
and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was
at first hard to bear was his feet.
After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined
his feet by the campfire, thought it would be impossible
to walk on them; but when everybody got up he went
along, limping, and, when he had warmed up, walked
without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were
more terrible to look at than before. However, he did not
look at them now, but thought of other things.
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in
man and the saving power he has of transferring his
attention from one thing to another, which is like the
safety valve of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to
blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the
prisoners who lagged behind, though more than a
hundred perished in that way. He did not think of
Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently
would soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre
think about himself. The harder his position became and
the more terrible the future, the more independent of
that position in which he found himself were the joyful
and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that
came to him.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIV, 12
77 For the mediocre it is happiness to be mediocre.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LVII
78 Morell. An honest man feels that he must pay Heaven for
every hour of happiness with a good spell of hard
unselfish work to make others happy. We have no more
right to consume happiness without producing it than to
consume wealth without producing it.
Shaw, Candida, |
79 Octavius. Oh, Jack, you talk of saving me from my highest
happiness.
Tanner. Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If it were only the
first half hour’s happiness, Tavy, | would buy it for you
with my last penny. But a lifetime of happiness! No man
alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
Shaw, Man and Superman, |
80 Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are
always proud of the fact. Perhaps their pride is like that of
the fox who had lost his tail; if so, the way to cure it is to
point out to them how they can grow a new tail. Very few
men, | believe, will deliberately choose unhappiness if
they see a way of being happy, | do not deny that such
men exist, but they are not sufficiently numerous to be
important.
Russell, Conquest of Happiness, I, 1
81 Happiness is fundamental in morals only because
happiness is not something to be sought for, but is
something now attained, even in the midst of pain and
trouble, whenever recognition of our ties with nature and
with fellow-men releases and informs our action.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, III, 9
9.9 Duty
MORAL OBLIGATION
Not all the authors who acknowledge that man is bound by
duty or moral obligation to act or to refrain from acting in
certain ways explicitly employ the words "duty" or
"obligation" in their ethical treatises or moral discourse.
Some writers who assert that there are certain things that a
person ought or ought not to do if one is going to act rightly,
or certain things that one ought or ought not to desire if one
iS going to seek real, not merely apparent goods, make these
points in the context of discussing virtue and vice rather
than duty or obligation.
The reader is, therefore, referred to Section 9.10 on Virtue
and Vice for statements about what ought or ought not to be
done or sought, which imply the existence of duties or
obligations even though they are not so denominated. In the
ancient world, the Roman writers rather than the Greeks
stress duties and enumerate or classify them; in the modern
world, the same thing is true of the German moralists, such
as Kant and Hegel, as contrasted with such English writers
as Locke, Hume, and J. S, Mill.
Closely connected with this difference in emphasis is the
importance accorded to law—civil, moral, and divine—in the
consideration of right and wrong in human conduct. Those
who lay great stress on law and obedience to it also tend to
conceive acting rightly as doing one's duty or fulfilling one's
obligation; and they also differentiate duties as legal or civil,
moral, and religious according to the kind of law that one is
under obligation to obey. Because of their concern with the
divine law and the natural moral law as well as with eternal
salvation or beatitude, Christian moralists and theologians
conceive right conduct in terms of duty as well as in terms of
virtue and happiness. For the relation of duty to law, the
reader is referred to Section 9.3 on Moral Law and Section
12.1 on Law and Lawyers.
1 Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the
whole duty of man.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
2 What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Micah 6:8
3 Hector. You [Rhesus] owe us much. You have spurned it
and to your friends in distress come with late relief.
Yet here are others, who are not our kin by blood,
who came long ago, and some of them have fallen and
lie
buried in their mounds, who greatly kept faith with our
city.
while others, in their armor, by their chariot teams,
have stood whatever cold winds or thirsty heat the
god
sends, and still do endure it, without sleeping, as you
did, snug beneath the covers.
Euripides, Rhesus, 411
4 No aspect of life, public or private, in business or in the
home, in personal matters or in dealing with others, is
without its moral duty. To discharge such duty fulfills all
that is morally right. To neglect it is inherently morally
wrong.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 2
5 We are not born for our own sake. Our country claims a
Share of our lives, and our friends claim a share.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 7
6 If any set of priorities were established to decide where we
owe most of our moral duty, country and parents would
be listed first. It is they that have laid us under the
heaviest obligations. Next in line would be our children
and the rest of the family, because they look to us alone
for support and do not have any other protection. Lastly
we must list our kinsmen. We live with them on good
terms and their lot is pretty much cast with ours.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 17
7 We are obligated to respect, defend, and maintain the
common bonds of union and fellowship that exist among
all members of the human race.
Cicero, Dc Officiis, |, 41
8 Arriving there, he [Mercury] found the Trojan prince
New ramparts raising for the town’s defense.
A purple scarf, with gold embroider’d o’er,
(Queen Dido’s gift,) about his waist he wore;
A sword, with glitt’ring gems diversified.
For ornament, not use, hung idly by his side.
Then thus, with winged words, the god began,
Resuming his own shape: "Degenerate man,
Thou woman's property, what mak’st thou here,
These foreign walls and Tyrian tow’rs to rear.
Forgetful of thy own? All-pow’rful Jove,
Who sways the world below and heav’n above,
Has sent me down with this severe command:
What means thy ling’ring in the Libyan land?
If glory cannot move a mind so mean,
Nor future praise from flitting pleasure wean,
Regard the fortunes of thy rising heir:
The promis’d crown let young Ascanius wear,
To whom th’ Ausonian scepter, and the state
Of Rome’s imperial name is ow’d by fate."
Virgil, Aeneid, IV
9 Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as
the Author chooses—if short, then in a short one; if long,
then in along one. If it be his pleasure that you should
enact a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private
citizen, see that you act it well. For this is your business—
to act well the given part, but to choose it belongs to
another.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XVII
10 | do my duty: other things trouble me not; for they are
either things without life, or things without reason, or
things that have rambled and know not the way.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 22
11 It is thy duty to order thy life well in every single act; and
if every act does its duty, as far as is possible, be content;
and no one is able to hinder thee so that each act shall
not do its duty.—But something external will stand in the
way.—Nothing will stand in the way of thy acting justly
and soberly and considerately.—But perhaps some other
active power will be hindered.—Well, but by acquiescing
in the hindrance and by being content to transfer thy
efforts to that which is allowed, another opportunity of
action is immediately put before thee in place of that
which was hindered, and one which will adapt itself to
this ordering of which we are speaking.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 32
12 No man has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as
to forget in his own ease the service due to his
neighbour; nor has any man a right to be so immersed in
active life as to neglect the contemplation of God.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 19
13 Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special
regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or
circumstance, are brought into closer connection with
you.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 28
14 A precept implies the notion of duty. But it is easy fora
man, especially for a believer, to understand that, of
necessity, he owes certain duties to God and to his
neighbour. But that in matters which regard himself and
not another, man has of necessity certain duties to
himself, is not so evident; for, at first glance, it seems
that everyone is free in matters that concern himself. And
therefore the precepts which prohibit disorders of a man
with regard to himself reach the people through the
instruction of men who are versed in such matters.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 100, 5
L5 It is our duty to hate, in the sinner, his being a sinner,
and to love in him, his being a man capable of bliss. And
this is to love him truly, out of charity, for God’s sake.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 25, 6
16 We cannot be bound beyond our powers and means. For
this reason—that we have no power to effect and
accomplish, that there is nothing really in our power but
will—all man’s rules of duty are necessarily founded and
established in our will.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 7, That Intention Is Judge
17 The knowledge of his duty should not be left to each
man’s judgment; it should be prescribed to him, not left
to the choice of his reason. Otherwise, judging by the
imbecility and infinite variety of our reasons and
opinions, we would finally forge for ourselves duties that
would set us to eating one another.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
18 Those who evade the common duties and that infinite
number of thorny and many-faceted rules that bind a
man of precise probity in civil life, achieve, in my opinion,
a fine saving, whatever point of especial rigor they may
impose on themselves. It is in a sense dying to escape
the trouble of living well. They may have some other
prize; but the prize of difficulty it has never seemed to
me they had, nor do | think there is anything more
arduous than keeping oneself straight amid the waves
and rush of the world, loyally responding to and
satisfying every part of one’s charge.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 33, The Story of Spurina
19 Human wisdom has never yet come up to the duties that
she has prescribed for herself; and if she ever did come
up to them, she would prescribe herself others beyond, to
which she would ever aim and aspire, so hostile to
consistency is our condition.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
20 Orlando. O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world.
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
Where none will sweat but for promotion.
And having that, do choke their service up
Even with the having.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Il, tii, 56
21 Duty is subdivided into two parts: the common duty of
every man, aS a man or member of a state; the other, the
respective or special duty of every man, in his profession,
vocation, and place.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XX, 7
22 When our passion leads us to do something, we forget
our duty; for example, we like a book and read it, when
we ought to be doing something else. Now, to remind
ourselves of our duty, we must set ourselves a task we
dislike; we then plead that we have something else to do
and by this means remember our duty.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 104
23 The whole future is doubtless determined; but since we
know not what it is, nor what is foreseen or resolved, we
must do our duty, according to the reason that God has
given us and according to the rules that he has
prescribed for us; and thereafter we must have a quiet
mind, and leave to God himself the care for the outcome.
For he will never fail to do that which shall be the best,
not only in general but also in particular, for those who
have true confidence in him, that is, a confidence
composed of true piety, a lively faith and fervent charity,
by virtue of which we will, as far as in us lies, neglect
nothing appertaining to our duty and his service. It is
true that we cannot ‘render service' to him, for he has
need of nothing: but it is ‘serving him’, in our parlance,
when we strive to carry out his presumptive will, co-
operating in the good as it is Known to us, wherever we
can contribute thereto. For we must always presume that
God is prompted towards the good we know, until the
event shows us that he had stronger reasons although
perhaps unknown to us, which have made him
subordinate this good that we sought to some other
greater good of his own designing, which he has not
failed or will not fail to effect.
Leibniz, Theodicy, 58
24 The more laws are multiplied, the more they are
despised, and all the new officials appointed to supervise
them are only so many more people to break them, and
either to share the plunder with their predecessors, or to
plunder apart on their own. The reward of virtue soon
becomes that of robbery; the vilest of men rise to the
greatest credit; the greater they are the more despicable
they become; their infamy appears even in their
dignities, and their very honours dishonour them. If they
buy the influence of the leaders or the protection of
women, it is only that they may sell justice, duty, and the
State in their turn: in the meantime, the people, feeling
that its vices are not the first cause of its misfortunes,
murmurs and complains that all its misfortunes come
solely from those whom it pays to protect it from such
things.
It is under these circumstances that the voice of duty
no longer speaks in men’s hearts, and their rulers are
obliged to substitute the cry of terror, or the lure of an
apparent interest, of which they subsequently trick their
creatures,
Rousseau, Political Economy
25 | have drawn the great moral lesson, perhaps the only
one of any practical value, to avoid those situations of life
which bring our duties into conflict with our interests, and
which show us our own advantage in the misfortunes of
others; for it is certain that, in such situations, however
sincere our love of virtue, we must, sooner or later,
inevitably grow weak without perceiving it, and become
unjust and wicked in act, without having ceased to be
just and good in our hearts.
Rousseau, Confessions, I]
26 Is not a patron... one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached
ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you
[the Earl of Chesterfield] have been pleased to take of my
labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
delayed till | am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till | am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till | am Known, and do not
want it. | hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess
obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be
unwilling that the public should consider me as owing
that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do
for myself.
Johnson, Letter to the Earl of Chesterfield (Feb. 7, 1755)
27 Johnson. \t is our first duty to serve society, and, after we
have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of
our own souls.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Feb. 1766)
28 Johnson. "Sir, you must consider that we have perfect
and imperfect obligations. Perfect obligations, which are
generally not to do something, are clear and positive; as,
‘thou shalt not kill.’ But charity, for instance, is not
definable by limits. It is a duty to give to the poor; but no
man can say how much another should give to the poor,
or when a man has given too little to save his soul. In the
Same manner it is a duty to instruct the ignorant, and of
consequence to convert infidels to Christianity; but no
man in the common course of things is obliged to carry
this to such a degree as to incur the danger of
martyrdom, aS no man is obliged to strip himself to the
shirt in order to give charity."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 7, 1773)
29 The discipline of colleges and universities is in general
contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the
interest, or more properly speaking, for the case of the
masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the
authority of the master, and whether he neglects or
performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to
behave to him as if he performed it with the greatest
diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom
and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness
and folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really
perform their duty, there are no examples, | believe, that
the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
30 A private citizen may feel his interest repugnant to his
duty; but it must be from a deficiency of sense or courage
that an absolute monarch can separate his happiness
from his glory, or his glory from the public welfare.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLVIII
31 If adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken
away the relish for life; if the unfortunate one, strong in
mind, indignant at his fate rather than desponding or
dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life
without loving it—not from inclination or fear, but from
duty—then his maxim has a moral worth.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
32 The necessity of acting from pure respect for the practical
law is what constitutes duty, to which every other motive
must give place, because it is the condition of a will
being good in itself and the worth of such a will is above
everything.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
33 A command to like to do a thing is in itself contradictory,
because if we already know of ourselves what we are
bound to do, and if further we are conscious of liking to
do it, acommand would be quite needless; and if we do it
not willingly, but only out of respect for the law, a
command that makes this respect the motive of our
maxim would directly counteract the disposition
commanded. That law of all laws, therefore, like all the
moral precepts of the Gospel, exhibits the moral
disposition in all its perfection, in which, viewed as an
ideal of holiness, it is not attainable by any creature, but
yet is the pattern which we should strive to approach,
and in an uninterrupted but infinite progress become like
to. In fact, if a rational creature could ever reach this
point, that he thoroughly likes to do all moral laws, this
would mean that there does not exist in him even the
possibility of a desire that would tempt him to deviate
from them; for to overcome such a desire always costs the
subject some sacrifice and therefore requires self-
compulsion, that is, inward constraint to something that
one does not quite like to do; and no creature can ever
reach this stage of moral disposition. For, being a
creature, and therefore always dependent with respect to
what he requires for complete satisfaction, he can never
be quite free from desires and inclinations, and as these
rest on physical causes, they can never of themselves
coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are
quite different; and therefore they make it necessary to
found the mental disposition of one’s maxims on moral
obligation, not on ready inclination, but on respect, which
demands obedience to the law, even though one may not
like it; not on love, which apprehends no inward
reluctance of the will towards the law. Nevertheless, this
latter, namely, love to the law (which would then cease to
be a command, and then morality, which would have
passed subjectively into holiness, would cease to be
virtue) must be the constant though unattainable goal of
his endeavours.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
34 Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace
nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest
submission, and yet seekest not to move the will by
threatening aught that would arouse natural aversion or
terror, but merely boldest forth a law which of itself finds
entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant reverence
(though not always obedience), a law before which all
inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly
counter-work it; what origin is there worthy of thee, and
where is to be found the root of thy noble descent which
proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations; a root to
be derived from which is the indispensable condition of
the only worth which men can give themselves?
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
35 The majesty of duty has nothing to do with enjoyment of
life; it has its special law and its special tribunal, and
though the two should be never so well shaken together
to be given well mixed, like medicine, to the sick soul, yet
they will soon separate of themselves; and if they do not,
the former will not act; and although physical life might
gain somewhat in force, the moral life would fade away
irrecoverably.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, |, 3
36 Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity!
Wordsworth, Ode to Duty
37 In duty the individual finds his liberation; first, liberation
from dependence on mere natural impulse and from the
depression which as a particular subject he cannot
escape in his moral reflections on what ought to be and
what might be; secondly, liberation from the
indeterminate subjectivity which, never reaching reality
or the objective determinacy of action, remains self-
enclosed and devoid of actuality. In duty the individual
acquires his substantive freedom.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 149
38 | have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies
the name of duty to many offices that are called duties.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
39 Captain Vere. But your scruples: do they move as ina
dusk? Challenge them. Make them advance and declare
themselves. Come now; do they import something like
this: If, mindless of palliating circumstances, we are
bound to regard the death of the master-at-arms as the
prisoner’s deed, then does that deed constitute a capital
crime whereof the penalty is a mortal one? But in natural
justice is nothing but the prisoner’s overt act to be
considered? How can we adjudge to summary and
shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God,
and whom we feel to be so?—Does that state it aright?
You sign sad assent. Well, | too feel that the full force of
that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear
attest that our allegiance h to Nature? No, to the King.
Though the ocean which is inviolate Nature primeval,
though this be the element where we move and have our
being as sailors, yet as the King’s officers lies our duty in
a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that true,
that in receiving our commissions we in the most
important regards ceased to be natural free agents. When
war is declared are we the commissioned fighters
previously consulted? We fight at command. If our
judgments approve the war, that is but coincidence. So in
other particulars. So now. For suppose condemnation to
follow these present proceedings. Would it be so much we
ourselves that would condemn as it would be martial law
operating through us? For that law and the rigor of it, we
are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is in this:
That however pitilessly that law may operate in any
instances, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it.
Melville, Billy Budd
40 Action from principle, the perception and the
performance of right, change things and relations; it is
essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly
with anything which was. It not only divides states and
churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual,
separating the diabolical in him from the divine.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
41 Man prompted by his conscience, will through long habit
acquire such perfect self-command, that his desires and
passions will at last yield instantly and without a struggle
to his social sympathies and instincts, including his
feeling for the judgment of his fellows. The still hungry, or
the still revengeful man will not think of stealing food, or
of wreaking his vengeance. It is possible, or as we shall
hereafter see, even probable, that the habit of self-
command may, like other habits, be inherited. Thus at
last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps
inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more
persistent impulses. The imperious word ought seems
merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a
rule of conduct, however it may have originated.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 4
42 What are called duties to ourselves are not socially
obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the
same time duties to others. The term duty to oneself,
when it means anything more than prudence, means self-
respect or self-development, and for none of these is any
one accountable to his fellow creatures, because for none
of them is it for the good of mankind that he be held
accountable to them.
Mill, On Liberty, 1V
43 It is a part of the notion of Duty in everyone of its forms,
that a person may rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty
is a thing which may be exacted from a person, as one
exacts a debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted
from him, we do not call it his duty. Reasons of prudence,
or the interest of other people, may militate against
actually exacting it; but the person himself, it is clearly
understood, would not be entitled to complain.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
44 The feeling of "ought," of personal obligation (to take up
again the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its
origin in the oldest and most original personal
relationship that there is, the relationship between buyer
and seller, creditor and ower: here it was that individual
confronted individual, and that individual matched
himself against individual. There has not yet been found
a grade of civilisation so low, as not to manifest some
trace of this relationship.
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, II, 8
45 Each one of us should devise his own virtue, his own
categorical imperative. A people perishes if it mistakes /ts
own duty for the concept of duty in general.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, X1
46 When an exceptional human being handles the mediocre
more gently than he does himself or his equals, this is not
mere politeness of the heart—it is simply his duty.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LVI
47 Centurion, [sulkily] | do my duty. That is enough for me.
Apollodorus. Majesty: when a stupid man is doing
something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is
his duty.
Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra, III
48 Napoleon. The English are a race apart. No Englishman is
too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough
to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is
born with a certain miraculous power that makes him
master of the world. When he wants a thing, he never
tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until
there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning
conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to
conquer those who possess the thing he wants. Then he
becomes irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what
pleases him and grabs what he covets: like the
shopkeeper, he pursues his purpose with the industry
and steadfastness that come from strong religious
conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is
never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the
great champion of freedom and national independence,
he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it
Colonization. When he wants a new market for his
adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to
teach the natives the Gospel of Peace. The natives kill the
missionary: he flies to arms in defence of Christianity;
fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a
reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores, he
puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross
on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the
earth, sinking, burning, and destroying all who dispute
the empire of the seas with him. He boasts that a slave is
free the moment his foot touches British soil; and he sells
the children of his poor at six years of age to work under
the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He makes
two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the
name of law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good
that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will
never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does
everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic
principles; he robs you on business principles; he
enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on
manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles
and cuts off his king’s head on republican principles. His
watchword is always Duty; and he never forgets that the
nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its
interest is lost.
Shaw, The Man of Destiny
49 A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in
personal relations.
Russell, Conquest of Happiness, II, 10
9.10 Virtue and Vice
The main contributions to the theory of virtue and vice come
down to us from the ancient Greeks, The Roman moralists
borrowed from the Greeks and translated the basic terms
into Latin, including the names of the particular virtues and
vices. The Christian theologians also borrowed from the
Greeks, but they contributed elaborations of their own and
added to the list of virtues the three—faith, hope, and
charity—which are specifically theological rather than moral
virtues. Modern secular writers have placed much less
emphasis on virtue and vice in their discussion of moral
problems and in their consideration of what is good and bad
or right and wrong; and when they have used the terms,
their use has seldom reflected the main points in the
analysis of virtue and vice given to us by the Greeks.
The reader will find in the quotations from Plato, Aristotle,
and other Greek writers an analysis that includes a
conception of virtue and vice as habits or habitual
dispositions, respectively good and bad; an elaborate
classification of particular virtues or aspects of virtue; a
division of the virtues into moral and intellectual virtues; an
indication of which among all the virtues are cardinal or
pivotal in the pursuit of happiness; a consideration of the
way in which virtue is acquired, involving a dispute over the
question whether virtue (more specifically, moral virtue) can
be taught; an examination of the development of good or
bad moral character in terms of virtue and vice; an assertion
of the indispensability of moral virtue for the achievement of
happiness; and—most difficult and subtle of all—apparently
opposite views on the question whether there are many
particular virtues, some of which a person may possess and
some of which a person may lack, or only many different
aspects of virtue, all of which a person must possess in order
to be genuinely virtuous.
On all of these points in the theory of virtue and vice,
other relevant discussions will be found in Section 8.2 on
Habit, Section 9.6 on Good and Evil, Section 9,7 on Right
and Wrong, Section 9.8 on Happiness, and Section 9.9 on
Duty; Moral Obligation. The treatment of particular virtues or
of particular aspects of virtue, both moral and intellectual,
will be found in Section 9.11 on Courage and Cowardice,
Section 9.12 on Temperance and Intemperance, Section 9.13
on Prudence, Section 9.14 on Honesty, and Section 9.15 on
Wisdom and Folly. Though not explicitly mentioned in the
title of Section 9.7, justice and injustice are treated there.
In addition, since moral virtue is discussed as involving
reason’s control over the emotions or its moderation of the
passions, the reader is referred to Chapter 4 on Emotion. In
that chapter the reader will find, in Sections 4.8 through
4.11, the treatment of such subjects as pity, envy, greed,
avarice, jealousy, pride, and humility, which are often
regarded as vices or sins.
The quotations below include the presentations by the
poets, biographers, historians, and essayists of outstanding
examples of human virtue and vice. They also include
considerations of the advantages and disadvantages of
virtue in the arena of politics, as well as what is involved in
being a virtuous ruler and a virtuous citizen. For other
discussions of these matters, the reader is referred to
Section 10.2 on The Realm of Politics and Section 10.5 on
Gitizenshp.
Finally, the reader’s attention must be called to a highly
restricted use of the word "virtue" that has come to the fore
in modern literature—the use in which it is identified with
chastity, sexual purity, or conformity to the sexual mores of
the tribe. The reader will thus find passages in which that is
all that is meant when men or women—and, regrettably,
mainly women—are called virtuous.
1 Penelope. The hard man and his cruelties will be cursed
behind his back, and mocked in death. But one whose
heart and ways are kind—of him strangers will bear
report to the wide world, and distant men will praise him.
Homer, Odyssey, XIX, 330
2 Phaedra. Our lives are worse than the mind’s quality
would warrant. There are many who know virtue.
We know the good, we apprehend it clearly.
But we can’t bring it to achievement. Some are betrayed
by their own laziness, and others value some other
pleasure above virtue.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 377
3 Chorus. Many are the natures of men,
Various their manners of living,
Yet a straight path is always the right one;
And lessons deeply taught
Lead man to paths of righteousness;
Reverence, | say, is wisdom
And by its grace transfigures—
So that we seek virtue
With a right judgment.
From all of this springs honor
Bringing ageless glory into
Man’s life. Oh, a mighty quest
Is the hunting out of virtue—
Which for womankind
Must be a love in quietness.
But, for men, infinite are the ways
To order and augment
The state.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, 558
4 Nicias. Every man is good in that in which he is wise, and
bad in that in which he is unwise.
Plato, Laches, 194B
5 Protagoras. No one would instruct, no one would rebuke, or
be angry with those whose calamities they suppose to be
due to nature or chance; they do not try to punish or to
prevent them from being what they are; they do but pity
them. Who is so foolish as to chastise or instruct the ugly,
or the diminutive, or the feeble? And for this reason.
Because he knows that good and evil of this kind is the
work of nature and of chance; whereas if a man is
wanting in those good qualities which are attained by
study and exercise and teaching, and has only the
contrary evil qualities, other men are angry with him, and
punish and reprove him —of these evil qualities one is
impiety, another injustice, and they may be described
generally as the very opposite of political virtue. In such
cases any man will be angry with another, and reprimand
him—clearly because he thinks that by study and
learning, the virtue in which the other is deficient may be
acquired.
Plato, Protagoras, 323B
6 Then, | [Socrates] said, these, Hippias and Prodicus, are
our premisses; and | would beg Protagoras to explain to
us how he can be right in what he said at first. | do not
mean in what he said quite at first, for his first statement,
as you may remember, was that whereas there were five
parts of virtue none of them was like any other of them;
each of them had a separate function. To this, however, |
am not referring, but to the assertion which he afterwards
made that of the five virtues four were nearly akin to
each other, but that the fifth, which was courage, differed
greatly from the others. And of this he gave me the
following proof. He said: You will find, Socrates, that some
of the most impious, and unrighteous, and intemperate,
and ignorant of men are among the most courageous;
which proves that courage is very different from the other
parts of virtue. | was surprised at his saying this at the
time, and | am still more surprised now that | have
discussed the matter with you. So! asked him whether by
the brave he meant the confident. Yes, he replied, and
the impetuous or goers. (You may remember, Protagoras,
that this was your answer.)
He (Protagoras] assented.
Well then, | said, tell us against what are the
courageous ready to go—against the same dangers as
the cowards?
No, he answered.
Then against something different?
Yes, he said.
Then do cowards go where there is safety, and the
courageous where there is danger?
Yes, Socrates, SO men Say.
Very true, | said. But | want to Know against what do
you say that the courageous are ready to go—against
dangers, believing them to be dangers, or not against
dangers?
No, said he; the former case has been proved by you
in the previous argument to be impossible.
That, again, 1 replied, is quite true. And if this has
been rightly proven, then no one goes to meet what he
thinks to be dangers, since the want of self-control, which
makes men rush into dangers, has been shown to be
ignorance.
He assented.
And yet the courageous man and the coward alike go
to meet that about which they are confident; so that, in
this point of view, the cowardly and the courageous go to
meet the same things.
And yet, Socrates, said Protagoras, that to which the
coward goes is the opposite of that to which the
courageous goes; the one, for example, is ready to go to
battle, and the other is not ready.
And is going to battle honourable or disgraceful? |
said.
Honourable, he replied.
And if honourable, then already admitted by us to be
good; for all honourable actions we have admitted to be
good.
That is true; and to that opinion | shall always adhere.
True, | said. But which of the two are they who, as you
say, are unwilling to go to war, which is a good and
honourable thing?
The cowards, he replied.
And what is good and honourable, | said, is also
pleasant?
It has certainly been acknowledged to be so, he
replied.
And do the cowards knowingly refuse to go to the
nobler, and pleasanter, and better?
The admission of that, he replied, would belie our
former admissions.
But does not the courageous man also go to meet the
better, and pleasanter, and nobler?
That must be admitted.
And the courageous man has no base fear or base
confidence?
True, he replied.
And if not base, then honourable?
He admitted this.
And if honourable, then good?
Yes.
But the fear and confidence of the coward or foolhardy
or madman, on the contrary, are base?
He assented.
And these base fears and confidences originate in
ignorance and uninstructedness?
True, he said.
Then, as to the motive from which the cowards act, do
you call it cowardice or courage?
| should say cowardice, he replied.
And have they not been shown to be cowards through
their ignorance of dangers?
Assuredly, he said.
And because of that ignorance they are cowards?
He assented.
And the reason why they are cowards is admitted by
you to be cowardice?
He again assented.
Then the ignorance of what is and is not dangerous is
cowardice?
He nodded assent.
But surely courage, | said, is opposed to cowardice?
Yes.
Then the wisdom which knows what are and are not
dangers is opposed to the ignorance of them?
To that again he nodded assent.
And the ignorance of them is cowardice?
To that he very reluctantly nodded assent.
And the knowledge of that which is and is not
dangerous is courage, and is opposed to the ignorance of
these things?
At this point he would no longer nod assent, bm was
silent.
And why, | said, do you neither assent nor dissent,
Protagoras?
Finish the argument by yourself, he said.
| only want to ask one more question, | said, | want to
know whether you still think that there are men who are
most ignorant and yet most courageous?
You seem to have a great ambition to make me
answer, Socrates, and therefore | will gratify you, and say,
that this appears to me to be impossible consistently with
the argument.
My only object, | said, in continuing the discussion,
has been the desire to ascertain the nature and relations
of virtue; for if this were clear, | am very sure that the
other controversy which has been carried on at great
length by both of us— you affirming and | denying that
virtue can be taught—would also become clear. The
result of our discussion appears to me to be singular. For
if the argument had a human voice, that voice would be
heard laughing at us and saying: "Protagoras and
Socrates, you are strange beings; there are you, Socrates,
who were saying that virtue cannot be taught,
contradicting yourself now by your attempt to prove that
all things are knowledge, including justice, and
temperance, and courage,—which tends to show that
virtue can certainly be taught; for if virtue were other
than knowledge, as Protagoras attempted to prove, then
clearly virtue cannot be taught; but H virtue is entirely
knowledge, as you are seeking to show, then | cannot but
suppose that virtue is capable of being taught.
Protagoras, on the other hand, who started by saying that
it might be taught, is now eager to prove it to be
anything rather than knowledge; and if this is true, it
must be quite incapable of being taught." Now 1,
Protagoras, perceiving this terrible confusion of our ideas,
have a great desire that they should be cleared up. And |
should like to carry on the discussion until we ascertain
what virtue is, and whether capable of being taught or
not.
Plato, Protagoras, 359A
7 Socrates. Seeing then that men become good and useful
to states, not only because they have knowledge, but
because they have right opinion, and that neither
knowledge nor right opinion is given to man by nature or
acquired by him—(do you imagine either of them to be
given by nature?
Meno. Not I.)
Soc. Then if they are not given by nature, neither are
the good by nature good?
Men. Certainly not.
Soc. And nature being excluded, then came the
question whether virtue is acquired by teaching?
Men. Yes.
Soc. If virtue was wisdom [or knowledge], then, as we
thought, it was taught?
Men. Yes.
Soc. And if it was taught it was wisdom?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. And if there were teachers, it might be taught;
and if there were no teachers, not?
Men. True.
Soc. But surely we acknowledge that there were no
teachers of virtue?
Men. Yes.
Soc. Then we acknowledged that it was not taught,
and was not wisdom?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. And yet we admitted that it was a good?
Men. Yes.
Soc. And the right guide is useful and good?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. And the only right guides are knowledge and true
opinion—these are the guides of man; for things which
happen by chance are not under the guidance of man:
but the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge.
Men. | think so too.
Soc. But if virtue is not taught, neither is virtue
knowledge.
Men. Clearly not.
Soc. Then of two good and useful things, one, which is
knowledge, has been set aside, and cannot be supposed
to be our guide in political life.
Men. | think not.
Soc. And therefore not by any wisdom, and not
because they were wise, did Themistocles and those
others of whom Anytus spoke govern states. This was the
reason why they were unable to make others like
themselves—because their virtue was not grounded on
knowledge.
Men. That is probably true, Socrates.
Soc. But if not by knowledge, the only alternative
which remains is that statesmen must have guided states
by right opinion, which is in politics what divination is in
religion; for diviners and also prophets say many things
truly, but they know not what they say.
Men. So | believe.
Soc. And may we not, Meno, truly call those men
"divine" Who, having no understanding, yet succeed in
many a grand deed and word?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. Then we shall also be right in calling divine those
whom we were just now speaking of as diviners and
prophets, including the whole tribe of poets. Yes, and
statesmen above all may be said to be divine and
illumined, being inspired and possessed of God, in which
condition they say many grand things, not knowing what
they say.
Men. Yes.
Soc. And the women too, Meno, call good men divine—
do they not? and the Spartans, when they praise a good
man, say "that he is a divine man."
Men. And | think, Socrates, that they are right;
although very likely our friend Anytus may take offence
at the word.
Soc. | do not care; as for Anytus, there will be another
opportunity of talking with him. To sum up our enquiry—
the result seems to be, if we are at all right in our view,
that virtue is neither natural nor acquired, but an instinct
given by God to the virtuous. Nor is the instinct
accompanied by reason, unless there may be supposed to
be among statesmen some one who is capable of
educating statesmen. And if there be such an one, he
may be said to be among the living what Homer says that
Tiresias was among the dead, "he alone has
understanding; but the rest are flitting shades"; and he
and his virtue in like manner will be a reality among
shadows.
Men. That is excellent, Socrates.
Soc. Then, Meno, the conclusion is that virtue comes
to the virtuous by the gift of God. But we shall never
know the certain truth until, before asking how virtue is
given, we enquire into the actual nature of virtue.
Plato, Meno, 98B
8 Socrates. Daily to discourse about virtue ... is the greatest
good of man, and... the unexamined life is not worth
living.
Plato, Apology, 38A
9 Socrates. Virtue is one, but.., the forms of vice are
innumerable.
Plato, Republic, IV, 445B
10 Virtue is free, and aS a man honours or dishonours her he
will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the
chooser.
Plato, Republic, X, 617B
11 Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral,
philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical
wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance
moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not
say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is
good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man
also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of
mind we call those which merit praise virtues.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1103a4
12 The question might be asked, what we mean by saying
that we must become just by doing just acts, and
temperate by doing temperate acts; for if men do just
and temperate acts, they are already just and temperate,
exactly as, if they do what is in accordance with the laws
of grammar and of music, they are grammarians and
musicians.
Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do
something that is in accordance with the laws of
grammar, either by chance or at the suggestion of
another. A man will be a grammarian, then, only when he
has both done something grammatical and done it
grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance
with the grammatical knowledge in himself.
Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are
not similar; for the products of the arts have their
goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they
should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in
accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain
character it does not follow that they are done justly or
temperately. The agent also must be in a certain
condition when he does them; in the first place he must
have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and
choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action
must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.
These are not reckoned in as conditions of the possession
of the arts, except the bare knowledge; but as a condition
of the possession of the virtues knowledge has little or no
weight, while the other conditions count not for a little
but for everything, i.e. the very conditions which result
from often doing just and temperate acts.
Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they
are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but
it is not the man who does these that is just and
temperate, but the man who also does them as just and
temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by
doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by
doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing
these no one would have even a prospect of becoming
good.
Aristotle, 1105a17
13 Virtue... is a state of character concerned with choice,
lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being
determined by a rational principle, and by that principle
hv which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends
on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it
iS a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or
exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while
virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.
Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which
states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is
best and right an extreme.
Aristotle Ethics, 1[l(O6b36
14 There are three kinds of disposition ... two o! them vices,
involving excess and deficiency respectively, and one a
virtue, viz, the mean, and all are in a sense opposed to
all; for the extreme states are contrary both to the
intermediate state and to each other, and the
intermediate to the extremes; as the equal is greater
relatively to the less, less relatively to the greater, so the
middle states art excessive relatively to the deficiencies,
deficient relatively to the excesses, both in passions and
in actions. For the brave man appears rash relatively to
the coward, and cowardly relatively to the rash man; and
similarly the temperate man appears self-indulgent
relatively to the insensible man, insensible relatively to
the self-indulgent, and the liberal man prodigal relatively
to the mean man, mean relatively to the prodigal. Hence
also the people at the extremes push the intermediate
man each over to the other, and the brave man is called
rash by the coward, cowardly by the rash man, and
correspondingly in the other cases.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1108b11
15 With regard to the virtues in general we have stated their
genus in outline, viz. that they are means and that they
are states of character, and that they tend, and by their
own nature, to the doing of the acts by which they are
produced, and that they are in our power and voluntary,
and act as the right rule prescribes. But actions and
states of character are not voluntary in the same way; for
we are masters of our actions from the beginning right to
the end, if we know the particular facts, but though we
control the beginning of our states of character the
gradual progress is not obvious any more than it is in
illnesses; because it was in our power, however, to act in
this way or not in this way, therefore the states are
voluntary.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1114b26
16 We said... that it [happiness] is not a disposition; for if it
were it might belong to some one who was asleep
throughout his life, living the life of a plant, or, again, to
some one who was suffering the greatest misfortunes. If
these implications are unacceptable, and we must rather
class happiness as an activity, as we have said before,
and if some activities are necessary, and desirable for the
sake of something else, while others are so in themselves,
evidently happiness must be placed among those
desirable in themselves, not among those desirable for
the sake of something else; for happiness does not lack
anything, but is self-sufficient. Now those activities are
desirable in themselves from which nothing is sought
beyond the activity. And of this nature virtuous actions
are thought to be; for to do noble and good deeds is a
thing desirable for its own sake.
Pleasant amusements also are thought to be of this
nature; we choose them not for the sake of other things;
for we are injured rather than benefited by them, since
we are led to neglect our bodies and our property. But
most of the people who are deemed happy take refuge in
such pastimes, which is the reason why those who are
ready-witted at them are highly esteemed at the courts of
tyrants; they make themselves pleasant companions in
the tyrants; favourite pursuits, and that is the sort of man
they want. Now these things are thought to be of the
nature of happiness because people in despotic positions
spend their leisure in them, but perhaps such people
prove nothing; for virtue and reason, from which good
activities flow, do not depend on despotic position; nor, if
these people, who have never tasted pure and generous
pleasure, take refuge in the bodily pleasures, should
these for that reason be thought more desirable; for boys,
too, think the things that are valued among themselves
are the best. It is to be expected, then, that, as different
things seem valuable to boys and to men, so they should
to bad men and to good. Now... those things are both
valuable and pleasant which are such to the good man;
and to each man the activity in accordance with his own
disposition is most desirable, and, therefore, to the good
man that which is in accordance with virtue. Happiness,
therefore, does not lie in amusement; it would, indeed, be
strange if the end were amusement, and one were to take
trouble and suffer hardship all one’s life in order to amuse
oneself. For, in a word, everything that we choose we
choose for the sake of something else—except happiness,
which is an end. Now to exert oneself and work for the
sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But
to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as
Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort
of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot
work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is
taken for the sake of activity.
The happy life is thought to be virtuous; now a
virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in
amusement. And we Say that serious things are better
than laughable things and those connected with
amusement, and that the activity of the better of any two
things—-whether it be two elements of our being or two
men—is the more serious; but the activity of the better is
ipso facto superior and more of the nature of happiness.
And any chance person—-even a slave—can enjoy the
bodily pleasures no less than the best man; but no one
assigns to a Slave a Share in happiness—unless he
assigns to him also a share in human life. For happiness
does not lie in such occupations, but,... in virtuous
activities.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1176a33
17 The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance,
magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness,
prudence, wisdom. If virtue is a faculty of beneficence,
the highest kinds of it must be those which are most
useful to others, and for this reason men honour most the
just and the courageous, since courage is useful to others
in war, justice both in war and in peace. Next comes
liberality; liberal people let their money go instead of
fighting for it, wnereas other people care more for money
than for anything else. Justice is the virtue through which
everybody enjoys his own possessions in accordance with
the law; its opposite is injustice, through which men
enjoy the possessions of others in defiance of the law.
Courage is the virtue that disposes men to do noble
deeds in situations of danger, in accordance with the law
and in obedience to its commands; cowardice is the
opposite. Temperance is the virtue that disposes us to
obey the law where physical pleasures are concerned;
incontinence is the opposite. Liberality disposes us to
spend money for others’ good; illiberality is the opposite.
Magnanimity is the virtue that disposes us to do good to
others on a large scale; [its opposite is meanness of
spirit]. Magnificence is a virtue productive of greatness in
matters involving the spending of money. The opposites
of these two are smallness of spirit and meanness
respectively. Prudence is that virtue of the understanding
which enables men to come to wise decisions about the
relation to happiness of the goods and evils that have
been previously mentioned.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1366a39
18 Laelius. lf we wish to avoid anxiety we must avoid virtue
itself, which necessarily involves some anxious thoughts
in showing its loathing and abhorrence for the qualities
which are opposite to itself—as kindness for ill nature,
self-control for licentiousness, courage for cowardice.
Thus you may notice that it is the just who are most
pained at injustice, the brave at cowardly actions, the
temperate at depravity. It is then characteristic of a
rightly ordered mind to be pleased at what is good and
grieved at the reverse.
Cicero, Friendship, XIII
19 Anyone who separates the supreme good from virtue and
measures it only in terms of self-interest— if he is always
consistent and never over-ruled by his better nature—
could find no value in friendship, justice, or generosity.
No one can be brave who considers pain the supreme
evil. Nor could anyone be temperate who regards
pleasure as the highest good.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 2
20 It is virtue, to fly vice; and the highest wisdom to have
lived free from folly.
Horace, Epistles, |, 1
21 Nature does not give a man virtue: the process of
becoming a good man is an art.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 90
22 All vices are at odds with nature, all abandon the proper
order of things.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 122
23 Aman must cast virtue out from his heart if he is to admit
anger, because vices and virtues do not mix well
together. One can no more be angry and kind at the same
time than he can be sick and well.
Seneca, On Anger, Il, 12
24 Vice quickly creeps in; virtue is difficult to find; she
requires ruler and guide. But vice can be acquired even
without a tutor.
Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales, III, 30
25 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else
make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is
known by his fruit.
Matthew 12:33
26 Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise, think on these things,
Philippians 4:8
27 Vice, the opposite of virtue, shows us more clearly what
virtue is. Justice becomes more obvious when we have
injustice to compare it to. Many such things are proved
by their contraries,
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XII, 1
28 Real excellence... is most recognised when most openly
looked into; and in really good men, nothing which meets
the eyes of external observers so truly deserves their
admiration, as their daily common life does that of their
nearer friends.
Plutarch, Pericles
29 The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with
the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men;
sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression ora
jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations,
than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or
the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
Plutarch, Alexander
30 The true love of virtue is in all men produced by the love
and respect they bear to him that teaches it; and those
who praise good men, yet do not love them, may respect
their reputation, but do not really admire, and will never
imitate their virtue.
Plutarch, Cato the Younger
31 There is ... a method very exact and necessary for all
discussion of the nature of the universe which very
clearly and indisputably presents to us the fact that that
which is fair and limited, and which subjects itself to
knowledge, is naturally prior to the unlimited,
incomprehensible, and ugly, and furthermore that the
parts and varieties of the infinite and unlimited are given
shape and boundaries by the former, and through it
attain to their fitting order and sequence, and like objects
brought beneath some seal or measure, all gain a share of
likeness to it and similarity of name when they fall under
its influence. For thus it is reasonable that the rational
part of the soul will be the agent which puts in order the
irrational part, and passion and appetite, which find their
places in the two forms of inequality, will be regulated by
the reasoning faculty as though by a kind of equality and
sameness. And from this equalizing process there will
properly result for us the so-called ethical virtues,
sobriety, courage, gentleness, self-control, fortitude, and
the like.
Nicomachus, Arithmetic, 1, 23
32 Modest actions preserve the modest man, and immodest
actions destroy him: and actions of fidelity preserve the
faithful man, and the contrary’ actions destroy him. And
on the other hand contrary actions strengthen contrary
characters: shamelessness strengthens the shameless
man, faithlessness the faithless man, abusive words the
abusive man, anger the man of an angry temper, and
unequal receiving and giving make the avaricious man
more avaricious.
For this reason philosophers admonish us not to be
satisfied with learning only, but also to add study, and
then practice.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 9
33 If thou findest in human life anything better than justice,
truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, anything
better than thy own mind’s self-satisfaction in the things
which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and
in the condition that is assigned to thee without thy own
choice; if, | say, thou seest anything better than this, turn
to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast
found to be the best. ... If thou findest everything else
smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing
else, for if thou dost once diverge and incline to it, thou
wilt no longer without distraction be able to give the
preference to that good thing which is thy proper
possession and thy own; for it is not right that anything
of any other kind, such as praise from the many, or
power, or enjoyment of pleasure, should come into
competition with that which is rationally and politically or
practically good.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Ill, 6
34 When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues
of those who live with thee; for instance, the activity of
one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a
third, and some other good quality of a fourth. For
nothing delights so much as the examples of the virtues,
when they are exhibited in the morals of those who live
with us and present themselves in abundance, as far as is
possible. Wherefore we must keep them before us.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 48
35 The perfection of moral character consists in this, in
passing every day as the last, and in being neither
violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 69
36 For most or even all forms of evil serve the Universe—
much as the poisonous snake has its use— though in
most cases their function is unknown. Vice itself has
many useful sides: it brings about much that is beautiful,
in artistic creations for example, and it stirs us to
thoughtful living, not allowing us to drowse in security.
Plotinus, Second Ennead, III, 18
37 Nothing is utterly condemnable save vice.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 3
38 No one without true piety—that is, true worship of the
true God—can have true virtue.
Augustine, City of God, V, 19
39 In Scripture they are called God’s enemies who oppose
His rule, not by nature, but by vice; having no power to
hurt Him, but only themselves. For they are His enemies,
not through their power to hurt, but by their will to
oppose Him. For God is unchangeable, and wholly proof
against injury. Therefore the vice which makes those who
are called His enemies resist Him, is an evil not to God,
but to themselves. And to them it is an evil, solely
because it corrupts the good of their nature. It is not
nature, therefore, but vice, which is contrary to God. For
that which is evil is contrary to the good. And who will
deny that God is the supreme good? Vice, therefore, is
contrary to God, as evil to good. Further, the nature it
vitiates is a good, and therefore to this good also it is
contrary. But while it is contrary to God only as evil to
good, it is contrary to the nature it vitiates, both as evil
and as hurtful. For to God no evils are hurtful; but only to
natures mutable and corruptible, though, by the
testimony of the vices themselves, originally good. For
were they not good, vices could not hurt them. For how
do they hurt them but by depriving them of integrity,
beauty, welfare, virtue, and, in short, whatever natural
good vice is wont to diminish or destroy? But if there be
no good to take away, then no injury can be done, and
consequently there can be no vice. For it is impossible
that there should be a harmless vice. Whence we gather,
that though vice cannot injure the unchangeable good, it
can injure nothing but good; because it does not exist
where it does not injure.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 3
40 If the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved
and not another thing in His stead. He cannot be evilly
loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we
do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live
well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that itis a
brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of
love.
Augustine, City of God, XV, 22
41 Though the soul may seem to rule the body admirably,
and the reason the vices, if the soul and reason do not
themselves obey God, as God has commanded them to
serve Him, they have no proper authority over the body
and the vices. For what kind of mistress of the body and
the vices can that mind be which is ignorant of the true
God, and which, instead of being subject to His authority,
is prostituted to the corrupting influences of the most
vicious demons? It is for this reason that the virtues
which it seems to itself to possess, and by which it
restrains the body and the vices that it may obtain and
keep what it desires, are rather vices than virtues so long
as there is no reference to God in the matter.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 25
42 Man is judged to be good or bad chiefly according to the
pleasure of the human will; for that man is good and
virtuous who takes pleasure in the works of virtue, and
that man evil who takes pleasure in evil works.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I~ Il, 34, 4
43 One can make bad use of a virtue taken as an object, for
instance, by having evil thoughts about a virtue, that is,
by hating it, or by being proud of it; but one cannot make
bad use of virtue as principle of action, so that an act of
virtue be evil.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 55, 4
44 Human virtue is a habit perfecting man in view of his
doing good deeds. Now, in man there are but two
principles of human actions, namely, the intellect or
reason and the appetite; for these are the two principles
of movement in man as stated in [Aristotle’s] book on the
Soul, Consequently every human virtue must be a
perfection of one of these principles. Accordingly if it
perfects man’s speculative or practical intellect in order
that his deed may be good, it will be an intellectual
virtue, but if it perfects his appetite, it will be a moral
virtue. It follows therefore that every human virtue is
either intellectual or moral.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 58, 3
45 Moral virtue can be without some of the intellectual
virtues, namely, wisdom, science, and art, but not
without understanding and prudence. Moral virtue
cannot be without prudence, because moral virtue is a
habit of choosing, that is, making us choose well. Now in
order that a choice be good, two things are required.
First, that the intention be directed to a due end; and this
is done by moral virtue, which inclines the appetitive
power to the good that is in accord with reason, which is
a due end. Secondly, that man take rightly those things
which have reference to the end, and he cannot do this
unless his reason counsel, judge and command rightly,
which is the function of prudence and the virtues joined
to it.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 58, 4
46 Things may be numbered either in respect of their formal
principles, or according to their subjects, and in either
way we find that there are four cardinal virtues.
For the formal principle of the virtue of which we
speak now is the good of reason, which good can be
considered in two ways. First, as consisting in the
consideration itself of reason; and thus we have one
principal virtue, called Prudence.—Secondly, according
as the reason puts its order into something else; either
into operations, and then we have Justice; or into
passions, and then there must be two virtues. For the
need of putting the order of reason into the passions is
due to their going against reason, and this occurs in two
ways. First, by the passions inciting to something against
reason, and then the passions need a curb, which we call
Temperance. Secondly, by the passions withdrawing us
from following the dictate of reason, for instance, through
fear of danger or toil, and then man needs to be
strengthened for that which reason dictates, lest he turn
back; and to this end there is Fortitude.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 61, 2
47 Virtues are understood differently by various writers. For
some take them as signifying certain general conditions
of the human soul, to be found in all the virtues, so that,
namely, prudence is merely a certain rectitude of
discernment in any actions or matters whatever; justice,
a certain rectitude of the soul by which man does what he
ought in any matters; temperance, a disposition of the
soul moderating any passions or operations, so as to keep
them within bounds; and fortitude, a disposition by which
the soul is strengthened for that which is in accord with
reason, against any assaults of the passions, or the toil
involved by any operations. To distinguish these four
virtues in this way does not imply that justice,
temperance and fortitude are distinct virtuous habits. For
it pertains to every moral virtue, from the fact That it is a
habit, that it should be accompanied by a certain
firmness so as not to be moved by its contrary, and this,
we have said, belongs to fortitude. Moreover, since it is a
virtue, it is directed to good which involves the notion of
right and due, and this, we have said, belongs to justice.
Again, owning to the (act that it is a moral virtue
partaking of reason, it observes the mode of reason in all
things, and does not exceed its bounds, which has been
stated to belong to temperance. It is only in the point of
having discernment which we ascribed to prudence, that
there seems to be a distinction from the other three, since
discernment belongs essentially to reason; but the other
three imply a certain participation of reason by way of a
kind of application (of reason) to passions or operations.
According to the above explanation, then, prudence
would be distinct from the other three virtues but these
would not be distinct from one another; for it is evident
that one and the same virtue is both habit, and virtue,
and moral virtue.
Others, however, with better reason, take these four
virtues, according as they have their special determinate
matter, each its own matter, in which special praise is
given to that general condition from which the virtue’s
name is taken.... In this way it is clear that the aforesaid
virtues are distinct habits, differentiated in respect of
their diverse objects.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-Il, 61, 4
48 Speaking absolutely, the intellectual virtues, which
perfect the reason, are more excellent than the moral
virtues, which perfect the appetite.
But if we consider virtue in its relation to act, then
moral virtue, which perfects the appetite, whose function
it is to move the other powers to act ... is more excellent.
And since virtue is called so from its being a principle of
action, for it is the perfection of a power, it follows again
that the nature of virtue agrees more with moral than
with intellectual virtue.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 66, 3
49 Men who are well disposed are led willingly to virtue by
being admonished better than by coercion; but men who
are evilly disposed are not led to virtue unless they are
compelled.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 95, 1
50 Virtue is praised because of the will, not because of the
ability: and therefore if a man fall short of equality which
is the mean of justice, through lack of ability, his virtue
deserves no less praise, provided there be no failing on
the part of his will.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/I-/l, 81, 6
51 Cressida. In everything there should be moderation,
For though one might forbid all drunkenness,
One could not say that men through all creation
Should never drink—’twere folly, nothing less.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, Il, 103
52 That servant and that nurse unto the vices
Which men do call in English Idleness,
Portress at Pleasure’s gate, by all advices
We should avoid, and by her foe express,
That is to say, by lawful busyness.
We ought to live with resolute intent,
Lest by the Fiend through sloth we should be rent.
For he, that with his thousand cords and sly
Continually awaits us all to trap,
When he aman in idleness may spy
He easily the hidden snare will snap.
And till the man has met the foul mishap,
He’s not aware the Fiend has him in hand;
We ought to work and idleness withstand.
And though men never dreaded they must die,
Yet men see well, by reason, idleness
Is nothing more than rotten sluggardry,
Whereof comes never good one may possess;
And see sloth hold her in a leash, no less,
Only to sleep and eat and always drink
And to absorb all gain of others' swink.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Second Nun’s Prologue
53 A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of
virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so
much that is evil.
Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his
own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or
not according to necessity.... He need not make himself
uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without
which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if
everything is considered carefully, it will be found that
something which looks like virtue, if followed, would be
his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet
followed brings him security and prosperity.
Machiavelli, Prince, XV
54 As if our touch were infectious, we by our handling
corrupt things that of themselves are beautiful and good.
We can grasp virtue in such a way that it will become
vicious, if we embrace it with too sharp and violent a
desire. Those who say that there is never any excess in
virtue, inasmuch as it is no longer virtue if there is excess
in it, are playing with words.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 30, Of Moderation
55 It seems to me that virtue is something other and nobler
than the inclinations toward goodness that are born in us.
Souls naturally regulated and well-born follow the same
path, and show the same countenance in their actions, as
virtuous ones. But virtue means something greater and
more active than letting oneself, by a happy disposition,
be led gently and peacefully in the footsteps of reason.
He who through a natural mildness and easygoingness
should despise injuries received would do a very fine and
praiseworthy thing; but he who, outraged and stung to
the quick by an injury, should arm himself with the arms
of reason against this furious appetite for vengeance, and
after a great conflict should finally master it, would
without doubt do much more. The former would do well,
and the other virtuously; one action might be called
goodness, the other virtue. For it seems that the name of
virtue presupposes difficulty and contrast, and that it
cannot be exercised without opposition. Perhaps this is
why we Call God good, strong, liberal, and just, but we do
not call him virtuous: his operations are wholly natural
and effortless.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 11, Of Cruelty
56 Virtue refuses facility for her companion; and... the easy,
gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a
good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It
demands a rough and thorny road; it wants to have either
external difficulties to struggle with ... by means of which
fortune takes pleasure in breaking up the
unwaveringness of a man’s career; or internal difficulties
created by the disordered appetites and imperfections of
our nature.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 11, Of Cruelty
57 When | confess myself religiously to myself, | find that
the best goodness | have has some tincture of vice.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 20, We Taste Nothing Pure
58 The acknowledgment of virtue carries no less weight in
the mouth of the man who hates it, inasmuch as truth
wrests it from him by force, and if he will not receive it
within, at least he covers himself with it as an ornament.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 1, Of the Useful and the
Honorable
59 There is no vice truly a vice which is not offensive, and
which a sound judgment does not condemn; for its
ugliness and painfulness is so apparent that perhaps the
people are right who Say it is chiefly produced by
stupidity and ignorance. So hard it is to imagine anyone
knowing it without hating it.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 2, Of Repentance
60 Portia. How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, V, i, 90
61 Clown. Any thing that’s mended is but patched: virtue
that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that
amends is but patched with virtue.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I, v, 52
62 Sir Toby. Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous,
there shall be no more cakes and ale?
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, tii, 123
63 Laertes. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister.
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself 'scapcs not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring.
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed.
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
Ophelia. | shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, aS some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ili, 33
64 1st Lord. Our virtues would be proud, if our faults
whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they
were not cherished by our virtues.
Shakespeare, All's Well Thai Ends Well, IV, iti, 82
65 Duke. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch’d
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor.
Both thanks and use.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, I, i, 33
66 /ago. Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or
thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills
are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles, or sow
lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with
one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to
have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry,
why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of
reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and
baseness of our natures would conduct us to most
preposterous conclusions; but we have reason to cool our
raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts;
whereof | take this that you call love to be a sect or scion.
Shakespeare, Othello, I, tii, 322
67 Edgar. The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
Shakespeare, Lear, V, iii, 170
68 Griffith. Noble madam.
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, IV, ti, 45
69 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,
When not to be receives reproach of being.
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d
Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CXX!
701 ama Knight, and a Knight will | die, if so it please
Omnipotence. Some chuse the high Road of haughty
Ambition; others the low Ways of base servile Flattery; a
Third sort take the crooked Path of deceitful Hypocrisy;
and a few, very few, that of true Religion. | for my own
Part, guided by my Stars, follow the narrow Track of
Knight-Errantry; and for the Exercise of it, | despise
Riches, but not Honour. | have redress’d Grievances, and
righted the Injur’d, chastis’d the Insolent, vanquish’d
Giants, and trod Elves and Hobgoblins under my Feet! |
am in Love, but no more than the Profession of Knight-
Errantry obliges me to be; yet | am none of this Age’s
vicious Lovers, but a chaste Platonick. My Intentions are
all directed to vertuous Ends, and to do no Man Wrong,
but Good to all the World. And now let your Graces judge,
most excellent Duke and Dutchess, whether a Person who
makes it his only Study to practise all this, deserves to be
upbraided for a Fool.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 32
71 Men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt manners,
as those that are half good and half evil.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, VI, 9
72 The arts which flourish in times while virtue is in growth,
are military; and while virtue is in state, are liberal; and
while virtue is in declination, are voluptuary.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, X, 13
73 Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they
are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover
vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Bacon, Of Adversity
74 Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely virtue
is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate
features; and that hath rather dignity of presence, than
beauty of aspect.
Bacon, Of Beauty
75 We do not believe ourselves to be exactly sharing in the
vices of the vulgar when we see that we are sharing in
those of great men; and yet we do not observe that in
these matters they are ordinary men.
Pascal, Pensees, Il, 103
76 The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by
his efforts, but by his ordinary life.
Pascal, Pensees, VI, 352
77 When we would pursue virtues to their extremes on
either side, vices present themselves, which insinuate
themselves insensibly there, in their insensible journey
towards the infinitely little; and vices present themselves
in a crowd towards the infinitely great, so that we lose
ourselves in them and no longer see virtues. We find fault
with perfection itself.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 357
78 we do not sustain ourselves in virtue by our own
strength, but by the balancing of two opposed vices, just
as we remain upright amidst two contrary gales. Remove
one of the vices, and we fall into the other.
Pascal, Pensees, VI, 359
79 Attendant Spirit. Before the starry threshold of /oves
Court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aereal Spirits live insphear’d
In Regions milde of calm and serene Ayr,
Above the smoak and stirr of this dim spot,
Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care
Confin’d, and pester’d in this pin-fold here,
Strive to keep up a frail, and Feaverish being
Unmindfull of the crown that Vertue gives
After this mortal change, to her true Servants
Amongst the enthron’d gods on Sainted seats.
Yet som there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that Golden Key
That ope’s the Palace of Eternity:
To such my errand is, and but for such,
| would not soil these pure Ambrosial weeds,
With the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould.
Milton, Comus, 1
80 Elder Brother. Som say no evil thing that walks by night
In fog, or fire, by lake, or moorish fen.
Blew meager Hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,
That breaks his magick chains at curfeu time,
No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,
Hath hurtfull power o’re true virginity.
Do ye beleeve me yet, or shall | call
Antiquity from the old Schools of Greece
To testifie the arms of Chastity?
Hence had the huntress Dian her dred bow
Fair silver-shafted Queen for ever chaste,
Wherwith she tam’d the brinded lioness
And spotted mountain pard, but set at nought
The frivolous bolt of Cupid, gods and men
Fear’d her stern frown, and she was queen oth’ Woods.
What was that snaky-headed Gorgon sheild
That wise Minerva wore, unconquer’d Virgin,
Whenvith she freez’d her foes to congeal’d stone?
But rigid looks of Chast austerity,
And noble grace that dash’t brute violence
With sudden adoration, and blank aw.
So dear to Heav’n is Saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried Angels lacky her.
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in deer dream, and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft convers with heav’nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th’outward shape.
The unpolluted temple of the mind.
And turns it by degrees to the souls essence.
Till all be made immortal.
Milton, Comus, 432
81 Elder Brother. This | hold firm,
Vertue may be assail’d, but never hurt.
Surpriz’d by unjust force, but not enthrall’d.
Yea even that which mischief meant most harm,
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.
But evil on it self shall back recoyl,
And mix no more with goodness, when at last
Gather’d like scum, and setl’d to it self
It shall be in eternal restless change
Self-fed, and self-consum’d, if this fail.
The pillar’d firmament is rott’nness.
And earths base built on stubble.
Milton, Comus, 588
82 | cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue,
unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and
sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that
immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and
heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we
bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial,
and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore
which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and
knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers,
and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her
whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.
Milton, Areopagitica
83 Philinte. lf everyone were clothed with integrity, if every
heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be
well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us
bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.
Moliere, Le Misanthrope, IV, I
84 By virtue and power, | understand the same thing; that is
to say, virtue, in so far as it is related to man, is the
essence itself or nature of the man in so far as it has the
power of affecting certain things which can be
understood through the laws of its nature alone.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Definition 8
85 The more each person strives and is able to seek his own
profit, that is to say, to preserve his being, the more
virtue does he possess; on the other hand, in so far as
each person neglects his own profit, that is to say,
neglects to preserve his own being, is he impotent.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 20
86 There is no single thing in nature which is more profitable
to man than a man who lives according to the guidance
of reason. For that is most profitable to man which most
agrees with his own nature, that is to say, man.... Buta
man acts absolutely from the laws of his own nature when
he lives according to the guidance of reason, and so far
only does he always necessarily agree with the nature of
another man; therefore there is no single thing more
profitable to man than man.
When each man seeks most that which is profitable to
himself, then are men most profitable to one another; for
the more each man seeks his own profit and endeavours
to preserve himself, the more virtue does he possess, or,
in other words, the more power does he possess to act
according to the laws of his own nature, that is to say, to
live according to the guidance of reason. But men most
agree in nature when they live according to the guidance
of reason, therefore ... men will be most profitable to one
another when each man seeks most what is profitable to
himself.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 35, Corols. 1-2
87 Though that passes for vice in one country which is
counted a virtue, or at least not vice, in another, yet
everywhere virtue and praise, vice and blame, go
together. Virtue is everywhere, that which is thought
praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the
allowance of public esteem is called virtue.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXVIII,
11
88 Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 70
89 [Lemuel Gulliver lists the negative blessings of living
among the Houyhnhnms] | did not feel the treachery or
inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or
open enemy. | had no occasion of bribing, flattering or
pimping, to procure the favour of any great man, or of his
minion. | wanted no fence against fraud or oppression:
here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor
lawyer to ruin my fortune: no informer to watch my words
and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire:
here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets,
highwaymen, house-breakers, attorneys, bawds,
buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, soleneticks,
tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers,
robbers, virtuosoes; no leaders or followers of party and
faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or
examples: no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or
pillories: no cheating shop-keepers or mechanicks: no
pride, vanity or affectation: no fops, bullies, drunkards,
strolling whores, or poxes: no ranting, lewd expensive
wives: no stupid, proud pedants: no importunate, over-
bearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited,
Swearing Companions: no scoundrels raised from the dust
upon the merit of their vices; or nobility thrown into it, on
account of their virtues: no lords, fiddlers, judges, or
dancing-masters.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 10
90 As fruits ungrateful to the planter’s care
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear;
The surest Virtues thus from Passions shoot,
Wild Nature’s vigor working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!
Sec anger, zeal and fortitude supply;
Ev'n av’rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;
Lust, thro’ some certain strainers well refin’d,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind:
Envy, to which th’ignoble mind’s a Slave.
Is emulation in the learn’d or brave:
Nor Virtue, male or female, can we name,
But what will grow on Pride, or grow on Shame.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 181
91 Vice is a monster of so frightful mien.
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 217
92 Virtuous and vicious ev’ry Man must be.
Few in th’extreme, but all in the degree.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 231
93 This gentleman [Mr. Square the philosopher] and Mr.
Thwackum scarce ever met without a disputation; for
their tenets were indeed diametrically opposite to each
other. Square held human nature to be the perfection of
all virtue, and that vice was a deviation from our nature,
in the same manner as deformity of body is. Thwackum,
on the contrary, maintained that the human mind, since
the fall, was nothing but a sink of iniquity, till purified
and redeemed by grace. In one point only they agreed,
which was, in all their discourses on morality never to
mention the word goodness. The favourite phrase of the
former, was the natural beauty of virtue; that of the
latter, was the divine power of grace. The former
measured all actions by the unalterable rule of right, and
the eternal fitness of things; the latter decided all matters
by authority; but in doing this, he always used the
scriptures and their commentators, as the lawyer doth his
Coke upon Lyttleton, where the comment is of equal
authority with the text.
Fielding, Tom Jones, III, 3
94 The foibles and vices of men, in whom there is great
mixture of good, become more glaring objects from the
virtues which contrast them and shew their deformity;
and when we find such vices attended with their evil
consequence to our favourite characters, we are not only
taught to shun them for our own sake, but to hate them
for the mischiefs they have already brought on those we
love.
Fielding, Tom Jones, X, 1
95 There are a Set of religious, or rather moral writers, who
teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and
vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and
comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one
objection, namely, that it is not true.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XV, 1
96 The human mind feels such an exquisite pleasure in the
exercise of power; even those who are lovers of virtue are
so excessively fond of themselves that there is no man so
happy as not still to have reason to mistrust his honest
intentions; and, indeed, our actions depend on so many
things that it is infinitely easier to do good, than to do it
well.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVIII, 41
97 In the present order of things, virtue is attended with
more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more
favourable reception from the world.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XI, 108
98 Whatever may be the consequence of such a miraculous
transformation of mankind as would endow them with
every species of virtue, and free them from every species
of vice, this concerns not the magistrate, who aims only
at possibilities. He cannot cure every vice by substituting
a virtue in its place. Very often he can only cure one vice
by another; and in that case, he ought to prefer what is
least pernicious to society.
Hume, Of Refinement in the Arts
99 What is virtue? Beneficence towards the fellow-creature.
Can | call virtue things other than those which do me
good? | am needy, you are generous. | am in danger, you
help me. | am deceived, you tell me the truth. | am
neglected, you console me. | am ignorant, you teach me.
Without difficulty | shall call you virtuous. But what will
become of the cardinal and divine virtues? Some of them
will remain in the schools.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Virtue
100 The most depraved of men always pay some sort of
homage to public faith; and even robbers, who are the
enemies of virtue in the great society, pay some respect
to the shadow of it in their secret caves.
Rousseau, Political Economy
101 The noblest virtues are negative, they are also the most
difficult, for they make little show, and do not even make
room for that pleasure so dear to the heart of man, the
thought that some one is pleased with us. If there bea
man who does no harm to his neighbours, what good
must he have accomplished! What a bold heart, what a
strong character it needs! It is not in talking about this
maxim, but in trying to practise it, that we discover both
its greatness and its difficulty.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
102 Virtue presented singly to the imagination or the reason
is SO well recommended by its own graces and so strongly
supported by arguments, that a good man wonders how
any can be bad.
Johnson, Rambler No. 175
103 Neither our virtues nor vices are all our own. If there
were no cowardice there would be little insolence. Pride
cannot rise to any great degree but by the concurrence of
blandishment or the sufferance of tameness.
Johnson, Rambler No. 180
104 Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of
God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He
has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and
genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that
sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face
of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of
cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation
has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those,
who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and
industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence,
depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers.
Dependence begets subservience and venality,
suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for
the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and
consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been
retarded by accidental circumstances; but, generally
speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the
other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its
husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its
healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby
to measure its degree of corruption.
Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, XIX
105 It is always easy, as well as agreeable, for the inferior
ranks of mankind to claim a merit from the contempt of
that pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond
their reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like
that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by
poverty and ignorance.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
106 We may learn from the example of Cato that a character
of pure and inflexible virtue is the most apt to be misled
by prejudice, to be heated by enthusiasm, and to
confound private enmities with public Justice.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXX1X
107 There are very few of those virtues which are not
capable of being imitated, and even outdone in many of
their most striking effects, by the worst of vices.
Burke, Speech on Economical Reform (Feb. 11, 1780)
108 When the thinking man has conquered the temptations
to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard)
duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction
which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is
her own reward.
Kant, Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics
109 Virtue signifies a moral strength of will. But this does
not exhaust the notion; for such strength might also
belong to a holy (super-human) being, in whom no
opposing impulse counteracts the law of his rational will;
who therefore willingly does everything in accordance
with the law. Virtue then is the moral strength of a man's
will in his obedience to duty; and this is a moral
necessitation by his own law giving reason, inasmuch as
this constitutes itself a power executing the law. It is not
itself a duty, nor is it a duty to possess it (otherwise we
should be in duty bound to have a duty), but it
commands, and accompanies its command with a moral
constraint (one possible by laws of internal freedom). But
since this should be irresistible, strength is requisite, and
the degree of this strength can be estimated only by the
magnitude of the hindrances which man creates for
himself, by his inclinations. Vices, the brood of unlawful
dispositions, are the monsters that he has to combat;
wherefore this moral strength as fortitude constitutes the
greatest and only true martial glory of man; it is also
called the true wisdom, namely, the practical, because it
makes the u/timate end of the existence of man on earth
its own end. Its possession alone makes man free,
healthy, rich, a king, etc,, nor can either chance or (ate
deprive him of this, since he possesses himself, and the
virtuous cannot lose his virtue.
Kant, Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics, XIV
110 That best portion of a good man's life.
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 33
111 The principle of self-interest rightly understood is not a
lofty one, but it is clear and sure. It does not aim at
mighty objects, but it attains without excessive exertion
all those at which it aims. As it lies within the reach of all
Capacities, everyone can without difficulty learn and
retain it. By its admirable conformity to human
weaknesses it easily obtains great dominion; nor is that
dominion precarious, since the principle checks one
personal interest by another, and uses, to direct the
passions, the very same instrument that excites them.
The principle of self-interest rightly understood
produces no great acts of self-sacrifice, but it suggests
daily small acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to
make a man virtuous; but it disciplines a number of
persons in habits of regularity, temperance, moderation,
foresight, self-command; and if it does not lead men
straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in
that direction by their habits. If the principle of interest
rightly understood were to sway the whole moral world,
extraordinary virtues would doubtless be more rare; but |
think that gross depravity would then also be less
common. The principle of interest rightly understood
perhaps prevents men from rising far above the level of
mankind, but a great number of other men, who were
falling far below it, are caught and restrained by it.
Observe some few individuals, they are lowered by it;
survey mankind, they are raised.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 8
112 Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the
exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.
Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of
courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in
expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works
are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in
the world—as invalids and the insane pay a high board.
Their virtues are penances.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
113 My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
Tennyson, Sir Galahad
114 You who govern public affairs, what need have you to
employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be
virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind;
the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the
grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
Thoreau, Walden: The Village
115 Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an
instant’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the
only investment that never fails.
Thoreau, Walden: Higher Laws
116 The first element of good government... being the virtue
and intelligence of the human beings composing the
community, the most important point of excellence which
any form of government can possess is to promote the
virtue and intelligence of the people themselves.
Mill, Representative Government, I!
117 Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an intensity
disproportionate to the number of his more indirect
misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds were like the
subtle muscular movements which are not taken account
of in the consciousness, though they bring about the end
that we fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we
are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be
seen by Omniscience.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, VII, 68
118 It seems not to be true that there is a power in the
universe, which watches over the well-being of every
individual with parental care and brings all his concerns
to a happy ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man
are incompatible with a universal principle of
benevolence or with—what is to some degree
contradictory—a universal principle of justice.
Earthquakes, floods, and fires do not differentiate
between the good and devout man, and the sinner and
unbeliever. And, even if we leave inanimate nature out of
account and consider the destinies of individual men in
so far as they depend on their relations with others of
their own kind, it is by no means the rule that virtue is
rewarded and wickedness punished, but it happens often
enough that the violent, the crafty, and the unprincipled
seize the desirable goods of the earth for themselves,
while the pious go empty away. Dark, unfeeling, and
unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of
rewards and punishments, which, according to religion,
governs the world, seems to have no existence.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
9.11 Courage and Cowardice
Of all the virtues, the one most frequently extolled by the
poets is courage. Many of the memorable characters of the
great epics and tragedies of antiquity, of the plays of
Shakespeare, and of modern fiction are depicted as
lionhearted men, men who have the fortitude to withstand
the onslaughts of misfortune, or the valor to attempt what
the timid or craven would never dare. The historians and the
biographers, too, give us portraits of bold and daring
leaders, of men whose strength of character enables them to
remain steady on their course, overcoming what appear to
be insuperable obstacles. Courage is the stuff out of which
heroes are made and the heroic temper is moulded.
Relevant, therefore, to the consideration of courage are
quotations that will be found in Section 1.6 on Human
Greatness: The Hero.
The reader will have noted the vocabulary of epithets
applicable to this virtue and its associated vice: for
courageous, brave, bold, daring, valorous, fearless; for
cowardly, timid, craven, pusillanimous, effeminate. The
name given the virtue itself is frequently fortitude rather
than courage, the one word in its etymology implying
strength—strength of moral character, not of physique; the
other suggesting robustness of spirit.
The analysis given by the philosophers instructs us that
courage is not fearlessness. He who, by reason of a certain
inborn temperamental disposition, lacks fear is not a
courageous man and will never become one. Rather it is he
who, suffering the impulses of fear or the disinclination to
suffer pain, overcomes them for the sake of a good deed to
be done ora right objective to be gained. Furthermore, the
courageous man is not one who appears to act courageously
or even does so in one circumstance or two, but rather the
man who has the firmly established habitual disposition to
suffer pains and overcome fears for a good purpose. When
the threatening pains are bodily and the fears recoil from
bodily attack that may cause death or injury, the virtue is
often called ‘‘physical courage," to distinguish it from the
moral fortitude exhibited by the man who risks
disapprobation, contumely, or even dishonor for a good
cause. However, in both cases, the strength lies in the man’s
moral character, not in his physique.
Cowardice is not the only vice that philosophers have
opposed to courage. If the coward is one who gives in too
readily to his fears, fears the wrong things, or fails to
overcome his fears when he ought to, the foolhardy man at
the other extreme is one who dismisses his fears too readily,
and lacks sufficient respect for the dangers involved. In
between these two extremes, the courageous man is seen as
one who exercises a reasonable or prudent judgment
concerning how to manage his fears, how to moderate or
control them. Hence some of the writers about courage
introduce the notion of prudence or of sound judgment into
their discussion. For the consideration of this related virtue,
the reader is referred to Section 9.13 on Prudence; and for
treatment of the emotion that is chiefly involved in courage
and cowardice, the reader is referred to Section 4.2 on Fear.
1 If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
Proverbs 24:10
2 I[domeneus. The skin of the coward changes colour one
way and another,
and the heart inside him has no control to make him
sit steady,
but he shifts his weight from one foot to another, then
settles firmly
on both feet, and the heart inside his chest pounds
violent
as he thinks of the death spirits, and his teeth chatter
together:
but the brave man’s skin will not change colour, nor is
he too much
frightened, once he has taken his place in the hidden
position,
but his prayer is to close as soon as may be in bitter
division.
Homer, Iliad, XIII, 279
3 Artabanus. It is best for men, when they take counsel, to
be timorous, and imagine all possible calamities, but
when the time for action comes, then to deal boldly.
Herodotus, History, VII, 49
4 Pericles. The palm of courage will surely be adjudged most
Justly to those, who best know the difference between
hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to
shrink from danger.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Il, 40
5 Pericles. They whose minds are least sensitive to calamity,
and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the
greatest men and the greatest communities.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Il, 64
6 Socrates. Is not courage, Simmias, a quality which is
specially characteristic of the philosopher?
Simmias. Certainly.
There is temperance again, which even by the vulgar
iS Supposed to consist in the control and regulation of the
passions, and in the sense of superiority to them—is not
temperance a virtue belonging to those only who despise
the body, and who pass their lives in philosophy?
Most assuredly.
For the courage and temperance of other men,’ if you
will consider them, are really a contradiction.
How so?
Well, he said, you are aware that death is regarded by
men in general as a great evil.
Very true, he said.
And do not courageous men face death because they
are afraid of yet greater evils?
That is quite true.
Then all but the philosophers are courageous only
from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a
man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a
coward, is surely a strange thing.
Plato, Phaedo, 68A
7 With what sort of terrible things ... is the brave man
concerned? Surely with the greatest; for no one is more
likely than he to stand his ground against what is awe-
inspiring. Now death is the most terrible of all things; for
it is the end, and nothing is thought to be any longer
either good or bad for the dead. But the brave man would
not seem to be concerned even with death in all
circumstances, e.g. at sea or in disease. In what
circumstances, then? Surely in the noblest. Now such
deaths are those in battle; for these take place in the
greatest and noblest danger.... Properly, then, he will be
called brave who is fearless in face of a noble death, and
of all emergencies that involve death; and the
emergencies of war are in the highest degree of this kind.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1115a24
8 What is terrible is not the same for all men; but we say
there are things terrible even beyond human strength.
These, then, are terrible to every one—at least to every
sensible man; but the terrible things that are not beyond
human strength differ in magnitude and degree, and so
too do the things that inspire confidence. Now the brave
man is as dauntless as man may be. Therefore, while he
will fear even the things that are not beyond human
strength, he will face them as he ought and as the rule
directs, for honour’s sake; for this is the end of virtue. But
it is possible to fear these more, or less, and again to fear
things that are not terrible as if they were. Of the faults
that are committed one consists in fearing what one
should not, another in fearing as we should not, another
in fearing when we should not, and so on; and so too with
respect to the things that inspire confidence. The man,
then, who faces and who fears the right things and from
the right motive, in the right way and at the right time,
and who feels confidence under the corresponding
conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts
according to the merits of the case and in whatever way
the rule directs.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1115b7
9 Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in fearlessness
has no name... but he would be a sort of madman or
insensible person if he feared nothing, neither
earthquakes nor the waves, as they say the Celts do not;
while the man who exceeds in confidence about what
really is terrible is rash. The rash man, however, is also
thought to be boastful and only a pretender to courage;
at all events, as the brave man is with regard to what is
terrible, so the rash man wishes to appear, and so he
imitates him in situations where he can. Hence also most
of them are a mixture of rashness and cowardice; for,
while in these situations they display confidence, they do
not hold their ground against what is really terrible. The
man who exceeds in fear is a coward; for he fears both
what he ought not and as he ought not, and all the
similar characterizations attach to him. He is lacking also
in confidence; but he is more conspicuous for his excess
of fear in painful situations. The coward... is a despairing
sort of person; for he fears everything. The brave man, on
the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for
confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The
coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are
concerned with the same objects but are differently
disposed towards them; for the first two exceed and fall
short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right,
position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for
dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in
them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action,
but quiet beforehand.
As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect
to things that inspire confidence or fear.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1115b24
10 Experience with regard to particular facts is... thought to
be courage; this is indeed the reason why Socrates
thought courage was knowledge. Other people exhibit
this quality in other dangers, and professional soldiers
exhibit it in the dangers of war; for there seem to be
many empty alarms in war, of which these have had the
most comprehensive experience; therefore they seem
brave, because the others do not know the nature of the
facts. Again, their experience makes them most capable
in attack and in defence, since they can use their arms
and have the kind that are likely to be best both for
attack and for defence; therefore they fight like armed
men against unarmed or like trained athletes against
amateurs; for in such contests too it is not the bravest
men that fight best, but those who are strongest and
have their bodies in the best condition. Professional
soldiers turn cowards, however, when the danger puts too
great a strain on them and they are inferior in numbers
and equipment; for they are the first to fly, while citizen-
forces die at their posts, as in fact happened at the
temple of Hermes. For to the latter flight is disgraceful
and death is preferable to safety on those terms; while
the former from the very beginning faced the danger on
the assumption that they were stronger, and when they
know the facts they fly, fearing death more than
disgrace; but the brave man is not that sort of person.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1116b3
11 Though courage is concerned with feelings of confidence
and of fear, it is not concerned with both alike, but more
with the things that inspire fear; for he who is
undisturbed in face of these and bears himself as he
should towards these is more truly brave than the man
who does so towards the things that inspire confidence. It
is for facing what is painful, then... that men are called
brave. Hence also courage involves pain, and is justly
praised; for it is harder to face what is painful than to
abstain from what is pleasant.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1117a29
12 It is generally agreed by the learned and the untaught
alike that men who are brave, high-spirited, patient, and
superior to human vicissitudes, will endure pain with
patience. Nor would anyone disagree that a man who so
suffers merits praise. When such endurance is both
expected of brave men and praised when it is found, is it
not ignoble to shy away from the onset of pain or be
unable to bear it? But perhaps, even if all right-minded
states are called virtuous, the term may not cover all
virtues. All may have received the name from the one
single virtue that was considered as outshining all the
others, because the word "virtue" comes from the word
for man. And man’s special virtue is courage. Of courage
there are two principle types, the scorn of death and the
scorn of pain.
Cicero, Disputations, Il, 18
13 Jurnus. Fortune befriends the bold.
Virgil, Aeneid, X
14 Then with a dose embrace he [Aeneas] strain’d his son,
And, kissing thro’ his helmet, thus begun:
"My son, from my example learn the war,
In camps to suffer, and in fields to dare;
But happier chance than mine attend thy care!
This day my hand thy tender age shall shield.
And crown with honors of the conquer’d field:
Thou, when thy riper years shall send thee forth
To toils of war, be mindful of my worth;
Assert thy birthright, and in arms be known,
For Hector’s nephew, and AEneas' son."
Virgil, Aeneid, XII
15 It is truly very commendable to abhor and shun the doing
any base action; but to stand in fear of every kind of
censure or disrepute may argue a gentle and
openhearted, but not an heroic temper.
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus and Timoleon Compared
16 Cato Major, hearing some commend one that was rash,
and inconsiderately daring in a battle, said, There is a
difference between a man’s prizing valour at a great rate,
and valuing life at little.
Plutarch, Pelopidas
17 To do a wrong thing is base, and to do well where there is
no danger, common; the good man’s characteristic is to
do so where there is danger.
Plutarch, Cains Marius
18 The ancients, 1 think, did not imagine bravery to be plain
fearlessness, but a cautious fear of blame and disgrace.
Plutarch, Cleomenes
19 Be like the promontory against which the waves
continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of
the water around it.
Unhappy am |, because this has happened to me.—Not
so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me,
because | continue free from pain, neither crushed by the
present nor fearing the future. For such a thing as this
might have happened to every man; but every man
would not have continued free from pain on such an
occasion. Why then is that rather a misfortune than this a
good fortune? And dost thou in all cases call that a man’s
misfortune, which is not a deviation from man’s nature?
And does a thing seem to thee to be a deviation from
man’s nature, when it is not contrary to the will of man’s
nature? Well, thou knowest the will of nature. Will then
this which has happened prevent thee from being just,
magnanimous, temperate, prudent, secure against
inconsiderate opinions and falsehood; will it prevent thee
from having modesty, freedom, and everything else, by
the presence of which man’s nature obtains all that is its
own? Remember too on every occasion which leads thee
to vexation to apply this principle; not that this isa
misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 49
20 Here sighs, plaints, and deep wailings resounded through
the starless air: it made me weep at first.
Strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain,
tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse, and sounds of
hands amongst them,
made a tumult, which turns itself unceasing in that air
for ever dyed, as sand when [it eddies in a whirlwind].
And I, my head begirt with horror, said; "Master, what
is this that | hear? and who are these that seem so
overcome with pain?"
And he to me: "This miserable mode the dreary souls
of those sustain, who lived without blame, and without
praise.
They are mixed with the caitiff choir of the angels, who
were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God; but were for
themselves.
Heaven chased them forth to keep its beauty from
impair; and the deep Hell receives them not, for the
wicked would have some glory over them."
And |: "Master what is so grievous to them, that makes
them lament thus bitterly?" He answered: "I will tell it to
thee very briefly.
These have no hope of death; and their blind life is so
mean, that they are envious of every other lot.
Report of them the world permits not to exist; Mercy
and [Justice] disdains them: let us not speak of them; but
look, and pass."
And I, who looked, saw an ensign, which whirling ran
so quickly that it seemed to scorn all pause; and behind it
came so long a train of people, that | should never have
believed death had undone so many.
After | had recognised some amongst them, | [saw and
knew] the shadow of him who from cowardice made the
great refusal.
Forthwith | understood and felt assured, that this was
the crew of caitiffs, hateful to God and to his enemies.
Dante, Inferno, I/l, 22
21 Pandar. Remember, too, it is no idle boast
That fortune helps the brave in his emprise,
But from the coward wretch she ever flies.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, IV, 86
22 The precepts of resoluteness and constancy do not state
that we must not protect ourselves as much as it lies in
our power from the evils and troubles that threaten us;
nor consequently that we should not fear being taken by
surprise. On the contrary, all honorable means of
safeguarding ourselves from evils are not only permitted
but laudable. And constancy’s part is played principally
in bearing troubles patiently where there is no remedy.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 12, Of Constancy
23 Valor has its limits like the other virtues, and these limits
once transgressed, we find ourselves on the path of vice;
so that we may pass through valor to temerity, obstinacy,
and madness, unless we know its limits well—and they
are truly hard to discern near the borderlines.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 15, One Is Punished
24 The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will;
there lies his real honor. Valor is the strength, not of legs
and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the
worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own... . He
who relaxes none of his assurance, no matter how great
the danger of imminent death; who, giving up his soul,
still looks firmly and scornfully at his enemy—he is
beaten not by us, but by fortune; he is killed, not
conquered.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 31, Of Cannibals
25 Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 27, Cowardice, Mother of Cruelty
26 Hotspur. Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower,
Safety.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, II, Hi, 10
27 Falstaff. To die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the
counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but
to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be
no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life
indeed. The better part of valour is discretion.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, V, iv, 116
28 Benedick. |In a false quarrel there is no true valour.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, V, I, 120
29 Caesar. Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Shakespeare, Caesar, Il, i, 32
30 King. That we would do.
We should do when we would; for this "would" changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this "should" is like a soendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, vil, 119
31 Nestor. The sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus’ horse; where’s then the saucy boat
Whose weak untimber’d sides but even now
Co-rivall’d greatness? Either to harbour fled,
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide
In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the breese
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks.
And flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of
courage
As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize.
And with an accent tuned in selfsame key
Retorts to chiding fortune.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 34
32 Troilus. Manhood and honour
Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat their
thoughts
With this cramm’d reason, Reason and respect
Make livers pale and lustihood deject.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Il, ii, 47
33 Lucio. Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, I, iv, 77
34 Kent. None of these rogues and cowards
But Ajax is their fool.
Shakespeare, Lear, II, ti, 132
35 Lady Macbeth. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’s! the ornament of life.
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would,"
Like the poor cat i’ the adage?
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, vil, 39
36 Lady Macbeth. | have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;
| would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash'd the brains out, had | so sworn as you
Have done to this.
Macbeth. |f we should fail?
Lady M. We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place.
And we'll not fail.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, vil, 54
37 After they had gone a pretty way under a pleasing Covert
of Chestnut-Trees, they came into a Meadow adjoining to
certain Rocks, from whose Top there was a great Fall of
Waters. At the Foot of those Rocks they discover’d certain
old illcontriv’d Buildings, that rather look’d like Ruins
than inhabited Houses; and they perceiv’d that the
terrifying Noise of the Blows, which yet continued, issu’d
out of that Place. When they came nearer, even patient
Rozinante himself started at the dreadful Sound; but
being hearten’d and pacify’d by his Master, he was at last
prevail’d with to draw nearer and nearer with wary Steps;
the Knight recommending himself all the way most
devoutly to his Du/cinea, and now and then also to
Heaven, in short Ejaculations. As for Sancho, he stuck
close to his Master, peeping all the way through
Rozinante's Legs, to see if he could perceive what he
dreaded to find out. When a little farther, at the doubling
of the Point of a Rock, they plainly discover’d (kind
Reader, do not take it amiss) Six huge Fulling-Mill
Hammers, which interchangeably thumping several
Pieces of Cloth, made the terrible Noise that caus’d all
Don Quixote's Anxieties and Sancho's Tribulation that
Night.
Don Quixote was struck dumb at this unexpected
Sight, and was ready to drop from his Horse with Shame
and Confusion. Sancho star’d upon him, and saw him
down his Head, with a desponding dejected
Countenance, like a Man quite dispirited with this cursed
Disappointment. At the same Time he look’d upon
Sancho, and seeing by his Eyes, and his Cheeks swell’d
with Laughter, that he was ready to burst, he could not
forbear laughing himself in spight of all his Vexation; so
that Sancho seeing his Master begin, immediately gave a
Loose to his Mirth, and broke out into such a Fit of
Laughing, that he was forc’d to hold his Sides with both
his Knuckles, for fear of bursting his aking Paunch. Four
times he ceas’d, and four times renew’d his obstreperous
Laughing; which Sauciness Don Quixote began to resent
with great Indignation; and the more when Sancho, in a
jeering Tone, presum’d to ridicule him with his own
Words, repeating part of the vain Speech he made when
first they heard the Noise; Know, Sancho, / was born in
this Iron Age to restore the Age of Gold. | am the Mart for
whom Heaven has reserved the most dangerous and
glorious Adventures, &c. Thus he went on, till his Master,
dreadfully inrag’d at his Insolence, hit him two such
Blows on the Shoulders with his Lance, that had they
fallen upon his Head they had sav’d Don Quixote the
trouble of paying him his Wages, whatever he must have
done to his Heirs. Thereupon Sancho, finding his Jest
turn’d to Earnest, begg’d Pardon with all Submission:
Mercy, good your Worship, cry’d he, spare my Bones |
beseech you! | meant no harm, | did but joke a little. And
because You joke, | do not, cry’d Don Quixote. Come
hither, good Mr Jester, you who pretend to rally, tell me,
had this been a dangerous Adventure, as well as it proves
only a false Alarm, have | not shewn Resolution enough to
undertake and finish it? Am 1, who am a Knight, bound to
know the Meaning of every Mechanick Noise, and
distinguish between Sound and Sound? Besides, it might
happen, as really it is, that | had never seen a Fulling-Mill
before, tho’ thou, like a base Scoundrel as thou art, wert
born and brought up among such mean Implements of
Drudgery. But let the six Fulling-Hammers be transform’d
into so many Giants, and then set them at me one by
one, or all together; and if | do not lay ’em at my Feet
with their Heels upwards, then I'll give thee Leave to
exercise thy ill-bred Railery as much as thou pleasest.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, |, 20
38 The Keeper observing the Posture Don Quixote had put
himself in, and that it was not possible for him to prevent
letting out the Lions, without incurring the Resentment of
the desperate Knight, set the Door of the foremast Cage
wide open; where, as | have said, the Male Lion lay, who
appeared of a monstrous Bigness, and of a hideous
frightful Aspect. The first thing he did was to roll and turn
himself round in his Cage; in the next Place he stretch’d
out one of his Paws, put forth his Claws, and rouz’d
himself. After that he gap’d and yawn’d for a good while,
and shew’d his dreadful Fangs, and then thrust out half a
Yard of Broad Tongue, and with it lick’d the Dust out of his
Eyes and Face. Having done this, he thrust his Head quite
out of the Cage, and star’d about with his Eyes that
look’d like two live Coals of Fire; a Sight and Motion,
enough to have struck Terror into Temerity itself. But Don
Quixote only regarded it with Attention, wishing his grim
Adversary would leap out of his Hold, and come within his
reach, that he might exercise his Valour, and cut the
Monster piece-meal. To his Height of Extravagance had
his Folly transported him; but the generous Lion, more
gentle than arrogant, taking no notice of his Vapouring
and Bravadoes, after he had look’d about him a while,
turn’d his Tail, and having shew’d Don Quixote his
Posteriors, very contentedly lay down again in his
Apartment. Don Quixote seeing this, commanded the
Keeper to rouze him with his Pole, and force him out
whether he would or no. Not |, indeed. Sir, answer’d the
Keeper; | dare not do it for my Life; for if | provoke him,
I’m sure to be the first he’ll tear to Pieces. Let me advise
you. Sir, to be satisfy’d with your Day’s Work. 'Tis as
much as the bravest He that wears a Head can pretend to
do. Then pray go no farther, | beseech you: The Door
stands open, the Lion is at his Choice, whether he will
come out or no. You have waited for him, you see he does
not care to look you in the Face, and since he did not
come out at the first, | dare engage he will not stir out
this Day. You have shewn enough the Greatness of your
Courage. No man is obliged to do more than challenge his
Enemy, and wait for him in the Field. If he comes not,
that’s his own Fault, and the Scandal is his, as the Honour
the Challenger’s. ‘Tis true, reply’d Don Quixote. Come,
shut the Cage-Door, Honest Friend, and give mea
Certificate under thy Hand in the amplest Form thou
can’st devise, of what thou hast seen me perform; how
thou did’st open the Cage for the Lion; how | expected his
coming, and he did not come out. How, upon his not
coming out then, | stay’d his own Time, and instead of
meeting me, he turned Tail and lay down. | am oblig’d to
do no more. So, Inchantments avant; and Heaven prosper
Truth, Justice, and Knight-Errantry! Shut the Door, as | bid
thee, while | make Signs to those that ran away from us,
and get ’em to come back, that they may have an
Account of this Exploit from thy own Mouth.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 17
39 Every Knight has his particular Employment. Let the
Courtier wait on the Ladies; let him with splendid
Equipage adorn his Prince’s Court, and witha
magnificent Table support poor Gentlemen. Let him give
Birth to Feasts and Tournaments, and shew his Grandeur,
Liberality, and Munificence, and especially his Piety; in all
these things he fulfils the Duties of his Station. But as for
the Knight-Errant, let him search into all the Corners of
the World, enter into the most intricate Labyrinths, and
every Hour be ready to attempt Impossibility itself. Let
him in desolate Wilds baffle the Rigor of the Weather, the
scorching Heat of the Sun’s fiercest Beams, and the
Inclemency of Winds and Snow: Let Lions never fright
him. Dragons daunt him, not evil Spirits deter him. To go
in Quest of these, to meet, to dare, to conflict, and to
overcome ’em all, is his principal and proper Office. Since
then my Stars have decreed me to be one of those
Adventurous Knights, | think my self obliged to attempt
every thing that seems to come within the Verge of my
Profession. This, Sir, engag’d me to encounter those Lions
just now, judging it to be my immediate Business, tho' |
was sensible of the extreme Rashness of the Undertaking.
For well | know, that Valour is a Virtue situate between
the two vicious Extremes of Cowardice and Temerity. But
certainly ‘tis not so ill for a Valiant Man to rise to a Degree
of Rashness, as ’tis to fall short and border upon
Cowardice. For as ‘tis easier for a Prodigal to become
Liberal, than a Miser; so 'tis easier for the hardy and rash
Person to be reduced to true Bravery, than for the Coward
ever to rise to that Virtue: And therefore in thus
attempting Adventures, believe me, Signor Don Diego,
‘tis better to exceed the Bounds a little, and over-do,
rather than underdo the thing; because it sounds better
in People’s Ears to hear it said, how that such a Knight is
Rash and Hardy, than such a Knight is Dastardly and
Timorous.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 17
40 Courage (by which | mean the contempt of wounds and
violent death) inclineth men to private revenges, and
sometimes to endeavour the unsettling of the public
peace: and timorousness many times disposeth to the
desertion of the public defence, Both these, they say,
cannot stand together in the same person.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, Review and Conclusion
41 Satan. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 105
42 Raphael. Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintaind
Against revolted multitudes the Cause
Of Truth, in word mightier then they in Armes;
And for the testimonie of Truth hast born
Universal reproach, far worse to beare
Then violence.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 29
43 Raphael. No thought of flight.
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argu’d fear; each on himself reli’d,
As onely in his arm the moment lay
Of victoric.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 236
44 Flight at the proper time, just as well as fighting, is to be
reckoned, therefore, as showing strength of mind ina
man who is free; that is to say, a free man chooses flight
by the same strength or presence of mind as that by
which he chooses battle.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop, 69, Corol.
45 None but the brave deserves the fair.
Alexander's Feast, 15
46 Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues;
and without courage a man will scarce keep steady to his
duty, and fill up the character of a truly worthy man.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 115
47 'Tis unwise to punish Cowards with Ignominy; for if they
had regarded that, they would not have been Cowards:
Death is their proper Punishment, because they fear it
most.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
48 We have already observed that great heat enervates the
strength and courage of men, and that in cold climates
they have a certain vigour of body and mind, which
renders them patient and intrepid, and qualifies them for
arduous enterprises. This remark holds good, not only
between different nations, but even in the different parts
of the same country. In the north of China people are
more courageous than those in the south; and those in
the south of Korea have less bravery than those in the
north.
We ought not, then, to be astonished that the
effeminacy of the people in hot climates has almost
always rendered them slaves; and that the bravery of
those in cold climates has enabled them to maintain their
liberties. This is an effect which springs from a natural
cause.
This has also been found true in America; the despotic
empires of Mexico and Peru were near the Line, and
almost all the little free nations were, and are still, near
the Poles.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XVII, 2
49 In a military nation, cowardice supposes other vices; it is
an argument of a person’s having deviated from the
principles of his education, of his being insensible of
honour, and of having refused to be directed by those
maxims which govern other men; it shows that he neither
fears their contempt, nor sets any value upon their
esteem. Men of any tolerable extraction seldom want
either the dexterity requisite to co-operate with strength,
or the strength necessary to concur with courage; for as
they set a value upon honour, they are practised in
matters without which this honour cannot be obtained.
Beside, in a military nation, where strength, courage and
prowess are esteemed, crimes really odious are those
which arise from fraud, artifice, and cunning, that is, from
cowardice.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVIII, 17
50 Johnson. Courage is a quality so necessary for
maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when
it is associated with vice.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 11, 1784)
51 A coward, a man incapable either of defending or of
revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most
essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much
mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his
body, who is either deprived of some of its most essential
members, or has lost the use of them. He is evidendy the
more wretched and miserable of the two; because
happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the
mind, must necessarily depend more upon the healthful
or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the mind,
than upon that of the body. Even though the martial spirit
of the people were of no use towards the defence of the
society, yet to prevent that sort of mental mutilation,
deformity, and wretchedness, which cowardice
necessarily involves in it, from spreading themselves
through the great body of the people, would still deserve
the most serious attention of government, in the same
manner as it would deserve its most serious attention to
prevent a leprosy or any other loathsome and offensive
disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from
Spreading itself among them, though perhaps no other
public good might result from such attention besides the
prevention of so great a public evil.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
52 Female courage, however it may be raised by fanaticism,
or confirmed by habit, can be only a faint and imperfect
imitation of the manly valour that distinguishes the age
or country in which it may be found.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1X
53 Experience has proved the distinction of active and
passive courage; the fanatic who endures without a groan
the torture of the rack or the stake, would tremble and fly
before the face of an armed enemy.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLVI!
54 The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 9
55 The intrinsic worth of courage as a disposition of mind is
to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the
sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to
actualize this final end, and the means to this end is the
sacrifice of personal actuality. This form of experience
thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a
self-sacrifice which yet is the real existence of one’s
freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality,
yet only as a cog playing its part in the mechanism of an
external organization; absolute obedience, renunciation
of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete
absence of mind, coupled with the most intense and
comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the
moment of acting; the most hostile and so most personal
action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of
complete indifference or even liking towards them as
individuals.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 328
56 To risk one’s life is better than merely fearing death, but
is still purely negative and so indeterminate and without
value in itself. It is the positive aspect, the end and
content, which first gives significance to this spiritedness.
Robbers and murderers bent on crime as their end,
adventurers pursuing ends planned to suit their own
whims, etc., these too have spirit enough to risk their
lives.
The principle of the modern world—thought and the
universal—has given courage a higher form, because its
display now seems to be more mechanical, the act not of
this particular person, but of a member of a whole.
Moreover, it seems to be turned not against single
persons, but against a hostile group, and hence personal
bravery appears impersonal. It is for this reason that
thought has invented the gun, and the invention of this
weapon, which has changed the purely personal form of
bravery into a more abstract one, is no accident.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 328
57 Personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue,—
merely the distinguishing mark of a subaltern, a virtue,
indeed, in which we are surpassed by the lower animals;
or else you would not hear people say, as brave as a lion.
Schopenhauer, Position, 1V
58 An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade
than a coward.
Melville, Moby Dick, XXVI
59 Few men’s courage is proof against protracted meditation
unrelieved by action.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLVI
60 | am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half
an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the
steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the
snowplow for their winter quarters; who have not merely
the three-o'-clock-in-the-moming courage, which
Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage
does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when
the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are
frozen.
Thoreau, Walden: Sounds
61 It is... impossible to decide in many cases whether certain
social instincts have been acquired through natural
selection, or are the indirect result of other instincts and
faculties, such as sympathy, reason, experience, and a
tendency to imitation; or again, whether they are simply
the result of long-continued habit. So remarkable an
instinct as the placing sentinels to warn the community
of danger, can hardly have been the indirect result of any
of these faculties; it must, therefore, have been directly
acquired. On the other hand, the habit followed by the
males of some social animals of defending the
community, and of attacking their enemies or their prey
in concert, may perhaps have originated from mutual
sympathy; but courage, and in most cases strength, must
have been previously acquired, probably through natural
selection,
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 4
62 Dolokhov. \f you are going to fight a duel, and you make
a will and write affectionate letters to your parents, and if
you think you may be killed, you are a fool and are lost
for certain. But go with the firm intention of killing your
man as quickly and surely as possible, and then all will be
right.... Everyone fears a bear... but when you see one
your fear’s all gone, and your only thought is not to let
him get away!
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IV, 4
63 At the approach of danger there are always two voices
that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very
reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the
danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more
reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to
think of the danger, since it is not in man’s power to
foresee everything and avert the general course of
events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is
painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 17
64 Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not
absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not
a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose
misapplication of the word. Consider the flea! —
incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if
ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep
or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the
massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives
both day and night and all days and nights in the very
lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet
is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of
a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten
centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and
Putnam as men who ‘didn’t know what fear was’, we
ought always to add the flea—and put him at the head of
the procession.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, XII
65 There are several good protections against temptations,
but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, XXXVI
66 Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
Yeats, To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
67 If people throw up to us our works of fiction in which we
write about people who are soft, weak, cowardly, and
sometimes even downright bad, it’s not because these
people are soft, weak, cowardly, or bad; because if we
were to say, as Zola did, that they are that way because
of heredity, the workings of environment, society,
because of biological or psychological determinism,
people would be reassured, They would say, "Well, that’s
what we're like, no one can do anything about it." But
when the existentialist writes about a coward, he says
that this coward is responsible for his cowardice. He’s not
like that because he has a cowardly heart or lung or
brain; he’s not like that on account of his physiological
makeup; but he’s like that because he has made himself
a coward by his acts. There’s no such thing as a cowardly
constitution; there are nervous constitutions; there is
poor blood, as the common people say, or strong
constitutions. But the man whose blood is poor is not a
coward on that account, for what makes cowardice is the
act of renouncing or yielding. A constitution is not an act;
the coward is defined on the basis of the acts he
performs. People feel, in a vague sort of way, that this
coward we’re talking about is guilty of being a coward,
and the thought frightens them. What people would like
is that a coward or a hero be born that way.
Sartre, Existentialism
9.12 Temperance and Intemperance
The quality of moderation that is sometimes identified with
virtue itself is more often identified with one particular
virtue or one aspect of virtue—temperance. When the latter
is the case, the moderation involved represents a control
over the desires or appetites. The maxim of temperance
"Nothing overmuch" calls not for total abstinence, but rather
an avoidance of excess.
In the case of courage, as the reader will find in Section
9.11, the obvious examples of fortitude exhibit the
overcoming of excessive fear of physical pain or injury. Here
the obvious examples of temperance exhibit the overcoming
of cravings for bodily pleasures, expecially the pleasures of
food, drink, and sex. The intemperate characters portrayed
by the poets or reported by the biographers and historians
are epitomes of gluttony, inebriation, and lust. The reader
will also find in Section 9.11 on Courage and Cowardice that
the poets and historians tend to give us portrayals of
courage rather than cowardice, for brave men are the heroes
of history and fiction. Here, however, the poets and
historians more frequently dwell on the exploits and
depravities of the intemperate; the person of temperate
character or of moderate desires seldom attracts attention or
dominates the scene.
Temperance and intemperance are seldom if ever
attributed to a single act. The temperate person is one who
is disposed by habit to restrain the appetites and keep them
within the bounds of reason in order to prevent them from
distracting from the pursuit of objectives worthier than the
gratification of desires. The intemperate person is one who
habitually indulges himself without rein, preferring the
pleasures of the moment to the achievement of goals that
require the exercise of restraint here and now. Because the
intemperate person manifests great self-indulgence, this
person is sometimes described as being childish in
character, on the supposition that an excess that is natural
in the very young should be corrected by the development
of temperance with maturity.
Since temperance and intemperance are for the most
part concerned with the moderation or indulgence of desires
and with a reasonable or prudent enjoyment of pleasures,
the reader is referred, for relevant materials, to Section on
Desire, Section 4.7 on Pleasure and Pain, and Section 9.13
on Prudence.
1 Neither repletion, nor fasting, nor anything else, is good
when more than natural.
Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 11, 4
2 Socrates. Every man is his own ruler; but perhaps you
think that there is no necessity for him to rule himself; he
is only required to rule others?
Callicles. What do you mean by his "ruling over
himself?"
Soc. A simple thing enough; just what is commonly
said, that a man should be temperate and master of
himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.
Cal. What innocence! you mean those fools— the
temperate?
Soc. Certainly—any one may know that to be my
meaning.
Ca/. Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for
how can aman be happy who is the servant of anything?
On the contrary, | plainly assert, that he who would truly
live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost,
and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to
their greatest he should have courage and intelligence to
minister to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this |
affirm to be natural justice and nobility. To this however
the many cannot attain; and they blame the strong man
because they are ashamed of their own weakness, which
they desire to conceal, and hence they say that
intemperance is base. As | have remarked already, they
enslave the nobler natures, and being unable to satisfy
their pleasures, they praise temperance and justice out of
their own cowardice. For if a man had been originally the
son of a king, or had a nature capable of acquiring an
empire or a tyranny or sovereignty, what could be more
truly base or evil than temperance—to a man like him, |
say, who might freely be enjoying every good, and has no
one to stand in his way, and yet has admitted custom and
reason and the opinion of other men to be lords over
him?—must not he be in a miserable plight whom the
reputation of justice and temperance hinders from giving
more to his friends than to his enemies, even though he
be aruler in his city? Nay, Socrates, for you profess to be
a votary of the truth, and the truth is this: that luxury and
intemperance and licence, if they be provided with
means, are virtue and happiness— all the rest is a mere
bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of
men, nothing worth.
Soc. There Is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of
approaching the argument; for what you say is what the
rest of the world think, but do not like to say. And | must
beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life
may become manifest. Tell me, then:—you say, do you
not, that in the rightly-developed man the passions ought
not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to
the utmost and somehow or other satisfy them, and that
this is virtue?
Cal. Yes; | do.
Soc. Then those who want nothing are not truly said to
be happy?
Cal. No indeed, for then stones and dead men would
be the happiest of all.
Soc. But surely life according to your view is an awful
thing. ... | would fain prove to you that you should change
your mind, and, instead of the intemperate and insatiate
life, choose that which is orderly and sufficient and has a
due provision for daily needs. Do | make any impression
on you, and are you coming over to the opinion that the
orderly are happier than the intemperate? Or do | fail to
persuade you, and, however many tales | rehearse to you,
do you continue of the same opinion still?
Cal. The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.
Plato, Gorgias, 491B
3 Socrates. Listen to me, then, while | recapitulate the
argument:—lIs the pleasant the same as the good? Not
the same. Callicles and | are agreed about that. And is the
pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good? or the
good for the sake of the pleasant? The pleasant is to be
pursued for the sake of the good. And that is pleasant at
the presence of which we are pleased, and that is good at
the presence of which we are good? To be sure. And we
are good, and all good things whatever are good when
some virtue is present in us or them? That, Callicles, is
my conviction. But the virtue of each thing, whether body
or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the
best way comes to them not by chance but as the result
of the order and truth and art which are imparted to
them: Am | not right? | maintain that | am. And is not the
virtue of each thing dependent on order or arrangement?
Yes, | say. And that which makes a thing good is the
proper order inhering in each thing? Such is my view. And
is not the soul which has an order of her own better than
that which has no order? Certainly. And the soul which
has order is orderly? Of course. And that which is orderly
is temperate? Assuredly. And the temperate soul is good?
No other answer can | give, Callicles dear; have you any?
Callicles. Go on, my good fellow.
Soc. Then | shall proceed to add, that if the temperate
soul is the good soul, the soul which is in the opposite
condition, that is, the foolish and intemperate, is the bad
soul. Very true.
And will not the temperate man do what is proper,
both in relation to the gods and to men;— for he would
not be temperate if he did not? Certainly he will do what
iS proper. In his relation to other men he will do what is
just; and in his relation to the gods he will do what is
holy; and he who does what is just and holy must be just
and holy? Very true. And must he not be courageous? for
the duty of a temperate man is not to follow or to avoid
what he ought not, but what he ought, whether things or
men or pleasures or pains, and patiently to endure when
he ought; and therefore, Callicles, the temperate man,
being, as we have described, also just and courageous
and holy, cannot be other than a perfectly good man, nor
can the good man do otherwise than well and perfectly
whatever he does; and he who does well must of
necessity be happy and blessed, and the evil man who
does evil, miserable: now this latter is he whom you were
applauding—the intemperate who is the opposite of the
temperate. Such is my position, and these things | affirm
to be true. And if they are true, then | further affirm that
he who desires to be happy must pursue and practise
temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as
his legs will carry him: he had better order his life so as
not to need punishment; but if either he or any of his
friends, whether private individual or city, are in need of
punishment, then justice must be done and he must
suffer punishment, if he would be happy. This appears to
me to be the aim which a man ought to have, and
towards which he ought to direct all the energies both of
himself and of the state, acting so that he may have
temperance and justice present with him and be happy,
not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained, and in the
never-ending desire to satisfy them leading a robber’s
life. Such a one is the friend neither of God nor man, for
he is incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of
communion is also incapable of friendship. And
philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and
friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice
bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and
that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not
disorder or misrule, my friend.
Plato, Gorgias, 506B
4 Protarchus. The temperate are restrained by the wise
man’s aphorism of "Never too much," which is their rule,
but excess of pleasure possessing the minds of fools and
wantons becomes madness and makes them shout with
delight.
Plato, Philebus, 45B
5 Athenian Stranger. He who knows the temperate life will
describe it as in all things gentle, having gentle pains
and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not
insane; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all
things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and
vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane;
and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains,
but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the
pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence
one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more
pleasant and the other more painful, and he who would
live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live
intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is
that no man is voluntarily intemperate; but that the
whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives,
either from ignorance, or from want of self-control, or
both.
Plato, Laws, V, 733B
6 | came to Italy and Sicily on my first visit. My first
impressions on arrival were those of strong disapproval—
disapproval of the kind of life which was there called the
life of happiness, stuffed full as it was with the banquets
of the Italian Greeks and Syracusans, who ate to repletion
twice every day, and were never without a partner for the
night; and disapproval of the habits which this manner of
life produces. For with these habits formed early in life,
no man under heaven could possibly attain to wisdom—
human nature is not capable of such an extraordinary
combination. Temperance also is out of the question for
such a man; and the same applies to virtue generally. No
city could remain in a state of tranquillity under any laws
whatsoever, when men think it right to squander all their
property in extravagant excesses, and consider it a duty
to be idle in everything else except eating and drinking
and the laborious prosecution of debauchery.
Plato, Seventh Letter
7 Temperance and self-indulgence... are concerned with the
kind of pleasures that the other animals share in, which
therefore appear slavish and brutish; these are touch and
taste. But even of taste they appear to make little or no
use; for the business of taste is the discriminating of
flavours, which is done by winetasters and people who
season dishes; but they hardly take pleasure in making
these discriminations, or at least self-indulgent people do
not, but in the actual enjoyment, which in all cases
comes through touch, both in the case of food and in that
of drink and in that of sexual intercourse. This is why a
certain gourmand prayed that his throat might become
longer than a crane's, implying that it was the contact
that he took pleasure in. Thus the sense with which self-
indulgence is connected is the most widely shared of the
senses; and self-indulgence would seem to be justly a
matter of reproach, because it attaches to us not as men
but as animals. To delight in such things, then, and to
love them above all others, is brutish.
Aristotle, 1118a24
8 The temperate man ,.. neither enjoys the things that the
self-indulgent man enjoys most—but rather dislikes them
—nor in general the things that he should not, nor
anything of this sort to excess, nor does he feel pain or
craving when they are absent, or does so only toa
moderate degree, and not more than he should, nor when
he should not, and so on; but the things that, being
pleasant, make for health or for good condition, he will
desire moderately and as he should, and also other
pleasant things if they are not hindrances to these ends,
or contrary to what is noble, or beyond his means. For he
who neglects these conditions loves such pleasures more
than they are worth, but the temperate man is not that
sort of person, but the sort of person that the right rule
prescribes.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1119a11
9 All our disorders result from intemperance. It is the revolt
from all common sense and right reason. It is so
completely foreign to reason that such lust of the soul
cannot be curbed. Just as temperance allays the cravings
and makes them obey reason, thus keeping the mind well
balanced; so the enemy, intemperance, utterly disrupts
the normal condition of the mind. Hence one is beset with
anxiety, fears, and all other disorders.
Cicero, Disputations, IV, 9
10 The appetites must be made subject to the control of
reason, and not allowed to run ahead of it or to lag
behind because of indolence or listlessness. Everyone
should enjoy a quiet soul and be free from every type of
passion. Then will strength of character and self-control
shine through in all their brilliance. But when appetites
are unleashed to run wild, either in desire or aversion,
and are not reined in by reason, they exceed all restraint
and measure. They throw off obedience and leave it
behind. They refuse to obey the rule of reason to which
they ought to be subject by the law of nature. Both the
mind and the body can be well put in disarray by the
appetites.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 29
11 There is a mean in things; finally, there are certain
boundaries, on either side of which moral rectitude
cannot exist.
Horace, Satires, |, 1
12 Safer thou'lt sail life's voyage, if thou steer
Neither right out to sea, nor yet, when rise
The threat’ning tempests, hug the shore too near.
Unwisely wise.
What man soe’er the golden mean doth choose.
Prudent will shun the hovel’s foul decay;
But with like sense, a palace will refuse
And vain display.
Horace, Odes, II, 10
13 Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing
the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong
behaviour. For people abstain from forbidden things far
more often through feelings of inhibition when it comes
to doing what is wrong than through any will to good.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 83
14 To want to Know more than is sufficient is a form of
intemperance.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 88
15 In the constitution of the rational animal | see no virtue
which is opposed to justice; but | see a virtue which is
opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 39
16 | strive daily against greediness in eating and drinking.
For this is not the kind of thing | can resolve once and for
all to cut off and touch no more, as | could with
fornication. For the reins of the throat are to be held
somewhere between too lightly and too tightly.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 31
17 Nature inclines everything to whatever is becoming to it.
Wherefore man naturally desires pleasures that are
becoming to him. Since, however, man as such is a
rational being, it follows that those pleasures are
becoming to man which are in accordance with reason.
From such pleasures temperance does not withdraw him,
but from those which are contrary to reason. Wherefore it
is clear that temperance is not contrary to the inclination
of human nature, but is in accord with it.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 141, 1
18 Temperance is about desires and pleasures in the same
way as fortitude is about fear and daring. Now fortitude is
about fear and daring with respect to the greatest evils
whereby nature itself is dissolved; and such are dangers
of death. Wherefore in like manner temperance must
needs be about desires for the greatest pleasures. And
since pleasure results from a natural operation, it is so
much the greater according as it results from a more
natural operation. Now to animals the most natural
operations are those which preserve the nature of the
individual by means of meat and drink, and the nature of
the species by the union of the sexes. Hence temperance
is properly about pleasures of meat and drink and sexual
pleasures. Now these pleasures result from the sense of
touch. Wherefore it follows that temperance is about
pleasures of touch.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-ll, 141, 4
19 Sins of intemperance are said to be childish. For the sin
of intemperance Is one of unchecked concupiscence,
which is likened to a child in three ways. First, as regards
that which they both desire, for like a child
concupiscence desires something disgraceful. This is
because in human affairs a thing is beautiful according as
it harmonizes with reason.... Now a child does not attend
to the order of reason; and in like manner concupiscence
dots not listen to reason.... Secondly, they are alike as to
the result. For a child, if left to his own will, becomes
more self-willed: hence it is written; A horse not broken
becometh stubborn, and a child left to himself will
become headstrong. So, too, concupiscence, if indulged,
gathers strength: wherefore Augustine says: Lust served
became a custom, and custom not resisted became
necessity. Thirdly, as to the remedy which is applied to
both. For a child is corrected by being restrained; hence it
is written: Withhold not correction from a child. .. Thou
shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from Hell.
In like manner by resisting concupiscence we moderate it
according to the demands of virtue. Augustine indicates
this when he says that if the mind be lifted up to spiritual
things, and remain fixed thereon, the impulse of custom,
i.e, Carnal concupiscence, /s broken, and being
suppressed is gradually weakened: for it was stronger
when we followed it, and though not wholly destroyed, it
is certainly less strong when we curb it. Hence the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says that as a child ought to live
according to the direction of his tutor so ought the
concupiscible to accord with reason.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 142, 2
20 | discern new torments, and new tormented souls,
whithersoever | move, and turn, and gaze.
| am in the Third Circle, that of the eternal, accursed,
cold, and heavy rain; its [law] and quality i$ never new.
Large hail, and turbid water, and snow, [pour down]
through the darksome air; the ground, on which it falls,
emits a putrid smell.
Cerberus, a monster fierce and strange, with three
throats, barks dog-like over those that are immersed in it.
His eyes are red, his beard [greasy] and black, his
belly wide, and clawed his hands; he clutches the spirits,
flays, and piecemeal rends them.
The rain makes them howl like dogs; with one side
they screen the other; they often turn themselves, the
impious wretches.
When Cerberus, the great Worm, perceived us, he
opened his mouths and shewed his tusks: no limb of him
kept still.
My Guide, spreading his palms, took up earth; and,
with full fists, cast it into his ravening gullets.
As the dog, that barking craves, and grows quiet when
he bites his food, for he strains and battles only to devour
it:
so did those squalid visages of Cerberus the Demon,
who thunders on the spirits so, that they would fain be
deaf.
We passed over the shadows whom the heavy rain
subdues; and placed our soles upon their emptiness,
which seems a body.
They all were lying on the ground save one, who sat
up forthwith when he saw us pass before him.
"O thou, who through this Hell art led," he said to me,
"recognise me if thou mayest; thou wast made before |
was unmade."
And | to him: "The anguish which thou hast, perhaps
withdraws thee from my memory, so that it seems not as
if | ever saw thee.
But tell me who art thou, that art put in such a doleful
place, and in such punishment; that, though other may
be greater, none is so displeasing."
And he to me: "Thy city, which is so full of envy that
the sack already overflows, contained me in the clear life.
You, citizens, called me Ciacco: for the baneful crime
of Gluttony, as thou seest, | languish in the rain;
and I, wretched spirit, am not alone, since all these for
like crime are in like punishment"; and more he said not.
Dante, Inferno, VI, 4
21 O gluttony, full of all wickedness,
O first cause of confusion to us all,
Beginning of damnation and our fall,
Till Christ redeemed us with His blood again!
Behold how dearly, to be brief and plain.
Was purchased this accursed villainy;
Corrupt v/as all this world with gluttony!
Adam our father, and his wife also,
From Paradise to labour and to woe
Were driven for that vice, no doubt; indeed
The while that Adam fasted, as | read,
He was in Paradise; but then when he
Ate of the fruit forbidden of the tree,
Anon he was cast out to woe and pain
O gluttony, of you we may complain!
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Pardoner’s Tale
22 Drink until misfortune overtakes you! People like you
won't reach old age, for the best part of mankind perishes
from too much drink.
Luther, Table Talk, 3468
23 Grangousier and his neighbors. Which was first, thirst or
drinking? Thirst, for who in the time of innocence would
have drunk without being athirst? Nay, sir, it was
drinking; for privatio praesupponit habitum. | am learned,
you see: Foecundi calices quem non fecere disertum? We
poor innocents drink but too much without thirst. Not |
truly, who am a Sinner, for | never drink without thirst,
either present or future. To prevent it, as you know, |
drink for the thirst to come. | drink eternally. This is to me
an eternity of drinking, and drinking of eternity. Let us
sing, let us drink, and tune up our roundlays. Where is my
funnel? What, it seems | do not drink but by an attorney?
Do you wet yourselves to dry, or do you dry to wet you?
Pish, | understand not the rhetoric (theoric | should say),
but | help myself somewhat by the practice. Beast,
enough! | sup, | wet, | humect, | moisten my gullet, |
drink, and all for fear of dying. Drink always and you shall
never die. If | drink not, | am a ground dry, gravelled and
spent. | am stark dead without drink, and my soul ready
to fly into some marsh amongst frogs: the soul never
dwells in a dry place, drought kills it. O you butlers,
creators of new forms, make me of no drinker a drinker,
perenity and everlastingness of sprinkling, and bedewing
me through these my parched and sinewy bowels. He
drinks in vain, that feels not the pleasure of it.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, |, 5
24 Grangousier. | have a remedy against thirst, quite
contrary to that which is good against the biting of a mad
dog. Keep running after a dog, and he will never bite you;
drink always before the thirst, and it will never come
upon you.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, |, 5
25 Is it still temperance and frugality to avoid expenses and
pleasures whose use and knowledge are imperceptible to
us? An easy way to reform and a cheap one!
Montaigne, Essays, I, 3, Our Feelings Reach Out
26 Virtue’s tool is moderation, not strength.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 26, Education of Children
27 Enough for the sage to curb and moderate his
inclinations; for to do away with them is not in him,
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 2, Of Drunkenness
28 It is perhaps easier to do without the whole sex than to
behave rightly in every respect in association with our
wives; and a man may live more carefree in poverty than
in justly dispensed abundance. Enjoyment conducted
according to reason is more arduous than abstinence.
Moderation is a virtue that gives more trouble than
suffering does.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 33, The Story of Spurina
29 Salisbury. To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily.
To throw a perfume on the violet.
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish.
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Shakespeare, King John, IV, ti, 10
30 Nerissa. They are as sick that surfeit with too much as
they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness
therefore, to be seated in the mean: superfluity comes
sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, ti, 5
31 Falstaff Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?
Prince of Wales. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of
old sack and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping
3
N)
upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a
devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless
hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks
the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-
houses and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in
flame-coloured taffeta, | see no reason why thou shouldst
be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, I, ti, 1
Worcester. Hear you, cousin; a word.
Hotspur. All studies here | solemnly defy,
Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke:
And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales,
But that | think his father loves him not
And would be glad he met with some mischance,
| would have him poison’d with a pot of ale.
Wor. Farewell, kinsman: I’ll talk to you When you are
better temper’d to attend.
Northumberland. Why, what a wasp-stung and
impatient fool
Art thou to break into this woman’s mood,
Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!
Hot. Why, look you, | am whipp’d and scourged with
rods,
Nettled and stung with pismires, when | hear
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.
In Richard’s time—what do you call the place?—
A plague upon it, it is in Gloucestershire;
"Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,
His uncle York; where | first bow’d my knee
Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke—
’Sblood!—
When you and he came back from Ravenspurgh.
North. At Berkley castle.
Hot. You say true:
Why, what a candy deal of courtesy
This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!
Look, "When his infant fortune came to age,"
And "gentle Harry Percy," and "kind cousin";
O, the devil take such cozeners! God forgive me!
Good uncle, tell your tale; | have done.
Wor. Nay, if you have not, to it again;
We will stay your leisure.
Hot. | have done, i’ faith.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, I, tii, 227
33 Rosalind. Why then, can one desire too much of a good
thing?
Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV, 1, 123
34 Lucio. Why, how now, Claudio! whence comes this
restraint?
Claudio. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope by the immoderate use
Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue.
Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,
A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, I, ti, 128
35 Cassio. | remember a mass of things, but nothing
distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that
men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away
their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel,
and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
Shakespeare, Othello, II, iii, 289
36 lago. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature,
if it be well used; e.xclaim no more against it.
Shakespeare, Othello, Il, tif, 312
37 Porter. Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff. What three things does drink especially
provoke?
Port. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the
desire but it takes away the performance; therefore,
much drink may be said to be an equivocator with
lechery'; it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on,
and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens
him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion,
equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie,
leaves him.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, II, iii, 29
38 Macduff. Boundless intemperance
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
The untimely emptying of the happy throne
And fall of many kings.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, iii, 67
39 There is, said Michael, if thou well observe
The rule of not too much, by temperance taught
In what thou eatst and drinkst, seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XI, 527
40 Blessedness is not the reward of \nrtue, but is virtue
itself; nor do we delight in blessedness because we
restrain our lusts; but, on the contrary, because we
delight in it, therefore are we able to restrain them.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 42
41 To say truth, nothing is more erroneous than the common
observation, that men who are ill-natured and
quarrelsome when they are drunk, are very worthy
persons when they are sober: for drink, in reality, doth
not reverse nature, or create passions in men which did
not exist in them before. It takes away the guard of
reason, and consequently forces us to produce those
symptoms, which many, when sober, have art enough to
conceal. It heightens and inflames our passions
(generally indeed that passion which is uppermost in our
mind), so that the angry temper, the amorous, the
generous, the good-humoured, the avaricious, and all
other dispositions of men, are in their cups heightened
and exposed.
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 9
42 Johnson. To temperance, every’ day is bright; and every’
hour is propitious to diligence.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1758)
43 Moderation in the affections and passions, self-control,
and calm deliberation are not only good in many
respects, but even seem to constitute pan of the intrinsic
worth of the person; but they are far from deserving to be
called good without qualification, although they have
been so unconditionally praised by the ancients. For
without the principles of a good will, they may become
extremely bad, and the coolness of a villain not only
makes him far more dangerous, but also directly makes
him more abominable in our eyes than he would have
been without it.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, |
44 The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 7
45 Faust. Fear not! This league with you | shall not break!
The aim and goal of all my energy
Is to fulfil the promise | now make,
I've puffed myself loo high, | see;
Only within your ranks do! deserve to be.
The Mighty Spirit sourned me with a scoff.
And Nature turns herself away from me.
The thread of thought is broken off,
To me all learning's long been nauseous.
In depths of sensuality
Let us our glowing passions still!
In magic's veils impervious
Prepared at once be every marvel’s thrill!
Come, let us plunge into Time's rushing dance,
Into the roll of Circumstance!
There may then pain and joyance,
Successes and annoyance,
Alternately follow as they can,
Only restlessly active is a man!
Goethe, Faust, 1, 1741
46 Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess.
Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every
faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal
penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation
with its life.
Emerson, Compensation
47 He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never
be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A
puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an
appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle.
Thoreau, Walden: Higher Laws
48 All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all
purity is one. It is the same whether a man cat, or drink,
or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite,
and we only need to see a person do any one of these
things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure
can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is
attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at
another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste?
He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we
know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor
which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and
purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the
student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean
person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a
stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes
without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness,
and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning
a Stable.
Thoreau, Walden: Higher Laws
49 A person who show-s rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit—
who cannot live within moderate means— who cannot
restrain himself from hurtful indulgences—who pursues
animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and
intellect—must expect to be lowered in the opinion of
others, and to have a less share of their favourable
sentiments; but of this he has no right to complain,
unless he has merited their favour by special excellence
in his social relations, and has thus established a title to
their good offices, which is not affected by his demerits
towards himself.
Mill, On Liberty, 1V
9.13 Prudence
Whereas courage and temperance, as virtues, are traits of
character, the virtue of prudence is a quality of mind. That is
why it is sometimes called an "intellectual virtue" along with
science, art, and wisdom. But it also differs from these other
intellectual virtues in that it is not concerned with
knowledge, or understanding, or even with know-how or skill
in making things, but with action. Another name for
prudence, the reader will find in the quotations below, is
“practical wisdom"—wisdom in the choice of means to
achieve the goals of life. Hence of all the intellectual virtues,
prudence or practical wisdom is the one most integrally
related to the moral virtues of courage, temperance, and
justice. The reader will find the treatment of speculative or
philosophical wisdom in Section 9.15 on Wisdom and Folly.
As certain quotations below expressly indicate, the
crucial question is whether it is possible to be wise (i.e.,
practically wise or prudent) without being good (i.e., morally
virtuous), or good without being wise. If the answer to that
question affirms the inseparability of prudence and moral
virtue, then, as another quotation points out, cleverness in
the choice of means to achieve morally reprehensible ends—
for example, the cunning of the thief—is not genuine
prudence, but a counterfeit of it.
The prudent man, we are told, is one who has the
habitual disposition to take counsel or advice and then to
weigh the advantages and disadvantages in a process of
deliberation before coming to a decision about what ought
to be done in the particular case under consideration. The
prudent man is a man of sound judgment, not about things
in general, nor about the principles or rules of morality, but
about the circumstances of particular cases in which
decisions have to be made for or against particular courses
of action. Lack of prudence manifests itself in the making of
rash or impetuous decisions, on the one hand, or in
prolonged indecision, on the other.
1 Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most
indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he
has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and
unparalleled. By his own native capacity, alike unformed
and unsupplemented by study, he was at once the best
judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no
deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to
its most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor
of all that came within the sphere of his practice, he was
not without the power of passing an adequate Judgment
in matters in which he had no experience. He could also
excellently divine the good and evil which lay hid in the
unseen future. In fine, whether we consider the extent of
his natural powers, or the slightness of his application,
this extraordinary man must be allowed to have
surpassed all others in the faculty of intuitively meeting
an emergency.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 138
2 Socrates. Let us consider the goods of the soul: they are
temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension,
memory, magnanimity, and the like?
Meno. Surely.
Soc. And such of these as are not knowledge, but of
another sort, are sometimes profitable and sometimes
hurtful; as, for example, courage wanting prudence,
which is only a sort of confidence? When a man has no
sense he is harmed by courage, but when he has sense
he is profited?
Men. True,
Soc. And the same may be said of temperance and
quickness of apprehension; whatever things are learned
or done with sense are profitable, but when done without
sense they are hurtful?
Men. Very true.
Soc. And in general, all that the soul attempts or
endures, when under the guidance of wisdom, ends in
happiness; but when she is under the guidance of folly, in
the opposite?
Men. That appears to be true.
Soc. If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is
admitted to be profitable, it must be wisdom or prudence,
since none of the things of the soul are either profitable
or hurtful in themselves, but they are all made profitable
or hurtful by the addition of wisdom or of folly; and
therefore if virtue is profitable, virtue must be a sort of
wisdom or prudence?
Men. | quite agree.
Soc. And the other goods, such as wealth and the like,
of which we were just now saying that they are
sometimes good and sometimes evil, do not they also
become profitable or hurtful, accordingly as the soul
guides and uses them rightly or wrongly; just as the
things of the soul herself are benefited when under the
guidance of wisdom and harmed by folly?
Men. True.
Soc. And the wise soul guides them rightly, and the
foolish soul wrongly.
Men. Yes.
Soc. And is not this universally true of human nature?
All other things hang upon the soul, and the things of the
soul herself hang upon wisdom, if they are to be good;
and so wisdom is inferred to be that which profits—and
virtue, as we Say, is profitable?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. And thus we arrive at the conclusion that virtue is
either wholly or partly wisdom?
Men. | think that what you are saying, Socrates, is very
true.
Plato, Meno, 88A
3 Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by
considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it
is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to
be able to deliberate well about what is good and
expedient for himself, not in some particular respect...
but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in
general. This is shown by the fact that we credit men with
practical wisdom in some particular respect when they
have calculated well with a view to some good end which
is one of those that are not the object of any art. It follows
that in the general sense also the man who is capable of
deliberating has practical wisdom. Now no one
deliberates about things that are invariable, nor about
things that it is impossible for him to do. Therefore, since
scientific knowledge involves demonstration, but there is
no demonstration of things whose first principles are
variable (for all such things might actually be otherwise),
and since it is impossible to deliberate about things that
are of necessity, practical wisdom cannot be scientific
knowledge nor art; not science because that which can
be done is capable of being otherwise, not art because
action and making are different kinds of thing. The
remaining alternative, then, is that it is a true and
reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the
things that are good or bad for man. For while making
has an end other than itself, action cannot; for good
action itself is its end. It is for this reason that we think
Pericles and men like him have practical wisdom, viz.
because they can see what is good for themselves and
what is good for men in general; we consider that those
can do this who are good at managing households or
states, (This is why we call temperance by this name; we
imply that it preserves one’s practical wisdom. Now what
it preserves is a judgement of the kind we have
described. For it is not any and every judgment that
pleasant and painful objects destroy and pervert, e.g, the
judgement that the triangle has or has not its angles
equal to two right angles, but only judgements about
what is to be done. For the originating causes of the
things that are done consist in the end at which they are
aimed; but the man who has been ruined by pleasure or
pain forthwith fails to see any such originating cause—to
see that for the sake of this or because of this he ought to
choose and do whatever he chooses and does; for vice is
destructive of the originating cause of action.) Practical
wisdom, then, must be a reasoned and true state of
capacity to act with regard to human goods. But further,
while there is such a thing as excellence in art, there is no
such thing as excellence in practical wisdom; and in art
he who errs willingly is preferable, but in practical
wisdom, as in the virtues, he is the reverse. Plainly, then,
practical wisdom is a virtue and not an art. There being
two parts of the soul that can follow a course of
reasoning, it must be the virtue of one of the two, i.e. of
that part which forms opinions; for opinion is about the
variable and so is practical wisdom. But yet it is not only
a reasoned state; this is shown by the fact that a state of
that sort may be forgotten but practical wisdom cannot.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1140a24
4 Practical wisdom ... is concerned with things human and
things about which it is possible to deliberate; for we say
this is above all the work of the man of practical wisdom,
to deliberate well, but no one deliberates about things
invariable, nor about things which have not an end, and
that a good that can be brought about by action. The
man who is without qualification good at deliberating is
the man who is capable of aiming in accordance with
calculation at the best for man of things attainable by
action. Nor is practical wisdom concerned with universals
only—it must also recognize the particulars; for it is
practical, and practice is concerned with particulars. This
is why some who do not know, and especially those who
have experience, are more practical than others who
know.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1141b7
5 Understanding, also, and goodness of understanding, in
virtue of which men are said to be men of understanding
or of good understanding, are neither entirely the same
as opinion or scientific knowledge (for at that rate all men
would have been men of understanding), nor are they
one of the particular sciences, such as medicine, the
science of things connected with health, or geometry, the
science of spatial magnitudes. For understanding is
neither about things that are always and are
unchangeable, nor about any and every one of the things
that come into being, but about things which may
become subjects of questioning and deliberation. Hence
it is about the same objects as practical wisdom; but
understanding and practical wisdom are not the same.
For practical wisdom issues commands, since its end is
what ought to be done or not to be done; but
understanding only judges. (Understanding is identical
with goodness of understanding, men of understanding
with men of good understanding.) Now understanding is
neither the having nor the acquiring of practical wisdom;
but as learning is called understanding when it means
the exercise of the faculty of knowledge, so
‘understanding’ is applicable to the exercise of the
faculty of opinion for the purpose of judging of what
some one else says about matters with which practical
wisdom is concerned—and of judging soundly; for ‘well’
and ‘soundly’ are the same thing. And from this has come
the use of the name ‘understanding’ in virtue of which
men are said to be ‘of good understanding’, viz. from the
application of the word to the grasping of scientific truth;
for we often call such grasping understanding.
What is called judgement, in virtue of which men are
said to ‘be sympathetic judges’ and to ‘have judgement’,
is the right discrimination of the equitable. This is shoun
by the fact that we say the equitable man is above all
others a man of sympathetic judgement, and identify
equity with sympathetic judgement about certain facts.
And sympathetic judgement is judgement which
discriminates what is equitable and does so correctly;
and correct judgement is that which judges what is true.
Now all the states we have considered converge, as
might be expected, to the same point; for when we speak
of judgement and understanding and practical wisdom
and intuitive reason we credit the same people with
possessing judgement and having reached years of
reason and with having practical wisdom and
understanding. For all these faculties deal with ultimates,
i.e, with particulars; and being a man of understanding
and of good or sympathetic judgement consists in being
able to judge about the things with which practical
wisdom is concerned; for the equities are common to all
good men in relation to other men.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1142b34
6 As in the part of us which forms opinions there are two
types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so loo in the
moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue
in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves
practical wisdom. This is why some Say that all the
virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and why Socrates
in one respect was on the right track while in another he
went astray; in thinking that all the virtues were forms of
practical wisdom he was wrong, but in saying they
implied practical wisdom he was right. This is confirmed
by the fact that even now all men, when they define
virtue, after naming the state of character and its objects
add ‘that (state) which is in accordance with the right
rule’; now the right rule is that which is in accordance
with practical wisdom. All men, then, seem somehow' to
divine that this kind of state is virtue, viz. that which is in
accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little
further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with
the right rule, but the state that implies the presence of
the right rule, that is virtue; and practical wisdom is a
right rule about such matters. Socrates, then, thought the
virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought
they were, all of them, forms of scientific knowledge),
while we think they /nvo/ve a rational principle.
It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not
possible to be good in the strict sense without practical
wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue. But in
this way we may also refute the dialectical argument
whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in
separation from each other; the same man, it might be
said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so
that he will have already acquired one when he has not
yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the
natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of
which a man is called without qualification good; for with
the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be
given all the virtues. And it is plain that, even if it were of
no practical value, we should have needed it because it is
the virtue of the part of us in question; plain too that the
choice will not be right without practical wisdom any
more than without virtue; for the one determines the end
and the other makes us do the things that lead to the
end.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1144b14
7 The beginning and the greatest good is prudence.
Wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than
philosophy; for from prudence are sprung all the other
virtues, and it teaches us that it is not possible to live
pleasantly without living prudently and honourably and
justly, nor, again, to live a life of prudence, honour, and
justice without living pleasantly. For the virtues are by
nature bound up with the pleasant life, and the pleasant
life is inseparable from them.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
8 Then the father [Phoebus] rubbed his son’s [Phaethon’s]
face with a divine ointment, to enable him to endure the
searing flames. On his head he placed his own rays, and,
sighing deeply from his troubled heart—for he foresaw
the grief that was in store for him—he said: ‘At least obey
your father’s instructions, my son, if you can. Use the
goad sparingly, and hold in the reins with all your
strength. The horses set a fast pace of their own accord:
the difficulty is to check their keenness. And do not try to
drive straight across the five zones of heaven—there is a
track that slants in a broad curve, confined within the
boundaries of three zones, which avoids the Southern
Pole, and also the North with its chilling winds. Travel by
this road, where you will see clear marks of wheels. To
allow earth and heaven to share equally in your warmth,
do not go too low, nor yet force your way into the upper
air: if you drive too high, you will set the dome of heaven
on fire, and if you are too low you will scorch the earth.
The middle way is safest. Nor must you swerve to the
right, towards the coiling Serpent, nor to the left, where
the low-lying Altar shines. Hold your course between
them both.’
Ovid, Metamorphoses, I!
9 What shall | say of that virtue which is called prudence? Is
not all its vigilance spent in the discernment of good from
evil things, so that no mistake may be admitted about
what we should desire and what avoid? And thus it is
itself a proof that we are in the midst of evils, or that evils
are in us; for it teaches us that it is an evil to consent to
sin, and a good to refuse this consent.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 4
10 It is requisite for prudence, which is right reason about
things to be done, that man be well disposed with regard
to the ends, and this depends on the rectitude of his
appetite. Therefore, for prudence there is need of a moral
virtue, which rectifies the appetite. On the other hand,
the good of things made by art is not the good of man’s
appetite, but the good of those artificial things
themselves, and therefore art does not presuppose
rectitude of the appetite. The consequence is that more
praise is given to a craftsman who is at fault willingly,
than to one who is unwillingly; but it is more contrary to
prudence to sin willingly than unwillingly, since rectitude
of the will is essential to prudence, but not to art.
Accordingly it is evident that prudence is a virtue distinct
from art.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 57, 4
11 Prudence is of good counsel about matters regarding
man’s entire life, and the end of human life. But in some
arts there is counsel about matters concerning the ends
proper to those arts. Hence some men, in so far as they
are good counsellors in matters of warfare, or
government, are said to be prudent officers or rulers, but
not prudent absolutely; only those are prudent absolutely
who give good counsel about all the concerns of life.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 57, 4
12 Prudence is the principal of all the virtues absolutely.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 61, 2
13 No moral virtue can be without prudence, for the reason
that it is proper to moral virtue to make a right choice,
since it is an elective habit. Now right choice requires not
only the inclination to a due end, which inclination is the
direct outcome of moral virtue, but also the right choice
of means, which choice is made by prudence, that
counsels, judges, and commands in those things that are
directed to the end. In like manner one cannot have
prudence unless one has the moral virtues, since
prudence is right reason about things to be done, and the
starting-point of reason is the end of the thing to be
done, to which end man is rightly disposed by moral
virtue. Hence, just as we cannot have speculative science
unless we have the understanding of the principles, so
neither can we have prudence without the moral virtues.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 65, 1
14 Prudence has no business with supreme matters which
are the object of wisdom, but its command covers things
ordered to wisdom, namely, how men are to obtain
wisdom. Therefore prudence, or political science, is, in
this way, the servant of wisdom, for it leads to wisdom,
preparing the way for her, as the porter for the king.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 66, 5
15 Prudence considers the means of acquiring happiness,
but wisdom considers the very object of happiness.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 66, 5
16 Prudence is threefold. There is a false prudence, which
takes its name from its likeness to true prudence. For
since a prudent man is one who disposes well of the
things that have to be done for a good end, whoever
disposes well of such things as are fitting for an evil end,
has false prudence, in so far as that which he takes for an
end, is good, not in truth but in appearance. Thus a man
is called a good robber, and in this way we may speak of
a prudent robber, by way of similarity, because he
devises fitting ways of committing robbery. This is the
prudence of which the Apostle says: The prudence of the
flesh is death, because, to wit, it places its ultimate end
in the pleasures of the flesh.
The second prudence is indeed true prudence,
because it devises fitting ways of obtaining a good end;
and yet it is imperfect, from a twofold source. First,
because the good which it takes for an end, is not the
common end of all human life, but of some particular
affair; thus when a man devises fitting ways of
conducting business or of sailing a ship, he is called a
prudent business-man, or a prudent sailor:—secondly,
because he fails in the chief act of prudence, as when a
man takes counsel aright, and forms a good judgment,
even about things concerning life as a whole, but fails to
make an effective command.
The third prudence is both true and perfect, for it
takes counsel, judges and commands aright in respect of
the good end of man’s whole life: and this alone is
prudence simply so-called, and cannot be in sinners,
whereas the first prudence is in sinners alone, while
imperfect prudence is common to good and wicked men,
especially that which is imperfect through being directed
to a particular end, since that which is imperfect on
account of a failing in the chief act, is only in the wicked.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 47, 13
17 For any man who hath a house to found,
Runs not at once the labor to begin
With reckless hand, but first will look around,
And send his heart’s line outward from within.
To see how best of all his end to win.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 153
18 The virtue assigned to the affairs of the world is a virtue
with many bends, angles, and elbows, so as to join and
adapt itself to human weakness; mixed and artificial, not
straight, clean, constant, or purely innocent.... He who
walks in the crowd must step aside, keep his elbows in,
step back or advance, even leave the straight way,
according to what he encounters. He must live not so
much according to himself as according to others, not
according to what he proposes to himself but according
to what others propose to him, according to the time,
according to the men, according to the business.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
19 Fool. Mark it, nuncle:
"Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest.
Ride more than thou goest.
Learn more than thou trowest.
Set less than thou throwest.
Leave thy drink and thy whore.
And keep in-a-door.
And thou shall have more
Than two tens to a score."
Kent. This is nothing, fool.
Shakespeare, Lear, I, iv, 130
20 Apemantus. Immortal gods, | crave no pelf;
| pray for no man but myself.
Grant | may never prove so fond,
To trust man on his oath or bond;
Or a harlot, for her weeping;
Or a dog, that seems a-sleeping;
Or a keeper with my freedom;
Or my friends, if | should need ’em.
Amen.
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, I, II, 63
21 There is no great concurrence between learning and
wisdom. For of the three wisdoms which we have set
down to pertain to civil life, for wisdom of behaviour, it is
by learned men for the most part despised, as an inferior
to virtue and an enemy to meditation; for wisdom of
government, they acquit themselves well when they are
called to it, but that happeneth to few; but for the
wisdom of business, wherein man’s life is most
conversant, there be no books of it, except some few
scattered advertisements, that have no proportion to the
magnitude of this subject. For if books were written of
this as the other, | doubt not but learned men with mean
experience, would far excel men of long experience
without learning, and outshoot them in their own bow.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, XXIII, 4
22 Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from
the experience of time past: so there is a presumption of
things past taken from other things, not future, but past
also. For he that hath seen by what courses and degrees
a flourishing state hath first come into civil war, and then
to ruin; upon the sight of the ruins of any other state will
guess the like war and the like courses have been there
also. But this conjecture has the same uncertainty almost
with the conjecture of the future, both being grounded
only upon experience.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 3
23 When the thoughts of a man that has a design in hand,
running over a multitude of things, observes how they
conduce to that design, or what design they may
conduce unto; if his observations be such as are not easy,
or usual, this wit of his is called prudence, and dependeth
on much experience, and memory of the like things and
their consequences heretofore.,
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 8
24 A man that doth his business by the help of many and
prudent counsellors, with every one consulting apart in
his proper element, does it best; as he that useth able
seconds at tennis play, placed in their proper stations. He
does next best that useth his own judgement only; as he
that has no second at all. But he that is carried up and
down to his business in a framed counsel, which cannot
move but by the plurality of consenting opinions, the
execution whereof is commonly, out of envy or interest,
retarded by the part dissenting, does it worst of all. and
like one that is carried to the ball, though by good
players, yet in a wheelbarrow, or other frame, heavy of
itself, and retarded also by the inconcurrent judgements
and endeavours of them that drive it; and so much the
more, as they be more that set their hands to it; and most
of all, when there is one or more amongst them that
desire to have him lose. And though it be true that many
c>'cs see more than one, yet it is not to be understood of
many counsellors, but then only when the final resolution
is in one man.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 25
25 Nothing more unqualifies a Man to act with Prudence,
than a Misfortune that is attended with Shame and Guilt.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
26 Prudence and circumspection are necessary even to the
best of men. They are indeed, as it were, a guard to
Virtue, without which she can never be safe. It is not
enough that your designs, nay, that your actions, are
intrinsically good; you must take care they shall appear
so. If your inside be never so beautiful, you must preserve
a fair outside also.
Fielding, Tom Jones, III, 7
27 Where prudence is made too much of, not enough is
made of fortune; opportunity is let slip, and deliberation
results in the loss of its object.
Rousseau, Social Contact, Ill, 2
28 Prudence! Prudence which is ever bidding us look
forward into the future, a future which in many eases we
Shall never reach; here is the real source of nil our
troubles! How mad it is for so short-lived a creature as
man to look forward into a future to which he rarely
attains, while he neglects the present which is his? this
madness is all the more fatal since it increases with years,
and the old, always timid, prudent, and miserly, prefer to
do without necessaries to-day that they may have
luxuries at a hundred.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
29 If we could always be prudent, we should rarely need to
be virtuous.
Rousseau, Confessions, I]
30 The principle of private happiness .., is... most
objectionable, not merely because it is false, and
experience contradicts the supposition that prosperity is
always proportioned to good conduct, nor yet merely
because it contributes nothing to the establishment of
morality—since it is quite a different thing to make a
prosperous man and a good man, or to make one prudent
and sharp-sighted for his own interests and to make him
virtuous—but because the springs it provides for morality
are such as rather undermine it and destroy its sublimity,
since they put the motives to virtue and to vice in the
Same class and only teach us to make a better
calculation, the specific difference between virtue and
vice being entirely extinguished.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
31 Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses. If a man has
acted unwisely and reproaches himself for his
imprudence no longer than is necessary for him to learn
his lesson, he is observing a rule of prudence and it must
be accounted to him for honour, for it is a sign of strength
of character. But the accusation of conscience cannot be
So readily dismissed, neither should it be.
Kant, Lectures on Ethics, Conscience
32 Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 7
9.14 Honesty
A wide diversity of moral traits are treated here under the
heading of honesty. As the quotations indicate, the word has
been applied to truthfulness of statement, to fairness in
dealing with others, to keeping one’s promises, to
trustworthiness, to repaying one’s debts, and to a general
rectitude of intention and action. Such things as lying,
deceiving, cheating, bearing false witness, stealing, and
defrauding are—obviously— instances of dishonesty.
It would appear, at first glance, as if "honesty" were
another name for justice, since the examples given above of
honest and dishonest actions are alSo examples of Just and
unjust conduct. However, there are some unjust actions—for
example, murdering another man or enslaving him—that
would not be called dishonest. Honesty seems to be
confined to that area of conduct in which truthfulness or
fairness in dealing with others is called for as a matter of
justice. For the treatment of justice as a moral virtue, the
reader is referred to Section 9.7 on Right and Wrong. The
reader will also find some quotations concerned with
truthfulness and lying in Section 6.3 on Truth.
All of us Know and most of us repeat the oft-quoted
maxim "Honesty is the best policy," thinking it to be morally
sound. But, according to Kant, it is the maxim of a dishonest
man—one who refrains from dishonesty only because it is
expedient, not because it is just to do so. The maxim about
honesty, Kant suggests, should be "Honesty is better than all
policy."
1 Thou shall not raise a false report: put not thine hand with
the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.
Exodus 23:1
2 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and
righteous slay thou not: for | will not justify the wicked.
Exodus 23:7
3 If asoul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and
lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to
keep, or in fellowship, or in a think taken away by
violence, or hath deceived his neighbour;
Or have found that which was lost, and lieth
concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all these
that a man doeth, sinning therein:
Then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty,
that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or
the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which
was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he
found.
Or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall
even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth
part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it
appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering.
And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord,
a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy
estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest:
And the priest shall make an atonement for him before
the Lord: and it shall be forgiven him for any thing of all
that he hath done in trespassing therein,
Leviticus 6:2-7
4 Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall
stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath
not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
Psalms 24:3—4
5 A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just
weight is his delight.
Proverbs 11:1
6 Odysseus. Take it to heart, and pass the word along:
fair dealing brings more profit in the end.
Homer, Odyssey, XXII, 374
7 Darius. Whether men lie, or say true, it is with one and the
same object. Men lie, because they think to gain by
deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they
expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be
trusted afterwards in more important matters. Thus,
though their conduct is so opposite, the end of both is
alike.
Herodotus, History, Ill, 72
8 Of on. Time is the only test of honest men, one day is
Space enough to know a rogue.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 614
9 Envoys of the Mitylenians. There can never be any solid
friendship between individuals, or union between
communities that is worth the name, unless the parties
be persuaded of each other’s honesty.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, III, 10
10 He who claims more than he has with no ulterior object is
a contemptible sort of fellow (otherwise he would not
have delighted in falsehood), but seems futile rather than
bad; but if he does it for an object, he who does it for the
sake of reputation or honour is (for a boaster) not very
much to be blamed, but he who does it for money, or the
things that lead to money, is an uglier character (it is not
the capacity that makes the boaster, but the purpose; for
it is in virtue of his state of character and by being a man
of a certain kind that he is a boaster); as one man is a liar
because he enjoys the lie itself, and another because he
desires reputation or gain. Now those who boast for the
sake of reputation claim such qualities as win praise or
congratulation, but those whose object is gain claim
qualities which are of value to one’s neighbours and
one’s lack of which is not easily detected, e.g. the powers
of a seer, a Sage, or a physician. For this reason it is such
things as these that most people claim and boast about;
for in them the above-mentioned qualities are found.
Mock-modest people, who understate things, seem
more attractive in character; for they are thought to
speak not for gain but to avoid parade; and here too it is
qualities which bring reputation that they disclaim, as
Socrates used to do. Those who disclaim trifling and
obvious qualities are called humbugs and are more
contemptible; and sometimes this seems to be
boastfulness, like the Spartan dress; for both excess and
great deficiency are boastful. But those who use
understatement with moderation and understate about
matters that do not very much force themselves on our
notice seem attractive. And it is the boaster that seems to
be opposed to the truthful man; for he is the worse
character.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1127b9
11 No type of injustice is more glaring than that of the
hypocrite who, in the very instant of being most false,
makes the pretence of appearing virtuous.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 13
12 Let your communication be. Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
Matthew 5:37
13 A certain man named An-a-ni-as, with Sapphira his wife,
sold a possession,
And kept back part of the price, his wife also being
privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the
apostles’ feet.
But Peter said, An-a-ni-as, why hath Satan filled thine
heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of
the price of the land?
Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it
was sold, was it not in thine own power? why has thou
conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied
unto men, but unto God.
And An-a-ni-as hearing these words fell down, and
gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that
heard these things.
And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried
him out, and buried him.
And it was about the space of three hours after, when
his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.
And Peter answered unto her. Tell me whether ye sold
the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
Then Peter said unto her. How is it that ye have agreed
together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet
of them which have buried thy husband are at the door,
and shall carry thee out.
Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded
up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her
dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
Acts 5:1-10
14 Solon. Men keep their promises when neither side can get
anything by the breaking of them.
Plutarch, Solon
15 If you want to be Somebody, these days, Have the nerve
to commit an act that rates jailing or exile:
Probity merits praise—and has to starve on the
highways.
Juvenal, Satire |
16 Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall
compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect,
to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the
hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and
curtains.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Ill, 7
17 External conduct has the character of honesty, in so far
as it reflects internal rectitude. For this reason honesty
consists radically in the internal choice, but its expression
lies in the external conduct.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 145, 1
18 Because fraud is a vice peculiar to man, it more
displeases God.
Dante, Inferno, XI, 25
19 Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory
should not meddle with lying.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 9, Of Liars
20 In truth lying is an accursed vice. We are men, and hold
together, only by our word. If we recognized the horror
and the gravity of lying, we would persecute it with fire
more justly than other crimes. | find that people ordinarily
fool around chastising harmless faults in children very
inappropriately, and torment them for thoughtless
actions that leave neither imprint nor consequences.
Only lying, and a little below it obstinacy', seem to me to
be the actions whose birth and progress one should
combat insistently. They grow with the child. And once
the tongue has been put on this wrong track, it cannot be
called back without amazing difficulty.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 9, Of Liars
21 Lying is an ugly vice, which an ancient paints in most
shameful colors when he say's that it is giving evidence
of contempt for God, and at the same time of fear of men.
It is not possible to represent more vividly the horror, the
vileness, and the profligacy of it. For what can you
imagine uglier than being a coward toward men and bold
toward God? Since mutual understanding is brought
about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word
betrays human society. It is the only instrument by means
of which our wills and thoughts communicate, it is the
interpreter of our soul. If it fails us, we have no more hold
on each other, no more knowledge of each other. If it
deceives us, it breaks up all our relations and dissolves all
the bonds of our society.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 18, Of Giving the Lie
22 There are rules both false and lax in philosophy. The
example that is proposed to us for making private utility
prevail over our pledged word does not receive enough
weight from the circumstance that they introduce into it.
Robbers have seized you; they have set you free again
after extracting from you an oath to pay a certain sum.
People are wrong to say that an honest man will be quit
of his word without paying, once he is out of their hands.
Nothing of the sort. What fear has once made me will, |
am bound still to will when without fear. And even if it
has forced only my tongue without my will, | am still
bound to make good my word to the last penny. As for
me, when my tongue has sometimes thoughtlessly run
ahead of my thoughts, | have scrupled to disavow it for
all that Otherwise we shall come by degrees to overthrow
all the rights that a third person obtains from our
promises and oaths. ... In this alone does private interest
have the right to excuse us for failing our promise, if we
have promised something wicked and unjust in itself; for
the rights of virtue must prevail over the rights of our
obligation.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 1, The Useful and the Honorable
23 Falstaff. Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, V, iv, 148
24 Verges. | thank God | am as honest as any man living that
is an old man and no honester than I.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Ill, V, 15
25 Nym. You'll pay me the eight shillings | won of you at
betting?
Pistol. Base is the slave that pays.
Shakespeare, Henry V, II, 1, 99
26 King Henry. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop;
a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow
bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but
a good heart... is the sun and the moon; or rather the sun
and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes,
but keeps his course truly.
Shakespeare, Henry V, V, ii, 168
27 Touchstone. Honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey
a sauce to sugar.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, tii, 30
28 Hamlet. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one
man picked out of ten thousand.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 178
29 lago. The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are.
Shakespeare, Othello, I, tii, 405
30 Cornwall. This is some fellow,
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he,
Ail honest mind and plain, he must speak truth!
An they will take it, so; if not, he’s plain.
These kind of knaves | know, which in this plainness
Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends
Than twenty silly ducking observants
That stretch their duties nicely.
Shakespeare, Lear, II, ti, 102
31 Duncan. There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.
He was a gentleman on whom | built
An absolute trust.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, iv, 12
32 Menenius. His nature is too noble for the world.
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident.
Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth.
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Ill, i, 255
33 Autolycus. Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his
sworn brother, a very simple gentleman!
Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 605
34 Autolycus. Though | am not naturally honest, | am so
sometimes by chance.
Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 731
35 It will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it
not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man’s
nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like allay in coin
of gold and silver; which may make the metal work the
better, but it embaseth it.
Bacon, Of Truth
36 Winding and crooked courses are the goings of the
serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon
the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with
shame as to be found false and perfidious.
Bacon, Of Truth
37 He who counterfeiteth, acts a part; and is as it were out
of himself: which, if long, proves so irksome, that Men are
glad to pull of their Vizards, and resume themselves
again; no practice being able to naturalize such
unnaturals, or make a Man rest content not to be himself.
And therefore since Sincerity is thy Temper, let veracity
be thy Virtue in Words, Manners, and Actions.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, III, 20
38 To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is spoken,
but disadvantageous to those who tell it, because it
makes them disliked.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 100
39 Although people may have no interest in what they are
saying, we must not absolutely conclude from this that
they are not lying; for there are some people who lie for
the mere sake of lying.
Pascal, Pensees, Il, 108
40 On th’ other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not Heav’n; he seemd
For dignity compos’d and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his Tongue
Dropt Manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest Counsels: for his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to Nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: yet he pleas’d the eare.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 108
41 Lying is so ready and cheap a cover for any miscarriage,
and so much in fashion among all sorts of people, that a
child can hardly avoid observing the use is made of it on
all occasions, and so can scarce be kept without great
care from getting into it. But it is so ill a quality, and the
mother of so many ill ones that spawn from it and take
shelter under it, that a child should be brought up in the
greatest abhorrence of it imaginable.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 131
42 Scandal. He that first cries out stop Thief, is often he that
has stol’n the Treasure.
Congreve, Love for Love, III, iv
43 Honesty hath no fence against superior cunning.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
44 As universal a Practice as Lying is, and as easy a one as it
seems, | do not remember to have heard three good Lyes
in all my Conversation, even from those who were most
celebrated in that Faculty.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
45 A Wit’s a feather, and a Chief a rod;
An honest Man’s the noblest work of God.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle lV, 247
46 Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he [Yorick] would
say, that Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would
add,—of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly
one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-
meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and
money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking
and shoplifting in seven. In the naked temper which a
merry heart discovered, he would say there was no
danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of
gravity was design, and consequently deceit;— ‘twas a
taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and
knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its
pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what
a French wit had long ago defined it,—viz. "A mysterious
carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind";—
which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence,
would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.
Sterne, Trisitram Shandy, I, II
47 |It is impossible to see the long scrolls in which every
contract is included, with all their appendages of seals
and attestation, without wondering at the depravity of
those beings who must be restrained from violation of
promise by such formal and public evidences, and
precluded from equivocation and subterfuge by such
punctilious minuteness.
Johnson, Rambler No, 131
48 Johnson. Why, Sir, if the fellow does not think as he
speaks, he is lying; and | see not what honour he can
propose to himself from having the character of a lyar.
But if he does really think that there is no distinction
between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our
houses let us count our spoons.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 1763)
49 | asked him whether, as a moralist, he did not think that
the practice of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice
feeling of honesty. Johnson. "Why no, Sir, if you act
properly. You are not to deceive your clients with false
representations of your opinion: you are not to tell lies to
a judge." Boswell. "But what do you think of supporting a
cause which you know to be bad?" Johnson, "Sir, you do
not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it.
| have said that you are to state facts fairly; so that your
thinking, or what you call Knowing, a cause to be bad,
must be from reasoning, must be from your supposing
your arguments to be weak and inconclusive. But, Sir,
that is not enough. An argument which does not convince
yourself, may convince the Judge to whom you urge it:
and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong,
and he is right. It is his business to judge; and you are not
to be confident in your own opinion that a cause is bad,
but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the
Judge’s opinion." Boswell, "But, Sir, does not affecting a
warmth when you have no warmth, and appearing to be
clearly of one opinion when you are in reality of another
opinion, does not such dissimulation impair one’s
honesty? Is there not some danger that a lawyer may put
on the same mask in common life, in the intercourse with
his friends?" Johnson. "Why no, Sir. Everybody knows you
are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is,
therefore, properly no dissimulation: the moment you
come from the bar you resume your usual behaviour. Sir,
a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the
common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid
for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon
his hands when he should walk on his feet."
Boswell, Lift of Johnson (1766)
50 Johnson. |It must be considered, that a man who only does
what every one of the society to which he belongs would
do, is not a dishonest man.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (April 6, 1772)
51 While we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest
recommendation of what he himself practised with the
utmost conscientiousness: | mean a strict attention to
truth, even in the most minute particulars. "Accustom
your children (said he,) constantly to this; if a thing
happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say
that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but
instantly check them; you do not know where deviation
from truth will end." Boswel/. "It may come to the door:
and when once an account is at all varied in one
circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to be
totally different from what really happened." Our lively
hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted
at this, and ventured to say, "Nay, this is too much. If Mr.
Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, | would comply, as
| should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little
variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a
day, if one is not perpetually watching." Johnson. "Well,
Madam, and you ought to be perpetually watching. It is
more from carelessness about truth than from intentional
lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world."
In his review of Dr. Warton’s Essay on the Writings and
Genius of Pope, Johnson has given the following salutary
caution upon this subject:
"Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of
false information, or enable any man to conceive that so
many groundless reports should be propagated, as every
man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate
what they think, as what they know; some men of
confused memories and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to
one man what belongs to another; and some talk on,
without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to
broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently
diffused by successive relaters."
Had he lived to read what Sir John Hawkins and Mrs,
Piozzi have related concerning himself, how much would
he have found his observation illustrated. He was indeed
sO much impressed with the prevalence of falsehood,
voluntary or unintentional, that | never knew any person
who upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told,
discovered more of the incredulus odi. He would say, with
a significant look and decisive tone, "It is not so. Do not
tell this again." He inculcated upon all his friends the
importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest
degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua
Reynolds observed to me, has been, that all who were of
his schoo! are distinguished for a love of truth and
accuracy,which they would not have possessed in the
same degree, if they had not been acquainted with
Johnson.
Boswell. Life of Johnson (March 31, 1778)
52 We talked of the casuistical question, Whether it was
allowable at any times to depart from Truth? Johanson. "
The general rule is, that Truth should never be violated,
because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of
life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith;
and occasional inconveniences should be willingly
suffered that we may preserve it. There must, however,
be some exceptions. If. for instance, a murderer should
ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him what
is not true, because you are under a previous obligation
not to betray a man to a murderer."
Boswell. Life of Johnson, (June 13, 1784)
53 The honest man, though e'er sae poor.
Is king o' men for a’ that!
Burns, A Man's a Man for a' That
54 (A man) finds himself forced by necessity to borrow
money. He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but
secs also that nothing will be lent to him unless he
promises stoutly to repay it in a definite time. He desires
to make this promise, but he has still so much conscience
as to ask himself: "Is it not unlawful and inconsistent with
duty to get out of a difficulty in this way?" Suppose
however that he resolves to do so: then the maxim of his
action would be expressed thus: "When | think myself in
want of money, | will borrow money and promise to repay
it, although | know that | never can do so." Now this
principle of self-love or of one's own advantage may
perhaps be consistent with my whole future welfare; but
the question now is, "Is it right?" | change then the
suggestion of self-love into a universal law, and state the
question thus: "How would it be if my maxim were a
universal law?" Then | see at once that it could never
hold as a universal law of nature, but would necessarily
contradict itself. For supposing it to be a universal law
that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty
should be able to promise whatever he pleases, with the
purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself
would become impossible, as well as the end that one
might have in view in it, Since no one would consider that
anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such
statements as vain pretences.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
55 He who it thinking of making a lying promise to others
will see at once that he would be using another man
merely as a mean, without the latter containing at the
same time the end in himself. For he whom | propose by
such a promise to use for my own purposes cannot
possibly assent to my mode of acting towards him and,
therefore, cannot himself contain the end of this action.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
56 Though this proposition, "honesty is the best policy,"
announces a theory, too frequently, alas! contradicted by
experience; yet no objection will ever overthrow this:
honesty is better than all policy, and is even an essential
condition of it.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Appendix, 1
57 In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for stays
and foundations. There is none but a Strict and faithful
dealing at home and a severe barring out of all duplicity
or illusion there. Whatever games are played with us, we
must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our
privacy with the last honesty and truth. | look upon the
simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the
root of all that is sublime in character. Soeak as you
think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. |
prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as
good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or
dissipated, or undermined, to all the ec/atin the universe.
This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion,
poetry, and art. At the top or at the bottom of all illusions,
| set the cheat which still leads us to work and live for
appearances; in spite of our conviction, in all sane hours,
that it is what we really are that avails, with friends, with
strangers, and with fate or fortune.
Emerson, I/lusions
58 Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that
they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule,
but the best of current silver. An honest man would have
but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule
at all in such a case.
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
59 Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by
practice; it is less a matter of will than of habit, and |
doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the
practice and formation of such a habit, To speak and act
truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult,
and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under
intimidation or penalty; and it is a strange thought how
many men there are, as | trust, who would hold to it at
the cost of fortune or life, for one who would hold to it at
the cost of a little daily trouble. And seeing that of all sin
there is, perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the
Almighty, no one more "wanting the good of virtue and of
being," than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence
to fall into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation,
and surely becoming an honourable man to resolve, that,
whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course of
his life may impel him to bear or to believe, none shall
disturb the serenity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish
the reality of his chosen delights.
Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, II, 1
60 Father Zossima. The man who lies to himself and listens
to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot
distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so
loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no
respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and
distract himself without love he gives way to passions
and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices,
all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The
man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than
anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take
offence, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has
insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for
himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque,
has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a
molehill— he knows that himself, yet he will be the first
to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he
feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine
vindictiveness.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, Il, 2
9.15 Wisdom and Folly
Of all the qualities of mind or character that are called
virtues, excellences, or perfections, wisdom is, perhaps, the
one most universally admired, as it is also, perhaps, the one
that is generally thought most difficult to achieve. Socrates
is famous for his unwillingness to accept the oracle’s
judgment of himself as the wisest man in Greece, declaring
that only God is wise and that men show some semblance of
wisdom only if they realize how little they know. According
to Socrates, the philosopher must not be thought of as a
wise man, but rather as a lover of or seeker after wisdom.
Some of the quotations below define philosophical or
speculative wisdom as the highest form of attainable
knowledge, consisting in an understanding of first principles
or ultimate causes. The greatest praise that has been given
to philosophy is accorded to it by those who identify it with
wisdom. For other quotations that express this view or
quotations questioning it, the reader is referred to Section
17.1 on Philosophy and Philosophers.
Wisdom and folly are often thought of by the poets and
the historians, as in books of the Old and the New
Testament, not as consisting in profound knowledge and
abysmal ignorance; rather the wise man is one who knows
how to manage all the affairs of life well, while the fool
stumbles and blunders and goes astray. This treatment of
wisdom overlaps the discussion of prudence or practical
wisdom, which the reader will find in Section 9.13. It also
touches on the same fundamental question that is raised
there— whether or not it is possible to be a wise man
without being a man of good moral character.
The quotations below include not only the praise of
wisdom, but also the praise of folly, especially the kinds of
folly that, upon examination, emerge as wisdom in disguise.
They give us examples of fools who speak wisely about
matters concerning which pretenders to wisdom fall into
folly. They distinguish true wisdom from the counterfeit of
wisdom that is exemplified in the cunning of the Serpent.
And they place the beginning of wisdom in wonder or in the
fear of the Lord.
1 In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by
night: and God said, Ask what | shall give thee.
And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed unto thy servant
David my father great mercy, according as he walked
before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in
uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast kept for
him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to
sit on his throne, as it is this day.
And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant
king instead of David my father: and | am but a little
child: | know not how to go out or come in.
And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which
thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be
numbered nor counted for multitude.
Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to
judge thy people, that | may discern between good and
bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had
asked this thing.
And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this
thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither
hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of
thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding
to discern judgment;
Behold, | have done according to thy words: lo, | have
given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that
there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee
Shall any arise like unto thee.
And | have also given thee that which thou hast not
asked, both riches, and honour: so that there shall not be
any among the kings like unto thee all thy days.
| Kings 3:5-13
2 The price of wisdom is above rubies.
Job 28:18
3 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Psalms 111:10
4 A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred
stripes into a fool.
Proverbs 17:10
5 Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the
wisdom of thy words.
Proverbs 23:9
6 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his
own conceit.
Proverbs 26:5
7 | gave my heart to Know wisdom, and to know madness
and folly: | perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that
incrcaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Ecclesiastes 1:17-18
8 | saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth
darkness.
The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool
walketh in darkness: and | myself perceived also that one
event happeneth to them all.
Then said | in my heart. As it happeneth to the fool, so
it happeneth even to me; and why was | then more wise?
Then | said in my heart, that this also is vanity.
For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of
the fool forever; seeing that which now is in the days to
come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man?
as the fool.
Ecclesiastes 2:13-16
9 Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor
man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.
Ecclesiastes 9:16
10 Chorus. Zeus, who guided men to think, who has laid it
down that wisdom comes alone through suffering.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 176
11 Oceanos. It is a profitable
thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 386
12 Haemon. A man, though wise, should never be ashamed
of learning more, and must unbend his mind.
Sophocles, Antigone, 710
13 They amongst men who pretend to wisdom and expend
deep thought on words do incur a serious charge of folly.
Euripides, Medea, 1225
14 Theseus. What fools men are! You work and work for
nothing, you teach ten thousand tasks to one another,
invent, discover everything. One thing only you do not
know: one thing you never hunt for— a way to teach fools
wisdom.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 916
15 Chorus. A tongue without reins,
defiance, unwisdom—
their end is disaster.
But the life of quiet good,
the wisdom that accepts—
these abide unshaken,
preserving, sustaining
the houses of men.
Far in the air of heaven,
the sons of heaven live.
But they watch the lives of men.
And what passes for wisdom is not;
unwise are those who aspire,
who outrange the limits of man.
Briefly, we live. Briefly,
then die. Wherefore, | say,
he who hunts a glory, he who tracks
some boundless, superhuman dream,
may lose his harvest here and now
and garner death. Such men are mad,
their counsels evil.
Euripides, Bacchae, 387
16 Socrates. If you are wise, all men will be your friends and
kindred, for you will be useful and good; but if you are
not wise, neither father, nor mother, nor kindred; nor any
one else, will be your friends.
Plato, Lysis, 210B
17 Socrates. God only is wise; and... the wisdom of men is
worth little or nothing.... He ... is the wisest, who, like
Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth
nothing.
Plato, Apology, 23A
18 Socrates. First among the virtues found in the State,
wisdom comes into view, and in this | detect a certain
peculiarity.
Glaucon. What is that?
The State which we have been describing is said to be
wise as being good in counsel?
Very true.
And good counsel is clearly a kind of knowledge, for
not by ignorance, but by knowledge, do men counsel
well?
Clearly.
And the kinds of knowledge in a State are many and
diverse?
Of course.
There is the knowledge of the carpenter; but is that
the sort of Knowledge which gives a city the title of wise
and good in counsel?
Certainly not; that would only give a city the
reputation of skill in carpentering.
Then a city is not to be called wise because possessing
a knowledge which counsels for the best about wooden
implements?
Certainly not.
Nor by reason of a knowledge which advises about
brazen pots, | said, nor as possessing any other similar
knowledge?
Not by reason of any of them, he said.
Nor yet by reason of Knowledge which cultivates the
earth; that would give the city the name of agricultural?
Yes.
Well, | said, and is there any knowledge in our
recently-founded State among any of the citizens which
advises, not about any particular thing in the Slate, but
about the whole, and considers how a State can best deal
with itself and with other States?
There certainly is.
And what is this knowledge, and among whom is it
found? | asked.
It is the knowledge of the guardians, he replied, and is
found among those whom we were just now describing as
perfect guardians.
And what is the name which the city derives from the
possession of this sort of knowledge?
The name of good in counsel and truly wise.
And will there be in our city more of these true
guardians or more smiths?
The smiths, he replied, will be far more numerous.
Will not the guardians be the smallest of all the
classes who receive a name from the profession of some
kind of knowledge?
Much the smallest.
And so by reason of the smallest part or class, and of
the knowledge which resides in this presiding and ruling
part of itself, the whole State, being thus constituted
according to nature, will be wise; and this, which has the
only knowledge worthy to be called wisdom, has been
ordained by nature to be of all classes the least.
Plato, Republic, IV, 428A
19 Socrates. God is never in any way unrighteous—he is
perfect righteousness; and he of us who is the most
righteous is most like him... . To Know this is true wisdom
and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and
vice. All other kinds of wisdom or cleverness, which seem
only, such as the wisdom of politicians, or the wisdom of
the arts, are coarse and vulgar.
Plato, Theaetetus, 176A
20 Socrates. And of all the virtues, is not wisdom the one
which the mass of mankind are always claiming, and
which most arouses in them a spirit of contention and
lying conceit of wisdom?
Protarchus. Certainly.
Soc. And may not all this be truly called an evil
condition?
Pro. Very evil.
Plato, Philebus, 49A
21 All men suppose what is called Wisdom to deal with the
first causes and the principles of things; so that... the
man of experience is thought to be wiser than the
possessors of any sense-perception whatever, the artist
wiser than the men of experience, the master-worker than
the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to
be more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive.
Clearly then Wisdom is knowledge about certain
principles and causes.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b28
22 We must inquire of what kind are the causes and the
principles, the knowledge of which is Wisdom. If one were
to take the notions we have about the wise man, this
might perhaps make the answer more evident. We
suppose first, then, that the wise man knows all things, as
far as possible, although he has not knowledge of each of
them in detail; secondly, that he who can learn things
that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is %vise
(sense-perception is common to all, and therefore easy
and no mark of Wisdom); again, that he who is more
exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser,
in every branch of knowledge; and that of the sciences,
also, that which is desirable on its own account and for
the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of Wisdom
than that which is desirable on account of its results, and
the superior science is more of the nature of Wisdom than
the ancillary; for the wise man must not be ordered but
must order, and he must not obey another, but the less
wise must obey him.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a5
23 Wisdom (1) in the arts we ascribe to their most finished
exponents, e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus
as a maker of portrait-statues, and here we mean nothing
by wisdom except excellence in art; but (2) we think that
some people are wise in general, not in some particular
field or in any other limited respect,... Therefore wisdom
must plainly be the most finished of the forms of
knowledge. It follows that the wise man must not only
know what follows from the first principles, but must also
possess truth about the first principles. Therefore wisdom
must be intuitive reason combined with scientific
knowledge— scientific knowledge of the highest objects
which has received as it were its proper completion. Of
the highest objects, we say; for it would be strange to
think that the art of politics, or practical wisdom, is the
best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the
world.
Aristotle, 1141a9
24 It is evident. .. that philosophic wisdom and the art of
politics cannot be the same; for if the state of mind
concerned with a man’s own interests is to be called
philosophic wisdom, there will be many philosophic
wisdoms; there will not be one concerned with the good
of all animals (any more than there is one art of medicine
for all existing things), but a different philosophic wisdom
about the good of each species.
But if the argument be that man is the best of the
animals, this makes no difference; for there are other
things much more divine in their nature even than man,
e.g,, most conspicuously, the bodies of which the
heavens are framed. From what has been said it is plain,
then, that philosophic wisdom is scientific knowledge,
combined with intuitive reason, of the things that are
highest by nature.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1141a28
25 Fools admire and like all things the more which they
perceive to be concealed under involved language, and
determine things to be true which can prettily tickle the
cars and are varnished over with finely sounding phrase.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
26 Because law ought to reform vice and promote virtue, the
guiding principles of life can be inferred from it. Wisdom
is the mother of all good things, and philosophy has
taken its name from the Greek expression that means
“love of wisdom." Of all the gifts of the gods to the human
race, philosophy is the richest, most bountiful, and most
exalted. Besides all its other wisdom, philosophy has
informed us that the most difficult thing in the world is to
know ourselves. This adage is so decisive for us that
credit for it is given not to some person, but to the god at
Delphi. The man who knows himself will acknowledge
that he has a divine spark within him. He will regard his
own nature as a consecrated reflection of God, Therefore
what he does and thinks will be worthy of this great gift
of the gods. When he has examined and tried himself, he
will understand how nobly equipped by nature he
entered into life. He will realize how various are the ways
for attaining wisdom. At first his mind contained only
vague concepts, but these were later illuminated by the
help of wisdom. He learns how to be a good man and
consequently a happy man.
Cicero, Laws, |, 22
27 Think, while there’s time, how soon Death’s pyre may
blaze;
And some brief folly mix with prudent ways:
At the fit hour ‘tis sweet to unbend.
Horace, Odes, IV, 12
28 Only the wise man is content with what is his. All
foolishness suffers the burden of dissatisfaction with
itself.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 9
29 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you
seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool,
that he may be wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own
craftiness.
| Corinthians 3:18-19
30 For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
I! Corinthians 11:19
31 [Cato] used to assert... that wise men profited more by
fools, than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided
the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the
good examples of wise men.
Plutarch, Marcus Cato
32 All that comes to be, work of nature or of craft, some
wisdom has made: everywhere a wisdom presides at a
making.
No doubt the wisdom of the artist may be the guide of
the work; it is sufficient explanation of the wisdom
exhibited in the arts; but the artist himself goes back,
after all, to that wisdom in Nature which is embodied in
himself; and this is not a wisdom built up of theorems but
one totality, not a wisdom consisting of manifold detail
co-ordinated into a unity but rather a unity working out
into detail.
Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, VIII, 5
33 Wisdom insinuates itself into holy souls, and makes them
the friends of God and His prophets, and noiselessly
informs them of His works.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 4
34 We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent: we are
set free by the foolishness of God. Moreover, just as the
former was called wisdom, but was in reality the folly of
those who despised God, so the latter is called
foolishness, but is true wisdom in those who overcome
the devil.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 14
35 If wisdom in the knowledge of the created world is lovely,
how lovely is the wisdom which has created all things
from nothing!
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, XXIV
36 Whatever is divided and multiplied in creatures exists in
God simply and unitedly. Now man has different kinds of
knowledge, according to the different objects of His
knowledge. He has /nte/ligence as regards the knowledge
of principles; he has science as regards knowledge of
conclusions; he has wisdom, according as he knows the
highest cause; he has counsel or prudence, according as
he knows what is to be done. But God knows all these by
one simple act of knowledge... Hence the simple
knowledge of God can be named by all these names; in
such a way, however, that there must be removed from
each of them, so far as they enter into the divine
predication, everything that savors of imperfection; and
everything that expresses perfection is to be retained in
them. Hence it is said, With Him is wisdom and strength.
He hath counsel and understanding.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 14, 1
37 Wisdom is a kind of science in so far as it has that which
is common to all the sciences, namely, to demonstrate
conclusions from principles. But since it has something
proper to itself above the other sciences, in so far, that is,
as it judges of them all, not only as to their conclusions,
but also zs to their first principles, therefore it is a more
perfect virtue than science.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 57, 2
38 Since the word knowledge implies certitude of
judgment... if this certitude of the judgment is derived
from the highest cause, the knowledge has a special
name, which is wisdom. For a wise man in any branch of
knowledge is one who knows the highest cause of that
kind of knowledge, and is able to judge of all matters by
that cause; and a wise man absolutely, is one who knows
the cause which is absolutely highest, namely God.
Hence the knowledge of Divine things is called wisdom,
while the knowledge of human things is called
knowledge, this being the common name denoting
certitude of judgment, and appropriated to the judgment
which is formed through second causes. Accordingly, if
we take knowledge in this way, it is a distinct gift from
the gift of wisdom, so that the gift of knowledge is only
about human or created things.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 9, 2
39 Since wisdom is the knowledge of Divine things. ... it is
considered by us in one way, and in another way by
philosophers. For, seeing that our life is ordered to the
enjoyment of God, and is directed to this according toa
participation of the Divine Nature, conferred on us
through grace, wisdom, as we look at it, is considered not
only as making us know God, as it is with the
philosophers, but also as directing human conduct; since
this is directed not only by the human law, but also by
the Divine law....
Accordingly the beginning of wisdom as to its essence
consists in the first principles of wisdom, which are the
articles of faith, and in this sense faith is said to be the
beginning of wisdom. But as regards the effect, the
beginning of wisdom is the point where wisdom begins to
work, and in this way fear is the beginning of wisdom, yet
servile fear in one way, and filial fear, in another. For
servile fear is like a principle disposing a man to wisdom
from without, in so far as he refrains from sin through fear
of punishment, and is thus fashioned for the effect of
wisdom.... On the other hand, chaste or filial fear is the
beginning of wisdom, as being the first effect of wisdom.
For since the regulation of human conduct by the Divine
law belongs to wisdom, in order to make a beginning,
man must first of all fear God and submit himself to Him;
thus the result will be that in all things he will be ruled by
God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 19, 7
40 Wisdom denotes a certain rectitude of judgment
according to the Eternal Law. Now rectitude of judgment
is twofold: first, on account of perfect use of reason,
secondly, on account of a certain connaturality with the
matter about which one has to judge in a given instance.
Thus, about matters of chastity, a man after inquiring
with his reason forms a right judgment if he has learnt
the science of morals, while he who has the habit of
chastity judges rightly of such matters by a kind of
connaturality.
Accordingly it pertains to the wisdom that is an
intellectual virtue to pronounce right judgment about
Divine things after reason has made its inquiry, but it
pertains to wisdom as a gift of the Holy Ghost to judge
rightly about them on account of a certain connaturality
with them.... Now this sympathy or connaturality for
Divine things is the result of charity, which unites us to
God: He who Is joined to the Lord, is one spirit.
Consequently wisdom which is a gift, has its cause in the
will, which cause is charity, but it has its essence in the
intellect, whose act is to judge rightly.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 45, 2
41 Folly is fittingly opposed to wisdom. For sapiens (wise) as
Isidore says "iS So named from sapor (Savour), because
just as the taste is quick to distinguish between savours
of meats, so is a wise man in discerning things and
causes." Therefore it is manifest that folly is opposed to
wisdom as its contrary, while fatuity is opposed to itasa
pure negation, for the fatuous man lacks the sense of
judgment; the fool has the sense, though dulled, and the
wise man has the sense acute and penetrating.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-ll, 46, 1
42 It is part of folly that a man should have a distaste for
God and His gifts.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 46, 3
43 [Pantagruel] took all things in good part, and interpreted
every action to the best sense. He never vexed nor
disquieted himself with the least pretence of dislike to
anything, because he knew that he must have most
grossly abandoned the divine mansion of reason, if he
had permitted his mind to be never so little grieved,
afflicted, or altered at any occasion whatsoever. For all
the goods that the heaven covereth, and that the earth
containeth, in all their dimensions of height, depth,
breath, and length, are not of so much worth, as that we
should for them disturb or disorder our affections, trouble
or perplex our senses or spirits.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, III, 2
44 Pantagruel. As he who narrowly takes heed to what
concerns the dexterous management of his private
affairs, domestic businesses, and those adoes which are
confined within the strait-laced compass of one family,—
who is attentive, vigilant, and active in the economic rule
of his own house,—whose frugal spirit never strays from
home,—who loseth no occasion whereby he may
purchase to himself more riches, and build up new heaps
of treasure on his former wealth,—and who knows warily
how to prevent the inconveniences of poverty, is called a
worldly wise man, though perhaps in the second
judgment of the intelligences which are above, he be
esteemed a fool,—so, on the contrary is he most like,
even in the thoughts of celestial spirits, to be not only
sage, but to presage events to come by divine
inspiration, who laying quite aside those cares which are
conducible to his body, or his fortunes, and, as it were
departing from himself, rids all his senses of terrene
affections, and clears his fancies of those plodding
studies which harbour in the minds of thriving men. All
which neglects of sublunary things are vulgarly imputed
folly.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 37
45 It seems to me that all peculiar and out-of-the-way
fashions come rather from folly and ambitious affectation
than from true reason, and that the wise man should
withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in
freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for
externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions
and forms. Society in general can do without our
thoughts; but the rest—our actions, our work, our
fortunes, and our very life—we must lend and abandon to
its service and to the common opinions, just as the great
and good Socrates refused to save his life by
disobedience to the magistrate, even to a very unjust and
very iniquitous magistrate. For it is the rule of rules, and
the universal law of laws, that each man should observe
those of the place he is in.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 23, Of Custom
46 Stupidity and wisdom meet at the same point of feeling
and of resolving to endure human accidents. The wise
curb and control the evil; the others are not aware of it.
The latter are, so to speak, on this side of accidents, the
former beyond them; for the wise man, after having well
weighed and considered their qualities and measured
and judged them for what they are, springs above them
by the power of a vigorous courage. He disdains them
and tramples them underfoot, having a strong and solid
soul, against which the arrows of fortune, when they
come to strike, must necessarily bounce off and be
blunted, meeting a body on which they can make no
impression. The ordinary and middle condition of men
lodges between these two extremes; which is that of
those who perceive evils, feel them, and cannot endure
them.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 54, Of Vain Subtleties
47 What does truth preach to us, when she exhorts us to flee
worldly philosophy, when she so often inculcates in us
that our wisdom is but folly before God; that of all
vanities the vainest is man; that the man who is
presumptuous of his knowledge does not yet know what
knowledge is; and that man, who is nothing, if he thinks
he is something, seduces and deceives himself? These
statements of the Holy Spirit express so clearly and so
vividly what | wish to maintain, that no other proof would
be needed against men who would surrender with all
submission and obedience to its authority. But these men
insist on being whipped to their own cost and will not
allow us to combat their reason except by itself.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
4B The wisest man that ever was, when they ashed him
what he knew, answered that he knew this much, that he
knew nothing. He was verifying what they say, that the
greatest part of what we know is the least of those parts
that we do not know; that is to say that the very thing we
think we know is a part, and a very small part, of our
ignorance.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
49 Anyone who has once been very foolish will never at any
other time be very wise.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 6, Of Coaches
50 Gratiano. There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond.
And do a wilful stillness entertain.
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle,
And when | ope my lips let no dog bark!"
O my Antonio, | do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing, when, | am very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, i, 88
51 Portia. |f to do were as easy as to Know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages
princes’ palaces.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, ti, 13
52 Dogberry. | am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an
officer, and, which is more, a householder, and, which is
more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and
one that Knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough,
go to; and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that
hath two gowns and everything handsome about him.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, IV, ti, 82
53 Celia. Always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of
the wits.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, I, ti, 58
54 Jaques. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear,
Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vii, 33
55 Jaques. Invest me in my motley; give me leave
To speak my mind, and | will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, 11, vil, 58
56 Touchstone. The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise
man knows himself to be a fool.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, V, i, 34
57 Viola. This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III, i, 66
58 Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that
thou wast born with.
Kent. This is not altogether fool, my Lord.
Shakespeare, Lear, I, iv, 162
59 Fool. Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach
thy Fool to lie. | would fain learn to lie.
Lear. An you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped.
Fool. | marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are.
They'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have
me whipped for lying; and sometimes | am whipped for
holding my peace. | had rather be any kind o’ thing than
a Fool; and yet | would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast
pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle.
Shakespeare, Lear, I, iv, 195
60 Fool. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee beaten
for being old before thy time.
Lear. How’s that?
Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst
been wise.
Shakespeare, Lear, I, v, 44
61 Kent. Why, fool?
Fool. We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee
there’s no labouring i’ the winter. All that follow their
noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and there’s not
a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking.
Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest
it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that
goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise
man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. |
would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives
it.
Shakespeare, Lear, Il, iv, 67
62 Fool. He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a
horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.
Shakespeare, Lear, Ill, vi, 19
63 They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense:
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XCIV
64 Oh! Sir [Batchclor], reply’d Don Antonio, what have you
to answer for, in robbing the World of the most diverting
Folly, that ever was expos’d among Mankind?
Cervantes, Den Quixote, 11, 65
65 Silence is the virtue of a fool.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk, VI, III, 31
66 There is in human nature generally more of the fool than
of the wise; and therefore those faculties by which the
foolish part of men’s minds is taken are most potent.
Bacon, Of Boldness
67 The folly of one man is the fortune of another. For no man
prospers so suddenly as by others' errors.
Bacon, Of Fortune
68 The sciences taken all together are identical with human
wisdom.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, |
69 | cannot justifie that contemptible Proverb, That fools
only are Fortunate; or that insolent Paradox, That a wise
man is out of the reach of Fortune. ... 'Tis, | confess, the
common fate of men of singular gifts of mind to be
destitute of those of Fortune, which doth not any way
deject the Spirit of wiser judgments, who throughly
understand the justice of this proceeding; and being
inrich’d with higher donatives, cast a more careless eye
on these vulgar parts of felicity.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 18
70 Let Providence provide for Fools: ‘tis not partiality, but
equity in God, who deals with us but as our natural
Parents; those that are able of Body and Mind, he leaves
to their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a
larger portion, and pieces out the defect of one, by the
access of the other.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 18
71 Tltc world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural
ignorance, which is man’s true state. The sciences have
two extremes which meet. the first is the pure natural
ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The
other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who,
having run through all that men can know, find they
know nothing, and come back again to that same
ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned
ignorance which is conscious of itself. Those between the
two, who have departed from natural ignorance and not
been able to reach the other, have some smattering of
this vain knowledge and pretend to be wise. These
trouble the world and are bad judges of everything. The
people and the wise constitute the world; these despise
it, and are despised. They judge badly of everything, and
the world judges rightly of them.
Pascal, Pensées, V, 327
72 Adam. Apte the Mind or Fancie is to roave
Unchcekt, and of her roaving is no end;
Till warn’d, or by experience taught, she learn
That not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and suttle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime Wisdom, what is more, is fume.
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 188
73 Samson. What is strength without a double share
Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensom.
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest suttleties, not made to rule.
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 53
74 God. He who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light.
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
the first and wisest of them all profess’d
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits,
A third son doubled all things, though plain sence;
Others in vertue plac’d felicity,
But vertue joyn’d with riches and long life.
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease,
The Stoic last in Philosophic pride,
By him call’d vertue; and his vertuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,
Which when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can,
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast.
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas what can they teach, and not mislead;
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more.
And how the world began, and how man fell
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the Soul they talk, but all awrie,
And in themselves seek vertue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none,
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud.
Milton, Paradise Regained, IV, 288
75 No God and no human being, except an envious one, is
delighted by my impotence or my trouble, or esteems as
any virtue in us tears, sighs, fears, and other things of
this kind, which are signs of mental impotence; on the
contrary, the greater the joy with which we are affected,
the greater the perfection to which we pass thereby, that
is to say, the more do we necessarily partake of the
divine nature. To make use of things, therefore, and to
delight in them as much as possible (provided we do not
disgust ourselves with them, which is not delighting in
them), is the part of a wise man. It is the part of a wise
man, | say, to refresh and invigorate himself with
moderate and pleasant eating and drinking, with sweet
scents and the beauty of green plants, with ornament,
with music, with sports, with the theatre, and with all
things of this kind which one man can enjoy without
hurting another. For the human body is composed of a
great number of parts of diverse nature, which constantly
need new and varied nourishment, in order that the
whole of the body may be equally fit for everything which
can follow from its nature, and consequently that the
mind may be equally fit to understand many things at
once. This mode of living best of all agrees both with our
principles and with common practice; therefore this mode
of living is the best of all, and is to be universally
commended,
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop, 45, Schol,
76 The ignorant man is not only agitated by external causes
in many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but
lives also ignorant, as it were, both of God and of things,
and as soon as he ceases to suffer ceases also to be. On
the other hand, the wise man, in so far as he is
considered as such, is scarcely ever moved in his mind,
but, being conscious by a certain eternal necessity of
himself, of God, and of things, never ceases to be, and
always enjoys true peace of soul. If the way which, as |
have shown, leads hither seem very difficult, it can
nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult since it
is so seldom discovered.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 42, Schol.
77 The latter Part of a wise man’s Life is taken up in curing
the Follies, Prejudices, and false Opinions he had
contracted in the former.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
78 The learn’d is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he Knows no more.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Il, 263
79 No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul’s church more safe than Paul’s churchyard;
Nay, fly to Altars; there they'll talk you dead:
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,
And never shocked, and never turned aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund’ring tide.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Ill, 622
80 [Johnson’s] superiority over other learned men consisted
chiefly in what may be called the art of thinking, the art
of using his mind; a certain continual power of seizing
the useful substance of all that he knew, and exhibiting it
in a clear and forcible manner; so that knowledge, which
we often see to be no better than lumber in men of dull
understanding, was, in him, true, evident, and actual
wisdom.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1784)
81 The greybeard, old Wisdom, may boast of his treasures,—
Give me with gay Folly to live;
| grant him calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures,
But Folly has raptures to give.
Burns, Written on a Window of the "Globe Tavern,"
Dumfries
82 The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock; but of
wisdom, no clock can measure.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 7
83 If the fool would persist in his folly he would become
wise.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 7
84 Faust. Through the world | have but flown.
Whatever | craved, | seized it by the hair,
Whatever sufficed not, | let fare.
Whatever escaped, | let it go.
I’ve but desired and but achieved, each hour,
And then again have wished, and so with power
Stormed through my life; at first with power and
greatness;
But now life moves with cautious, wise sedateness.
Well do | know the sphere of earth and men.
The view beyond is barred to mortal ken;
A fool! who thither turns his blinking eyes
And dreams he'll find his like above the skies.
Let him stand fast and look around on earth;
Not mute is this world to a man of worth.
Why need he range through all eternity?
Here he can seize all that he knows to be.
Thus let him wander down his earthly day;
When spirits spook, let him pursue his way;
Let him find pain and bliss as on he stride.
He! every moment still unsatisfied.
Goethe, Faust, 11, 5, 11433
85 Faust. Yes, to this thought | hold unswerving,
To wisdom’s final fruit, profoundly true;
Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.
Thus here, by danger girt, the active day
Of childhood, manhood, age will pass away.
Aye! such a throng | fain would see,
Stand on free soil among a people free.
Then might I say, that moment seeing;
"Ah, linger on, thou art so fair!"
The traces of my earthly being
Can perish not in aeons—they are there!
That lofty moment | now feel in this:
| now enjoy the highest moment’s bliss.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 5, 11573
86 Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.
Wordsworth, The Excursion, I/l, 231
87 Wisdom attempts nothing enormous and disproportioned
to its powers, nothing which it cannot perform or nearly
perform.
Emerson, The Conservative
88 The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
Emerson, Experience
89 It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate
things.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
90 Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its
own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is
content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things,
and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things
that provokes it out of the soul.
Whitman, Song of the Open Road, VI
91 The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other
woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and
write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of
the wisdom box. But it is quite another matter whether he
ever opens the box or not.
T. H. Huxley, A Liberal Education
92 There is a limit to human knowledge, and both sacred
and profane writers witness that overwisdom is folly.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pt. Il, V, 6
93 Pierre. All we can know is that we know nothing. And
that’s the height of human wisdom.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, V, 1
94 The Mason The highest wisdom is not founded on reason
alone, not on those worldly sciences of physics, history,
chemistry, and the like, into which intellectual knowledge
is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest
wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole—
the science explaining the whole creation and man’s
place in it. To receive that science it is necessary to purify
and renew one’s inner self, and so before one can know, it
is necessary to believe and to perfect one’s self. And to
attain this end, we have the light called conscience that
God has implanted in our souls.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, V, 2
95 The king says.... Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our
side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, XXVI
96 Behold, the fool saith, ’Put not all thine eggs in the one
basket’—which is but a manner of saying, ‘Scatter your
money and your attention;’ but the wise man saith, ‘Put
all your eggs in the one basket and— WATCH THAT
BASKET.’
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, XV
Chapter 10
POLITICS
Chapter 10 is divided into nine sections: 10.1 Society and
the State, 10.2 The Realm of Politics, 10.3 Government: Its
Nature, Necessity, and Forms, 10,4 Government of and by
the People: Republic and Democracy, 10.5 Citizenship, 10.6
Despotism and Tyranny, 10.7 Slavery, 10.8 Classes and
Glass Conflict, and 10.9 Revolution.
For the most part, the term "politics" is used here to cover
the range of questions or issues that have been discussed in
political philosophy or political theory, though the
quotations often go afield to touch on related topics in the
wider domain of social thought. The opening section, for
example, is concerned with human association in all its
forms—with different types of societies or communities, not
just civil society, the political community, or state; and
Section 10.2 not only includes passages that discuss politics
as a discipline or branch of practical philosophy, but also
passages that offer counsel or guidance to the statesman or
politician and try to formulate the rules of statecraft or the
policies to adopt for success in the struggle for power.
Similarly, Sections 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9, in dealing with
Slavery, class conflict, and revolution, introduce economic
and sociological considerations in addition to the more
narrowly political ones.
The central sections in this chapter are devoted to the
problems of government, especially the government of the
political community or state. Section 10.3 prepares the way
for the sections to follow by assembling quotations
concerning the nature of government, its necessity, and the
various forms it takes or can take. Section 10.4 deals with
constitutional government or a government of laws, as
contrasted with absolute or unlimited government, which is
treated in Section 10.6 under the head of despotism and
tyranny. Since citizenship, in a strict sense, comes into
existence only with the creation of republics and the
question of who shall be admitted to citizenship is mainly
raised in connection with democracy, Section 10.5,
Citizenship, follows directly after the section in which
republics and democracies are discussed. Similarly, since
slavery or subjection is the condition of those who are
governed tyrannically or despotically, Section 10.7, Slavery,
follows directly after the section in which despotism and
tyranny are discussed. The last two sections of the chapter
are also closely related to one another; for, as the reader will
find, one of the main points made in both Sections 10.8 and
10.9 is that class conflict breeds revolution.
Four other chapters deal with subjects and problems that
either fall within the domain of politics or are closely related
to it. They are Chapter 11 on Economics, Chapter 12 on Law
and Justice, Chapter 13 on Liberty and Equality, and Chapter
14 on War and Peace. The reader is advised to consult these
chapters for matters that are not fully treated here, or for the
discussion of matters that throw light on what is treated
here.
10.1 Society and the State
Man, it is said, is both a social and a political animal. Of
these two ascriptions, "social" has the broader connotation.
Like other animals, man is gregarious rather than solitary.
His gregariousness is manifested in various forms of human
association: the family is one of these; the tribe or village,
another; and a third is the state. It is only in virtue of this
last form of association that man is called a "political"
animal; and among gregarious or social animals, man alone
is political.
The political community or civil society may be a city-
state or a nation-state, and it might, at some future date,
even be a world-state. In any of these embodiments, the
state differs in a number of respects from all other forms of
society, among which the most distinctive, perhaps, is that it
may include within its domain other societies, such as
families or tribes, but while it remains an independent or
autonomous state, it is itself included in no larger
community.
The reader will find that ancient and modern writers offer
different characterizations of the state, as well as different
accounts of its nature and origin. However, careful reading
will discover that, although the moderns employ the fiction
of a social contract as the original constitution of the state,
there is underlying agreement that the state is both natural
and conventional—natural in the sense that man is by
nature political and needs the state for the perfection of
human life, and conventional in the sense that the state
comes into existence through human institutions,
intelligently devised and voluntarily adopted.
The foregoing considerations affect the answers given to
such questions as whether man is made for the state or the
state for man; whether man is a part of the state and
subordinate to it as an organic part is subordinate to the
body of which it is a member; whether the end that the state
serves is the happiness of its constituent beings; whether
the state can exist without law or government; and whether,
as contrasted with the state of nature and the state of war,
civil society is identical with civil peace. The reader will find
that these questions are also discussed in other contexts—in
Section 9.8 on Happiness; in Section 10.3 on Government:
Its Nature, Necessity, and Forms; in Section 12.1 on Law and
Lawyers; in Section 14.3 on The Conditions of Peace.
1 Socrates. Mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were
no cities. But the consequence was that they were
destroyed by the wild beasts, for they were utterly weak
in comparison of them, and their art was only sufficient to
provide them with the means of life, and did not enable
them to carry on war against the animals: food they had,
but not as yet the art of government, of which the art of
war is a part. After a while the desire of self-preservation
gathered them into cities; but when they were gathered
together, having no art of government, they evil
intreated one another, and were again in process of
dispersion and destruction. Zeus feared that the entire
race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to
them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering
principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and
conciliation.
Plato, Protagoras, 322A
2 Socrates. A State... arises, as | conceive, out of the needs
of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have
many wants. Gan any other origin of a State be
imagined?
Adeimantus. There can be no other.
Then as we have many wants, and many persons are
needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one
purpose and another for another; and when these
partners and helpers are gathered together in one
habitation the body of inhabitants is termed a State.
True, he said.
And they exchange with one another, and one gives,
and another receives, under the idea that the exchange
will be for their good.
Very true.
Then, | said, let us begin and create in idea a State;
and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of
our invention.
Plato, Republic, Il, 369A
3 Socrates. Can there be any greater evil than discord and
distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? or
any greater good than the bond of unity?
Glaucon. There cannot.
And there is unity where there is community of
pleasures and pains—where all the citizens are glad or
grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow?
No doubt.
Yes; and where there is no common but only private
feeling a State is disorganized—when you have one half
of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at
the same events happening to the city or the citizens?
Certainly.
Such differences commonly originate in a
disagreement about the use of the terms "mine" and "not
mine," "his" and "not his,"
Exactly so.
And is not that the best-ordered State in which the
greatest number of persons apply the terms "mine" and
“not mine" in the same way to the same thing?
Quite true.
Or that again which most nearly approaches to the
condition of the individual—as in the body, when but a
finger of one of us is hurt, the whole frame, drawn
towards the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom
under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and
sympathizes all together with the part affected, and we
say that the man has a pain in his finger; and the same
expression is used about any other part of the body,
which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure
at the alleviation of suffering.
Very true, he replied; and | agree with you that in the
best-ordered State there is the nearest approach to this
common feeling which you describe.
Then when any one of the citizens experiences any
good or evil, the whole State will make his case their own,
and will either rejoice or sorrow with him?
Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered
State.
Plato, Republic, V, 462A
4 Man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live
with others.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1169a18
5 Every state is a community of some kind, and every
community is established with a view to some good; for
mankind always act in order to obtain that which they
think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the
state or political community, which is the highest of all,
and which embraces all the rest, aims at good ina
greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Aristotle, Politics, 1252a1
6 When several villages are united in a single complete
community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-
sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in
the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the
sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of
society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of
them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each
thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether
we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides,
the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be
self-sufficing is the end and the best.
Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of
nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And
he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a
state, is either a bad man or above humanity...
Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the
family and to the individual, since the whole is of
necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body
be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an
equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for
when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But
things are defined by their working and power; and we
ought not to say that they are the same when they no
longer have their proper quality, but only that they have
the same name. The proof that the state is a creation of
nature and prior to the individual is that the individual,
when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like
a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to
live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficent
for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part
of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by
nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the
greatest of benefactors.
Aristotle, Politics, 1252b28
7 AS a means to the end which he [Plato] ascribes to the
state, the scheme, taken literally, is impracticable, and
how we are to interpret it is nowhere precisely stated, |
am speaking of the premiss from which the argument of
Socrates proceeds, ‘that the greater the unity of the state
the better’. Is it not obvious that a state may at length
attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state?—
since the nature of a state is to be a plurality.
Aristotle, Politics, 1261a13
8 A state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the
sake of life only: if life only were the object, slaves and
brute animals might form a state, but they cannot, for
they have no share in happiness or in a life of free choice.
Nor does a state exist for the sake of alliance and security
from injustice, nor yet for the sake of exchange and
mutual intercourse.... Virtue must be the care of a state
which is truly so called, and not merely enjoys the name:
for without this end the community becomes a mere
alliance which differs only in place from alliances of
which the members live apart; and law is only a
convention, ‘a surety to one another of justice’, as the
sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make
the citizens good and just. ... It is clear then that a state
is not a mere society, having a common place,
established for the prevention of mutual crime and for
the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which
a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not
constitute a state, which is a community of families and
aggregation of families in well-being, for the sake of a
perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only
be established among those who live in the same place
and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connexions,
brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which
draw men together. But these are created by friendship,
for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the
state is the good life, and these are the means towards it.
And the state is the union of families and villages in a
perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy
and honourable life.
Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for
the sake of noble actions, and not of mere
companionship. Hence they who contribute most to such
a society have a greater share in it than those who have
the same or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are
inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who
exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in
virtue.
Aristotle, Politics, 1280a32
9 A state... only begins to exist when it has attained a
population sufficient for a good life in the political
community: it may indeed, if it somewhat exceed this
number, be a greater state. But... there must be a limit.
What should be the limit will be easily ascertained by
experience. For both governors and governed have duties
to perform; the special functions of a governor are to
command and to judge. But if the citizens of a state are
to judge and to distribute offices according to merit, then
they must know each other’s characters; where they do
not possess this knowledge, both the election to offices
and the decision of lawsuits will go wrong. When the
population is very large they are manifestly settled at
haphazard, which clearly ought not to be.... Clearly then
the best limit of the population of a state is the largest
number which suffices for the purposes of life, and can be
taken in at a single view.
Aristotle, Politics, 1326b8
10 States require property, but property, even though living
beings are included in it, is no part of a state; for a state
is not a community of living beings only, but a
community of equals, aiming at the best life possible.
Now, whereas happiness is the highest good, being a
realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can
attain, while others have little or none of it, the various
qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are
various kinds of states and many forms of government;
for different men seek after happiness in different ways
and by different means, and so make for themselves
different modes of life and forms of government.
Aristotle, Politics, 1328a35
11 Let us, .. enumerate the functions of a state, and we
Shall easily elicit what we want:
First, there must be food; secondly, arts, for life
requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms,
for the members of a community have need of them, and
in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority
both against disobedient subjects and against external
asSailants; fourthly, there must be a certain amount of
revenue, both for internal needs, and for the purposes of
war; fifthly, or rather first, there must be a care of
religion, which is commonly called worship; sixthly, and
most necessary of all, there must be a power of deciding
what is for the public interest, and what is just in men's
dealings with one another.
These are the services which every state may be said
to need. For a state is not a mere aggregate of persons,
but a union of them sufficing for the purposes of life; and
if any of these things be wanting, it is as we maintain
impossible that the community can be absolutely self-
sufficing. A state then should be framed with a view to
the fulfilment of these functions. There must be
husbandmen to procure food, and artisans, and a warlike
and a wealthy class, and priests, and judges to decide
what it necessary and expedient.
Aristotle, Politics, 1328b4
12 The principles of fellowship and society that nature has
established among men must be traced back to their
origins. The first principle subsists among all members of
the human race. It is that connecting link of reason and
speech by which the several processes of teaching,
learning, communicating, discussing, and debating
associate men together and unite them in a kind of
brotherhood. In no other particular are we more distinct
from the animals. We may grant them courage (for
example, horses and lions). But we do not credit them
with justice, equity, and goodness, because they are not
endowed with reason or speech.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 16
13 As a foot is no longer a foot if it is detached from the
body, so you are no longer a man if you are separated
from other men. For what is a man? A part of a state, of
that first which consists of Gods and of men; then of that
which is called next to it, which is a small image of the
universal state.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 5
14 If we... say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable
beings bound together by a common agreement as to the
objects of their love, then, in order to discover the
character of any people, we have only to observe what
they love. Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an
assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and
is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of
love, it is reasonably called a people; and it will bea
superior people in proportion as it is bound together by
higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound
together by lower.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 24
15 The light of reason is placed by nature in every man, to
guide him in his acts towards his end. Wherefore, if man
were intended to live alone, aS many animals do, he
would require no other guide to his end. Each man would
be a king unto himself, under God, the highest King,
inasmuch as he would direct himself in his acts by the
light of reason given him from on high. Yet it is natural for
man, more than for any other animal, to be a social and
political animal, to live in a group.
Aquinas, On Kingship, I, 1
16 The preservation of states is a thing that probably
surpasses our understanding.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
17 Archbishop of Canterbury. Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavour in continual motion;
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience; for so work the honey-bees.
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold.
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o’er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone.
Shakespeare, Henry V, I, ti, 183
18 Ulysses. The providence that’s in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus’ gold,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought and almost, like the gods,
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery—with whom relation
Durst never meddle—in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expressure to.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, III, ii, 196
19 In the youth of a state, arms do flourish: in the middle
age of a state, learning; and then both of them together
for a time: in the declining age of a state, mechanical arts
and merchandize.
Bacon, Of Vicissitude of Things
20 A state is a perfect body of free men, united together in
order to enjoy common rights and advantages.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peaces Bk. I, I, 14
21 Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the
world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in
this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal.
For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning
whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not
say that all automata (engines that move themselves by
springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial
life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves,
but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels,
giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended
by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that
rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by
art is created that great Leviathan called a
Commonwealth, or State, which is but an artificial man,
though of greater stature and strength than the natural,
for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in
which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life
and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other
officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints;
reward and punishment (by which fastened to the scat of
the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to
perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the
body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular
members are the strength; the people’s safety its
business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to
know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and
laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health;
sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts
and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic
were at first made, set together, and united, resemble
that fiat, or the Let us make men, pronounced by God, in
the Creation.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Intro.
22 The final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally
love liberty, and dominion over others) in the
introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which
we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of
their own preservation, and of a more contented life
thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from
that miserable condition of war which is necessarily
consequent... to the natural passions of men when there
is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by
fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 17
23 Irrational creatures cannot distinguish between injury
and damage; and therefore as long as they be at ease,
they are not offended with their fellows: whereas man is
then most troublesome when he is most at ease; for then
it is that he loves to show his wisdom, and control the
actions of them that govern the Commonwealth....
The agreement of [irrational] creatures is natural; that
of men is by covenant only, which is artificial: and
therefore it is no wonder if there be somewhat else
required, besides covenant, to make their agreement
constant and lasting; which is a common power to keep
them in awe and to direct their actions to the common
benefit.
The only way to erect such a common power, as may
be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners,
and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure
them in such sort as that by their own industry and by
the fruits of the earth they may nourish themselves and
live contentedly, is to confer all their power and strength
upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may
reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will:
which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or
assembly of men, to bear their person; and everyone to
own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever
he that so beareth their person shall act, or cause to be
acted, in those things which concern the common peace
and safety; and therein to submit their wills, every one to
his will, and their judgements to his judgement. This is
more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them
all in one and the same person, made by covenant of
every man with every man, in such manner as if every
man should say to every man: / authorise and give up my
right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly
of men, on this condition; that thou give up thy right to
him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This
done, the multitude so united in one person is called a
Commonwealth. ... This is the generation of that great
Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that
mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our
peace and defence.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 17
24 Though nothing can be immortal which mortals make;
yet, if men had the use of reason they pretend to, their
Commonwealths might be secured, at least, from
perishing by internal diseases. For by the nature of their
institution, they are designed to live as long as mankind,
or as the laws of nature, or as justice itself, which gives
them life. Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not
by external violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is
not in men as they are the matter, but as they are the
makers and orderers of them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 29
25 It is by the highest right of nature that each person
exists, and consequently it is by the highest right of
nature that each person does those things which follow
from the necessity of his nature; and therefore it is by the
highest right of nature that each person judges what is
good and what is evil, consults his own advantage as he
thinks best, avenges himself, and endeavours to preserve
what he loves and to destroy what he hates. If men lived
according to the guidance of reason, every one would
enjoy this right without injuring any one else. But
because men are subject to affects which far surpass
human power or virtue, they are often drawn in different
directions and are contrary to one another, although they
need one another’s help.
In order, then, that men may be able to live in
harmony and be a help to one another, it is necessary for
them to cede their natural right, and beget confidence
one in the other that they will do nothing by which one
can injure the other.... By this law, therefore, can society
be strengthened, if only it claims for itself the right which
every individual possesses of avenging himself and
deciding what is good and what is evil, and provided,
therefore, that it possess the power of prescribing a
common rule of life, of promulgating laws and supporting
them, not by reason, which cannot restrain the affects,
but by penalties.
This society, firmly established by law and with a
power of self-preservation, is called a State, and those
who are protected by its right are called Citizens. We can
now easily see that in the natural state there is nothing
which by universal consent is good or evil, since every
one in a natural state consults only his own profit;
deciding according to his own way of thinking what is
good and what is evil with reference only to his own
profit, and is not bound by any law to obey any one but
himself. Hence in a natural state sin cannot be conceived,
but only in a civil state, where it is decided by universal
consent what is good and what is evil, and where every
one is bound to obey the State. Sin, therefore, is nothing
but disobedience, which is punished by the law of the
State alone; obedience, on the other hand, being
regarded as a merit in a citizen, because on account of it
he is considered worthy to enjoy the privileges of the
State. Again, in a natural state no one by common
consent is the owner of anything, nor is there anything in
nature which can be said to be the rightful property of
this and not of that man, but all things belong to all, so
that in a natural state it is impossible to conceive a desire
of rendering to each man his own or taking from another
that which is his; that is to say, in a natural state there is
nothing which can be called just or unjust, but only ina
civil state, in which it is decided by universal consent
what is one person’s and what is another’s. Justice and
injustice, therefore, sin and merit, are external notions,
and not attributes, which manifest the nature of the
mind.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 37, Schol. 2
26 If all the members of a state wish to disregard the law, by
that very fact they dissolve the state and destroy the
commonwealth.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, 111
27 The commonwealth seems to me to be a Society of men
constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and
advancing their own civil interests.
Civil interests | call life, liberty, health, and indolency
of body; and the possession of outward things, such as
money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
28 The political society is instituted for no other end, but
only to secure every man’s possession of the things of
this life. The care of each man’s soul and of the things of
heaven, which neither does belong to the commonwealth
nor can be subjected to it, is left entirely to every man’s
self,
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
29 Man being born... with a title to perfect freedom and an
uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of
the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number
of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to
preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate,
against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to
judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as
he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death
itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his
opinion, requires it. But because no political society can
be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to
preserve the property, and in order thereunto punish the
offences of all those of that society, there, and there only,
is political society where every one of the members hath
quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands
of the community in all cases that exclude him not from
appealing for protection to the law established by it....
Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into
one society as to quit every one his executive power of
the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and
there only is a political or civil society,
Locke, II Civil Government, VII, 87-89
30 Mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state
of Nature, being but in an ill condition while they remain
in it are quickly driven into society. Hence it comes to
pass, that we seldom find any number of men live any
time together in this state. The inconveniencies that they
are therein exposed to by the irregular and uncertain
exercise of the power every man has of punishing the
transgressions of others, make them take sanctuary
under the established laws of government, and therein
seek the preservation of their property. It is this makes
them so willingly give up every one his single power of
punishing to be exercised by such alone as shall be
appointed to it amongst them, and by such rules as the
community, or those authorised by them to that purpose,
Shall agree on. And in this we have the original right and
rise of both the legislative and executive power as well as
of the governments and societies themselves.
For in the state of Nature to omit the liberty he has of
innocent delights, a man has two powers. The first is to
do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of himself
and others within the permission of the law of Nature; by
which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of
mankind are one community, make up one society
distinct from all other creatures, and were it not for the
corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there
would be no need of any other, no necessity that men
should separate from this great and natural community,
and associate into lesser combinations. The other power a
man has in the state of Nature is the power to punish the
crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives
up when he joins in a private, if | may so call it, or
particular political society, and incorporates into any
commonwealth separate from the rest of m-an-kind.
The first power—viz., of doing whatsoever he thought
fit for the preservation of himself and the rest of mankind,
he gives up to be regulated by laws made by the society,
so far forth as the preservation of himself and the rest of
that society shall require; which laws of the society in
many things confine the liberty he had by the law of
Nature.
Secondly, the power of punishing he wholly gives up,
and engages his natural force, which he might before
employ in the execution of the law' of Nature, by his own
single authority, as he thought fit, to assist the executive
power of the society as the Jaw thereof shall require. For
being now in a new state, wherein he is to enjoy many
conveniencies from the labour, assistance, and society of
others in the same community, as well as protection from
its whole strength, he is to part also with as much of his
natural liberty, in providing for himself, as the good,
prosperity, and safety of the society shall require, which
is not only necessary but just, since the other members of
the society do the like.
Locke, II Civil Government, IX, 127-130
31 In the state of nature ... all men are born equal, but they
cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose
it, and they recover it only by the protection of the laws.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, V/11, 3
32 | suppose men to have reached the point at which the
obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of
nature show their power of resistance to be greater than
the resources at the disposal of each individual for his
maintenance in that state. That primitive condition can
then .subsist no longer; and the human race would perish
unless it changed its manner of existence.
But, as men cannot engender new forces, but only
unite and direct existing ones, they have no other means
of preserving themselves than the formation, by
aggregation, of a sum of forces great enough to overcome
the resistance. These they have to bring into play by
means of a single motive power, and cause to act in
concert.
This sum of forces can arise only where several
persons come together: hut, as the force and liberty of
each man are the chief instruments of his self-
preservation, how can he pledge them without harming
his ow n interests, and neglecting the care hr owes to
himself? This difficulty, in its bearing on my present
subject, may be stated in the following terms:
"The problem ts to find a form of association which will
defend and protect with the whole common force the
person and goods of each associate, and in which each,
while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself
alone, and remain as free as before." This is the
fundamental problem of which the Socia/ Contract
provides the solution.
The clauses of this contract are so determined by the
nature of the act that the slightest modification would
make them vain and ineffective; so that, although they
have perhaps never been formally set forth, they are
everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted
and recognised, until, on the violation of the social
compact, each regains his original rights and resumes his
natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty in
favour of which he renounced it.
These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced
to one—the total alienation of each associate, together
with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the
first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the
conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one
has any interest in making them burdensome to others.
Moreover, the alienation being without reserve, the
union is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has
anything more to demand: for, if the individuals retained
certain rights, as there would be no common superior to
decide between them and the public, each, being on one
point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state
of nature would thus continue, and the association would
necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical.
Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives
himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over
whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields
others over himself, he gains an equivalent for
everything he loses, and an increase of force for the
preservation of what he has.
Rousseau, Social Contract, |, 6
33 The passage from the state of nature to the civil state
produces a very remarkable change in man, by
substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving
his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then
only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical
impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had
considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on
different principles, and to consult his reason before
listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he
deprives himself of some advantages which he got from
nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are
so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his
feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that,
did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade
him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless
continually the happy moment which took him from it for
ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal,
made him an intelligent being and a man.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 8
34 The social compact sets up among the citizens an
equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to
observe the same conditions and should therefore all
enjoy the same rights. Thus, from the very nature of the
compact, every act of Sovereignty, that is, every
authentic act of the general will, binds or favours all the
citizens equally; so that the Sovereign recognises only
the body of the nation, and draws no distinctions
between those of whom it is made up. What, then, strictly
Speaking, is an act of Sovereignty? It is not a convention
between a superior and an inferior, but a convention
between the body and each of its members. It is
legitimate, because based on the social contract, and
equitable, because common to all; useful, because it can
have no other object than the general good, and stable,
because guaranteed by the public force and the supreme
power. So long as the subjects have to submit only to
conventions of this sort, they obey no-one but their own
will; and to ask how far the respective rights of the
Sovereign and the citizens extend, is to ask up to what
point the latter can enter into undertakings with
themselves, each unth all, and all with each.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 4
35 What is the end of political association? The preservation
and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest
mark of their preservation and prosperity? Their numbers
and population. Seek then nowhere else this mark that is
in dispute. The rest being equal, the government under
which, without external aids, without naturalisation or
colonies, the citizens increase and multiply most, is
beyond question the best.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 9
36 The opposite of the state of nature is the civil state as the
condition of a society standing under a distributive
justice. In the state of nature, there may even be
juridicial forms of society—such as marriage, parental
authority, the household, and such like. For none of
these, however, does any law a priori lay it down as an
incumbent obligation: "Thou sha// enter into this state."
But it may be said of the juridical state that: "All men who
may even involuntarily come into relations of right with
one another ought to enter into this state."
The natural or non-juridical social state may be viewed
as the sphere of private right, and the civil state may be
specially regarded as the sphere of public right. The
latter state contains no more and no other duties of men
towards each other than what may be conceived in
connection with the former state; the matter of private
right is, in short, the very same in both. The laws of the
civil state, therefore, only turn upon the juridical form of
the coexistence of men under a common constitution;
and, in this respect, these law's must necessarily be
regarded and conceived as public laws.
Kant, Science of Right, 41
37 Before a legal state of society can be publicly
established, individual men, nations, and states, can
never be safe against violence from each other; and this
is evident from the consideration that every one of his
own will naturally does what seems good and right in his
own eyes, entirely independent of the opinion of others.
Hence, unless the institution of right is to be renounced,
the first thing incumbent on men is to accept the
principle that it is necessary to leave the state of nature,
in which every one follows his own inclinations, and to
form a union of all those who cannot avoid coming into
reciprocal communication, and thus subject themselves
in common to the external restraint of public compulsory
laws. Men thus enter into a civil union, in which every
one has it determined by law what shall be recognized as
his; and this is secured to him by a competent external
power distinct from his own individuality. Such is the
primary obligation, on the part of all men, to enter into
the relations of a civil state of society.
Kant, Science of Right, 44
38 The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea. It is ethical
mind qua the substantial will manifest and revealed to
itself, Knowing and thinking itself, accomplishing what it
knows and in so far as it knows it. The state exists
immediately in custom, mediately in individual self-
consciousness, knowledge, and activity, while self-
consciousness in virtue of its sentiment towards the state
finds in the state, as its essence and the end and product
of its activity, its substantive freedom... .
The state is absolutely rational inasmuch as it is the
actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the
particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has
been raised to consciousness of its universality. This
substantial unity is an absolute unmoved end in itself, in
which freedom comes into its supreme right. On the other
hand this final end has supreme right against the
individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the
state.
If the state is confused with civil society, and if its
specific end is laid down as the security and protection of
property and personal freedom, then the interest of the
individuals as such becomes the ultimate end of their
association, and it follows that membership of the state is
something optional. But the state's relation to the
individual is quite different from this. Since the state is
mind objectified, it is only as one of its members that the
individual himself has objectivity, genuine individuality,
and an ethical life.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 257-258
39 A nation does not begin by being a state. the transition
from a family, a horde, a clan, a multitude, etc., to
political conditions is the realization of the Idea in the
form of that nation. Without this form, a nation, as an
ethical substance— which is what it is implicitly, lacks
the objectivity of possessing in its own eyes and in the
eyes of others, a universal and universally valid
embodiment in laws, that is, in determinate thoughts,
and as a result it fails to secure recognition from others.
So long as it lacks objective law and an explicitly
established rational constitution, its autonomy is formal
only and is not sovereignty...
It is the absolute right of the Idea to step into
existence in clear-cut laws and objective institutions,
beginning with marriage and agriculture,... whether this
right be actualized in the form of divine legislation and
favour, or in the form of force and wrong. This right is the
right of heroes to found states.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 349-350
40 The rational end of man is life in the state, and if there is
no state there, reason at once demands that one be
founded. Permission to enter a state or leave it must be
given by the state; this then Is not a matter which
depends on an individual's arbitrary will and therefore
the state does not rest on contract, for contract
presupposes arbitrariness. It is false to maintain that the
foundation of the state is something at the option of all
Its members. It is nearer the truth to say that it is
absolutely necessary for every individual to be a citizen.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 75
41 When we walk the streets at night in safely, it do« not
strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of
feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not
reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of
special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the
impression that force holds the state together, but in fact
its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which
everybody possesses.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 268
42 we should desire to have in the state nothing except
what is an expression of rationality. The state is the world
which mind has made for itself; its march, therefore, is on
lines that are fixed and absolute. How often we talk of the
wisdom of God in nature! But we are not to assume for
that reason that the physical world of nature is a loftier
thing than the world of mind. As high as mind stands
above nature, so high does the state stand above
physical life. Man must therefore venerate the state as a
secular deity, and observe that if it is difficult to
comprehend nature, it is infinitely harder to understand
the state.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 272
43 The state of nature is.,. predominantly that of injustice
and violence, ol untamed natural impulses, of inhuman
deeds and feelings. Limitation is certainly produced by
society and the state, but it is a limitation of the mere
brute emotions and Hide instincts; as also, in a more
advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of
Caprice and passion. This kind of constraint is pan of the
instrumentality by which only, the consciousness of
freedom and the desire for its attainment. In its true—
that is, rational and ideal form—can be obtained....
Society and the state are the very conditions in which
freedom is realized.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
44 In dealing with the State we ought to remember that its
institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before
we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen;
that every one of them was once the act of a single man;
every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a
particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we
may make as good, we may make better.
Emerson, Politics
45 The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been
tried.
Emerson, Politics
46 the highest conceivable form of human society is that in
which the desire to do what is best for the whole,
dominates and limits the action of every member of that
society.
T. H. Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, Prologue
47 the proletariat seizes the state power, and transforms the
means of production in the first instance into state
property. But in doing this, it puts an end to itself as the
proletariat, it puts an end to all class differences and
class antagonisms, it puts an end also to the state as the
state. Former society, moving in class antagonisms, had
need of the state, that is, an organisation of the
exploiting class at each period for the maintenance of its
external conditions of production; that is, therefore, for
the forcible holding down of the exploited class in the
conditions of oppression (slavery, villeinage or serfdom,
wage labour) determined by the existing mode of
production. The state was the official representative of
society as a whole, its embodiment in a visible
corporation; but it was this only in so far as it was the
state of that class which itself, in its epoch, represented
society as a whole; in ancient times, the state of the
slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal
nobility; in our epoch, of the bourgeoisie. When
ultimately it becomes really representative of society as a
whole, it makes itself superfluous. As soon as there is no
longer any class of society to be held in subjection; as
soon as, along with class domination and the struggle for
individual existence based on the former anarchy of
production, the collisions and excesses arising from these
have also been abolished, there is nothing more to be
repressed which would make a special repressive force, a
state, necessary. The first act in which the state really
comes forward as the representative of society as a whole
—the taking possession of the means of production in the
name of society—is at the same time its last independent
act as a state. The interference of the state power in
social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after
another, and then ceases of itself. The government of
persons is replaced by the administration of things and
the direction of the processes of production. The state is
not "abolished," /t withers away.
Engels, Anti-Duhring, III, 2
48 Though society is not founded on a contract, and though
no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in
order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who
receives the protection of society owes a return for the
benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it
indispensable that each should be bound to observe a
certain line of conduct towards the rest.
Mill, On Liberty, 1V
49 | used the word "State": my meaning is self-evident,
namely, a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of
conquerors and masters, which with all its warlike
organisation and all its organising power pounces with its
terrible claws on a population, in numbers possibly
tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad.
Such is the origin of the "State." That fantastic theory
that makes it begin with a contract is, | think, disposed of.
He who command, he who is a master by "nature," he
who comes on the scene forceful in deed and gesture—
what has he to do with contracts? Such beings defy
calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason,
notice, excuse, they are there like the lightning is there,
too terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too "different," to
be personally even hated. Their work is an instinctive
creating and impressing of forms, they are the most
involuntary, unconscious artists Aat there are:—their
appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of
sovereignty which is live, in which the functions are
partitioned and apportioned, in which above all no part is
received or finds a place, until pregnant with a "meaning"
in regard to the whole.
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, II, 17
50 The truth is that the social order is fixed by laws of nature
precisely analogous to those of the physical order. The
most that man can do is by ignorance and self-conceit to
mar the operation of social laws. The evils of society are
to a great extent the result of the dogmatism and self-
interest of statesmen, philosophers, and ecclesiastics who
in past time have done just what the socialists now want
to do. Instead of studying the natural laws of the social
order, they assumed that they could organize society as
they chose; they made up their minds what kind of a
society they wanted to make; and they planned their
little measures for the ends they had resolved upon. It
will take centuries of scientific study of the facts of nature
to eliminate from human society the mischievous
institutions and traditions which the said statesmen,
philosophers, and ecclesiastics have introduced into it.
W. G. Sumner, Socialism
51 The teaching of Marx and Engels regarding the
inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the bourgeois
state. It cannot be replaced by the proletarian state (the
dictatorship of the proletariat) through "withering away,"
but, as a general rule, only through a violent revolution....
The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian
state is impossible without a violent revolution. The
abolition of the proletarian state, i.e. of all states, is only
possible through "withering away/"
Lenin, State and Revolution, I, 4
10.2 The Realm of Politics
The word "politics" is frequently used to designate a sphere
of action in which men engage, vying with one another for
power or position, scheming or planning to achieve certain
objectives either in concert with their fellow's or through
control or domination of them. But the word is also used to
name a learned discipline, a department of human thought
or inquiry', an art or science. In the latter meaning, "politics"
is short for political philosophy, political theory, political
science, or the art of politics. The quotations collected here
are concerned with the realm of politics in both senses of the
term.
Those dealing with politics as a learned discipline ora
department of thought and inquiry offer different answers to
the question whether politics is a science or an art; and if a
science, what type of science, appealing to what sort of
principles, and offering what kind of evidence or arguments
for its conclusions. Similar questions are asked about ethics
or moral philosophy, as the reader will see by turning to
Section 9.1; and by putting together quotations in that
section and in this one, the reader will be reminded of some
of the views that have been held about the relation of ethics
and politics to one another. The main point at issue is
whether politics is a normative discipline, one concerned
with standards of justice, with such goods as liberty and
equality, with what ought to be the ends and means of
political action, not merely with what has been or can be
done. Considerations relevant to this issue will be found in
Section 11.1 on Property, Section 11.2 on Wealth and
Poverty, Section 12.2 on Justice and In-Justice, Section 13.1
on Freedom in Society, and Section 13.3 on Equality.
The quotations dealing with politics as a sphere of action
tend to concentrate on the maxims, rules, or policies that
the individual should put into practice if the individual
wishes to succeed in attaining one’s objectives, whatever
they may be, good or bad. How far the person should be
restrained by moral scruples, to what extent the person
should let one’s striving for success justify’ the employment
of any means that promise to achieve it, what compromises
with honesty the person must make—these and similar
questions run through or lie behind the advice offered by
such men of practical experience as Machiavelli and Francis
Bacon, as well as by such philosophers as Plato and
Aristotle. Outstanding examples of political sagacity and
political ineptitude, of genuine statesmanship and of
successful chicanery, are provided by the historians and the
poets.
The favorable and unfavorable connotations that are
often attached to the terms "statesman" and "politician"
derive from different evaluations placed on political virtue,
Skill, or technique. Antipolitical writers, such as Thoreau,
tend to regard the realm of politics as one from which virtue,
honesty, and conscience are totally excluded.
1 Menelaus. As with sailing, so with politics: make your cloth
too taut, and your ship will dip and keel, but slacken off
and trim your sails, and things head up again. The gods,
you know, resent being importuned too much; in the
same way the people dislike being pushed or hustled. Too
much zeal offends where indirection works,
Euripides, Orestes, 706
2 Praxagora. Ye are to blame for this, Athenian people,
Ye draw your wages from the public purse,
Yet each man seeks his private gain alone.
So the State reels, like any Aesimus.
Still, if ye trust me, ye shall yet be saved.
| move that now the womankind be asked
To rule the State. In our own homes, ye know,
They are the managers and rule the house.
Ist Woman. O good, good, good! speak on, speak on,
dear man!
Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 205
3 Cleon. Ordinary men usually manage public affairs better
than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always
wanting to appear wiser than the la\vs, and to overrule
every proposition brought forward, thinking that they
cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by
such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those
who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less
learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the
speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather
than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, III, 37
4 Socrates. Do | understand you,... and is your meaning that
you teach the art of politics, and that you promise to
make men good citizens?
Protagoras. That, Socrates, is exactly the profession
which | make.
Then, | said, you do indeed possess a noble art, if there
is no mistake about this; for | \rill freely confess to you,
Protagoras, that | have a doubt whether this art is
capable of being taught, and yet | know not how to
disbelieve your assertion. And | ought to tell you why |
am of opinion that this art cannot be taught or
communicated by man to man. | say that the Athenians
are an understanding people, and indeed they are
esteemed to be such by the other Hellenes. Now |
observe that when we are met together in the assembly,
and the matter in hand relates to building, the builders
are Summoned as advisers; when the question is one of
shipbuilding, then the shipwrights; and the like of other
arts which they think capable of being taught and
learned. And if some person offers to give them advice
who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art,
even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble,
they \rill not listen to him, but laugh and hoot at him,
until either he is clamoured down and retires of himself;
or if he persist, he is dragged away or put out by the
constables at the command of the prytanes. This is their
way of behaving about professors of the arts. But when
the question is an affair of state, then everybody is free to
have a say—carpenter, tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger;
rich and poor, high and low— any one who likes gets up,
and no one reproaches him, as in the former case, with
not having learned, and having no teacher, and yet
giving advice; evidently because they are under the
impression that this sort of knowledge cannot be taught.
And not only is this true of the state, but of individuals;
the best and wisest of our citizens are unable to impart
their political wisdom to others: as for example, Pericles,
the father of these young men, who gave them excellent
instruction in all that could be learned from masters, in
his own department of politics neither taught them, nor
gave them teachers; but they were allowed to wander at
their own free will in a sort of hope that they would light
upon virtue of their own accord.
Plato, Protagoras, 319A
5 Socrates. Some one may wonder why | go about in private
giving advice and busying myself with the concerns of
others, but do not venture to come forward in public and
advise the state. 1 will tell you why. ... | am certain, O
men of Athens, that if | had engaged in politics, | should
have perished long ago, and done no good either to you
or to myself. And do not be offended at my telling you the
truth: for the truth is, that no man who goes to war with
you or any other multitude, honestly striving against the
many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done ina
state, will save his life; he who will fight for the right, if he
would live even for a brief space, must have a private
station and not a public one.
Plato, Apology, 31B
6 Socrates. Good men do not wish to be openly demanding
payment for governing and so to get the name of
hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the
public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not
being ambitious they do not care about honour.
Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they
must be induced to serve from the fear of punishment.
And this, as | imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has
been deemed dishonourable. Now the worst part of the
punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be
ruled by one who is worse than himself. And the fear of
this, as | conceive, induces the good to take office, not
because they would, but because they cannot help—not
under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or
enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because
they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one
who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. For
there is reason to think that if a city were composed
entirely of good men, then to avoid office would be as
much an object of contention as to obtain office is at
present; then we should have plain proof that the true
ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest,
but that of his subjects; and every one who knew this
would choose rather to receive a benefit from another
than to have the trouble of conferring onc.
Plato, Republic, |, 347A
7 Eleatic Stranger. Then the true and natural art of
statesmanship will never allow any State to be formed by
a combination of good and bad men, if this can be
avoided; but will begin by testing human natures in play,
and after testing them, will entrust them to proper
teachers who are the ministers of her purposes—she will
herself give orders, and maintain authority; just as the art
of weaving continually gives orders and maintains
authority over the carders and all the others who prepare
the material for the work, commanding the subsidiary
arts to execute the works which she deems necessary for
making the web.
Socrates. Quite true.
Str. In like manner, the royal science appears to me to
be the mistress of all lawful educators and instructors,
and having this queenly power, will not permit them to
train men in what will produce characters unsuited to the
political constitution which she desires to create, but only
in what will produce such as are suitable. Those which
have no share of manliness and temperance, or any other
virtuous inclination, and, from the necessity of an evil
nature, are violently carried away to godlessness and
insolence and injustice, she gets rid of by death and
exile, and punishes them with the greatest of disgraces.
¥ Soc. That is commonly said.
Str. But those w’ho are w-allowing in ignorance and
baseness she bows under the yoke of slavery.
¥ Soc. Quite right.
Str. The rest of the citizens, out of whom, if they have
education, something noble may be made, and who are
capable of being united by the Statesman, the kingly art
blends and weaves together; taking on the one hand
those whose natures tend rather to courage, which is the
stronger element and may be regarded as the warp, and
on the other hand those which incline to order and
gentleness, and which are represented in the figure as
spun thick and soft, after the manner of the woof—these,
which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and
weave together,... This then we declare to be the
completion of the web of political action, which is created
by a direct inter-texture of the brave and temperate
natures, whenever the royal science has drawn the two
minds into communion with one another by unanimity
and friendship, and having perfected the noblest and
best of all the webs which political life admits, and
enfolding therein all other inhabitants of cities, wnether
slaves or freemen, binds them in one fabric and governs
and presides over them, and, in so far as to be happy is
vouchsafed to a city, in no particular fails to secure their
happiness.
Plato, Statesman, 308B
8 Athenian Stranger. There is a difficulty in apprehending
that the true art of politics is concerned, not with private
but with public good (for public good binds together
states, but private only distracts them); and that both the
public and private good well of individuals as of states is
greater when the state and not the individual is first
considered. In the second place, although a person knows
in the abstract that this is true, yet if he be possessed of
absolute and irresponsible power, he will never remain
firm in his principles or persist in regarding the public
good as primary in the state, and the private good as
secondary. Human nature will be always drawing him into
avarice and selfishness, avoiding pain and pursuing
pleasure without any reason, and will bring these to the
front, obscuring the juster and better; and so working
darkness in his soul will at last fill with evils both him and
the whole city.
Plato, Laws, IX, 875A
9 Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and
pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this
reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at
which all things aim....
If. ., there is some end of the things we do, which we
desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for
the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for
the sake of something else (for at that rate the process
would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty
and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief
good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great
influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a
mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If
so, we must try’, in outline at least, to determine what it
is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the
object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative
art and that which is most truly the master art. And
politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that
ordains which of the sciences should be studied ina
state, and which each class of citizens should learn and
up to what point they should learn them; and we see
even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under
this, for example, strategy, economics, rhetoric; now,
since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since,
again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we
are to abstain from, the end of this science must include
those of the others, so that this end must be the good for
man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and
for a state, that of the state seems at all events
something greater and more complete whether to attain
or to preserve; though it is worthwhile to attain the end
merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain
it for a nation or for city-states.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1094a1
10 Political science does not make men, but takes them from
nature and uses them.
Aristotle, Politics, 1258a21
11 It is obvious that government too is the subject of a
single science, which has to consider what government is
best and of what sort it must be, to be most in
accordance with our aspirations, if there were no external
impediment, and also what kind of government is
adapted to particular states. For the best is often
unattainable, and therefore the true legislator and
statesman ought to be acquainted, not only with (1) that
which is best in the abstract, but also with (2) that which
is best relatively to circumstances. We should be able
further to say how a state may be constituted under any
given conditions (3); both how it is originally formed and,
when formed, how it may be longest preserved; the
supposed state being so far from having the best
constitution that it is unprovided even with the
conditions necessary for the best; neither is it the best
under the circumstances, but of an inferior type.
He ought, moreover, to know (4) the form of
government which is best suited to states in general; for
political writers, although they have excellent ideas, are
often unpractical. We should consider, not only what form
of government is best, but also what is possible and what
is easily attainable by all.
Aristotle, Politics, 1288b21
12 Above all every state should be so administered and so
regulated by law that its magistrates cannot possibly
make money.... For the people do not take any great
offence at being kept out of the government—indeed
they are rather pleased than otherwise at having leisure
for their private business—but what irritates them is to
think that their rulers are stealing the public money; then
they are doubly annoyed; for they lose both honour and
profit. If office brought no profit, then and then only could
democracy" and aristocracy be combined; for both
notables and people might have their wishes gratified. All
would be able to hold office, which is the aim of
democracy, and the notables would be magistrates,
which is the aim of aristocracy. And this result may be
accomplished when there is no possibility of making
money out of the offices; for the poor will not want to
have them when there is nothing to be gained from them
—they would rather be attending to their own concerns;
and the rich, who do not want money from the public
treasury, will be able to take them; and so the poor will
keep to their work and grow rich, and the notables will
not be governed by the lower class.
Aristotle, Politics, 1308b31
13 Let us now address those who, while they agree that the
life of virtue is the most eligible, differ about the manner
of practising it. For some renounce political power, and
think that the life of the freeman is different from the life
of the statesman and the best of all; but others think the
life of the statesman best. The argument of the latter is
that he who does nothing cannot do well, and that
virtuous activity is identical with happiness. To both we
Say: ‘you are partly right and partly wrong.’ The first class
are right in affirming that the life of the freeman is better
than the life of the despot; for there is nothing grand or
noble in having the use of a Slave, in so far as heisa
Slave; or in issuing commands about necessary things.
But it is an error to suppose that every sort of rule is
despotic like that of a master over slaves, for there is as
great a difference between the rule over freemen and the
rule over slaves as there is between slavery by nature
and freedom by nature, about which | have said enough
at the commencement of this treatise. And it is equally a
mistake to place inactivity above action, for happiness is
activity, and the actions of the Just and wise are the
realization of much that is noble.
But perhaps some one, accepting these premisses,
may still maintain that supreme power is the best of all
things, because the possessors of it are able to perform
the greatest number of noble actions. If so, the man who
is able to rule, instead of giving up anything to his
neighbour, ought rather to take away his power; and the
father should make no account of his son, nor the son of
his father, nor friend of friend; they should not bestow a
thought on one another in comparison with this higher
object, for the best is the most eligible and ‘doing well’ is
the best. There might be some truth in such a view if we
assume that robbers and plunderers attain the chief
good. But this can never be; their hypothesis is false. For
the actions of a ruler cannot really be honourable, unless
he is aS much superior to other men as a husband is toa
wife, or a father to his children, or a master to his slaves.
And therefore he who violates the law can never recover
by any success, however great, what he has already lost
in departing from virtue. For equals the honourable and
the just consist in sharing alike, as is just and equal. But
that the unequal should be given to equals, and the
unlike to those who are like, is contrary to nature, and
nothing which is contrary to nature is good. If, therefore,
there is any one superior in virtue and in the power of
performing the best actions, him we ought to follow and
obey, but he must have the capacity for action as well as
virtue.
Aristotle, Politics, 1325a16
14 Far better it is to obey in peace and quiet than to wish to
rule with power supreme and be the master of kingdoms.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
15 People who have a natural ability for administering
public affairs should not hesitate to run for public office
and take part in directing the government. In no other
way can a government be run or greatness of spirit be
demonstrated. Statesmen no less than philosophers
(perhaps more so) should embody that quality of nobility
and an indifference toward outward circumstances that |
refer to so often. They also need a peaceful spirit and
freedom from care, if they are to be rid of worries and
lead a life of constancy. This is easier for philosophers to
do» because their lives are less exposed to the exigencies
of fortune. They also have fewer wants, so if misfortune
does befall them, the blow is not so calamitous. With
good reason, therefore, are stronger emotions aroused in
those who deal in public affairs than in those who live in
quietude. Greater too is the ambition of the former to
succeed. So much more, then, do they require greatness
of spirit and freedom from wearying cares.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 21
16 The magistrate ought definitely to bear in mind that he
represents the state. It is hw duty to uphold its honor and
dignity, to enforce its |.aws, to dispense to everyone his
constitutional rights, and 10 remember that all this has
been committed to him as a sacred trust.
Cicero, De Officiis, 1, 34
17 They [the chief priests] send unto him certain of the
Pharisees and of the Hero-di-ans, to catch him in his
words.
And when they were come, they say unto him. Master,
we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for
thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the
way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar.
or not?
Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing
their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring
me a penny, that | may see it.
And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is
this image and superscription? And they said unto him,
Caesar's
And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things tiiat
are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
Mark 12:13-17
18 A ruler’s first aim is to maintain his office, which is done
no less by avoiding what is unfit than by observing what
is suitable. Whoever is either too remiss or too strict is no
more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a
despot, and so becomes either odious or contemptible to
his subjects.... the one seems to be the fault of easiness
and good-nature, the other of pride and severity.
Plutarch, Romulus and Theseus Compared
19 People do not obey, unless rulers know how to command;
obedience is a lesson taught by commanders. A true
leader himself creates the obedience of his own followers;
as it is the last attainment in the art of riding to make a
horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of
government, to inspire men with a willingness to obey.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
20 The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the
present posture of affairs; often by foregoing a part he
saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter
secures n greater.
Plutarch, Poplicola and Solon Compared
21 Fabius. It is no inglorious thing to have fear for the safety
of our country, but to be turned from ones course by
men's opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation,
shows a man unfit to hold an office such as this, which,
by such conduct, he makes the slave of those whose
errors it is his business to control.
Plutarch, Fabius
22 If the motions of rulers be constantly opposite and cross
to the tempers and inclinations of the people, they will be
resented as arbitrary and harsh; as, on the other side, too
much deference, or encouragement, as too often it has
been, to popular faults and errors, is full of danger and
ruinous consequences.
Plutarch. Phocion
23 Ambitious men, whose minds, doling on glory, which isa
mere image of virtue, produce nothing that is genuine or
uniform, but only, as might be expected of such a
conjunction, misshapen and unnatural actions.,...
For this is indeed the true condition of men in public
life, who, to gain the vain title of being the people's
leaders and governors, are content to make themselves
the slaves and followers of all the people’s humours and
caprices. For as the lookout men at the ship’s prow,
though they see what is ahead before the men at the
helm, yet constantly look back to the pilots there, and
obey the orders they give; so these men, steered, as |
may say, by popular applause, though they bear the
name of governors, are in reality the mere underlings of
the multitude.
Plutarch, Agis
2'1 Fear and force... are not... the adamantine chains which
secure... power, but the love, zeal, and affection inspired
by clemency and justice, which, though they seem more
pliant than the stiff and hard bonds of severity, are
nevertheless the strongest and most durable lies to
sustain a lasting government.
Plutarch, Dion
25 Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou
art not dyed with this dye; for such things happen. Keep
thyself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from
affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods,
kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to
continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee.
Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life. There is
only one fruit of this terrene life, a pious disposition and
social acts. Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus.
Remember his constancy in every act which was
conformable to reason, and his evenness in all things,
and his piety, and the serenity of his countenance, and
his sweetness, and his disregard of empty fame, and his
efforts to understand things; and how he would never let
anything pass without having first most carefully
examined it and clearly understood it; and how he bore
with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming
them in return; how he did nothing in a hurry; and how
he listened not to calumnies, and how exact an examiner
of manners and actions he was; and not given to
reproach people, nor timid, nor suspicious, nor sophist;
and with how little he was satisfied, such as lodging, bed,
dress, food, servants; and how laborious and patient; and
how he was able on account of his sparing diet to hold
out to the evening, not even requiring to relieve himself
by any evacuations except at the usual hour; and his
firmness and uniformity in his friendships; and how he
tolerated freedom of speech in those who opposed his
opinions; and the pleasure that he had when any man
showed him anything better; and how religious he was
without superstition. Imitate all this that thou mayest
have as good a conscience, when thy last hour comes, as
he had.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 30
26 Mastership has a twofold meaning. First, as opposed to
Slavery, in which sense a master means one to whom
another is subject as a slave. In another sense mastership
is referred in a general sense to any kind of subject, and
in this sense even he who has the office of governing and
directing free men can be called a master. In the state of
innocence man could have been a master of men, not in
the former but in the latter sense.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 96, 4
27 If ... a multitude of free men is ordered by the ruler
towards the common good of the multitude, that
rulership will be right and just, as is suitable to free men.
If, on the other hand, a rulership aims, not at the common
good of the multitude, but at the private good of the
ruler, it will be an unjust and perverted rulership.
Aquinas, On Kingships I, 1
28 He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is
ruined; because that predominancy has been brought
about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are
distrusted by him who has been raised to power.
Machiavelli, Prince, III
29 In seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely
into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to
inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have
to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he
will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by
benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or
evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his
hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they
attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and
repeated wrongs.
Machiavelli, Prince, VIII
30 A prince who does not understand the art of war... cannot
be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He
ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this
subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself
more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two
ways, the one by action, the other by study.
Machiavelli, Prince, XIV
31 It would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless,
liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the
reputation for it, injures you; for if one exercises it
honestly and as it should be exercised, it may not
become known, and you will not avoid the reproach of its
opposite. Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among
men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of
magnificence; so that a prince thus inclined will consume
in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the
end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly
weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything
he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to
his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued
by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended
many and rewarded few, he is affected by the very first
trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the first
danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw
back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being
miserly.
Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this
virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized,
except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the
reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be
more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his
economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend
himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in
enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes
to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom
he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness
towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.
Machiavelli, Prince, XVI
32 A prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he
does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can
endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated,
which will always be as long as he abstains from the
property of his citizens and subjects and from their
women. But when it is necessary’ for him to proceed
against the life of someone, he must do it on proper
Justification and for manifest cause, but above all things
he must keep his hands off the property of others,
because men more quickly forget the death of their
father than the loss of their patrimony.
Machiavelli, Prince, XVII
33 Everyone admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to
keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft
Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes
who have done great things have held good faith of little
account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect
of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who
have relied on their word. ... A prince, therefore, being
compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose
the fox and the lion; because the Hon cannot defend
himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself
against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to
discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those
who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they
are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to,
keep faith when such observance may be turned against
him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it
exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept
would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not
keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it
with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince
legitimate reasons to excuse this nonobservance. Of this
endless modem examples could be given, showing how
many treaties and engagements have been made void
and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and
he who has known best how to employ the fox has
succeeded best.
But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this
characteristic, and to be a great pretender and
dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to
present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will
always find someone who will allow himself to be
deceived. One recent example | cannot pass over in
silence. Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men,
nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found
victims; for there never was a man who had greater
power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would
affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his
deceits always succeeded according to his wishes,
because he well understood this side of mankind.
Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the
good qualities | have enumerated, but it is very
necessary to appear to have them. And | shall dare to say
this also, that to have them and always to observe them
is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to
appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and
to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you
require not to be so, you may be able and know how to
change to the opposite,
Machiavelli, Prince, XVIII
34 The prince who has more to fear from the people than
from foreigners ought to build fortresses, but he who has
more to fear from foreigners than from the people ought
to leave them alone.... For this reason the best possible
fortress is—not to be hated by the people, because,
although you may hold the fortresses, yet they will not
save you if the people hate you, for there will never be
wanting foreigners to assist a people who have taken
arms against you.
Machiavelli, Prince, XX
35 The choice of servants is of no little importance to a
prince, and they are good or not according to the
discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which
one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by
observing the men he has around him; and when they are
capable and faithful he may always be considered wise,
because he has known how to recognize the capable and
to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one
cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error
which he made was in choosing them.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXII
36 A prince... ought always to take counsel, but only when
he wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to
discourage every one from offering advice unless he asks
it; but, however, he ought to be a constant inquirer, and
afterwards a patient listener concerning the things of
which he inquired; also, on learning that any one, on any
consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let
his anger be felt.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXIII
37 If there are some who think that a prince who conveys an
impression of his wisdom is not so through his own
ability, but through the good advisers that he has around
him, beyond doubt they are deceived, because this is an
axiom which never fails: that a prince who is not wise
himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he
has yielded his affairs entirely to one person who
happens to be a very prudent man. In this case indeed he
may be well governed, but it would not be for long,
because such a governor would in a short time take away
his state from him.
But if a prince who is not experienced should take
counsel from more than one he will never get united
counsels, nor will he Know how to unite them. Each of the
counsellors will think of his own interests, and the prince
will not know how to control them or to see through them.
And they are not to be found otherwise, because men will
always prove untrue to you unless they are kept honest
by constraint. Therefore it must be inferred that good
counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of the
wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince
from good counsels.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXIII
38 Government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects
that they shall be neither able nor disposed to injure you;
and this is done by depriving them of all means of
injuring you, or by bestowing such benefits upon them
that it would not be reasonable for them to desire any
change of fortune.
Machiavelli, Discourses, 11, 23
39 We owe subjection and obedience equally to all kings, for
that concerns their office; but we do not owe esteem, any
more than affection, except to their virtue. Let us make
this concession to the political order; to suffer them
patiently if they are unworthy, to conceal their vices, to
abet them by commending their indifferent actions if
their authority’ needs our support. But, our dealings over,
it is not right to deny to justice and to our liberty the
expression of our true feelings, and especially to deny
good subjects the glory of having reverently and
faithfully served a master whose imperfections were so
well known to them, and thus to deprive posterity of such
a useful example.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 3, Our Feelings Reach Out
40 Truly it is no small thing to have to rule others, since in
ruling ourselves so many difficulties occur. As for
commanding, which seems to be so sweet: considering
the imbecility of human judgment and the difficulty of
choice in new and doubtful things, | am strongly of this
opinion, that it is much easier and pleasanter to follow
than to guide, and that it is a great rest for the mind to
have only to hold to a mapped-out path and to be
answerable only for oneself.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 42, Of the Inequality
41 It may be said, on the one hand, that to give factions a
loose rein to entertain their oum opinions is to scatter
and sow division; it is almost lending a hand to augment
it, there being no barrier or coercion of the laws to check
or hinder its course. But on the other hand, one could
also say that to give factions a loose rein to entertain
their own opinions is to soften and relax them through
facility and case, and to dull the point, which is
Sharpened by rarity, novelty, and difficulty. And yet |
prefer to think, for the reputation of our kings' piety, that
having been unable to do what they would, they have
pretended to will what they could.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 19, Of Freedom of Conscience
42 Liberality itself is not in its proper light in the hands of a
sovereign; private people have more right to exercise it.
For, to be precise about it, a king has nothing that is
properly his own; he owes his very self to others.
The authority to judge is not given for the sake of the
judge, but for the sake of the person judged. A superior is
never appointed for his own benefit, but for the benefit of
the inferior, and a doctor for the sick, not for himself. All
authority, like all art, has its end outside of itself., . .
Wherefore the tutors of young princes who make it a
point to impress on them this virtue of liberality and
preach to them not to know how to refuse anything, and
to think nothing so well spent as what they give away (a
lesson that | have seen in great favor in my time), either
look more to their own profit than to their master’s, or do
not well understand to whom they speak. It is all too easy
to impress liberality on a man who has the means to
practice it all he wants at the expense of others. And
since its value is reckoned not by the measure of the gift,
but by the measure of the giver’s means, it amounts to
nothing in such powerful hands. They find themselves
prodigal before they are liberal. Therefore liberality is
little to be commended compared with other royal
virtues, and it is the only' one, as the tyrant Dionysius
said, that goes with tyranny itself.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 6, Of Coaches
43 King Henry. Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how
lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep
Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy
To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery?
O, yes it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.
And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade.
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys.
Is far beyond a prince’s delicates.
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him.
Shakespeare, Ill Henry VI, Il, v, 41
44 Ulysses. O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities.
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe.
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead.
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey.
And last cat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdain’d
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by him beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation.
Shakespeare, Trolius and Cressida, I, ii, 101
45 Ist Officer. Come, come, they are almost here. How many
stand for consulships?
2nd Officer. Three, they say; but ‘tis thought of carry
one Coriolanus will carry it.
lst Off. That’s a brave fellow; but he’s vengeance
proud, and loves not the common people.
2nd Off. Faith, there have been many great men that
have flattered the people, who ne’er loved them; and
there be many that they have loved, they know not
wherefore; so that, if they love they know not why, they
hate upon no better a ground; therefore, for Coriolanus
neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests
the true knowledge he has in their disposition.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, II, ti, 1
46 Well then, quoth Sancho, let me have this Island, and I'll
do my best to be such a Governor, that, in spite of
Rogues, | shan’t want a small Nook in Heaven one Day or
other. Tis not out of Covetousness neither, that I'd leave
my little Cott, and set up for somebody, but meerly to
know what Kind of Thing it is to be a Governor. Oh!
Sancho, said the Duke, when once you've had a Taste of
it, you’ll never leave licking your Fingers, ‘tis so sweet
and bewitching a Thing to command and be obey’d. | am
confident, when your Master comes to be an Emperor (as
he cannot fail to be, according to the Course of his
Affairs) he will never by any Consideration be persuaded
to Abdicate; his only Grief will be, that he was one no
sooner.
Troth, Sir, reply’d Sancho, | am of your Mind; 'tis a
dainty Thing to command, though ‘twere but a Flock of
Sheep. Oh! Sancho, cry'd the Duke, let me live and die
with thee; for thou hast an Insight into every Thing. |
hope thou’lt prove as good a Governor as thy Wisdom
bespeaks thee. But no more at this Time,—to Morrow,
without further Delay, you set forward to your Island, and
Shall be furnish’d this Afternoon with Equipage and Dress
answerable to your Post, and all other Necessaries for
your Journey.
Let ’em dress me as they will, quoth Sancho, | shall be
the same Sancho Panza still.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 42
47 Being come to himself, he [Sancho] ask’d what ‘twas a
Clock? They answer’d, ‘twas now break of Day. He said
nothing, but, without any Words, began to put on his
Clothes. While this was doing, and he continu’d seriously
silent, all the Eyes of the Company were fix’d upon him,
wondring what could be the meaning of his being in such
haste to put on his Clothes. At last he made an End of
dressing himself, and creeping along softly, (for he was
too much bruis’d to go along very fast) he got to the
Stable, follow'd by all the Company, and coming to
Dapple, he embrac’d the quiet Animal, gave him a loving
Kiss on the Forehead, and, with Tears in his Eyes, Come
hither, said he, my Friend, thou faithful Companion, and
Fellow-sharer in my Travels and Miseries; when thee and |
consorted together, and all my Cares were but to mend
thy Furniture, and feed thy little Carcase, then happy
were my Days, my Months, and Years. But since | forsook
Thee, and clamber’d up the Towers of Ambition and Pride,
a thousand Woes, a thousand Torments, and four
thousand Tribulations have haunted and worry’d my Soul.
While he was talking thus, he fitted on his Pack-Saddle,
no Body offering to say any thing to him. This done, with
a great deal of Difficulty he mounted his Ass, and then
addressing himself to the Steward, the Secretary, the
Gentleman-waiter, and Doctor Pedro Rezio, and many
others that stood by; Make Way, Gentlemen, said he, and
let me return to my former Liberty’. Let me go that | may
seek my old Course of Life, and rise again from that Death
that buries me here alive. | was not born to bea
Governor, nor to defend Islands nor Cities from Enemies
that break in upon ’em. | Know better what belongs to
Ploughing, Delving, Pruning and Planting of Vineyards,
than how to make Laws, and defend Countries and
Kingdoms. St Peter is very well at Rome: Which is as
much as to say, let every one stick to the Calling he was
born to. A Spade does better in My Hand than a
Governor’s Truncheon; and | had rather fill my Belly with
a Mess of plain Porridge, than lie at the Mercy of a
Coxcombly Physick-monger that starves me to Death. |
had rather solace my self under the Shade of an Oak in
Summer, and wrap my Corps up in a double Sheep-skin
in the Winter at my Liberty, than lay me down with the
Slavery of a Government in fine Holland Sheets, and case
my Hide in Furs and richest Sables. Heaven be with you,
Gentlefolks, and pray tell without, but hath made it one
of the great names of his blessed Son; The Counsellor.
Bacon, Of Counsel
55 A king, when he presides in counsel, let him beware how
he opens his own inclination too much in that which he
propoundeth; for else counsellors will but take the wind
of him, and instead of giving free counsel, sing hima
song of placebo.
Bacon, Of Counsel
56 He that is to govern a whole nation must read in himself,
not this or that particular man; but mankind.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Intro.
57 The power of a man, to take it universally, is his present
means to obtain some future apparent good.... The
greatest of human powers is that which is compounded of
the powers of most men, united by consent, in one
person, natural or civil, that has the use of all their
powers depending on his will; such as is the power of a
Commonwealth: or depending on the wills of each
particular; such as is the power of a faction, or of diverse
factions leagued. Therefore to have servants is power; to
have friends is power: for they are strengths united.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 10
58 If the essential rights of sovereignty ... be taken away,
the Commonwealth is thereby dissolved, and every man
retumeth into the condition and calamity of a war with
every other man, which is the greatest evil that can
happen in this life; it is the office of the sovereign to
maintain those rights entire, and consequently against
his duty, first, to transfer to another or to lay from himself
any of them. For he that deserteth the means deserteth
the ends; and he deserteth the means that, being the
sovereign, acknowledgeth himself subject to the civil
laws, and renounceth the power of supreme judicature; or
of making war or peace by his own authority; or of
judging of the necessities of the Commonwealth; or of
levying money and soldiers when and as much as in his
own conscience he shall judge necessary; or of making
officers and ministers both of war and peace; or of
appointing teachers, and examining what doctrines are
conformable or contrary to the defence, peace, and good
of the people.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 30
59 He that is minded to obey all the commonwealth's orders,
whether through fear of its power or through love of
quiet, certainly consults after his own heart his own
safety and interest.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Ill, 3
60 It is easy to understand to what end the legislative power
ought to be directed and by what measures regulated;
and that is the temporal good and outward prosperity of
the society; which is the sole reason of men's entering
into society, and the only thing they seek and aim at in it.
And it is also evident what liberty remains to men in
reference to their eternal salvation, and that is that every
one should do what he in his conscience is persuaded to
be acceptable to the Almighty, on whose good pleasure
and acceptance depends their eternal happiness. For
obedience is due, in the first place, to God and,
afterwards to the laws.
But some may ask: "What if the magistrate should
enjoin anything by his authority that appears unlawful to
the conscience of a private person?" | answer that, if
government be faithfully administered and the counsels
of the magistrates be indeed directed to the public good,
this will seldom happen. But if, perhaps, it do so fall out, |
say, that such a private person is to abstain from the
action that he judges unlawful, and he is to undergo the
punishment which it is not unlawful for him to bear. For
the private judgement of any person concerning a law
enacted in political matters, for the public good, does not
take away the obligation of that law, nor deserve a
dispensation. But if the law, indeed, be concerning things
that lie not within the verge of the magistrate’s authority
(as, for example, that the people, or any party amongst
them, should be compelled to embrace a strange religion,
and join in the worship and ceremonies of another
Church), men are not in these cases obliged by that law,
against their consciences. For the political society is
instituted for no other end, but only to secure every
man’s possession of the things of this life. The care of
each man’s soul and of the things of heaven, which
neither does belong to the commonwealth nor can be
subjected to it, is left entirely to every man’s Self.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
61 | think it may not be amiss to set down what | take to be
political power. That the power of a magistrate over a
subject may be distinguished from that of a father over
his children, a master over his servant, a husband over
his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct
powers happening sometimes together in the same man,
if he be considered under these different relations, it may
help us to distinguish these powers one from another,
and show the difference betwixt a ruler of a
commonwealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a
galley.
Political power, then, | take to be a right of making
laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less
penalties for the regulating and preserving of property,
and of employing the force of the community in the
execution of such laws, and in the defence of the
commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for
the public good.
Locke, II Civil Government, |, 2-3
62 But these two powers, political and paternal, are so
perfectly distinct and separate, and built upon so
different foundations, and given to so different ends, that
every subject that is a father has as much a paternal
power over his children as the prince has over his. And
every prince that has parents owes them as much filial
duty and obedience as the meanest of his subjects do to
theirs, and can therefore contain not any part or degree
of that kind of dominion which a prince or magistrate has
over his subject.
Locke, II Civil Government, VI, 71
63 Since a rational creature cannot be supposed, when free,
to put himself into subjection to another for his own
harm... prerogative can be nothing but the people's
permitting their rulers to do several things of their own
free choice where the law was silent, and sometimes too
against the direct letter of the law, for the public good
and their acquiescing in it when so done. For as a good
prince, who is mindful of the trust put into his hands and
careful of the good of his people, cannot have too much
prerogative—that is, power to do good, so a weak and ill
prince, who would claim that power his predecessors
exercised, without the direction of the law, asa
prerogative belonging to him by right of his office, which
he may exercise at his pleasure to make or promote an
interest distinct from that of the public, gives the people
an occasion to claim their right and limit that power,
which, whilst it was exercised for their good, they were
content should be tacitly allowed.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIV, 164
64 In chusing persons for all employments, they [the
Lilliputians] have more regard to good morals than to
great abilities; for, since government is necessary’ to
mankind, they believe that the common size of human
understandings, is fitted to some station or other; and
that Providence never intended to make the management
of publick affairs a mystery, to be comprehended only by
a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom
are three born in an age: but, they suppose truth, justice,
temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power; the
practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a
good intention, would qualify any man for the service of
his country, except where a course of study is required.
But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far
from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind,
that employments could never be put into such
dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and at
least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance ina
virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal
consequence to the publick weal, as the practices of a
man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and had
great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his
corruptions.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
65 The king [of Brobdingnag) was struck with horror at the
description 1 had given of those terrible engines, and the
proposal | had made [to shmv him how to make gun
powder and cannon). He was amazed how so impotent
and grovelling an insect as | (these were his expressions)
could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a
manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of
blood and desolation, which 1 had painted as the
common effects of those destructive machines; whereof
he said, some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have
been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that
although few things delighted him so much as new
discoveries in an or in nature; yet he would rather lose
half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he
commanded me, as | valued my life, never to mention
any more.
A strange effect of narrow principles and short views!
that a prince possessed of every quality which procures
veneration, love and esteem; of strong parts, great
wisdom and profound learning; endued with admirable
talents for government, and almost adored by his
subjects; should from a nice unnecessary scruple,
whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an
opportunity put into his hands, that would have made
him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the
fortunes of his people.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Il, 7
66 1 lake this defect among them [the Brobdingnagians] to
have risen from their ignorance; by not having hitherto
reduced politicks into a science, as the more acute wits of
Europe have done. For, | remember very well, in a
discourse one day with the king, when | happened to say,
there were several thousand books among us, written
upon the art of government, it gave him (directly
contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our
understandings. He professed both to abominate and
despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either ina
prince or a minister. He could not tell what | meant by
secrets of State, where an enemy or some rival nation
were not in the ease. He confined the knowledge of
governing within very narrow bounds; to common sense
and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy
determination of civil and criminal causes; with some
other obvious topicks which are not worth considering.
And, he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make
two cars of com, or two blades of grass to grow upon a
spot of ground where only one grew before, would
deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service
to his country, than the whole race of politicians put
together.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Il, 7
67 Politicks, as the Word is commonly understood, are
nothing but Corruptions, and consequently of no U«i toa
good King, or a good Ministry, for which Reason Courts
are so over-run with Politicks.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
68 So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by
clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame, and endear
them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them
to have an opportunity of displaying it.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VI, 21
69 Constant experience shows us that every man invested
with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as
far as it will go.... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary
from the very nature of things that power should bea
check to power.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XI, 4
70 The manners of a prince contribute as much as the laws
themselves to liberty; like these he may transform men
into brutes, and brutes into men. If he prefers free and
generous spirits, he will have subjects; if he likes base,
dastardly souls, he will have slaves. Would he know the
great art of ruling, let him call honour and virtue to
attend his person; and let him encourage personal merit.
He may even sometimes cast an eye on talents and
abilities. Let him not be afraid of those rivals who are
called men of merit; he is their equal when once he loves
them. Let him gain the hearts of his people, without
subduing their spirits. Let him render himself popular; he
ought to be pleased with the affections of the lowest of
his subjects, for they too are men. The common people
require so very little condescension, that it is fit they
should be humoured; The infinite distance between the
sovereign and them will surely prevent them from giving
him any uneasiness. Let him be exorable to supplication,
and resolute against demands; let him be sensible, in
fine, that his people have his refusals, while his courtiers
enjoy his favours.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XII, 27
71 Politics is a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains
its end by a slow progression.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIV, 13
72 The only precaution necessary for the father of a family is
to guard himself against depravity, and prevent his
natural inclinations from being corrupted; whereas it is
these themselves which corrupt The Magistrate. In order
to act aright, the first has only to consult his heart; the
other becomes a traitor The moment he listens to his.
Even his own reason should be suspect to him, nor should
he follow any rule other than the public reason, which is
The law. Thus nature has made a multitude of good
fathers of families; but it is doubtful whether, from The
very beginning of The world, human wisdom has made
ten men capable of governing their peers.
Rousseau, Political Economy
73 The most pressing interest of the ruler, and even his most
indispensable duty ... is to watch over the observation of
the laws of which he is the minister, and on which his
whole authority is founded. At The same time, if he
exacts the observance of them from others, he is the
more strongly bound to observe them himself, since he
enjoys all their favour. For his example is of such force,
that even if the people were willing to permit him to
release himself from the yoke of the law, he ought to be
cautious in availing himself of so dangerous a
prerogative, which others might soon claim to usurp in
their turn, and often use to his prejudice. At bottom, as all
social engagements are mutual in nature, it is impossible
for any one to set himself above the law, without
renouncing its advantages.
Rousseau, Political Economy
74 A fool, if he be obeyed, may punish crimes as well as
another: but the true statesman is he who knows how to
prevent them.
Rousseau, Political Economy
75 That government which confines itself to mere obedience
will find difficulty in getting itself obeyed. If it is good to
know how to deal with men as they are, it is much better
to make them what there is need that they should be.
The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into
a man’s inmost being, and concerns itself no less with his
will than with his actions. It is certain that all peoples
become in the long run what the government makes
them; warriors, citizens, men, when it so pleases: or
merely populace and rabble, when it chooses to make
them so. Hence every prince who despises his subjects,
dishonours himself, in confessing that he does not know
how to make them worthy of respect. Make men,
therefore, if you would command men: if you would have
them obedient to the laws, make them love the laws, and
then they will need only to know what is their duty to do
it.
Rousseau, Political Economy
76 A careful and well-intentioned government, vigilant
incessantly to maintain or restore patriotism and morality
among the people, provides beforehand against the evils
which sooner or later result from the indifference of the
citizens to the fate of the Republic, keeping within narrow
bounds that personal interest which so isolates the
individual that the State is enfeebled by his power, and
has nothing to hope from his good-will. Wherever men
love their country, respect the laws, and live simply, little
remains to be done in order to make them happy; and in
public administration, where chance has less influence
than in The lot of individuals, wisdom is so nearly allied
to happiness, that the two objects are confounded.
Rousseau, Political Economy
77 |It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them, it is
also necessary to consider their subsistence. Provision for
the public wants is an obvious inference from the general
will, and the third essential duty of government. This
duty is not, we should feel, to fill the granaries of
individuals and thereby to grant them a dispensation
from labour, but to keep plenty so within their reach that
labour is always necessary and never useless for its
acquisition.
Rousseau, Political Economy
78 We know for ourselves that we must put up with a bad
government when it is there; the question is how to find a
good one.
Rousseau, Social Contract, HI, 6
79 You say with pride, "My people are my subjects" Granted,
but what are you? The subject of your ministers. And your
ministers, what are they? The subjects of their clerks,
their mistresses, the servants of their servants. Grasp all,
usurp all, and then pour out your silver with both hands;
set up your batteries, raise the gallows and the wheel;
make laws, issue proclamations, multiply your spies, your
soldiers, your hangmen, your prisons, and your chains.
Poor little men, what good does it do you? You will be no
better served, you will be none the less robbed and
deceived, you will be no nearer absolute power. You will
say continually, "It is our will," and you will continually do
the will of others.
Rousseau, Emile, 11
80 Dr. Johnson. Let us... now consider what the people would
really gain by a general abolition of the right of
patronage. What is most to be desired by such a change
is, that the country should be supplied with better
ministers. But why should we suppose that the parish will
make a wiser choice than the patron? ... It may be urged,
that though the parish might not choose better ministers,
they would at least choose ministers whom they like
better, and who would therefore officiate with greater
efficacy. That ignorance and perverseness should always
obtain what they like, was never considered as the end of
government; of which it is the great and standing benefit,
that the wise see for the simple, and the regular act for
the capricious. But that this argument supposes the
people capable of judging, and resolute to act according
to their best judgements, though this be sufficiently
absurd, it is not all its absurdity. It supposes not only
wisdom, but unanimity in those, who upon no other
occasions are unanimous or wise.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 1, 1773)
8| Like the modesty affected by Augustus, the state
maintained by Diocletian was a theatrical representation;
but it must be confessed that, of the two comedies, the
former was of a much more liberal and manly character
than the latter. It was the aim of the one to disguise, and
the object of the other to display, the unbounded power
which the emperors possessed over the Roman world.
Ostentation was the first principle of the new system
instituted by Diocletian. The second was division. He
divided the empire, the provinces, and every branch of
the civil as well as military administration. He multiplied
the wheels of the machine of government, and rendered
its operations less rapid but more secure. Whatever
advantages and whatever defects might attend these
innovations, they must be ascribed in a very great degree
to the first inventor.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIII
82 Julian recollected with terror the observation of his
master Plato, that the government of our flocks and herds
is always committed to beings of a Superior species; and
that the conduct of nations requires and deserves the
celestial powers of the Cods or of the Genii. From this
principle he justly concluded that the man who presumes
to reign should aspire to the perfection of the divine
nature; that he should purify his soul from her mortal and
terrestrial part; that he should extinguish his appetites,
enlighten his understanding, regulate his passions, and
subdue the wild beast which, according to the lively
metaphor of Aristotle, seldom fails to ascend the throne
of a despot. The throne of Julian, which the death of
Constanlius fixed on an independent basis, was the scat
of reason, of virtue, and perhaps of vanity. He despised
the honours, renounced the pleasures, and discharged
with incessant diligence the duties of his exalted station:
and there were few among his subjects who would have
consented to relieve him from the weight of the diadem,
had they been obliged to submit their time and their
actions to the rigorous laws which their philosophic
emperor imposed on himself.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXII
83 To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made
by the leaders in any public assembly, they ought to
respect, in some degree perhaps to fear, those whom
they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly, the
followers must be qualified, if not for actors, at least for
judges; they must also be judges of natural weight and
authority. Nothing can secure a steady and moderate
conduct in such assemblies, but that the body of them
should be respectably composed, in point of condition in
life, of permanent property, of education, and of such
habits as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
84 AU persons possessing any portion of power ought to be
strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act
in trust: and that they are to account for their conduct in
that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of
society.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
85 Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom;
and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies (Mar.
22,1775)
86 True politics can never take a step, without having
previously rendered homage to morality; united with this,
it is no longer a difficult or complicated art; morality cuts
the knot which politics is incapable of untying, whenever
they are in opposition to each other. The rights of man
ought to be religiously respected, should sovereigns in
rendering it make the greatest sacrifices. One cannot
compromise here between right and utility; politics must
bend the knee before morality; but by this means it may
also expect insensibly to attain to an eminence, where it
will shine with an immortal glory.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Appendix, 1
87 In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at
making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either
can rarely be cured by persecution.
Hamilton, Federalist |
88 The science of politics... like most other sciences, has
received great improvement. The efficacy of various
principles is now well understood, which were either not
known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The
regular distribution of power into distinct departments;
the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the
institution of courts composed of judges holding their
offices during good behaviour; the representation of the
people in the legislature by deputies of their own
election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have made
their principal progress towards perfection in modern
times. They are means, and powerful means, by which
the excellences of republican government may be
retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided. To
this catalogue of circumstances that tend to the
amelioration of popular systems of civil government, |
shall venture, however novel it may appear to some, to
add one more, on a principle which has been made the
foundation of an objection to the new Constitution; |
mean the enlargement of the orbit within which such
systems are to revolve, either in respect to the
dimensions of a single State, or to the consolidation of
several smaller States into one great Confederacy.
Hamilton, Federalist 9
89 Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science
of government has yet been able to discriminate and
define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces
—the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the
privileges and powers of the different legislative
branches. Questions daily occur in the course of practice
which prove the obscurity which reigns in these subjects,
and which puzzle the greatest adepts in political science.
Madison, Federalist 37
90 There is nothing so apt to agitate the passions of
mankind as personal considerations, whether they relate
to ourselves or to others, who are to be the objects of our
choice or preference. Hence, in every exercise of the
power of appointing to offices by an assembly of men, we
must expect to see a full display of all the private and
party likings and dislikes, partialities and antipathies,
attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who
compose the assembly. The choice which may at any time
happen to be made under such circumstances will of
course be the result either of a victory gained by one
party over the other or of a compromise between the
parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate
will be too often out of sight. In the first, the
qualifications best adapted to uniting the sufrages of the
party will be more considered than those which fit the
person for the station. In the last, the coalition will
commonly turn upon some interested equivalent: "Give
us the man we wish for this office, and you shall have the
one you wish for that." This will be the usual condition of
the bargain. And it will rarely happen that the
advancement of the public service will be the primary
object either of party victories or of party negotiations.
Hamilton, Federalist 76
91 The three ends which a statesman ought to propose to
himself in the government of a nation, are — 1. Security
to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and 3. Hope to all.
Coleridge, Table-Talk (June 25, 1831)
92 Only that will which obeys law is free; for it obeys itself—
it is independent and so free. When the state or our
country constitutes a community of existence; when the
subjective will of man submits to laws—the contradiction
between liberty and necessity vanishes.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
93 Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or
debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of
a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by
obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped
and oppressive.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Intro.
94 Government has come to be a trade, and is managed
solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into
politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world
Shall last his days.
Emerson, Letter to Thomas Carlyle (Oct. 7, 1835)
95 Head winds are far more prevalent than winds from
astern. . . For the most part the commodore on the
quarterdeck gets his atmosphere at secondhand from the
Sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first;
but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty
lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time
that the leaders little suspect it.
Melville, Moby Dick, |
96 Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or
Shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until
we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Men generally, under such a government as this, think
that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the
majority to alter them. They think that, if they should
resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is
the fault of the government itself that the remedy is
worse than the evil. It makes it worse.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
97 The government does not concern me much, and | shall
bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many
moments that | live under a government, even in this
world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-
free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to
be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally
interrupt him.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
98 Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit
and gravel, and the two political parties are its two
opposite halves—sometimes split into quarters, it may
be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but
states, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
99 | do not allow myself to suppose that either the
convention or the League have concluded to decide that |
am either the greatest or best man in America, but rather
they have concluded that it is not best to swap horses
while crossing the river, and have further concluded that
| am not so poor a horse that they might not make a
botch of it in trying to swap.
Lincoln, Speech to the National Union League
Delegation (June 9, 1864)
100 While, in the morality of the best Pagan nations, duty to
the State holds even a disproportionate place, infringing
on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian
ethics, that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed
or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New
Testament, that we read the maxim—"A ruler who
appoints any man to an office, when there is in his
dominions another man better qualified for it, sins
against God and against the State." What little
recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in
modem morality is derived from Greek and Roman
sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of
private life, whatever exists of magnanimity,
highmindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of
honour, is derived from the purely human, not the
religious part of our education, and never could have
grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth,
professedly recognised, is that of obedience.
Mill, On Liberty, II
101 To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to
human freedom and advancement, begin, or rather at
which they begin to predominate over the benefits
attending the collective application of the force of
society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of
the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being; to
secure as much of the advantages of centralised power
and intelligence as can be had without turning into
governmental channels too great a proportion of the
general activity—is one of the most difficult and
complicated questions in the art of government. It is, ina
great measure, a question of detail, in which many and
various considerations must be kept in view, and no
absolute rule can be laid down. But | believe that the
practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be
kept in view, the standard by which to test all
arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may
be conveyed in these words; the greatest dissemination
of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest
possible centralisation of information, and diffusion of it
from the centre.
Mill, On Liberty, V
102 The power in society which has any tendency to convert
itself into political power is not power quiescent, power
merely passive, but active power; in other words, power
actually exerted; that is to say, a very small portion of all
the power in existence. Politically soeaking, a great part
of all power consists in will. How is it possible, then, to
compute the elements of political power, while we omit
from the computation anything which acts on the will? To
think that because those who wield the power in society
wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no
use to attempt to influence the constitution of the
government by acting on opinion, is to forget that
opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces.
One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-
nine who have only interests. They who can succeed in
creating a general persuasion that a certain form of
government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be
preferred, have made nearly the most important step
which can possibly be taken towards ranging the powers
of society on its side.
Mill, Representative Government, |
103 In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every
administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole
population under his rule is kept going, and in this
consciousness of being indispensable every administrator
finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the
sea of history’ remains calm the ruler-administrator in his
frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the
people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his
efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon asa
storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to
move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship
moves independently with its own enormous motion, the
boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and
suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler
and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless,
feeble man.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XI, 25
104 Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes
which are devoid of truth.
Russell, Unpopular Essays, VII
10.3 Government
ITS NATURE, NECESSITY, AND FORMS
The distinction made by certain writers between a state of
nature and a civil society or commonwealth (discussed in
quotations in Section 10.1) turns on the absence or
presence of government and its institutions, mainly the
enactment and enforcement of laws and the adjudication of
disputes by judicial tribunals or courts. The absence of
government is anarchy. It would, therefore, appear to be the
case that the presence of government is essential or
indispensable to the existence of the state or
commonwealth, and to the civil peace that is identical with
civil society.
That is the view which predominates in the passages
assembled here. The opposing view, advanced by the
proponents of anarchy, is not well represented, though some
indications of it will be found in quotations from Thoreau
and Emerson. For other indications of it, and for
considerations relevant to this fundamental issue about
government, the reader should turn to Section 13.1 on
Freedom in Society and Section 14.3 on The Conditions of
Peace.
A large number of quotations name and classify diverse
forms of government. In an early instance of this type of
discussion reported by Herodotus, the principal
differentiation is made in terms of whether government is by
the one, the few, or the many; and it is in such terms that
Plato and Aristotle, and others after them, distinguish such
forms of government as monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, or propose a mixed regimine that combines
government by the one, the few, and the many. When a
further criterion is introduced—whether government is for
the private benefit of the ruler of for the public good of the
ruled—differentiation is made between good and bad
government by the one (monarchy vs. tyranny), good and
bad government by the few (aristocracy vs. oligarchy), and
good and bad government by the many (polity vs.
democracy).
Some political philosophers, including those already
mentioned, dismiss the foregoing classification of the forms
of government as superficial, and propose instead the basic
distinction between a government of laws and a government
of men—between constitutional or republican government,
on the one hand, and absolute or despotic government, on
the other. When this is made the pivotal distinction, such
terms as monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, and
democracy take on different meanings, as the reader will see
by examining the passages below with this in mind. Thus,
for example, an absolute monarchy may be benevolent or
tyrannical; a constitutional government may be aristocratic,
oligarchical, or democratic according to the qualifications it
sets up for citizenship and public office; and most republics
would appear to have the characteristics of the mixed
regime, involving the one, the few, and the many in different
functions or departments of government. On all these
matters, the reader will find additional quotations in
subsequent sections of this chapter, especially Sections
10.4, 10.5, and 10.6.
Other matters treated here include the division of the
branches or functions of government into the legislative, the
judicial, and the executive; questions concerning the
primacy of the legislative and the prerogatives of the
executive; and the issue concerning the limitations, if any,
that should be imposed upon the authority and power of
government. One bit of wisdom on this moot question is
expressed in Abraham Lincoln’s memorable statement that
government should do for the people whatever they cannot
do for themselves.
1 The conspirators met together to consult about the
situation of affairs. At this meeting speeches were made,
to which many of the Greeks give no credence, but they
were made nevertheless. Otanes recommended that the
management of public affairs should be entrusted to the
whole nation. "To me," he said, "it seems advisable, that
we should no longer have a single man to rule over us—
the rule of one is neither good nor pleasant. Ye cannot
have forgotten to what lengths Cambyses went in his
haughty tyranny, and the haughtiness of the Magi ye
have yourselves experienced. How indeed is it possible
that monarchy should be a well-adjusted thing, when it
allows a man to do as he likes without being answerable?
Such licence is enough to stir strange and unwonted
thoughts in the heart of the worthiest of men. Give a
person this power, and straightway his manifold good
things puff him up with pride, while envy is so natural to
human kind that it cannot but arise in him. But pride and
envy together include all wickedness—both of them
leading on to deeds of savage violence. True it is that
kings, possessing as they do all that heart can desire,
ought to be void of envy; but the contrary is seen in their
conduct towards the citizens. They are jealous of the
most virtuous among their subjects, and wish their death;
while they lake delight in the meanest and basest, being
ever ready to listen to the tales of slanderers. A king,
besides, is beyond all other men inconsistent with
himself. Pay him court in moderation, and he is angry
because you do not show him more profound respect—
show him profound respect, and he is offended again,
because (as he says) you fawn on him. But the worst of
all is, that he sets aside the laws of the land, puts men to
death without trial, and subjects women to violence. The
rule of the many, on the other hand, has, in the first
place, the fairest of names, to wit, isonomy; and further it
is free from all those outrages which a king is wont to
commit. There, places are given by lot, the magistrate is
answerable for what he does, and measures rest with the
commonalty. | vote, therefore, that we do away with
monarchy, and raise the people to power. For the people
are all in all."
Such were the sentiments of Otanes. Megabyzus
spoke next, and advised the setting up of an oligarchy:
—"In all that Otanes has said to persuade you to put
down monarchy," he observed, "I fully concur; but his
recommendation that we should call the people to power
seems to me not the best advice. For there is nothing so
void of understanding, nothing so full of wantonness, as
the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for
men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant,
to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude
unbridled mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least
knows what is he about, but a mob is altogether devoid of
knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge ina
rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is
right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the
fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses
everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by
democracies; but let us choose out from the citizens a
certain number of the worthiest, and put the government
into their hands. For thus both we ourselves shall be
among the governors, and power being entrusted to the
best men, it is likely that the best counsels will prevail in
the state."
This was the advice which Megabyzus gave, and after
him Darius came forward, and spoke as follows:—"All that
Megabyzus said against democracy was well said, | think;
but about oligarchy he did not speak advisedly; for take
these three forms of government—democracy', oligarchy,
and monarchy—and let them each be at their best, |
maintain that monarchy far surpasses the other two.
What government can possibly be better than that of the
very best man in the whole state? The counsels of such a
man are like himself, and so he governs the mass of the
people to their heart’s content; while at the same time
his measures against evil-doers are kept more secret than
in other states. Contrariwise, in oligarchies, where men
vie with each other in the service of the commonwealth,
fierce enmities are apt to arise between man and man,
each wishing to be leader, and to carry his own measures;
whence violent quarrels come, which lead to open strife,
often ending in bloodshed. Then monarchy is sure to
follow; and this too shows how far that rule surpasses all
others. Again, in a democracy, it is impossible but that
there will be malpractices: these malpractices, however,
do not lead to enmities, but to dose friendships, which
are formed among those engaged in them, who must hold
well together to carry on their villainies. And so things go
on until a man stands forth as champion of the
commonalty, and puts down the evil-doers. Straightway
the author of so great a service is admired by all, and
from being admired soon comes to be appointed king; so
that here too it is plain that monarchy is the best
government. Lastly, to sum up all in a word, whence, |
ask, was it that we got the freedom which we enjoy?—did
democracy give it us, or oligarchy, or a monarch? As a
single man recovered our freedom for us, my sentence is
that we keep to the rule of one. Even apart from this, we
ought not to change the laws ol our lore-fathers when
they work fairly; for to do so is not well."
Such were the three opinions brought forward at this
meeting; the four other Persians voted in favour of the
last. Otanes, who wished to give his countrymen a
democracy, when he found the decision against him,
arose a second time, and spoke thus before the assembly;
—"Brother conspirators, it is plain that the king who is to
be chosen will be one of ourselves, whether we make the
choice by casting lots for the prize, or by letting the
people decide which of us they will have to rule over
them, in or any other way. Now, as | have neither a mind
to rule nor to be ruled, | shall not enter the lists with you
in this matter. | withdraw, however, on one condition—
none of you Shall claim to exercise rule over me or my
seed for ever." The six agreed to these terms, and Otanes
withdrew and stood aloof from the contest. And still to
this day the family of Otanes continues to be the only
free family in Persia; those who belong to it submit to the
rule of the king only so far as they themselves choose;
they are bound, however, to observe the law's of the land
like the other Persians.
Herodotus, History, Ill, 80-83
2 Eleatic Stranger. Monarchy divides into royalty and
tyranny; the rule of the few into aristocracy, which has an
auspicious name, and oligarchy; and democracy or the
rule of the many, which before was one, must now be
divided.
Young Socrates. On what principle of division?
Str. On the same principle as before, although the
name is now discovered to have a twofold meaning. For
the distinction of ruling with law or without law, applies
to this as well as to the rest.
XY Soc. Yes.
Str. The division made no difference when we were
looking for the perfect State, as we show’cd before. But
now’ that this has been separated off, and, as we said,
the others alone are left for us, the principle of law and
the absence of law will bisect them all.
¥ Soc. That would seem to follow, from what has been
said.
Str. Then monarchy, when bound by good
prescriptions or laws, is the best of all the six, and when
lawless is the most bitter and oppressive to the subject.
Y¥ Soc. True.
Str. The government of the few, which is intermediate
between that of the one and many, is also intermediate in
good and evil; but the government of the many is in
every respect w’eak and unable to do either any great
good or any great evil, when compared with the others,
because the offices are too minutely subdivided and too
many hold them. And this therefore is the worst of all
lawful governments, and the best of all lawless ones. If
they are all without the restraints of law, democracy is
the form in which to live is best; if they are well ordered,
then this is the last which you should choose, as royalty,
the first form, is the best, with the exception of the
seventh, for that excels them all, and is among States
what God is among men.
Plato, Statesman, 302B
3 The distinction which is made between the mg and the
statesman is as follows: When the government is
personal, the ruler is a king; when, cording to the rules of
the political science, t c citizens rule and are ruled in
turn, then he is called a statesman.
Aristotle, Politics, 1252a13
4 The rule of a master is not a constitutional rule, and ... all
the different kinds of rule are not, as some affirm, the
same with each other. For there is one rule exercised over
subjects who are by nature free, another over subjects
who are by nature slaves. The rule of a household is a
monarchy, for every house is under one head: whereas
constitutional rule is a government of freemen and
equals.
Aristotle, Politics, 1255b/6
5 The words constitution and government have the same
meaning, and the government, which is the supreme
authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a
few, or of the many. The true forms of government,
therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the
many, govern with a view to the common interest; but
governments which rule with a view to the private
interest, whether of the one, or of the few, or of the many,
are perversions. For the members of a state, if they are
truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages. Of
forms of government in which one rules, we call that
which regards the common interests, kingship or royalty;
that in which more than one, but not many, rule,
aristocracy; and it is so called, either because the rulers
are the best men, or because they have at heart the best
interests of the state and of the citizens. But when the
citizens at large administer the state for the common
interest, the government is called by the generic name,—
a constitution. And there is a reason for this use of
language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but as
the number increases it becomes more difficult for them
to attain perfection in every kind of virtue, though they
may in military virtue, for this is found in the masses.
Hence in a constitutional government the fighting-men
have the supreme power, and those who possess arms
are the citizens.
Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions are as
follows:—of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of
constitutional government, democracy. For tyranny is a
kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the
monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the
wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the
common good of all.
Aristotle, Politics, 1279a25
6 If we call the rule of many men, who are all of them good,
aristocracy, and the rule of one man royalty, then
aristocracy will be better for states than royalty, whether
the government is supported by force or not, provided
only that a number of men equal in virtue can be found.
Aristotle, Politics, 1286b4
7 Democracies are safer and more permanent than
oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is
more numerous and has a greater share in the
government; for when there is, no middle class, and the
poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the
state soon comes to an end...
These considerations will help us to understand why
most governments are either democratical or oligarchical.
The reason is that the middle class is seldom numerous in
them, and whichever party, whether the rich or the
common people, trasgresses the mean and predominates,
draws the constitution its own way, and thus arises either
oligarchy or democracy. There is another reason—the
poor and the rich quarrel with one another, and
whichever side gets the better, instead of establishing a
just or popular government, regards political supremacy
as the prize of victory, and the one party sets up a
democracy and the other an oligarchy.
Aristotle, Politics, 1296a14
8 All constitutions have three elements, concerning which
the good lawgiver has to regard what is expedient for
each constitution. When they are well-ordered, the
constitution is well-ordered, and as they differ from one
another, constitutions differ. There is one element which
deliberates about public affairs; secondly that concerned
with the magistracies—the questions being, what they
should be, over what they should exercise authority, and
what should be the mode of electing to them; and thirdly
that which has judicial power.
Aristotle, Politics, 1297b37
9 The forms of government are four—democracy, oligarchy,
aristocracy, monarchy. The supreme right to judge and
decide always rests, therefore, with either a part or the
whole of one or other of these governing powers.
A Democracy is a form of government under which the
citizens distribute the offices of state among themselves
by lot, whereas under oligarchy there is a property
qualification, under aristocracy one of education. By
education | mean that education which is laid down by
the law; for it is those who have been loyal to the
national institutions that hold office under an aristocracy.
These are bound to be looked upon as ‘the best men’,
and it is from this fact that this form of government has
derived its name (‘the rule of the best'} Monarchy, as the
word implies, is the constitution in which one man has
authority over all. There are two forms of monarchy:
kingship, which is limited by prescribed conditions, and
‘tyranny’, which is not limited by anything.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1365b29
10 The end of democracy is freedom; of oligarchy, wealth; of
aristocracy, the maintenance of education and national
institutions; of tyranny, the protection oi the tyrant.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1366a4
11 Sovereignty in a state is thrown like a ball from kings to
tyrants, from tyrants to aristocrats (or to the people at
large), and finally to an oligarchy or to another tyrant. No
single type of government lasts very long. This being the
case, | regard monarchy as the best of the three basic
types of government. But a moderate, mixed type of
government, combining all three elements, is even better.
There should be a monarchical element in the state. The
leading citizens ought also to have some power. And the
people themselves should have some say in running the
affairs of the nation. This kind of constitution promotes a
high degree of equality—something free men cannot do
without for long. Such a constitution also provides
stability. The three basic forms of government too easily
degenerate into their corresponding perversions:
monarchy into despotism, aristocracy into an oligarchy,
and democracy into mob rule or anarchy. These forms
often change to new types, but a mixed constitution does
not unless grievous errors are made in governing. There
appears no reason to change the form of government, if
all the citizens have a feeling of security. Nor does this
form have an opposite perversion into which it can easily
Slide.
Cicero, Republic, |, 44
12 All nations and cities are ruled by the people, the
nobility, or by one man. A constitution, formed by
selection out of these elements ... is easy to commend
but not to produce; or, if it is produced, it cannot be
lasting.
Tacitus, Annals, IV, 33
13 Two points are to be observed concerning the right
ordering of rulers in a state or nation. One is that all
should take some share in the government, for this form
of constitution ensures peace among the people,
commends itself to all, and is guarded by all.... The other
point is to be observed in respect of the kinds of
government, or the different ways in which the
constitutions are established.... The best form of
government is in a state or kingdom, where one is given
the power to preside over all, while under him are others
having governing powers; and yet a government of this
kind is shared by all, both because all are eligible to
govern, and because the rulers are chosen by all. For this
is the best form of polity, being partly kingdom, since
there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far
as a number of persons are set in authority; partly
democracy, that is, government by the people, in so far
as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the
people have the right to choose their rulers.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 105, 1
14 If an unjust government is carried on by one man alone,
who seeks his own benefit from his rule and not the good
of the multitude subject to him, such a ruler is called a
tyrant —a word derived from strength —because he
oppresses by might instead of ruling by justice. Thus
among the ancients all powerful men were called tyrants.
If an unjust government is carried on, not by one but by
several, and if they be few, it is called an oligarchy, that
is, the rule of a few. This occurs when a few, who differ
from the tyrant only by the fact that they are more than
one, oppress the people by means of their wealth. If,
finally, the bad government is carried on by the
multitude, it is called a democracy, i.e. control by the
populace, which comes about when the plebeian people
by force of numbers oppress the rich. In this way the
whole people will be as one tyrant.
Aquinas, On Kingship, I, 1
15 All those who have written upon civil institutions
demonstrate (and history is full of examples to support
them) that whoever desires to found a state and give it
laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and
ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they
may find occasion for it. If their evil disposition remains
concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some
unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked
occasion to show itself; but time, which has been said to
be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.
Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 3
16 Not in theory, but in truth, the best and most excellent
government for each nation is the one under which it has
preserved its existence. Its form and essential fitness
depend on habit. We are prone to be discontented with
the present state of things. But | maintain, nevertheless,
that to wish for the government of a few in a democratic
state, or another type of government in a monarchy, is
foolish and wrong,
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 9, Of Vanity
17 Gonzalo. |' the commonwealth | would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would | admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, Succession.
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty—
Sebastian. Yet he would be king on’t.
Antonio. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets
the beginning.
Gon. All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony.
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would | not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance.
To feed my innocent people.
Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects?
Ant. None, man; all idle. Whores and knaves.
Gon. | would with such perfection govern, sir,
To excel the golden age,
Shakespeare, Tempest, II, i, 144
18 When any of the four pillars of government are mainly
shaken or weakened (which are religion, justice, counsel,
and treasure), men had need to pray for fair weather.
Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles
19 It is not in the power of man to devise any form of
government free from imperfections and dangers.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, Bk. I, Ill, 8
20 Desire of knowledge, and arts of peace, inclineth men to
obey a common power; for such desire containeth a
desire of leisure, and consequently protection from some
other power than their own.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 11
21 The power to coin money, to dispose of the estate and
persons of infant heirs, to have pre-emption in markets,
and all other statute prerogatives may be transferred by
the sovereign, and yet the power to protect his subjects
be retained. But if he transfer the militia, he retains the
judicature in vain, for want of execution of the laws; or if
he grant away the power of raising money, the militia is
in vain; or if he give away the government of doctrines,
men will be frighted into rebellion with the fear of spirits.
And so if we consider any one of the said rights, we shall
presently see that the holding of all the rest will produce
no effect in the conservation of peace and justice, the
end for which all Commonwealths are instituted. And this
division is it whereof it is said, a kingdom divided in itself
cannot stand: for unless this division precede, division
into opposite armies can never happen.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 18
22 The difference of Commonwealths consisteth in the
difference of the sovereign, or the person representative
of all and every one of the multitude. And because the
sovereignty is either in one man, or in an assembly of
more than one; and into that assembly either every man
hath right to enter, or not every one, but certain men
distinguished from the rest; it is manifest there can be
but three kinds of Commonwealth. For the representative
must needs be one man, or more; and if more, then it is
the assembly of all, or but of a part. When the
representative is one man, then is the Commonwealth a
monarchy; when an assembly of all that will come
together, then it is a democracy, or popular
Commonwealth; when an assembly of a part only, then it
is called an aristocracy. Other kind of Commonwealth
there can be none: for either one, or more, or all, must
have the sovereign power (which | have shown to be
indivisible) entire.
There be other names of government in the histories
and books of policy; as tyranny and oligarchy; but they
are not the names of other forms of government, but of
the same forms misliked. For they that are discontented
under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are
displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy; so also, they
which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it
anarchy, which signifies want of government; and yet |
think no man believes that want of government is any
new kind of government; nor by the same reason ought
they to believe that the government is of one kind when
they like it, and another when they mislike it or are
oppressed by the governors.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 19
23 The sovereign power, whether placed in one man, as in
monarchy, or in one assembly of men, as in popular and
aristocratical Commonwealths, is as great as possibly
men can be imagined to make it. And though of so
unlimited a power, men may fancy many evil
consequences, yet the consequences of the want of it,
which is perpetual war of every man against his
neighbour, are much worse.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 20
24 Temporal and spiritual government are but two words
brought into the world to make men see double and
mistake their lawful sovereign. It is true that the bodies of
the faithful, after the resurrection, shall be not only
Spiritual, but eternal; but in this life they are gross and
corruptible. There is therefore no other government in
this life, neither of state nor religion, but temporal; nor
teaching of any doctrine lawful to any subject which the
governor both of the state and of the religion forbiddeth
to be taught. And that governor must be one; or else
there must needs follow faction and civil war in the
Commonwealth between the Church and State; between
Spiritualists and temporalists; between the sword of
justice and the shield of faith; and, which is more, in
every Christian man’s own breast between the Christian
and the man.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 39
25 We have defined an aristocratic dominion as that which
is held not by one man, but by certain persons chosen
out of the multitude, whom we shall henceforth call
patricians. | say expressly, "that which is held by certain
persons chosen." For the chief difference between this
and a democracy is, that the right of governing depends
in an aristocracy on election only, but in a democracy for
the most part on some right either congenital or acquired
by fortune... . And therefore, although in any dominion
the entire multitude be received into the number of the
patricians, provided that right of theirs is not inherited,
and does not descend by some law to others, the
dominion will for all that be quite an aristocracy, because
none are received into the number of the patricians save
by express election.... We must observe a very great
difference, which exists between the dominion which is
conferred on one man and that which is conferred ona
sufficiently large council. For, in the first place, the power
of one man is.., very inadequate to support the entire
dominion; but this no one, without manifest absurdity,
can affirm of a sufficiently large council. For, in declaring
the council to be sufficiently large, one at the same time
denies, that it is inadequate to support the dominion. A
king, therefore, is altogether in need of counsellors, but a
council like this is not so in the least. In the second place,
kings are mortal, but councils are everlasting. And so the
power of the dominion which has once been transferred
to a large enough council never reverts to the
multitude.... Thirdly, a king’s dominion is often on
sufferance, whether from his minority, sickness, or old
age, or from other causes; but the power of a council of
this kind, on the contrary, remains always one and the
same. In the fourth place, one man’s will is very
fluctuating and inconstant; and, therefore, in a monarchy,
all law is, indeed, the explicit will of the king... but not
every will of the king ought to be law; but this cannot be
said of the will of a sufficiently numerous council. For
since the council itself, as we have just shown, needs no
counsellors, its every explicit will ought to be law. And
hence we conclude, that the dominion conferred upon a
large enough council is absolute, or approaches nearest
to the absolute. For if there be any absolute dominion, it
is, in fact, that which is held by an entire multitude.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, VIII, 1-3
26 | easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy
for the inconveniences of the state of Nature, which must
certainly be great where men may be judges in their own
case, since it is easy to be imagined that he who was so
unjust as to do his brother an injury will scarce be so just
as to condemn himself for it.
Locke, II Civil Government, II, 13
27 The great and chief end ... of men uniting into
commonwealths, and putting themselves under
government, is the preservation of their property.
Locke, II Civil Government, IX, 124
28 In the state of Nature there are many things wanting.
Firstly, there wants an established, settled, known law,
received and allowed by common consent to be the
standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to
decide all controversies between them. For though the
law of Nature be plain and intelligible to all rational
creatures, yet men, being biased by their interest, as well
as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of
it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their
particular cases.
Secondly, in the state of Nature there wants a known
and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all
differences according to the established law. For every
one in that state being both judge and executioner of the
law of Nature, men being partial to themselves, passion
and revenge is very apt to carry them too far, and with
too much heat in their own cases, as well as negligence
and unconcernedness, make them too remiss in other
men's.
Thirdly, in the state of Nature there often wants power
to back and support the sentence when right, and to give
it due execution. They who by any injustice offended will
seldom fail where they are able by force to make good
their injustice. Such resistance many times makes the
punishment dangerous, and frequently destructive to
those who attempt it.
Locke, II Civil Government, IX, 124-126
29 The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws
to any other hands, for it being but a delegated power
from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to
others. The people alone can appoint the form of the
commonwealth, which is by constituting the legislative,
and appointing in whose hands that shall be. And when
the people have said, "Wc will submit, and be governed
by laws made by such men, and in such forms," nobody
else can say other men shall make laws for them; nor can
they be bound by any laws but such as are enacted by
those whom they have chosen and authorised to make
laws for them.
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 141
30 In well-ordered commonwealths, where the good of the
whole is so considered as it ought, the legislative power is
put into the hands of divers persons who, duly
assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a
power to make laws, which when they have done, being
separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws
they have made; which is a new and near tic upon them
to take care that they make them for the public good.
Locke, II Civil Government, XII, 143
31 Where the laws cannot be executed it is all one as if there
were no laws, and a government without laws is, |
suppose, a mystery in politics inconceivable to human
capacity, and inconsistent with human society.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIX, 219
32 A government is like everything else: to preserve it we
must love it.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, IV, 5
33 Republics end with luxury; monarchies with poverty.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VII, 4
34 In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine
struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty;
and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the
contest.
Hume, Of the Origin of Government
35 The legislative power belongs to the people, and can
belong to it alone. It may, on the other hand, readily be
seen, from the principles laid down above, that the
executive power cannot belong to the generality as
legislature or Sovereign, because it consists wholly of
particular acts which fall outside the competency of the
law, and consequently of the Sovereign, whose acts must
always be laws.
The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to
bind it together and set it to work under the direction of
the general will, to serve as a means of communication
between the State and the Sovereign, and to do for the
collective person more or less what the union of soul and
body does for man. Here we have what is, in the State,
the basis of government, often wrongly confused with the
Sovereign, whose minister it is.
What then is government? An intermediate body set
up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure
their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution
of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and
political.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 1
36 It is not good for him who makes the laws to execute
them.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 4
37 A people that would always govern well would not need
to be governed.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 4
38 Law being purely the declaration of the general will, it is
clear that, in the exercise of the legislative power, the
people cannot be represented; but in that of the
executive power, which is only the force that is applied to
give the law effect, it both can and should be
represented.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I/l, 15
39 Johnson. | would not give half a guinea to Vtvc under one
form of government rather than another. It is of no
moment to the happiness of an individual.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (March 31,1772)
40 Talking of different governments,Johnson. "The more
contracted that power is, the more easily it« destroyed. A
country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
Government there cannot be so firm, as when it rests
upon a broad basis gradually contracted, as the
government of Great Britain, which is founded on the
parliament, then is in the privy council, then in the King."
Boswell. "Power, when contracted into the person of a
despot, may be easily destroyed, as the prince may be
cut off. So Caligula wished that the people of Rome had
but one neck, that he might cut them off at a blow."
Oglethorpe. "It was of the Senate he wished that. The
Senate by its usurpation controuled both the Emperour
and the people. And don’t you think that we see too
much of that in our own Parliament?"
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 14, 1778)
41 When the Judicial is united to the executive power, it is
scarce possible that justice should not frequently be
sacrificed to what is vulgarly called politics. The persons
entrusted with the great interests of the state may, even
without any corrupt views, sometimes imagine it
necessary to sacrifice to those interests the rights of a
private man. But upon the impartial administration of
justice depends the liberty of every individual, the sense
which he has of his own security. In order to make every
individual feel himself perfectly secure in the possession
of every right which belongs to him, it is not only
necessary that the judicial should be separated from the
executive power, but that it should be rendered as much
as possible independent of that power. The judge should
not be liable to be removed from his office according to
the caprice of that power. The regular payment of his
salary should not depend upon the good-will or even
upon the good economy of that power.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
42 Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the
government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the
government of others? Or have we found angels in the
forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this
question.
Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
43 A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men
from injuring one another, which shall leave them
otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry
and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of
labor the bread it has earned: this is the sum of good
government.
Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
44 The two Antonines... governed the Roman world forty-two
years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and
virtue. Although Pius had two sons, he preferred the
welfare of Rome to the interest of his family, gave his
daughter Faustina in marriage to young Marcus, obtained
from the senate the tribunitian and proconsular powers,
and with a noble disdain, or rather ignorance of jealousy,
associated him to all the labours of government. Marcus
[Aurelius], on the other hand, revered the character of his
benefactor, loved him as a parent, obeyed him as his
sovereign, and, after he was no more, regulated his own
administration by the example and maxims of his
predecessor. Their united reigns are possibly the only
period of history in which the happiness of a great people
was the sole object of government.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, III
45 Administration of justice and of the finances [are] the two
objects which, in a state of peace, comprehend almost all
the respective duties of the sovereign and of the people;
of the former, to protect the citizens who are obedient to
the laws; of the latter, to contribute the share of their
property which is required for the expenses of the state.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XVII
46 The three powers in the state as regards their relations to
each other, are... coordinate with one another as so many
moral persons, and the one is thus the complement of the
other in the way of completing the constitution of the
state; they are likewise subordinate to one another, so
that the one cannot at the same time usurp the function
of the other by whose side it moves, each having its own
principle and maintaining its authority in a particular
person, but under the condition of the will of a superior;
and further, by the un/on of both these relations, they
assign distributively to every subject in the state his own
rights.
Considered as to their respective dignity, the three
powers may be thus described. The will of the sovereign
legislator, in respect of what constitutes the external
mine and thine, is to be regarded as irreprehensible; the
executive function of the supreme ruler is to be regarded
as irresistible; and the judicial sentence of the supreme
judge is to be regarded as irreversible, being beyond
appeal.
Kant, Science of Right, 48
47 The idea of a national government involves in it, not only
an authority over the individual citizens, but an indefinite
supremacy over all persons and things, so far as they are
objects of lawful government. Among a people
consolidated into one nation, this supremacy is
completely vested in the national legislature.
Madison, Federalist 39
48 In a government where numerous and extensive
prerogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary
monarch, the executive department is very justly
regarded as the source of danger, and watched with all
the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. Ina
democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in
person the legislative functions, and are continually
exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and
concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their
executive magistrates, tyranny may well be
apprehended, on some favourable emergency, to start up
in the same quarter. But in a representative republic,
where the executive magistracy is carefully limited, both
in the extent and the duration of its power; and where
the legislative power is exercised by an assembly which is
inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with
an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is
sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which
actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be
incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by
means which reason prescribes; it is against the
enterprising ambition of this department that the people
ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their
precautions.
Madison, Federalist 48
49 What is government itself but the greatest of all
reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no
government would be necessary.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 51
50 A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to
the object of government, which is the happiness of the
people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which
that object can be best attained. Some governments are
deficient in both these qualities; most governments are
deficient in the first.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 62
51 No government, any more than an individual, will long be
respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly
respectable without possessing a certain portion of order
and stability.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 62
52 The state as a political entity is... cleft into three
substantive divisions:
(a) the power to determine and establish the universal
—the Legislature;
{b) the power to subsume single cases and the
spheres of particularity under the universal—the
Executive;
(c) the power of subjectivity, as the will with the power
of ultimate decision—the Crown. In the crown, the
different powers are bound into an individual unity which
is thus at once the apex and basis of the whole, i.e. of
constitutional monarchy.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 273
53 A distinction must be made when aristocracies and
democracies accuse each other of facilitating corruption.
In aristocratic governments, those who are placed at the
head of affairs are rich men, who are desirous only of
power. In democracies, statesmen are poor and have their
fortunes to make. The consequence is that in aristocratic
states the rulers are rarely accessible to corruption and
have little craving for money, while the re-verse is the
case in democratic nations.
But in aristocracies, as those who wish to attain the
head of affairs possess considerable wealth, and as the
number of persons by whose assistance they may rise is
comparatively small, the government is, if | may so
speak, put up at auction. In democracies, on the contrary,
those who are covetous of power are seldom wealthy, and
the number of those who confer power is extremely great.
Perhaps in democracies the number of men who might be
bought is not smaller, but buyers are rarely to be found;
and, besides, it would be necessary to buy so many
persons at once that the attempt would be useless.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 13
54 Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of
legislation than democracies ever can be. They are
possessed of a self-control that protects them from the
errors of temporary excitement; and they form far-
reaching designs, which they know how to mature till a
favorable opportunity arrives. Aristocratic government
proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how to
make the collective force of all its laws converge at the
same time to a given point. Such is not the case with
democracies, whose laws are almost always ineffective or
inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more
imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures
that it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its
own cause; but the object it has in view is more useful.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I, 14
55 The less government we have the better—the fewer laws,
and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of
formal government is the influence of private character,
the growth of the Individual; the appearance of The
principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the
wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be
owned, but a shabby imitation.
Emerson, Politics
56 The only government that | recognize—and it matters not
how few are at the head of it, or how small its army—is
that power that establishes justice in the land, never that
which establishes Injustice. What shall we think of a
government to which all the truly brave and just men in
the land are enemies, standing between it and those
whom it oppresses?
Thoreau, Plea for Captain John Brown
57 | heartily accept the motto, "That government is best
which governs least"; and | should like to see it acted up
to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally
amounts to this, which also | believe, "That government is
best which governs not at all"; and when men are
prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which
they will have. Government is at best but an expedient;
but most governments are usually, and all governments
are sometimes, inexpedient.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
58 | went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our
front door, for, as | told the storekeeper, the Governor was
coming here. ‘Aye,’ said he, ‘and the Legislature too.’
‘Then | will take two bolts,’ said |. He said that there had
been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our
protectors were coming.
Thoreau, Journal (Sept, 8, 1859)
59 The legitimate object of government is to do fora
community of people whatever they need to have done,
but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves
in their separate and individual capacities. In all that the
people can individually do as well for themselves,
government ought not to interfere.
Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
60 The... most cogent reason for restricting the
interference of government is the great evil of adding
unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to
those already exercised by the government causes its
influence over hopes and fears to be more widely
diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and
ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the
government, or of some party which aims at becoming
the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the
insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the
universities, and the public charities, were all of them
branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal
corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves
on them, became departments of the central
administration; if the employees of all these different
enterprises were appointed and paid by the government,
and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all
the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the
legislature would make this or any other country free
otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater,
the more efficiently and scientifically the administrative
machinery was constructed—the more skilful the
arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and
heads with which to work it.
Mill, On Liberty, V
61 The proper functions of a government are not a fixed
thing, but different in different states of society; much
more extensive in a backward than in an advanced state.
Mill, Representative Government, I!
62 The interest of the monarch, or the interest of the
aristocracy either collective or that of its individual
members, is promoted, or they themselves think that it
will be promoted, by conduct opposed to that which the
general interest of the community requires. The interest,
for example, of the government is to tax heavily: that of
the community is to be as little taxed as the necessary
expenses of good government permit. The interest of the
king, and of the governing aristocracy, is to possess, and
exercise, unlimited power over the people; to enforce, on
their part, complete conformity to the will and
preferences of the rulers. The interest of the people is to
have as little control exercised over them in any respect
as is consistent with attaining the legitimate ends of
government. The interest, or apparent and supposed
interest, of the king or aristocracy is to permit no censure
of themselves, at least in any form which they may
consider either to threaten their power, or seriously to
interfere with their free agency. The interest of the people
is that there should be full liberty of censure on every
public officer, and on every public act or measure. The
interest of a ruling class, whether in an aristocracy or an
aristocratic monarchy, is to assume to themselves an
endless variety of unjust privileges, sometimes benefiting
their pockets at the expense of the people, sometimes
merely tending to exalt them above others, or, what is
the same thing in different words, to degrade others
below themselves. If the people are disaffected, which
under such a government they are very likely to be, it is
the interest of the king or aristocracy to keep them at a
low level of intelligence and education, foment
dissensions among them, and even prevent them from
being too well off, lest they should "wax fat, and kick";
agreeably to the maxim of Cardinal Richelieu in his
celebrated Testament Politique. All these things are for
the interest of a king or aristocracy, in a purely selfish
point of view, unless a sufficiently strong counter-interest
is created by the fear of provoking resistance. All these
evils have been, and many of them still are, produced by
the sinister interests of kings and aristocracies, where
their power is sufficient to raise them above the opinion
of the rest of the community; nor is it rational to expect,
as a consequence of such a position, any other conduct.
Mill, Representative Government, VI
63 Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force,
there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of
the nationality under the same government, and a
government to themselves apart. This is merely saying
that the question of government ought to be decided by
the governed. One hardly knows what any division of the
human race should be free to do if not to determine with
which of the various collective bodies of human beings
they choose to associate themselves.
Mill, Representative Government, XVI
64 It is already a common, and is rapidly tending to become
the universal, condition of the more backward
populations, to be either held in direct subjection by the
more advanced, or to be under their complete political
ascendancy; there are in this age of the world few more
important problems than how to organise this rule, so as
to make it a good instead of an evil to the subject people;
providing them with the best attainable present
government, and with the conditions most favourable to
future permanent improvement. But the mode of fitting
the government for this purpose is by no means so well
understood as the conditions of good government ina
people capable of governing themselves. We may even
say that it is not understood at all.
Mill, Representative Government, XVIII
65 The government of a people by itself has a meaning and
a reality; but such a thing as government of one people
by another does not and cannot exist. One people may
keep another as a warren or preserve for its own use, a
place to make money in, a human cattle farm to be
worked for the profit of its own inhabitants. But if the
good of the governed is the proper business of a
government, it is utterly impossible that a people should
directly attend to it. The utmost they can do is to give
some of their best men a commission to look after it; to
whom the opinion of their own country can neither be
much of a guide in the performance of their duty, nora
competent judge of the mode in which it has been
performed.
Mill, Representative Government, XVIII
66 The ends of government are as comprehensive as those
of the social union. They consist of all the good, and all
the immunity from evil, which the existence of
government can be made either directly or indirectly to
bestow.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, BK. V, Il, 2
67 Government neither subsists nor arises because it is good
or useful, but solely because it is inevitable.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 3
10.4 Government of and by the People
REPUBLIC AND DEMOCRACY
The kind of government being discussed in this section has
been variously characterized as constitutional government,
duly constituted government, limited and responsible
government, a government of laws, lawful government, de
jure government (or government by right rather than by
might), government with the consent of the governed, and
government based on the sovereignty of the people. While
most of the authors quoted here are advocates or defenders
of such government, usually regarding it as the only just or
the only legitimate form of rule, they differ among
themselves about the provisions that constitutional
government should make for popular participation either
through citizenship and suffrage or through election to
public office.
The issue debated here can be expressed in the
questions: Which portion or portions of the total population
of the state shall be regarded as "the people" in the strict
political sense of "qualified participants” in affairs of state?
Which shall be treated as wards of the state, to be ruled for
their own good, rather than as members of the ruling class?
To understand these questions, it is necessary to understand
the constitution that sets up a republic as an arrangement of
offices, each given a certain limited authority to be
exercised by men only in virtue of their being officeholders,
selected or elected from the body of men who are admitted
to citizenship. Hence the qualifications for citizenship and
for the other offices of government become the critical
consideration in differentiating one constitution from
another. Section 10.5 on Citizenship contains quotations
relevant to this point.
The opponents of democracy argue for republics in which
suffrage is restricted, the most frequent insistence being
that the citizens should be men of property, although race,
gender, education, and religion have also been defended as
disqualifying criteria. The reader will also find a rejection of
democracy that is based on the identification of it with
direct participation on the part of the citizens, as in the
republics of ancient Greece. The writers of The Federalist
argue against direct democracy and for republican
government, understood by them as consisting in
government not directly by the people, but by their
representatives.
The proponents of democracy differ among themselves
on how far they would extend suffrage. In the ancient world,
the advocates of democracy as against oligarchy proposed
that, among men born free, suffrage and public office should
be open to poor and rich alike; but they had no qualms
about excluding slaves, for example. As late as the
eighteenth century such writers as Locke, Rousseau, and
Kant combined their advocacy of constitutional government
with an acceptance of disfranchised classes in the
population. The reader will find that J. S. Mill, writing in the
middle of the nineteenth century, is the first among political
theorists to argue for universal suffrage, including the
enfranchisement of women.
One other basic issue appears in this section—
justification of rule by the majority. It is enlightened by
Rousseau’s insight that unanimity is required for the
establishment of majority rule. Allowing the majority to
prevail does not preclude misrule by the majority or
repression of minorities. This raises the difficult question of
what safeguards can be set up to prevent misrule by the
majority without at the same time nullifying majority rule
itself.
1 Theseus. One moment, stranger.
Your start was wrong, seeking a master here.
This city is free, and ruled by no one man.
The people reign, in annual succession.
They do not yield the power to the rich;
The poor man has an equal share in it.
Herald. That one point gives the better of the game
To me. The town | come from is controlled
By one man, not a mob. And there is no one
To puff it up with words, for private gain,
Swaying it this way, that way. Such a man
First flatters it with wealth of favors; then
He does it harm, but covers up his blunders
By blaming other men, and goes scot-free.
The people is no right judge of arguments;
Then how can it give right guidance to a city?
A poor man, working hard, could not attend
To public matters, even if ignorance
Were not his birthright. When a wretch, a nothing,
Obtains respect and power from the people
By talk, his betters sicken at the sight.
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 403
2 Athenagoras. \t will be said, perhaps, that democracy is
neither wise nor equitable, but that the holders of
property are also the best fitted to rule. | say, on the
contrary, first, that the word demos, or people, includes
the whole state, oligarchy only a part; next, that if the
best guardians of property are the rich, and the best
counsellors wise, none can hear and decide so well as the
many; and that all these talents, severally and
collectively, have their just place in a democracy.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, VI, 39
3 Soaates. Democracy comes into being after the poor have
conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and
banishing some, while to the remainder they give an
equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of
government in which the magistrates are commonly
elected by lot.
Adeimantus. Yes ... that is the nature of democracy,
whether the revolution has been effected by arms, or
whether fear has caused the opposite party to withdraw.
And now what is their manner of life, and what sort of
a government have they? for as the government is, such
will be the man.
Clearly, he said.
In the first place, are they not free; and is not the city
full of freedom and frankness—a man may say and do
what he likes?
Tis said so, he replied.
And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to
order for himself his own life as he pleases?
Clearly.
Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest
variety of human natures?
There will.
This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States,
being like an embroidered robe which is spangled with
every sort of flower. And just as women and children
think a variety of colours to be of all things most
charming, so there are many men to whom this State,
which is spangled with the manners and characters of
mankind, will appear to be the fairest of States.
Yes.
Yes, my good Sir, and there will be no better in which
to look for a government.
Why?
Because of the liberty which reigns there—they have a
complete assortment of constitutions; and he who has a
mind to establish a State, as we have been doing, must
go to a democracy as he would to a bazaar at which they
sell them, and pick out the one that suits him; then, when
he has made his choice, he may found his State.
He will be sure to have patterns enough.
And there being no necessity, | said, for you to govern
in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be
governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go
to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless
you are so disposed— there being no necessity also,
because some law forbids you to hold office or bea
dicast, that you should not hold office or be a dicast, if
you have a fancy—is not this a way of life which for the
moment is supremely delightful?
For the moment, yes.
And is not their humanity to the condemned in some
cases quite charming? Have you not observed how, ina
democracy, many persons, although they have been
sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and
walk about the world—the gentleman parades like a hero,
and nobody sees or cares?
Yes, he replied, many and many a one.
See too, | said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and
the "don't care" about trifles, and the disregard which she
shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid
down at the foundation of the city—as when we said that,
except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there
never will be a good man who has not from his childhood
been used to play amid things of beauty and make of
them a joy and a study—how grandly does she trample
all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving
a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and
promoting to honour any one who professes to be the
people’s friend.
Yes, she is of a noble spirit.
These and other kindred characteristics are proper to
democracy, which is a charming form of government, full
of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality
to equals and unequals alike.
We know her well.
Plato, Republic, Vill, 557A
4 Socrates. Democracy has her own good, of which the
insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?
Adeimantus. What good?
Freedom, | replied; which, as they tell you ina
democracy, is the glory of the State—and that therefore
in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to
dwell.
Yes; the saying is in everybody’s mouth.
| was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of
this and the neglect of other things introduces the
change in democracy, which occasions a demand for
tyranny.
How so?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has
evil cup-bearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk
too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her
rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught,
she calls them to account and punishes them, and says
that they are cursed oligarchs.
Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.
Yes, | said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by
her slaves who hug their chains and men of naught; she
would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who
are like subjects: these are men after her own heart,
whom she praises and honours both in private and
public. Now in such a State, can liberty have any limit?
Certainly not.
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private
houses, and ends by getting among the animals and
infecting them.
How do you mean?
| mean that the father grows accustomed to descend
to the level of his sons and to fear them and the son is on
a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence
for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and the
metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the
metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either.
Yes, he said, that is the way.
And these are not the only evils, | said—there are
several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master
fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise
their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and
the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to
compete with him in word or deed; and old men
condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and
gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and
authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of
the young.
Quite true, he said.
The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave
bought with money, whether male or female, is just as
free as his or her purchaser; nor must | forget to tell of the
liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each
other.
Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises
to our lips?
That is what | am doing, | replied; and | must add that
no one who does not know would believe, how much
greater is the liberty which the animals who are under
the dominion of man have in a democracy than in any
other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says,
are as good as their she-mistresscs, and the horses and
asses have a way of marching along %vith all the rights
and dignities of freemen; and they will run at any body
who comes in their way if he does not leave the road
clear for them: and all things are just ready to burst with
liberty.
When | take a country walk, he said, | often experience
what you describe. You and | have dreamed the same
thing.
And above all, | said, and as the result of all, see how
sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at
the least touch of authority and at length, as you know,
they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten;
they will have no one over them.
Yes, he said, | Know it too well.
Such, my friend, | said, is the fair and glorious
beginning out of which springs tyranny.
Plato, Republic, Vill, 562A
5 Athenian Stranger. The state in which the law is above the
rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has
salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer.
Plato, Laws, IV, 715B
6 If the people are not utterly degraded, although
individually they may be worse judges than those who
have special knowledge—as a body they are as good or
better.
Aristotle, Politics, 1282a15
7 As a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than
a banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a
better judge of many things than any individual.
Again, the many are more incorruptible than the few....
The individual is liable to be overcome by anger or by
some other passion, and then his judgement is
necessarily perverted; but it is hardly to be supposed that
a great number of persons would all get into a passion
and go wrong at the same moment.
Aristotle, Politics, 1286a28
8 It must not be assumed, as some are fond of saying, that
democracy is simply that form of government in which
the greater number are sovereign, for in oligarchies, and
indeed in every government, the majority rules; nor again
is oligarchy that form of government in which a few are
sovereign....We should rather say that democracy is the
form of government in which the free are rulers, and
oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the
free are the many and the rich are the few. Otherwise a
government in which the offices were given according to
stature ... or according to beauty, would be an oligarchy;
for the number of tall or good-looking men is small. And
yet oligarchy and democracy are not sufficiently
distinguished merely by these two characteristics of
wealth and freedom. Both of them contain many other
elements, and therefore we must carry our analysis
further, and say that the government is not a democracy
in which the freemen, being few in number, rule over the
many who are not free.. .. Neither is it a democracy when
the rich have the government because they exceed in
number.... But the form of government is a democracy
when the free, who are also poor and the majority,
govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble
govern, they being at the same time few in number.
Aristotle, Politics, 1290a30
9 Of forms of democracy first comes that which is said to be
based strictly on equality. In such a democracy the law
says that it is just for the poor to have no more advantage
than the rich; and that neither should be masters, but
both equal. For if liberty and equality... are chiefly to be
found in democracy, they will be best attained when all
persons alike share in the government to the utmost. And
since the people are the majority, and the opinion of the
majority is decisive, such a government must necessarily
be a democracy. Here then is one sort of democracy.
There is another, in which the magistrates are elected
according to a certain property qualification, but a low
one; he who has the required amount of property has a
Share in the government, but he who loses his property
loses his rights. Another kind is that in which all the
citizens who are under no disqualification share in the
government, but still the law is supreme. In another,
everybody, if he be only a citizen, is admitted to the
government, but the law is supreme as before, A fifth
form of democracy, in other respects the same, is that in
which, not the law, but the multitude, have the supreme
power, and supersede the law by their decrees. This is a
state of affairs brought about by the demagogues.
Aristotle, Politics, 1291b30
10 There are various ways in which all may share in the
government; they may deliberate, not all in one body,
but by turns, as in the constitution of Telecles the
Milesian. There are other constitutions in which the
boards of magistrates meet and deliberate, but come into
office by turns, and are elected out of the tribes and the
very smallest divisions of the state, until every one has
obtained office in his turn. the citizens, on the other
hand, are assembled only for the purposes of legislation,
and to consult about the constitution, and to hear the
edicts of the magistrates. In another variety of democracy
the citizens form one assembly, but meet only to elect
magistrates, to pass laws, to advise about war and peace,
and to make scrutinies. Other matters are referred
severally to special magistrates, who are elected by vote
or by lot out of all the citizens. Or again, the citizens
meet about election to offices and about scrutinies, and
deliberate concerning war or alliances while other
matters are administered by the magistrates, who, as far
as is possible, are elected by vote. | am speaking of those
magistrates in which special knowledge is required. A
fourth form of democracy is when all the citizens meet to
deliberate about everything, and the magistrates decide
nothing, but only make the preliminary inquiries; and
that is the way in which the last and worst form of
democracy, corresponding, as we maintain, to the close
family oligarchy and to tyranny, is at present
administered. All these modes are democratical.
Aristotle, Politics, 1298a11
11 In democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen
a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true
interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic
of democracy, the government of the majority and
freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that
equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that
freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such
democracies every one lives as he pleases.
.. But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery
to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is
their salvation.
Aristotle, Politics, 1310a24
12 The voice of the people has something divine; else how
could so many agree in one thing?
Marvel not if the vulgar speak truer than the great, for
they speak safer.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. VI, Ill, 9
13 There never was any government so purely popular, as
not to require the exclusion of the poor, of strangers,
women, and minors from the public councils.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, Bk. I, III, 8
14 A democracy, in effect, is no more than an aristocracy of
orators, interrupted sometimes with the temporary
monarchy of one orator.
Hobbes, Elements of Law, Pt. Il, Il, 5
15 The majority is the best way, because it is visible and has
strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the
least able.
Pascal, Pensées, XIV, 878
16 To make the people fittest to choose, and the chosen
fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty
education, to teach the people faith, not without virtue,
temperance, modesty, sobriety, parsimony, justice; not to
admire wealth or honor; to hate turbulence and ambition;
to place every one his private welfare and happiness in
the public peace, liberty, and safety.
Milton, Ready and Easy Way
17 Political power is that power which every man having in
the state of Nature has given up into the hands of the
society, and therein to the governors whom the society
hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it
Shall be employed for their good and the preservation of
their property. Now this power, which every man has in
the state of Nature, and which he parts with to the
society in all such cases where the society can secure
him, is to use such means for the preserving of his own
property as he thinks good and Nature allows him; and to
punish the breach of the law of Nature in others so as
(according to the best of his reason) may most conduce
to the preservation of himself and the rest of mankind; so
that the end and measure of this power, when in every
man’s hands, in the state of Nature, being the
preservation of all of his society—that is, all mankind in
general—it can have no other end or measure, when in
the hands of the magistrate, but to preserve the members
of that society in their lives liberties, and possessions,
and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their
lives and fortunes, which are as much as possible to be
preserved; but a power to make laws, and annex such
penalties to them as may tend to the preservation of the
whole, by cutting off those parts, and those only, which
are so corrupt that they threaten the sound and healthy,
without which no severity is lawful. And this power has its
original only from compact and agreement and the
mutual consent of those who make up the community.
Locke, II Civil Government, XV, 171
18 Perhaps it will be said that the people being ignorant and
always discontented, to lay the foundation of government
in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the
people, is to expose it to certain ruin; and no government
will be able long to subsist if the people may set up a new
legislative whenever they take offence at the old one. To
this | answer, quite the contrary. People are not so easily
got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest.
They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the
acknowledged faults in the frame they have been
accustomed to. And if there be any original defects, or
adventitious ones introduced by time or corruption, it is
not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all
the world sees there is an opportunity for it.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIX, 223
19 The people, in whom the supreme power resides, ought
to have the management of everything within their
reach; that which exceeds their abilities must be
conducted by their ministers.
But they cannot properly be said to have their
ministers, without the power of nominating them: it is,
therefore, a fundamental maxim in this government, that
the people should choose their ministers—-that is, their
magistrates.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Il, 2
20 The people are extremely well qualified for choosing
those whom they are to entrust with part of their
authority. They have only to be determined by things to
which they cannot be strangers, and by facts that are
obvious to sense. They can tell when a person has fought
many battles, and been crowned with success; they are,
therefore, capable of electing a general. They can tell
when a judge is assiduous in his office, gives general
satisfaction, and has never been charged with bribery:
this is sufficient for choosing a praetor. They are struck
with the magnificence or riches of a fellow-citizen; no
more is requisite for electing an edile. These are facts of
which they can have better information in a public forum
than a monarch in his palace. But are they capable of
conducting an intricate affair, of seizing and improving
the opportunity and critical moment of action? No; this
surpasses their abilities.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Il, 2
21 In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they
are also in despotic governments: in the former, because
they are everything; in the latter, because they are
nothing.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VI, 2
22 The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when
the spirit of equality is extinct, but likewise when they fall
into a spirit of extreme equality, and when each citizen
would fain be upon a level with those whom he has
chosen to command him. Then the people, incapable of
bearing the very power they have delegated, want to
manage everything themselves, to debate for the senate,
to execute for the magistrate, and to decide for the
judges.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VIII, 2
23 The great advantage of representatives is their capacity
of discussing public affairs. For this the people
collectively are extremely unfit, which is one of the chief
inconveniences of a democracy.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XI, 6
24 Ordinarily there is no comparison between the crimes of
the great who are always ambitious, and the crimes of the
people who always want, and can want only liberty and
equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality, do
not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination,
poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours’ lands,
etc.; but ambitious might and the mania for power
plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time,
whatever be the place.
Popular government is in itself, therefore, less
iniquitous, less abominable than despotic power.
The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny
and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling
republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the
republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.
The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish
fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with
many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the
many tails obey a single head which wants to devour
everything.
Democracy seems suitable only to a very little
country, and further it must be happily situated. Small
though it be, it will make many mistakes, because it will
be composed of men. Discord will reign there as ina
monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish
massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no
condemnation to the galleys for having taken some water
from the sea without paying for it, unless one supposes
this republic composed of devils in a corner of hell.
One questions every day whether a republican
government is preferable to a king’s government? The
dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern men is
very difficult.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Democracy
25 The general will is always right and tends to the public
advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of
the people are always equally correct. Our will is always
for our own good, but we do not always see what that is;
the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived,
and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is
bad.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 3
261...give the name "Republic" to every State that is
governed by laws, no matter what the form of its
administration may be: for only in such a case does the
public interest govern, and the res publica rank asa
reality. Every legitimate government is republican.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 6
27 If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has
been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is
against the natural order for the many to govern and the
few to be governed.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 4
28 There is no government so subject to civil wars and
intestine agitations as democratic or popular
government, because there is none which has so strong
and continual a tendency to change to another form, or
which demands more vigilance and courage for its
maintenance as it is.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 4
29 Were there a people of gods, their government would be
democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 4
30 There is but one law which, from its nature, needs
unanimous consent. This is the social compact; for civil
association is the most voluntary of all acts. Every man
being born free and his own master, no one, under any
pretext whatsoever, can make any man subject without
his consent. To decide that the son of a slave is born a
Slave is to decide that he is not born a man.
If then there are opponents when the social compact is
made, their opposition does not invalidate the contract,
but merely prevents them from being included in it. They
are foreigners among citizens. When the State is
instituted, residence constitutes consent; to dwell within
its territory is to submit to the Sovereign.
Apart from this primitive contract, the vote of the
majority always binds all the rest. This follows from the
contract itself. But it is asked how a man can be both free
and forced to conform to wills that are not his own. How
are the opponents at once free and subject to laws they
have not agreed to?
| retort that the question is wrongly put. The citizen
gives his consent to all the laws, including those which
are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those
which punish him when he dares to break any of them.
The constant will of all the members of the State is the
general will; by virtue of it they are citizens and free.
When in the popular assembly a law is proposed, what
the people is asked is not exactly whether it approves or
rejects the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with
the general will, which is their will. Each man, in giving
his vote, states his opinion on that point; and the general
will is found by counting votes. When therefore the
opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves
neither more nor less than that | was mistaken, and that
what | thought to be the general will was not so. If my
particular opinion had carried the day | should have
achieved the opposite of what was my will; and it is in
that case that | should not have been free.
This presupposes, indeed, that all the qualities of the
general will still reside in the majority: when they cease
to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty is no
longer possible.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, 2
31 The basis of our political systems is the right of the
people to make and to alter their constitutions of
government. But the constitution which at any time
exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the
whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very
idea of the power and the right of the people to establish
government presupposes the duty of every individual to
obey the established government.
Washington, Farewell Address
32 In every government on earth is some trace of human
weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy,
which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly
open, cultivate and improve. Every government
degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people
alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe
depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds
must be improved to a certain degree. This indeed is not
all that is necessary, though it be essentially necessary.
An amendment of our constitution must here come in aid
of the public education. The influence over government
must be shared among all the people. If every individual
which composes their mass participates of the ultimate
authority, the government will be safe; because the
corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private
resources of wealth; and public ones can not be provided
but by levies on the people. In this case every man would
have to pay his own price.
Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, XIV
33 | am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people
will always be found to be the best army. They may be led
astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves.
The people are the only censors of their governors;
and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true
principles of their institution. To punish these errors too
severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the
public liberty.
Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington (Jan. 16, 1787)
34 All... will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though
the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will
to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority
possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect,
and to violate would be oppression.
Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
35 There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of
this are virtue and talents. Formerly, bodily powers gave
place among the aristo/. But since the invention of
gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with
missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor,
politeness, and other accomplishments, has become but
an auxiliary ground of distinction.
There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on
wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with
these it would belong to the first class. The natural
aristocracy | consider as the most precious gift of nature,
for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.
And, indeed, it would have been inconsistent in Creation
to have formed man for the social state and not to have
provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the
concerns of the society. May we not even say that that
form of government is the best which provides the most
effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristo/
into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is
a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision
should be made to prevent its ascendancy.
Jefferson, Letter to John Adam (Oct. 28,1813)
36 To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of
constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which
a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and
which he ought always most seriously to consider. But
authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the
member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote,
and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest
conviction of his judgment and conscience,—these are
things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and
which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole
order and tenor of our constitution.
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from
different and hostile interests; which interests each must
maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents
and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly
of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where,
not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide,
but the general good, resulting from the general reason
of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you
have chosen him, he is not member for Bristol, but he isa
member of parliament. If the local constituent should
have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion,
evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the
community, the member for that place ought to be as far,
as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect.
Burke, Speech at Bristol (Nov. 3, 1774)
37 Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained,
the people... are, themselves, in a great measure, their
own instruments.... They are less under responsibility to
one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense
of fame and estimation.... Their own approbation of their
own acts has to them the appearance of a public
judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is
therefore the most shameless thing in the world. As it is
the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man
apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to
punishment.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
38 A democracy... is the most complex of all the forms of the
state, for it has to begin by uniting the will of all so as to
form a people; and then it has to appoint a sovereign
over this common union, which sovereign is no other than
the united will itself.
Kant, Science of Right, 51
39 The problem of a constitution is solvable even to a nation
of devils (I shall be forgiven what is offensive in the
expression) if this people is but endowed with
understanding.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Supplement |
40 After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the
subsisting federal government, you are called upon to
deliberate on a new Constitution for the United Slates of
America. The subject speaks its own importance;
comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the
existence of the Union, the safety and welfare of the parts
of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many
respects the most interesting in the world. It has been
frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved
to the people of this country, by their conduct and
example, to decide the important question, whether
societies of men are really capable or not of establishing
good government from reflection and choice, or whether
they are forever destined to depend for their political
constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth
in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with
propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is
to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act
may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the
general misfortune of mankind.
Hamilton, Federalist 1
41 U is not a new observation that the people of any country
(if, like the Americans, intelligent and well-informed)
seldom adopt and .steadily persevere for many years in
an erroneous opinion respecting their interests.
Jay, Federalist 3
42 A pure democracy, by which 1 mean a society consisting
of a small number of citizens, who assemble and
administer the government in person, can admit of no
cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or
interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of
the whole; a communication and concert result from the
form of government itself; and there is nothing to check
the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an
obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies
have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal
security or the rights of property; and have in general
been as short in their lives as they have been violent in
their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronised
this species of government, have erroneously supposed
that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their
political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly
equalised and assimilated in their possessions, their
Opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which | mean a government in which
the scheme of representation takes place, opens a
different prospect, and promises the cure for which we
are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies
from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the
nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive
from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a
democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the
government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens
elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of
citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the
latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to
refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them
through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose
wisdom may best discern the true interest of their
country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be
least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial
considerations.
Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the
public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the
people, will be more consonant to the public good than if
pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the
purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted.
Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister
designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other
means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the
interests, of the people. The question resulting is,
whether small or extensive republics are more favourable
to the election of proper guardians of the public weal;
and it is clearly decided in favour of the latter by two
obvious considerations:
In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however
small the republic may be, the representatives must be
raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the
cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they
must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard
against the confusion of a multitude. Hence the number
of representatives in the two cases not being in
proportion to that of the two constituents, and being
proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows
that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the
large than in the small republic, the former will present a
greater option, and consequently a greater probability of
a fit choice.
In the next place, as each representative will be
chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than
in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy
candidates to practise with success the vicious arts by
which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of
the people being more free, will be more likely to centre
in men who possess the most attractive merit and the
most diffusive and established character.
Madison, Federalist 10
43 In a democracy the people meet and exercise the
government in person; in a republic, they assemble and
administer it by their representatives and agents. A
democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small
spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.
Madison, Federalist 14
44 As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from
the central point which will just permit the most remote
citizens to assemble as often as their public functions
demand, and will include no greater number than can
join in those functions; so the natural limit of a republic is
that distance from the centre which will barely allow the
representatives to meet as often as may be necessary for
the administration of public affairs.
Madison, Federalist 14
45 It is said to be necessary that all classes of citizens
should have some of their own number in the
representative body, in order that their feelings and
interests may be the better understood and attended to.
But we have seen that this will never happen under any
arrangement that leaves the votes of the people free.
Where this is the case, the representative body, with too
few exceptions to have any influence on the spirit of the
government, will be composed of landholders, merchants,
and men of the learned professions.
Hamilton, Federalist 35
46 Nothing can be more fallacious than to found our political
calculations on arithmetical principles. Sixty or seventy
men may be more properly trusted with a given degree of
power than six or seven. But it does not follow that six or
seven hundred would be proportionably a better
depositary. And if we carry on the supposition to six or
seven thousand, the whole reasoning ought to be
reversed. The truth is, that in all cases a certain number
at least seems to be necessary to secure the benefits of
free consultation and discussion, and to guard against
too easy a combination for improper purposes; as, on the
other hand, the number ought at most to be kept within a
certain limit, in order to avoid the confusion and
intemperance of a multitude. In all very numerous
assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion
never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every
Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian
assembly would still have been a mob.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 55
47 The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be,
first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to
discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of
the society; and in the next place, to take the most
effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst
they continue to hold their public trust. The elective
mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of
republican government. The means relied on in this form
of government for preventing their degeneracy are
numerous and various. The most effectual one is such a
limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a
proper responsibility to the people.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 57
48 It is a misfortune incident to republican government,
though in a less degree than to other governments, that
those who administer it may forget their obligations to
their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important
trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch
of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing
the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary
check on the government. It doubles the security to the
people, by requiring the concurrence of mu distinct
bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the
ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be
sufficient. This is a precaution founded on such clear
principles, and now so well understood in the United
States, that it would be more than superfluous to enlarge
on it. | will barely remark, that as the improbability of
sinister combinations will be in proportion to the
dissimilarity in the genius of the two bodies, it must be
politic to distinguish them from each other by every
circumstance which wll consist with a due harmony in all
proper measures, and with the genuine principles of
republican government.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 62
49 It is a just observation that the people commonly intend
the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors.
But their good sense would despise the adulator who
should pretend that they always reason right about the
means of promoting it. They Know from experience that
they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so
seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by
the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of
the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the
artifices of men who possess their confidence more than
they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather
than to deserve it.
Hamilton, Federalist 71
50 A constitution is not just something manufactured; it is
the work of centuries, it is the Idea, the consciousness of
rationality so far as that consciousness is developed ina
particular nation. No constitution, therefore, is just the
creation of its subjects.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 274
51 Public opinion is the unorganized way in which a people’s
opinions and wishes are made known. What is actually
made authoritative in the state must operate in an
organized manner as the parts of the constitution do. But
at all times public opinion has been a great power and it
iS particularly so in our day when the principle of
subjective freedom has such importance and
significance. What is to be authoritative nowadays
derives its authority, not at all from force, only to a small
extent from habit and custom, really from insight and
argument.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 316
52 To those for whom the word "democracy" is synonymous
with disturbance, anarchy, spoliation, and murder, | have
attempted to show that democracy may be reconciled
with respect for property, with deference for rights, with
safety to freedom, with reverence for religion; that, if
democratic government fosters less than another some of
the finer possibilities of the human spirit, it has its great
and noble aspects; and that perhaps, after all, it is the
will of God to bestow a lesser grade of happiness upon all
men than to grant a greater share of it to a smaller
number and to bring a few to the verge of perfection. |
have undertaken to demonstrate to them that, whatever
their opinion on this point may be, it is too late to
deliberate; that society is advancing and dragging them
along with it toward equality of conditions; that the sole
remaining alternative lies between evils henceforth
irresistible; that the question is not whether aristocracy
or democracy can be maintained but whether we are to
live under a democratic society, devoid indeed of poetry
and greatness, but at least orderly and moral, or under a
democratic society, lawless and depraved, abandoned to
the frenzy of revolution or subjected to a yoke heavier
than any of those which have crushed mankind since the
fall of the Roman Empire.
Tocqueville, Letter to Eugene Stoffels (Feb, 21, 1835)
53 | confess that in America | saw more than America; |
sought there the image of democracy itself, with its
inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions,
in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its
progress.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Intro.
54 Democracy not only lacks that soundness of judgment
which is necessary to select men really deserving of their
confidence, but often have not the desire or the
inclination to find them out. It cannot be denied that
democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the
feeling of envy in the human heart; not so much because
they afford to everyone the means of rising to the same
level with others as because those means perpetually
disappoint the persons who employ them. Democratic
institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality
which they can never entirely satisfy.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 13
55 A democracy can obtain truth only as the result of
experience; and many nations may perish while they are
awaiting the consequences of their errors.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 13
56 Governments usually perish from impotence or from
tyranny. In the former case, their power escapes from
them; it is wrested from their grasp in the latter. Many
observers who have witnessed the anarchy of democratic
states have imagined that the government of those states
was naturally weak and impotent. The truth is that when
war is once begun between parties, the government loses
its control over society. But | do not think that a
democratic power is naturally without force or resources;
say, rather, that it is almost always by the abuse of its
force and the misemployment of its resources that it
becomes a failure. Anarchy is almost always produced by
its tyranny or its mistakes but not by its want of strength.
It is important not to confuse stability with force, or
the greatness of a thing with its duration. In democratic
republics the power that directs society is not stable, for
it often changes hands and assumes a new direction. But
whichever way it turns, its force is almost irresistible. The
governments of the American republics appear to me to
be as much centralized as those of the absolute
monarchies of Europe, and more energetic than they are.
| do not, therefore, imagine that they will perish from
weakness.
If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed,
that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the
majority, which may at some future time urge the
minorities to desperation and oblige them to have
recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the
result, but it will have been brought about by despotism.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 15
57 | think... that the species of oppression by which
democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that
ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will
find no prototype of it in their memories. | seek in vain for
an expression that will accurately convey the whole of
the idea | have formed of it; the old words despotism and
tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and
since | cannot name, | must attempt to define it.
| seek to trace the novel features under which
despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that
strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of
men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to
procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they
glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger
to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private
friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the
rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does
not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel
them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and
if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any
rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and
tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure
their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That
power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It
would be like the authority of a parent if, like that
authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but
it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
childhood: it is well content that the people should
rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For
their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it
chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures,
manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free
agency of man less useful and less frequent; it
circumscribes the will within a narrower range and
gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself, The
principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it
has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on
them as benefits.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, lV, 6
58 We may naturally believe that it is not the singular
prosperity of the few, but the greater well-being of all
that is most pleasing in the sight of the Creator and
Preserver of men. What appears to me to be man's
decline is, to His eye, advancement; what afflicts me is
acceptable to Him. A state of equality is perhaps less
elevated, but it is more just: and its justice constitutes its
greatness and its beauty. | would strive, then, to raise
myself to this point of the divine contemplation and
thence to view and to judge the concerns of men.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, lV, 8
59 There are two different modes in which the sense of the
community may be taken: one, simply by the right of
suffrage, unaided; the other, by the right through a
proper organism. Each collects the sense of the majority.
But one regards numbers only and considers the whole
community as a unit, having but one common interest
throughout, and collects the sense of the greater number
of the whole as that of the community. The other, on the
contrary, regards interests as well as numbers—
considering the community as made up of different and
conflicting interests as far as the action of the
government is concerned—and takes the sense of each,
through its majority or appropriate organ, and the united
sense of all as the sense of the entire community. The
former of these | shall call the numerical or absolute
majority; and the latter, the concurrent or constitutional
majority. | call it the constitutional majority, because it is
an essential element in every constitutional government
—be its form what it may. So great is the difference,
politically speaking, between the two majorities that they
cannot be confounded without leading to great and fatal
errors; and yet the distinction between them has been so
entirely overlooked that, when the term majority is used
in political discussions, it is applied exclusively to
designate the numerical—as if there were no other. Until
this distinction is recognized, and better understood,
there will continue to be great liability to error in properly
constructing constitutional governments, especially of
the popular form, and of preserving them when properly
constructed. Until then, the latter will have a strong
tendency to slide, first, into the government of the
numerical majority and, finally, into absolute government
of some other form.
J. C. Calhoun, Disquisition on Government
60 The practical reason why, when the power is once in the
hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and fora
long period continue, to rule is not because they are most
likely to Ix: in the right, nor because this seems fairest to
the minority, but because they are physically the
strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in
all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men
understand it. Can there not be a government in which
majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but
conscience?—in which majorities decide only those
questions to winch the rule of expediency is applicable?
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least
degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has
every man a conscience, then? | think that we should be
men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
the only obligation which | have a right to assume is to do
at any time what | think right.
Thoreau, Cult Disobedience
61 The authority of government, even such as | am willing to
submit to—for | will cheerfully obey those who know and
can do better than I, and in many things even those who
neither know nor can do so well—is still an impure one: to
be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of
the governed. It can have no pure right over my person
and property but what | concede to it. The progress from
an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited
monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true
respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher
was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of
the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last
improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to
take a step further toward recognizing and organizing the
rights of man? There will never be a really free and
enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the
individual as a higher and independent power, from
which all its own power and authority are derived, and
treats him accordingly. 1 please myself with imagining a
state at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to
treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which
even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if
a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor
embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors
and fellow men. A state which bore this kind of fruit, and
suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare
the way for a still more perfect and glorious state, which
also | have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
62 No man is good enough to govern another man without
that other’s consent. | say this is the leading principle—
the sheet anchor of American republicanism.
Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Ill. (Oct. 16, 1854)
63 Plainly, the central idea of secession is (he essence of
anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional
checks, and limitations, and always changing easily with
deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is
the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects
it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism.
Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a
permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that,
rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in
some form, is all that is left.
Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
64 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting place for those who
here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But,
in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave
men, living and dead, who struggled here have
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for
us the living rather to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that
from these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead
Shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God
shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
63 At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it
is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules
the world. The only power deserving the name is that of
masses, and of governments while they make themselves
the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This
is as true in the moral and social relations of private life
as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go by the
name of public opinion are not always the same sort of
public: in America they are the whole white population;
in England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always
a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And what is a
still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their
opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from
ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done
for them by men much like themselves, addressing them
or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment,
through the newspapers.
Mill, On Liberty, III
66 No government by a democracy or a numerous
aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions,
qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or
could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the
sovereign Many have let themselves be guided (which in
their best times they always have done) by the counsels
and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed One
or Few.
Mill, On Liberty, III
67 One of the greatest dangers ... of democracy, as of all
other forms of government, lies in the sinister interest of
the holders of power: it is the danger of class legislation;
of government intended for (whether really effecting it or
not) the immediate benefit of the dominant class, to the
lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most
important questions demanding consideration, in
determining the best constitution of a representative
government, is how to provide efficacious securities
against this evil.
If we consider as a class, politically soeaking, any
number of persons who have the same sinister interest—
that is, whose direct and apparent interest points towards
the same description of bad measures; the desirable
object would be that no class, and no combination of
classes likely to combine, should be able to exercise a
preponderant influence in the government.
Mill, Representative Government, VI
68 All trust in constitutions is grounded on the assurance
they may afford, not that the depositaries of power will
not, but that they cannot, misemploy it. Democracy is not
the ideally best form of government unless this weak side
of it can be strengthened; unless it can be so organised
that no class, not even the most numerous, shall be able
to reduce all but itself to political insignificance, and
direct the course of legislation and administration by its
exclusive class interest. The problem is, to find the means
of preventing this abuse, without sacrificing the
characteristic advantages of popular government.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
69 Among the foremost benefits of free government is that
education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which
is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people
when they are called to take a part in acts which directly
affect the great interests of their country.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
70 Whoever, in an otherwise popular government, has no
vote, and no prospect of obtaining it, will either bea
permanent malcontent, or will feel as one whom the
general affairs of society do not concern; for whom they
are to be managed by others; who "has no business with
the laws except to obey them,” nor with public interests
and concerns except as a looker-on. What he will Know or
care about them from this position may partly be
measured by what an average woman of the middle class
knows and cares about politics, compared with her
husband or brothers.
Independently of all these considerations, it is a
personal injustice to withhold from any one, unless for
the prevention of greater evils, the ordinary privilege of
having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in
which he has the same interest as other people. If he is
compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he is
required implicitly to obey, he should be legally entitled
to be told what for; to have his consent asked, and his
opinion counted at its worth, though not at more than its
worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and
civilised nation; no persons disqualified, except through
their own default. Every one is degraded, whether aware
of it or not, when other people, without consulting him,
take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his
destiny. And even in a much more improved state than
the human mind has ever yet reached, it is not in nature
that they who are thus disposed of should meet with as
fair play as those who have a voice. Rulers and ruling
classes are under a necessity of considering the interests
and wishes of those who have the suffrage; but of those
who are excluded, it is in their option whether they will
do so or not, and, however honestly disposed, they are in
general too fully occupied with things which they must
attend to, to have much room in their thoughts for
anything which they can with impunity disregard. No
arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be
permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is
peremptorily excluded; in which the electoral privilege is
not open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
71 All human beings have the same interest in good
government; the welfare of all is alike affected by it, and
they have equal need of a voice in it to secure their share
of its benefits. If there be any difference, women require
it more than men, since, being physically weaker, they
are more dependent on law and society for protection.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
72 The majority of the male sex are, and will be all their
lives, nothing else than labourers in cornfields or
manufactories; but this does not render the suffrage less
desirable for them, nor their claim to it less irresistible,
when not likely to make a bad use of it. Nobody pretends
to think that woman would make a bad use of the
suffrage. The worst that is said is that they would vote as
mere dependents, at the bidding of their male relations. If
it be so, so let it be. If they think for themselves, real
good will be done, and if they do not, no harm. It is a
benefit to human beings to take off their fetters, even if
they do not desire to walk.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
73 | have said that the new and more democratic force
which is now superseding our old middle-class Liberalism
cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies
still to form. We hear promises of its giving us
administrative reform, law reform, reform of education,
and | know not what; but those promises come rather
from its advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and
to justify it for superseding middle-class Liberalism, than
from clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed.
But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned friends
against whom culture may with advantage continue to
uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection; that this is
an inward spiritual activity, having for its characters
increased sweetness, increased light, increased life,
increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both
worlds, the world of middle-class Liberalism and the world
of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from the
world of middle-class Liberalism in which he was bred,
always inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery to
which, as we have seen, Englishmen are so prone, and
which has been the bane of middle-class Liberalism. ... It
is the same fashion of teaching a man to value himself
not on what he is, not on his progress in sweetness and
light, but on the number of the railroads he has
constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built.
Only the middle classes are told they have done it all
with their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the
democracy are told they have done it all with t eh hands
and sinews. But teaching the democracy to put its trust
in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be
Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they
are superseding; and they too, like the middle class, will
be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of the future
without having on a wedding garment, and nothing
excellent can then come from them. Those who know
their besetting faults, those who have watched them and
listened to them, or those who will read the instructive
account recently given of them by one of themselves, the
Journeyman Engineer, will agree that the idea which
culture sets before us of perfection—an increased
Spiritual activity, having for its characters increased
sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased
sympathy - is an idea which the new democracy needs far
more than the idea of the blessedness of the franchise, or
the wonderfulness of its own industrial performances.
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, |
74 Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent
many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
75 The question | would raise concerns why we prefer
democratic and humane arrangements to those which are
autocratic and harsh. And by "why," | mean the reason for
preferring them, not just the causes which lead us to the
preference. One cause may be that we have been taught
not only in the schools but by the press, the pulpit, the
platform, and our laws and law-making bodies that
democracy is the best of all social institutions. We may
have so assimilated this idea from our surroundings that
it has become an habitual part of our mental and moral
make-up. But similar causes have led other persons in
different surroundings to widely varying conclusions—to
prefer fascism, for example. The cause for our preference
is not the same thing as the reason why we should prefer
it.
It is not my purpose here to go in detail into the
reason. But | would ask a single question: Can we find
any reason that does not ultimately come down to the
belief that democratic social arrangements promote a
better quality of human experience, one which is more
widely accessible and enjoyed, than do non-democratic
and anti-democratic forms of social life?
Dewey, Experience and Education, III
76 No estimate of the effects of culture upon the elements
that now make up freedom begins to be adequate that
does not take into account the moral and religious splits
that are found in our very make-up as persons. The
problem of creation of genuine democracy cannot be
successfully dealt with in theory or in practice save as we
create intellectual and moral integration out of present
disordered conditions. Splits, divisions, between attitudes
emotionally and congenially attuned to the past and
habits that are forced into existence because of the
necessity of dealing with present conditions arc a chief
cause of continued profession of devotion to democracy
by those who do not think nor act day by day in accord
with the moral demands of the profession. The
consequence is a further weakening of the environing
conditions upon which genuine democracy occurs,
whether the division is found in business men, in
clergymen, in educators or in politicians. The serious
threat to our democracy is not the existence of foreign
totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own
personal attitudes and within our own institutions of
conditions similar to those which have given a victory to
external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence
upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is
also accordingly here—within ourselves and our
institutions.
Dewey, Freedom and Culture, I!
10.5 Citizenship
Constitutional government and citizenship come into
existence simultaneously; until the advent of republics, men
either lived in subjection to despots or in enslavement by
tyrants. The citizen is a politically free man, as the subject
and the slave are not; being a constituent of government,
having suffrage and access to public office, having a voice in
government either directly or by representation, and being
self-governing; as a member of the ruling class, the citizen is
both ruler and ruled. Whether all adult human beings should
be admitted to citizenship, as a matter of justice or natural
right, is the central question in the dispute about
democracy. The reader will find much that is relevant to this
issue in Section 10.4 on Government of And By The People:
Repubuc And Democracy.
That issue is, of course, apparent in this section also. In
addition, there is discussion of the office of citizenship itself,
its privileges and duties; enumerations of the characteristics
desirable in a citizen; attempts to define the ideal of a good
citizen and to distinguish what is involved in being a good
citizen and in being a good man. The last point poses the
problem that confronts a virtuous man who happens to bea
citizen in a bad society.
1 Jon. | pray my mother is Athenian,
So that through her I may have rights of speech.
For when a stranger comes into a city
Of pure blood, though in name a citizen,
His mouth remains a slave: he has no right
Of speech.
Euripides, lon, 671
2 Eleatic Stranger. No citizen should do anything contrary to
the laws, and any infringement of them should be
punished with death and the most extreme penalties.
Plato, Statesman, 297B
3 Athenian Stranger. There is something over and above law
which lies in a region between admonition and law, and
has several times occurred to us in the course of
discussion; for example, in the education of very young
children there were things, as we maintain, which are not
to be defined, and to regard them as matters of positive
law is a great absurdity. Now, our laws and the whole
constitution of our state having been thus delineated, the
praise of the virtuous citizen is not complete when he is
described as the person who serves the la%vs best and
obeys them most, but the higher form of praise is that
which describes him as the good citizen who passes
through life undefiled and is obedient to the words of the
legislator, both when he is giving laws and when he
assigns praise and blame. This is the truest word that can
be spoken in praise of a citizen; and the true legislator
ought not only to write his laws, but also to interweave
with them all such things as seem to him honourable and
dishonourable. And the perfect citizen ought to seek to
strengthen these no less than the principles of law which
are sanctioned by punishments.
Plato, Laws, VII, 822B
4 The principle of compensation... is the salvation of states.
Even among freemen and equals this is the principle
which must be maintained, for they cannot all rule
together, but must change at the end of year or some
other period of time or in some other succession. The
result is that upon this plan they all govern; just as if
shoemakers and carpenters were to exchange their
occupations, and the same persons did not always
continue shoemakers and carpenters. And since it is
better that this should be so in politics as well, it is clear
that while there should be continuance of same persons
in the power where it is possible, yet where this is not
possible by reason of the natural equality of the citizens,
and at the same time it is just that all should share in the
government (whether to govern be a good thing ora
bad), an approximation to this is that equals should in
turn retire from office and should, apart from official
position, be treated alike. Thus the one party rule and the
others are ruled in turn, as if they were no longer the
Same persons.
Aristotle, Politics, 1261a30
5 A state is composite, like any other whole made up of
many parts;—these are the citizens, who compose it. It is
evident, therefore, that we must begin by asking, Who is
the citizen, and what is the meaning of the term? For
here... there may be a difference of opinion. He who isa
citizen in a democracy will often not be a citizen in an
oligarchy. Leaving out of consideration those who have
been made citizens, or who have obtained the name of
citizen in any other accidental manner, we may Say, first,
that a citizen is not a citizen because he lives in a certain
place, for resident aliens and slaves share in the place;
nor is he a citizen who has no legal right except that of
suing and being sued; for this right may be enjoyed
under the provisions of a treaty... . The citizen whom we
are seeking to define is a citizen in the strictest sense,
against whom no such exception be taken, and his
special characteristic is that e shares in the
administration of justice, and in offices. Now of offices
some are discontinuous, and the same persons are not
allowed to hold them twice, or can only hold them after a
fixed interval; others have no limit of time,—for example,
the office of dicast of ecclesiast. It may, indeed, be
argued that these are not magistrates at all, and that
their functions give them no share in the government.
But surely it is ridiculous to say that those who have the
supreme power do not govern. Let us not dwell futher
upon this, which is a purely verbal question; what we
want is a common term including both discast and
ecclesiast. Let us for the sake of distinction, call it
‘indefinite office’, and we will assume that those who
share in such office are citizens. This is the most
comprehensive definition of a citizen, and best suits all
those who are generally so called....
The citizen ... of necessity differs under each form of
government; and our definition is best adapted to the
citizen of a democracy; but not necessarily to other
states. For in some states the people are not
acknowledged, nor have they any regular assembly, but
only extraordinary ones; and suits arc distributed by
sections among the magistrates. At Lacedaemon, for
instance, the Ephors determine suits about contracts,
which they distribute among themselves, while the elders
are judges of homicide, and other causes are decided by
other magistrates. ...We may, indeed, modify our
definition of the citizen so as to include these states. In
them it is the holder of a definite, not of an indefinite
office, who legislates and judges, and to some or all such
holders of definite offices is reserved the right of
deliberating or judging about some things or about all
things. The conception of the citizen now begins to clear
up.
He who has the power to take part in the deliberative
or judicial administration of any state is said by us to bea
citizen of that state; and, soeaking generally, a state isa
body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life.
Aristotle, Politics, 1274b38
6 There is arule... which is exercised over freemen and
equals by birth—a constitutional rule, which the ruler
must learn by obeying, as he would learn the duties of
general of cavalry by being under the orders of a general
of cavalry, or the duties of a general of infantry by being
under the orders of a general of infantry, and by having
had the command of a regiment and of a company. It has
been well said that ‘he who has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander’. The two are not the same,
but the good citizen ought to be capable of both; he
should know how to govern like a freeman, and how to
obey like a freeman—these are the virtues of a citizen.
And, although the temperance and justice of a ruler are
distinct from those of a subject, the virtue of a good man
will include both; for the virtue of the good man who is
free and also a subject, for example, his justice, will not
be one but will comprise distinct kinds, the one qualifying
him to rule, the other to obey.
Aristotle, Politics, 1277b8
7 In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same
as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good
citizen is only good relatively to his own form of
government.
Aristotle, Politics, 1293b4
8 First among the materials required by the statesman is
population: he will consider what should be the number
and character of the citizens, and then what should be
the size and character of the country. Most persons think
that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but
even if they are right, they have no idea what is a large
and what a small state. For they judge of the size of the
city by the number of the inhabitants; whereas they
ought to regard, not their number, but their power. A city
too, like an individual, has a work to do; and that city
which is best adapted to the fulfilment of its work is to be
deemed greatest, in the same sense of the word great in
which Hippocrates might be called greater, not as a man,
but as a physician, than some one else who was taller.
And even if we reckon greatness by numbers, we ought
not to include everybody, for there must always be in
cities a multitude of slaves and sojourners and foreigners;
but we should include those only who are members of the
stale, and who form an essential part of it. The number of
the latter is a proof of the greatness of a city; but a city
which produces numerous artisans and comparatively
few soldiers cannot be great, for a great city is not to be
confounded with a populous one.
Aristotle, Politics, 1326a5
9 Since we are here speaking of the best form of
government, i.c. that under which the state will be most
happy (and happiness, as has been already said, cannot
e-xist without virtue), it clearly follows that in the state
which is best governed and possesses men who are just
absolutely, and not merely relatively to the principle of
the constitution, the citizens must not lead the life of
mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life is ignoble and
inimical to virtue. Neither must they be husbandmen,
since leisure is necessary both for the development of
virtue and the performance of political duties.
Again, there is in a state a class of warriors, and
another of councillors, who advise about the expedient
and determine matters of law, and these seem in an
especial manner parts of a state. Now, should these two
classes be distinguished, or are both functions to be
assigned to the same persons? Here again there is no
difficulty in seeing that both functions will in one way
belong to the same, in another, to different persons. To
different persons in so far as these employments are
suited to different primes of life, for the one requires
wisdom and the other strength. But on the other hand,
since it is an impossible thing that those who are able to
use or to resist force should be willing to remain always in
subjection, from this point of view the persons are the
same; for those who carry arms can always determine the
fate of the constitution. It remains therefore that both
functions should be entrusted by the ideal constitution to
the same persons, not, however, at the same time, but in
the order prescribed by nature, who has given to young
men strength and to older men wisdom. Such a
distribution of duties will be expedient and also just, and
is founded upon a principle of conformity to merit.
Besides, the ruling class should be the owners of
property, for they are citizens, and the citizens of a state
should be in good circumstances; whereas mechanics or
any other class which is not a producer of virtue have no
Share in the state. This follows from our first principle, for
happiness cannot exist without virtue, and a city is not to
be termed happy in regard to a portion of the citizens,
but in regard to them all. And clearly property should be
in their hands, since the husbandmen will of necessity be
Slaves or barbarian Periocci.
Aristotle, Politics, 1328b33
10 Never in reply to the question, to what country you
belong, say that you are an Athenian or a Corinthian, but
that you are a citizen of the world. For why do you say
that you are an Athenian, and why do you not say that
you belong to the small nook only into which your poor
body was cast at birth? Is it not plain that you call
yourself an Athenian or Corinthian from the place which
has a greater authority and comprises not only that small
nook itself and all your family, but even the whole
country from which the stock of your progenitors is
derived down to you? He then who has observed with
intelligence the administration of the world, and has
learned that the greatest and supreme and the most
comprehensive community is that which is composed of
men and God, and that from God have descended the
seeds not only to my father and grandfather, but to all
beings which are generated on the earth and are
produced .., why should not such a man call himself a
citizen of the world?
Epictetus, Discourses, 1,9
11 What... does the character of a citizen promise? To hold
nothing as profitable to himself; to deliberate about
nothing as if he were detached from the community, but
to act as the hand or foot would do, if they had reason
and understood the constitution of nature, for they would
never put themselves in motion nor desire anything
otherwise than with reference to the whole.
Epictetus, Discourses, Il, 10
12 In the consulship of Aulus Vitellius and Lucius Vipstanus
the question of filling up the Senate was discussed, and
the chief men of Gallia Comata, as it was called, who had
long possessed the rights of allies and of Roman citizens,
sought the privilege of obtaining public offices at Rome.
There was much talk of every kind on the subject, and it
was argued before the emperor with vehement
opposition. "Italy," it was asserted, "is not so feeble as to
be unable to furnish its own capital with a senate. Once
our native-born citizens sufficed for peoples of our own
kin, and we are by no means dissatisfied with the Rome of
the past. To this day we cite examples, which under our
old customs the Roman character exhibited as to valour
and renown. Is it a small thing that Veneti and Insubres
have already burst into the Senate-house, unless a mob
of foreigners, a troop of captives, so to say, is now forced
upon us? What distinctions will be left for the remnants of
our noble houses, or for any impoverished senators from
Latium? Every place will be crowded with these
millionaires, whose ancestors of the second and third
generations at the head of hostile tribes destroyed our
armies with fire and sword, and actually besieged the
divine Julius at Alesia. These are recent memories. What if
there were to rise up the remembrance of those who fell
in Rome’s citadel and at her altar by the hands of these
same barbarians! Let them enjoy indeed the title of
citizens, but let them not vulgarise the distinctions of the
Senate and the honours of office.”
These and like arguments failed to impress the
emperor. He at once addressed himself to answer them,
and thus harangued the assembled Senate. “My
ancestors, the most ancient of whom was made at once a
citizen and a noble of Rome, encourage me to govern by
the same policy of transferring to this city all conspicuous
merit, wherever found. And indeed | know, as facts, that
the Julii came from Alba, the Coruncanii from Camerium,
the Porcii from Tusculum, and not to inquire too minutely
into the past, that new members have been brought into
the Senate from Etruria and Lucania and the whole of
Italy, that Italy itself was at last extended to the Alps, to
the end that not only single persons but entire countries
and tribes might be united under our name. We had
unshaken peace at home; we prospered in all our foreign
relations, in the days when Italy beyond the Po was
admitted to share our citizenship, and when, enrolling in
our ranks the most vigorous of the provincials, under
colour of settling our legions throughout the world, we
recruited our exhausted empire. Are we sorry that the
Balbi came to us from Spain, and other men not less
illustrious from Narbon Gaul? Their descendants are still
among us, and do not yield to us in patriotism.
What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens, but this, that
mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as
aliens those whom they had conquered? Our founder
Romulus, on the other hand was so wise that he fought as
enemies and then hailed as fellow-citizens several
nations on the very same day. Strangers have reigned
over us. That freedmen's sons should be intrusted with
public offices is not, as many wrongly think, a sudden
innovation, but was a common practice in the old
commonwealth. But, it will be said, we have fought
Senones. | suppose then that the Volsci and AEqui never
stood in array against us.Our city was taken by the Gauls.
Well, we alSo gave hostages to the Etruscans, and passed
under the yoke of Samnites. On the whole, if you a review
all our wars, never has one been finished in a shorter
time than that with the Gauls. Thenceforth they have
preserved an unbroken and loyal peace. United as they
now are with us by manners, education, and
intermarriage, let them bring us their gold and their
wealth rather than enjoy it in isolation. Everything,
Senators, which we now hold to be of the highest
antiquity, was once new. Plebeian magistrates came after
patrician; Latin magistrates after patrician; magistrates of
other Italian peoples after Latin. This practice too will
establish itself, and what we are this day justifying by
precedents, will be itself a precedent.”
Tacitus, Annals, XI, 23-24
13 My nature is rational and social; and my city and country,
so far as | am Antoninus, is Rome, but so faraslama
man, it is the world.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 44
14 The life of a citizen is happy, who continues a course of
action which is advantageous to his fellow-citizens, and is
content with whatever the state may assign to him.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 6
15 As the Philosopher [Aristotle] says, a man is said to bea
citizen in two ways: first, absolutely; secondly, ina
restricted sense. A man is a citizen absolutely if he has all
the rights of citizenship, for instance, the right of
debating or voting in the popular assembly. On the other
hand, any man may be called citizen in a restricted sense
only, if he dwells within the state—even common people
or children or old men, who are not fit to enjoy power in
matters pertaining to the common good.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 105, 3
16 Men are not born fit for citizenship, but must be made so.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, V, 2
17 Submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly and
enjoying privileges and protection under them, makes
not aman a member of that society; it is only a local
protection and homage due to and from all those who,
not being in a state of war, come within the territories
belonging to any government, to all parts whereof the
force of its law extends. But this no more makes a mana
member of that society, a perpetual subject of that
commonwealth, than it would make a man a subject to
another in whose family he found it convenient to abide
for some time, though, whilst he continued in it, he were
obliged to comply with the laws and submit to the
government he ound there. And thus we see that
foreigners by living all their lives under another
government and en-joying the privileges and protection
of it, though they are bound, even in conscience, to
submit to its administration as far forth as any denizen,
yet do not thereby come to be subjects or members of
that commonwealth. Nothing can make any man so but
his actually entering into it by positive engagement and
express promise and compact.
Locke, II Civil Government, VIII, 122
18 There can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty
without virtue, no virtue without citizens; create citizens,
and you have everything you need; without them, you
will have nothing but debased slaves, from the rulers of
the State downwards. To form citizens is not the work of a
day; and in order to have men it is necessary to educate
them when they are children.
Rousseau, Political Economy
19 Most people mistake a town for a city, and a townsman
for a citizen. They do not know that houses make a town,
but citizens a city. The same mistake long ago cost the
Carthaginians dear. | have never read of the title of
citizens being given to the subjects of any prince, not
even the ancient Macedonians or the English of to-day,
though they are nearer liberty than any one else. The
French alone everywhere familiarly adopt the name of
citizens, because, as can be seen from their dictionaries,
they have no idea of its meaning; otherwise they would
be guilty in usurping it, of the crime of /ese-majeste:
among them, the name expresses a virtue, and not a
right. When Bodin spoke of our citizens and townsmen,
he fell into a bad blunder in taking the one class for the
other. M. d'Alembert has avoided the error, and, in his
article on Geneva, has clearly distinguished the four
orders of men (or even five, counting mere foreigners)
who dwell in our town, of which two only compose the
Republic. No other French writer, to my knowledge, has
understood the real meaning of the word citizen.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 6, fn.
20 Suppose the State is composed of ten thousand citizens.
The Sovereign can only be considered collectively and as
a body; but each member, as being a subject, is regarded
as an individual: thus the Sovereign is to the subject as
ten thousand to one, i.e., each member of the State has
as his share only a ten-thousandth part of the sovereign
authority, although he is wholly under its control. If the
people numbers a hundred thousand, the condition of the
subject undergoes no change, and each equally is under
the whole authority of the laws, while his vote, being
reduced to a hundred-thousandth part, has ten times less
influence in drawing them up. The subject therefore
remaining always a unit, the relation between him and
the Sovereign increases with the number of the citizens.
From this it follows that, the larger the State, the less the
liberty.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 1
21 As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business
of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their
money than with their persons the State is not far from its
fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay
troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in
council they name deputies and stay at home. By reason
of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to
enslave their country and representatives to sell it....
The better the constitution of a State is, the more do
public affairs encroach on private in the minds of the
citizens. Private affairs are even of much less importance,
because the aggregate of the common happiness
furnishes a greater proportion of that of each individual,
so that there is less for him to seek in particular cares. In
a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies:
under a bad government no one cares to stir a step to get
to them, because no one is interested in what happens
there, because it is foreseen that the general will will not
prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-
absorbing. Good laivs lead to the making of better ones;
bad ones bring about worse. As soon as any man says of
the affairs of the State What does it matter to me? the
State may be given up for lost.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IIl, 15
22 It was a maxim of ancient jurisprudence, that as a slave
had not any country of his own, he acquired with his
liberty an admission into the political society of which his
patron was a member. The consequences of this maxim
would have prostituted the privileges of the Roman city
to a mean and promiscuous multitude. Some seasonable
exceptions were therefore provided; and the honourable
distinction was confined to such slaves only, as for just
causes, and with the approbation of the magistrate,
should receive a solemn and legal manumission. Even
these chosen freed-men obtained no more than the
private rights of citizens, and were rigorously excluded
from civil or military honours. Whatever might be the
merit or fortune of their sons, they likewise were
esteemed unworthy of a seat in the senate; nor were the
traces of a servile origin allowed to be completely
obliterated till the third or fourth generation.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I!
23 The members of a civil society... united for the purpose of
legislation, and thereby constituting a state, are called its
citizens; and there are three juridical attributes that
inseparably belong to them by right. These are:—1.
constitutional freedom. as the right of every citizen to
have to obey no other law than that to which he has
given his consent or approval; 2. civil equality, as the
right of the citizen to recognise no one as a superior
among the people in relation to himself, except in so far
as such a one Is as Subject to Ais moral power to impose
obligations, as that other has power to impose obligations
upon him; and 3. political independence, as the right to
owe his existence and continuance in society not to the
arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers
as a member of the commonwealth, and, consequently,
the possession of a civil personality, which cannot be
represented by any other than himself.
Kant, Science of Right, 46
24 The capability of voting by possession of the suffrage
properly constitutes the political qualification of a citizen
as a member of the state. But this, again, presupposes
the independence or self-sufficiency of the individual
citizen among the people, as one who is not a mere
incidental part of the commonwealth, but a member of it
acting of his own will in community with others. The last
of the three qualities involved necessarily constitutes the
distinction between active and passive citizenship
although the latter conception appears to stand in
contradiction to the definition of a citizen as such. The
following examples may serve to remove this difficulty.
The apprentice of a merchant or tradesman, a servant
who is not in the employ of the state, a minor, all women,
and, generally, every one who is compelled to maintain
himself not according to his own industry, but as it is
arranged by others (the state excepted), are without civil
personality, and their existence is only, as it were,
incidentally included in the state. The woodcutter whom |
employ on my estate; the smith in India who carries his
hammer, anvil, and bellows into the houses where he is
engaged to work in iron, as distinguished from the
European carpenter or smith, who can offer the
independent products of his labour as wares for public
sale; the resident tutor as distinguished from the
schoolmaster; the ploughman as distinguished from the
farmer and such like, illustrate the distinction in question.
In all these eases, the former members of the contrast are
distinguished from the latter by being mere subsidiaries
of the commonwealth and not active independent
members of it, because they are of necessity commanded
and protected by others, and consequently possess no
political self-sufficiency in themselves. Such dependence
on the will of others and the consequent inequality are,
however, not inconsistent with the freedom and equality
of the individuals as men helping to constitute the
people. Much rather is it the case that it is only under
such conditions that a people can become a state and
enter into a civil constitution. But all are not equally
qualified to exercise the right of suffrage under the
constitution, and to be full citizens of the state, and not
mere passive subjects under its protection. For, although
they are entitled to demand to be treated by all the other
citizens according to laws of natural freedom and
equality, as passive parts of the state, it does not follow
that they' ought themselves to have the right to deal
with the state as active members of it, to reorganize it, or
to take action by way of introducing certain laws. All they
have a right in their circumstances to claim may be no
more than that whatever be the mode in which the
positive law's are enacted, these laws must not be
contrary’ to the natural laws that demand the freedom of
all the people and the equality that is conformable
thereto; and it must therefore be made possible for them
to raise themselves from this passive condition in the
state to the condition of active citizenship.
Kant, Science of Right, 46
25 | think that we should be men first, and subjects
afterward.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
26 It is a great discouragement to an individual, and a still
greater one to a class, to be left out of the constitution; to
be reduced to plead from outside the door to the arbiters
of their destiny, not taken into consultation within. the
maximum of the invigorating effect of freedom upon the
character is only obtained when the person acted on
either is, or is looking forward to becoming, a citizen as
fully privileged as any other.
Mill, Representative Government, III
27 |If anoble and civilised democracy is to subsist, the
common citizen must be something of a saint and
something of a hero. We see therefore how justly
flattering and profound, and at the same time how
ominous, was Montesquieu's saying that the principle of
democracy is virtue.
Santayana, Life of Reason, U, 5
10.6 Despotism and Tyranny
Until fairly recently in the tradition of Western politics,
monarchies, kingships, or autocracies have been the rule,
and republics the exception. A single man seated ona
throne and holding the sceptre of sovereignty has been the
prevalent image of the ruler. In fact, for many centuries the
words "prince" or "king" and "sovereign" were
interchangeable. Our English word "king" carries the
meaning that once attached to the Greek word tyrannis as
well as to the Latin word rex. The tyrant was a monarch with
absolute power; and the word "despot" derives from a Greek
word that designates the rule of a master over his slaves.
With the beginnings of political philosophy in the writings
of Plato and Aristotle, these terms take on the meanings
they have for us today. A tyrant is a ruler who exploits for his
own interests the subjects in his power; tyranny is the
archetype of misrule, whether the power of government is in
the hands of the one, the few, or the many. An elite can also
misrule in a manner that deserves the appellation
"tyrannical"; and since the beginnings of popular
government and extensions of the franchise in the
nineteenth century, there has been much concern about
"the tyranny of the majority."
The reader will find relevant materials on this in Section
10.4.
Despotism, as contrasted with tyranny, is sometimes
qualified by the term "benevolent." Both despotism and
tyranny signify absolute power—government without the
consent of the governed and with no participation on their
part. But when such absolute power is exercised with some
regard for the rights and welfare of the ruled, in a quasi-
paternalistic manner, the despot is said to be benevolent.
The reader will find the authors quoted here in opposition
on many points, some defending absolute monarchy as the
ideal form of government or, as in the case of Hobbes, the
only legitimate form of government; and some, like Locke
and Rousseau, saying that absolute monarchy is not a form
of civil government at ail and has no legitimacy. The reader
will also find a discussion of the question whether
benevolent despotism is ever justified by the uncivilized or
politically immature condition of the people over whom and
for whose benefit it is exercised. For the condition of those
subject to tyrannical or despotic rule and for their response
to it, the reader should turn to Section 10.7 on Slavery and
Section 10.9 on Revolution.
1 As a roaring Hon, and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler
over the poor people.
The prince that wanteth understanding is also a great
oppressor; but he that hateth covetousness shall prolong
his days.
Proverbs 28:15-16
2 Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening
the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get
dishonest gain.
Ezekiel 22:27
3 Nestor. Nor... think to match your strength with the king,
since never equal with the rest is the portion of honour of
the sceptred king to whom Zeus gives magnificence.
Even though you are the stronger man, and the mother
who bore you was immortal, yet is this man greater who
is lord over more than you rule.
Homer, Iliad, |, 277
4 Chorus. Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1365
5 Pisistratus, at a time when there was civil contention in
Attica between the party of the Sea-coast headed by
Megacles the son of Alcmaeon, and that of the Plain
headed by Lycurgus, one of the Aristolaids, formed the
project of making himself tyrant, and with this view
created a third party. Gathering together a band of
partisans, and giving himself out for the protector of the
Highlanders, he contrived the following stratagem. He
wounded himself and his mules, and then drove his
chariot into the market-place, professing to have just
escaped an attack of his enemies, who had attempted his
life as he was on his way into the country. He besought
the people to assign him a guard to protect his person,
reminding them of the glory which he had gained when
he led the attack upon the Megarians, and took the town
of Nisaea, at the same time performing many other
exploits. The Athenians, deceived by his story, appointed
him a band of citizens to serve as a guard, who were to
carry clubs instead of spears, and to accompany him
wherever he went. Thus strengthened, Pisistratus broke
into revolt and seized the citadel. In this way he acquired
the sovereignty of Athens, which he continued to hold
without disturbing the previously existing offices or
altering any of the laws. He administered the state
according to the established usages, and his
arrangements were wse and salutary.
Herodotus, History, |, 59
6 Theseus. Naught is more hostile to a city than a despot;
where he is, there are in the first place no law's common
to all, but one man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his
alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an
end.
Euripides, Suppliants, 429
7 Wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing
simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal
comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the
great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great
proceeding from them; though they would each have
their affairs with their immediate neighbours.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 17
8 Polus. Then you would not wish to be a tyrant?
Socrates. Not if you mean by tyranny what | mean.
Pol. | mean... the power of doing whatever seems good
to you in a state, killing, banishing, doing in all things as
you like.
Plato, Gorgias, 469B
9 Socrates. How then does a protector begin to change into
a tyrant? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do
in the tale of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus.
Adeimantus. What tale?
The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a
single human victim minced up with the entrails of other
victims is destined to become a wolf. Did you never hear
it?
O yes.
And the protector of the people is like him; having a
mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from
shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favourite method
of false accusation he brings them into court and murders
them, making the life of man to disappear, and with
unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow
citizen; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same
time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of
lands: and after this, what will be his destiny? Must he
not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from
being a man become a wolf— that is, a tyrant?
Inevitably.
This, | said, is he who begins to make a party against
the rich?
The same.
After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite
of his enemies, a tyrant full grown.
Plato, Republic, Vill, 565B
10 [Socrates said] He who is the real tyrant, whatever men
may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the
greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of
the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly
unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and
is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of
him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of
convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he
resembles: and surely the resemblance holds?
Very true, he (Adeimantus] said.
Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse
from having power: he becomes and is of necessity more
jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more friendless,
more impious, than he was at first; he is the purveyor and
cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is
that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes
everybody else as miserable as himself.
No man of any sense will dispute your words.
Come then, | said, and as the general umpire in
theatrical contests proclaims the result, do you also
decide who in your opinion is first in the scale of
happiness, and who second, and in what order the others
follow: there are five of them in all— they are the royal,
timocratical, oligarchical, democratical, tyrannical.
The decision will be easily given, he replied; they shall
be choruses coming on the stage, and | must judge them
in the order in which they enter, by the criterion of virtue
and vice, happiness and misery.
Need we hire a herald, or shall | announce, that the
son of Ariston [the best] has decided that the best and
justest is also the happiest, and that this is he who is the
most royal man and king over himself; and that the worst
and most unjust man is also the most miserable, and that
this is he who being the greatest tyrant of himself is also
the greatest tyrant of his State?
Make the proclamation yourself, he said.
And shall | add, "whether seen or unseen by gods and
men"?
Let the words be added.
Plato, Republic, IX, 579B
11 A man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and
excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man
needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his
own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who
is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny
is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own
good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the
worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best
that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for
tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king
becomes a tyrant.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1160b3
12 The appointment of a king is the resource of the better
classes against the people, and he is elected by them out
of their own number, because either he himself or his
family excel in virtue and virtuous actions; whereas a
tyrant is chosen from the people to be their protector
against the notables, and in order to prevent them from
being injured. History shows that almost all tyrants have
been demagogues who gained the favour of the people
by their accusation of the notables. At any rate this was
the manner in which the tyrannies arose in the days
when cities had increased in power. Others which were
older originated in the ambition of kings wanting to
overstep the limits of their hereditary power and become
despots. Others again grew out of the class which were
chosen to be chief magistrates; for in ancient times the
people who elected them gave the magistrates, whether
civil or religious, a long tenure. Others arose out of the
custom which oligarchies had of making some individual
supreme over the highest offices. In any of these ways an
ambitious man had no difficulty, if he desired, in creating
a tyranny, since he had the power in his hands already,
either as king or as one of the officers of state.
Aristotle, Politics, 1310b8
13 Kingly rule is little affected by external causes, and is
therefore lasting; it is generally destroyed from within.
And there are two ways in which the destruction may
come about; when the members of the royal family
quarrel among themselves, and when the kings attempt
to administer the state too much after the fashion of a
tyranny, and to extend their authority contrary to the law.
Royalties do not now come into existence; where such
forms of government arise, they are rather monarchies or
tyrannies. For the rule of a king is over voluntary
subjects, and he is supreme in all important matters; but
in Our own day men are more upon an equality, and no
one is SO immeasurably superior to others as to represent
adequately the greatness and dignity of the office. Hence
mankind will not, if they can help, endure it, and any one
who obtains power by force or fraud is at once thought to
be a tyrant. In hereditary monarchies a further cause of
destruction is the fact that kings often fall into contempt,
and, although possessing not tyrannical power, but only
royal dignity, are apt to outrage others. Their overthrow is
then readily effected; for there is an end to the king when
his subjects do not want to have him, but the tyrant lasts,
whether they like him or not.
Aristotle, Politics, 1312b39
14 As to tyrannies, they are preserved in two most opposite
ways. One of them is the old traditional method in which
most tyrants administer their government. Of such arts
Periander of Corinth is said to have been the great
master, and many similar devices may be gathered from
the Persians in the administration of their government.
There are firstly the prescriptions mentioned some
distance back, for the preservation of a tyranny, in so far
as this is possible; viz. that the tyrant should lop off those
who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit; he
must not allow common meals, clubs, education, and the
like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is
likely to inspire either courage or confidence among his
subjects; he must prohibit literary assemblies or other
meetings for discussion, and he must take every means
to prevent people from knowing one another (for
acquaintance begets mutual confidence). Further, he
must compel all persons staying in the city to appear in
public and live at his gates; then he will Know what they
are doing: if they are always kept under, they will learn to
be humble. In short, he should practise these and the like
Persian and barbaric arts, which all have the same object.
A tyrant should also endeavour to know what each of his
subjects says or does, and should employ spies, like the
‘female detectives’ at Syracuse, and the eavesdroppers
whom Hiero was in the habit of sending to any place of
resort or meeting; for the fear of informers prevents
people from speaking their minds, and if they do, they
are more easily found out. Another art of the tyrant is to
sow quarrels among the citizens; friends should be
embroiled with friends, the people with the notables, and
the rich with one another. Also he should impoverish his
subjects; he thus provides against the maintenance of a
guard by the citizens, and the people, having to keep
hard at work, are prevented from conspiring. The
Pyramids of Egypt afford an example of this policy; also
the offerings of the family of Cypsclus, and the building
of the temple of Olympian Zeus by the Peisistratidae and
the great Polycratean monuments at Samos: all these
works were alike intended to occupy the people and keep
them poor. Another practice of tyrants is to multiply
taxes, after the manner of Dionysius at Syracuse, who
contrived that within five years his subjects should bring
into the treasury their whole property. The tyrant also
fond of making war in order that his subjects may have
something to do and be always in want of a leader. And
whereas the power of a king is preserved by his friends,
the characteristic of a tyrant is to distrust his friends,
because he knows that all men want to overthrow him,
and they above all have the power.
Aristotle, Politics, 1313a34
13 By the standard of popular opinion, | cannot imagine
what greater boon could fall to a man than to be a king.
But when | begin to consider the question from the point
of view of the standard of truth, then | can think of
nothing more disadvantageous than to have risen to such
a height by means of injustice. For can it be regarded as
an advantage to anyone to be confronted with all sorts of
reasons for worry, anxiety, and fear day in and day out,
and to live a life beset from all sides with plots and perils?
Cicero, De Officiis, I/l, 21
16 A kingdom is the best form of government of the people,
so long as it is not corrupt. But since the power granted
to a king is so great, it easily degenerates into tyranny,
unless he to whom this power is given be a very virtuous
man; for “it is only the virtuous man that conducts
himself well in the midst of prosperity,” as [Aristode]
observes.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 105, 1
17 A tyrannical government is not just, because it is
directed, not to the common good, but to the private
good of the ruler. .. . Consequently there is no sedition in
disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the
tyrant’s rule be disturbed so inordinately that his subjects
suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance
than from the tyrant’s government. Indeed it is the tyrant
rather that is guilty of sedition, since he encourages
discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord
over them more securely.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—II, 42, 2
18 The government of tyrants. .. cannot last long because it
is hateful to the multitude, and what is against the
wishes of the multitude cannot be long preserved.
Aquinas, On Kingship, I, 10
19 Between a tyrant am or usurping chief
And any outlawed man or errant thief,
It's just the same, there is no difference.
One told to Alexander this sentence:
That, since the tyrant is of greater might,
By force of numbers, to slay men outright
And burn down house and home even as a plane,
Lo! for that he’s a captain, that’s certain;
And since the outlaw has small company
And may not do so great a harm as he,
Nor bring a nation into such great grief,
Why, he’s called but an outlaw or a thief.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Manciple’s Tale
20 He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the
nobles maintains himself with more difficulty than he who
comes to it by the aid of the people, because the former
finds himself with many around him who consider
themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither
rule nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches
sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and
has none around him, or few, who are not prepared to
obey him. Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and
without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can
satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than
that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, whilst
the former only desire not to be oppressed.
Machiavelli, Prince, 1X
21 Richmond. More than | have said, loving countrymen,
The leisure and enforcement of the time
Forbids to dwell upon: yet remember this,
God and our good cause fight upon our side;
The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,
Like high-rear’d bulwarks, stand before our faces;
Richard except, those whom we fight against
Had rather have us win than him they follow:
For what is he they follow? truly, gentlemen,
A bloody tyrant and a homicide;
One raised in blood, and one in blood establish’d;
One that made means to come by what he hath,
And slaughter’d those that were the means to help him
A base foul stone, made precious by the foil
Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set;
One that hath ever been God’s enemy:
Then, if you fight against God’s enemy,
God will in justice ward you as his soldiers;
If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,
You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain.
Shakespeare, Richard Ill, V, tli, 237
22 King Richard. For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
The rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Shakespeare, Richard Il, Ill, ti, 155
23 Pandulph. A sceptre snatch’d with an unruly hand
Must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d;
And he that stands upon a slippery place
Makes nice of no vile hold to slay him up.
Shakespeare, King John, III, iv, 135
24 King Henry. What infinite heart’s-case
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too.
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O Ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear’d
Than they in fearing.
What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy Ceremony give thee cure!
Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee.
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream.
That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose;
lama king that find thee, and | know
"Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl.
The farced title running ‘fore the King,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phaebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country’s peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
Shakespeare, Henry V, IV, i, 253
25 Brutus. As Caesar loved me, | weep for him; as he was
fortunate, | rejoice at it; as he was valiant, | honour him:
but, as he was ambitious, | slew him. There is tears for his
love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death
for his ambition.
Shakespeare, Caesar, Ill, if, 25
26 Menteith. What does the tyrant?
Caithness. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.
Some say he’s mad; others that lesser hate him
Do call it valiant fury; but, for certain,
He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus. Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love; now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, ti, 11
27 Macduff. Turn, hell-hound, turn!
Macbeth. Of all men else | have avoided thee.
But get thee back; my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Macd. | have no words;
My voice is in my sword. Thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out!
They fight.
Macb. Thou losest labour.
As easy mayst thou the intrcnchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
| bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.
Macd. Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripp’d.
Macb. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow’d my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.
Macd. Then yield thee, coward.
And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time!
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,
"Here may you see the tyrant."
Macb. | will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet | will try the last. Before my body
| throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”
Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, villi, 4
28 Pericles. Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.
Shakespeare, Pericles, I, ti, 79
29 Wolsey. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favours!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III, ti, 366
30 It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to
desire and many things to fear; and yet that commonly is
the case of kings.
Bacon, Of Empire
31 Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or
evil times; and which have much veneration, but no rest.
Bacon, Of Empire
32 | put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual
and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth
only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a
man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has
already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a
moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power
and means to live well, which he hath present, without
the acquisition of more. And from hence it is that kings,
whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the
assuring it at home by laws, or abroad by wars: and when
that is done, there succeedeth a new desire; in some, of
fame from new conquest; in others, of ease and sensual
pleasure; in others, of admiration, or being flattered for
excellence in some art or other ability of the mind.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 11
33 In a body politic, if the representative be one man,
whatsoever he does in the person of the body which is
not warranted in his letters, nor by the laws, is his own
act, and not the act of the body, nor of any other member
thereof besides himself: because further than his letters
or the laws limit, he representeth no man's person, but
his own. But what he does according to these is the act of
every one: for of the act of the sovereign every one is
author, because he is their representative unlimited; and
the act of him that recedes not from the letters of the
sovereign is the act of the sovereign, and therefore every
member of the body is author of it.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Il, 22
34 The name of tyranny signifieth nothing more nor less
than the name of sovereignty, be it in one or many men,
saving that they that use the former word are understood
to be angry with them they call tyrants; | think the
toleration of a professed hatred of tyranny is a toleration
of hatred to Commonwealth in general, and another evil
seed, not differing much from the former.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, Review and Conclusion
35 Tyranny consists in the desire of universal power beyond
its scope.
There are different assemblies of the strong, the fair,
the sensible, the pious, in which each man rules at home,
not elsewhere. And sometimes they meet, and the strong
and the fair foolishly fight as to who shall be master, for
their mastery is of different kinds. They do not
understand one another, and their fault is the desire to
rule everywhere. Nothing can effect this, not even might,
which is of no use in the kingdom of the wise, and is only
mistress of external actions. So these expressions are
false and tyrannical: “Il am fair, therefore | must be feared.
| am strong, therefore | must be loved. lam...”
Tyranny is the wish to have in one way what can only
be had in another. We render different duties to different
merits; the duty of love to the pleasant; the duty of fear
to the strong; duty of belief to the learned.
We must render these duties; it is unjust to refuse
them, and unjust to ask others. And so it is false and
tyrannical to say, “He is not strong, therefore | will not
esteem him; he is not able, therefore | will not fear him.
Pascal, Pensees, V, 332
36 Michael. Reason in man obscur’d, or not obeyd,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart Passions catch the Government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free. Therefore since hee permits
Within himself unworthie Powers to reign
Over free Reason, God in Judgement just
Subjects him from without to violent Lords;
Who oft as undeservedly enthrall
His outward freedom: Tyrannic must be,
Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XII, 86
37 That people must needs be mad or strangely infatuated
that build the chief hope of their common happiness or
safety on a single person; who, if he happen to be good,
can do no more than another man; if to be bad, hath in
his hands to do more evil without check than millions of
other men.
Milton, Ready and Easy Way
38 It is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for
any, who have the power, to call to account a tyrant or
wicked king, and after due conviction, to depose and put
him to death.
Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
39 To say kings are accountable to none but God, is the
overturning of all law and government. For if they may
refuse to give account, then all covenants made with
them at coronation, all oaths are in vain, and mere
mockeries, all laws which they swear to keep, made to no
purpose: for if the king fear not God (as how many of
them do not?) we hold then our lives and estates by the
tenure of his mere grace and mercy, as from a god, not a
mortal magistrate—a position that none but court
parasites or men besotted would maintain.
Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
40 They are much mistaken, who suppose that one man can
by himself hold the supreme right of a commonwealth.
For the only limit of right... is power. But the power of one
man is very inadequate to support so great a load. And
hence it arises, that the man, whom the multitude has
chosen king, looks out for himself generals, or
counsellors, or friends, to whom he entrusts his own and
the common welfare; so that the dominion, which is
thought to be a perfect monarchy, is in actual working an
aristocracy, not, indeed, an open but a hidden one, and
therefore the worst of all.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, VI, 5
41 It is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men
is counted for the only government in the world, is indeed
inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of
civil government at all. For the end of civil society being
to avoid and remedy those inconveniencies of the state of
Nature which necessarily follow from every man’s being
judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority to
which every one of that society may appeal upon any
injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which
every one of the society ought to obey. Wherever any
persons are who have not such an authority to appeal to,
and decide any difference between them there, those
persons are still in the state of Nature. And so is every
absolute prince in respect of those who are under his
dominion.
Locke, II Civil Government, VII, 90
42 As usurpation is the exercise of power which another
hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power
beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this
IS making use of the power any one has in his hands, not
for the good of those who are under it, but for his own
private, separate advantage. When the governor,
however entitled makes not the law, but his will, the rule,
and his commands and actions are not directed to the
preservation of the properties of his people, but the
satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness,
or any other irregular passion.,..
It is a mistake to think this fault is proper only to
monarchies. Other forms of government are liable to it as
well as that; for wherever the power that is put in any
hands for the government of the people and the
preservation of their properties is applied to other ends,
and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them
to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that
have it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether
those that thus use it are one or many...
Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.
Locke, II Civil Government, XVIII, 199-202
43 Jones. | know but of one solid objection to absolute
monarchy. The only defect in which excellent constitution
seems to be, the difficulty of finding any man adequate
to the office of an absolute monarch: for this
indispensably require three qualities very difficult, as it
appears from history, to be found in princely natures;
first, a sufficient quantity of moderation in the prince, to
be contented with all the power which is possible for him
to have. 2ndly, Enough of wisdom to know his own
happiness. And, 3rdly, Goodness sufficient to support the
happiness of others, when not only compatible with, but
instrumental to his own.
Now if an absolute monarch, with all these great and
rare qualifications, should be allowed capable of
conferring the greatest good on society; it must be surely
granted, on the contrary, that absolute power, vested in
the hands of one who is deficient in them all, is likely to
be attended with no less a degree of evil.
In short, our own religion furnishes us with adequate
ideas of the blessing, as well as curse, which may attend
absolute power. The pictures of heaven and of hell will
place a very lively image of both before our eyes; for
though the prince of the latter can have no power, but
what he originally derives from the omnipotent Sovereign
in the former, yet it plainly appears from Scripture, that
absolute power in his infernal dominions is granted to
their diabolical ruler. This is indeed the only absolute
power which can by Scripture be derived from heaven. If,
therefore, the several tyrannies upon earth can prove any
title to a Divine authority, it must be derived from this
Original grant to the prince of darkness; and these
subordinate deputations must consequently come
immediately from him whose stamp they so expressly
bear.
To conclude, as the examples of all ages show us that
mankind in general desire power only to do harm, and,
when they obtain it, use it for no other purpose; it is not
consonant with even the least degree of prudence to
hazard an alteration, where our hopes are poorly kept in
countenance by only two or three exceptions out of a
thousand instances to alarm our fears. In this case it will
be much wiser to submit to a few inconveniences arising
from the dispassionate deafness of laws, than to remedy
them by applying to the passionate open ears of a tyrant.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XII, 12
44 |t is not enough to have intermediate powers in a
monarchy; there must be also a depositary of the laws.
This depositary can only be the judges of the supreme
courts of justice, who promulgate the new laws, and
revive the obsolete. The natural ignorance of the nobility,
their indolence and contempt of civil government, require
that there should be a body invested with the power of
reviving and executing the laws, which would be
otherwise buried in oblivion. The princess council are not
a proper depositary. They are naturally the depositary of
the momentary will of the prince, and not of the
fundamental laws. Besides, the prince’s council is
continually changing; it is neither permanent nor
numerous; neither has it a sufficient share of the
confidence of the people; consequently it is capable of
setting them right in difficult conjunctures, or of reducing
them to proper obedience.
Despotic governments, where there are no
fundamental laws, have no such kind of depositary.
Hence it is that religion has generally so much influence
in those countries, because it forms a kind of permanent
depositary; and if this cannot be said of religion, it may of
the customs that are respected instead of laws.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Il, 4
45 Honour is far from being the principle of despotic
government: mankind being here all upon a level, no one
person can prefer himself to another; and as on the other
hand they are all slaves, they can give themselves no sort
of preference.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, Ill, 8
46 As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy
honour, so fear is necessary in a despotic government:
with regard to virtue, there is no occasion for it, and
honour would be extremely dangerous.
Here the immense power of the prince devolves
entirely upon those whom he is pleased to entrust with
the administration. Persons capable of setting a value
upon themselves would be likely to create disturbances.
Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish
even the least sense of ambition.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws III, 9
47 Luxury is.,. absolutely necessary in monarchies; as it is
also in despotic states. In the former, it is the use of
liberty; in the latter, it is the abuse of servitude. A slave
appointed by his master to tyrannise over other wretches
of the same condition, uncertain of enjoying tomorrow
the blessings of to-day, has no other felicity than that of
glutting the pride, the passions, and voluptuousness of
the present moment,
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VII, 4
48 In despotic governments women do not introduce, but
are themselves an object of, luxury. They must be ina
state of the most rigorous servitude. Every one follows
the spirit of the government, and adopts in his own family
the customs he secs elsewhere established. As the laws
are very severe and executed on the spot, they are afraid
lest the liberty of women should expose them to danger.
Their quarrels, indiscretions, repugnancies, jealousies,
piques, and that art, in fine, which little souls have of
interesting great ones, would be attended there with fatal
consequences.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VII, 9
49 There are two sorts of tyranny: one real, which arises from
oppression; the other is seated in opinion, and is sure to
be felt whenever those who govern establish things
shocking to the existing ideas of a nation.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIX, 3
50 One gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows
no laws but those of this caprice, who takes his subjects’
property, and who afterwards enrols them to go to take
the property of his neighbours. There are none of these
tyrants in Europe.
One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man
and that of many. The tyranny of many would be that of a
body which invaded the rights of other bodies, and which
exercised despotism in favour of the laws corrupted by it.
Nor are there any tyrants of this sort in Europe.
Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under
neither; but if | had to choose, | should detest the tyranny
of one man less than that of many. A despot always has
his good moments; an assembly of despots never. If a
tyrant does me an injustice, | can disarm him through his
mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of
grave tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When it is
not unjust, it is at the least hard, and never does it
bestow favours.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Tyranny
51 The strongest is never strong enough to be always the
master, unless he transforms strength into right, and
obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest,
which, though to all seeming meant ironically, is really
laid down as a fundamental principle. But are we never to
have an explanation of this phrase? Force is a physical
power, and | fail to see what moral effect it can have. To
yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will—at the
most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?
Suppose for a moment that this so-called "right"
exists. | maintain that the sole result is a mass of
inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the
effect changes with the cause: every force that is greater
than the first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is
possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is
legitimate; and, the strongest being always in the right,
the only thing that matters is to act so as to become the
strongest. But what kind of right is that which perishes
when force fails? If we must obey perforce, there is no
need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced
to obey, we are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the
word "right" adds nothing to force: in this connection, it
means absolutely nothing.
Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to force, it
iS a good precept, but superfluous: | can answer for its
never being violated. All power comes from God, | admit;
but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are
forbidden to call in the doctor? A brigand surprises me at
the edge of a wood: must | not merely surrender my
purse on compulsion; but, even if | could withhold it, am |
in conscience bound to give it up? For certainly the pistol
he holds is also a power.
Let us then admit that force does not create right, and
that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 3
52 A people, says Grotius, can give itself to a king. Then,
according to Grotius, a people is a people before it gives
itself. The gift is itself a civil act, and implies public
deliberation. It would be better, before examining the act
by which a people gives itself to a king, to examine that
by which it has become a people; for this act, being
necessarily prior to the other, is the true foundation of
society.
Rousseau, Social Contract, |, 5
53 Kings desire to be absolute, and men are always crying
out to them from afar that the best means of being so is
to get themselves loved by their people. This precept is
all very well, and even in some respects very true.
Unfortunately, it will always be derided at court. The
power which comes of a people’s love is no doubt the
greatest; but it is precarious and conditional, and princes
will never rest content with it. The best kings desire to be
in a position to be wicked, if they please, without
forfeiting their mastery: political sermonisers may tell
them to their hearts’ content that, the people’s strength
being their own, their first interest is that the people
should be prosperous, numerous and formidable; they are
well aware that this is untrue. Their first personal interest
is that the people should be weak, wretched, and unable
to resist them. | admit that, provided the subjects
remained always in submission, the prince’s interest
would indeed be that it should be powerful in order that
its power, being his own, might make him formidable to
his neighbours; but, this interest being merely secondary
and subordinate, and strength being incompatible with
submission, princes naturally give the preference always
to the principle that is more to their immediate
advantage.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 6
54 For a monarchical State to have a chance of being well
governed, its population and extent must be
proportionate to the abilities of its governor. It is easier to
conquer than to rule.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 6
55 If, according to Plato, the "king by nature" is such a
rarity, how often will nature and fortune conspire to give
him a crown? And, if royal education necessarily corrupts
those who receive it, what is to be hoped from a series of
men brought up to reign? It is, then, wanton self-
deception to confuse royal government with government
by a good king. To see such government as it is in itself,
we must consider it as it is under princes who are
incompetent or wicked: for either they will come to the
throne wicked or incompetent, or the throne will make
them so.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 6
56 Instead of governing subjects to make them happy,
despotism makes them wretched in order to govern them.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Ill, 8
57 Johnson. \f a sovereign oppresses his people to a great
degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a
remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep
us safe under every form of government.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 31, 1772)
58 Johnson. "Why, Sir, absolute princes seldom do any harm.
But they who are governed by them are governed by
chance. There is no security for good government."
Cambridge. "There have been many sad victims to
absolute government." Johnson. "So, Sir, have there been
to popular factions." Boswell. "The question is, which is
worst, one wild beast or many?"
Boswell, Life of Johnson (April 18, 1775)
59 There is not a crowned head in Europe whose talents or
merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the
people of any parish in America.
Jefferson, Letter to Washington (May 2, 1788)
60 | have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush (Sept. 23, 1800)
61 The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of
a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he
may be distinguished, is entrusted with the execution of
the laws, the management of the revenue, and the
command of the army. But, unless public liberty is
protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the
authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon
degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in
an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to
assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the
connection between the throne and the altar, that the
banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the
side of the people. A martial nobility and stubborn
commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and
collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only
balance capable of preserving a free constitution against
enterprises of an aspiring prince.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, III
62 Of the various forms of government which have prevailed
in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present
the fairest scope for ridicule. Is it possible to relate,
without an indignant smile, that, on the father's decease,
the property of a nation, like that of a drove of oxen,
descends to his infant son, as yet unknown to mankind
and to himself; and that the bravest warriors and the
wisest statesmen, relinquishing their natural right to
empire, approach the royal cradle with bended knees and
protestations of inviolable fidelity? Satire and
declamation may paint these obvious topics in the most
dazzling colours, but our more serious thoughts will
respect a useful prejudice, that establishes a rule of
succession, independent of the passions of mankind; and
we Shall cheerfully acquiesce in any expedient which
deprives the multitude of the dangerous, and indeed the
ideal, power of giving themselves a master.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VI!
63 The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their
purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately
sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of
emerging from their obscurity.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXII
64 Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are
rebels from principle.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
65 Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly
66 The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive,
and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few,
or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or
elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of
tyranny.
Madison, Federalist 47
67 Salemenes. Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that
Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice,
The weakness and the wickedness of luxury,
The negligence, the apathy, the evils
Of sensual sloth—produce ten thousand tyrants.
Whose delegated cruelty surpasses
The worst acts of one energetic master,
However harsh and hard in his own bearing.
Byron, Sardanapalus, |, i, 113
68 Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there is
left nothing but a poor forked raddish with a head
fantastically carved.
Carlyle, The Hero as Man of Letters
69 God said, | am tired of kings,
| suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.
Emerson, Boston Hymn
70 Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so
long as individuality exists under it; and whatever
crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it
may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing
the will of God or the injunctions of men.
Mill, On Liberty, III
71 A people may prefer a free government, but if, from
indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public
spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for
preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly
attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to
cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or
temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual,
they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even
of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable
him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they
are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for
their good to have had it even for a short time, they are
unlikely long to enjoy it. Again, a people may be
unwilling or unable to fulfil the duties which a particular
form of government requires of them. A rude people,
though in some degree alive to the benefits of civilised
society, may be unable to practise the forbearance which
it demands: their passions may be too violent, or their
personal pride too exacting, to forego private conflict,
and leave to the laws the avenging of their real or
supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilised government,
to be really advantageous to them, will require to be ina
considerable degree despotic: to be one over which they
do not themselves exercise control, and which imposes a
great amount of forcible restraint upon their actions.
Mill, Representative Government, |
72 A people in a state of savage independence, in which
every one lives for himself, exempt, unless by fits, from
any external control, is practically incapable of making
any progress in civilisation until it has learnt to obey. The
indispensable virtue, therefore, in a government which
establishes itself over a people of this sort is, that it make
itself obeyed. To enable it to do this, the constitution of
the government must be nearly, or quite, despotic. A
constitution in any degree popular, dependent on the
voluntary surrender by the different members of the
community of their individual freedom of action, would
fail to enforce the first lesson which the pupils, in this
stage of their progress, require. Accordingly, the
civilisation of such tribes, when not the result of
juxtaposition with others already civilised, is almost
always the work of an absolute ruler.
Mill, Representative Government, I!
73 | am far from condemning, in cases of extreme exigency,
the assumption of absolute power in the form of a
temporary dictatorship. Free nations have, in times of old,
conferred such power by their own choice, as a necessary
medicine for diseases of the body politic which could not
be got rid of by less violent means. But its acceptance,
even for a time strictly limited, can only be excused, if...
the dictator employs the whole power he assumes in
removing the obstacles which debar the nation from the
enjoyment of freedom. A good despotism is an altogether
false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some
temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and
dangerous of chimeras. Evil for evil, a good despotism, in
a country at all advanced in civilisation, is more noxious
than a bad one; for it is far more relaxing and enervating
to the thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people.
Mill, Representative Government, III
74 There are, as we have already seen, conditions of society
in which a vigorous despotism is in itself the best mode of
government for training the people in what is specifically
wanting to render them capable of a higher civilisation.
There are others in which the mere fact of despotism has
indeed no beneficial effect, the lessons which it teaches
having already been only too completely learnt; but in
which, there being no spring of spontaneous
improvement in the people themselves, their almost only
hope of making any steps in advance depends on the
chances of a good despot. Under a native despotism, a
good despot is a rare and transitory accident: but when
the dominion they are under is that of a more civilised
people, that people ought to be able to supply it
constantly. The ruling country ought to be able to do for
its subjects all that could be done by a succession of
absolute monarchs, guaranteed by irresistible force
against the precariousness of tenure attendant on
barbarous despotisms, and qualified by their genius to
anticipate all that experience has taught to the more
advanced nation. Such is the ideal rule of a free people
over a barbarous or semi-barbarous one. We need not
expect to see that ideal realised; but unless some
approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a dereliction of
the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a nation:
and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish
usurpers, On a par in criminality with any of those whose
ambition and rapacity have sported from age to age with
the destiny of masses of mankind.
Mill, Representative Government, XVIII
75 By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says:
"Don’t it s’prise you de way dem kings carries on,
Huck?"
"No," | say, “it don’t."
"Why don’t it, Huck?"
"Well, it don’t, because it’s in the breed. | reckon
they’re all alike."
"But, Huck, dese kings o’ourn is reglar rapscallions;
dat’s jist what dey is; dey’s reglar rapscallions."
"Well, that’s what I’m a-saying; all kings is mostly
rapscallions, as fur as | can make out."
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, XXIII
10.7 Slavery
The meaning of slavery can be summed up by the negation
of liberty, equality, property, and rights. Slavery isa
deprivation of freedom, the subordination of one man to
another as inferior to superior, the condition of being
completely propertyless because one’s whole being is the
property of another, and a status totally devoid of rights.
The reader will, therefore, find that the discussion of slavery
in this section involves notions treated elsewhere: in Section
11.1 on Property, in Section 12.3 on Rights—Natural and
Civil, in Section 13.1 on Freedom in Society, and in Section
13.3 on Equality. The reader will also find relevant materials
in Section 10.6 on Despotism and Tyranny.
The passages quoted here define slavery; distinguish
different types of slavery; contrast the economic roles of the
Slave and the artisan, the feudal serf, the peasant, and the
proletariat; discuss the policies of masters in the treatment
of their slaves; and regard the institution of slavery as one of
the consequences of sin. The crucial question, however,
concerns the justice of slavery.
One justification of slavery maintains that, as a matter of
fact, some men are by nature slaves and, therefore, should
be ruled for the benefit of those who are by nature free.
Another justification applies only to those who are taken
prisoners in a just war and, having forfeited their lives, can
therefore be justly enslaved. Still another turns on regarding
slaves as something less than human and, therefore, without
human rights.
The condemnation of slavery as intrinsically unjust and a
clear violation of man’s natural rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness rests on the affirmation of human
equality, the equality of men as men overshadowing their
inequalities in all other respects. Rousseau’s comment on
Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery calls attention to the
central question of fact: Are those who appear to be slavish
by nature merely men who have been born into slavery and
have had their characters conditioned by their treatment as
Slaves? If, in fact, no men are by nature slaves, then Aristotle
must be counted among those who condemn the
enslavement of men as being contrary to nature and,
therefore, unjust.
1 Of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among
you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are
with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall
be your possession.
Leviticus 25:45
2 Eumaios. Zeus who views the wide world takes away
half the manhood of a man, that day
he goes into captivity and slavery.
Homer, Odyssey, XVII, 321
3 Servant. He is a poor thing who does not feel as his
masters do, grieve in their grief, be happy in their
happiness. |, though | wear the name of lackey, yet aspire
to be counted in the number of the generous slaves, for |
do not have the name of liberty but have the heart.
Better this, than for a single man to have the double evil
of an evil spirit and to be named by those about him as a
Slave.
Euripides, Helen, 726
4 Callicles. The suffering of injustice is not the part of a man,
but of a slave, who indeed had better die than live; since
when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is unable to
help himself, or any other about whom he cares.
Plato, Gorgias, 483A
5 Athenian Stranger. The right treatment of slaves is to
behave properly to them, and to do to them, if possible,
even more justice than to those who are our equals; for
he w’ho naturally and genuinely reverences justice, and
hates injustice, is discovered in his dealings with any
class of men to whom he can easily be unjust And he who
in regard to the natures and actions of his slaves is
undefiled by impiety and injustice, will best sow the
seeds of virtue in them; and this may be truly said of
every master, and tyrant, and to every other having
authority in relation to his inferiors.
Plato, Laws, VI, 777B
6 Now instruments are of various sorts; some are living,
others lifeless; in the rudder, the pilot of a ship has a
lifeless, in the look-out man, a living instrument; for in
the arts the servant is a kind of instrument. Thus, too, a
possession is an instrument for maintaining life. And so,
in the arrangement of the family, a slave is a living
possession, and property a number of such instruments;
and the servant is himself an instrument which takes
precedence of all other instruments. For if every
instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or
anticipating the will of others... if... the shuttle would
weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to
guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor
masters slaves.
Aristotle, Politics, 1253b27
7 The master is only the master of the slave; he does not
belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of
his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see what
is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not
his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he
may be said to be another’s man who, being a human
being, is also a possession. And a possession may be
defined as an instrument of action, separable from the
possessor.
But is there any one thus intended by nature to bea
Slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and
right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?
There is no difficulty in answering this question, on
grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should
rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but
expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked
out for subjection, others for rule.
Aristotle, Politics, 1254a12
8 We may firstly observe in living creatures both a
despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the
body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules
the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule. And it
is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the
mind and the rational element over the passionate, is
natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or
the rule of the inferior is always hurtful. The same holds
good of animals in relation to men; for tame animals have
a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better
off when they are ruled by man; for then they are
preserved. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the
female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled;
this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind. Where
then there is such a difference as that between soul and
body, or between men and animals (as in the case of
those whose business is to use their body, and who can
do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves,
and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they
should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be
and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in
rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have,
such a principle, is a slave by nature. Whereas the lower
animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey
their instincts. And indeed the use made of slaves and of
tame animals is not very different; for both with their
bodies minister to the needs of life. Nature would like to
distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves,
making the one strong for servile labour, the other
upright, and although useless for such services, useful for
political life in the arts both of war and peace. But the
opposite often happens—that some have the souls and
others have the bodies of freemen. And doubtless if men
differed from one another in the mere forms of their
bodies as much as the statues of the Gods do from men,
all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be
Slaves of the superior. And if this is true of the body, how
much more just that a similar distinction should exist in
the soul? but the beauty of the body is seen, whereas the
beauty of the soul is not seen. It is clear, then, that some
men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for
these latter slavery is both expedient and right.
Aristotle, Politics, 1254b2
9 What difference does it make how many masters a man
has? Slavery is only one, and yet the person who refuses
to let the thought of it affect him is a free man no matter
how great the swarm of masters around him.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 28
10 ‘They’re slaves,’ people say. No. They’re human beings.
‘They're slaves.’ But they share the same roof as
ourselves. ‘They’re slaves.' No, they’re friends, humble
friends. ‘They’re slaves.’ Strictly speaking they’re our
fellow-slaves, if you once reflect that fortune has as much
power over us as over them.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 47
11 How about reflecting that the person you call your slave
traces his origin back to the same stock as yourself, has
the same good sky above him, breathes as you do, lives
as you do, dies as you do? It is as easy for you to see in
him a free-born man as for him to see a Slave in you.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 47
12 Effort is free once it is towards a fully recognised good;
the involuntary is, precisely, motion away from a good
and towards the enforced, towards something not
recognised as a good; servitude lies in being powerless to
move towards one’s good, being debarred from the
preferred path in a menial obedience. Hence the shame
of slavedom is incurred not when one is held from the
hurtful but when the personal good must be yielded in
favour of another’s.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, VIII, 4
13 He did not intend that His rational creature, who was
made in His image, should have dominion over anything
but the irrational creation—not man over man, but man
over the beasts. And hence the righteous men in
primitive times were made shepherds of cattle rather
than kings of men, God intending thus to teach us what
the relative position of the creatures is, and what the
desert of sin; for it is with justice, we believe, that the
condition of slavery is the result of sin. And this is why we
do not find the word "slave" in any pan of Scripture until
righteous Noah branded the sin of his son with this name.
It is a name, therefore, introduced by sin and not by
nature. The origin of the Latin word for slave is supposed
to be found in the circumstance that those who by the
law of war were liable to be killed were sometimes
preserved by their victors, and were hence called
servants. And these circumstances could never have
arisen save through sin. For even when we wage a just
war, Our adversaries must be sinning; and every victory,
even though gained by wicked men, is a result of the first
judgment of God. who humbles the vanquished either for
the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. Witness
that man of God, Daniel, who, when be was in captivity,
confessed to God his own sins and the sins of his people,
and declares with pious grief that these were the cause of
the captivity. The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin,
which brings man under the dominion of his fellow—that
which does not happen save by the judgment of God,
with Whom is no unrighteousness, and Who knows how
to award fit punishments to every variety of offence. But
our Master in heaven says, "Every one who doeth sin is
the servant of sin." And thus there are many wicked
masters who have religious men as their slaves, and who
are yet themselves in bondage; "for of whom a man is
overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage." And
beyond question it is a happier thing to be the slave of a
man than of a lust; for even this very lust o! ruling, to
mention no others, lays waste men’s hearts with the most
ruthless dominion. Moreover, when men are subjected to
one another in a peaceful order, the lowly position does
as much good to the servant as the proud position does
harm to the master. But by nature, as God first created
us, no one is the slave either of man or of sin. This
servitude is, however, penal, and is appointed by that law
which enjoins the preservation of the natural order and
forbids its disturbance; for if nothing had been done in
violation of that law, there would have been nothing to
restrain by penal servitude. And therefore the apostle
admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters, and to
serve them heartily and with good-will, so that, if they
cannot be freed by their masters, they may themselves
make their slavery in some sort free, by serving not in
crafty fear, but in faithful love, until all unrighteousness
pass away, and all principality and every human power
be brought to nothing, and God be all in all.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 15
14 Subjection is twofold. One is servile, by virtue of which a
superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit, and
this kind of subjection began after sin. There is another
kind of subjection, which is called economic or civil,
whereby the superior makes use of his subjects for their
own benefit and good; and this kind of subjection existed
even before sin.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 92, |
15 A slave differs from a free man in that the latter "has the
disposal of himself," as is stated in the beginning of
[Aristotle’s] Metaphysics, but a slave is ordered to
another. So that one man is master of another as his slave
when he refers the one whose master he is, to his own—
namely, the master’s, use. And since every man’s proper
good is desirable to himself, and consequently it is a
grievous matter to anyone to yield to another what ought
to be one’s own, therefore such dominion implies of
necessity a pain inflicted on the subject. And therefore in
the state of innocence such a mastership could not have
existed between man and man.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 96, 4
16 The master of the servant is master also of all he hath,
and may exact the use thereof; that is to say, of his
goods, of his labour, of his servants, and of his children,
as often as he shall think fit. For he holdcth his life of his
master by the covenant of obedience; that is, of owning
and authorising whatsoever the master shall do. And in
case the master, if he refuse, kill him, or cast him into
bonds, or otherwise punish him for his disobedience, he is
himself the author of the same, and cannot accuse him of
injury.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 20
17 Freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary
to, and closely joined with, a man’s preservation, that he
cannot part with it but by what forfeits his preservation
and life together. For a man, not having the power of his
own life, cannot by compact or his own consent enslave
himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute,
arbitrary power of another to take away his life when he
pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has
himself, and he that cannot take away his own life cannot
give another power over it....
The perfect condition of slavery ... is nothing else but
the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror
and a captive, for if once compact enter between them,
and make an agreement for a limited power on the one
side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and
slavery ceases as long as the compact endures; for, as
has been said, no man can by agreement pass over to
another that which he hath not in himself—a power over
his own life.
Locke, II Civil Government, IV, 22-23
18 There is another sort of servant which by a peculiar name
we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war are,
by the right of Nature, subjected to the absolute
dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These
men having, as | say, forfeited their lives and, with it,
their liberties, and lost their estates, and being in the
state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in
that state be considered as any part of civil society, the
chief end whereof is the preservation of property.
Locke, II Civil Government, VII, 85
19 Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right
which gives to one man such a power over another as
renders him absolute master of his life and fortune. The
state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither
useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave,
because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue;
nor to the master, because by having an unlimited
authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself
to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes
fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XV, 1
20 Were | to vindicate our right to make slaves of the
negroes, these should be my arguments:
The Europeans, having extirpated the Americans, were
obliged to make slaves of the Africans, for clearing such
vast tracts of land.
Sugar would be too dear if the plants which produce it
were cultivated by any other than slaves.
These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat
nose that they can scarcely be pitied.
It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise
Being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such
a black ugly body.
It is so natural to look upon colour as the criterion of
human nature, that the Asiatics, among whom eunuchs
are employed, always deprive the blacks of their
resemblance to us by a more opprobrious distinction.
The colour of the skin may he determined by that of
the hair, which, among the Egyptians, the best
philosophers in the world, was of such importance that
they put to death all the red-haired men who fell into
their hands.
The negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which
polite nations so highly value. Can there be a greater
proof of their wanting common sense?
It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be
men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion
would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.
Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to
the Africans. For were the case as they state it, would the
European powers, who make so many needless
conventions among themselves, have failed to enter into
a general one, in behalf of humanity and compassion?
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XV, 5
21 In moderate governments it is a point of the highest
importance that there should not be a great number of
Slaves. The political liberty of those states adds to the
value of civil liberty; and he who is deprived of the latter
is also bereft of the former. He sees the happiness of a
society, of which he is not so much as a member; he sees
the security of others fenced by laws, himself without any
protection. He perceives that his master has a soul,
capable of enlarging itself: while his own labours under a
continual depression. Nothing more assimilates a man to
a beast than living among freedmen, himself a slave.
Such people as these are natural enemies of society; and
their number must be dangerous.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XV, 12
22 Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One
thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a
greater slave than they.
Rousseau, Social Contract, 1,2
23 Aristotle... had said that men are by no means equal
naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others
for dominion.
Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the
cause. Nothing can be more certain than that every man
born in slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything
in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them:
they love their servitude, <is the comrades of Ulysses
loved their brutish condition. If then there are slaves by
nature, it is because there have been slaves against
nature. Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice
perpetuated the condition.
Rousseau, Social Contrary I, 2
24 The right of conquest has no foundation other than the
right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror
the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to
enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does
not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except
when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to
enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to
kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him
buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the
victor holds nO right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious
circle in founding the right of life and death on the right
of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and
death?
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 4
25 Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may
be so. Extremes meet. Everything that is not in the
course of nature has its disadvantages, civil society most
of all. There are some unhappy circumstances in which
we can only keep our liberty at others’ expense, and
where the citizen can be perfectly free only when the
Slave is most a slave. Such was the case with Sparta. As
for you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you are
slaves yourselves; you pay for their liberty with your own.
It is in vain that you boast of this preference; | find in it
more cowardice than humanity.
| do not mean by all this that it is necessary to have
Slaves, or that the right of slavery is legitimate: | am
merely giving the reasons why modern peoples, believing
themselves to be free, have representatives, while
ancient peoples had none. In any case, the moment a
people allows itself to be represented, it is no longer free:
it no longer exists.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IIl, 15
26 After supper | accompanied him [Johnson] to his
apartment, and at my request he dictated to me an
argument in favour of the negro who was then claiming
his liberty, in an action in the Court of Session in
Scotland. He had always been very zealous against
Slavery in every form, in which I, with all deference,
thought that he discovered "a zeal without knowledge."
Upon one occasion, when in company with some very
grave men at Oxford, his toast was, "Here’s to the next
insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies." His violent
prejudice against our West Indian and American settlers
appeared whenever there was an opportunity. Towards
the conclusion of his Taxation no Tyranny, he says, "how
is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the
drivers of negroes?"...
The argument dictated by Dr. Johnson was as follows:
"It must be agreed that in most ages many countries
have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery;
yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be
supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible
not to conceive that men in their original state were
equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be
subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An
individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but
he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.
What is true of a criminal seems true likewise of a
captive. Aman may accept life from a conquering enemy
on condition of perpetual servitude; but it is very
doubtful whether he can entail that servitude on his
descendants; lor nO man can stipulate without
commission for another. The condition which he himself
accepts, his son or grandson perhaps would have
rejected. If we should admit, what perhaps may with more
reason be denied, that there are certain relations
between man and man which may make slavery
necessary and just, yet it can never be proved that he
who is now suing for his freedom ever stood in any of
those relations. He is certainly subject by no law, but that
of violence, to his present master; who pretends no claim
to his obedience, but that he bought him from a
merchant of slaves, whose right to sell him never was
examined. .. The sum of the argument is this:—No man is
by nature the property of another: The defendant is,
therefore, by nature free: The rights of nature must be
some way forfeited before they can be justly taken away:
That the defendant has by any act forfeited the rights of
nature we require to be proved; and if no proof of such
forfeiture can be given, we doubt not but the justice of
the court will declare him free."
| record Dr. Johnson’s argument fairly upon this
particular case; where, perhaps, he was in the right. But |
beg leave to enter my most solemn protest against his
general doctrine with respect to the S/ave Trade. For | will
resolutely say—that his unfavourable notion of it was
owing to prejudice, and imperfect or false information.
The wild and dangerous attempt which has for some time
been persisted in to obtain an act of our Legislature, to
abolish so very important and necessary a branch of
commercial interest, must have been crushed at once,
had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took
the lead in it, made the vast body of Planters, Merchants,
and others, whose immense properties are involved in
that trade, reasonably enough suppose that there could
be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has
received excites my wonder and indignation: and though
some men of superiour abilities have supported it;
whether from a love of temporary popularity, when
prosperous; or a love of general mischief, when
desperate, my opinion is unshaken. To abolish a status,
which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man has
continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable
class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme
cruelty to the African Savages, a portion of whom it saves
from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own
country, and introduces into a much happier state of life;
especially now when their passage to the West Indies and
their treatment there is humanely regulated. To abolish
that trade would be to —shut the gates of mercy on
mankind.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Sept. 23, 1777)
27 There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the
manners of our people produced by the existence of
slavery among us. The whole commerce between master
and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous
passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one
part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our
children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an
imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education
in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do
what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive
either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining
the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should
always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But
generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child
looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the
same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to
the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it
with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who
can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances. And with what execration should the
statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the
citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other,
transforms those into despots, and these into enemies,
destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae
of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this
world, it must be any other in preference to that in which
he is born to live and labor for another; in which he must
lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as
depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment
of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition
on the endless generations proceeding from him. With
the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed.
For in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who
can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of
the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed
are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure when we have removed their only firm
basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be
violated but with his wrath? Indeed | tremble for my
country when | reflect that God is just; that his justice
cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature
and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of
fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible
events; that it may become probable by supernatural
interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can
take side with us in such a contest.
Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, XVIII
28 In the free states of antiquity the domestic slaves were
exposed to the wanton rigour of despotism. The perfect
settlement of the Roman empire was preceded by ages of
violence and rapine. The slaves consisted, for the most
part, of barbarian captives, taken in thousands by the
chance of war purchased at a vile price, accustomed to a
life of independence, and impatient to break and to
revenge their fetters. Against such internal enemies,
whose desperate insurrections had more than once
reduced the republic to the brink of destruction the most
severe regulations, and the most cruel treatment, seemed
almost justified by the great law of self-preservation. But
when the principal nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
were united under the laws of one sovereign, the source
of foreign supplies flowed with much less abundance, and
the Romans were reduced to the milder but more tedious
method of propagation. In their numerous families, and
particularly in their country estates, they encouraged the
marriage of their slaves. The sentiments of nature, the
habits of education, and the possession of a dependent
species of property, contributed to alleviate the hardships
of servitude. The existence of a slave became an object of
greater value, and though his happiness still depended
on the temper and circumstances of the master, the
humanity of the latter, instead of being restrained by
fear, was encouraged by the sense of his o>vn interest.
The progress of manners was accelerated by the virtue or
policy of the emperors; and by the edicts of Hadrian and
the Antonines, the protection of the laws was extended to
the most abject part of mankind. The jurisdiction of life
and death over the slaves, a power long exercised and
often abused, was taken out of private hands, and
reserved to the magistrates alone. The subterraneous
prisons were abolished; and, upon a just complaint of
intolerable treatment, the injured slave obtained either
his deliverance, or a less cruel master.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 11
29 No individual in the state can indeed be entirely without
dignity; for he has at least that of being a citizen, except
when he has lost his civil status by a crime. As a criminal
he is still maintained in life, but he is made the mere
instrument of the will of another, whether it be the state
or a particular citizen. In the latter position, in which he
could only be placed by a juridical judgement, he would
practically become a s/ave, and would belong as property
to another, who would be not merely his master but his
owner. Such an owner would be entitled to exchange or
alienate him as a thing, to use him at will except for
shameful purposes, and to dispose of his powers, but not
of his life and members. No one can bind himself to such
a condition of dependence, as he would thereby cease to
be a person, and it is only as a person that he can make a
contract.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
30 Even if by committing a crime [a person] has personally
become subjected to another, this subject-condition does
not become hereditary; for lie has only brought it upon
himself by his own wrongdoing. Neither can one who has
been begotten by a slave be claimed as property on the
ground of the cost of his rearing, because such rearing is
an absolute duty naturally incumbent upon parents; and
in case the parents be slaves, it devolves upon their
masters or owners, who, in undertaking the possession of
such subjects, have also made themselves responsible for
the performance of their duties.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
31 Let the case of the slaves be considered, as it is in truth,
a peculiar one. Let the compromising expedient of the
Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as
inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal
level of free inhabitants; which regards the slave as
divested of two-fifths of the man.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 54
32 To adhere to man’s absolute freedom—one aspect of the
matter—is eo ipso to condemn slavery. Yet if a man isa
Slave, his own will is responsible for his slavery, just as it
is its will which is responsible if a people is subjugated.
Hence the wrong of slavery lies at the door not simply of
enslavers or conquerors but of the slaves and the
conquered themselves. Slavery occurs in man’s transition
from the state of nature to genuinely ethical conditions; it
occurs in a world where a wrong is still right. At that
stage wrong has validity and so is necessarily in place.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 57
33 Mr. [Henry] Clay said to me: "In our Southern states there
are a great many districts where white people cannot get
acclimatized and where the blacks live and prosper. |
imagine that in time the black population of the South, as
it becomes free, will concentrate in that portion of the
American territory, and the white population, on the
other hand, will gradually move out. In that way a
population will be formed entirely descended from the
Africans, which will be able to have its own nationality
and to enjoy its own laws. | can see no other solution to
the great question of slavery, | do not think that the
blacks will ever mingle sufficiently completely with the
white to form a single people with them. The introduction
of this foreign race is anyhow the one great plague of
America."
Tocqueville, Journey to America (Sept. 18, 1831)
34 Interview with Mr. John Quincy] Adams (the former
President)...
Do you look on slavery as a great plague for the
United States?
Yes, certainly. That is the root of almost all the troubles
of the present and fears for the future.
Do the Southerners realize that state of affairs?
Yes, at the bottom of their hearts. But it is a truth that
they will not admit, although they are clearly
preoccupied about it. Slavery has altered the whole slate
of society in the South. There the whites form a class to
themselves which has all the ideas, all the passions, all
the prejudices of an aristocracy. But do not be mistaken;
nowhere is equality between the whites so complete as in
the South. Here we have great equality before the law,
but it simply does not affect our ways of life. There are
upper classes and working classes. Every white man in
the South is an equally privileged being whose destiny it
is to make the Negroes work without working himself. You
cannot conceive how far the idea that work is shameful
has entered into the spirit of the Americans of the South.
Any undertaking in which the Negroes cannot serve ina
subordinate role is sure not to succeed in that part of the
Union. All those who trade in a large way in Charleston
and the towns have come from New England.
| remember a Southern congressman who %vas dining
with me in Washington, and who could not conceal his
surprise at seeing white servants serving us at table. He
said to Mrs. Adams; "I feel that it is degrading the human
race to have white men for servants. When one of them
comes to change my plate, | am always tempted to offer
him my place at table." From the idleness in which the
whites in the South live spring great differences in their
character. They devote themselves to bodily exercises, to
hunting and races. They are strongly built, brave, and
very honorable; they are more touchy about "points of
honor" than people anywhere else; duels are frequent.
Do you think that actually it is impossible to do
without Negroes in the South?
| am convinced to the contrary, Europeans cultivate
the land in Greece and in Sicily; why should they not do
so in Virginia or the Caroli-nas? It is not hotter there.
Is the number of slaves increasing?
It is diminishing in all the provinces to the east of the
Delaware because there wheat and tobacco are grown,
and for those crops Negroes are more hindrance than
help. So they are sent from there to the provinces where
cotton and sugar are grown; in those provinces their
numbers increase. In the states of the West where they
have been introduced, their numbers remain small.
Tocqueville, Journey to America (Oct. 1, 1831)
35 | hold that, in the present state of civilization, where two
races of different origin and distinguished by color and
other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are
brought together, the relation now existing in the
slaveholding states between the two is, instead of an evil,
a good—a positive good. | feel myself called upon to
speak freely upon the subject, where the honor and
interests of those | represent are involved. | hold, then,
that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized
society in which one portion of the community did not, in
point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and
general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history.
J. C. Calhoun, Speech on the Reception of Abolitionist
Petitions (Feb. 1837)
36 If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other
end fastens itself around your own.
Emerson, Compensation
37 What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me
to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does
that indignity amount to, weighed, | mean, in the scales
of the New Testament? Who is not a slave? Tell me that.
Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me
about—however they may thump and punch me about, |
have the satisfaction of Knowing that it is all right: that
everybody else is one way or other served in much the
Same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of
view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round,
and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades,
and be content.
Melville, Moby Dick, |
38 Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery
a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes
to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.
Lincoln, Fragment on Slavery (July 1, 1854)
39 If Acan prove, however conclusively, that he may of right
enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument and
prove equally that he may enslave A?
You say A is white, and B is black. It is color, then; the
lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care.
By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet
with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites
are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and
therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care
again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man
you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and if you can
make it your interest, you have the right to enslave
another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he
has the right to enslave you.
Lincoln, Fragment on Slavery (July /, 1854)
40 If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those
offenses which, in the providence of God must needs
come, but which, having continued through His
appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He
gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe
due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern
therein any departure from those divine attributes which
the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if
God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the
bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
Shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,
as was Said three thousand years ago, so still it must be
said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether."
Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address
41 In slave labour, even that part of the working day in
which the slave is only replacing the value of his own
means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works
for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the
slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, VI, 19
42 In this and most other civilised countries ... an
engagement by which a person should sell himself, or
allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null and
void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground
for thus limiting his power ol voluntarily disposing of his
own lot in life, is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this
extreme case. The reason for not interfering, unless for
the sake of others, with a person’s voluntary acts, is
consideration for his liberty. His voluntary choice is
evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at least
endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best
provided for by allowing him to take his own means of
pursuing it. But by selling himself for a slave, he
abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it
beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own
case, the very purpose which is the justification of
allowing him to dispose of himself. He is no longer free;
but is thenceforth in a position which has no longer the
presumption in its favour, that would be afforded by his
voluntarily remaining in it. The principle of freedom
cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is
not freedom to be allowed to alienate his freedom.
Mill, On Liberty, V
43 All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still,
into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds
of his day for himself is a slave, be he otherwise whatever
he likes, statesman, merchant, official, or scholar.
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 283
44 In the relation of master to slave the master does no;
make a point of the need that he has for the other; he has
in his grasp the power of satisfying this need through his
own action; whereas the slave, in his dependent
condition, his hope and fear, is quite conscious of the
need he has for his master. Even if the need is at bottom
equally urgent for both, it always works in favor of the
oppressor and against the oppressed.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Intro.
10.8 Classes and Class Conflict
The notion of the class struggle or class conflict was not
invented by Karl Marx, though it is often attributed to him,
as is also the conception of a classless society. The reader
will find a passage from the Republic in which Plato declares
that there are two cities, not one, the city of the rich and the
city of the poor; and they are forever in conflict with one
another. The reader will also find a statement by Aristotle
setting forth his conception of the ideal polity as one that
approximates classlessness through the overwhelming
preponderance of a middle class, neither rich nor poor.
Toynbee's observation that war and class are the twin
evils that have plagued all historic civilizations and brought
their downfall is corroborated by much that is said in (he
quotations gathered below. Among the class divisions
mentioned, the two that have exerted the greatest
divisiveness upon society are, first, the chasm that separates
the haves from the have-nots, the rich from the poor, the
propertied class from the unpropertied; and the second, the
one that sets a ruling class apart from a Subject class, those
with political power and privileges and those excluded from
active participation in political life.
The acceptance of class divisions and class conflict is not
confined to the ancients. The reader will find it in quotations
drawn from Montesquieu, Rousseau, and even from Thomas
Jefferson, who, in proposing an educational system for
Virginia, thought of the children as divided into those who
were destined for labor and those who were destined for
leisure and learning. The reader will also find a quotation
from the tenth Federalist paper, in which Madison argues
that since factions and factional conflict cannot be
eliminated from society, the best we can hope to do is to
find ways of remedying or attenuating their baneful effects.
A class-structured society promotes and preserves
inequalities of treatment, status, and opportunity. Hence
those who advocate a universal equality of conditions favor
the ideal of a classless society. For other relevant discussion,
the reader is referred to Section 11.2 on Wealth and Poverty,
Section 13.3 on Equality, Section 10.4 on Government of
and by the People: Republic and Democracy, and Section
10.9 on Revolution.
1 Theseus. The classes of citizens are three. The rich
Are useless, always lusting after more.
Those who have not, and live in want, are a menace,
Ridden with envy and fooled by demagogues;
Their malice stings the owners. Of the three,
The middle part saves cities; it guards the order
A community establishes.
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 238
2 Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the
city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war
with one another; and in either there are many smaller
divisions, and you would be altogether beside the mark if
you treated them all as a single State.
Plato, Republic, IV, 422B
3 The city of Hippodamus was composed of 10,000 citizens
divided into three parts,—one of artisans, one of
husbandmen, and a third of armed defenders of the state.
He also divided the land into three parts, one sacred, one
public, the third private:— the first was set apart to
maintain the customary worship of the gods, the second
was to support the warriors, the third was the property of
the husbandmen.
Aristotle, Politics, 1267b30
4 States... are composed, not of one, but of many elements.
One clement is the food-producing class, who are called
husbandmen; a second, the class of mechanics who
practise the arts without which a city cannot exist;—of
these arts some are absolutely necessary, others
contribute to luxury or to the grace of life. The third class
is that of traders, and by traders | mean those who are
engaged in buying and selling, whether in commerce or
in retail trade. A fourth class is that of the serfs or
labourers. The warriors make up the fifth class, and they
are as necessary as any of the others, if the country is not
to be the slave of every invader.
Aristotle, Politics, 1290b38
5 All claim to possess political ability, and think that they
are quite competent to fill most offices. But the same
persons cannot be rich and poor at the same time. For
this reason the rich and the poor are regarded in an
especial sense as parts of a state. Again, because the rich
are generally few in number, while the poor are many,
they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the
other prevails they form the government. Hence arises
the common opinion that there are two kinds of
government—democracy and oligarchy.
Aristotle, Politics, 1291b5
6 The best political community is formed by citizens of the
middle class, and... those states are likely to be well-
administered, in which the middle class is large, and
stronger if possible than both the other classes, or at any
rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle
class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes
from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of a
state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient
property; for where some possess much, and the others
nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a
pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either
extreme,—either out of the most rampant democracy, or
out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of
the middle constitutions and those akin to them.
Aristotle, Politics, 1295b35
7 Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to
desolation; and every city or house divided against itself
Shall not stand.
Matthew 12:25
8 Of all his measures the most commended %%’as his
distribution of the people by their trades into companies
or guilds; for as the city consisted, or rather did not
consist of, but was divided into, two different tribes, the
diversity between which could not be effaced and in the
meantime prevented all unity and caused perpetual
tumult and ill-blood, reflecting how hard substances that
do not readily mix when in the lump may, by being
beaten into powder, in that minute form be combined, he
[Numa Pompilius] resolved to divide the whole population
into a number of small divisions, and thus hoped, by
introducing other distinctions, to obliterate the original
and great distinction, which would be lost among the
smaller. So, distinguishing the whole people by the
several arts and trades, he formed the companies of
musicians, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, shoemakers,
skinners, braziers, and potters; and all other
handicraftsmen he composed and reduced into a single
company, appointing every one their proper courts,
councils, and religious observances. In this manner all
factious distinctions began, for the first time, to pass out
of use, no person any longer being either thought of or
spoken of under the notion of a Sabine or a Roman, a
Romulian or a Tatian; and the new division became a
source of general harmony and intermixture.
Plutarch, Numa Pompilius
9 The Athenians, now the Cylonian sedition was over and
the polluted gone into banishment, fell into their old
quarrels about the government, there being as many
different parties as there were diversities in the country.
The Hill quarter favoured democracy, the Plain, oligarchy,
and those that lived by the Seaside stood for a mixed sort
of government, and so hindered either of the other
parties from prevailing. And the disparity of fortune
between the rich and the poor, at that time, also reached
its height; so that the city seemed to be in a truly
dangerous condition, and no other means for freeing it
from disturbances and settling it to be possible but a
despotic power. All the people were indebted to the rich;
and either they tilled their land for their creditors, paying
them a sixth part of the increase, and were, therefore,
called Hectemorii and Thetes, or else they engaged their
body for the debt, and might be seized, and either sent
into slavery at home, or sold to strangers; some (for no
law forbade it) were forced to sell their children, or fly
their country to avoid the cruelty of their creditors; but
the most part and the bravest of them began to combine
together and encourage one another to stand to it, to
choose a leader, to liberate the condemned debtors,
divide the land, and change the government.
Plutarch, Solon
10 Don Quixote. All the Lineages and Descents of Mankind,
are reduceablc to these four Heads: First, Of those, who
from a very small and obscure Beginning, have rais’d
themselves to a spreading and prodigious Magnitude.
Secondly, Of those who deriving their Greatness from a
noble Spring, still preserve the Dignity and Character of
their original Splendor. A Third, are those who, though
they had large Foundations, have ended in a Point like a
Pyramid, which by little and little dwindle as it were into
nothing, or next to nothing, in comparison of its Basis.
Others there are (and those are the Bulk of Mankind) who
have neither had a good Beginning, nor a rational
Continuance, and whose Ending shall therefore be
obscure; such are the common People, the Plebeian Race.
The Ottoman Family is an Instance of the first Sort,
having deriv’d their present Greatness from the poor
Beginning of a base-born Shepherd. Of the second Sort,
there are many Princes who being born such, enjoy their
Dominions by Inheritance, and leave them to their
Successors without Addition or Dimunution. Of the third
Sort, there is an infinite Number of Examples; for all the
Pharaohs and Ptolomies of Egypt, your Caesars of Rome,
and all the Swarm (if | may use that Word) of Princes,
Monarchs, Lords, Medes, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and
Barbarians: All these Families and Empires have ended in
a Point, as well as those who gave rise to ’em: for it were
impossible at this Day to find any of their Descendants, or
if we cou’d find ’em, it would be in a poor groveling
Condition. As for the Vulgar, | say nothing of ’em, more
than that they are thrown in as Cyphers to increase the
Number of Mankind, without deserving any other Praise.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 6
11 There are four classes of men who pay the debts of the
state; the proprietors of the land, those engaged in trade,
the labourers and artificers, and, in fine, the annuitants
either of the state or of private people. Of these four
classes the last, in a case of necessity one would imagine,
ought least to be spared, because it is a class entirely
passive, while the state is supported by the active vigour
of the other three. But as it cannot be higher taxed,
without destroying the public confidence, of which the
state in general and these three classes in particular have
the utmost need; as a breach in the public faith cannot
be made on a certain number of subjects without
seeming to be made on all; as the class of creditors is
always the most exposed to the projects of ministers, and
always in their eye, and under their immediate
inspection, the state is obliged to give them a singular
protection, that the part which is indebted may never
have the least advantage over that which is the creditor.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXII, 18
12 Every political society is composed of other smaller
societies of different kinds, each of which has its interests
and its rules of conduct: but those societies which
everybody perceives, because they have an external and
authorised form, are not the only ones that actually exist
in the State: all individuals who are united by a common
interest compose as many others, either transitory or
permanent, whose influence is none the less real because
it is less apparent, and the proper observation of whose
various relations is the true knowledge of public morals
and manners. The influence of all these tacit or formal
associations causes, by the influence of their will, as
many different modifications of the public will. The will of
these particular societies has always two relations; for the
members of the association, it is a general will; for the
great society, it is a particular will; and it is often right
with regard to the first object, and wrong as to the
second. An individual may be a devout priest, a brave
soldier, or a zealous senator, and yet a bad citizen. A
particular resolution may be advantageous to the smaller
community, but pernicious to the greater. It is true that
particular societies being always subordinate to the
general society in preference to others, the duty of a
citizen takes precedence of that of a senator, and a man’s
duty, of that of a citizen: but unhappily personal interest
is always found in inverse ratio to duty, and increases in
proportion as the association grows narrower, and the
engagement less sacred; which irrefragably proves that
the most general will is always the most just also, and
that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.
Rousseau, Political Economy
13 It is on the middle classes alone that the whole force of
the law is exerted; they are equally powerless against the
treasures of the rich and the penury of the poor. The first
mocks them, the second escapes them. The one breaks
the meshes, the other passes through them.
Rousseau, Political Economy
14 are not all the advantages of society for the rich and
powerful? Are not all lucrative posts in their hands? are
not all privileges and exemptions reserved for them
alone? Is not the public authority always on their side? If
a man of eminence robs his creditors, or is guilty of other
knaveries, is he not always assured of impunity? are not
the assaults, acts of violence, assassinations, and even
murders committed by the great, matters that are hushed
up in a few months, and of which nothing more is
thought? But if a great man himself is robbed or insulted,
the whole police force is immediately in motion, and woe
even to innocent persons who chance to be suspected. If
he has to pass through any dangerous road, the country’
iS up in arms to escort him. If the axle-tree of his chaise
breaks, everybody flies to his assistance. If there is a
noise at his door, he speaks but a word, and all is silent. If
he is incommoded by the crowd, he waves his hand and
every one makes way. If his coach is met on the road by a
wagon, his servants are ready to beat the driver’s brains
out, and fifty honest pedestrians going quietly about
their business had better be knocked on the head than
an idle jackanapes be delayed in his coach. Yet all this
respect costs him not a farthing: it is the rich man’s right,
and not what he buy’s with his wealth. How different is
the ease of the poor man! the more humanity owes him,
the more society denies him. Every door is shut against
him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if
ever he obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty
than others obtain favours. If the militia is to be raised or
the highway to be mended, he is always given the
preference; he always bears the burden which his richer
neighbour has influence enough to get exempted from.
On the least accident that happens to him, everybody
avoids him: if his cart be overturned in the road, so far is
he from receiving any assistance, that he is lucky if he
does not get horse-whipped by the impudent lackeys of
some young Duke; in a word, all gratuitous assistance is
denied to the poor when they need it, just because they
cannot pay for it. | look upon any poor man as totally
undone, if he has the misfortune to have an honest heart,
a fine daughter, and a powerful neighbour.
Rousseau, Political Economy
15 | mentioned that old Mr. Sheridan complained of the
ingratitude of Mr. Wedderburne and General Fraser, who
had been much obliged to him when they were young
Scotchmen entering upon life in England. Johnson. "Why,
Sir, aman is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of
those who have risen far above him. A man when he gets
into a higher sphere, into other habits of life, cannot keep
up all his former connections. Then, Sir, those who knew
him formerly upon a level with themselves, may think
that they ought still to be treated as on a level, which
cannot be; and an acquaintance in a former situation
may bring out things which it would be very disagreeable
to have mentioned before higher company, though,
perhaps, every body knows of them." He placed this
subject in a new light to me, and shewed that a man who
has risen in the world, must not be condemned too
harshly for being distant to former acquaintance, even
though he may have been much obliged to them. It is, no
doubt, to be wished that a proper degree of attention
should be shewn by great men to their early friends. But
if either from obtuse insensibility to difference of
situation, or presumptuous forwardness, which will not
submit even to an exteriour observance of it, the dignity
of high place cannot be preserved, when they are
admitted into the company of those raised above the
state in which they once were, encroachment must be
repelled, and the kinder feelings sacrificed.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 28, 1776)
16 Men may live together in society with some tolerable
degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to
protect them from the injustice of those passions. But
avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of
labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are
the passions which prompt to invade property, passions
much more steady in their operation, and much more
universal in their influence.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, |
17 Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security
of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the
rich against the poor, or of those who have some property
against those who have none at all.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, |
18 At the discharging of the pupils from the elementary
schools, the two classes separate—those destined for
labor will engage in the business of agriculture or enter
into apprenticeships to such handicraft art as may be
their choice; their companions, destined to the pursuits
of science, will proceed to the college, which will consist
first of general schools and second of professional
schools. The general schools will constitute the second
grade of education.
The learned class may still be subdivided into two
sections; first, those who are destined for learned
professions, as a means of livelihood; and second, the
wealthy, who, possessing independent fortunes, may
aspire to share in conducting the affairs of the nation or
to live with usefulness and respect in the private ranks of
life. Both of these sections will require instruction in all
the higher branches of science; the wealthy to qualify
them for either public or private life; the professional
section will need those branches especially which are the
basis of their future profession, and a general knowledge
of the others as auxiliary to that and necessary to their
standing and associating with the scientific class.
Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr (Sept. 7, 1814)
19 Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of
society are produced by the restraints which the
necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed
on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the
possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of
all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the
most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of
one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the
tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force,
and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity.
The ardour of contention, the pride of victory, the despair
of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of
future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to
silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every
page of history has been stained with civil blood.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1V
20 When Caesar subdued the Gauls, that great nation was
already divided into three orders of men; the clergy, the
nobility, and the common people. The first governed by
superstition, the second by arms, but the third and last
was not of any weight or account in their public councils.
It was very natural for the plebeians, oppressed by debt
or apprehensive of injuries, to implore the protection of
some powerful chief, who acquired over their persons and
property the same absolute rights as, among the Greeks
and Romans, a master exercised over his slaves. The
greatest part of the nation was gradually reduced ina
state of servitude; compelled to perpetual labour on the
estates of the Gallic nobles, and confined to the soil,
either by the real weight of fetters, or by the no less cruel
and forcible restraints of the laws. During the long series
of troubles which agitated Gaul, from the reign of
Gallienus to that of Diocletian, the condition of those
servile peasants was peculiarly miserable; and they
experienced at once the complicated tyranny of their
masters, of the barbarians, of the soldiers, and of the
officers of the revenue.
Their patience was at last provoked into despair. On
every side they rose in multitudes, armed with rustic
weapons, and with irresistible fury. The ploughman
became a foot soldier, the shepherd mounted on
horseback, the deserted villages and open towns were
abandoned to the flames, and the ravages of the
peasants equalled those of the fiercest barbarians. They
asserted the natural rights of men, but they asserted
those rights with the most savage cruelty. The Gallic
nobles, justly dreading their revenge, either took refuge
in the fortified cities, or fled from the wild scene of
anarchy. The peasants reigned without control; and two
of their most daring leaders had the folly and rashness to
assume the Imperial ornaments. Their power soon expired
at the approach of the legions. The strength of union and
discipline obtained an easy victory over a licentious and
divided multitude. A severe retaliation was inflicted on
the peasants who were found in arms: the affrighted
remnant returned to their respective habitations, and
their unsuccessful effort for freedom served only to
confirm their slavery. So strong and uniform is the current
of popular passions, that we might almost venture, from
very scanty materials, to relate the particulars of this war;
but we are not disposed to believe that the principal
leaders, AElianus and Amandus, were Christians, or to
insinuate that the rebellion, as it happened in the time of
Luther, was occasioned by the abuse of those benevolent
principles of Christianity which inculcate the natural
freedom of mankind.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIII
21 Such is the constitution of civil society, that, whilst a few
persons are distinguished by riches, by honours, and by
knowledge, the body of the people is condemned to
obscurity, ignorance, and poverty.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
22 Those who contend for a simple democracy, or a pure
republic, actuated by the sense of the majority and
operating within narrow limits, assume or Suppose a case
which is altogether fictitious. They found their reasoning
on the idea that the people composing the society enjoy
not only an equality of political rights but that they have
all precisely the same interests and the same feelings in
every respect. Were this in reality the case, their
reasoning would be conclusive. The interest of the
majority would be that of the minority, also; the decisions
could only turn on mere opinion concerning the good of
the whole, of which the major voice would be the safest
criterion; and within a small sphere, this voice could be
most easily collected and the public affairs most
accurately managed.
We know, however, that no society ever did, or can,
consist of so homogeneous a mass of citizens. In the
Savage state, indeed, an approach is made toward it, but
in that state little or no government is necessary’. In all
civilized societies distinctions are various and
unavoidable. A distinction of property results from that
very protection which a free government gives to
unequal faculties of acquiring it. There will be rich and
poor; creditors and debtors; a landed interest, a monied
interest, a mercantile interest, a manufacturing interest.
These classes may again be subdivided according to the
different productions of different situations and soils, and
according to different branches of commerce and of
manufactures. In addition to these natural distinctions,
artificial ones will be founded on accidental differences in
political, religious, or other opinions, or an attachment to
the persons of leading individuals. However erroneous or
ridiculous these grounds of dissension and faction may
appear to the enlightened statesman or the benevolent
philosopher, the bulk of mankind, who are neither
statesmen nor philosophers, will continue to view them in
a different light.
Madison, Letter to Jefferson (Oct, 24, 1787)
23 By a faction, | understand a number of citizens, whether
amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are
united and actuated by some common impulse of
passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other
citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of
the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of
faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by
controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes
of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is
essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every
citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the
same interests....
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first
would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues
fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different
opinions will be formed. As long as the connection
subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions
and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each
other; and the former will be objects to which the latter
will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of
men, from which the rights of property originate, is not
less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests.
The protection of these faculties is the first object of
government. From the protection of different and unequal
faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different
degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and
from the influence of these on the sentiments and views
of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the
society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the
nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into
different degrees of activity, according to the different
circumstances of civil society, A zeal for different
opinions concerning religion, concerning government,
and many other points, as well of speculation as of
practice; an attachment of different leaders ambitiously
contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of
other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting
to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind
into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and
rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress
each other than to cooperate for their common good. So
strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual
animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents
itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have
been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and
excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common
and durable source of factions has been the various and
unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and
those who are without property have ever formed distinct
interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those
who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed
interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a
moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of
necessity in civilised nations, and divide them into
different classes, actuated by different sentiments and
views. The regulation of these various and interfering
interests forms the principal task of modem legislation,
and involves the spirit of party and faction in the
necessary and ordinary operations of the government....
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be
able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them
all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen
will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can
such an adjustment be made at all without taking into
view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely
prevail over the immediate interest which one party may
find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of
the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the
causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is
only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
Madison, Federalist 10
24 It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard
the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to
guard one part of the society against the injustice of the
other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different
classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common
interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There
are but two methods of providing against this evil: the
one by creating a will in the community independent of
the majority—that is, of the society itself; the other, by
comprehending in the society so many separate
descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust
combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if
not impracticable.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 51
25 It appears that a society constituted according to the
most beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with
benevolence for its moving principle, instead of self-love,
and with every evil disposition in all its members
corrected by reason and not force, would, from the
inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original
depravity of man, in a very short period degenerate into
a society constructed upon a plan not essentially
different from that which prevails in every known state at
present; | mean a society divided into a class of
proprietors, and a class of laborers, and with self-love the
main spring of the great machine.
Malthus, Population, X
26 The ways and means of sharing in the capital of society
are left to each man’s particular choice, but the
subdivision of civil society into different general branches
is a necessity. The family is the first precondition of the
state, but class divisions are the second. The importance
of the latter is due to the fact that although private
persons are self-seeking, they are compelled to direct
their attention to others. Here then is the root which
connects self-seeking to the universal, i.e. to the state,
whose care it must be that this tic is a hard and fast one.
In our day agriculture is conducted on methods
devised by reflective thinking, i.e. like a factory. This has
given it a character like that of industry and contrary to
its natural one. Still, the agricultural class will always
retain a mode of life which is patriarchal and the
substantial frame of mind proper to such a life. The
member of this class accepts unreflectively what is given
him and takes what he gets, thanking God for it and
living in faith and confidence that this goodness will
continue. What comes to him suffices him; once it is
consumed, more comes again. This is the simple attitude
of mind not concentrated on the struggle for riches. It
may be described as the attitude of the old nobility which
just ate what there was. So far as this class is concerned,
nature does the major part, while individual effort is
secondary. In the business class, however, it is
intelligence which is the essential thing, and natural
products can be treated only as raw materials.
In the business class, the individual is thrown back on
himself, and this feeling of self-hood is most intimately
connected with the demand for law and order. The sense
of freedom and order has therefore arisen above all in
tow'ns. The agricultural class, on the other hand, has
little occasion to think of itself; what it obtains is the gift
of a stranger, of nature. Its feeling of dependence is
fundamental to it, and with this feeling there is readily
associated a willingness to submit to whatever may befall
it at other men’s hands. The agricultural class is thus
more inclined to subservience, the business class to
freedom.
When we say that a man must be a "somebody," we
mean that he should belong to some specific social class,
since to be a somebody means to have substantive
being. A man with no class is a mere private person and
his universality is not actualized. On the other hand, the
individual in his particularity may lake himself as the
universal and presume that by entering a class he is
surrendering himself to an indignity. This is the false idea
that in attaining a determinacy necessary to it, a thing is
restricting and surrendering itself.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Pars. 201-207
27 The middle class, to which civil servants belong, is
politically conscious and the one in which education is
most prominent. For this reason it is also the pillar of the
state so far as honesty and intelligence are concerned. A
state without a middle class must therefore remain on a
low level.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 297
28 On the whole, the class of landed property owners is
divided into an educated section and a section of
farmers. But over against both of these sorts of people
there stands the business class, which is dependent on
needs and concentrated on their satisfaction, and the
civil servant class, which is essentially dependent on the
state. The security and stability of the agricultural class
may be still further increased by the institution of
primogeniture, though this institution is desirable only
from the point of view of politics, since it entails a
sacrifice for the political end of giving the eldest son a
life of independence.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 306
29 "It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob
do."
“But suppose there are two mobs?" suggested Mr.
Snodgrass.
"Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick.
Dickens, Pickwick Papers, XIII
30 The Manifesto being our joint production, | consider
myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition
which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition
is: That in every historical epoch the prevailing mode of
economic production and exchange, and the social
organization necessarily following from it, form the basis
upon which is built up, and from which alone can be
explained, the political and intellectual history of that
epoch; that, consequently, the whole history of mankind
(since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding
land in common ownership) has been a history of class
struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited,
ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these
class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which,
nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited
and oppressed class—the proletariat— cannot attain its
emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling
class—the bourgeoisie— without at the same time, and
once and for all, emancipating society at large from all
exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class
struggles.
This proposition, which in my opinion is destined to do
for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we,
both of us, had been gradually approaching for some
years before 1845. How far | had independently
progressed towards it is best shown by my Condition of
the Working Class in England. But when | again met Marx
at Brussels in the spring of 1845, he had it already
worked out, and put it before me in terms almost as clear
as those in which | have stated it here.
Engels, Communist Manifesto, Pref.
31 The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
32 The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in
history.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand,
has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that
bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left no
other bond between man and man than naked self-
interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the
most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous
enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water
of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth
into exchange value, and in place of the numberless
indefeasible chartered freedoms has set up that single,
unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for
exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it
has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal
exploitation.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
33 The essential condition for the existence and sway of the
bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of
capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage
labour rests exclusively on competition between the
labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary
promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary
combination, due to association. The development of
modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the
very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and
appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore,
produces above all are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and
the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
34 Political power, properly so called, is merely the
organized power of one class for oppressing another. If
the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled by the force of circumstances to organize itself
as a Class; if by means of a revolution it makes itself the
ruling class and, as such, sweeps away by force the old
conditions of production, then it will, along with these
conditions, have swept away the conditions for the
existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally,
and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a
Class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes
and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in
which the free development of each is the condition for
the free development of all.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
35 The reason why, in any tolerable constituted society,
justice and the general interest mostly in the end carry
their point, is that the separate and selfish interests of
mankind are almost always divided; some are interested
in what is wrong, but some, also, have their private
interest on the side of what is right: and those who are
governed by higher considerations, though too few and
weak to prevail against the whole of the others, usually
after sufficient discussion and agitation become strong
enough to turn the balance in favour of the body of
private interests which is on the same side with them.
The representative system ought to be so constituted as
to maintain this state of things: it ought not to allow any
of the various sectional interests to be so powerful as to
be capable of prevailing against truth and justice and the
other sectional interests combined.
Mill, Representative Government, VI
36 |... contend for the principle of plural voting. 1 do not
propose the plurality as a thing in itself undesirable,
which, like the exclusion of part of the community from
the suffrage, may be temporarily tolerated while
necessary to prevent greater evils. | do not look upon
equal voting aS among the things which are good in
themselves, provided they can be guarded against
inconveniences. | look upon it as only relatively good;
less objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded
on irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but in
principle wrong, because recognising a wrong standard,
and exercising a bad influence on the voter's mind. It is
not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the
country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as
much political power as knowledge. The national
institutions should place all things that they are
concerned with before the mind of the citizen in the light
in which it is for his good that he should regard them:
and as it is for his good that he should think that every
one is entitled to some influence, but the better and
wiser to more than others, it is important that this
conviction should be professed by the State, and
embodied in the national institutions.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
37 Napoleon. There are three sorts of people in the world:
the low people, the middle people, and the high people.
The low people and the high people are alike in one
thing: they have no scruples, no morality. The low are
beneath morality, the high above it. | am not afraid of
either of them; for the low are unscrupulous without
knowledge, so that they make an idol of me; whilst the
high are unscrupulous without purpose, so that they go
down before my will. Look you: | shall go over all the
mobs and all the courts of Europe as a plough goes over a
field. It is the middle people who are dangerous: they
have both knowledge and purpose. But they, too, have
their weak point. They are full of scruples: chained hand
and foot by their morality and respectability.
Shaw, The Man of Destiny
38 War and Class have been with us ever since the first
civilizations emerged above the level of primitive human
life some five or six thousand years ago, and they have
always been serious complaints. Of the twenty or so
civilizations Known to modern Western historians, all
except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and,
when we diagnose each case, jn extremis or post
mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has
been either War or Class or some combination of the two.
Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, Il
10.9 Revolution
As indicated in passages drawn from the historians of
antiquity and from the ancient political philosophers,
revolution and civil strife were regarded as a regular part of
normal political life. The conception of a society so
constituted that it might be exempt from revolutionary
action, either by force or by fraud, was projected as an
almost utopian idea. Insofar as injustice, class conflicts, and
an inequality of conditions abound in the very imperfect
societies that exist, revolution is always and everywhere
brewing.
Some of the writers quoted here attempt to distinguish
different types of revolution, to specify the causes
productive of revolution, and to consider what those in
power can do to prevent themselves from being overthrown.
Others among the authors represented concern themselves
mainly with the defense of rebellion or revolution as a
drastic remedy that is justified when relief from oppression
or injustice cannot be achieved in any other way. They
suggest that it is the tyrant who is the rebel, the lawless one,
rather than his mistreated subjects. When they speak of a
"right of revolution" or a "right of rebellion," they are, in
effect, asserting that revolutions are justifiable under certain
circumstances. They are opposed in this conviction by
others who deny that resistance to established authority can
ever be justified.
The discussion of revolution in this section is for the most
part concerned with political upheavals or insurrections. For
related matters, the reader is referred to other sections in
this chapter on Politics, especially Section 10.6 on
Despotism and Tyranny and Section 10.8 on Classes and
Class Conflict; and to Section 12.3 on Rights-Natural and
Civil and Section 14.1 on Warfare and the State of War.
However, certain passages from Karl Marx included here
touch on revolutions that affect the economic organization
of society; and in this connection the reader is referred to
Section 11.1 on Property, Section 11.2 on Wealth and
Poverty, and Section 11.3 on Labor.
1 The sufferings [in the Hellenic countries] which revolution
entailed... were many and terrible, such as have occurred
and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind
remains the same.
... Words had to change their ordinary’ meaning and to
take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity
came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally;
prudent hesitation, soecious cowardice; moderation was
held to be a cloak for Unmanliness; ability to see all sides
of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence
became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a
justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of
extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent
a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a
shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try
to provide against having to do either was to break up
your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In fine, to
forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a
crime where it was wanting, was equally commended,
until even blood became a weaker tic than party, from
the superior readiness of those united by the latter to
dare everything without reserve; for such associations
had not in view the blessings derivable from established
institutions but were formed by ambition for their
overthrow; and the confidence of their members in each
other rested less on any religious sanction than upon
complicity in crime. The fair proposals of an adversary
were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of die
two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also
was held of more account than sell-preservation. Oaths of
reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet
an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no
other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity offered,
he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off
his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter
than an open one, since, considerations of safety apart,
success by treachery won him the palm of superior
intelligence.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, III, 82
2 If [a man's country] should appear to him to be following a
policy which is not a good one, he should say so,
provided that his words are not likely either to fall on deaf
ears or to lead to the loss of his own life. But force against
his native land he should not use in order to bring about
a change of constitution, when it is not possible for the
best constitution to be introduced without driving men
into exile or putting them to death; he should keep quiet
and offer up prayers for his own welfare and for that of his
country.
Plato, Seventh Letter
3 Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals
that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind
which creates revolutions.
Aristotle, Politics, 1302a29
4 Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by
fraud. Force may be applied either at the time of making
the revolution or afterwards. Fraud, again, is of two kinds;
for sometimes the citizens are deceived into acquiescing
in a change of government, and afterwards they are held
in subjection against their will.... In other cases the
people are persuaded at first, and afterwards, by a
repetition of the persuasion, their goodwill and allegiance
are retained.
Aristotle, Politics, 1304b7
5 Among ourselves the sons of the ruling class in an
oligarchy live in luxury, but the sons of the poor are
hardened by exercise and toil, and hence they are both
more inclined and better able to make a revolution.
Aristotle, Politics, 1310a22
6 If to provide itself with a king belongs to the right of a
given multitude, it is not unjust that the king be deposed
or have his power restricted by that same multitude if,
becoming a tyrant, he abuses the royal power. It must not
be thought that such a multitude is acting unfaithfully in
deposing the tyrant, even though it had previously
subjected itself to him in perpetuity, because he himself
has deserved that the covenant with his subjects should
not be kept, since, in ruling the multitude, he did not act
faithfully as the office of a king demands.
Aquinas, On Kingship, 1,6
7 Men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better
themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms
against him who rules: wherein they are deceived,
because they afterwards find by experience they have
gone from bad to worse.
Machiavelli, Prince, 111
8 He who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom
and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it,
for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and
its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither
time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. And what
ever you may do or provide against, they never forget
that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or
dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to
them.
Machiavelli, Prince, V
9 It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more
difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or
more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the
introduction of a new order of things. Because the
innovator has for enemies all those who have done well
under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in
those who may do well under the new. This coolness
arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the
laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men,
who do not readily believe in new things until they have
had along experience of them. Thus it happens that
whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to
attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend
lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered
along with them.
It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this
matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators
can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that
is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have
they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first
instance they always succeed badly, and never compass
anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use
force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all
armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones
have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the
nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to
persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that
persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such
measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be
possible to make them believe by force.
Machiavelli, Prince, VI
10 A prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on
account of his subjects, the other from without, on
account of external powers. From the latter he is
defended by being well armed and having good allies,
and if he is well armed he will have good friends, and
affairs will always remain quiet within when they are
quiet without, unless they should have been already
disturbed by conspiracy; and even should affairs outside
be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and
has lived as | have said, as long as he does not despair,
he will resist every attack....
But concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are
disturbed he has only to fear that they will conspire
secretly, from which a prince can easily secure himself by
avoiding being hated and despised, and by keeping the
people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary for
him to accomplish.... And one of the most efficacious
remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is
not to be hated and despised by the people, for he who
conspires against a prince always expects to please them
by his removal; but when the conspirator can only look
forward to offending them, he will not have the courage
to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront a
conspirator are infinite... . On the side of the conspirator,
there is nothing but fear, jealousy, prospect of
punishment to terrify him; but on the side of the prince
there is the majesty of the principality, the laws, the
protection of friends and the state to defend him; so that,
adding to all these things the popular goodwill, it is
impossible that any one should be so rash as to conspire.
For whereas in general the conspirator has to fear before
the execution of his plot, in this case he has also to fear
the sequel to the crime; because on account of it he has
the people for an enemy, and thus cannot hope for any
escape...
For this reason | consider that a prince ought to reckon
conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in
esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred
towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody.
And well-ordered states and wise princes have taken
every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to
keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of
the most important objects a prince can have.
Machiavelli, Prince, XIX
11 Those who give the first shock to a state are apt to be the
first ones swallowed up in its ruin. The fruits of the
trouble rarely go to the one who has stirred it up; he
beats and disturbs the water for other fishermen.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 23, Of Custom
12 It takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such
esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one
must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many
inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals,
as Civil wars and political changes bring with them ina
matter of such weight—and introduce them into one’s
own country. Isn’t it bad management to encourage so
many certain and known vices in order to combat
contested and debatable errors? Is there any worse kind
of vices than those which attack our conscience and our
understanding of one another?
Montaigne, Essays, |, 23, Of Custom
13 Menenius. There was a time when all the body’s members
Rebell'd against the belly, thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I' the midst o’ the body, idle and unactive.
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labour with the rest, where the other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answer’d—
Ist Citizen. Well, sir, wnat answer made the belly? .
Men. Sir, | shall tell you. With a kind of smile,
Which ne’er came from the lungs, but even thus—
For, look you, | may make the belly smile
As well as speak—it tauntingly replied
To the discontented members, the mutinous parts
That envied his receipt; even so most fitly
As you malign our senators for that
They are not such as you.
Ist Cit. Your belly’s answer? What?
The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye,
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter.
With other muniments and petty helps
In this our fabric, if that they—
Men. What then?
‘Fore me, this fellow speaks: What then? what then
Ist Cit. Should by the cormorant belly be restrain’d.
Who is the sink o’ the body—
Men. Well, what then?
ist Cit. The former agents, if they did complain,
What could the belly answer?
Men. | will tell you;
If you’ll bestow a small—of what you have little—
Patience awhile, you'll hear the Ally’s answer.
Ist Cit. Ye’re long about it.
Men. Note me this, good friend;
Your most grave belly was deliberate,
Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer’d;
"True is it, my incorporate friends," quoth he,
"That | receive the general food at first,
Which you do live upon; and fit it is,
Because | am the store-house and the shop
Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,
| send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o’ the brain;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live; and though that all at once,
You, my good friends"—this says the belly, mark me—
Ist Cit. Ay, sir; well, well.
Men. "Though all at once cannot
See what | do deliver out to each,
Yet | can make my audit up, that all
From me do back receive the flour of all,
And leave me but the bran." What say you to’t?
Ist Cit. lt was an answer. How apply you this?
Men. The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members; for examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you
And no way from yourselves. What do you think,
You, the great toe of this assembly?
Ist Cit. | the great toe! Why the great toe?
Men. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest,
Of this most wise rebellion, thou go’st foremost;
Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,
Lead’st first to win some vantage.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, I, |, 99
14 In civil matters even a change for the better is suspected
on account of the commotion it occasions, for civil
government is supported by authority, unanimity, fame,
and public opinion, and not by demonstration.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 90
15 Shepherds of people had need know the kalendars of
tempests in state; which are commonly greatest when
things grow to equality; as natural tempests are greatest
about the AEguinoctia. And as there are certain hollow
blasts of wind and secret swellings of seas before a
tempest, so are there in states... . Libels and licentious
discourses against the state when they are frequent and
open; and in like sort false news, often running up and
down, to the disadvantage of the state, and hastily
embraced; are amongst the signs of troubles.
Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles
16 The causes and motives of seditions are: innovation in
religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking
of privileges; general oppression; advancement of
unworthy persons; strangers; dearths; disbanded
soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever, in
offending people, joineth and knitteth them in a common
cause.
Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles
17 The infliction of what evil soever on an innocent man that
is not a subject, if it be for the benefit of the
Commonwealth, and without violation of any former
covenant, is no breach of the law of nature. For all men
that are not subjects are either enemies, or else they
have ceased from being so by some precedent covenants.
But against enemies, whom the Commonwealth judgeth
capable to do them hurt, it is lawful by the original right
of nature to make war; wherein the sword judgeth not,
nor doth the victor make distinction of nocent and
innocent as to the time past, nor has other respect of
mercy than as it conduceth to the good of his own
people. And upon this ground it is that also in subjects
who deliberately deny the authority of the
Commonwealth established, the vengeance is lawfully
extended, not only to the fathers, but also to the third
and fourth generation not yet in being, and consequently
innocent of the fact for which they are afflicted: because
the nature of this offence consisteth in the renouncing of
subjection, which is a relapse into the condition of war
commonly called rebellion; and they that so offend, suffer
not as subjects, but as enemies. For rebellion is but war
renewed.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 28
18 The art of opposition and of revolution is to unsettle
established customs, sounding them even to their source,
to point out their want of authority and justice. We must,
it is said, get back to natural and fundamental la%vs of
the State, which an unjust custom has abolished. It isa
game certain to result in the loss of all; nothing will be
just on the balance. Yet people readily lend their ear to
such arguments. They shake off the yoke as soon as they
recognise it; and the great profit by their ruin and by that
of these curious investigators of accepted customs. But
from a contrary mistake men sometimes think they can
justly do everything which is not without an example.
That is why the wisest of legislators said that it was
necessary to deceive men for their own good.... We must
not see the fact of usurpation; law was once introduced
without reason, and has become reasonable. We must
make it regarded as authoritative, eternal, and conceal its
origin, if we do not wish that it should soon come to an
end.
Pascal, Paisees, V, 294
19 A civil state, which has not done away with the causes of
seditions, where war is a perpetual object of fear, and
where, lastly, the laws are often broken, differs but little
from the mere state of nature, in which everyone lives
after his own mind at the great risk of his life.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, V, 2
20 The inhabitants of any country, who are descended and
derive a title to their estates from those who are subdued,
and had a government forced upon them, against their
free consents, retain a right to the possession of their
ancestors, though they consent not freely to the
government, whose hard conditions were, by force,
imposed on the possessors of that country. For the first
conqueror never having had a title to the land of that
country, the people, who are the descendants of, or claim
under those who were forced to submit to the yoke of a
government by constraint, have always a right to shake it
off, and free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny
the sword hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put
them under such a frame of government as they willingly
and of choice consent to (which they can never be
supposed to do, till either they are put in a full state of
liberty to choose their government and governors, or at
least till they have such standing laws to which they
have, by themselves or their representatives, given their
free consent, and also till they are allowed their due
property, which is so to be proprietors of what they have
that nobody can take away any part of it without their
own consent, without which, men under any government
are not in the state of free men, but are direct slaves
under the force of war).
Locke, II Civil Government, XVI, 192
21 Whensoever... the legislative shall transgress this
fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear,
folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or
put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over
the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this
breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put
into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves
to the people, who have a right to resume their original
liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative
(such as they shall think fit), provide for their own safety
and security, which is the end for which they are in
society.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIX, 222
22 Revolutions happen not upon every little
mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the
ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all
the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people
without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses,
prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way,
make the design visible to the people, and they cannot
but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are
going, it is not to be wondered that they should then
rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into
such hands which may secure to them the ends for which
government was at first erected, and without which,
ancient names and specious forms are so far from being
better, that they are much worse than the state of Nature
or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great
and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIX, 225
23 The popular insurrection that ends in the death or
deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by
which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and
fortunes of his subjects. As he was maintained by force
alone, it is force alone that overthrows him. Thus
everything takes place according to the natural order;
and, whatever may be the result of such frequent and
precipitate revolutions, no one man has reason to
complain of the injustice of another, but only of his own
ill-fortune or indiscretion.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, 11
24 When, in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume,
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
25 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long
established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the
forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same object, evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such government, and to provide new guards
for their future security.
Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
26 | hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good
thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in
the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally
establish the encroachments on the rights of the people
which have produced them. An observation of this truth
should render honest republican governors so mild in
their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them
too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health
of government.
Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (Jan. 30, 1787)
27 General rebellions and revolts of an whole people never
were encouraged, now or at any time. They are always
provoked.
Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (Apr. 3, 1777)
28 Resistance on the part of the people to the supreme
legislative power of the state is in no case legitimate; for
it is only by submission to the universal legislative will,
that a condition of law and order is possible. Hence there
is no right of sedition, and still less of rebellion, belonging
to the people.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
29 It is the duty of the people to bear any abuse of the
supreme power, even then though it should be
considered to be unbearable. And the reason is that any
resistance of the highest legislative authority can never
but be contrary to the law, and must even be regarded as
tending to destroy the whole legal constitution.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
30 When on the success of a revolution a new constitution
has been founded, the unlawfulness of its beginning and
of its institution cannot release the subjects from the
obligation of adapting themselves, as good citizens, to
the new order of things; and they are not entitled to
refuse honourably to obey the authority that has thus
attained the power in the state.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
31 Why is the experiment of an extended republic to be
rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is
it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they
have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times
and other nations, they have not suffered a blind
veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to
overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the
knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their
own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be
indebted for the possession, and the world for the
example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the
American theatre, in favour of private rights and public
happiness. Had no important step been taken by the
leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not
be discovered, no government established of which an
exact model did not present itself, the people of the
United States might, at this moment, have been
numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided
councils, must at best have been labouring under the
weight of some of those forms which have crushed the
liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America,
happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they
pursued a new and more noble course. They
accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the
annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of
governments which have no model on the face of the
globe.
Madison, Federalist 14
32 If the representatives of the people betray their
constituents, there is then no resource left but in the
exertion of that original right of self-defence which is
paramount to all positive forms of government, and which
against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be
exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than
against those of the rulers of an individual State. Ina
single State, if the persons intrusted with supreme power
become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or
districts of which it consists, having no distinct
government in each, can take no regular measures for
defence. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms,
without concert, without system, without resource;
except in their courage and despair. The usurpers,
clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often
crush the opposition in embryo. The smaller the extent of
the territory, the more difficult will it be for the people to
form a regular or systematic plan of opposition, and the
more easy will it be to defeat their early efforts.
Intelligence can be more speedily obtained of their
preparations and movements, and the military force in
the possession of the usurpers can be more rapidly
directed against the part where the opposition has
begun. In this situation there must be a peculiar
coincidence of circumstances to insure success to the
popular resistance.
Hamilton, Federalist 28
33 The political condition of France... [before the French
Revolution] presents nothing but a confused mass of
privileges altogether contravening thought and reason—
an utterly irrational state of things, and one with which
the greatest corruption of morals, of spirit was associated
—an empire characterized by destitution of right, and
which, when its real state begins to be recognized,
becomes shameless destitution of right. The fearfully
heavy burdens that pressed upon the people, the
embarrassment of the government to procure for the
court the means of supporting luxury and extravagance,
gave the first impulse to discontent. The new spirit began
to agitate men’s minds; oppression drove men to
investigation. It was perceived that the sums extorted
from the people were not expended in furthering the
objects of the state, but were lavished in the most
unreasonable fashion. The entire political system
appeared one mass of injustice. The change was
necessarily violent, because the work of transformation
was not undertaken by the government.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. IV, Ill, 3
34 Amid the ruins which surround me shall | dare to say that
revolutions are not what | most fear for coming
generations? If men continue to shut themselves more
closely within the narrow circle of domestic interests and
to live on that kind of excitement, it is to be apprehended
that they may ultimately become inaccessible to those
great and powerful public emotions which perturb
nations, but which develop them and recruit them. When
property becomes so fluctuating and the love of property
so restless and so ardent, | cannot but fear that men may
arrive at such a state as to regard every new theory as a
peril, every innovation as an irksome toil, every social
improvement as a stepping-stone to revolution, and so
refuse to move altogether for fear of being moved too far.
| dread, and | confess it, lest they should at last so
entirely give way to a cowardly love of present enjoyment
as to lose sight of the interests of their future selves and
those of their descendants and prefer to glide along the
easy current of life rather than to make, when it is
necessary, a strong and sudden effort to a higher
purpose.
It is believed by some that modern society will be
always Changing its aspect; for myself, | fear that it will
ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions,
the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind
will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will
swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting
fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless
and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that
humanity will cease to advance.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 21
35 If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it
not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new
stand side by side and admit of being compared; when
the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope;
when the historic glories of the old can be compensated
by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all
times, is a very good one, if we but Know what to do with
it.
Emerson, The American Scholar
36 By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Emerson, Concord Hymn
37 All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the
right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the
government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great
and unendurable.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
38 Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the
power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the
existing government, and form a new one that suits them
better. This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—a
right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole
people of an existing government, may choose to
exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may
revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the
territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any
portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a
minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may
oppose their movement.
Lincoln, Speech on the Mexican War (Jam 12, 1848)
39 This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people
who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the
existing government, they can exercise their
constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary
right to dismember or overthrow it.
Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
40 Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win.
Workingmen of all countries, unite!
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, IV
41 Pierre. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite
fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and
also because wisdom needs no violence.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, VI, 7
42 All who achieve real distinction in life begin as
revolutionists. The most distinguished persons become
more revolutionary as they grow older, though they are
commonly supposed to become more conservative owing
to their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Revolutionist’s Handbook,
Preface
43 Even if for every hundred correct things we did we
committed ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would
still be—and it will be in the judgment of history-- great
and invincible; for this is the first time that nota
minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but
the real masses, the overwhelming majority of the of the
working people are themselves building a new life and
are by their own experience soling the most difficult
problems of socialist organisation.
Lenin, Letter to American Workers ( Aug. 20,1918)
Chapter 11
ECONOMICS
Chapter 11 is divided into six sections: 11.1 Property, 11.2
Wealth and Poverty, 11.3 Labor, 11.4 Money, 11.5 Trade,
Commerce, and Industry, and 11.6 Taxation.
It is not surprising that, among the great writers, the
economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx should be the two
most frequently represented in this chapter. However, many
others, among them notably Plato, Aristotle, Locke,
Rousseau, and J. S. Mill, contribute insights and observations
that broaden and deepen the consideration of economic
matters, especially in relation to the pursuit of happiness,
virtue and vice, justice and rights, and law and government.
In its Greek origin, economics was conceived as the
science or art of household management, concerned largely
with the acquisition by the family of its supply of
consumable goods and with the husbanding of its resources.
The labor power involved in the domestic production of
wealth was largely that of the household’s slaves. Though
production by independent artisans existed, and though
retail trade within the community and commerce between
cities flourished, these were not thought to be subjects of
concern to economics.
In the eighteenth century, the science became
transformed into the much broader study of national wealth
and, as the phrase "political economy" indicates, economic
questions became matters of public policy, one of the chief
concerns of government. With this broadening in the scope
of economics, such subjects as those treated in Sections
11.3 to 11-6—labor; money; trade, commerce, and industry;
and taxation— raised problems and involved considerations
that had had no place in ancient economic thought.
The nature of property, the role of wealth and poverty in
human life, and, to some extent, the function of money
receive attention from ancient and medieval authors, as well
as modern writers, though their approach to such subjects is
strikingly different. For one thing, the notion of capital—
both capital goods in the form of instruments of production
and financial capital—does not enter into the ancient
discussion of property, wealth, or industry; for another, such
matters as the distribution of wealth, the division of labor,
free trade, and state control or regulation of economic
processes are barely mentioned, if touched on at all.
Political economy, involving the government’s role in the
economic sphere, necessarily treats of matters that are also
covered in Chapter 10 on Politics. Political economy was also
once regarded as a branch of moral philosophy, along with
ethics and politics, dealing with questions of value and
policy and laying down prescriptions about what ought to be
done with regard to the production, exchange, and
distribution of wealth. There is, therefore, some overlapping
in the matters treated in this chapter and in Chapter 9 on
Ethics. Certain subjects of economic interest, such as
economic Justice, economic freedom, and economic equality,
are treated in other contexts; economic justice in Section
12.2; economic freedom in Section 13.1; and economic
equality in Section 13.3, and also in Section 10.8 on Classes
and Class Conflict.
11.1 Property
Four subjects dominate this section. One, of course, is the
nature of property itself. What can we truly or rightly call our
own? What constitutes property? Is property to be equated
with the possession of material things or does it extend to
other things as well—anything that belongs to the individual
by right? On the broader view, a person’s life, liberty and
even labor power are one’s property, as well as one’s
physical possessions or one’s estates.
A second and closely related question concerns the origin
of property and the basis of the right to own it. If there were
no property, everything would be common to all— the
exclusive possession of none. Those who take the broader
view of property mentioned above distinguish between
natural and acquired property, and make the rightful
acquisition of property—the exclusive possession of that
which was originally common—depend on one’s application
to the common of something that is proper to oneself and by
right one’s own—the labor power of one’s mind and body.
This labor theory of acquired property or of the right to
property was first enunciated by Locke. It is also found in
statements by Rousseau and Gibbon and bears an
interesting relation to the theories of property rights
developed by Kant and Hegel.
The third and fourth themes that run through Section
11.1 are also closely related. One is the proposal, first
advanced by Plato and first questioned by Aristotle, that in
an ideal society all the external things that constitute wealth
should be held and used in common by the citizens or
guardians of the state. This is often mistakenly referred to as
"the community of property," for what is held and used in
common cannot be property. The other related theme is
Marx’s proposal—central to the Communist Manifesto — that
the ownership of the means of production should be
transferred from private hands to the state or the
community as a whole. This, too, is often mistakenly referred
to as "the abolition of private property." The object of attack
is the private ownership of capital—the instruments of
production— not other forms of private property, such as
consumable goods.
For the consideration of property in a noneconomic sense
as signifying everything that belongs to an individual by
right— one’s life and liberty as well as one’s estates—the
reader is referred to Section 12.3 on Rights—Natural and
Civil; and for the purely economic consideration of property,
the reader will find additional materials in Section 11.2 on
Wealth and Poverty. Property as a qualification for
citizenship and suffrage is discussed in Section 10.5 on
Citizenship.
1 Thou shall not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which
they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou
Shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee
to possess it,
Deuteronomy 19:14
2 Socrates. In our city the language of harmony and concord
will be more often heard than in any other. As | was
describing before, when any one is well or ill, the
universal word will be "with me it is well" or "it is ill."
Glaucon. Most true.
And agreeably to this mode of thinking and speaking,
were we not saying that they will have their pleasures
and pains in common?
Yes, and so they will.
And they will have a common interest in the same
thing which they will alike call "my own," and having this
common interest they will have a common feeling of
pleasure and pain?
Yes, far more so than in other States.
And the reason of this, over and above the general
constitution of the State, will be that the guardians will
have a community of women and children?
That will be the chief reason.
And this unity of feeling we admitted to be the
greatest good, as was implied in our own comparison of a
well-ordered State to the relation of the body and the
members, when affected by pleasure or pain?
That we acknowledged, and very rightly.
Then the community of wives and children among our
citizens is clearly the source of the greatest good to the
State?
Certainly.
And this agrees with the other principle which we were
affirming—that the guardians were not to have houses or
lands or any other property; their pay was to be their
food, which they were to receive from the other citizens,
and they were to have no private expenses; for we
intended them to preserve their true character of
guardians.
Right, he replied.
Both the community of property and the community of
families, as |am saying, tend to make them more truly
guardians; they will not tear the city in pieces by
differing about "mine" and "not mine"; each man
dragging any acquistion which he has made into a
separate house of his own, where he has a separate wife
and children and private pleasures and pains; but all will
be affected as far as may be by the same pleasures and
pains because they are all of one opinion about what is
near and dear to them, and therefore they all tend
towards a common end.
Plato, Republic, V, 463B
3 Property should be private, but the use of it common; and
the special business of the legislator is to create in men
this benevolent disposition.... How immeasurably greater
is the pleasure, when a man feels a thing to be his own;
for surely the love of self is a feeling implanted by nature
and not given in vain, although selfishness is rightly
censured; this, however, is not the mere love of self, but
the love of self in excess, like the miser’s love of money;
for all, or almost all, men love money and other such
objects in a measure. And further, there is the greatest
pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or
guests or companions, which can only be rendered when
a man has private property. These advantages are lost by
excessive unification of the state. The exhibition of two
virtues, besides, is visibly annihilated in such a state:
first, temperance towards women (for it is an honourable
action to abstain from another’s wife for temperance
sake); secondly, liberality in the matter of property. No
one, when men have all things in common, will any
longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal
action; for liberality consists in the use which is made of
property. Such legislation may have a specious
appearance of benevolence; men readily listen to it, and
are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful
manner everybody will become everybody’s friend,
especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils
now existing, in states, suits about contracts, convictions
for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are
said to arise out of the possession of private property.
These evils, however, are due to a very different cause—
the wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see That
there is much more quarrelling among those who have all
things in common, though there are not many of them
when compared with the vast numbers who have private
property.
Aristotle, Politics, 1263a38
4 Private ownership does not derive from nature. Property
becomes private either through long occupancy (such as
with people who settled an unoccupied territory long
ago), or through conquest (as in the case of land taken in
war), or by due process of law, barter, or allotment.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 7
5 If we all seized the property of our neighbors and grabbed
from one another what we could make use of, the bonds
of human society would necessarily crumble.
Cicero, De Officiis, III, 5
6 As heaven is for the gods, so the earth has been given to
mankind, and lands uninhabited are common to all.
Tacitus, Annals, XI//l, 55
7 God has sovereign dominion over all things: and He,
according to His providence, directed certain things to
the sustenance of man’s body. For this reason man has a
natural dominion over things, as regards the power to
make use of them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-ll, 66, 1
8 Two things are competent to man in respect of exterior
things. One is the power to procure and dispense them,
and in this regard it is lawful for man to possess property.
Moreover this is necessary, to human life for three
reasons. First because every man is more careful to
procure what is for himself alone than that which is
common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the
labor and leave to another that which concerns the
community, as happens where there is a great number of
servants. Secondly, because human affairs are conducted
in more orderly fashion if each man is charged with
taking care of some particular thing himself, whereas
there would be confusion if everyone had to look after
any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly, because a more
peaceful state is ensured to man if each one is contented
with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels
arise more frequently where there is no division of the
things possessed.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 66, 2
9 Man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but
as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate
them to others in their need.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 66, 2
10 Community of goods is ascribed to the natural law, not
that the natural law dictates that all things should be
possessed in common and that nothing should be
possessed as one’s own: but because the division of
possessions is not according to the natural law, but rather
arose from human agreement which belongs to positive
law. Hence the ownership of possessions is not contrary
to the natural law, but an addition thereto devised by
human reason.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 66,2
11 King Richard. Nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
Shakespeare, Richard II, Ill, ii, 152
12 Antonio. | pray you, think you question with the Jew:
You may as well go stand upon the beach
And bid the main flood bate his usual height;
You may as well use question with the wolf
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as w-ell forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops and to make no noise,
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven;
You may as well do any thing most hard,
As seek to soften that—than which what’s harder? —
His Jewish heart: therefore, | do beseech you,
Make no more offers, use no farther means,
But with all brief and plain conveniency
Let me have judgement and the Jew his will.
Bassanio. For thy three thousand ducats here is six.
Shylock. \f every ducat in six thousand ducats
Were in six parts and every part a ducat,
| would not draw them; | would have my bond.
Duke. How shah thou hope for mercy, rendering none?
Shy. What judgement shall | dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules.
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them: shall | say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
Be season’d with such viands? You will answer
“The slaves are ours": so do | answer you:
The pound of flesh, which | demand of him,
Is dearly bought; 'tis mine and | will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 70
13 Property, as now in use, was at first a creature of the
human will. But, after it was established, one man was
prohibited by the law of nature from seizing the property
of another against his will.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, BK. I, |, 10
14 As nothing can naturally be produced, except from some
materials before in existence, it follows that, if those
materials were our own, the possession of them under
any new Shape, or commodity is only a continuation of
our former property; if they belonged to no one, our
possession comes under the class of title by occupancy;
but if they were another’s, no improvement of ours can
by the law of nature give us a right of property therein.
Grotius, Rights of War and React, Bk. 11, III, |
15 The nutrition of a Commonwealth consisteth in the plenty
and distribution of materials conducing to life: in
concoction or preparation, and, when concocted, in the
conveyance of it by convenient conduits to the public
use.
As for the plenty of matter, it is a thing limited by
nature to those commodities which, from the two breasts
of our common mother, land and sea, God usually either
freely giveth or for labour selleth to mankind....
The distribution of the materials of this nourishment is
the constitution of mine, and thine, and his; that is to
say, in one word, propriety; and belongeth in all kinds of
Commonwealth to the sovereign power. For where there is
no Commonwealth, there is, as hath been already shown,
a perpetual war of every man against his neighbour; and
therefore everything is his that getteth it and keepeth it
by force; which is neither propriety nor community, but
uncertainty.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 24
16 The propriety which a subject hath in his lands consisteth
in a right to exclude all other subjects from the use of
them; and not to exclude their sovereign, be it an
assembly or a monarch. For seeing the sovereign, that is
to say, the Commonwealth (whose person he
representeth), is understood to do nothing but in order to
the common peace and security, this distribution of lands
is to be understood as done in order to the same: and
consequently, whatsoever distribution he shall make in
prejudice thereof is contrary to the will of every subject
that committed his peace and safety to his discretion and
conscience, and therefore by the will of every one of
them is to be reputed void.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 24
17 Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to
all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own
"person." This nobody has any right to but himself. The
"labour" of his body and the "work" of his hands, we may
Say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out
of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he
hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something
that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It
being by him removed from the common state Nature
placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to
it that excludes the common right of other men. For this
"labour" being the unquestionable property of the
labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is
once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as
good left in common for others.
He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under
an Oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the
wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody
can deny but the nourishment is his. | ask, then, when
did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he
ate? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home?
or when he picked them up? And it is plain, if the first
gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That
labour put a distinction between them and common. That
added something to them more than Nature, the common
mother of all, had done, and so they became his private
right. And will anyone say he had no right to those acorns
or apples he thus appropriated because he had not the
consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a
robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in
common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man
had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given
him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact,
that it is the taking any part of what is common, and
removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which
begins the property, without which the common is of no
use. And the taking of this or that part does not depend
on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus, the
grass my horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and
the ore | have digged in any place, where 1 have a right
to them in common with others, become my property
without the assignation or consent of anybody, the labour
that was mine, removing them out of that common state
they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 26-27
18 the measure of property Nature well set, by the extent of
men’s labour and the conveniency of life. No man’s
labour could subdue or appropriate all, nor could his
enjoyment consume more than a small part; so that it
was impossible for any man, this way, to entrench upon
the right of another or acquire to himself a properly to the
prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for
as good and as large a possession (after the other had
taken out his) as before it was appropriated. Which
measure did confine every man’s possession to a very
moderate proportion, and such as he might appropriate
to himself without injury to anybody in the first ages of
the world, when men were more in danger to be lost, by
wandering from their company, in the then vast
wilderness of the earth than to be straitened for want of
room to plant in.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 35
19 This | dare boldly affirm , .. every man should have as
much as he could make use of, would hold still in the
world, without straitening anybody, since there is land
enough in the world to suffice double the inhabitants,
had not the invention of money, and the tacit agreement
of men to put a value on it, introduced (by consent)
larger possessions and a right to them.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 36
20 Since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of
man, in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its
value only from the consent of men—whereof labour yet
makes in great part the measure—it is plain that the
consent of men have agreed to a disproportionate and
unequal possession of the earth—1 mean out of the
bounds of society and compact; for in governments the
laws regulate it; they having, by consent, found out and
agreed in a way how aman may, rightfully and without
injury possess more than he himself can make use of by
receiving gold and silver, which may continue long ina
man’s possession without decaying for the overplus, and
agreeing those metals should have a value.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 50
21 The difference of rank, birth, and condition established in
monarchical governments is frequently attended with
distinctions in the nature of property; and the laws
relating to the constitution of this government may
augment the number of these distinctions. Hence, among
us goods are divided into real estates, purchases,
dowries, paraphernalia, paternal and maternal
inheritances; movables of different kinds; estates held in
fee-simple, or in tail; acquired by descent or conveyance;
allodial, or held by soccage; ground rents; or annuities.
Each sort of goods is subject to particular rules, which
must be complied with in the disposal of them. These
things must needs diminish the simplicity of the la%vs.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VI, |
22 Whenever the public good happens to be the matter in
question, it is not for the advantage of the public to
deprive an individual of his property, or even to retrench
the least part of it by a law, ora political regulation.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVI, 15
23 During the ardour of new enthusiasms, when every
principle is inflamed into extravagance, the community of
goods has frequently been attempted; and nothing but
experience of its inconveniences, from the returning or
disguised selfishness of men, could make the imprudent
fanatics adopt anew the ideas of justice and of separate
property. So true is it that this virtue derives its existence
entirely from its necessary use to the intercourse and
social state of mankind.
Hume, Concerning Principles of Morals, III
24 Few enjoyments are given us from the open and liberal
hand of nature; but by art, labour, and industry, we can
extract them in great abundance. Hence the ideas of
property become necessary in all civil society.
Hume, Concerning Principles of Morals, 111
25 The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground,
bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found
people simple enough to believe him, was the real
founder of civil society.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
26 The cultivation of the earth necessarily brought about its
distribution; and property, once recognised, gave rise to
the first rules of justice; for, to secure each man his own,
it had to be possible for each to have something. Besides,
as men began to look forward to the future, and all had
something to lose, every one had reason to apprehend
that reprisals would follow any injury he might do to
another. This origin is so much the more natural, as it is
impossible to conceive how property can come from
anything but manual labour: for what else can a man add
to things which he does not originally create, so as to
make them his own property? It is the husbandman’s
labour alone that, giving him a title to the produce of the
ground he has tilled, gives him a claim also to the land
itself, at least till harvest, and so, from year to year, a
constant possession which is easily transformed into
property.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
27 Insatiable ambition, the thirst of raising their respective
fortunes, not so much from real want as from the desire to
Surpass others, inspired all men with a vile propensity to
injure one another, and with a secret jealousy, which is
the more dangerous, as it puts on the mask of
benevolence, to carry its point with greater security. In a
word, there arose rivalry and competition on the one
hand, and conflicting interests on the other, together
with a secret desire on both of profiting at the expense of
others. All these evils were the first effects of property,
and the inseparable attendants of growing inequality.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Il
28 In general, to establish the right of the first occupier over
a plot of ground, the following conditions are necessary;
first, The land must not yet be inhabited; secondly, a man
must occupy only the amount he needs for his
subsistence; and, in the third place, possession must be
taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labour and
cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be
respected by others, in default of a legal title.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 9
29 One of the chief characteristics of the golden age, of the
age in which neither care nor danger had intruded on
mankind, is the community of possessions. Strife and
fraud were totally excluded, and every turbulent passion
was stilled by plenty and equality. Such were indeed
happy times; but such times can return no more.
Community of possession must include spontaneity of
production; for what is obtained by labour will be of right
the property of him by whose labour it is gained.
Johnson, Rambler No. 131
30 There seems (said he [Johnson],) to be in authours a
stronger right of property than that by occupancy; a
metaphysical right, a right, as it were, of creation, which
should from its nature be perpetual; but the consent of
nations is against it, and indeed reason and the interests
of learning are against it; for were it to be perpetual, no
book, however useful, could be universally diffused
amongst mankind, should the proprietor take it into his
head to restrain its circulation.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 8, 1773)
31 The general stock of any country or society is the same
with that of all its inhabitants or members, and therefore
naturally divides itself into the same three portions, each
of which has a distinct function or office.
The first is that portion which is reserved for
immediate consumption, and of which the characteristic
is, that it affords no revenue or profit. It consists in the
stock of food, clothes, household furniture, etc., which
have been purchased by their proper consumers, but
which are not yet entirely consumed. The whole stock of
mere dwelling-houses too, subsisting at any one time in
the country’, make a part of this first portion. the stock
that is laid out in a house, if it is to be the dwelling-house
of the proprietor, ceases from that moment to serve in the
function of a capital, or to afford any revenue to its owner.
A dwelling-house, as such, contributes nothing to the
revenue of its inhabitant; and though it is, no doubt,
extremely useful to him, it is as his clothes and household
furniture are useful to him, which, however, makes a part
of his expense, and not of his revenue. If it is to be let toa
tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing,
the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other
revenue which he derives either from labour, or stock, or
land. Though a house, therefore, may yield a revenue to
its proprietor, and thereby serve in the function of a
capital to him, it cannot yield any to the public, nor serve
in the function of a capital to it, and the revenue of the
whole body of the people can never be in the smallest
degree increased by it. Clothes, and household furniture,
in the same manner, sometimes yield a revenue, and
thereby serve in the function of a capital to particular
persons. In countries where masquerades are common, it
is a trade to let out masquerade dresses for a night.
Upholsterers frequently let furniture by the month or by
the year. Undertakers let the furniture of funerals by the
day and by the week. Many people let furnished houses,
and get a rent, not only for the use of the house, but for
that of the furniture. The revenue, however, which is
derived from such things must always be ultimately
drawn from some other source of revenue. Of all parts of
the stock, either of an individual, or of a society, reserved
for immediate consumption, what is laid out in houses is
most slowly consumed, A stock of clothes may last
several years: a stock of furniture half a century ora
century: but a stock of houses, well built and properly
taken care of, may last many centuries. Though the
period of their total consumption, however, is more dust
ant, they are still as really a stock reserved for immediate
consumption as either clothes or household furniture.
The second of the three portions into which the
general stock of the society divides itself, is the fixed
capital, of which the characteristic is, that it affords a
revenue or profit without circulating or changing masters.
It consists chiefly of the four following articles:
First, of all useful machines and instruments of trade
which facilitate and abridge labour:
Secondly, of all those profitable buildings which are
the means of procuring a revenue, not only to their
proprietor who lets them for a rent, but to the person who
possesses them and pays that rent for them; such as
shops, warehouses, workhouses, farmhouses, with all
their necessary buildings; stables, granaries, etc. These
are very different from mere dwelling houses. They are a
sort of instruments of trade, and may be considered in
the same light:
Thirdly, of the improvements of land, of what has been
profitably laid out in clearing, draining, enclosing,
manuring, and reducing it into the condition most proper
for tillage and culture. An improved farm may very justly
be regarded in the same light as those useful machines
which facilitate and abridge labour, and by means of
which an equal circulating capital can afford a much
greater revenue to its employer. An improved farm is
equally advantageous and more durable than any of
those machines, frequently requiring no other repairs
than the most profitable application of the farmer’s
capital employed in cultivating it:
Fourthly, of the acquired and useful abilities of all the
inhabitants or members of the society. The acquisition of
such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during
his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a
real expense, which is a capital fixed and realized, as it
were, in his person. Those talents, as they make a part of
his fortune, so do they likewise of that of the society to
which he belongs. The improved dexterity of a workman
may be considered in the same light as a machine or
instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labour,
and which, though it costs a certain expense, repays that
expense with a profit.
The third and last of the three portions into which the
general stock of the society naturally divides itself, is the
circulating capital; of which the characteristic is, that it
affords a revenue only by circulating or changing
masters.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, |
32 Upon equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will choose
to employ their capitals rather in the improvement and
cultivation of land than either in manufactures or in
foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land
has it more under his view and command, and his fortune
is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader,
who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the
winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements
of human folly and injustice, by giving great credits in
distant countries to men with whose character and
situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The
capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in
the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured
as the nature of human affairs can admit of. The beauty
of the country besides, the pleasures of a country life, the
tranquillity of mind which it promises, and wherever the
injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the
independency which it really affords, have charms that
more or less attract everybody; and as to cultivate the
ground was the original destination of man, so in every
stage of his existence he seems to retain a predilection
for this primitive employment.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, III, 1
33 Men who have no property can injure one another only in
their persons or reputations. But when one man kills,
wounds, beats, or defames another, though he to whom
the injury is done suffers, he who does it receives no
benefit. It is otherwise with the injuries to property. The
benefit of the person who does the injury is often equal to
the loss of him who suffers it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, |
34 Wherever there is great property there is great inequality.
For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred
poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence
of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the
indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by
want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It
is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the
owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the
labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive
generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at
all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though
he never provoked, he can never appease, and from
whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful
arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise
it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property,
therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil
government. Where there is no property, or at least none
that exceeds the value of two or three days’ labour, civil
government is not so necessary.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
35 The community of goods, which had so agreeably
amused the imagination of Plato, and which subsisted in
some degree among the austere sect of the Essenians,
was adopted for a shon time in the primitive church. The
fervour of the first proselytes prompted them to sell those
worldly possessions which they despised, to lay the price
of them at the feet of the apostles, and to content
themselves with receiving an equal share out of the
general distribution. The progress of the Christian religion
relaxed, and gradually abolished, this generous
institution, which, in hands less pure than those of the
apostles, would too soon have been corrupted and
abused by the returning selfishness of human nature;
and the converts who embraced the new religion were
permitted to retain the possession of their patrimony, to
receive legacies and inheritances, and to increase their
separate property by all the lawful means of trade and
industry.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
36 The original right of property can only be justified by the
accident or merit of prior occupancy; and on this
foundation it is wisely established by the philosophy of
the civilians. The savage who hollow’s a tree, inserts a
Sharp stone into a wooden handle, or applies a string to
an elastic branch, becomes in a state of nature the just
proprietor of the canoe, the bow, or the hatchet. The
materials were common to all; the new form, the produce
of his time and simple industry, belongs solely to himself.
His hungry brethren cannot, without a sense of their own
injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the forest
overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity.
If his provident care preserves and multiplies the tame
animals, whose nature is tractable to the arts of
education, he acquires a perpetual title to the use and
service of their numerous progeny, which derives its
existence from him alone. If he encloses and cultivates a
field for their sustenance and his own, a barren waste Is
converted into a fertile soil; the seed, the manure, the
labour, create a new value, and the rewards of harvest
are painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving year.
In the successive states of society, the hunter, the
shepherd, the husbandman, may defend their
possessions by two reasons which forcibly appeal to the
feelings of the human mind: that whatever they enjoy is
the fruit of their own industry; and that every man who
envies their felicity may purchase similar acquisitions by
the exercise of similar diligence. Such, in truth, may be
the freedom and plenty of a small colony cast on a fruitful
island. But the colony multiplies, while the space still
continues the same; the common rights, the equal
inheritance of mankind, are engrossed by the bold and
crafty; each field and forest is circumscribed by the
landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the peculiar
praise of the Roman jurisprudence that it asserts the
claim of the first occupant to the wild animals of the
earth, the air, and the waters. In the progress from
primitive equity to final injustice, the steps are silent, the
shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute
monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial
reason. The active, insatiate principle of self-love can
alone supply the arts of life and the wages of industry:
and as soon as civil government and exclusive property
have been introduced, they become necessary to the
existence of the human race.
Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLIV
37 The personal title of the first proprietor must be
determined by his death; but the possession, without any
appearance of change, is peaceably continued in his
children, the associates of his toil, and the partners of his
wealth. Tins natural inheritance has been protected by
the legislators of every climate and age, and the father is
encouraged to persevere in slow and distant
improvements, by the tender hope that a long posterity
will enjoy the fruits of his labour. The principle of
hereditary succession is universal; but the order has been
variously established by convenience or caprice, by the
spirit of national institutions, or by some partial example
which was originally decided by fraud or violence.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLIV
38 | can only call a corporeal thing or an object in space
"mine," when, even although not in physical possession
of it, 1am able to assert that | am in possession of it in
another real nonphysical sense. Thus, | am not entitled to
call an apple mine merely because | hold it in my hand or
possess it physically; but only when | am entitled to say,
"| possess it, although | have laid it out of my hand, and
wherever it may lie," In like manner, | am not entitled to
say of the ground, on which | may have laid myself down,
that therefore it is mine; but only when | can rightly
assert that it still remains in my possession, although |
may have left the spot. For anyone who, in the former
appearances of empirical possession, might wrench the
apple out of my hand, or drag me away from my resting-
place, would, indeed, injure me in respect of the /nner
"mine" of freedom, but not in respect of the external
"mine," unless | could assert That | was in the possession
of the object, even when not actually holding it
physically. And if | could not do this, neither could | call
the apple or the spot mine.
Kant, Science of Right, 4
39 If, by word or deed, | declare my will that some external
thing shall be mine, | make a declaration that every other
person is obliged to abstain from the use of this object of
my exercise of will; and this imposes an obligation which
no one would be under, without such a juridical act on
my part. But the assumption of this act at the same time
involves the admission that | am obliged reciprocally to
observe a similar abstention towards every other in
respect of what is externally theirs; for the obligation in
question arises from a universal rule regulating the
external juridical relations. Hence | am not obliged to let
alone what another person declares to be externally his,
unless every other person likewise secures me by a
guarantee that he will act in relation to what is mine,
upon the same principle. This guarantee of reciprocal and
mutual abstention from what belongs to others does not
require a special juridical act for its establishment, but is
already involved in the conception of an external
obligation of right, on account of the universality and
consequently the reciprocity of the obligatoriness arising
from a universal Rule. Now a single will, in relation to an
external and consequently contingent possession, cannot
serve as a compulsory law for all, because that would be
to do violence to the freedom which is in accordance with
universal laws. Therefore it is only a will that binds every
one, and as such a common, collective, and authoritative
will, that can furnish a guarantee of security to all. But
the state of men under a universal, external, and public
legislation, conjoined with authority and power, is called
the civil state. There can therefore be an external mine
and thine only in the civil state of society.
Kant, Science of Right, 8
40 the principle of external acquisition .., may be
expressed thus: "Whatever | bring under my power
according to the law of external freedom, of which as an
object of my free activity of will | have the capability of
making use according to the postulate of the practical
reason, and which | will to become mine in conformity
with the idea of a possible united common will, /s mine."
Kant, Science of Right, 10
41 It is... only by positive transference or conveyance, that
a personal right can be acquired; and this is only possible
by means of a common will, through which objects come
into the power of one or other, so that as one renounces a
particular thing which he holds under the common right,
the same object when accepted by another, in
consequence of a positive act of will, becomes his. Such
tranference of the property of one to another is termed its
alienation. The act of the united wills of two persons, by
which what belonged to one passes to the other,
constitutes contract.
Kant, Science of Right, 18
42 Property is nothing but a basis of expectation; the
expectation of deriving certain advantages from a thing
which we are said to possess, in consequence of the
relation in which we stand towards it.
There is no image, no painting, no visible trait, which
can express the relation that constitutes property. It is not
material, it is metaphysical; it is a mere conception of the
mind.
Bentham, Theory of Legislation, Principles of the Civil
Code, |, 8
43 Property and law are born together, and die together.
Before laws were made there was no property; take away
laws, and property ceases.
Bentham, Theory of Legislation, Principles of the Civil
Code, I, 8
44 This term [Property], in its particular application, means
“that dominion which one man claims and exercises over
the external things of the world, in exclusion of every
other individual."
In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces
everything to which a man may attach a value and have
a right; and which leaves to everyone else the like
advantage.
In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandise, or
money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has property in his opinions
and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious
Opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by
them.
He has property very dear to him in the safety and
liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his
faculties and free choice of the objects on which to
employ them.
In a word, aS a man is said to have a right to his
property, he may be equally said to have a property in his
rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort
is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his
person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the
Same, though from an opposite cause.
Government is instituted to protect property of every
sort, as well that which lies in the various rights of
individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses.
This being the end of government, that alone is just
government which impartially secures to every man
whatever is his own.
Madison, Property
45 A person has as his substantive end the right of putting
his will into any and every thing and thereby making it
his, because it has no such end in itself and derives its
destiny and soul from his will. This is the absolute right of
appropriation which man has over all "things".
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 44
46 The principle that a thing belongs to the person who
happens to be the first in time to take it into his
possession is immediately self-explanatory and
superfluous, because a second person cannot take into
his possession what is already the property of another.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 50
47 My merely partial or temporary use of a thing, like my
partial or temporary possession of it (a possession which
itself is simply the partial or temporary possibility of
using it) is therefore to be distinguished from ownership
of the thing itself. If the whole and entire use of a thing
were mine, while the abstract ownership was supposed to
be someone else’s, then the thing as mine would be
penetrated through and through by my will, and at the
same time there would remain in the thing something
impenetrable by me, namely the will, the empty will, of
another. As a positive will, | would be at one and the
same time objective and not objective to myself in the
thing—an absolute contradiction. Ownership therefore is
in essence free and complete.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 62
48 Single products of my particular physical and mental skill
and of my power to act | can alienate to someone else
and | can give him the use of abilities for a restricted
period, because, on the strength of this restriction, my
abilities acquire an external relation to the totality and
universality of my being. By alienating the whole of my
time, as crystallized in my work, and everything |
produced, | would be making into another’s property the
substance of my being, my universal activity and
actuality, my personality.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 67
49 When a child begins to move in the midst of the objects
that surround him, he is instinctively led to appropriate to
himself everything that he can lay his hands upon; he
has no notion of the property of others; but as he
gradually learns the value of things and begins to
perceive that he may m his turn be despoiled, he
becomes more circumspect, and he ends by respecting
those rights in others which he wishes to have respected
in himself. The principle which the child derives from the
possession of his toys is taught to the man by the objects
which he may call his own. In America, the most
democratic of nations, those complaints against property
in general, which are so frequent in Europe, are never
heard, because in America there are no paupers. As
everyone has property of his own to defend, everyone
recognizes the principle upon which he holds it.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 14
50 If we attentively consider each of the classes of which
society is composed, it is easy to see that the passions
created by property are keenest and most tenacious
among the middle classes. The poor often care but little
for what they possess, because they suffer much more
from the want of what they have not than they enjoy the
little they have. The rich have many other passions
besides that of riches to satisfy; and, besides, the long
and arduous enjoyment of a great fortune sometimes
makes them in the end insensible to its charms. But the
men who have a competency, alike removed from
opulence and from penury, attach an enormous value to
their possessions. As they are still almost within the reach
of poverty, they see its privations near at hand and dread
them; between poverty and themselves there is nothing
but a scanty fortune, upon which they immediately fix
their apprehensions and their hopes. Every day increases
the interest they take in it, by the constant cares which it
occasions; and they are the more attached to it by their
continual exertions to increase the amount. The notion of
surrendering the smallest part of it is insupportable to
them, and they consider its total loss as the worst of
misfortunes.
Now, these eager and apprehensive men of small
property constitute the class that is constantly increased
by the equality of conditions. Hence in democratic
communities the majority of the people do not clearly see
what they have to gain by a revolution, but they
continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might
lose by one.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 21
51 In a revolution the owners of personal property have
more to fear than all others; for, on the one hand, their
property is often easy to seize, and, on the other, it may
totally disappear at any moment-a subject of alarm to
which the owners of real property are less exposed, since,
although they may lose the income of their estates, they
may hope to preserve the land itself through the greatest
vicissitudes. Hence the former are much more alarmed at
the symptoms of revolutionary commotion than the latter.
Thus nations are less disposed to make revolutions in
proportion as personal property is augmented and
distributed among them and as the number of those
possessing it is increased.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. Il, in, 21
52 In no country in the world is the love of property more
active and more anxious than in the United States;
nowhere does the majority display less inclination for
those principles which threaten to alter, in whatever
manner, the laws of property.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol, II, Ill, 21
53 | laid my bones to, and drudged for the good | possess; it
was not got by fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you
must show me a warrant like these stubborn facts in your
own fidelity and labor, before | suffer you, on the faith of
a few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim to
scatter it as your own.
Emerson, The Conservative
54 Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of
their access to reason, their rights in property are very
unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a
county.
Emerson, Politics
55 There is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet
inarticulate, that the whole constitution of property, on
its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on
persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly the only
interest for the consideration of the State is persons; that
property will always follow persons; that the highest end
of government is the culture of men; and that if men can
be educated, the institutions will share their
improvement and the moral sentiment will write the law
of the land.
Emerson, Politics
56 The law may in a mad freak say that all shall have power
except the owners of property; they shall have no vote.
Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year
after year, write every statute that respects property.
Emerson, Politics
57 Property... has been well compared to snow— "if it fail
level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow."
Emerson, Nature, V
58 In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes from
the idle and imbecile to the industrious, brave and
persevering.
Emerson, Wealth
59 The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
Thoreau, Journal (Nov. 9, 1852)
60 It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and
make exchanges of their own account. We must,
therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are also
their owners. Commodities are things, and, therefore,
without power of resistance against man. If they are
wanting in docility he can use force; in other words, he
can take possession of them. In order that these objects
may enter into relation with each other as commodities,
their guardians must place themselves in relation to one
another, as persons whose will resides in those objects,
and must behave in such a way that each does not
appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his
own, except by means of an act done by mutual consent.
They must, therefore, mutually recognize in each other
the rights of private proprietors.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, |, 2
61 At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based
on a man’s own labour. At least, some such assumption
w»as necessary since only commodity owners with equal
rights confronted each other, and the sole means by
which a man could become possessed of the commodities
of others was by alienating his own commodities; and
these could be replaced by labour alone. Now, however,
property turns out to be the right, on the part of the
capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or
its product, and to be the impossibility, on the part of the
labourer, of appropriating his own product. The
separation of property from labour has become the
necessary consequence of a law that apparently
Originated in their identity.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vil, 24
62 Through however long a series of periodical reproduction
and previous accumulation it may have passed, the
capital functioning today retains its primal virginity. So
long as the law-s of exchange are followed in each act of
exchange considered individually, the mode of
appropriation may be revolutionized without touching
property rights derived from commodity production. The
same right was valid at a time when the product
belonged to the producer, who could only enrich himself
by his own labour, exchanging equivalent for equivalent,
and is still valid in the capitalist period in which the
social wealth becomes to an ever increasing degree the
property of those who are in a position to appropriate
over and over again the unpaid labour of others.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, VII. 24
63 The development of capitalist production makes it
constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of
the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and
competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist
production to be felt by each individual capitalist as
external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly
extending his capital, in order to preserve it; but extend
it he cannot, except by means of progressive
accumulation.
So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of
capital—endowed as capital is, in his person, with
consciousness and a will—his own private consumption is
a robbery perpetrated on accumulation, just as in book-
keeping by double entry the private expenditure of the
capitalist is placed on the debtor side of his account
against his capital. To accumulate is to conquer the world
of social wealth, to increase the mass of human beings
exploited by him, and thus to extend both the direct and
the indirect way of the capitalist.
But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist
production, accumulation, and wealth, become
developed, the capitalist ceases to be the mere
incarnation of capital. He has a fellow-feeling for his own
Adam, and his education gradually enables him to smile
at the rage for asceticism, as a mere prejudice of the old-
fashioned miser. While the capitalist of the classical type
brands individual consumption as a sin against his
function, and as "abstinence" from accumulating, the
modernized capitalist is capable of upon accumulation as
"abstinence" from pleasure.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vil, 24
64 The ... thing that interests us is the secret discovered in
the new world by the political economy of the old world,
and proclaimed on the housetops: that the capitalist
mode of production and accumulation, and therefore
capitalist private property, have for their fundamental
condition the annihilation of self-earned private
property’; in other words, the expropriation of the
labourer.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vill, 33
65 The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the
abolition of property generally, but the abolition of
bourgeois property. But modem bourgeois private
property is the final and most complete expression of the
system of producing and appropriating products that is
based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the
many by the few.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
66 Docs wage labour create any property for the labourer?
Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property
which exploits wage labour and which cannot increase
except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage
labour for fresh exploitation. Property in its present form
is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
67 When ... capital is converted into common property, into
the property of all members of society, personal property
is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only
the social character of the property that is changed. It
loses its class character.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
68 You are horrified at our intending to do away until private
property. But in your existing society private property is
already done away with for nine-tenths of the population;
its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence
in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us,
therefore, with intending to do away with a form of
property, the necessary condition for whose existence is
the non-existence of any property for the immense
majority of society.
In a word, you reproach us with intending to do away
with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we
intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be
converted into capital, money, or rent—into a social
power capable of being monopolised—i.e., from the
moment when individual property can no longer be
transformed into bourgeois property, into capital; from
that moment, you Say, individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you
mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the
middle class owner of property. This person must, indeed,
be swept out of the way and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to
appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to
deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of
others by means of such appropriation.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I!
69 It has been objected that upon the abolition of private
property all work will cease and universal laziness will
overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to
have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those
of its members who work acquire nothing, and those who
acquire anything do not work.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
70 If... the choice were to be made between Communism
with all its chances, and the present state of society with
all its sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private
property necessarily carried with it as a consequence,
that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we
now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour—the
largest portions to those who have never worked at all,
the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal,
and so in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling
as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until
the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot
count with certainty on being able to cam even the
necessaries of life; if this or Communism were the
alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of
Communism would be but as dust in the balance. But to
make the comparison applicable, we must compare
Communism at its best, with the regime of individual
property not as it is, but as it might be made. The
principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial
in any country.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk, Il, 1, 3
71 The laws of property have never yet conformed to the
principles on which the justification of private property
rests. They have made property’ of things which never
ought to be property, and absolute property where only a
qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the
balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped
impediments upon some, to give advantage to others;
they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented
all from starting fair in the race. That all should indeed
start on perfectly equal terms, is inconsistent with any
law of private property: but if as much pains as has been
taken to aggravate the inequality of chances arising from
the natural working of the principle, had been taken to
temper that inequality by every means not subversive of
the principle itself; if the tendency of legislation had
been to favour the diffusion, instead of the concentration
of wealth—to encourage the subdivision of the large
masses, instead of striving to keep them together; the
principle of individual property would have been found to
have no necessary connexion with the physical and social
evils which almost all Socialist writers assume to be
inseparable from it.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, BK. Il, 1, 3
72 Nothing is implied in property but the right of each to his
(or her) own faculties, to what he can produce by them,
and to whatever he can get for them in a fair market;
together with his right to give this to any other person if
he chooses, and the right of that other to receive and
enjoy it.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. 11. II, 3
73 When the "sacredness of property" is talked of, it should
always be remembered, that any such sacredness does
not belong in the same degree to landed property. No
man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the
whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of
general expediency. When private property in land is not
expedient, it is unjust- It is no hardship to any one, to be
excluded from what others have produced: they were not
bound to produce it for his use, and he loses nothing by
not sharing in what otherwise would not have existed at
all. But it is some hardship to be born into the world and
to find all nature’s gifts previously engrossed, and no
place left for the new-comer. To reconcile people to this,
after they have once admitted into their minds the idea
that any moral rights belong to them as human beings, it
will always be necessary to convince them that the
exclusive appropriation is good for mankind on the
whole, themselves included. But this is what no sane
human being could be persuaded of.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. II, 11, 6
74 To me it seems almost an axiom that property in land
should be interpreted strictly, and that the balance in all
cases of doubt should incline against the proprietor. The
reverse is the case with property in moveables, and in all
things the product of labour: over these, the owner’s
power both of use and of exclusion should be absolute,
except where positive evil to others would result from it:
but in the case of land, no exclusive right should be
permitted in any individual, which cannot be shown to be
productive of positive good. To be allowed any exclusive
right at all, over a portion of the common inheritance,
while there are others who have no portion, is already a
privilege. No quantity of moveable goods which a person
can acquire by his labour, prevents others from acquiring
the like by the same means; but from the very nature of
the case, whoever owns land, keeps others out of the
enjoyment of it. The privilege, or monopoly, is only
defensible as a necessary evil; it becomes an injustice
when carried to any point to which the compensating
good does not follow it.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. II, Il, 6
75 There is no divine right of property. Nothing is so
completely a man’s own that he may do what he likes
with it. His very limbs, intimately as they belong to him,
he may not use to the injury of society, much less his
knife, his stick, or “anything that is his." Not only may he
not use them malevolently: he must not use them even
carelessly and indifferently except at his own peril if harm
ensue. Exceptionally dangerous substances, such as
poisons and explosives, he can only obtain and possess
under exceptionally stringent conditions.
Nevertheless, as it is obviously w’ell that each man
should labor without fear of being deprived of the use
and enjoyment of the product of their labor—as in the
nature of things he would not labor at all without some
such incentive, it may be said that a man has a natural
right to own the product of his labor. The term natural
right, if old fashioned, is as much to the purpose as any
modern expression of the same meaning. But dus natural
right of the individual is still subject to all the limitations
imposed by the rights of his fellows.
Shaw, Freedom and the Sink
76 There are three practicable ways of providing for the
production of commodities and exchange of services in
civilized communities. These three are—
PRIVATE PROPERTY,
COLLECTIVISM,
COMMUNISM
The first is a non-socialist system. The other two are
socialist.
In ail modem States the three are in operation side by
side, but as Collectivism and Communism are purposely
restricted to those departments of industry in which the
Private Property system is practically impossible, the
predominating and characteristic method of organizing
the industry of the world is at present non-socialist.
As the method of producing and distributing wealth
has irresistibly influenced custom, morality, the forms of
law and religion, and indeed all social institutions, being
only less fundamental than human nature itself, it is
important that the three systems should be known and
understood as working arrangements, quite apart from
their abstract principles. Whoever masters the subject in
this way will perceive that discussions as to whether
Private Property in the abstract is better or worse than
Socialism are as idle as discussions as to whether black in
the abstract is better or worse than white. The
applicability of either system depends on the nature of
the commodity or service to which it is proposed to apply
it, on the industrial and moral development of the
community—in short, on diverse factors which vary in all
possible manners. There is no inconsistency of principle
in our present arrangement of Private Enterprise in the
medical profession, Collectivism in our postal service, and
Communism in our London bridges. If the student, as the
outcome of his study, concludes that it would be well to
effect such an extension of Collectivism as would make it
the predominant and characteristic system in this
country, then he may conveniently call himself a
Socialist. But there is no universally applicable abstract
principle of Socialism or Individualism by subscribing to
which men can claim to be Socialists or Individualists
without troubling themselves about economic science or
practical industry.
Shaw, Capital and Wages
11.2 Wealth and Poverty
This by far the richest section in this chapter, not only in the
range and variety of he passage quoted, but also in the
number and character of the authors who contribute a the
discussion of its basic themes. As contrasted with the
subjects covered in those sections to follow that tend to be
more narrowly economic, the discussion of wealth and
poverty involves broad psychological, moral, and political
considerations as well as strictly economic ones.
Those who ask whether any limit can be placed on the
production and acquisition of wealth by an individual ora
society find themselves confronted with the apparently
limitless reach of human desires. But, acknowledging this
fact, they also recognize the harmful effects, both upon the
individual and upon society, of setting no limits to the
accumulation of wealth. Almost without exception, the great
moralists from Plato, Aristotle, and the Roman Stoics to
Aquinas, Locke, and Rousseau condemn the insatiable lust
for external possessions, but they differ on the question of
the indispensability of a modicum of wealth as one of the
conditions of earthly happiness. They are also concerned
with the obligations of the individual, in justice and in
charity, to avoid injuring others by impoverishing them or
by letting their poverty go unrelieved. On these subjects,
the Old and the New Testament, die poets, the novelists, and
the historians also speak with intensity and eloquence.
On the other hand, poverty itself is praised as well as
deplored, not involuntary destitution, but the voluntary
poverty that is a virtuous way of life. We find divers
expressions of this point of view in the ancient Stoics, in the
Sacred Scriptures, in the Christian theologians, and in
modern writers like Thoreau, who voices a disdain for
wealth-seeking and a dislike for the burden of possessions
that are current in certain sections of our society today.
Balanced against this, increasingly as we approach modern
times, is the antiphonal voice that denounces the injustice
of a vast inequality in the distribution of wealth, and that
calls not merely for the relief of the poor but also for the
elimination of poverty itself.
To all of this, the economists add their proposals of
measures for increasing the wealth of nations and their
arguments for and against the control of its production and
distribution.
For the consideration of wealth and poverty in relation to
the pursuit of happiness and the conduct of life, the reader
is referred to Section 9.8 on Happiness, and also Section
9.10 on Virtue and Vice. Treatment of the religious aspect of
wealth and poverty will be found in Section 20.8 on Worship
and Service, and also in Section 20.13 on Sin and
Temptation. The problem of involuntary poverty or
destitution raises questions more fully discussed in Section
12.2 on Justice and Injustice and in Section 13.3 on Equality.
1 And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto
him, and said unto him, There were two in one city; the
one rich, and the other Poor.
The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds:
But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe
lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it
grew up together with him, and with his children; it did
eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in
his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.
And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he
Spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to
dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but
took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that
was come to him.
And David's anger was greatly kindled against the
man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man
that hath done this thing shall surely die;
And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did
this thing, and because he had no pity.
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.
Il Samuel 12:1-7
2 The rich man’s wealth is his strong city; the destruction of
the poor is their poverty.
Proverbs 10:15
3 The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich
hath many friends.
Proverbs 14:20
4 He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.
Proverbs 28:20
5 The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat
little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not
suffer him to sleep.
Ecclesiastes 5:12
6 Swineherd. Shyness is no asset to a beggar.
Homer, Odyssey, XVII, 352
7 Who bids his gather’d substance gradual grow
Shall see not livid hunger’s face of woe.
No bosom pang attends the home-laid store,
But fraught with loss the food without thy door.
"Tis good to take from hoards, and pain to need
What is far from thee:—give the precept heed.
Hesiod, Works and Days
8 Solon. He who possesses great store of riches is no nearer
happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily
needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so
he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the
end of life.
Herodotus, History, 1, 32
9 'Tis said that gifts tempt even gods; and o’er men’s minds
gold holds more potent sway than countless words.
Euripides, Medea, 964
10 Cyclops. Money’s the wise man’s religion, little man.
The rest is mere bluff and purple patches.
Euripides, Cyclops, 316
11 Farmer. In times like these, when wishes soar but power
fails,
| contemplate the steady comfort found in gold:
gold you can spend on guests; gold you can pay the
doctor
when you get sick. But a small crumb of gold will buy
our daily bread, and when a man has eaten that,
you cannot really tell the rich and poor apart.
Euripides, Electra, 426
12 Pericles. The real disgrace of poverty [lies] not in owning
to the fact but in declining the struggle against it.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, II, 40
13 Socrates. | do nothing but go about persuading you all,
old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons
or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the
greatest improvement of the soul.
Plato, Apology, 30A
14 Socrates. May | ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was
for the most part inherited or acquired by you?
Cephalus. Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know
how much | acquired? In the art of making money | have
been midway between my father and grandfather: for my
grandfather, whose name | bear, doubled and trebled the
value of his patrimony, that which he inherited being
much what | possess now; but my father Lysanias
reduced the property below what it is at present: and |
Shall be satisfied if | leave to these my sons not less but a
little more than | received.
That was why | asked you the question, | replied,
because | see that you are indifferent about money,
which is a characteristic rather of those who have
inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired
them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of
money as a creation of their own, resembling the
affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for
their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake
of use and profit which is common to them and all men.
And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk
about nothing but the praises of wealth.
That is true, he said.
Yes, that is very true, but may | ask another question?
—What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which
you have reaped from your wealth?
One, he said, of which | could not expect easily to
convince others. For let me tell you, Socrates, that when
a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares
enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales
of a world below and the punishment which is exacted
there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to
him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they
may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because
he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a
clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd
thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider
what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds
that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a
time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is
filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious
of no sin, sweet hope ... is the kind nurse of his age.... The
great blessing of riches, | do not say to every man, but to
a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or
to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally;
and when he departs to the world below he is not in any
apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts
which he owes to men. Now to this peace of mind the
possession of wealth greatly contributes; and therefore |
say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many
advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense
this is in my opinion the greatest.
Plato, Republic, 1, 330A
15 Socrates. And now, Adeimantus, is our State matured and
perfected?
Adeimantus. | think so.
Where, then, is justice, and where is injustice, and in
what part of the State did they spring up?
Probably in the dealings of these citizens with one
another. | cannot imagine that they are more likely to be
found any where else.
| dare say that you are right in your suggestion, | said;
we had better think the matter out, and not shrink from
the enquiry.
Let us then consider, first of all, what will be their way
of life, now that we have thus established them. Will they
not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and shoes, and
build houses for themselves? And when they are housed,
they will work, in Summer, commonly, stripped and
barefoot, but in winter substantially clothed and shod.
They will feed on barley-meal and flour of wheat, baking
and kneading them, making noble cakes and loaves;
these they will serve up on a mat of reeds or on clean
leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds strewn
with yew or myrtle. And they and their children will feast,
drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing
garlands on their heads, and hymning the praises of the
gods, in happy converse with one another. And they will
take care that their families do not exceed their means;
having an eye to poverty or war.
But, said Glaucon, interposing, you have not given
them a relish to their meal.
True, | replied, | had forgotten; of course they must
have a relish—salt, and olives, and cheese, and they will
boil roots and herbs such as country people prepare; for a
dessert we shall give them figs, and peas, and beans; and
they will roast myrtle-berries and acorns at the fire,
drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be
expected to live in peace and health to a good old age,
and bequeath a similar life to their children after them.
Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing fora
city of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts?
But what would you have, Glaucon? | replied.
Why, he said, you should give them the ordinary
conveniences of life. People who are to be comfortable
are accustomed to lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and
they should have sauces and sweets in the modern style.
Yes, | said, now | understand: the question which you
would have me consider is, not only how a State, but how
a luxurious State is created; and possibly there is no
harm in this, for in such a State we shall be more likely to
see how justice and injustice originate. In my opinion the
true and healthy constitution of the State is the one
which | have described.
Plato, Republic, 11, 371B
16 Socrates. There seem to be two causes of the
deterioration of the arts.
Adeimantus. What are they?
Wealth, | said, and poverty.
How do they act?
The process is as follows: When a potter becomes rich,
will he. think you, any longer take the same pains with
his art?
Certainly not.
He will grow more and more indolent and careless?
Very true.
And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter?
Yes; he greatly deteriorates.
But, on the other hand, if he has no money, and
cannot provide himself with tools or instruments, he will
not work equally well himself, nor will he teach his sons
or apprentices to work equally well.
Certainly not.
Then, under the influence either of poverty or of
wealth, workmen and their work are equally liable to
degenerate?
This is evident.
Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, | said, against
which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep
into the city unobserved.
What evils?
Wealth, | said, and poverty; the one is the parent of
luxury’ and indolence, and the other of meanness and
viciousness, and both of discontent.
Plato, Republic, IV, 421B
17 The citizen must indeed be happy and good, and the
legislator will seek to make him so; but very rich and very
good at the same time he cannot be, not, at least, in the
sense in which the many speak of riches. For they mean
by "the rich" the few who have the most valuable
possessions, although the owner of them may quite well
be a rogue. And if this is true, | can never assent to the
doctrine that the rich man will be happy—he must be
good as well as rich. And good in a high degree, and rich
in a high degree at the same time, he cannot be.
Plato, Laws, V, 742B
18 The magnificent man is like an artist; for he can see what
is fitting and spend large sums tastefully. ... Now the
expenses of the magnificent man are large and fitting.
Such, therefore, are also his results; for thus there will be
a great expenditure and one that is fitting to its result.
Therefore the result should be worthy of the expense, and
the expense should be worthy of the result, or should
even exceed it. And the magnificent man will soend such
sums for honour’s sake; for this is common to the virtues.
And further he will do so gladly and lavishly; for nice
calculation is a niggardly thing. And he will consider how
the result can be made most beautiful and most
becoming rather than for how much it can be produced
and how it can be produced most cheaply. It is necessary,
then, that the magnificent man be also liberal. For the
liberal man also will soend what he ought and as he
ought; and it is in these matters that the greatness
implied in the name of the magnificent man—his bigness,
as it were—is manifested, since liberality is concerned
with these matters; and at an equal expense he will
produce a more magnificent work of art. For a possession
and a work of art have not the same excellence. The most
valuable possession is that which is worth most, for
example gold, but the most valuable work of art is that
which is great and beautiful (for the contemplation of
such a work inspires admiration, and so does
magnificence); and a work has an excellence— viz.
magnificence—which involves magnitude. Magnificence
is an attribute of expenditures of the kind which we call
honourable, for example those connected with the gods—
votive offerings, buildings, and sacrifices—and similarly
with any form of religious worship, and all those that are
proper objects of public-spirited ambition, as when
people think they ought to equip a chorus or a trireme, or
entertain the city, in a brilliant way. But in all cases... we
have regard to the agent as well and ask who he is and
what means he has; for the expenditure should be worthy
of his means, and suit not only the result but also the
producer. Hence a poor man cannot be magnificent, since
he has not the means with which to spend large sums
fittingly; and he who tries is a fool, since he spends
beyond what can be expected of him and what is proper,
but it is right expenditure that is virtuous.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1122a34
19 Such ... is the magnificent man; the man who goes to
excess and is vulgar exceeds ... by spending beyond what
is right. For on small objects of expenditure he spends
much and displays a tasteless showiness; e.g. he gives a
club dinner on the scale of a wedding banquet, and when
he provides the chorus for a comedy he brings them on to
stage in purple, as they do at Megara. And all such things
he will do not for honour’s sake but to show off his
wealth, and because he thinks he is admired for these
things, and where he ought to spend much he spends
little and where little, much. The niggardly man on the
other hand will fall short in everything, and alter
spending the greatest sums will spoil the beauty of the
result for a trifle, and whatever he is doing he will
hesitate and consider how he may spend least, and
lament even that, and think he is doing everything ona
bigger scale than he ought.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1123a18
20 Happiness... must be some form of contemplation. But,
being aman, one will also need external prosperity; for
our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of
contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and
must have food and other attention. Still, we must not
think that the man who is to be happy will need many
things or great things ... for self-sufficiency and action do
not involve excess, and we can do noble acts without
ruling earth and sea.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1178b32
21 Some persons are led to believe that ... the whole idea of
their lives is that they ought either to increase their
money without limit, or at any rate not to lose it. The
origin of this disposition in men is that they are intent
upon living only, and not upon living well; and, as their
desires are unlimited, they also desire that the means of
gratifying them should be without limit.
Aristotle, Politics, 1257b38
22 It would be well also to collect the scattered stories of the
ways in which individuals have succeeded in amassing a
fortune; for all this is useful to persons who value the art
of getting wealth. There is the anecdote of Thales the
Milesian and his financial device, which involves a
principle of universal application, but is attributed to him
on account of his reputation for wisdom. He was
reproached for his poverty, which was supposed to show
that philosophy was of no use. According to the story, he
knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that
there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming
year; so, having a little money, he gave deposits for the
use of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which he
hired at a low price because no one bid against him.
When the harvest-time came, and many were wanted all
at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any rate
which he pleased, and made a quantity of money.
Thus he showed the world that philosophers can easily
be rich if they like, but that their ambition IS of another
sort. He is supposed to have given a striking proof of his
wisdom, but, as | was saying, his device for getting
wealth is of universal application, and is nothing but the
creation of a monopoly. It is an art often practised by
cities when they are in want of money; they make a
monopoly of provisions.
There was a man of Sicily, who, having money
deposited with him, bought up all the iron from the iron
mines; afterwards, when the merchants from their various
markets came to buy, he was the only seller, and without
much increasing the price he gained 200 per cent. Which
when Dionysius heard, he told him that he might take
away his money, but that he must not remain at
Syracuse, for he thought that the man had discovered a
way of making money which was injurious to his own
interests. He made the same discovery as Thales; they
both contrived to create a monopoly for themselves. And
statesmen as well ought to know these things; for a state
is often as much in want of money and of such devices for
obtaining it as a household, or even more so; hence some
public men devote themselves entirely to finance.
Aristotle, Politics, 1259a3
23 The true friend of the people should see that they be not
too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the
democracy; measures therefore should be taken which
will give them lasting prosperity; and as this is equally
the interest of all classes, the proceeds of the public
revenues should be accumulated and distributed among
its poor, if possible, in such quantities as may enable
them to purchase a little farm, or, at any rate, make a
beginning in trade or husbandry. And if this benevolence
cannot be extended to all, money should be distributed
in turn according to tribes or other divisions, and in the
meantime the rich should pay the fee for the attendance
of the poor at the necessary assemblies; and should in
return be excused from useless public services.
Aristotle, Politics, 1320a33
24 The constituents of wealth are; plenty of coined money
and territory; the ownership of numerous, large, and
beautiful estates; also the ownership of numerous and
beautiful implements, live stock, and slaves. All these
kinds of property are our own, are secure, gentlemanly,
and useful. The useful kinds are those that are
productive, the gentlemanly kinds are those that provide
enjoyment. By ‘productive’ | mean those from which we
gel our income; by ‘enjoyable’, those from which we get
nothing worth mentioning except the use of them. the
criterion of ‘security’ is the ownership of property in such
places and under such conditions that the use of it is in
our power; and it is ‘our own’ if it is in our own power to
dispose of it or keep it. By ‘disposing of it' | mean giving
it away or selling it. Wealth as a whole consists in using
tilings rather than in owning them; it is really the activity
—that is, the use—of property that constitutes wealth.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1361a12
25 What is long established seems akin to what exists by
nature; and therefore we feel more indignation at those
possessing a given good if they have as a matter of fact
only just got it and the prosperity it brings with it. The
newly rich give more offence than those whose wealth is
of long standing and inherited. The same is true of those
who have office or power, plenty of friends, a fine family,
etc. We feel the same when these advantages of theirs
secure them others. For here again, the newly rich give us
more offence by obtaining office through their riches than
do those whose wealth is of long standing; and so in all
other cases. The reason is that what the latter have is felt
to be really their own, but what the others have is not;
what appears to have been always what it is is regarded
as real, and so the possessions of the newly rich do not
seem to be really their own.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1367a16
26 Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant, their possession
of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they
had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a son
of standard of value for everything else, and therefore
they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy . . In a word,
the type of character produced by wealth is that of a
prosperous fool.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1390b33
27 Beware of an inordinate desire for wraith. Nothing is so
revealing of narrowness and littleness of soul than love
for money. Conversely, there is nothing more honorable
or noble than indifference to money, if one doesn’t base
any; or than genuine altruism and well-doing if one does
have it.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 20
26 Without doubt, the highest privilege of wealth is the
opportunity it affords for doing good, without giving up
one’s fortune.
Cicero, De Officiis, Il, 18
29 O happy, if he knew his happy state,
The swain, who, free from business and debate,
Receives his easy food from nature’s hand,
And just returns of cultivated land!
No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants,
To admit the tides of early visitants,
With eager eyes devouring, as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass.
No statues threaten, from high pedestals;
No Persian arras hides his homely walls,
With antic vests, which, through their shady fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold:
He boasts no wool, whose native white is dyed
With purple poison of Assyrian pride;
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat.
With home-bred plenty, the rich owner bless,
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvexed with quarrels, undisturbed with noise.
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys—
Cool grots, and living lakes, the flowery pride
Of meads, and streams that through the valley glide.
And shady groves that easy sleep invite,
And after toilsome days, a soft repose at night.
Wild beasts of nature in his woods abound;
And youth, of labour patient, plough the ground,
Inured to hardship, and to homely fare.
Nor venerable age is wanting there,
In great examples to the youthful train;
Nor are the gods adored with rites profane.
Virgil, Georgics, II
30 Aeneas. O sacred hunger of pernicious gold! Virgil,
Georgics What bands of faith can impious lucre hold?
Virgil, Aeneid, III
31 Neither sultry summer, nor winter, fire, ocean, sword, can
drive you from gain. You surmount every obstacle, that no
other man may be richer than yourself.
Horace, Satires, |, 1
32 Do you wonder that no one tenders you the affection
which you do not merit, since you prefer your money to
everything else?
Horace, Satires, |, 1
33 As riches grow, care follows, and a thirst
For more and more.
Horace, Odes, Ill, 16
34 Poverty’s inglorious load
Bids man unheard-of things endure and try;
While Virtue’s solitary road
He deems too steep, and cowardly passes by.
Horace, Odes, III, 24
35 It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the
one who hankers after more. What difference does it
make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in
his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how
much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after
what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get,
never what he has already. You ask what is the proper
limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential,
and second, having what is enough.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 2
36 Imagine that you’ve piled up all that a veritable host of
rich men ever possessed, that fortune has carried you far
beyond the bounds of wealth so far as any private
individual is concerned, building you a roof of gold and
clothing you in royal purple, conducting you to sucha
height of opulence and luxury that you hide the earth
with marble floors—putting you in a position not merely
to own, but to walk all over treasures—throw in
sculptures, paintings, all that has been produced at
tremendous pains by all the arts to satisfy extravagance:
all these things will only induce in you a craving for even
bigger things. Natural desires are limited; those which
spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for
falsity has no point of termination.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 16
37 For no one is worthy of a god unless he has paid no heed
to riches. | am not, mind you, against your possessing
them, but | want to ensure that you possess them without
tremors; and this you will only achieve in one way, by
convincing yourself that you can live a happy life even
without them, and by always regarding them as being on
the point of vanishing.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 18
38 No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one,
and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mam-
mon.
Therefore | say unto you, Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat,
and the body than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do
they reap, nor gather into barns; yci your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are yc not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit
unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do
they spin:
And yet | say unto you, That even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?
or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for
your heavenly Father knoweth that yc have need of all
these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Matthew 6:24—34
39 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell
that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
But when the young man heard that saying, he went
away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily | say unto
you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom
of heaven.
And again | say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God.
When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly
amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
Matthew 19:21-25
4O It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Mark 10:25
41 And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their
gifts into the treasury.
And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in
thither two mites.
And he said, Of a truth | say unto you, that this poor
widow hath cast in more than they all:
For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the
offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all
the living that she had.
Luke 21:1-4
42 The poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not
always.
John 12:8
43 There was now no more means of purchasing foreign
goods and small wares [in Sparta]; merchants sent no
Shiploads into Laconian ports; no rhetoric-master, no
itinerant fortune-teller, no harlot-monger, or gold or
silversmith, engraver, or jeweller, set foot in a country
which had no money; so that luxury, deprived little by
little of that which fed and fomented it, wasted to nothing
and died away of itself. For the rich had no advantage
here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had
no road to come abroad by but were shut up at home
doing nothing.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
44 There are many to be seen that make a good or a bad use
of riches, but it is difficult, comparatively, to meet with
one who supports poverty in a noble spirit; those only
Should be ashamed of it who incurred it against their
wills.
Plutarch, Aristides
45 Poverty is dishonourable not in itself, but when itis a
proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness;
whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just,
and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public
good, it shows a great and lofty mind. For he has no time
for great matters who concerns himself with petty ones;
nor can he relieve many needs of others, who himself has
many needs of his own. What most of all enables a man
to serve the public is not wealth, but content and
independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home,
distracts not the mind from the common good.
Plutarch, Aristides and Marcos Cato Compared
46 If you’re poor, you're a joke, on each and every occasion.
What a laugh, if your cloak is dirty or torn, if your toga
Seems a little bit soiled, if your shoe has a crack in the
leather,
Or if more than one patch attests to more than one
mending!
Poverty’s greatest curse, much worse than the fact of
it, is that
It makes men objects of mirth, ridiculed, humbled,
embarrassed.
‘Out of the front-row seats!’ they cry when you're out
of money.
Yield your place to the sons of some pimp, the spawn
of some cathouse.
Some slick auctioneer’s brat, or the louts some trainer
has fathered
Or the well-groomed boys whose sire is a gladiator.
Such is the law of place, decreed by the nitwitted
Otho;
All the best seats are reserved for the classes who
have the most money.
Who can many a girl if he has less money than she
does?
What poor man is an heir, or can hope to be? Which of
them ever
Rates a political job, even the meanest and lowest?
Long before now, all poor Roman descendants of
Romans
Ought to have marched out of town in one determined
migration.
Men do not easily rise whose poverty hinders their
merit.
Juvenal, Satire III
47 Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be
ready to let it go.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 33
48 Let us suppose a case of two men; for each individual
man, like one letter in a language, is as it were the
element of a city or kingdom, however far-spreading in its
occupation of the earth. Of these two men let us suppose
that one is poor, or rather of middling circumstances; the
other very rich. But the rich man is anxious with fears,
pining with discontent, burning with covetousness, never
secure, always uneasy, panting from the perpetual strife
of his enemies, adding to his patrimony indeed by these
miseries to an immense degree, and by these additions
also heaping up most bitter cares. But that other man of
moderate wealth is contented with a small and compact
estate, most dear to his own family, enjoying the
sweetest peace with his kindred neighbours and friends,
in piety religious, benignant in mind, healthy in body, in
life frugal, in manners chaste, in conscience secure. |
know not whether anyone can be such a fool, that he
dare hesitate which to prefer.
Augustine, City of God, IV, 3
49 It is not earthly riches which make us or our sons happy;
for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime, or be
possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or
perhaps by whom we would not.
Augustine, City of God, V, 18
50 It is impossible for man’s happiness to consist in wealth.
For wealth is two-fold... natural and artificial. Natural
wealth is that which serves man as a remedy for his
natural wants, such as food, drink, clothing, conveyances,
dwellings, and things of this kind, while artificial wealth is
that which is not a direct help to nature, as money, but is
invented by the art of man for the convenience of
exchange and as a measure of things saleable.
Now it is evident that man’s happiness cannot consist
in natural wealth. For wealth of this kind is sought as a
support of human nature; consequently it cannot be
man’s last end, but rather is ordered to man as to its end.
Therefore in the order of nature, all such things are below
man, and made for him....
And as to artificial wealth, it is not sought save for the
sake of natural wealth, since man would not seek it
except that by its means he procures for himself the
necessaries of life. Consequently much less does it have
the character of the last end. Therefore it is impossible for
happiness, which is the last end of man, to consist in
wealth.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 2, 1
51 Covetousness, as denoting a special sin, is called the root
of all sins, in likeness to the root of a tree, in furnishing
sustenance to the whole tree. For we see that by riches
man acquires the means of committing any sin whatever,
and of sating his desire for any sin whatever, since money
helps man to obtain all manner of temporal goods.... So
that in this sense desire for riches is the root of all sins.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 84, 1
52 The privation of one’s possessions, or poverty, is a means
of perfection, since by doing away with riches we remove
certain obstacles to charity; and these are chiefly three.
The first is the cares which riches bring with them.... The
second is the love of riches, which increases with the
possession of wealth. ... The third is vainglory or elation
which results from riches.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 188, 7
53 So long as external things are sought or possessed only
in a small quantity, and as much as is required for a mere
livelihood, such care does not hinder one much, and
consequently is not inconsistent with the perfection of
Christian life... Yet the possession of much wealth
increases the weight of care, which is a great distraction
to man’s mind and hinders him from giving himself
wholly to God’s service.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 188, 7
54 And when you me reproach for poverty,
The High God, in Whom we believe, say I,
In voluntary poverty lived His life.
And surely every man, or maid, or wife
May understand that Jesus, Heaven’s King,
Would not have chosen vileness of living.
Glad poverty’s an honest thing, that’s plain,
Which Seneca and other clerks maintain.
Whoso will be content with poverty,
| hold him rich, though not a shirt has he.
And he that covets much is a poor wight,
For he would gain what’s all beyond his might
But he that has not, nor desires to have,
Is rich, although you hold him but a knave.
True poverty, it sings right naturally;
Juvenal gaily says of poverty:
‘The poor man, when he walks along the way,
Before the robbers he may sing and play.
Poverty’s odious good, and, as | guess,
It is a stimulant to busyness;
A great improver, too, of sapience
In him that takes it all with due patience.
Poverty’s this, though it seem misery—
Its quality may none dispute, say I.
Poverty often; when a man is low,
Makes him his God and even himself to know.
And poverty’s an eye-glass, seems to me,
Through which a man his loyal friends may see.
Since you've received no injury from me,
Then why reproach me for my poverty.’
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath's Tale
55 The matter, form, effect, and goal of riches are worthless.
That’s why our Lord God generally gives riches to crude
asses to whom he doesn’t give anything else.
Luther, Table Talk, 5559
56 Pantagruel. Those of a mean spirit and shallow capacity
have not the skill to soend much in a short time.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Il, 2
57 The Bastard. Why rail | on this Commodity?
But for because he hath not woo'd me yet:
Not that | have the power to clutch my hand,
When his fair angels would salute my palm;
But for my hand, as unattempted yet,
Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles | am a beggar, | will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary.
Since kings break faith upon Commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for | will worship thee.
Shakespeare, King John, Il, i, 587
58 Hamlet. Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, ti, 65
59 Anne Page. O, what a world of vile ill-favour'd faults
Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year!
Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, III, iv, 32
60 /ago. Poor and content is rich and rich enough,
But riches fineless is as poor as winter
To him that ever fears he shall be poor.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, tii, 172
61 Goneril. Hear me, my lord.
What need you five and twenty, ten, or five,
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
Regan. What need one?
Lear. O, reason not the need. Our basest beggars
are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous.
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm.
Shakespeare, Lear, Il, iv, 263
62 Kent. Good my lord, enter here.
Lear. Prithee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease.
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.
[ Jo the Fool] In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty—
Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.
Fool goes in.
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From reasons such as these? O, | have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
Shakespeare, Lear, Ill, iv, 22
63 Timon. [To the gold] O thou sweet king-killer, and dear
divorce
"Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, loved, and delicate wooer.
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies in Dian’s lap! thou visible god,
That solder’st close impossibilities,
And makest them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, IV, tii, 382
64 Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and
good actions.
Bacon, Of Expense
65 | cannot call Riches better than the baggage of virtue.
The Roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the
baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be
spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea
and the care of it sometimes loscth or disturbeth the
victory.
Bacon, Of Riches
66 The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul.
Bacon, Of Riches
67 He that resteth upon gains certain, shall hardly grow to
great riches: and he that puts all upon adventures, doth
oftentimes break and come to poverty: it is good
therefore to guard adventures with certainties that may
uphold losses.
Bacon, Of Riches
68 Believe not much them that seem to despise riches; for
they despise them that despair of them; and none worse,
when they come to them.
Bacon, Of Riches
69 Be not penny-wise; riches have wings, and sometimes
they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must be set
flying to bring in more.
Bacon, Of Riches
70 Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From heav’n, for ev'n in heav’n his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands
Rifl’d the bowels of their mother Earth
For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Op’nd into the Hill a spacious wound
And dig’d out ribs of Gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best
Deserve the pretious bane.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 679
71 Satan. Great acts require great means of enterprise,
Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,
A Carpenter thy Father known, thy self
Bred up in poverty and streights at home;
Lost in a Desert here and hunger-bit;
Which way or from what hope dost thou aspire
To greatness? when Authority deriv’st.
What Followers, what Retinue canst thou gain,
Or at thy heels the dizzy Multitude,
Longer then thou canst feed them on thy cost?
Money brings Honour, Friends, Conquest, and Realms;
What rais’d Antipater the Edomite,
And his Son Herod plac’d on Juda's Throne;
(Thy throne) but gold that got him puissant friends?
Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst arrive,
Get Riches first, get Wealth, and Treasure heap,
Not difficult, if thou hearken to me,
Riches are mine. Fortune is in my hand;
They whom | favour thrive in wealth amain,
While Virtue, Valour, Wisdom sit in want.
To whom thus Jesus patiently reply’d;
Yet Wealth without these three is impotent.
To gain dominion or to keep it gain’d.
Milton, Paradise Regained, II, 412
72 To assist every one who is needy far surpasses the
strength or profit of a private person, for the wealth of a
private person is altogether insufficient to supply such
wants. Besides, the power of any one man is too limited
for him to be able to unite every one with himself in
friendship. The care, therefore, of the poor is incumbent
on the whole of society and concerns only the general
profit.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix XVII
73 My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what
motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex,
disquiet, and weary themselves by engaging ina
confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring
their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what |
meant in saying they did it for hire. Whereupon | was at
much pains to describe to him the use of money, the
materials it was made of, and the value of the metals;
that when a Yahoo had got a great store of this precious
substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a
mind to; the finest cloathing, the noblest houses, great
tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks; and
have his choice of the most beautiful females. Therefore
since money alone, was able to perform all these feats,
our Yahoos thought, they could never have enough of it
to spend or to save, as they found themselves inclined
from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice.
That, the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man’s
labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in
proportion to the former. That, the bulk of our people was
forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small
wages, to make a few live plentifully.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 6
74 In all well-instituted Commonwealths, Care has been
taken to limit Men’s Possessions; which is done for many
Reasons, and among the rest, for one which perhaps is
not often considered, That when Bounds are set to Men’s
Desires, after they have acquired as much as the Laws
will permit them, their private Interest is at an End, and
they have nothing to do but to take care of the Publick.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
75 | have already computed the charge of nursing a
beggar’s child (in which list | reckon all cottagers,
labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two
shillings per annum, rags included.
Swift, A Modest Proposal
76 Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern
about that vast number of poor people who are aged,
diseased, or maimed, and | have been desired to employ
my thoughts on what course may be taken to ease the
nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But | am not in
the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well
known that they are every day dying, and rotting, by cold
and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be
reasonably expected. And as to the younger labourers,
they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They
cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of
nourishment to a degree that if at any time they are
accidentally hired to common labour, they have not
strength to perform it, and thus the country and
themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.
Swift, A Modest Proposal
77 The wisest man is the likeliest to possess all worldly
blessings in an eminent degree; for as that moderation
which wisdom prescribes is the surest way to useful
wealth, so can it alone qualify us to taste many pleasures.
The wise man gratifies every appetite and every passion,
while the fool sacrifices ail the rest to pall and satiate
one.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VI, 3
78 Matters are so constituted that "nothing out of nothing"
is not a truer maxim in physics than in politics; and every
man who is greatly destitute of money is on that account
entirely excluded from all means of acquiring it.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 2
79 What is the poor pride arising from a magnificent house,
a numerous equipage, a splendid table, and from all the
other advantages or appearances of fortune, compared to
the warm, solid content, the swelling satisfaction, the
thrilling transports, and the exulting triumphs, which a
good mind enjoys, in the contemplation of a generous,
virtuous, noble, benevolent action?
Fielding, Tom Jones, XII, 10
80 Where young ladies bring great fortunes themselves,
they have some right to insist on spending what is their
own; and on that account | have heard the gentlemen
Say, aman has sometimes a better bargain with a poor
wife, than with a rich one.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XIII, 6
81 There are two sorts of poor; those who are rendered such
by the severity of government: these are, indeed,
incapable of performing almost any great action, because
their indigence is a consequence of their slavery. Others
are poor, only because they either despise or know not
the conveniences of life; and these are capable of
accomplishing great things, because their poverty
constitutes a part of their liberty.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XX, 3
82 When the nation is poor, private poverty springs from the
general calamity, and is, if | may so express myself, the
general calamity itself. All the hospitals in the world
cannot cure this private poverty; on the contrary, the
spirit of indolence, which it constantly inspires, increases
the general, and consequently the private, misery.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIII, 29
83 Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the fault,
If Mem’ry o’er their Tomb no Trophies raise,
Where thro’ the long-drawn isle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust.
Or Flatt’ry sooth the dull cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or wak’d to extasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage.
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes,
Their lot forbad: nor circumscrib’d alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin’d;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide.
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard
84 If by luxury one understands everything that is beyond
the necessary, luxury is a natural consequence of the
progress of the human species; and to reason
consequently every enemy of luxury should believe with
Rousseau that the state of happiness and virtue for man
is that, not of the savage, but of the orang-outang. One
feels that it would be absurd to regard as an evil the
comforts which all men would enjoy: also, does one not
generally give the name of luxury to the superfluities
which only a small number of individuals can enjoy. In
this sense, luxury is a necessary consequence of
property, without which no society can subsist, and of a
great inequality between fortunes which is the
consequence, not of the right of property, but of bad
laws. Moralists should address their sermons to the
legislators, and not to individuals, because it is in the
order of possible things that a virtuous and enlightened
man may have the power to make reasonable laws, and it
is not in human nature for all the rich men of a country to
renounce through virtue procuring for themselves for
money the enjoyments of pleasure or vanity.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Luxury
85 Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth
could hardly consist in anything but lands and cattle, the
only real possessions men can have. But, when
inheritances so increased in number and extent as to
occupy the whole of the land, and to border on one
another, one man could aggrandise himself only at the
expense of another; at the same time the
supernumeraries, who had been too weak or too indolent
to make such acquisitions, and had grown poor without
sustaining any loss, because, while they saw everything
change around them, they remained still the same, were
obliged to receive their subsistence, or steal it, from the
rich; and this soon bred, according to their different
characters, dominion and slavery, or violence and rapine.
The wealthy, on their part, had no sooner begun to taste
the pleasure of command, than they disdained all others,
and, using their old slaves to acquire new, thought of
nothing but subduing and enslaving their neighbours;
like ravenous wolves, which, having once tasted human
flesh, despise every other food and thenceforth seek only
men to devour.
Thus, as the most powerful or the most miserable
considered their might or misery as a kind of right to the
possessions of others, equivalent, in their opinion, to that
of property, the destruction of equality was attended by
the most terrible disorders. USurpations by the rich,
robbery by the poor, and the unbridled passions of both,
suppressed the cries of natural compassion and the still
feeble voice of justice, and filled men with avarice,
ambition and vice.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
86 Destitute of valid reasons to justify and sufficient
strength to defend himself, able to crush individuals with
ease, but easily crushed himself by a troop of bandits,
one against all, and incapable, on account of mutual
jealousy, of joining with his equals against numerous
enemies united by the common hope of plunder, the rich
man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length the
profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this
was to employ in his favour the forces of those who
attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire
them with different maxims, and to give them other
institutions as favourable to himself as the law of nature
was unfavourable.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
87 Luxury, which cannot be prevented among men who are
tenacious of their own convenience and of the respect
paid them by others, soon completes the evil society had
begun, and, under the pretence of giving bread to the
poor, whom it should never have made such,
impoverishes all the rest and sooner or later depopulates
the State. Luxury is a remedy much worse than the
disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in itself the
greatest of all evils, for every State, great or small: for, in
order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it
creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and
the labourer; it is like those scorching winds, which,
covering the trees and plants with devouring insects,
deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread
famine and death wherever they blow.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Appendix
88 The losses of the poor are much harder to repair than
those of the rich, and... the difficulty of acquisition is
always greater in proportion as there is more need for it.
"Nothing comes out of nothing," is as true of life as in
physics: money is the seed of money, and the first guinea
is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second
million.
Rousseau, Political Economy
89 It is one of the misfortunes of the rich to be cheated on
all sides; what wonder they think ill of mankind! It is
riches that corrupt men, and the rich are rightly the first
to feel the defects of the only tool they know. Everything
is ill-done for them, except what they do themselves, and
they do next to nothing.
Rousseau, Emile, 1
90 In the prospect of poverty there is nothing but gloom and
melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its
miseries bring no alleviations; it is a state in which every
virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid
reproach; a state in which cheerfulness is insensibility,
and dejection sullenness, of which the hardships are
without honor, and the labors without reward.
Johnson, Rambler No. SS
91 Wealth is nothing in itself, it is not useful but when it
departs from us; its value is found only in that which it
can purchase, which, if we suppose it put to its best use
by those that possess it, seems not much to deserve the
desire or envy of a wise man. It is certain that, with
regard to corporal enjoyment, money can neither open
new avenues to pleasure, nor block up the passages of
anguish. Disease and infirmity still continue to torture
and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or
promoted by softness. With respect to the mind, it has
rarely been observed, that wealth contributes much to
quicken the discernment, enlarge the capacity, or elevate
the imagination; but may, by hiring flattery, or laying
diligence asleep, confirm errour, and harden stupidity.
Johnson, Rambler No. 58
92 Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances: it
is often concealed in splendour, and often in
extravagance. It is the care of a very great part of
mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest: they
support themselves by temporary expedients, and every
day is lost in contriving for the morrow.
Johnson, Rasselas, XXV
93 Has Heav’n reserv’d, in pity to the poor,
No pathless waste, or undiscover’d shore?
No secret island in the boundless main?
No peaceful desert yet unclaim’d by Spain?
Quick let us rise, the happy scats explore,
And bear Oppression’s insolence no more.
This mournful truth is ev’rywhere confess’d.
Slow rises worth, by poverty depress’d:
But here more slow, where all are slaves to gold,
Where looks are merchandise, and smiles are sold;
Where won by bribes, by flatteries implor’d,
The groom retails the favours of his lord.
Johnson, London, 169
94 Poverty takes away so many means of doing good, and
produces so much inability to resist evil, both natural and
moral, that it is by all virtuous means to be avoided.
Johnson, Letter to James Boswell (June 3, 1782)
95 Your economy, | Suppose, begins now to be settled; your
expences are adjusted to your revenue, and all your
people in their proper places. Resolve not to be poor;
whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy
to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it
makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely
difficult.
Johnson, Letter to James Boswell (Dec. 7, 1782)
96 Johnson. |n civilized society, external advantages make
us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back
meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 20, 1763)
97 Johnson. When | was running about this town a very poor
fellow, | was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty;
but | was, at the same time, very sorry to be poor.... All
the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as
no evil, shew it to be evidently a great evil. You never find
people labouring to convince you that you may live very
happily upon a plentiful fortune.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 20, 1763)
98 Johnson. (to Edwards,) "From your having practised the
law long. Sir, | presume you must be rich." Edwards. "No,
Sir; | got a good deal of money; but | had a number of
poor relations to whom | gave a great part of it." Johnson.
"Sir, you have been rich in the most valuable sense of the
word." Edwards. "But | shall not die rich." Johnson. "Nay,
sure. Sir, it is better to live rich than to die rich."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 17, 1778)
99 Though the wealth of a country should be very great, yet
if it has been long stationary, we must not expect to find
the wages of labour very high in it. The funds destined for
the payment of wages, the revenue and stock of its
inhabitants, may be of the greatest extent; but if they
have continued for several centuries of the same, or very
nearly of the same extent, the number of labourers
employed every year could easily supply, and even more
than supply, the number wanted the following year.
There could seldom be any scarcity of hands, nor could
the masters be obliged to bid against one another in
order to get them. The hands, on the contrary, would, in
this case, naturally multiply beyond their employment.
There would be a constant scarcity of employment, and
the labourers would be obliged to bid against one
another in order to get it. If in such a country the wages
of labour had ever been more than sufficient to maintain
the labourer, and to enable him to bring up a family, the
competition of the labourers and the interest of the
masters would soon reduce them to this lowest rate which
is consistent with common humanity.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 8
100 The liberal reward of labour... as it is the necessary
effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national
wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on
the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at
a stand, and their starving condition that they are going
fast backwards.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 8
101 Is.., improvement in the circumstances of the lower
ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as
an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at
first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and
workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part
of every great political society. But what improves the
circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded
as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely
be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of
the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity,
besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole
body of the people, should have such a share of the
produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably
well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 8
102 The whole annual produce of the land and labour of
every country, or what comes to the same thing, the
whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides
itself... into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of
labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue
to three different orders of people; to those who live by
rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by
profit. These are the three great, original, and constituent
orders of every civilised society, from whose revenue that
of every other order is ultimately derived.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 11
103 In all countries where there is tolerable security, every
man of common understanding will endeavour to employ
whatever stock he can command in procuring either
present enjoyment or future profit. If it is employed in
procuring present enjoyment, it is a stock reserved for
immediate consumption. If it is employed in procuring
future profit, it must procure this profit either by staying
with him, or by going from him. In the one case it is fixed,
in the other it is a circulating capital. A man must be
perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security,
does not employ all the stock which he commands,
whether it be his own or borrowed of other people, in
some one or other of those three ways.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, 1
104 Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by
prodigality and misconduct.
Whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to
his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining
an additional number of productive hands, or enables
some other person to do so, by lending it to him for an
interest, that is, for a share of the profits. As the capital of
an individual can be increased only by what he saves
from his annual revenue or his annual gains, so the
capital of a society, which is the same with that of all the
individuals who compose it, can be increased only in the
Same manner.
Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of
the increase of capital. Industry, indeed, provides the
subject which parsimony accumulates. But whatever
industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and
store up, the capital would never be the greater.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Il, 3
105 The revenue of an individual may be spent either in
things which are consumed immediately, and in which
one day’s expense can neither alleviate nor support that
of another, or it may be spent in things more durable,
which can therefore be accumulated, and in which every
day’s expense may, as he chooses, either alleviate or
support and heighten the effect of that of the following
day. A man of fortune, for example, may either spend his
revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in
maintaining a great number of menial servants and a
multitude of dogs and horses; or contenting himself with
a frugal table and few attendants he may lay out the
greater part of it in adorning his house or his country
villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in useful or
ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues,
pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels, baubles,
ingenious trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most
trifling of all in amassing a great wardrobe of fine clothes,
like the favourite and minister of a great prince who died
a few years ago. Were two men of equal fortune to spend
their revenue, the one chiefly in the one way, the other in
the other, the magnificence of the person whose expense
had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be
continually increasing, every day’s expense contributing
something to support and heighten the effect of that of
the following day; that of the other, on the contrary,
would be no greater at the end of the period than at the
beginning. The former, too, would, at the end of the
period, be the richer man of the two. He would have a
stock of goods of some kind or other, which, though it
might not be worth all that it cost, would always be worth
something. No trace or vestige of the expense of the
latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty
years profusion would be as completely annihilated as if
they had never existed.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Il, 3
106 The expense... that is laid out in durable commodities
gives maintenance, commonly, to a greater number of
people than that which is employed in the most profuse
hospitality. Of two or three hundredweight of provisions,
which may sometimes be served up at a great festival,
one half, perhaps, is thrown to the dunghill, and there is
always a great deal wasted and abused. But if the
expense of this entertainment had been employed in
setting to work masons, carpenters, upholsterers,
mechanics, etc., a quantity of provisions, of equal value,
would have been distributed among a still greater
number of people who would have bought them in
pennyworths and pound weights, and not have lost or
thrown away a single ounce of them. In the one way,
besides, this expense maintains productive, in the other
unproductive hands. In the one way, therefore, it
increases, in the other, it does not increase, the
exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land
and labour of the country.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Il, 3
107 To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either
by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary
quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to
attempt to increase the good cheer of private families by
obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen
utensils. As the expense of purchasing those unnecessary
utensils would diminish instead of increasing either the
quantity of goodness of the family provisions, so the
expense of purchasing an unnecessary quantity of gold
and silver must, in every country, as necessarily diminish
the wealth which feeds, clothes, and lodges, which
maintains and employs the people. Gold and silver,
whether in the shape of coin or of plate, are utensils, it
must be remembered, as much as the furniture of the
kitchen. Increase the use for them, increase the
consumable commodities which are to be circulated,
managed, and prepared by means of them, and you will
infallibly increase the quantity; but if you attempt, by
extraordinary means, to increase the quantity, you will as
infallibly diminish the use and even the quantity too,
which in those metals can never be greater than what the
use requires. Were they ever to be accumulated beyond
this quantity, their transportation is so easy, and the loss
which attends their lying idle and unemployed so great,
that no law could prevent their being immediately sent
out of the country.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, |
108 The produce of industry is what it adds to the subject or
materials upon which it is employed. In proportion as the
value of this produce is great or small, so will likewise be
the profits of the employer. But it is only for the sake of
profit that any man employs a capital in the support of
industry; and he will always, therefore, endeavour to
employ it in the support of that industry of which the
produce is likely to be of the greatest value, or to
exchange for the greatest quantity either of money or of
other goods.
But the annual revenue of every society is always
precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole
annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the
same thing with that exchangeable value. As every
individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both
to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry,
and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of
the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours
to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he
can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor Knows how much he is promoting it.
By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign
industry, he intends only his own security; and by
directing that industry in such a manner as its produce
may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own
gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his
intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society than it
was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he
frequently promotes that of the society more effectually
than when he really intends to promote it. | have never
known much good done by those who affected to trade
for the public good.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 2
109 The natural effort of every individual to better his own
condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and
security, is So powerful a principle that it is alone, and
without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on
the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting
a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly
of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though
the effect of these obstructions is always more or less
either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its
security.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 5
110 Every system which endeavours, either by extraordinary
encouragements to draw towards a particular species of
industry a greater share of the capital of the society that
what would naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary
restraints, force from a particular species of industry
some share of the capital which would otherwise be
employed in it, is in reality subversive of the great
purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of
accelerating, the progress of the society towards real
wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of
increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its
land and labour.
All systems either of preference or of restraint,
therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious
and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of
its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate
the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own
interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and
capital into competition with those of any other man, or
order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged
from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must
always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the
proper performance of which no human wisdom or
knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of
superintending the industry of private people, and of
directing it towards the employments most suitable to
the interest of the society. According to the system of
natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to
attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but
plain and intelligible to common understandings: first,
the duty of protecting the society from violence and
invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the
duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of
the society from the injustice or oppression of every other
member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact
administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of
erecting and maintaining certain public works and
certain public institutions which it can never be for the
interest of any individual, or small number of individuals,
to erect and maintain; because the profit could never
repay the expense to any individual or small number of
individuals, though it may frequently do much more than
repay it to a great society.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 9
111 The rich, in particular, are necessarily interested to
support that order of things which can alone secure them
in the possession of their own advantages. Men of inferior
wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the
possession of their property, in order that men of superior
wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of
theirs.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
112 Thirst, hunger, and nakedness are positive evils: but
wealth is relative; and a prince, who would be richina
private station, may be exposed by the increase of his
wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of poverty.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LX!
113 | am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my
expense, and my expense is equal to my wishes.
Gibbon, Autobiography
114 Among the voluntary modes of raising... contributions,
lotteries ought not to be allowed, because they increase
the number of those who are poor, and involve danger to
the public property. It may be asked whether the relief of
the poor ought to be administered out of current
contributions, so that every age should maintain its own
poor; or whether this were better done by means of
permanent funds and charitable institutions, such as
widow's’ homes, hospitals, etc.? And if the former method
is the better, it may also be considered whether the
means necessary are to be raised by a legal assessment
rather than by begging, which is generally nigh akin to
robbing. The former method must in reality be regarded
as the only one that is conformable to the right of the
state, which cannot withdraw its connection from any one
who has to live. For a legal current provision does not
make the profession of poverty a means of gain for the
indolent, as is to be feared is the case with pious
foundations when they grow with the number of the poor;
nor can it be charged with being an unjust or unrighteous
burden imposed by the government on the people.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
115 It may at first appear strange, but | believe it is true,
that | cannot by means of money raise a poor man and
enable him to live much better than he did before,
without proportionably depressing others in the same
class. If | retrench the quantity of food consumed in my
house, and give him what | have cut off, | then benefit
him, without depressing any but myself and family, who
perhaps, may be well able to bear it. If | turn up a piece of
uncultivated land and give him the produce, | then
benefit both him and all the members of the society,
because what he before consumed is thrown into the
common stock, and probably some of the new produce
with it. But if | only give him money, supposing the
produce of the country to remain the same, | give hima
title to a larger share of that produce than formerly,
which share he cannot receive without diminishing the
shares of others. It is evident that this effect, in individual
instances, must be so small as to be totally
imperceptible; but still it must exist, as many other
effects do which, like some of the insects that people the
air, elude our grosser perceptions.
Malthus, Population, V
116 Hard as it may appear in individual instances,
dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful. Such a
stimulus seems to be absolutely necessary to promote
the happiness of the great mass of mankind, and every
general attempt to weaken this stimulus, however
benevolent its apparent intention, will always defeat its
own purpose. If men are induced to marry from a prospect
of parish provision, with little or no chance of maintaining
their families in independence, they are not only unjustly
tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon
themselves and children, but they are tempted, without
knowing it, to injure all in the same class with
themselves. A laborer who marries without being able to
support a family may in some respects be considered as
an enemy to all his fellow-laborers.
Malthus, Population, V
117 The poor still have the needs common to civil society,
and yet since society has withdrawn from them the
natural means of acquisition and broken the bond of the
family—in the wider sense of the clan—-their poverty
leaves them more or less deprived of all the advantages
of society, of the opportunity of acquiring skill or
education of any kind, as well as of the administration of
justice, the public health services, and often even of the
consolations of religion, and so forth. The public authority
takes the place of the family where the poor are
concerned in respect not only of their immediate want
but also of laziness of disposition, malignity, and the
other vices which arise out of their plight and their sense
of wrong.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 241
118 When the standard of living of a large mass of people
falls below a certain subsistence level... and when there is
a consequent loss of the sense of right and wrong, of
honesty and the self-respect which makes a man insist on
maintaining himself by his own work and effort, the result
is the creation of a rabble of paupers. At the same time
this brings with it, at the other end of the social scale,
conditions which greatly facilitate the concentration of
disproportionate wealth in a few hands.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 244
119 Poverty in itself does not make men into a rabble; a
rabble is created only when there is joined to poverty a
disposition of mind, an inner indignation against the rich,
against society, against the government, etc. A further
consequence of this attitude is that through their
dependence on chance men become frivolous and idle,
like the Neapolitan /azzaroni for example. In this way
there is born in the rabble the evil of lacking self-respect
enough to secure subsistence by its own labour and yet
at the same time of claiming to receive subsistence as its
right. Against nature man can claim no right, but once
society is established, poverty immediately takes the
form of a wrong done to one class by another. The
important question of how poverty is to be abolished is
one of the most disturbing problems which agitate
modern society.
Hegel, Philosophy of Eighty Additions, Par. 244
120 It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limits which
reason should impose on the desire for wealth; for there is
no absolute or definite amount of wealth which will
satisfy a man. The amount is always relative, that is to
say, just So much as will maintain the proportion between
what he wants and what he gets; for to measure a man's
happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he
expects to get, is as futile as to try to express a fraction
which shall have a numerator but no denominator. A man
never feels the loss of things which it never occurs to him
to ask for; he is just as happy without them; whilst
another, who may have a hundred times as much, feels
miserable because he has not got the one thing he wants.
In fact, here too, every man has an horizon of his own,
and he will expect as much as he thinks it is possible for
him to get.
Schopenhauer, Property
121 The man who has been born into a position of wealth
comes to look upon it as something without which he
could no more live than he could live without air; he
guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a
lover of order, prudent and economical. But the man who
has been born into a poor position looks upon it as the
natural one, and if by any chance he comes in fora
fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be
enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can
get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less.
Schopenhauer, Property
122 As regards our own welfare, there are only two ways in
which we can use wealth. We can either spend it in
ostentatious pomp, and feed on the cheap respect which
our imaginary glory will bring us from the infatuated
crowd; or, by avoiding all expenditure that will do us no
good, we can let our wealth grow, so that we may havea
bulwark against misfortune and want that shall be
stronger and better every day.
Schopenhauer, Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms
123 In democratic countries, however opulent a man is
supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his
fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his
father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich
than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore
constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth,
and they naturally turn their attention to trade and
manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and
most efficient means of success. In this respect they
Share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same
necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of
all necessities, that of not sinking in the world.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 19
124 Men living in democratic times have many passions, but
most of their passions either end in the love of riches or
proceed from it. The cause of this is not that their souls
are narrower, but that the importance of money is really
greater at such times. When all the members of a
community are independent of or indifferent to each
other, the co-operation of each of them can be obtained
only by paying for it: this infinitely multiplies the
purposes to which wealth may be applied and increases
its value. When the reverence that belonged to what is
old has vanished, birth, condition, and profession no
longer distinguish men, or scarcely distinguish them;
hardly anything but money remains to create strongly
marked differences between them and to raise some of
them above the common level. The distinction
originating in wealth is increased by the disappearance
or diminution of all other distinctions. Among aristocratic
nations money reaches only to a few points on the vast
circle of man's desires; in democracies it seems to lead to
all.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 17
125 Brotherhood is Brotherhood or Death, but money always
will buy money’s worth; in the wreck of human
dubitations, this remains indubitable, that Pleasure is
pleasant. Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed
away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural
course, we arrive at Aristocracy of the Moneybag....
Apparently a still baser sort of Aristocracy? An infinitely
baser; the basest yet known.
Carlyle, French Revolution, IX, 7
126 To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the
masterworks and chief men of each race.
Emerson, Wealth
127 The world is his who has money to go over it.
Emerson, Wealth
128 The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces
denouncing the thirst for wealth; but if men should take
these moralists at their word and leave off aiming to be
rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards
this love of power in the people, lest civilization should
be undone.
Emerson, Wealth
129 Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the
orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate— debt,
which consumes so much time, which so cripples and
disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is
a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is
needed most by those who suffer from it most.
Emerson, Nature, V
130 Ah! if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!
Emerson, Nature
131 "My other piece of advice, Copperfield," said Mr.
Micawber, "you know. Annual income twenty pounds,
annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of
day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—an4d, in
short, you are forever floored. As | am!"
Dickens, David Copperfield, XII
132 Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts
of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive
hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to
luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more
simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient
philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a
class than which none has been poorer in outward riches,
none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It
is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do.
The same is true of the more modern reformers and
benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or
wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground
of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of
luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or
commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays
professors of philosophy, but not philosophers, Yet it is
admirable to profess because it was once admirable to
live.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
133 However mean your life is, meet it and live it- do not
shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
It looks purest when you are richest The faultfinder will
find faults even in paradise Love your life, poor as it is.
You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious
hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected
from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from
the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as
early in the spring. | do not see but a quiet mind may live
as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as
in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the
most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply
great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think
that they are above being supported by the town; but it
oftener happens that they are not above supporting
themselves by dishonest means, which should be more
disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like
sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things,
whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them.
Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and
keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want
society. If | were confined to a corner of a garret all my
days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me
while | had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said:
‘From an army of three divisions one can take away its
general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most
abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.’ Do
not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself
to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.
Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The
shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, ‘and
lo! creation widens to our view.' we are often reminded
that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus,
our aims must still be the same, and our means
essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in
your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and
newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the
most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled
to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and
the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is
sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man
loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is
not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
Thoreau, Walden: Conclusion
134 All ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid
abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a
great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to
recklessness in marriage.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
135 That some should be rich, shows that others may
become rich, and hence is just encouragement to
industry and enterprize.
Lincoln, Reply to N.Y Workingmen's ... Association (Mar.
21, 1864)
136 Use-values become a reality only by use or
consumption; they also constitute the substance of all
wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, I, 1
137 The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-
value, as yarn, for example, or boots. But, although boots
are, in one sense, the basis of all social progress, and our
capitalist is a decided "progressist," yet he does not
manufacture boots for their own sake. Use-value is, by no
means, the thing [which one values for its own sake] in
the production of commodities. Use-values are only
produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as, they
are the material substratum, the depositaries of
exchange-value. Our capitalist has two objects in view: in
the first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a
value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be
sold, a commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a
commodity whose value shall be greater than the sum of
the values of the commodities used in its production, that
is, of the means of production and the labour power, that
he purchased with his good money in the open market.
His aim is to produce not only a use-value, but a
commodity also; not only use-value, but value; not only
value, but at the same time surplus value.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, III, 7
138 The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that
preaches to the labourers the accommodation of their
number to the requirements of capital. The mechanism of
capitalist production and accumulation constantly effects
this adjustment. The first word of this adaptation is the
creation of a relative surplus population, or industrial
reserve army. Its last word is the misery of constantly
extending strata of the active army of labour, and the
dead weight of pauperism.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vil, 25
139 Accumulation of wealth at one pole is...at the same time
accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,
brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e.,
on the side of the class that produces its own product in
the form of capital.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vil, 25
140 The intimate connection between the pangs of hunger
of the most industrious layers of the working class, and
the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the
rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis,
reveals itself only when the economic laws are known. It
is otherwise with the "housing of the poor." Every
unprejudiced observer sees that the greater the
centralization of the means of production, the greater is
the corresponding heaping together of the labourers
within a given space; that therefore, the swifter
capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the
dwellings of the working people, "Improvements" of
towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the
demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces
for banks, warehouses, etc., the widening of streets for
business traffic, for the carriages of luxury, and for the
introduction of tramways, etc., drive away the poor into
even worse and more crowded hiding-places.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vil, 25
141 The Irish famine of 1846 killed more them a million
people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the
country it did not the slightest damage.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vil, 25
142 In order to oppress a class certain conditions must be
assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its
slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom,
raised himself to membership in the commune, just as
the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism,
managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern
labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the
progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the
conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a
pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than
population and wealth.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
143 It is argued that whoever does the best he can, deserves
equally well, and ought not in justice to be putina
position of inferiority for no fault of his own; that superior
abilities have already advantages more than enough, in
the admiration they excite, the personal influence they
command, and the internal sources of satisfaction
attending them, without adding to these a superior share
of the world’s goods; and that society is bound in justice
rather to make compensation to the less favoured, for this
unmerited inequality of advantages, than to aggravate it.
On the contrary side it is contended, that society receives
more from the more efficient labourer; that his services
being more useful, society owes him a larger return for
them; that a greater share of the joint result is actually
his work, and not to allow his claim to it is a kind of
robbery; that if he is only to receive as much as others,
he can only be justly required to produce as much, and to
give a smaller amount of time and exertion, proportioned
to his superior efficiency.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
144 It is essential to the idea of wealth to be susceptible of
accumulation: things which cannot, after being produced,
be kept for some time before being used, are never, |
think, regarded as wealth, since however much of them
may be produced and enjoyed, the person benefited by
them is no richer, is nowise improved in circumstances.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, III, 3
145 Neither now nor in former ages have the nations
possessing the best climate and soil, been either the
richest or the most powerful; but (in so far as regards the
mass of the people) generally among the poorest,
though, in the midst of poverty, probably on the whole
the most enjoying. Human life in those countries can be
supported on so little, that the poor seldom suffer from
anxiety, and in climates in which mere existence is a
pleasure, the luxury which they prefer is that of repose.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, Vil, 3
146 Even in a progressive state of capital, in old countries, a
conscientious or prudential restraint on population is
indispensable, to prevent the increase of numbers from
outstripping the increase of capital, and the condition of
the classes who are at the bottom of society from being
deteriorated. Where there is not, in the people, or in some
very large proportion of them, a resolute resistance to
this deterioration—a determination to preserve an
established standard of comfort—the condition of the
poorest class sinks, even in a progressive state, to the
lowest point which they will consent to endure.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV, VI, 1
147 Whereas it has long been known and declared that the
poor have no right to the property of the rich, | wish it
also to be known and declared that the rich have no right
to the property of the poor.
Ruskin, Unto This Last, III, 54
148 There is no wealth but life. That country is the richest
which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy
human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected
the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the
widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of
his possessions, over the lives of others.
Ruskin, Unto This Last, IV, 77
149 Never did people believe anything more firmly, than
nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe
that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so
very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by
means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard
wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter
of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but
really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for
this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture,
the whole world, the future as well as the present, would
inevitably belong to the Philistines.
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, |
150 Father Zossima. | don’t deny that there is sin in the
peasants too. And the fire of corruption is spreading
visibly, hourly, working from above downwards, The spirit
of isolation is coming upon the people too. Money-lenders
and devourers of the commune are rising up. Already the
merchant grows more and more eager for rank, and
strives to show himself cultured though he has not a
trace of culture, and to this end meanly despises his old
traditions, and is even ashamed of the faith of his fathers.
He visits princes, though he is only a peasant corrupted.
The peasants are rotting in drunkenness and cannot
Shake off the habit. And what cruelty to their wives, to
their children even! All from drunkenness! I’ve seen in
the factories children of nine years old, frail, rickety, bent
and already depraved. The stuffy workshop, the din of
machinery, work all day long, the vile language and the
drink, the drink—is that what a little child’s heart needs?
He needs sunshine, childish play, good examples all
about him, and at least a little love.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, Vl, 3
151 Father Zossima. |I've been struck all my life in our great
people by their dignity, their true and seemly dignity. I've
seen it myself, | can testify to it, l’ve seen it and
marvelled at it, I’ve seen it in spite of the degraded sins
and poverty-stricken appearance of our peasantry. They
are not servile, and even after two centuries of serfdom
they are free in manner and bearing, yet without
insolence, and not revengeful and not envious. "You are
rich and noble, you are clever and talented, well, be so,
God bless you. | respect you, but | know that | too ama
man. By the very fact that | respect you without envy |
prove my dignity as a man."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, Vl, 3
152 If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous,
he will not bite you. This is the principal difference
between a dog and aman.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, XVI
153 The parts of our wealth most intimately ours are those
which are saturated with our labor. There are few men
who would not feel personally annihilated if a life-long
construction of their hands or brains—say an
entomological collection or an extensive work in
manuscript—were suddenly swept away. The miser feels
similarly towards his gold, and although it is true that a
part of our depression at the loss of possessions is due to
our feeling that we must now go without certain goods
that we expected the possessions to bring in their train,
yet in every case there remains, over and above this, a
sense of the shrinkage of our personality, a partial
conversion of ourselves to nothingness, which is a
psychological phenomenon by itself. We are all at once
assimilated to the tramps and poor devils whom we so
despise, and at the same time removed farther than ever
away from the happy sons of earth who lord it over land
and sea and men in the full-blown lustihood that wealth
and power can give, and before whom, stiffen ourselves
as we will by appealing to anti-snobbish first principles,
we cannot escape an emotion, open or sneaking, of
respect and dread.
William James, Psychology, X
154 Poverty indeed is the strenuous life,—without brass
bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or
circumlocutions.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XIV-XV
155 The praises of poverty need once more to be boldly
sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We
despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify
and save his inner life. If he does not join the general
scramble and pant with the money-making street, we
deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost
the power even of imagining what the ancient
idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation
from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the
manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are
or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away
our life at any moment irresponsibly—the more athletic
trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XIV-XV
156 In the millionaire Undershaft | have represented a man
who has become intellectually and spiritually as well as
practically conscious of the irresistible natural truth
which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the
greatest of our evils, and the worst of our crimes is
poverty, and that our first duty, to which every other
consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor. "Poor
but honest," "the respectable poor," and such phrases are
as intolerable and as immoral as "drunken but amiable,"
“fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker," "splendidly
criminal," or the like.... The thoughtless wickedness with
which we scatter sentences of imprisonment, torture in
the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and flogging, on
moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing
compared to the silly levity with which we tolerate
poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy
people or else a virtue to be embraced as St Francis
embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is
drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him
be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure
science instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If
he chooses to spend his urban eighteen shillings a week
or his agricultural thirteen shillings a week on his beer
and his family instead of saving it up for his old age, let
him be poor. Let nothing be done for "the undeserving":
let him be poor. Serve him right! Also—somewhat
inconsistently—blessed are the poor!
Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means
let him be weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a
nucleus of disease. Let him be a standing exhibition and
example of ugliness and dirt. Let him have rickety
children. Let him be cheap and let him drag his fellows
down to his own price by selling himself to do their work.
Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous
congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect our young
men with the diseases of the streets, and his sons
revenge him by turning the nation’s manhood into
scrofula, cowardice, cruelty, hypocrisy, political
imbecility, and all the other fruits of oppression and
malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still less
deserving; and let the deserving lay up for himself, not
treasures in heaven, but horrors in hell upon earth. This
being so, is it really wise to let him be poor?
Shaw, Major Barbara, Pref.
157 All capital... is nothing but spare subsistence. It is the
superfluous part of a man’s income—that which he is
content not to consume, or can easily be persuaded to
forego for the present for the sake of some future
advantage. Thus capital has been called "the reward of
abstinence"; and though the phrase has fallen into
general ridicule through its absurd and hypocritical
implication that the quantity of capital saved by any
person is in direct proportion to their powers of virtuous
self-denial, yet if we substitute "result" for "reward," and
strip the word "abstinence" of its moral implication, we
can accept the definition as practically true. Capital,
then, is the result of abstinence. If a man wants a flour
mill, he must save the cost of building it and fitting it up
out of his income. If he wishes to maintain it, he must not
spend on his immediate personal satisfaction all that it
brings him in, but must set aside a certain sum annually
to make good the wear and tear of the millstones and
machinery. If he desires to enlarge the mill, to put in
additional pairs of stones, to substitute steam power for
water power, or to introduce the steel roller system
method of grinding, he must abstain from consuming the
cost of these things in personal expenditure. The
accumulation and maintenance of capital is possible in
no other way. Abstinence is the inevitable condition.
Shaw, Capital and Wages
158 Unfortunately, the poor man suffers much less from
poverty than the community does, just as a man who
never washes his clothes is unbearable to his neighbor
though quite tolerable to himself. It is positively
delightful to be naked in warm weather; we are forced to
dress for the sake of our neighbors against our own
inclinations. A destitute man depresses his neighbors,
defiles his dwelling, becomes a centre of infection,
depraves morals: is, in short, a scandal. We may take it
then that a man will not be allowed to be poor, whatever
other indulgence may be extended to him.
Shaw, Redistribution of Income
159 Why do we, in fact, almost all of us, desire to increase
our incomes? It may seem, at first sight, as though
material goods were what we desire. But, in fact, we
desire these mainly in order to impress our neighbours.
When a man moves into a larger house in a more genteel
quarter, he reflects that "better" people will call on his
wife and some unprosperous cronies of former days can
be dropped. When he sends his son to a good school or
an expensive university, he consoles himself for the
heavy fees by thoughts of the social kudos to be gained.
In every big city, whether of Europe or of America, houses
in some districts are more expensive than equally good
houses in other districts, merely because they are more
fashionable, One of the most powerful of all our passions
is the desire to be admired and respected. As things
stand, admiration and respect are given to the man who
seems to be rich. This is the chief reason why people wish
to be rich. The actual goods purchased by their money
play quite a secondary part.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, VI
160 Wealth must justify itself in happiness.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 3
11.3 Labor
Labor, or what is sometimes called "work" and sometimes
called "toil," is considered in most of the texts here quoted
as that form of human activity which is productive of wealth
—either consumable goods or the means of production.
Some writers explicitly distinguish it from, as well as relate it
to, such other modes of activity as play or recreation and the
creative pursuits of leisure that have nothing to do with the
production of economic goods.
Beginning with the famous passage in Genesis, in which
Adam, expelled from Eden, is condemned to live by the
sweat of his brow, the pain of toil or labor is discussed by a
succession of Christian writers as one of the punishments for
sin. This is balanced by another line of texts in which the
satisfactions of work and the dignity of labor are
emphasized. But labor is nowhere praised as the be-all and
end-all of human life. The need to alleviate the fatigues, if
not the pains, of toil are acknowledged, and for this
therapeutic purpose play or recreation is recommended.
The division of labor and its effect on increased efficiency
in the production of wealth is a favorite theme of modern
economists, but there are anticipations of it in earlier
writers, even as far back as Plato.
The economists, as well as others, are also concerned
with the wages of labor and with the special role that labor
plays in the creation of economic value. The passages
quoted here from Marx, which state his "labor theory of
value," i.e., that labor is the sole productive source of
wealth, should be contrasted with the passages quoted from
Locke in Section 11.1 above, which state his "labor theory of
property," i.e., that labor is the indispensable condition of a
rightful acquisition of wealth.
The reader will find the tripartite distinction of work, play,
and leisure more fully discussed in certain passages
included in Section 9.8 on Happiness. The conception of
work as a punishment for sin will be found in Section 20.13
on Sin and Temptation.
1 In the sweat of thy face shaft thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground.
Genesis 3:19
2 Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the
evening.
Psalm 104:23
3 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be
wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her
food in the harvest.
How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou
arise out of thy sleep?
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the
hands to sleep:
So shall thy poverty come as one that travel-leth, and
thy want as an armed man.
Proverbs 6:6-11
4 | looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and
on the labour that | had laboured to do: and, behold, all
was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit
under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 2:11
5 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;
for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor
wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
Ecclesiastes 9:10
6 Still on the sluggard hungry want attends;
The scorn of man, the hate of Heaven impends;
While he, averse from labour, drags his days,
Yet greedy on the gains of others preys;
E’en as the stingless drones devouring seize
With glutted sloth the harvest of the bees.
Love every seemly toil, that so the store
Of foodful seasons heap thy garner’s floor.
From labour, men returns of wealth behold,
Flocks in their fields, and in their coffers gold:
From labour shaft thou with the love be bless’d
Of men and gods; the slothful they detest.
Not toil, but sloth, shall ignominious be;
Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee;
Shall view thy growing wealth with alter’d sense,
For glory, virtue, walk with opulence.
Hesiod, Works and Days
7 Amasis. Bowmen bend their bows when they wish to
shoot; unbrace them when the shooting is over.
Were they kept always strung they would break, and
fail the archer in time of need. So it is with men. If they
give themselves constantly to serious work, and never
indulge awhile in pastime or sport, they lose their senses,
and become mad or moody.
Herodotus, History, Il, 173
8 Socrates. We are not all alike; there are diversities of
natures among us which are adapted to different
occupations.
Adeimantus. Very true.
And will you have a work better done when the
workman has many occupations, or when he has only
one?
When he has only one.
Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt
when not done at the right time?
No doubt.
For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of
the business is at leisure; but the doer must follow up
what he is doing, and make the business his first object.
He must.
And if so, we must infer that all things are produced
more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when
one man does one thing which is natural to him and does
it at the right time, and leaves other things.
Plato, Republic, Il, 370A
9 Socrates says that a state is made up of four sorts of
people who are absolutely necessary; these are a weaver,
a husbandman, a shoemaker, and a builder; afterwards,
finding that they are not enough, he adds a smith, and
again a herdsman, to look after the necessary animals;
then a merchant, and then a retail trader. All these
together form the complement of the first state, as ifa
state were established merely to supply the necessaries
of life, rather than for the sake of the good, or stood
equally in need of shoemakers and of husbandmen. But
he does not admit into the state a military class until the
country has increased in size, and is beginning to
encroach on its neighbour’s land, whereupon they go to
war. Yet even amongst his four original citizens, or
whatever be the number of those whom he associates in
the state, there must be some one who will dispense
justice and determine what is just. And as the soul may
be said to be more truly part of an animal than the body,
so the higher parts of states, that is to say, the warrior
class, the class engaged in the administration of justice,
and that engaged in deliberation, which is the special
business of political common sense,—these are more
essential to the state than the parts which minister to the
necessaries of life. Whether their several functions are
the functions of different citizens, or of the same,—for it
may often happen that the same persons are both
warriors and husbandmen,—is immaterial to the
argument.
Aristotle, Politics, 1291a11
10 Let us consider trade and other occupations. Which ones
befit a gentleman and which are beneath him, we have
generally been taught as follows. First, any occupation is
to be rejected if it incurs public ill-will, such as tax-
collecting and usury. Also unfit for gentlemen are those
jobs done by hired workmen, whom we pay for manual
labor only and not for artistic skill. Their very wage isa
token of their slavery. We also consider vulgar those who
buy from wholesale agents to sell at retail. They would
make no profit without a good deal of outright lying. And
there is nothing more base than misrepresentation.
Mechanics also pursue a common calling, because there
can be nothing liberal about a workshop....
But those professions that cal! for a higher level of
intelligence and which confer some benefit on society,
such as medicine and architecture, are proper for those
whose social position they become. Commerce on a small
scale is contemptible. But a wholesale business on a large
scale, importing great quantities of goods from all over
the world and purveying them without deceit, cannot be
disparaged. It may, in fact, deserve the highest respect, if
those who engage in it, when they have made their
fortune, forsake the harbours for a country estate, just as
they have often gone from sea to port. But of all
occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than
agriculture. None is more profitable, delightful, or
becoming a free man.
Cicero, Di Offtciis, |, 42
11 Then saws were toothed, and sounding axes made;
(For wedges first did yielding wood invade);
And various arts in order did succeed,
(What cannot endless labour, urged by need?)
Virgil, Georgies, |
12 The laborer is worthy of his hire.
Luke 10:7
13 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him
labour, working with his hands the thing which is good,
that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Ephesians 4:28
14 Yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we
behaved not ourselves disorderly among you;
Neither did we cat any man’s bread for nought; but
wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we
might not be chargeable to any of you.
Il Thessalonians 3:7-8
15 One of the greatest and highest blessings Lycurgus
procured his people was the abundance of leisure which
proceeded from his forbidding to them the exercise of any
mean and mechanical trade. Of the money-making that
depends on troublesome going about and seeing people
and doing business, they had no need at all in a state
where wealth obtained no honour or respect. The Helots
tilled their ground for them, and paid them yearly in kind
the appointed quantity, without any trouble of theirs. To
this purpose there goes a story of a Lacedaemonian who,
happening to be at Athens when the courts were sitting,
was told of a citizen that had been fined for living an idle
life, and was being escorted home in much distress of
mind by his condoling friends; the Lacedaemonian was
much surprised at it and desired his friend to show him
the man who was condemned for living Ukc a freeman. So
much beneath them did they esteem the frivolous
devotion of time and attention to the mechanical arts and
to money-making.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
16 He who labors as he prays lifts his heart to God with his
hands.
Bernard of Clairvaux, Ad Sororem
17 Not everyone sins that works not with his hands, because
those precepts of the natural law which regard the good
of the many are not binding on each individual, but it
suffices that one person apply himself to this business
and another to that; for instance, that some be craftsmen,
others husbandmen, others judges, and others teachers,
and so forth.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 187,3
18 Being is something we hold dear, and being consists in
movement and action. Wherefore each man in some sort
exists in his work.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
19 Prince. |f all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, I, ti, 227
20 No kind of men love business for itself but those that are
learned; for other persons love it for profit, as an hireling,
that loves the work for the wages; or for honour, as
because it beareth them up m the eyes of men, and
refresheth their reputation, which otherwise would wear;
or because it putteth them in mind of their fortune, and
giveth them occasion to pleasure and displeasure; or
because it exerciseth some faculty wherein they take
pride, and so entertaineth them in good humour and
pleasing conceits toward themselves; or because it
advanceth any other their ends. So that as it is said of
untrue valours, that some men’s valours are in the eyes
of them that look on; so such men’s industries are in the
eyes of others, or at least in regard of their own
designments: only learned men love business as an
action according to nature, as agreeable to health of
mind as exercise is to health of body, taking pleasure in
the action itself, and not in the purchase: so that of all
men they are the most indefatigable, if it be towards any
business which can hold or detain their mind.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, 11, 5
21 Whereas many men, by accident inevitable, become
unable to maintain themselves by their labour, they
ought not to be left to the charity of private persons, but
to be provided for, as far forth as the necessities of nature
require, by the laws of the Commonwealth. For as it is
uncharitableness in any man to neglect the impotent; so
it is in the sovereign of a Commonwealth, to expose them
to the hazard of such uncertain charity.
But for such as have strong bodies the case is
otherwise; they are to be forced to work; and to avoid the
excuse of not finding employment, there ought to be
such laws as may encourage all manner of arts; as
navigation, agriculture, fishing, and all manner of
manufacture that requires labour.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 30
22 Eve. Adam, well may we labour still to dress
This Garden, still to tend Plant, Herb and Flour.
Our pleasant task enjoyn’d, but till more hands
Aid us, the work under our labour grows,
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind.
One night or two with wanton growth derides
Tending to wilde. Thou therefore now advise
Or hear what to my mind first thoughts present,
Let us divide our labours, thou where choice
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind
The Woodbine round this Arbour, or direct
The clasping Ivie where to climb, while |
In yonder Spring of Roses intermixt
With Myrtle, find what to redress till Noon:
For while so near each other thus all day
Our task we choose, what wonder if so near
Looks intervene and smiles, or object new
Casual discourse draw on, which intermits
Our dayes work brought to little, though begun
Early, and th’ hour of Supper comes unearn’d.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 205
23 It [is not] so strange as, perhaps, before consideration, it
may appear, that the property of labour should be able to
overbalance the community of land, for it is labour
indeed that puts the difference of value on everything;
and let anyone consider what the difference is between
an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with
wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in
common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find
that the improvement of labour makes the far greater
part of the value. | think it will be but a very modest
compulation to say, that of the products of the earth
useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of
labour. Nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they
come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about
them—what in them is purely owing to Nature and what
to labour—we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine
hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 40
24 It is labour... which puts the greatest part of value upon
land, without which it would scarcely be svorth anything;
it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful
products; for all that the straw’, bran, bread, of that acre
of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of as
good land which lies waste is all the effect of labour. For it
is not barely the ploughman’s pains, the reaper’s and
thresher’s toil, and the baker’s sweat, is to be counted
into the bread we cat; the labour of those who broke the
oxen, who digged and wrought the iron and stones, who
felled and framed the timber employed about the plough,
mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number,
requisite to this corn, from its .sowing to its being made
bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and
received as an effect of that; Nature and the earth
furnished only the almost worthless materials as in
themselves. It would be a strange catalogue of things
that industry’ provided and made use of about every loaf
of bread before it came to our use if we could trace them;
iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals,
lime, cloth, dyeing-drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all
the materials made use of in the ship that brought any of
the commodities made use of by any of the workmen, to
any part of the work, all which it would be almost
impossible, at least too long, to reckon up.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 43
25 No labour is so heavy but it may be brought to a level
with the workman ’s strength, when regulated by equity,
and not by avarice. The violent fatigues which slaves are
made to undergo in other parts may be supplied by a
skilful use of ingenious machines.... Possibly there is not
that climate upon earth where the most laborious
services might not with proper encouragement be
performed by freemen. Bad laws having made lazy men,
they have been reduced to slavery because of their
laziness.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XV, 8
26 The machines designed to abridge art are not always
useful. If a piece of workmanship is of a moderate price,
such as is equally agreeable to the maker and the buyer,
those machines which would render the manufacture
more simple, or, in other words, diminish the number of
workmen, would be pernicious. And if water-mills were
not everywhere established, | should not have believed
them so useful as is pretended, because they have
deprived an infinite multitude of their employment, a
vast number of persons of the use of water, and great
part of the land of its fertility.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIII, 15
27 Pangloss. When man was placed in the garden of Eden,
he was placed there, ... to cultivate it; which proves that
mankind are not created to be idle.
Voltaire, Candide, XXX
28 From the moment one man began to stand in need of the
help of another; from the moment it appeared
advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions
for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced,
work became indispensable, and vast forests became
smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of
his brow, and where slavery and misery were soon seen to
germinate and grow up with the crops.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
29 Equality might have been sustained, had the talents of
individuals been equal, and had, for example, the use of
iron and the consumption of commodities always exactly
balanced each other; but, as there was nothing to
preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed; the
strongest did most work; the most skilful turned his
labour to best account; the most ingenious devised
methods of diminishing his labour: the husbandman
wanted more iron, or the smith more corn, and, while
both laboured equally, the one gained a great deal by his
work, while the other could hardly support himself. Thus
natural inequality unfolds itself insensibly with that of
combination, and the difference between men, developed
by their different circumstances, becomes more sensible
and permanent in its effects, and begins to have an
influence, in the same proportion, over the lot of
individuals.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
30 What if | should undertake to show humanity attacked in
its very source, and even in the most sacred of all tics, in
which fortune is consulted before nature, and, the
disorders of society confounding all virtue and vice,
continence becomes a criminal precaution, and a refusal
to give life to a fellow-creature, an act of humanity? But,
without drawing aside the veil which hides all these
horrors, let us content ourselves with pointing out the evil
which others will have to remedy.
To all this add the multiplicity of unhealthy trades,
which shorten men's lives or destroy their bodies, such as
working in the mines, and the preparing of metals and
minerals, particularly lead copper, mercury, cobalt, and
arsenic: add those other dangerous trades which are
daily fatal to many tilers, carpenters, masons and miners:
put all these together and we can sec, in the
establishment and perfection of societies, the reasons for
that diminution of our species, which has been noticed by
many philosophers.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Appendix
31 It is allowed that vocations and employments of least
dignity are of the most apparent use, that the meanest
artisan or manufacturer contributes more to the
accommodation of life than the profound scholar and
argumentative theorist, and that the public would suffer
less present inconvenience from the banishment of
philosophers than from the extinction of any common
trade.
Johnson, Rambler No. 145
32 Johnson. "Why, Sir, you cannot call that pleasure [that is,
labor] to which all are averse, and which none begin but
with the hope of leaving off; a thing which men dislike
before they have tried it, and when they have tried it."
Boswell. "But, Sir, the mind must be employed, and we
grow weary when idle." /ohnson. "That is, Sir, because,
others being busy, we want company; but if we were all
idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all
entertain one another. There is, indeed, this in trade:—it
gives men an opportunity of improving their situation. If
there were no trade, many who are poor would always
remain poor. But no man loves labour for itself." Boswell.
"Yes, Sir, | Know a person who does. He is a very laborious
Judge, and he loves the labour." Johnson. "Sir, that is
because he loves respect and distinction. Could he have
them without labour, he would like it less." Boswell. "He
tells me he likes it for itself."—"Why, Sir, he fancies so,
because he is not accustomed to abstract."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct 26,1769)
33 The greatest improvement in the productive powers of
labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and
judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied,
seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
[These] effects ... in the general business of society, will
be more easily understood by considering in what
manner it [labour] operates in some particular
manufactures. ... To take an example, therefore, from a
very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of
labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of
the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business
(which the division of labour has rendered a distinct
trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery
employed in it (to the invention of which the same
division of labour has probably given occasion), could
scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin
in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the
way in which this business is now carried on, not only the
whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a
number of branches, of which the greater part are
likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire,
another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a
fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make
the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put
it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another;
it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and
the important business of making a pin is, in this manner,
divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in
some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands,
though in others the same man will sometimes perform
two or three of them. | have seen a small manufactory of
this kind where ten men only were employed, and where
some of them consequently performed two or three
distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and
therefore but indifferently accommodated with the
necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted
themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of
pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four
thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons,
therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight
thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a
tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be
considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins
in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and
independently, and without any of them having been
educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could
not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin
in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and
fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth
part of what they are at present capable of performing, in
consequence of a proper division and combination of
their different operations.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 1
34 In the first fire-engines, a boy was constantly employed
to open and shut alternately the communication between
the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either
ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to
play with his companions, observed that, by tying a
string from the handle of the valve which opened this
communication to another part of the machine, the valve
would open and shut without his assistance, and leave
him at liberty to divert himself with his play-fellows. One
of the greatest improvements that has been made upon
this machine, since it was first invented, was in this
manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his
own labour.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 1
35 When the division of labour has been once thoroughly
established, it is but a very small part of a man’s wants
which the produce of his own labour can supply. He
supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that
surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is
over and above his own consumption, for such parts of
the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for.
Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some
measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be
what is properly a commercial society.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 4
36 Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for
several days together, is in most men naturally followed
by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by
force or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It
is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by
some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but
sometimes, too, of dissipation and diversion.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 8
37 Custom everywhere regulates fashion. As it is ridiculous
not to dress, so is it, in some measure, not to be
employed, like other people. As a man of a civil
profession seems awkward in a camp or a garrison, and is
even in some danger of being despised there, so does an
idle man among men of business.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 9
38 There is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the
subject upon which it is bestowed: there is another which
has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value,
may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour.
Thus the labour of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the
value of the materials which he works upon, that of his
own maintenance, and of his master’s profit. The labour
of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of
nothing.... The labour of the latter, however, has its value,
and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. But
the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realizes itself in
some particular subject or vendible commodity, which
lasts for some time at least after that labour is past. It is,
as it were, a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored
up to be employed, if necessary, upon some other
occasion. That subject, or what is the same thing, the
price of that subject, can afterwards, if necessary, put
into motion a quantity of labour equal to that which had
originally produced it. The labour of the menial servant,
on the contrary, does not fix or realize itself in any
particular subject or vendible commodity. His services
generally perish in the very instant of their performance,
and seldom leave any trace or value behind them for
which an equal quantity of service could afterwards be
procured.
The labour of some of the most respectable orders in
the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive
of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any
permanent subject; or vendible commodity, which
endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal
quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The
sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice
and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy,
are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the
public, and are maintained by a part of the annual
produce of the industry of other people. Their service,
how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever,
produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service
can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and
defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour
this year will not purchase its protection, security, and
defence for the year to come. In the same class must be
ranked, some both of the gravest and most important,
and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen,
lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players,
buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc.
The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value,
regulated by the very same principles which regulate
that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest
and most useful, produces nothing which could
afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of
labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of
the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of
them perishes in the very instant of its production.
Both productive and unproductive labourers, and
those who do not labour at all, are all equally maintained
by the annual produce of the land and labour of the
country. This produce, how great soever, can never be
infinite, but must have certain limits. According,
therefore, as a smaller or greater proportion of it is in any
one year employed in maintaining unproductive hands,
the more in the one case and the less in the other will
remain for the productive, and the next year’s produce
will be greater or smaller accordingly; the whole annual
produce, if we except the spontaneous productions of the
earth, being the effect of productive labour.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Il, 3
39 In the progress of the division of labour, the employment
of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is,
of the great body of the people, comes to be confined toa
few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But
the understandings of the greater part of men are
necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The
man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple
operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the
same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert
his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding
out expedients for removing difficulties which never
occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such
exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant
as it h possible for a human creature to become. The
torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of
relishing or bearing a pan in any rational conversation,
but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender
sentiment, and consequently of forming any just
judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of
private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his
country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless
very particular pains have been taken to render him
otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his
country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life
naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes
him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and
adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity
of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his
strength with vigour and perseverance in any other
employment than that to which he has been bred. His
dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this
manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual,
social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and
civilised society this is the state into which the labouring
poor, that is, the great body of the people, must
necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to
prevent it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
40 The brethren (of the ancient monasteries] were
supported by their manual labour; and the duty of labour
was strenuously recommended as a penance, as an
exercise, and as the most laudable means of securing
their daily subsistence. The garden and fields, which the
industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest
or the morass, were diligently cultivated by their hands.
They performed, without reluctance, the menial offices of
slaves and domestics; and the several trades that were
necessary to provide their habits, their utensils, and their
lodging, were exercised within the precincts of the great
monasteries.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVII
41 All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division
of labour, namely, when, instead of one man doing
everything, each confines himself to a certain kind of
work distinct from others in the treatment it requires, so
as to be able to perform it with greater facility and in the
greatest perfection. Where the different kinds of work are
not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-
of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the
greatest barbarism.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, Pref.
42 There is no real wealth but the labor of man. Were the
mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world
would not be one grain of com the richer; no one comfort
would be added to the human race.
Shelley, Queen Mab, Notes
43 The means of acquiring and preparing the particularized
means appropriate to our similarly particularized needs is
work. Through work the raw material directly supplied by
nature is specifically adapted to these numerous ends by
all sorts of different processes. Now this formative change
confers value on means and gives them their utility, and
hence man in what he consumes is mainly concerned
with the products of men. It is the products of human
effort which man consumes.
Hegel, Philosophy of Rights 196
44 The universal and objective element in work, on the
other hand, lies in the abstracting process which effects
the subdivision of needs and means and thereby eo /pso
subdivides production and brings about the division of
labour. By this division, the work of the individual
becomes less complex, and consequently his skill at his
section of the Job increases, like his output. At the same
time, this abstraction of one man’s skill and means of
production from another’s completes and makes
necessary everywhere the dependence of men on one
another and their reciprocal relation in the satisfaction of
their other needs. Further, the abstraction of one man’s
production from another’s makes work more and more
mechanical, until finally man is able to step aside and
install machines in his place.
Hegel, Philosophy of Eighty 198
45 When a regular division of employments has spread
through any society, the social state begins to acquire a
consistency and stability which place it out of danger
from particular divergencies.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, VI, 5
46 When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged
in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his
work with singular dexterity; but at the same time he
loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the
direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit
and less industrious; so that it may be said of him that in
proportion as the workman improves, the man is
degraded. What can be expected of a man who has spent
twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? And to
what can that mighty human intelligence which has so
often stirred the world be applied in him except it be to
investigate the best method of making pins’ heads?
When a workman has spent a considerable portion of his
existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set
upon the object of his daily toil; his body has contracted
certain fixed habits, which it can never shake off; ina
word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the calling
that he has chosen. It is in vain that law's and manners
have been at pains to level all the barriers round such a
man and to open to him on every side a thousand
different paths to fortune; a theory of manufactures more
powerful than customs and laws binds him to a craft, and
frequently to a spot, which he cannot leave; it assigns to
him a certain place in society, beyond which he cannot
go; in the midst of universal movement it has rendered
him stationary.
In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is
more extensively applied, the workman becomes more
weak, more narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art
advances, the artisan recedes. On the other hand, in
proportion as it becomes more manifest that the
productions of manufactures are by so much the cheaper
and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and
educated men come forward to embark in manufactures,
which were heretofore abandoned to poor or ignorant
handicraftsmen. The magnitude of the efforts required
and the importance of the results to be obtained attract
them. Thus at the very time at which the science of
manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, II, 20
47 All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is alone
noble.
Carlyle, Past and Present, III, 4
48 Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling,
there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly
works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair.
Carlyle, Past and Present, III, II
49 The latest Gospel in this world is, Know' thy work and do
it.
Carlyle, Past and Present, III, 11
50 Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the
whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real
harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt,
Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all
these like helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor
dayworker, as of every man: but he bends himself with
free valour against his task, and all these are stilled, all
these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man
is now aman. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not
as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of
sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!
Carlyle, Past and Present, III, 11
51 When | go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, |
feel such an exhilaration and health that | discover that |
have been defrauding myself all this time in letting
others do for me what | should have done with my own
hands.
Emerson, Man the Reformer
52 Every man who removes into this city with any
purchasable talent or skill in him, gives to every man's
labor in the city a new worth.
Emerson, Wealth
53 The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work—
declining from your main design, to serve a turn here or
there.
Emerson, Wealth
54 Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle
with it without becoming proportionately brutified.
Hawthorne, American Notebooks (Aug, 12, 1841)
55 Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to
employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in
throwing them back, merely that they might earn their
wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
56 The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to
get ‘a good job,’ but to perform well a certain work; and,
even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a
town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel
that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood
merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire
a man who does your work for money, but him who does
it for love of it.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
57 | found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most
independent of any, especially as it required only thirty
or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day
ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free
to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of
his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month
to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the
other.
In short, | am convinced, both by faith and experience,
that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship
but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the
pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the
more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn
his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats
easier than | do.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
58 If we except the /ight and the air of heaven, no good
thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having
first cost labour. And, inasmuch (as) most good things are
produced by labour, it follows that [all] such things of
right belong to those whose labour has produced them.
But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some
have laboured, and others have, without labour enjoyed a
large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should
not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole
product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most
worthy object of any good government.
Lincoln, Fragments of a Tariff Discussion (Dec. 1, 1847)
59 If at any time all /abour should cease, and all existing
provisions be equally divided among the people, at the
end of a single year there could scarcely be one human
being left alive—all would have perished by want
subsistence.
So again, if upon such division, all that sort of labour,
which produces provisions, should cease, and each
individual should take up so much of his share as he
could, and carry it continually around his habitation,
although in this carrying, the amount of labour going on
might be as great as ever, so long as it could last, at the
end of the year the result would be precisely the same—
that is, none would be left living.
The first of these propositions shows, that universal
idleness would speedily result in universal ruin and the
second shows, that useless /abour is, in this respect, the
Same as idleness.
| submit, then, whether it does not follow, that partia/
idleness, and partial use/ess /abour, would, in the
proportion of their extent, in like manner result, in partial
ruin—whether, if a//should subsist upon the labour that
one half should perform, it would not result in very scanty
allowance to the whole.
Lincoln, Fragments of a Tariff Discussion (Dec. 1, 1847)
60 Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is
only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if
labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital,
and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has
its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other
rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always
will be, a relation between labor and capital, producing
mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole
labor of community exists within that relation. A few men
own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and,
with their capital, hire or buy another few to labor for
them. A large majority belong to neither class—neither
work for others, nor have others working for them.
Lincoln, Annual Message (Dec. 3, 1861)
61 There is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired
laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many
independent men everywhere in these States, a few years
back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent,
penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile,
Saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for
himself; then labors on his own account another while,
and at length hires another new beginner to help him.
This is the just, and generous, and prosperous system,
which opens the way to all—gives hope to all, and
consequent energy, and progress, and improvement of
condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be
trusted than those who toil up from poverty—none less
inclined to take, or touch, aught which they have not
honestly earned.
Lincoln, Annual Message (Dec. 3, 1861)
62 Labour power can appear upon the market as a
commodity only if, and so far as, its possessor, the
individual whose labour power it is, offers it for sale, or
sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to
do this, he must have it at his disposal, must be the
untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, that is, of
his person. He and the owner of money meet in the
market and deal with each other as on the basis of equal
rights, with this difference alone, that one is buyer, the
other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law.
The continuance of this relation demands that the owner
of the labour power should sell it only for a definite
period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for
all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a
free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into
a commodity.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Il, 6
63 Nature does not produce on the one side owners of
money or commodities, and on the other men possessing
nothing but their own labour power. This relation has no
natural basis, neither is its social basis one that is
common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result of
a past historical development, the product of many
economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series
of older forms of social production.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Il, 6
64 Within the process of production... capital acquired the
command over labour, i.e., over functioning labour power
or the labourer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist
takes care that the labourer does his work regularly and
with the proper degree of intensity.
Capital further developed into a coercive relation,
which compels the working class to do more work than
the narrow round of its own life-wants prescribes. As a
producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of
surplus labour and exploiter of labour power, it surpasses
in energy, disregard of bounds, recklessness, and
efficiency, all earlier systems of production based on
directly compulsory labour.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, Ill, 11
65 If we consider the process of production from the point of
view of the simple labour process, the labourer stands in
relation to the means of production, not in their quality as
capital, but as the mere means and material of his own
intelligent productive activity. In tanning, e.g., he deals
with the skins as his simple object of labour. It is not the
capitalist whose skin he tans. But it is different as soon as
we deal with the process of production from the point of
view of the process of creation of surplus value. The
means of production are at once changed into means for
the absorption of the labour of others. It is now no longer
the labourer that employs the means of production, but
the means of production that employ the labourer.
Instead of being consumed by him as material elements
of his productive activity, they consume him as the
ferment necessary to their own life process, and the life
process of capital consists only in its movement as value
constantly expanding, constantly multiplying itself.
Furnaces and workshops that stand idle by night, and
absorb no living labour, are "a mere loss" to the capitalist.
Hence, furnaces and workshops constitute lawful claims
upon the night labour of the workpeople. The simple
transformation of money into the material factors of the
process of production, into means of production,
transforms the latter into a title and a right to the labour
and surplus labour of others.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, Ill, 11
66 The foundation of every division of labour that is well
developed and brought about by the exchange of
commodities is the separation between town and country.
It may be said, that the whole economical history of
society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, lV, 14
67 It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures that
the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual
potencies of the material process of production, as the
property of another, and as a ruling power. This
separation begins in simple cooperation, where the
capitalist represents to the single w’orkman the oneness
and the will of the associated labour. It is developed in
manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail
labourer. It is completed in modem industry, which makes
science a productive force distinct from labour and
presses it into the service of capital.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, IV, 14
68 Every kind of capitalist production, insofar as it is not
only a labour process, but also a process of creating
surplus value, has this in common: that it is not the
workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the
instruments of labour that employ the workman. But it is
only in the factory system that this inversion for the first
time acquires technical and palpable reality. By means of
its conversion into an automation, the instrument of
labour confronts the labourer, during the labour process,
in the shape of capital, of dead labour, which dominates
and pumps dry living labour power. The separation of the
intellectual powers of production from the manual labour,
and the conversion of those powers into the might of
capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally
completed by modern industry erected on the foundation
of machinery. The special skill of each individual
insignificant factory operative vanishes as an
infinitesimal quantity’ before the science, the gigantic
physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied
in the factory mechanism and, together with that
mechanism, constitute the power of the "master."
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, IV, 15
69 The whole system of capitalist production is based on the
fact that the workman sells his labour power as a
commodity. Division of labour specializes this labour
power, by reducing it to skill in handling a particular tool.
So soon as the handling of this tool becomes the work of
a machine, then, with the use-value, the exchange value
of the workman’s labour power also vanishes; the
workman becomes unsaleable, like paper money thrown
out of currency by legal enactment. That portion of the
working class thus by machinery rendered superfluous
(that is, no longer immediately necessary for the self-
expansion of capital) either goes to the wall in the
unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures
with machinery, or else floods all the more easily
accessible branches of industry, swamps the labour
market, and sinks the price of labour power below its
value. It is impressed upon the workpeople, as a great
consolation, first, that their sufferings are only temporary
("a temporary inconvenience"), secondly, that machinery
acquires the mastery over the whole of a given field of
production only by degrees, so that the extent and
intensity of its destructive effect is diminished. The first
consolation neutralizes the second. When machinery
seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic
misery among the operatives who compete with it. Where
the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by great
masses.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, IV, 15
70 The more the productiveness of labour increases, the
more can the working day be shortened; and the more
the working day is shortened, the more can the intensity
of labour increase. From a social point of view, the
productiveness increases in the same ratio as the
economy of labour, which, in its turn, includes not only
economy of the means of production, but also the
avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of
production, while on the one hand enforcing economy in
each individual business, on the other hand begets, by its
anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous
squandering of labour power and of the social means of
production, not to mention the creation of a vast number
of employments, at present indispensable, but in
themselves superfluous.
The intensity and productiveness of labour being
given, the time which society is bound to devote to
material production is shorter, and, as a consequence,
the time at its disposal for the free development,
intellectual and social, of the individual is greater, in
proportion as the work is more and more evenly divided
among all the able-bodied members of society, and asa
particular d ass is more and more deprived of the power
to shift the natural burden of labour from its own
shoulders to those of another layer of society. In this
direction, the shortening of the working day finds at last
a limit in the generalization of labour. In capitalist
society, spare time is acquired for one class by converting
the whole lifetime of the masses into labour time.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, V, 17
71 In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is
developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the
modem working class, developed —a class of labourers,
who live only so long as they find work, and who find
work only so long as their labour increases capital. These
labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a
commodity like every other article of commerce, and are
consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of
competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to
division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all
individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the
workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine,
and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and
most easily acquired knack that is required of him.
Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted
almost entirely to the means of subsistence that he
requires for his maintenance and for the propagation of
his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also
of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion,
therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the
wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of
machinery and division of labour increases, in the same
proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by
prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the
work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of
the machinery, etc.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
72 In bourgeois society living labour is but a means to
increase accumulated labour. In Communist society
accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to
promote the existence of the labourer.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
73 The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from
them what they have not got.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
74 Intellectual speculation must be looked upon as a most
influential part of the productive labour of society, and
the portion of its resources employed in carrying on and
in remunerating such labour, as a highly productive part
of its expenditure.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, Il, 8
75 The number of persons fitted to direct and superintend
any industrial enterprise, or even to execute any process
which cannot be reduced almost to an affair of memory
and routine, is always far short of the demand; as is
evident from the enormous difference between the
Salaries paid to such persons, and the wages of ordinary
labour. The deficiency of practical good sense, which
renders the majority of the labouring class such bad
calculators—which makes, for instance, their domestic
economy so improvident, lax, and irregular— must
disqualify them for any but a low grade of intelligent
labour, and render their industry far less productive than
with equal energy it otherwise might be.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, Vil, 5
76 Hitherto it is questionable if all die mechanical inventions
yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human
being. They have enabled a greater population to live the
same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an
increased number of manufacturers and others to make
fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle
classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great
changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and
in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to
just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under
the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the
conquests made from the powers of nature by the
intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the
common property of the species, and the means of
improving and elevating the universal lot.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk, IV, VI, 2
77 The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor—
idleness—was a condition of the first man’s blessedness
before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness,
but the curse weighs on the race not only because we
have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but
because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both
idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the
wrong if we are idle. If man could find a state in which he
felt that though idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would
have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive
blessedness.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, VII, 1
78 Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world,
after all. He had discovered a great law of human action,
without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man
or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the
thing difficult to attain, If he had been a great and wise
philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now
have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a
body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever
a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to
understand why constructing artificial flowers or
performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling tenpins or
climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are
wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse
passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line,
in the summer, because the privilege costs them
considerable money; but if they are offered wages for the
service, that would turn it into work and then they would
resign.
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, I!
79 Leisure, though the propertied classes give its name to
their own idleness, is not idleness. It is not even a luxury:
it is a necessity, and a necessity of the first importance.
Some of the most valuable work done in the world has
been done at leisure, and never paid for in cash or kind.
Leisure may be described as free activity, labor as
compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes: labor does
what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which
in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor
and starvation.
Shaw, Socialism and Culture
11.4 Money
Most of the passages quoted in this section are concerned
with the conception of money as a common measure or
universal medium of exchange. In the background of this
discussion lies the distinction between a money economy
and a barter economy in which goods are exchanged
directly without the use of money. One profound difference
between these two economies, observed by a number of
writers, is that where money is not in use, spoilage and
waste exert a restraining influence on the accumulation of
goods that is not present when coin can be acquired through
trade and then stored away indefinitely.
Some of the passages deal with the borrowing and
lending of money, and this leads into a discussion of usury,
debt, and credit. Though money is seen to be useful in a
variety of ways, it is generally agreed that it is useless in
itself, which leads certain writers to call it "artificial wealth"
as contrasted with the natural wealth of consumable goods
and instruments of production.
The passages that enunciate or comment on the theme
that the love of money is the root of all evil might have been
placed in Section 11.2 on Wealth and Poverty; but since
they use the word "money" instead of the word "wealth"
they are included here. The reader should consult that
section and also Section 11.1 on Property and Section 11.5
on Trade, Commerce, and Industry for the treatment of other
contexts.
1 All things that are exchanged must be somehow
comparable. It is for this end that money has been
introduced, and it becomes in a sense an intermediate;
for it measures all things.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1133a18
2 There are two sorts of wealth-getting.... One is a part of
household management, the other is retail trade: the
former necessary and honourable, while that which
consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is
unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one
another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest
reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself,
and not from the natural object of it. For money was
intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at
interest, ... Of all modes of getting wealth this is the most
unnatural.
Aristotle, Politics, 1258a38
3 One has a duty to make money, but only by honorable
means. It is also one’s duty to save money and increase it
by diligence and thrift.
Cicero, De Officiis, 11, 24
4 Are you ignorant of what value money has, what use it can
afford? Bread, herbs, a bottle of wine may be purchased;
to which [necessaries], add (such others], as, being
withheld, human nature would be uneasy with itself.
What, to watch half dead with terror, night and day, to
dread profligate thieves, fire, and your slaves, lest they
should run away and plunder you; is this delightful? |
Should always wish to be very poor in possessions held
upon these terms.
Horace, Satires, |, 1
5 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while
some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and
pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
| Timothy 6:10
6 It is the higher accomplishment to use money well than to
use arms; but not to need it is more noble than to use it.
Plutarch, Coriolanus
7 The loss of money is awful, Such a terrible thing that no
one can counterfeit mourning,
No one be content with merely rending his garments,
Rubbing his eyes to produce crocodile tears. If your
money
Is gone, you will really cry with genuine lamentation.
Juvenal, Satire XIII
8 All material things obey money so far as the multitude of
fools is concerned, who know no other than material
goods, which can be obtained for money. But we should
take our judgment of human goods not from the foolish
but from the wise.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 2, |
9 In view of the fact that the Utopians’ customs are so
different from ours, a shrewd judge will not be surprised
to find that they do not use gold and silver at all as we
do. Since they keep gold and silver only for grave
contingencies, they take care that in the meantime no
one Shall value these metals more than they deserve. Iron
is obviously greatly superior to either. Men can no more
do without iron than without fire and water. But gold and
silver have no indispensable qualities. Human folly has
made them precious only because of their scarcity.
Nature, like a wise and generous parent, has placed the
best things everywhere and in the open, such as air and
water and the earth itself, but she has hidden vain and
useless things in remote and faraway places.
Thomas More, Utopia, II, 7
10 Panurge. Be still indebted to somebody or other, that
there may be somebody always to pray for you; that the
giver of all good things may grant unto you a blessed,
long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal
crossly with you, that it might be his chance to come
short of being paid by you, he will always speak good of
you in every company, ever and anon purchase new
creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means
you may make a shift by borrowing from Peter to pay
Paul, and with other folk’s earth fill up his ditch....
Believe me, your creditors, with a more fervent devotion,
will beseech Almighty God to prolong your life, they
being of nothing more afraid than that you should die; for
that they are more concerned for the sleeve than the arm,
and love silver better than their own lives.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 3
11 Grumio. Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.
Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, I, ti, 82
12 The Bastard. Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me
back.
When gold and silver becks me to come on.
Shakespeare, King John, III, tii, 12
13 Falstaff. | can get no remedy against this consumption of
the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but
the disease is incurable.
Shakespeare, II Henry IV, I, ti, 264
14 Polonius. Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, iii, 75
15 Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles
16 As to money, it may be observed that its uses do not
result from any value intrinsically belonging to the
precious metals, or to the specific denomination and
shape of coin, but from the general application which can
be made of it, as a standard of payment for all
commodities. For whatever is taken as a common
measure of all other things, ought to be liable, in itself, to
but little variation. Now the precious metals are of this
description, possessing nearly the same intrinsic value at
all times and in all places. Though the nominal value of
the same quantity of gold and silver, whether paid by
weight or coin will be greater or less, in proportion to the
abundance or scarcity of the things for which there is a
general demand.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, Bk. II, XII, 17
17 Gold and silver, being, as it happens, almost in all
countries of the world highly valued, is a commodious
measure of the value of all things else between nations;
and money, of what matter soever coined by the
sovereign of a Commonwealth, is a sufficient measure of
the value of all things else between the subjects of that
Commonwealth. By the means of which measures all
commodities, movable and immovable, are made to
accompany aman to all places of his resort, within and
without the place of his ordinary residence; and the same
passeth from man to man within the Commonwealth, and
goes round about, nourishing, as it passeth, every part
thereof.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 24
18 As money has presented us with an abstract of
everything, it has come to pass that its image above
every other usually occupies the mind of the multitude,
because they can imagine hardly any kind of joy without
the accompanying idea of money as its cause.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix XXVIII
19 Those... who know the true use of money, and regulate
the measure of wealth according to their needs, live
contented with few things.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix XX1xX
20 The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man,
and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first
commoners of the world look after—as it doth the
Americans now—are generally things of short duration,
such as—if they are not consumed by use—will decay and
perish of themselves. Gold, silver, and diamonds are
things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on,
more than real use and the necessary support of life.
Now of those good things which Nature hath provided
in common, every one hath a right (as hath been said) to
as much as he could use; and had a property in all he
could effect with his labour; all that his industry could
extend to, to alter from the state Nature had put it in, was
his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or
apples had thereby a property in them; they were his
goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look that he
used them before they spoiled, else he took more than
his share, and robbed others. And, indeed, it was a foolish
thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he
could make use of. If he gave away a part to anybody
else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession,
these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away
plums that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that
would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no
injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no
part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so
long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if
he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with
its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a
Sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all
his life, he invaded not the right of others; he might heap
up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the
exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in
the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of
anything uselessly in it.
And thus came in the use of money; some lasting
thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that, by
mutual consent, men would take in exchange for the truly
useful but perishable supports of life.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 46-47
21 In the beginning, all the world was America, and more so
than that is now; for no such thing as money was
anywhere known. Find out something that hath the use
and value of money amongst his neighbours, you shall
see the same man will begin presently to enlarge his
possessions.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 49
22 The greatest security of the liberties of a people who do
not cultivate the earth is their not knowing the use of
money. What is gained by hunting, fishing, or keeping
herds of cattle cannot be assembled in such great
quantity, nor be sufficiently preserved, for one man to
find himself in a condition to corrupt many others: but
when, instead of this, a man has a sign of riches, he may
obtain a large quantity of these signs, and distribute
them as he pleases.
The people who have no money have but few wants;
and these are supplied with ease, and in an equal
manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and hence it
proceeds that their chiefs are not despotic.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XVIII, 17
23 A specie is the sign of the value of merchandise paper is
the sign of the value of specie; and when it is of the right
sort, it represents this value in such a manner that as to
the effects produced by it there is not the least
difference.
In the same manner, as money is the sign and
representative of a thing, everything is a sign and
representative of money; and the state is in a prosperous
condition when on the one hand money perfectly
represents all things, and on the other all things perfectly
represent money, and are reciprocally the sign of each
other; that is, when they have such a relative value that
we may have the one as soon as we have the other. This
never happens in any other than a moderate government
nor does it always happen there; for example, if the laws
favour the dishonest debtor, his effects are no longer a
representative or sign of money. With regard to a despotic
government, it would be a prodigy did things there
represent their sign. Tyranny and distrust make every one
bury their specie; things therefore are not there the
representative of money.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXII, 2
24 Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of
commerce; but only the instrument which men have
agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of one commodity
for another. It is none of the wheels of trade; It is the oil
which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and
easy.
Hume, Of Money
25 Money has never appeared to me as valuable as it is
generally considered. More than that, it has never even
appeared to me particularly convenient. It is good for
nothing in itself; it has to be changed before it can be
enjoyed; one is obliged to buy, to bargain, to be often
cheated, to pay dearly, to be badly served. | should like
something which is good in quality; with my money | am
sure to get it bad.
Rousseau, Confessions, |
26 The money which a man possesses is the instrument of
freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument
of slavery.
Rousseau, Confessions, |
27 When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less
than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the
wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock
employed in raising, preparing, and bringing it to market,
according to their natural rates, the commodity is then
sold for what may be called its natural price. The
commodity is then sold precisely for what it is worth, or
for what it really costs the person who brings it to market.
The actual price at which any commodity is commonly
sold is called its market price. It may either be above, or
below, or exactly the same with its natural price.
The market price of every particular commodity is
regulated by the proportion between the quantity which
is actually brought to market, and the demand of those
who are willing to pay the natural price of the commodity,
or the whole value of the rent, labour, and profit, which
must be paid in order to bring it thither.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 7
28 A guinea may be considered as a bill for a certain
quantity of necessaries and conveniencies upon all the
tradesmen in the neighbourhood. The revenue of the
person to whom it is paid, does not so properly consist in
the piece of gold, as in what he can get for it, or in what
he can exchange it for. If it could be exchanged for
nothing, it would, like a bill upon a bankrupt, be of no
more value than the most useless piece of paper.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, 2
29 In some countries the interest of money has been
prohibited by law. But as something can everywhere be
made by the use of money, something ought everywhere
to be paid for the use of it. This regulation, instead of
preventing, has been found from experience to increase
the evil of usury; the debtor being obliged to pay, not
only for the use of the money, but for the risk which his
creditor runs by accepting a compensation for that use.
He is obliged, if one may say so, to insure his creditor
from the penalties of usury.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Il, 4
30 A bag of shining leather, filled with pearls, fell into the
hands of a private soldier; he carefully preserved the bag,
but he threw away its contents, judging that whatever
was of no use could not possibly be of any value.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIII
31 How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests
Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins
(Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests
Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines,
But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests
Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines.
Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp:—
Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp.
Byron, Don Juan, XII, 12
32 Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a
concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an
abstract satisfaction of all.
Schopenhauer, Property
33 Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is
hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its
effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Emerson, Nominalist and Realist
34 A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at
last, of moral values.
Emerson, Wealth
35 A dollar in a university is worth more than a dollarina
Jail; in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding community
than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives and
arsenic are in constant play.
Emerson, Wealth
36 The urbane activity with which a man receives money is
really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that
on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how
cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Melville, Moby Dick, |
37 The ways by which you may get money almost without
exception lead downward.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
38 You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but
you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is
minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man
does what he can, whether the community pay him for it
or not.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
39 Gold is now money with reference to all other
commodities only because it was previously, with
reference to them, a simple commodity. Like all other
commodities, it was also capable of serving as an
equivalent, either as simple equivalent in isolated
exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side of
others. Gradually, it began to serve, within varying limits,
as universal equivalent. So soon as it monopolizes this
position in the expression of value for the world of
commodities, it becomes the money commodity.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, I, 1
40 The first chief function of money is to supply
commodities with the material for the expression of their
values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the
Same denomination, qualitatively equal, and
quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal
measure of value. And only by virtue of this function
does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence,
become money.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Il, 3
41 It is not money that renders commodities
commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all
commodities, as values, are realized human labour, and
therefore commensurable, that their values can be
measured by one and the same special commodity, and
the latter be converted into the common measure of their
values, that is, into money. Money as a measure of value
is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be
assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in
commodities, labour time.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, |, 3
42 In order that it may play the part of money, gold must of
course enter the market at some point or other. This point
is to be found at the source of production of the metal, at
which place gold is bartered, as the immediate product of
labour, for some other product of equal value. From that
moment it always represents the realized price of some
commodity. Apart from its exchange for other
commodities at the source of its production, gold, in
whoever’s hands it may be, is the transformed shape of
some commodity alienated by its owner.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, |, 3
43 The commodity that functions as a measure of value,
and, either in its own person or by a representative, as
the medium of circulation, is money. Gold (or silver) is
therefore money. It functions as money, on the one hand,
when it has to be present in its own golden person. It is
then the money commodity, neither merely ideal, as in its
function of a measure of value, nor capable of being
represented, as in its function of circulating medium. On
the other hand, it also functions as money, when by
virtue of its function, whether that function be performed
in person or by representative, it congeals into the sole
form of value, the only adequate form of existence of
exchange value, in opposition to use-value, represented
by all other commodities.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, |, 3
44 There cannot... be intrinsically a more insignificant thing,
in the economy of society, than money; except in the
character of a contrivance for sparing time and labour. It
is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously, what
would be done, though less quickly and commodiously,
without it: and like many other kinds of machinery, it
only exerts a distinct and independent influence of its
own when it gets out of order.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. III, Vil, 3
45 The value of money, other things being the same, varies
inversely as its quantity; every increase of quantity
lowering the value, and every diminution raising it, ina
ratio exactly equivalent. This, it must be observed, is a
property peculiar to money.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. III, VIII, 2
46 Nothing precipitates and solidifies this gold » readily as
contact with human flesh heated by passion.
Mark Twain, Remarkabe Gold Mines
47 Nowto.., teach children that it is sinful to desire money,
is to strain towards the extreme possible limit of
impudence in lying and corruption in hypocrisy. The
universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our
civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience.
Money is the most important thing in the world. It
represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty
as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it
represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and
ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys
base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble
people. It is only when it is cheapened to worthlessness
for some and made impossibly dear to others, that it
becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish
social conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two
things are inseparable; money is the counter that enables
life to be distributed socially; it is life as truly as
sovereigns and bank notes are money. The first duty of
every citizen is to insist on having money on reasonable
terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving
four men three shillings each for ten or twelve hours’
drudgery and one man a thousand pounds for nothing.
The crying need of the nation is not for better morals,
cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption
of fallen sisten and erring brothere, nor the grace, love
and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough
money. And the evil to be attacked is not sin, suffering,
greed, priestcraft, kingcraft, demagogy, monopoly,
ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, no? any other of the
scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply poverty.
Shaw, Major Barbara, Pref.
48 The whole record of civilization is a record of the failure
of money as a higher incentive. The enormous majority of
men never make any serious effort to get rich. The few
who are sordid enough to do so easily become
millionaires with a little luck, and astonish the others by
the contrast between their riches and their stupidity. In
fact it is the complete breakdown in practice of the
sufficiency of the pecuniary incentive that has compelled
us to turn our backs on Adam Smith and Cobden, and
confess that both the old Tories and the modern Socialists
are right, and that there is no salvation for the world in
Free Contract and Free Trade.
The belief in money as an incentive is founded on the
observation that people will do for money what they will
not do for anything else. Careless observers think that
men will do anything for money; but this is clearly not
true: if it were, the majority would not be poorer than the
minority. They say also that everything men do is done
for money; and this also is obviously untrue: if it were
men would be always earning and never spending. The
most important, arduous, and painful of normal human
activities is the bearing of children; but when | try to
persuade women that they should refuse to do it unless
they are handsomely paid for it, they are shocked, and
persist in doing for nothing even when the result is
starvation for themselves and the children. We must
therefore keep strictly to the terms of the proposition,
which is, that people will do for money what they will not
do for love or for anything else except money. For
instance, an immense mass of the work of the modern
community consists in the oppression of the poor. To take
a crude instance, no man will go into the house where
naked and hungry children are crying for food and
warmth, and extort from their mother four shillings to pay
a slum landlord who already has more money than is
good for him, unless he is paid to do it.
Shaw, Redistribution of Income
11.5 Trade, Commerce, and Industry
The subjects covered here are connected with earlier ones,
especially the sections devoted to Money and to Wealth and
Poverty. Trade and commerce are concerned with
exchangeable wealth, in the form of commodities to be
bought and sold—either directly by barter or indirectly
through the use of money. Industry is concerned with the
production of wealth and with the production of capital
instruments or means of production. Money in the form of
financial capital plays an important role in the process.
Among the great authors, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and J.
S. Mill deal with these subjects mainly as professional
economists within whose field of study they fall. But other
writers contribute ethical, political, or historical comments—
questioning the motivation underlying trade, comparing it
with usury as unproductive of wealth, relating trade and
commerce to conflicts between states and wars, and yet also
seeing trade and commerce as one of the principal sources
of progress.
1 It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer: but w en he is
gone his way, then he boasteth.
Proverbs 20:14
2 There is a country in Libya, and a nation, beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, which they are wont to visit, where
they no sooner arrive but forthwith they unlade their
wares, and, having disposed them after orderly fashion
along the beach, leave them, and, returning aboard their
ships, raise great smoke. The natives, when they see the
smoke, come down to the shore, and, laying out to view
so much gold as they think the worth of the wares,
withdraw to a distance. The Carthaginians upon this
come ashore and look. If they think the gold enough, they
take it and go their way; but if it does not seem to them
sufficient, they go aboard ship once more, and wait
patiently. Then the others approach and add to their gold,
till the Carthaginians are content. Neither party deals
unfairly by the other: for they themselves never touch
the gold till it comes up to the worth of their goods, nor
do the natives ever carry off the goods till the gold is
taken away.
Herodotus, History, IV, 196
3 Athenian Stranger. |n order that the retail trader who
dwells in our city may be as good or as little bad as
possible, the guardians of the law shall remember that
they are not only guardians of those who may be easily
watched and prevented from becoming lawless or bad,
because they are well-born and bred; but still more
should they have a watch over those who are of another
sort, and follow pursuits which have a very strong
tendency to make men bad. And, therefore, in respect of
the multifarious occupations of retail trade, that is to say,
in respect of such of them as are allowed to remain,
because they seem to be quite necessary in a state—
about these the guardians of the law should meet and
take counsel with those who have experience of the
several kinds of retail trade, as we before commanded
concerning adulteration (which is a matter akin to this),
and when they meet they shall consider what amount of
receipts, after deducting expenses, will produce a
moderate gain to the retail trades, and they shall fix in
writing and strictly maintain what they find to be the
right percentage of profit; this shall be seen to by the
wardens of the agora, and by the wardens of the city, and
by the wardens of the country. And so retail trade wnl
benefit every one, and do the least possible injury to
those in the state who practise it.
Plato. Laws, XI, 920A
4 Of everything which we possess there are two uses: both
belong to the thing as such, but not in the same manner,
for one is the proper, and the other the improper or
secondary use of it. For example, a shoe is used for wear,
and is used for exchange; both are uses of the shoe. He
who gives a shoe in exchange for money or food to him
who wants one, does indeed use the shoe as a shoe, but
this is not its proper or primary purpose, for a shoe is not
made to be an object of barter. The same may be said of
all possessions, for the art of exchange extends to ail of
them, and it arises at first from what is natural, from the
circumstance that some have too little, others too much.
Hence we may infer that retail trade is not a natural part
of the art of getting wealth; had it been so, men would
have ceased to exchange when they had enough. In the
first community, indeed, which is the family, this art is
obviously of no use, but it begins to be useful when the
society increases. For the members of the family
Originally had ail things in common; later, when the
family divided into parts, the parts shared in many
things, and different parts in different things, which they
had to give in exchange for what they wanted, a kind of
barter which is still practised among barbarous nations
who exchange with one another the necessaries of life
and nothing more; giving and receiving wine, for
example, in exchange for corn, and the like. This sort of
barter is not part of the wealth-getting art and is not
contrary to nature, but is needed for the satisfaction of
men’s natural wants. The other or more complex form of
exchange grew, as might have been inferred, out of the
simpler. When the inhabitants of one country became
more dependent on those of another, and they imported
what they needed, and what they had too much of,
money necessarily came into use. For the various
necessaries of life are not easily carried about, and hence
men agreed to employ in their dealings with each other
something which was intrinsically useful and easily
applicable to the purposes of life, for example, iron,
silver, and the like. Of this the value was at first
measured simply by size and weight, but in process of
time they put a stamp upon it, to save the trouble of
weighing and to mark the value.
When the use of coin had once been discovered, out of
the barter of necessary articles arose the other art of
wealth-getting, namely, retail trade; which was at first
probably a simple matter, but became more complicated
as soon as men learned by experience whence and by
what exchanges the greatest profit might be made.
Aristotle, Politics, 1257a6
5 A tradesman is one whose business consists in the
exchange of things. According to the Philosopher
[Aristotle], exchange of things is twofold; one, natural as
it were, and necessary whereby one commodity is
exchanged for another, or money taken in exchange for a
commodity, in order to satisfy the needs of life. Such like
trading, properly speaking, does not belong to
tradesmen, but rather to housekeepers or civil servants
who have to provide the household or the state with the
necessaries of life. The other kind of exchange is either
that of money for money, or of any commodity for money,
not on account of the necessities of life, but for profit, and
this kind of exchange, properly speaking, regards
tradesmen, according to the Philosopher. The former kind
of exchange is commendable because it supplies a
natural need: but the latter is justly deserving of blame,
because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for
gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity. Hence
trading, considered in itself, has a certain debasement
attaching thereto, in so far as, by its very nature, it does
not imply a virtuous or necessary end. Nevertheless gain
which is the end of trading, though not implying, by its
nature, anything virtuous or necessary, does not, in itself,
connote anything sinful or contrary to virtue: wherefore
nothing prevents gain from being directed to some
necessary or even virtuous end, and thus trading
becomes lawful. Thus, for instance, a man may intend the
moderate gain which he seeks to acquire by trading for
the upkeep of his household, or for the assistance of the
needy: or again, a man may take to trade for some public
advantage, for instance, lest his country lack the
necessaries of life, and seek gain, not as an end, but as
payment for his labor.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-/l,
6 The gains of ordinary trades and vocations are honest, and
furthered by two things chiefly: by diligence, and by a
good name for good and fair dealing. But the gains of
bargains are of a more doubtful nature; when men shall
wait upon others’ necessity, broke by servants and
instruments to draw them on, put off others cunningly
that would be better chapmen, and the like practices,
which are crafty and naught.
Bacon, Of Riches
7 When a democracy is founded on commerce, private
people may acquire vast riches without a corruption of
morals. This is because the spirit of commerce is naturally
attended with that of frugality, economy, moderation,
labour, prudence, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as
this spirit subsists, the riches it produces have no bad
effect. The mischief is, when excessive wealth destroys
the spirit of commerce, then it is that the inconveniences
of inequality begin to be felt.
In order to support this spirit, commerce should be
carried on by the principal citizens; this should be their
sole aim and study; this the chief object of the laws: and
these very laws, by dividing the estates of individuals in
proportion to the increase of commerce, should set every
poor citizen so far at his case as to be able to work like
the rest, and every wealthy citizen in such a mediocrity
as to be obliged to take some pains either in preserving
or acquiring a fortune.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, V, 6
8 Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for
it is almost a general rule that wherever we find
agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that
wherever there is commerce, there we meet with
agreeable manners.
Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now
less savage than formerly. Commerce has everywhere
diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations: these
are compared one with another, and from this comparison
arise the greatest advantages.
Commercial laws, it may be said, improve manners for
the same reason that they destroy them. They corrupt the
purest morals. This was the subject of Plato’s complaints;
and we every day see that they polish and refine the
most barbarous.
Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who
traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent;
for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an
interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on
their mutual necessities.
But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not
in the same manner unite individuals. VVe see that in
countries where the people move only by the spirit of
commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the
moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which
humanity would demand, are there done, or there given,
only for money.
The spirit of trade produces in the mind of amana
certain sense of exact justice, opposite, on the one hand,
to robbery, and on the other to those moral virtues which
forbid our always adhering rigidly to the rules of private
interest, and suffer us to neglect this for the advantage of
others.
The total privation of trade, on the contrary, produces
robbery, which Aristotle ranks in the number of means of
acquiring; yet it is not at all inconsistent with certain
moral virtues. Hospitality, for instance, is most rare in
trading countries, while it is found in the most admirable
perfection among nations of vagabonds.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XX, 1—2
9 It is very usual, in nations ignorant of the nature of
commerce, to prohibit the exportation of commodities,
and to preserve among themselves whatever they think
valuable and useful. They do not consider that in this
prohibition they act directly contrary to their intention;
and that the more is exjx)rted of any commodity, the
more will be raised at home, of which they themselves
will always have the first offer.
Hume, Of the Balance of Trade
10 The greatness of a state, and the happiness of its
subjects, how independent soever they may be supposed
in some respects, are commonly allowed to be
inseparable with regard to commerce; and as private men
receive greater security, in the possession of their trade
and riches, from the power of the public, so the public
becomes powerful in proportion to the opulence and
extensive commerce of private men.
Hume, Of Commerce
11 Talking of trade, he [johnson] observed, "It is a mistaken
notion that a vast deal of money is brought into a nation
by trade. It is not so. Commodities come from
commodities; but trade produces no capital accession of
wealth. However, though there should be little profit in
money, there is a considerable profit in pleasure, as it
gives to one nation the productions of another; as we
have wines and fruits, and many other foreign articles,
brought to us."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct. 26, 1769)
12 Johnson. The great increase of commerce and
manufactures hurts the military spirit of a people;
because it produces a competition for something else
than martial honours,—a competition for riches. It also
hurts the bodies of the people; for you will observe, there
is no man who works at any particular trade, but you may
know him from his appearance to do so. One part or other
of his body being more used than the rest, he is in some
degree deformed,
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 13, 1773)
13 This division of labour, from which so many advantages
are derived, is not originally the effect of any human
wisdom, which foresees and intends that general
opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary,
though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain
propensity in human nature which has in view no such
extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and
exchange one thing for another.
Whether this propensity be one of those original
principles in human nature of which no further account
can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be
the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and
speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It
is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of
animals.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 2
14 People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for
merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends ina
conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to
raise prices,
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 10
15 Monopoly... is a great enemy to good management which
can never be universally established but in consequence
of that free and universal competition which forces
everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-
defence.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 11
16 The great commerce of every civilised society is that
carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those
of the country. It consists in the exchange of rude for
manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the
intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which
represents money. The country supplies the town with the
means of subsistence and the materials of manufacture.
The town repays this supply by sending back a part of the
manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country.
The town, in which there neither is nor can be any
reproduction of substances, may very properly be said to
gain its whole wealth and subsistence from the country.
We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that
the gain of the town is the loss of the country. The gains
of both are mutual and reciprocal, and the division of
labour is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all
the different persons employed in the various
occupations into which it is subdivided.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, III, 1
17 The importation of gold and silver is not the principal,
much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its
foreign trade. Between whatever places foreign trade is
carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits
from it. It carries out that surplus part of the produce of
their land and labour for which there is no demand
among them, and brings back in return for it something
else for which there is a demand. It gives a value to their
superfluities, by exchanging them for something else,
which may satisfy a part of their wants, and increase their
enjoyments. By means of it the narrowness of the home
market does not hinder the division of labour in any
particular branch of art or manufacture from being
carried to the highest perfection. By opening a more
extensive market for whatever part of the produce of
their labour may exceed the home consumption, it
encourages them to improve its productive powers, and
to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and
thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the
society. These great and important services foreign trade
is continually occupied in performing to all the different
countries between which it is carried on.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, |
18 The balance of produce and consumption may be
constantly in favour of a nation, though what is called the
balance of trade be generally against it. A nation may
import to a greater value than it exports for half a
century, perhaps, together; the gold and silver which
comes into it during all this time may be all immediately
sent out of it; its circulating coin may gradually decay,
different sorts of paper money being substituted in its
place, and even the debts, too, which it contracts in the
principal nations with whom it deals, may be gradually
increasing; and yet its real wealth, the exchangeable
value of the annual produce of its lands and labour, may,
during the same period, have been increasing in a much
greater proportion. The state of our North American
colonies, and of the trade which they carried on with
Great Britain, before the commencement of the present
disturbance, may serve as a proof that this is by no
means an impossible supposition.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 3
19 To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up
a people of customers may at first sight appear a project
fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a
project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but
extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced
by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen
only, are capable of fancying that they will find some
advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their
fellow-citizens to found and maintain such an empire.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 7
20 Whatever evils either reason or declamation have
imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was
attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the
vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life. In
the more remote ages of antiquity, the world was
unequally divided. The east was in the immemorial
possession of arts and luxury; whilst the west was
inhabited by rude and warlike barbarians, who either
disdained agriculture, or to whom it was totally unknown.
Under the protection of an established government, the
productions of happier climates, and the industry of more
civilised nations, were gradually introduced into the
western countries of Europe; and the natives were
encouraged, by an open and profitable commerce, to
multiply the former, as well as to improve the latter.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I!
21 It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact; and great
trade will always be attended with considerable abuses.
The contraband will always keep pace in some measure
with the fair trade. It should stand as a fundamental
maxim, that no vulgar precaution ought to be employed
in the cure of evils which are closely connected with the
cause of our prosperity.
Burke, Speech on American Taxation (1774)
22 | believe it will be found invariably true, that the
superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of
trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest
of the commercial world that wealth should be found
everywhere.
Burke, Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol (1778)
23 If nature wisely separates nations, which every state
would seek to combine, by artifice or force, and even
according to the principles of the law of nations; who, on
the other hand, through the interested spirit of all
nations, produces an union between them, which the idea
of the cosmopolitical right alone would not have
sufficiently secured from war and violence. It is the spirit
of commerce that sooner or later takes hold of every
nation, and is incompatible with war: the power of money
being that which of all others gives the greatest spring to
states, they find themselves obliged to labour at the
noble work of peace, though without any moral view; and
instantly seek to stifle, by mediations, war, in whatever
part it may break out, as if for this purpose they had
contracted a perpetual alliance; great associations ina
war are naturally rare, and less frequently still successful.
It is in this manner that nature, by means of the human
propensities, guarantees a perpetual peace; and though
the assurance which she gives us thereof is not sufficient
to predict theoretically, yet it prevents us from regarding
it as a chimerical aim, and makes it thereby a duty in us
to contribute towards it.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Supplement |
24 The spirit of enterprise, useful and prolific as it is, must
necessarily be contracted or expanded in proportion to
the simplicity or variety of the occupations and
productions which are to be found in a society. It must be
less in a nation of mere cultivators than in a nation of
cultivators and merchants; less in a nation of cultivators
and merchants than in a nation of cultivators, artificers,
and merchants.
Hamilton, Report on Manufactures
25 It seems not always to be recollected that nations who
have neither mines nor manufactures can only obtain the
manufactured articles of which they stand in need by an
exchange of the products of their soils; and that if those
who can best furnish them with such articles are
unwilling to give a due course to this exchange, they
must, of necessity, make every possible effort to
manufacture for themselves; the effect of which is that
the manufacturing nations abridge the natural
advantages of their situation through an unwillingness to
permit the agricultural countries to enjoy the advantages
of theirs, and sacrifice the interests of a mutually
beneficial intercourse to the vain project of selling
everything and buying nothing.
Hamilton, Report on Manufactures
26 The material existence of England is based on commerce
and industry, and the English have undertaken the
weighty responsibility of being the missionaries of
civilization to the world; for their commercial spirit urges
them to traverse every sea and land, to form connections
with barbarous peoples, to create wants and stimulate
industry, and first and foremost to establish among them
the conditions necessary to commerce, viz., the
relinquishment of a life of lawless violence, respect for
property, and civility to strangers.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. IV, Ill, 3
27 In democracies nothing is greater or more brilliant than
commerce; it attracts the attention of the public and fills
the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions
are directed towards it. Neither their own prejudices nor
those of anybody else can prevent the rich from devoting
themselves to it. The wealthy members of democracies
never form a body which has manners and regulations of
its own; the opinions peculiar to their class do not
restrain them, and the common opinions of their country
urge them on. Moreover, as all the large fortunes that are
found in a democratic community are of commercial
growth, many generations must succeed one another
before their possessors can have entirely laid aside their
habits of business.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 19
28 | know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary
attitudes than commercial ones. Commerce is naturally
adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize,
takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids
irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has
recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most
absolute necessity. Commerce renders men independent
of one another, gives them a lofty notion of their personal
importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own
affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it
therefore prepares men for freedom, but preserves them
from revolutions.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 21
29 The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish,
huckstering trade.
Emerson, Works and Days
30 There are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the
State, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is
fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; that is all
anybody can tell you about it.
Emerson, Character
31 The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing from
where it abounds to where it is costly.
Emerson, Wealth
32 We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see
that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America,
and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps
peace; that it will abolish slavery.
Emerson, Journal (Dec. 31, 1843)
33 "A bargain," said the son. "Here’s the rule for bargains
—‘Do other men, for they would do you.’ That’s the true
business precept. All others are counterfeits."
The delighted father applauded this sentiment to the
echo.
Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, XI]
34 This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle!
| am awaked almost every night by the panting of the
locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath.
It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It
is nothing but work, work, work. | cannot easily buy a
blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled
for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a
minute in the fields, took it for granted that | was
calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a
window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or
scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly
because he was thus incapacitated for—business! | think
that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to
poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant
business.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
35 That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the
means of commanding the labor of others less lucky,
without contributing any value to society! And that is
called enterprise! | know of no more startling
development of the immorality of trade and all the
common modes of getting a living.
Thoreau, Life Without Principle
36 The exchange of commodities is... accompanied by the
following changes in their form:
Commodity—Money—Commodaity
C---M--- C
The result of the whole process is, so far as concerns
the objects themselves, C—C, the exchange of one
commodity for another, the circulation of materialized
social labour. When this result is attained, the process is
at an end.
C— M, First Metamorphosis, or Sale
The leap taken by value from the body of the
commodity into the body of the gold is, as | have
elsewhere called it, the sa/to mortale of the commodity. If
it falls short, then, although the commodity itself is not
harmed, its owner decidedly is. The social division of
labour causes his labour to be as one-sided as his wants
are many-sided. This is precisely the reason why the
product of his labour serves him solely as exchange
value. But it cannot acquire the properties of a socially
recognized universal equivalent, except by being
converted into money. That money, however, is in some
one else’s pocket. In order to entice the money out of that
pocket, our friend’s commodity must, above all things, be
a use-value to the owner of the money. For this, it is
necessary that the labour expended upon it be of a kind
that is socially useful, of a kind that constitutes a branch
of the social division of labour. But division of labour is a
system of production which has grown up spontaneously
and continues to grow behind the backs of the producers.
The commodity to be exchanged may possibly be the
product of some new kind of labour that pretends to
satisfy newly arisen requirements, or even to give rise
itself to new requirements. A particular operation, though
yesterday, perhaps, forming one out of the many
operations conducted by one producer in creating a
given commodity, may today separate itself from this
connection, may establish itself as an independent
branch of labour and send its incomplete product to
market as an independent commodity. The circumstances
may or may not be ripe for such a separation. Today the
product satisfies a social want. Tomorrow the article may,
either altogether or partially, be superseded by some
other appropriate product. Moreover, although our
weaver’s labour may be a recognized branch of the social
division of labour, yet that fact is by no means sufficient
to guarantee the utility of his 20 yards of linen. If the
community’s want of linen, and such a want has a limit
like every other want, should already be saturated by the
products of rival weavers, our friend’s product is
superfluous, redundant, and consequently useless.
Although people do not look a gift-horse in the mouth,
our friend does not frequent the market for the purpose
of making presents. But suppose his product turns out a
real use-value, and thereby attracts money. The question
arises, how much will it attract? No doubt the answer is
already anticipated in the price of the article, in the
exponent of the magnitude of its value. We leave out of
consideration Here any accidental miscalculation of value
by our friend, a mistake that is soon rectified in the
market. We suppose him to have spent on his product
only that amount of labour time that is on an average
socially necessary. The price, then, is merely the money
name of the quantity of social labour realized in his
commodity. But without the leave, and behind the back,
of our weaver, the old fashioned mode of weaving
undergoes a change. The labour time that yesterday was
without doubt socially necessary to the production of a
yard of linen, ceases to be so today, a fact which the
owner of the money is only too eager to prove from the
prices quoted by our friend’s competitors. Unluckily for
him, weavers are not few and far between. Lastly,
suppose that every piece of linen in the market contains
no more labour time than is socially necessary. In spite of
this, all these pieces taken as a whole, may have had
superfluous labour time spent upon them. If the market
cannot stomach the whole quantity at the normal price of
2 shillings a yard, this proves that too great a portion of
the total labour of the community has been expended in
the form of weaving. The effect is the same as if each
individual weaver had expended more labour time upon
his particular product than is socially necessary. Here we
may say, with the German proverb: "Caught together,
hanged together." All the linen in the market counts but
as one article of commerce, of which each piece is only an
aliquot part. And as a matter of fact, the value also of
each single yard is but the materialized form of the same
definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous
human labour.
We see then, commodities are in love with money, but
"the course of true love never did run smooth," The
quantitative division of labour is brought about in exactly
the same spontaneous and accidental manner as its
qualitative division. The owners of commodities,
therefore, find out that the same division of labour that
turns them into independent private producers also frees
the social process of production and the relations of the
individual producers to each other within that process
from all dependence on the will of those producers, and
that the seeming mutual independence of the individuals
is supplemented by a system of general and mutual
dependence through or by means of the products.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, |, 3
37 The conversion of a sum of money into means of
production and labour power is the first step taken by the
quantum of value that is going to function as capital. This
conversion takes place in the market, within the sphere of
circulation. The second step, the process of production, is
complete so soon as the means of production have been
converted into commodities whose value exceeds that of
their component parts, and, therefore, contains the
capital originally advanced, plus a surplus value. These
commodities must then be thrown into circulation. They
must be sold, their value realized in money, this money
converted afresh into capital, and so over and over again.
This circular movement, in which the same phases are
continually gone through in succession, forms the
circulation of capital.
Marx, Capital, Vol. |, VII, Introduction
38 Modern industry has established the world market, for
which the discovery of America paved the way. This
market has given an immense development to
commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This
development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of
industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce,
navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the
bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed
into the background every class handed down from the
Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself
the product of a long course of development, of a series
of revolutions in the modes of production and of
exchange.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
39 Modem bourgeois society with its relations of production,
of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured
up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is
like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the
powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his
spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and
commerce is but the history of the revolt of modem
productive forces against modem conditions of
production, against the property relations that are the
conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its
rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that
by their periodical return put the existence of the entire
bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly.
In these crises a great part not only of the existing
products, but also of the previously created productive
forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there
breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would
have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-
production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a
state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a
universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of
every means of subsistence; industry and commerce
seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too
much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too
much industry, too much commerce. The productive
forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further
the development of the conditions of bourgeois property;
on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these
conditions, by which they are fettered, and no sooner do
they overcome these fetters than they bring disorder into
the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of
bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society
are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.
And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On
the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new
markets and by the more thorough exploitation of the old
ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more
extensive and more destructive crises, and by
diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, |
40 The increase of the general riches of the world, when
accompanied with freedom of commercial intercourse,
improvements in navigation, and inland communication
by roads, canals, or railways, tends to give increased
productiveness to the labour of every nation in particular,
by enabling each locality to supply with its special
products so much larger a market, that a great extension
of the division of labour in their production is an ordinary
consequence.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. 1, VIII, 6
41 The small capitalist, it is true, generally combines with
the business of direction some portion of the details,
which the other leaves to his subordinates: the small
farmer follows his own plough, the small tradesman
serves in his own shop, the small weaver plies his own
loom. But in this very union of functions there is, ina
great proportion of cases, a want of economy. The
principal in the concern is either wasting, in the routine
of a business, qualities suitable for the direction of it, or
he is only fit for the former, and then the latter will be ill
done. | must observe, however, that | do not attach, to
this saving of labour, the importance often ascribed to it.
There is undoubtedly much more labour expended in the
superintendence of many small capitals than in that of
one large capital. For this labour however the small
producers have generally a full compensation, in the
feeling of being their own masters, and not servants of an
employer. It may be said, that if they value this
independence they will submit to pay a price for it, and
to sell at the reduced rates occasioned by the
competition of the great dealer or manufacturer. But they
cannot always do this and continue to gain a living. They
thus gradually disappear from society. After having
consumed their little capital in prolonging the
unsuccessful struggle they either sink into the condition
of hired labourers, or become dependent on others for
support.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, IX. |
42 Where competitors are so few, they always end by
agreeing not to compete. They may run a race of
cheapness to ruin a new candidate, but as soon as he has
established his footing they come to terms with him.
When, therefore, a business of real public importance can
only be carried on advantageously upon so large a scale
as to render the liberty of competition almost illusory, it is
an unthrifty dispensation of the public resources that
several costly sets of arrangements should be kept up for
the purpose of rendering to the community this one
service. It is much better to treat it at once as a public
function; and if it be not such as the government itself
could beneficially undertake, it should be made over
entire to the company or association which will perform it
on the best terms for the public.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. I, IX, 3
43 Every seller of goods is a buyer of money, and the goods
he brings with him constitute his demand. The demand
for money differs from the demand for other things in
this, that it is limited only by the means of the purchaser.
The demand for other things is for so much and no more;
but there is always a demand for as much money as can
be got. Persons may indeed refuse to sell, and withdraw
their goods from the market, if they cannot get for them
what they consider a sufficient price. But this is only
when they think that the price will rise, and that they
Shall get more money by waiting. If they thought the low
price likely to be permanent, they would take what they
could get. It is always a sine gua non with a dealer to
dispose of his goods.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. III, VIII, 2
44 | confess | am not charmed with the ideal of life held out
by those who think that the normal state of human
beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling,
crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels,
which form the existing type of social life, are the most
desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the
disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial
progress.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV. VI, 2
45 Because a man has shop to mind
In time and place, since flesh must live,
Needs spirit lack all life behind,
All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,
All loves except what trade can give?
Browning, Shop
46 October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months
to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January,
September, April, November, May, March, June,
December, August, and February.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, XIII
47 A man can fell trees better than a woman. A woman can
knit stockings better than a man. Suppose the man can
fell two trees whilst the woman is felling one; and that
the woman can knit two pairs of stockings whilst the man
is knitting one. Suppose further that the time occupied
by the man in felling the two trees, and by the woman in
knitting the two pairs of stockings is one hour. Now if
each produces for himself and herself respectively, when
the woman wants a tree to bum and a pair of stockings to
wear, it will take her an hour to fell the tree, and half an
hour to knit the stockings—one hour and a half in all. And
the man, under the same necessity, will soend half an
hour in felling his tree, and one hour in knitting his
stockings—also one hour and a half in all. It costs the
man and woman three hours labor to supply themselves
with fuel and hosiery. But they can save an hour of this
by each working for the other. They require between
them two trees and two pairs of stockings. The man can
fell the two trees, and the woman knit the four stockings
in an hour each. Let them do so, and exchange a tree
against a pair of stockings. Each is now supplied as well
as before, although they have only worked t>vo hours
instead of three. They have gained half an hour’s leisure
each, and neither has gained it at the expense of the
other. The woman has worked half an hour for the man,
and he has worked half an hour for her. This is the state of
things which the Socialistic movement aims at
establishing.
Shaw, Our Lost Honesty
48 What does one expect from business save that it should
furnish money, to be used in turn for making more money
and for support of self and family, for buying books and
pictures, tickets to concerts which may afford culture,
and for paying taxes, charitable gifts and other things of
social and ethical value? How unreasonable to expect
that the pursuit of business should be itself a culture of
the imagination, in breadth and refinement; that it
Should directly, and not through the money which it
supplies, have social service for its animating principle
and be conducted as an enterprise in behalf of social
organization!
Dewey, Democracy and Education, XVIII
11.6 Taxation
The texts quoted here are not offered as covering or even as
touching on the technical intricacies of this difficult subject.
However, they do represent a choice selection of key
statements by the great authors concerning the purposes of
taxation and the criteria for judging the fairness, as well as
the effectiveness, with which taxes are levied.
That taxation, in some form, is necessary to defray costs
of government is generally agreed upon by all; but the use
of taxation for other purposes, such as the promotion of
economic welfare by a governmental redistribution of
wealth, is of such recent origin that it does not even appear
in most of the books from which we are quoting.
There is one other point of general agreement,
epitomized in the quotations from Burke and from Emerson:
namely that, regardless of their necessity and their fairness,
taxes are universally disliked by those who have to pay
them.
1 Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, | have bought
you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed
for you, and ye shall sow the land.
And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall
give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be
your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for
them of your households, and for food for your little ones.
And they said, Thou hast saved our lives; let us find
grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's
servants.
And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto
this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except
the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh's.
Genesis 47:23-26
2 Athenian Stranger. With a view to taxation, for various
reasons, every man ought to have had his property
valued: and the tribesmen should likewise bring a
register of the yearly produce to the wardens of the
country, that in this way there may be two valuations;
and the public officers may use annually whichever on
consideration they deem the best, whether they prefer to
take a certain portion of the whole value, or of the annual
revenue, after subtracting what is paid to the common
tables.
Plato, Laws, XII, 955B
3 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a
decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be
taxed.
Luke 2:1
4 Cato... gave most general annoyance by retrenching
people's luxury; for though (most of the youth being
thereby already corrupted) it seemed almost impossible
to take it away with an open hand and directly, yet going,
as it were, obliquely around, he caused all dress
carriages, women's ornaments, household furniture,
whose price exceeded one thousand five hundred
drachmas, to be rated at ten times as much as they were
worth; intending by thus making the assessments
greater, to increase the taxes paid upon them. He also
ordained that upon every thousand asses of property of
this kind, three should be paid, so that people, burdened
with these extra charges, and seeing others of as good
estates, but more frugal and sparing, paying less into the
public exchequer, might be tired out of their prodigality.
And thus, on the one side, not only those were disgusted
at Cato who bore the taxes for the sake of their luxury’,
but those, too, who on the other side laid by their luxury
for fear of the taxes.
Plutarch, Marcus Cato
5 Repeated demands on the part of the people, who
denounced the excessive greed of the revenue collectors,
made Nero doubt whether he should not order the repeal
of all indirect taxes, and so confer a most splendid boon
on the human race. But this sudden impulse was checked
by the senators, who having first heartily praised the
grandeur of his conception, pointed out "that the
dissolution of the empire must ensue if the revenues
which supported the State were to be diminished; for as
soon as the customs were swept away, there would follow
a demand for the abolition of the direct taxes. Many
companies for the collection of the indirect taxes had
been formed by consuls and tribunes, when the freedom
of the Roman people was still in its vigour, and
arrangements were subsequently made to insure an
exact correspondence between the amount of income
and the necessary disbursements. Certainly some
restraint, they admitted, must be put on the cupidity of
the revenue collectors, that they might not by new
oppressions bring into odium what for so many years had
been endured without a complaint."
Tacitus, Annals, XIII, 50
6 Cloten. Why tribute? why should we pay tribute? If Caesar
can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon
in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no
more tribute, pray you now.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Ill, i, 42
7 Queen Katharine. The subjects’ grief
Comes through commissions, which compel from each
The sixth part of his substance, to be levied
Without delay; and the pretence for this
Is named, your wars in France. This makes bold mouths.
Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze
Allegiance in them.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, I, ti, 55
8 The difficulty of raising money for the necessary uses of
the Commonwealth, especially in the approach of war...
ariseth from the opinion that every subject hath of a
propriety in his lands and goods exclusive of the
sovereign’s right to the use of the same. From whence it
cometh to pass that the sovereign power, which foreseeth
the necessities and dangers of the Commonwealth,
finding the passage of money to the public treasury
obstructed by the tenacity of the people, whereas it
ought to extend itself, to encounter and prevent such
dangers in their beginnings, contracteth itself as long as
it can, and when it cannot longer, struggles with the
people by stratagems of law to obtain little sums, which,
not sufficing, he is fain at last violently to open the way
for present supply or perish; and, being put often to these
extremities, at last reduceth the people to their due
temper, or else the Commonwealth must perish.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 29
9 To equal justice appertaineth also the equal imposition of
taxes; the equality whereof dependeth not on the
equality of riches, but on the equality of the debt that
every man oweth to the Commonwealth for his defence. It
is not enough for a man to labour for the maintenance of
his life; but also to fight, if need be, for the securing of his
labour. They must either do as the Jews did after their
return from captivity, in re-edifying the Temple, build with
one hand and hold the sword in the other, or else they
must hire others to fight for them. For the impositions
that are laid on the people by the sovereign power are
nothing else but the wages due to them that hold the
public sword to defend private men in the exercise of
several trades and callings. Seeing then the benefit that
every one receiveth thereby is the enjoyment of life,
which is equally dear to poor and rich, the debt which a
poor man oweth them that defend his life is the same
which a rich man oweth for the defence of his; saving
that the rich, who have the service of the poor, may be
debtors not only for their own persons, but for many
more. Which considered, the equality of imposition
consisteth rather in the equality of that which is
consumed, than of the riches of the persons that
consume the same. For what reason is there that he
which laboureth much and, sparing the fruits of his
labour, consumeth little should be more charged than he
that, living idly, getteth little and spendeth all he gets;
seeing the one hath no more protection from the
Commonwealth than the other?
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 30
10 It is true governments cannot be supported without great
charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys his share of the
protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for
the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own
consent—that is, the consent of the majority, giving it
either by themselves or their representatives chosen by
them; for if anyone shall claim a power to lay and levy
taxes on the people by his own authority, and without
such consent of the people, he thereby invades the
fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of
government. For what property have | in that which
another may by right take when he pleases to himself?
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 140
11 | heard a very warm debate between two professors,
about the most commodious and effectual ways and
means of raising money without grieving the subject. The
first affirmed, the justest method would be to lay a
certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed upon
every man, to be rated after the fairest manner, by a jury
of his neighbours. The second was of an opinion directly
contrary; to tax those qualities of body and mind for
which men chiefly value themselves; the rate to be more
or less according to the degrees of excelling; the decision
whereof should be left entirely to their own breast. The
highest tax was upon men, who are the greatest
favourites of the other sex; and the assessments
according to the number and natures of the favours they
have received; for which they are allowed to be their own
vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness were likewise
proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same
manner, by every person giving his own word for the
quantum of what he possessed. But, as to honour, justice,
wisdom and learning, they should not be taxed at all;
because, they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that
no man will either allow them in his neighbour, or value
them in himself.
The women were proposed to be taxed according to
their beauty and skill in dressing; wherein they had the
same privilege with the men, to be determined by their
own judgment. But constancy, chastity, good sense, and
good nature were not rated, because they would not bear
the charge of collecting.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Ill, 6
12 'Tis pleasant to observe, how free the present Age is in
laying Taxes on the next.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
13 Inequality occurs likewise when the condition of the
citizens differs with regard to taxes, which may happen in
four different ways: when the nobles assume the privilege
of paying none; when they commit frauds to exempt
themselves; when they engross the public money, under
pretence of rewards or appointments for their respective
employments; in fine, when they render the common
people tributary, and divide among their own body the
profits arising from the several subsidies. This last case is
very rare; an aristocracy so instituted would be the most
intolerable of all governments.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, V, 8
14 The public revenues are a portion that each subject gives
of his property, in order to secure or enjoy the remainder.
To fix these revenues in a proper manner, regard should
be had both to the necessities of the state and to those of
the subject. The real wants of the people ought never to
give way to the imaginary wants of the state.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIII, 1
15 The duties felt least by the people are those on
merchandise, because they are not demanded of them in
form. They may be so prudently managed that the people
themselves shall hardly know they pay them. For this
purpose it is of the utmost consequence that the person
who sells the merchandise should pay the duty. He is very
sensible that he does not pay it for himself; and the
consumer, who pays it in the main, confounds it with the
price.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIII, 7
16 Taxes may be increased in most republics, because the
citizen, who thinks he is paying himself, cheerfully
submits to them, and moreover is generally able to bear
their weight, from the nature of the government.
In a monarchy taxes may be increased, because the
moderation of the government is capable of procuring
opulence; it is a recompense, as it were, granted to the
prince for the respect he shows to the laws. In despotic
governments they cannot be increased, because there
can be no increase of the extremity of slavery.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIII, 13
17 The best taxes are such as are levied upon consumptions,
especially those of luxury, because such taxes are least
felt by the people. They seem in some measure voluntary,
since a man may choose how far he will use the
commodity which is taxed. They are paid gradually and
insensibly; they naturally produce sobriety and frugality,
if judiciously imposed; and being confounded with the
natural price of the commodity, they are scarcely
perceived by the consumers. Their only disadvantage is,
that they are expensive in the levying.
Taxes upon possessions are levied without expense,
but have every other disadvantage. Most states, however,
are obliged to have recourse to them, in order to supply
the deficiencies of the other.
But the most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary,
They are commonly converted, by their management,
into punishments on industry; and also, by their
unavoidable inequality, are more grievous, than by the
real burden which they impose. It is surprising, therefore,
to see them have place among any civilized people.
In general, all poll-taxes, even when not arbitrary,
which they commonly are, may be esteemed dangerous:
because it is so easy for the sovereign to add a little
more, and a little more, to the sum demanded, that these
taxes are apt to become altogether oppressive and
intolerable. On the other hand, a duty upon commodities
checks itself; and a prince will soon find, that an increase
of the impost is no increase of his revenue. It is not easy,
therefore, for a people to be altogether ruined by such
taxes.
Hume, Of Taxes
18 Every man, to be sure, is desirous of pushing off from
himself the burden of any tax which is imposed, and of
laying it upon others: but as every man has the same
inclination, and is upon the defensive, no set of men can
be supposed to prevail altogether in this contest.
Hume, Of Taxes
19 That taxes cannot be legitimately established except by
the consent of the people or its representatives, is a truth
generally admitted by all philosophers and jurists of any
repute on questions of public right.
Rousseau, Political Economy
20 In order to levy taxes in a truly equitable and
proportionate manner, the imposition ought not to be in
simple ratio to the property of the contributors, but in
compound ratio to the difference of their conditions and
the superfluity of their possessions. This very important
and difficult operation is daily made by numbers of
honest clerks, who know their arithmetic; but a Plato ora
Montesquieu would not venture to undertake it without
the greatest diffidence, or without praying to Heaven for
understanding and integrity.
Rousseau, Political Economy
21 Heavy taxes should be laid on servants in livery, on
equipages, rich furniture, fine clothes, on spacious courts
and gardens, on public entertainments of all kinds, on
useless professions, such as dancers, singers, players,
and in a word, on all that multiplicity of objects of luxury,
amusement and idleness, which strike the eyes of all, and
can the less be hidden, as their whole purpose is to be
seen, without which they would be useless. We need be
under no apprehension of the produce of these taxes
being arbitrary, because they are laid on things not
absolutely necessary. They must know but little of
mankind who imagine that, after they have been once
seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it; they would
a hundred times sooner renounce common necessaries,
and had much rather die of hunger than of shame. The
increase in their expense is only an additional reason for
supporting them, when the vanity of appearing wealthy
reaps its profit from the price of the thing and the charge
of the tax. As long as there are rich people in the world,
they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from
the poor, nor can the State devise a revenue less
burdensome or more certain than what arises from this
distinction.
Rousseau, Political Economy
22 Suppose the spirit of government was constantly to tax
only the superfluities of the rich, one of two things must
happen: either the rich would convert their superfluous
expenses into useful ones, which would redound to the
profit of the State, and thus the imposition of taxes would
have the effect of the best sumptuary laws, the expenses
of the State would necessarily diminish with those of
individuals, and the treasury would not receive so much
less as it would gain by having less to pay; or, if the rich
did not become less extravagant, the exchequer would
have such resources in the product of taxes on their
expenditure as would provide for the needs of the State.
In the first case the treasury would be the richer by what
it would save, from having the less to do with its money;
and in the second, it would be enriched by the useless
expenses of individuals.
Rousseau, Political Economy
23 It does not seem necessary that the expense of those
public works should he defrayed from that public
revenue, as it is commonly called, of which the collection
and application is in most countries assigned to the
executive power. The greater part of such public works
may easily be so managed as to afford a particular
revenue sufficient for defraying their own expense,
without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of
the society.
A highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example,
may in most cases be both made and maintained by a
small toll upon the carriages which make use of them: a
harbour, by a moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of
the shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage,
another institution for facilitating commerce, in many
countries, not only defrays its own expense, but affords a
small revenue or seignorage to the sovereign. The post-
office, another institution for the same purpose, over and
above defraying its own expense, affords in almost all
countries a very considerable revenue to the sovereign.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
24 Before | enter upon the examination of particular taxes, it
is necessary to premise the four following maxims with
regard to taxes in general.
The subjects of every state ought to contribute
towards the support of the government, as nearly as
possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is,
in proportion to the revenue which they respectively
enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of
government to the individuals of a great nation is like the
expense of management to the joint tenants of a great
estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to
their respective interests in the estate. In the observation
or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the
equality or inequality of taxation. Every tax, it must be
observed once for all, which falls finally upon one only of
the three sorts of revenue above mentioned, is
necessarily unequal in so far as it does not affect the
other two. In the following examination of different taxes |
Shall seldom take much further notice of this sort of
inequality, but shall, in most cases, confine my
observations to that inequality which is occasioned by a
particular tax falling unequally even upon that particular
sort of private revenue which is affected by it.
The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought
to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the
manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to
be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other
person. Where it is otherwise, every person subject to the
tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gatherer,
who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious
contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation,
some present or perquisite to himself. The uncertainty of
taxation encourages the insolence and favours the
corruption of an order of men who are naturally
unpopular, even where they are neither insolent nor
corrupt. The certainty of what each individual ought to
pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance that a
very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, 1
believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so
great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty.
Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the
manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the
contributor to pay it, A tax upon the rent of land or of
houses, payable at the same term at which such rents are
usually paid, is levied at the lime when it is most likely to
be convenient for the contributor to pay; or, when he is
most likely to have wherewithal to pay. Taxes upon such
consumable goods as are articles of luxury’ are all finally
paid by the consumer, and generally in a manner that is
very convenient for him. He pays them by little and little,
as he has occasion to buy the goods. As he is at liberty,
too, either to buy, or not to buy, as he pleases, it must be
his own fault if he ever suffers any considerable
inconveniency from such taxes.
Every lax ought to be so contrived as both to take out
and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as
possible over and above what it brings into the public
treasury of the slate. A tax may either take out or keep
out of the pockets of the people a great deal more than it
brings into the public treasury, in the four following ways.
First, the levying of it may require a great number of
officers, whose salaries may cat up the greater part of the
produce of the tax, and whose perquisites may impose
another additional tax upon the people. Secondly, it may
obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them
from applying to certain branches of business which
might give maintenance and unemployment to great
multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may
thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds
which might enable them more easily to do so. Thirdly, by
the forfeitures and other penalties which those
unfortunate individuals incur who attempt unsuccessfully
to evade the tax, it may frequently ruin them, and
thereby put an end to the benefit which the community
might have received from the employment of their
capitals. An injudicious tax offers a great temptation to
smuggling. But the penalties of smuggling must rise in
proportion to the temptation. Thee law, contrary to all the
ordinary principles of justice, first creates the temptation,
and then punishes those who yield to it; and it commonly
enhances the punishment, too, in proportion to the very
circumstance which ought certainly to alleviate it, the
temptation to commit the crime. Fourthly, by subjecting
the people to the frequent visits and the odious
examination of the tax-gatherers, it may expose them to
much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression; and
though vexation is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is
certainly equivalent to the expense at which every man
would be willing to redeem himself from it. It is in some
one or other of these four different wa>’s that taxes are
frequently so much more burdensome to the people than
they’ are beneficial to the sovereign.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 2
25 While property remains in the possession of the same
person, whatever permanent taxes may have been
imposed upon it, they have never been intended to
diminish or take away any part of its capital value, but
only some part of the revenue arising from it. But when
property changes hands, when it is transmitted either
from the dead to the living, or from the living to the
living, such taxes have frequently been imposed upon it
as necessarily take away some pact of its capital value.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 2
26 Those modes of taxation, by stamp-duties and by duties
upon registration, are of very’ modern invention. In the
course of little more than a century, however, stamp-
duties have, in Europe, become almost universal, and
duties upon registration extremely common. There is no
art which one government sooner learns of another than
that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 2
27 As the wages of labour are everywhere regulated, partly
by the demand for it, and partly by the average price of
the necessary articles of subsistence, whatever raises this
average price must necessarily raise those wages so that
the labourer may still be able to purchase that quantity of
those necessary articles which the state of the demand
for labour, whether increasing, stationary, or declining,
requires that he should have. A tax upon those articles
necessarily raises their price somewhat higher than the
amount of the tax, because the dealer, who advances the
tax, must generally get it back with a profit. Such a tax
must, therefore, occasion a rise in the wages of labour
proportionable to this rise of price.
It is thus that a tax upon the necessaries of life
operates exactly in the same manner as a direct tax upon
the wages of labour. The labourer, though he may pay it
out of his hand, cannot, for any considerable time at
least, be properly said even to advance it. It must always
in the long-run be advanced to him by his immediate
employer in the advanced rate of his wages. His
employer, if he is a manufacturer, will charge upon the
price of his goods this rise of wages, together with a
profit; so that the final payment of the tax together with
this overcharge, will fall upon the consumer. If his
employer is a farmer, the final payment, together with a
like overcharge, will fall upon the rent of the landlord.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 2
28 High taxes, sometimes by diminishing the consumption
of the taxed commodities, and some-times by
encouraging smuggling, frequently afford a smaller
revenue to government than what might be drawn from
more moderate taxes.
When the diminution of revenue is the effect of the
diminution of consumption there can be but one remedy,
and that is the lowering of the tax.
When the diminution of the revenue is the effect of
the encouragement given to smuggling, it may perhaps
be remedied in two ways; either by diminishing the
temptation to smuggle, or by increasing the difficulty of
smuggling. The temptation to smuggle can be diminished
only by the lowering of the lax, and the difficulty of
smuggling can be increased only by establishing that
system of administration which is most proper for
preventing it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 2
29 The finances of the state demanded the most vigilant
care of the emperor. Though every measure of injustice
and extortion had been adopted, which could collect the
property of the subject into the coffers of the prince; the
rapaciousness of Commodus had been so very
inadequate to his extravagance, that, upon his death, no
more than eight thousand pounds were found in the
exhausted treasury, to defray the current expenses of
government, and to discharge the pressing demand of a
liberal donative, which the new emperor had been
obliged to promise to the Praetorian guards. Yet under
these distressed circumstances, Pertinax had the
generous firmness to remit all the oppressive taxes
invented by Commodus, and to cancel all the unjust
claims of the treasury; declaring, in a decree of the
senate, "that he was better satisfied to administer a poor
republic with innocence, than to acquire riches by the
ways of tyranny and dishonour." Economy and industry
he considered as the pure and genuine sources of wealth;
and from them he soon derived a copious supply for the
public necessities.
Gibbon, Decline and Fell of the Roman Empire,
30 Of the several impositions introduced by Augustus, the
twentieth on inheritances and legacies was the most
fruitful, as well as the most comprehensive. As its
influence was not confined to Rome or Italy, the produce
continually increased with the gradual extension of the
ROMAN CITY. The new citizens, though charged, on equal
terms, with the payment of new taxes, which had not
affected them as subjects, derived an ample
compensation from the rank they obtained, the privileges
they acquired, and the fair prospect of honours and
fortune that was thrown open to their ambition.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VI
31 Several of his sayings are preserved. One of them in
particular discovers a deep insight into the constitution
of government. "The authority of the prince," said
Artaxerxes, "must be defended by a military force; that
force can only be maintained by taxes; all taxes must, at
last, fall upon agriculture; and agriculture can never
flourish except under the protection of justice and
moderation."
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VIII
32 The obscure millions of a great empire have much less to
dread from the cruelty than from the avarice of their
masters; and the/rhumble happiness in principally
affected by the grievance of excessive taxes, which,
gently pressing on the wealthy, descend with accelerated
weight on the meaner and more indigent classes of
society.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XVII
33 The noblest monument of a conqueror's fame, and of the
terror which he inspired, is the Saladine tenth, a general
tax, which was imposed on the laity and even the clergy
of the Latin church for the service of the holy war. The
practice was too lucrative to expire with the occasion;
and this tribute became the foundation of all the tithes
and tenths on ecclesiastical benefices which have been
granted by the Roman pontiffs to Catholic sovereigns, or
reserved for (he immediate use of the apostolic see.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LIX
34 This extraordinary man, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please
universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to
please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given
to men. However, he attempted it.
Burke, Speech on American Taxation (1774)
35 The sovereign, as undertaker of the duly of the people,
has the right to ta,x them for purposes essentially
connected with their own preservation. Such are, in
particular, the relief of the poor, foundling asylums, and
ecclesiastical establishments, otherwise designated
charitable or pious foundations.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
36 As regards the cost of maintaining the ecclesiastical
establishment, for similar reasons this must be derived
not from the public funds of the state, but from the
section of the people who profess the particular faith of
the church; and thus only ought it to fall as a burden on
the community.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
37 Every proposal for a specific tax is sure to meet with
opposition. It has been objected to a poll tax at a fixed
rate that it will be unequal, and the rich will pay no more
than the poor. In the form in which it has been offered in
these papers, the poor, properly speaking, are not
comprehended, though it is true that beyond the
exclusion of the indigent the tax has no reference to the
proportion of properly; but it should be remembered that
it is impossible to devise any specific tax that will operate
equally on the whole community. It must be the province
of the legislature to hold the scales with a judicious hand
and balance one by another. The rich must be made to
pay for their luxuries, which is the only proper way of
taxing their superior wealth.
Hamilton, Continentalist 6
30 Do we imagine that our assessments operate equally?
Nothing can be more contrary to the fact. Wherever a
discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the
property of their neighbors, they will abuse it; their
passions, prejudices, partialities, dislikes will have the
principal lead in measuring the abilities of those over
whom their power extends; and assessors will ever be a
set of petty tyrants, too unskillful, if honest, to be
possessed of so delicate a trust, and too seldom honest to
give them the excuse of want of skill.
Hamilton, Continentalist 6
39 There is, perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the
tranquillity of nations than their being bound to mutual
contributions for any common object that does not yield
an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation,
as true as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so
readily about as the payment of money.
Hamilton, Federalist 7
40 the popular system of administration inherent in the
nature of popular government, coinciding with the real
scarcity of money incident to a languid and mutilated
state of trade, has hitherto defeated every experiment for
extensive collections, and has at length taught the
different legislatures the folly of attempting them.
No person acquainted with what happens in other
countries will be surprised at this circumstance. In so
opulent a nation as that of Britain, where direct taxes
from superior wealth must be much more tolerable, and,
from the vigour of the government, much more
practicable, than in America, far the greatest part of the
national revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect
kind, from imposts, and from excises. Duties on imported
articles form a large branch of this latter description.
In America, it is evident that we must a long time
depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties.
In most parts of it, excises must be confined within a
narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill brook
the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The
pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly
yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of
impositions on their houses and lands; and personal
property is too precarious and invisible a fund to be laid
hold of in any other way than by the imperceptible
agency of taxes on consumption.
Hamilton, Federalist 12
41 Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle
of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and
motion, and enables it to perform its most essential
functions. A complete power, therefore, to procure a
regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources
of the community will permit, may be regarded as an
indispensable ingredient in every constitution. From a
deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue;
either the people must be subjected to continual plunder,
as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the
public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal
atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.
Hamilton, Federalist 30
42 What are the chief sources of expense in every
government? What has occasioned that enormous
accumulation of debts with which several of the European
nations are oppressed? The answer plainly is, wars and
rebellions; the support of those institutions which are
necessary to guard the body politic against these two
most mortal diseases of society. The expenses arising
from those institutions which are relative to the mere
domestic police of a State, to the support of its
legislative, executive, and judicial departments, with
their different appendages, and to the encouragement of
agriculture and manufactures (which will comprehend
almost all the objects of state expenditure), are
insignificant in comparison with those which relate to the
national defence.
Hamilton, Federalist 34
43 A just security to property is not afforded by that
government under which unequal taxes oppress one
species of property and reward another species; where
arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the
rich and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor;
where the keenness and competitions of want are
deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again
applied by an unfeeling policy as another spur; in
violation of that sacred property which heaven, in
decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow
kindly reserved to him in the small repose that could be
spared from the supply of his necessities.
Madison, Property
44 Services are now almost entirely reduced to money
payments, and military service is now almost the only
personal one exacted. In the past, fat more claims were
made directly on a man’s own person, and he used to be
called upon for work according to his ability. In our day,
the state purchases what it requires. This may at first
sight seem an abstract, heartless, and dead state of
affairs, and for the state to be satisfied with indirect
services may also look like decadence in the state. But
the principle of the modem state requires that the whole
of an individual’s activity shall be mediated through his
will. By means of money, however, the justice of equality
can be achieved much more efficiently. Otherwise, if
assessment depended on concrete ability, a talented man
would be more heavily taxed than an untalented one.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 299
45 Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What
a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think
they get their money’s worth, except for these.
Emerson, Politics
46 If | deny the authority of the State when it presents its
tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and
so harass me and my children without end. This is hard.
This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and
at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
47 | have paid no poll-tax for six years. | was put into a jail
once on this account, for one night; and, as | stood
considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet
thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron
grating which strained the light, | could not help being
struck with the foolishness of that institution which
treated me as if | were mere flesh and blood and bones, to
be locked up. | wondered that it should have concluded
at length that this was the best use it could put me to,
and had never thought to avail itself of my services in
some way. | saw that, if there was a wall of stone between
me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one
to climb or break through before they could get to be as
free as | was. | did not for a moment feel confined, and
the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. | felt
as if | alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They
plainly did not know how to treat me but behaved like
persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every
compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that
my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone
wall. | could not but smile to see how industriously they
locked the door on my meditations, which followed them
out again without let or hindrance, and they were really
all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they
had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they
cannot come at some person against whom they have a
spite, will abuse his dog. | saw that the State was half-
witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver
spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes,
and | lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
48 | have never declined paying the highway tax, because |
am as desirous of being a good neighbor as | am of being
a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, | am doing
my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no
particular item in the tax-bill that | refuse to pay it. |
simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw
and stand aloof from it effectually. | do not care to trace
the course of my dollar, if | could, till it buys aman ora
musket to shoot one with—the dollar is innocent—but |
am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
49 As the national debt finds its support in the public
revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for
interest, etc., the modern system of taxation was the
necessary complement of the system of national loans.
The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary
expenses, without the taxpayers feeling it immediately,
but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes.
On the other hand, the raising of taxation, caused by the
accumulation of debts contracted one after another,
compels the government always to have recourse to new
loans for new extraordinary’ expanses. Modem fiscality,
whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary
means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price),
thus contains within itself the germ of automatic
progression. Over-taxation is not an incident, but rather a
principle.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Vill, 31
50 A just distribution of burthens, by holding up to every
citizen an example of morality and good conscience
applied to difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the
value which the highest authorities attach to them, tends
in an eminent degree to educate the moral sentiments of
the community, both in respect of strength and of
discrimination. Such a mode of levying the taxes as does
not impede the industry, or unnecessarily interfere with
the liberty, of the citizen, promotes, not the preservation
only, but the increase of the national wealth, and
encourages a more active use of the individual faculties.
And vice versa, all errors in finance and taxation which
obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and
morals tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount,
positively to impoverish and demoralise them.
Mill, Representative Government, I!
51 It is... important that the assembly which votes the taxes,
either general or local, should be elected exclusively by
those who pay something towards the taxes imposed.
Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other
people’s money, have every motive to be lavish and none
to economise. As far as money matters are concerned,
any power of voting possessed by them is a violation of
the fundamental principle of free government; a
severance of the power of control from the interest in its
beneficial exercise. It amounts to allowing them to put
their hands into other people's pockets for any purpose
which they think fit to call a public one.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
52 It is essential, as it is on many other accounts desirable,
that taxation, in a visible shape, should descend to the
poorest class. In this country, and in most others, there is
probably no labouring family which does not contribute
to the indirect taxes, by the purchase of tea, coffee,
sugar, not to mention narcotics or stimulants. But this
mode of defraying a share of the public expenses is
hardly felt. ... lt would be better that a direct tax, in the
simple form of a capitation, should be levied on every
grown person in the community; or that every such
person should be admitted an elector on allowing himself
to be rated extra ordinem to the assessed taxes; or that a
small annual payment, rising and falling with the gross
expenditure of the country, should be required from
every registered elector; that so everyone might feel that
the money which he assisted in voting was partly his
own, and that he was interested in keeping down its
amount.
Mill, Representative Government, VIII
53 How many... and how irreconcilable, are the standards of
justice to which reference is made in discussing the
repartition of taxation. One opinion is, that payment to
the State should be in numerical proportion to pecuniary
means. Others think that justice dictates what they term
graduated taxation; taking a higher percentage from
those who have more to spare. In point of natural justice
a strong ease might be made for disregarding means
altogether, and taking the same absolute sum (whenever
it could be got) from everyone: as the subscribers to a
mess, or to a club, all pay the same sum for the same
privileges, whether they can all equally afford it or not.
Since the protection (it might be said) of law and
government is afforded to, and is equally required by all,
there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same
price. It is reckoned justice, not injustice, that a dealer
should charge to all customers the same price for the
same article, not a price varying according to their means
of payment. This doctrine, as applied to taxation, finds no
advocates, because it conflicts so strongly with man’s
feelings of humanity and of social expediency; but the
principle of justice which it invokes is as true and as
binding as those which can be appealed to against it.
Accordingly it exerts a tacit influence on the line of
defence employed for other modes of assessing taxation.
People feel obliged to argue that the State does more for
the rich than for the poor, as a justification for its taking
more from them: though this is in reality not true, for the
rich would be far better able to protect themselves, in the
absence of law or government, than the poor, and indeed
would probably be successful in converting the poor into
their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to the same
conception of justice, as to maintain that all should pay
an equal capitation tax for the protection of their persons
(these being of equal value to all), and an unequal tax for
the protection of their property, which is unequal. To this
others reply, that the all of one man is as valuable to him
as the all of another. From these confusions there is no
other mode of extrication than the utilitarian.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
54 What is taken from the rich in taxes, would, if not so
taken, have been saved and converted into capital, or
even expended in the maintenance and wages of
servants or of any class of unproductive labourers, to that
extent the demand for labour is no doubt diminished, and
the poor injuriously affected, by the tax on the rich.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. |, V, 10
55 Equality of taxation ... as a maxim of politics, means
equality of sacrifice. It means apportioning the
contribution of each person towards the expenses of
government, so that he shall feel neither more nor less
inconvenience from his share of the payment than every
other person experiences from his. This standard, like
other standards of perfection, cannot be completely
realized; but the first object in every practical discussion
should be to know what perfection is.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. V, 11, 2
56 To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the
smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to
impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and
saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes
which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it b
for the public good to place under limitation.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, BK. V, 11,3
Chapter 12
LAW and JUSTICE
Chapter 12 is divided into four sections: 12.1 Law and
Lawyers, 12.2 Justice and Injustice, 12.3 Rights—Natural and
Civil, and 12.4 Crime and Punishment.
This chapter, like Chapters 13 and 14, is closely related
to Chapter 10 on Politics; though insofar as some of its
passages discuss economic justice and economic rights, it
also touches on matters treated in Chapter 11 on Economics.
The discussion of law in Section 12.1 deals mainly with
man-made law, the law of the state, sometimes also referred
to as "civil law" or "positive law." The passages collected in
this section, therefore, tend to overlap passages in Section
10.3 on Government: Its Nature, Necessity, and Forms.
Section 12.2 goes beyond the consideration of justice in
relation to law; it contains quotations that also discuss the
justice of political, economic, and social institutions or
arrangements. It is followed by Section 12.3, which
introduces considerations intimately involved in the theory
of justice.
The chapter closes with a section—12.4— that involves
the notions of law, justice, and rights. The quotations
collected here consider the kinds, causes, and prevention of
crime, and debate the issues concerning the purposes and
justifications of punishment.
12.1 Law and Lawyers
Among the quotations collected here, the reader will find a
number that distinguish different kinds of law; divine law
and man-made law, natural law and positive law, and the
moral law and the law of the state. All of the kinds
mentioned share in the property that distinguishes
statements of law from other pronouncements: laws are
commands or prohibitions that prescribe how people ought
or ought not to behave; laws are violable rules of conduct.
The so-called "laws of nature" discovered and formulated by
natural scientists, being inviolable, are not laws in this sense
at all.
This section concentrates mainly on one kind of law:
positive law, the man-made laws that are one of the
principal instruments of government. The reader will find the
treatment of the natural moral law and the divine law in
Section 9.3. The reader will also find matters closely related
to the discussion of law in Section 12.2 and Section 12.3.
The passages assembled here discuss most of the critical
questions that have been raised about the nature and
operation of positive law: the difference between a
constitution as the fundamental law of the state and the
laws enacted by the legislative assemblies set up by the
constitution; coercive force as an essential property of law;
the educative influence of law; the difference between the
written and the unwritten law, or between legislative
enactments and customary law; the distinction between a
government of laws and a government of men; the role of
courts and judges in the application of law, and the need for
equity to prevent injustice in the application of a just law to
a particular case not foreseen by the lawmaker; the
considerations favoring or disfavoring the change of laws;
and the settlement of disputes by laws and courts instead of
by force and fighting as indispensable to the maintenance of
peace.
One issue, more fundamental than all the others, is
disputed in a number of quotations. On the one hand, the
reader will find an expression of the view that laws represent
the sovereign’s will; or as Ulpian, a Roman jurist, put it,
“whatever pleases the prince has the force of law."
According to this view, justice consists solely in obedience to
law; the laws themselves cannot be said either to be just or
unjust; being the ultimate standard of justice, they cannot
be measured by it. On the other hand, the reader will find
passages expressing the diametrically opposite view that
justice is the standard by which the goodness of laws is
measured. According to this view, an unjust law is a law in
name only, not binding on the conscience of those who are
subject to it.
Included here also are diatribes against law and lawyers,
akin to the attacks on physicians that the reader will find in
Section 18.2. On the other side of the balance are
economiums in praise of great lawgivers, such as Solon and
Lycurgus, together with the honoring of law as basic to
civilized life.
1 Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger,
as for one of your own country.
Leviticus 24:22
2 Menelaus. Laws will never be rightly kept in a city
That knows no fear or reverence.
Sophocles, Ajax, 1073
3 Aethra. The power that keeps cities of men together
Is noble preservation of the laws.
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 312
4 Cleon. Bad laws which are never changed are better for a
city than good ones that have no authority.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, III, 37
5 Socrates. Then consider the matter in this way:—-Imagine
that | am about to play truant (you may call the
proceeding by any name which you like), and the laws
and the government come and interrogate me: "Tell us,
Socrates," they say; "what are you about? are you not
going by an act of yours to overturn us—the laws, and the
whole state, as far as in you lies? Do you imagine that a
state can subsist and not be overthrown, in which the
decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and
trampled upon by individuals?" What will be our answer,
Crito, to these and the like words? Any one, and
especially a rhetorician, will have a good deal to say on
behalf of the law which requires a sentence to be carried
out. He will argue that this law should not be set aside;
and Shall we reply, "Yes; but the state has injured us and
given an unjust sentence." Suppose | say that?
Crito. Very good, Socrates.
Soc. "And was that our agreement with you?" the law
would answer; "or were you to abide by the sentence of
the state?" And if | were to express my astonishment at
their words, the law would probably add: "Answer,
Socrates, instead of opening your eyes—you are in the
habit of asking and answering questions. Tell us,—What
complaint have you to make against us which justifies
you in attempting to destroy us and the state? In the first
place did we not bring you into existence? Your father
married your mother by our aid and begat you. Say
whether you have any objection to urge against those of
us who regulate marriage?" None, | should reply. "Or
against those of us who after birth regulate the nurture
and education of children, in which you also were
trained? Were not the law's, which have the charge of
education, right in commanding your father to train you
in music and gymnastic?" Right, | should reply. "Well
then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured
and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that
you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before
you? And if this is true you are not on equal terms with
us; nor can you think that you have a right to do to us
what we are doing to you. Would you have any right to
strike or revile or do any other evil to your father or your
master, if you had one, because you have been struck or
reviled by him, or received some other evil at his hands?
—you would not say this? And because we think right to
destroy you, do you think that you have any right to
destroy us in return, and your country as far as in you
lies? Will you, O professor of true virtue, pretend that you
are justified in this? Has a philosopher like you failed to
discover that our country is more to be valued and higher
and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and
more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men
of understanding? also to be soothed, and gently and
reverently entreated when angry, even more than a
father, and either to be persuaded, or if not persuaded, to
be obeyed? And when we are punished by her, whether
with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to be
endured in silence: and if she leads us to wounds or
death in battle, thither we follow as is right; neither may
any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, but whether in
battle or in a court of law, or in any other place, he must
do what his city and his country order him; or he must
change their view of what is just: and if he may do no
violence to his father or mother, much less may he do
violence to his country." What answer shall we make to
this, Crito? Do the laws speak truly, or do they not?
Cr. | think that they do.
Plato, Crito, 50A
6 Athenian Stranger. Consider, then, to whom our state is to
be entrusted. For there is a thing which has occurred
times without number in states
Cleinias. What thing?
Ath. That when there has been a contest for power,
those who gain the upper hand so entirely monopolize
the government, as to refuse all share to the defeated
party and their descendants—they live watching one
another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that
some one who has a recollection of former wrongs will
come into power and rise up against them. Now,
according to our view, such governments are not polities
at all, nor are laws right which are passed for the good of
particular classes and not for the good of the whole state.
States which have such laws are not polities but parties,
and their notions of justice are simply unmeaning. | say
this, because | am going to assert that we must not
entrust the government in your state to any one because
he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage,
such as strength, or stature, or again birth: but he who is
most obedient to the laws of the state, he shall win the
palm; and to him who is victorious in the first degree
Shall be given the highest office and chief ministry of the
gods; and the second to him who bears the second palm;
and on a similar principle shall all the other offices be
assigned to those who come next in order. And when | call
the rulers servants or ministers of the law, | give them
this name not for the sake of novelty, but because |
certainly believe that upon such service or ministry
depends the well- or ill-being of the state. For that state
in which the law is subject and has no authority, |
perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but | see that the
state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers
are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every
blessing which the Gods can confer.
Plate, Laws, IV, 715A
7 Athenian Stranger. Laws are partly framed for the sake of
good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on
friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of
those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be
subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
Plato, Laws, IX, 880OB
8 The equitable is just, but not the legally Just but a
correction of legal justice. The reason is that all law is
universal but about some things it is not possible to make
a universal statement which shall be correct. In those
cases, then, in which it is necessary to speak universally,
but not possible to do so correctly, the law takes the
usual case, though it is not ignorant of the possibility of
error. And it is none the less correct; for the error is not in
the law nor in the legislator but in the nature of the thing,
since the matter of practical affairs is of this kind from the
start. When the law speaks universally, then, and a case
arises on it which is not covered by the universal
statement, then it is right, where the legislator fails us
and has erred by over-simplicity, to correct the omission
—to say what the legislator himself would have said had
he been present, and would have put into his law if he
had known. Hence the equitable is just, and better than
one kind of justice—not better than absolute justice but
better than the error that arises from the absoluteness of
the statement. And this is the nature of the equitable, a
correction of law where it is defective owing to its
universality.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1137b11
9 It is difficult to get from youth up a right training for virtue
if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to
live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most
people, especially when they are young. For this reason
their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for
they will not be painful when they have become
customary. But it is surely not enough that when they are
young they should get the right nurture and attention;
since they must, even when they are grown up, practise
and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as
well, and generally speaking to cover the whole of life; for
most people obey necessity rather than argument, and
punishments rather than the sense of what is noble.
This is why some think that legislators ought to
stimulate men to virtue and urge them forward by the
motive of the noble, on the assumption that those who
have been well advanced by the formation of habits will
attend to such influences; and that punishments and
penalties should be imposed on those who disobey and
are of inferior nature, while the incurably bad should be
completely banished. A good man (they think), since he
lives with his mind fixed on what is noble submit to
argument, while a bad man, whose desire is for pleasure,
is corrected by pain like a beast of burden. This is, too,
why they say the pains inflicted should be those that are
most opposed to the pleasures such men love.
However that may be, if (as we have said) the man
who is to be good must be well trained and habituated,
and go on to spend his time in worthy occupations and
neither willingly nor unwillingly do bad actions, and if
this can be brought about if men live in accordance with
a sort of reason and right order, provided this has force,—
if this be so, the paternal command indeed has not the
required force or compulsive power (nor in general has
the command of one man, unless he be a king or
something similar), but the law has compulsive power,
while it is at the same time a rule proceeding from a sort
of practical wisdom and reason. And while people hate
men who oppose their impulses, even if they oppose
them rightly, the law in its ordaining of what is good is
not burdensome.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1179b31
10 The habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil, and,
when the advantage is small, some errors both of
lawgivers and rulers had better be left; the citizen will not
gain so much by making the change as he will lose by the
habit of disobedience- The analogy of the arts is false; a
change in a lawis avery different thing from a change in
an art. For the law has no power to command obedience
except that of habit, which can only be given by time, so
that a readiness to change from old to new laws
enfeebles the power of the law.
Aristotle, Politics, 1269a15
11 He who bids the law rule may be deemed to bid God and
Reason alone rule, but he who bids man rule adds an
element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and
passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are
the best of men. The law is reason unaffected by desire.
Aristotle, Politics, 1287a28
12 Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good
government. Hence there are two parts of good
government; one is the actual obedience of citizens to
the laws, the other part is the goodness of the laws which
they obey; they may obey bad laws as well as good. And
there may be a further subdivision; they may obey either
the best laws which are attainable to them, or the best
absolutely.
Aristotle, Politics, 1294a4
13 In all well-attempered governments there is nothing
which should be more jealously maintained than the
Spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small
matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at
last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of
small expenses in time eats up a fortune.
Aristotle, Politics, 1307b30
14 Particular law is that which each community lays down
and applies to its own members: this is partly written and
partly unwritten. Universal law is the law of Nature. For
there really is, as every one to some extent divines, a
natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men,
even on those who have no association or covenant with
each other.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1373b4
15 Law is only a principle of right derived from the will of the
gods. It commands what is decent and forbids the
opposite.
Cicerro, Philippics, XI, 12
16 Injustice often comes about through trickery, in other
words, through an over-subtle or perhaps fraudulent
construction of law. This is the origin of the familiar
proverb, "More law, less justice."
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 10
17 We should never prosecute the innocent. But we need
have no scruples about undertaking the defense of a
guilty person, so long as he is not utterly depraved and
evil. People expect it; custom sanctions it; and humanity
condones it. It is, after all, the business of the judge ina
trial to find out the truth.
Cicero, De Officiis, Il, 14
18 The fairness of a law does not consist in its effect being
actually felt by all alike, but in its having been laid down
for all alike.
Seneca, Letters to Luciliuts, 107
19 Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with
burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch
not the burdens with one of your fingers.
Luke 11:46
20 Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing.... For
he thought that the most material points, and such as
most directly tended to the public welfare, being
imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good
discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a
stronger security, than any compulsion would be, in the
principles of action formed in them by their best lawgiver,
education. And as for things of lesser importance, as
pecuniary contracts, and such like, the forms of which
have to be changed as occasion requires, he thought it
the best way to prescribe no positive rule or inviolable
usage in such cases, willing that their manner and form
should be altered according to the circumstances of time,
and determinations of men of sound judgment. Every end
and object of law and enactment it was his design
education should effect.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
21 When he perceived that his more important institutions
had taken root in the minds of his countrymen, that
custom had rendered them familiar and easy’, that his
commonwealth was now grown up and able to go alone,
then, as Plato somewhere tells us, the Maker of the world,
when first he saw it existing and beginning its motion,
felt joy, even so Lycurgus, viewing with joy and
satisfaction the greatness and beauty of his political
structure, now fairly at work and in motion, conceived the
thought to make it immortal too, and, as far as human
forecast could reach, to deliver it down unchangeable to
posterity. He called an extraordinary assembly of all the
people, and told them that he now thought everything
reasonably well established, both for the happiness and
the virtue of the state; but that there was one thing still
behind, of the greatest importance, which he thought not
fit to impart until he had consulted the oracle; in the
meantime, his desire was that they would observe the
laws without any the least alteration until his return, and
then he would do as the god should direct him. They all
consented readily, and bade him hasten his journey; but,
before he departed, he administered an oath to the two
kings, the senate, and the whole commons, to abide by
and maintain the established form of polity until Lycurgus
should be come back.
This done, he set out for Delphi, and, having sacrificed
to Apollo, asked him whether the laws he had established
were good, and sufficient for a people’s happiness and
virtue. The oracle answered that the laws were excellent,
and that the people, while it observed them, should live
in the height of renown. Lycurgus took the oracle in
writing, and sent it over to Sparta; and, having sacrificed
the second time to Apollo, and taken leave of his friends
and his son, he resolved that the Spartans should not be
released from the oath they had taken, and that he
would, of his own act, close his life where he was.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
22 This... is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s
neighbour, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing
more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus
then right reason differs not at all from the reason of
justice.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XI, 1
23 The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns
on earth and lives by faith... while it sojourns on earth,
calls citizens out of all nations and gathers together a
society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about
diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions whereby
earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing
that, however various these are, they all tend to one and
the same end of earthly peace.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 17
24 A private person cannot lead another to virtue
efficaciously; for he can only advise, and if his advice be
not taken, it has no coercive power, such as the law
should have, in order to prove an efficacious inducement
to virtue... , , But this coercive power is vested in the
whole people or in some public personage, to whom it
belongs to inflict penalties,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 90, 3
25 A law is imposed on others by way of a rule and measure.
Now a rule or measure is imposed by being applied to
those who are to be ruled and measured by it. Therefore,
in order that a law obtain the binding force which is
proper to a law, it must be applied to the men who have
to be ruled by it. Such application is made by its being
notified to them by promulgation. Therefore promulgation
is necessary for the law to obtain its force.
Thus... the definition of Jaw may be gathered; and it is
nothing other than an ordinance of reason for the
common good, made by him who has care of the
community, and promulgated,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 90, 4
26 Man has a natural aptitude for virtue; but the perfection
itself of virtue must be acquired by man by means of
some kind of training. Thus we observe that man is
helped by industry in his necessities, for instance, in food
and clothing. Certain beginnings of these he has from
nature, that is, his reason and his hands; but he has not
the full complement, as other animals have, to whom
nature has given sufficient covering and food. Now it is
difficult to see how man could suffice for himself in the
matter of this training; for the perfection of virtue
consists chiefly in withdrawing man from undue
pleasures, to which above all man is inclined, and
especially the young, who are more capable of being
trained. Consequently a man needs to receive this
training from another, through which to arrive at the
perfection of virtue. And as to those young people who
are inclined to acts of virtue by their good natural
disposition, or by custom, or rather by the gift of God,
paternal training suffices, which is by admonitions. But
since some are found to be depraved, and prone to vice,
and not easily amenable to words, it was necessary for
such to be restrained from evil by force and fear, in order
that at least they might cease from evil-doing and leave
others in peace, and that they themselves, by being
accustomed in this way, might be brought to do willingly
what hitherto they did from fear, and thus become
virtuous. Now this kind of training, which compels
through fear of punishment, is the discipline of laws.
Therefore, in order that man might have peace and
virtue, it was necessary for laws to be framed. ... As the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says, "it is better that all things be
regulated by law than left to be decided by judges," and
this for three reasons. First, because it is easier to find a
few wise men competent to frame right laws than to find
the many who would be necessary to judge rightly of
each single case. Secondly, because those who make
laws consider long beforehand what laws to make; but
judgment on each single case has to be pronounced as
soon as it arises. And it is easier for man to see what is
right by taking many instances into consideration, than
by considering one solitary fact. Thirdly, because
lawgivers judge universally and of future events, while
those who sit in judgment judge of things present,
towards which they are affected by love, hatred, or some
kind of cupidity, so that their judgment is perverted.
Since then the animated justice of the judge is not
found in every man, and since it can be deflected,
therefore it was necessary, whenever possible, for the law
to determine how to judge, and for very few matters to be
left to the decision of men.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 95,1
27 The common principles of the natural law cannot be
applied to all men in the same way on account of the
great variety of human affairs, and from this arises the
diversity of positive la%vs among various people.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 95,2
28 The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue not
suddenly, but gradually. Therefore it does not lay upon
the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who
are already virtuous, namely, that they should abstain
from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being
unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet
greater evils.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 96, 2
29 Laws may be unjust in two ways. First, by being contrary
to human good ... as when an authority imposes on his
subjects burdensome laws, conducive not to the common
good but rather to his own cupidity or vainglory; or...as
when a man makes a law that goes beyond the power
committed to him; or. , .as when burdens are imposed
unequally on the community, although with a view to the
common good. The like are acts of violence rather than
laws....
Secondly, laws may be unjust through being opposed
to the Divine good. Such are the laws of tyrants inducing
to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law;
and laws of this kind must in no way be observed.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I~ II, 96, 4
30 The notion of law contains two things: first, that itis a
rule of human acts; secondly, that it has coercive power.
Hence a man may be subject to law in two ways. First, as
the regulated is subject to the regulator, and in this way
whoever is subject to a power is subject to the law framed
by that power. But it may happen in two ways that one is
not subject to a power. In one way, by being altogether
free from its authority. Hence the subjects of one city or
kingdom are not bound by the laws of the sovereign of
another city or kingdom, since they are not subject to his
authority. In another way by being under a yet higher law.
Thus the subject of a proconsul should be ruled by his
command, but not in those matters in which the subject
receives his orders from the emperor; for in these matters
he is not bound by the mandate of the lower authority,
since he is directed by that of a higher. In this way, one
who is subject absolutely to a law may not be subject to it
in certain matters, in respect of which he is ruled by a
higher law.
Secondly, a man is said to be subject to a law as the
coerced is subject to the coercer. In this way the virtuous
and the just are not subject to the law, but only the
wicked. Because coercion and violence are contrary to
the will; but the will of the good is in harmony with the
law, while the will of the wicked is discordant from it.
Therefore in this sense the good are not subject to the
law, but only the wicked.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 96, 5
31 Human law is a dictate of re 2 ison, by which human acts
are directed. Thus there may be two causes for the just
change of human law: one on the part of reason; the
other on the part of man whose acts are regulated by law.
The cause on the part of reason is that it seems natural to
human reason to advance gradually from the imperfect to
the perfect....
On the part of man, whose acts are regulated by law,
the law can be rightly changed on account of the
changed condition of man, to whom different things are
c-xpedient according to the difference of his condition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 97, 1
32 Human law is rightly changed in so far as such change is
conducive to the common weal. But, to a certain extent,
the mere change of law is of itself prejudicial to the
common good, because custom avails much for the
observance of laws, seeing that what is done contrary to
general custom, even in slight matters, is looked upon as
grave. Consequently, when a law is changed, the binding
power of the law is diminished, in so far as custom is
abolished. Therefore human law should never be
changed, unless, in some way or other, the common
welfare be compensated according to the extent of the
harm done in this respect.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 97, 2
33 For such law as man gives to other wight.
He should himself submit to it, by right.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Man of Law’s Prologue, Intro.
34 The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or
composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there
cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it
follows that where they are well armed they have good
laws.
Machiavelli, Prince, XII
35 There are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the
other by force; the first method is proper to men, the
second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not
sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second.
Machiavelli, Prince, XVIII
36 For as good habits of the people require good laws to
support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits
on the part of the people.
Machiavelli, Discourses, I, 18
37 The strictest right is the greatest wrong, and therefore
equity is necessary. This is not a rash relaxation of laws
and discipline. It is, rather, an interpretation of laws
which in some crises finds mitigating circumstances,
especially in cases in which the law doesn’t decide on
principle. According to the circumstances equity weighs
for or against. But the weighing must be of such kind that
the law isn’t undermined, for no undermining of natural
law and divine law must be allowed.
Luther, Table Talk, 4178
38 The law is a silent magistrate, and a magistrate a
speaking law.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 20
39 It is very doubtful whether there can be such evident
profit in changing an accepted law, of whatever sort it be,
as there is harm in disturbing it; inasmuch as a
government is like a structure of different parts joined
together in such a relation that it is impossible to budge
one without the whole body feeling it.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 23, Of Custom
40 There is little relation between our actions, which are in
perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws. The
most desirable laws are those that are rarest, simplest,
and most general; and | even think that it would be
better to have none at all than to have them in such
numbers as we have.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
41 Now laws remain in credit not because they are just, but
because they are laws. That is the mystic foundation of
their authority; they have no other. And that is a good
thing for them. They are often made by fools, more often
by people who, in their hatred of equality, are wanting in
equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors.
There is nothing so grossly and widely and ordinarily
faulty as the laws. Whoever obeys them because they are
just, does not obey them for just the reason he should.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
42 Dick the Butcher. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the
lawyers.
John Cade. Nay, that | mean to do. Is not this a
lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb
should be made parchment? that parchment, being
scribbled o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee
stings: but | say, 'tis the bee's wax; for | did but seal once
to a thing, and | was never mine own man since.
Shakespeare, II Henry VI, IV, ti, 82
43 Reason is the life of the Law. Nay the Common Law itselfe
is nothing else but reason; which is to be understood of
an artificial! perfection of reason, gotten by long study,
observation, and experience, and not of every man’s
naturall reason.
Sir Edward Coke, Commentary Upon Littleton, 138
44 The most obvious and natural way of discovering the
truth is by referring to laws, which derive their force and
efficacy from the general consent of mankind; so that if a
law rests upon the presumption of any fact, which in
reality has no existence, such a law is not binding. For
when no evidence of the fact can be produced, the entire
foundation, on which that law rests must fail.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, Bk. II, XI, 6
45 As men, for the attaining of peace and conservation of
themselves thereby, have made an artificial man, which
we Call a Commonwealth; so also have they made
artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves,
by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end to the
lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given
the sovereign power, and at the other end to their own
ears. These bonds, in their own nature but weak, may
nevertheless be made to hold, by the danger, though not
by the difficulty of breaking them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 21
46 Of positive laws some are human, some divine: and of
human positive laws, some are distributive, some penal.
Distributive are those that determine the rights of the
subjects, declaring to every man what it is by which he
acquireth and holdeth a propriety in lands or goods, and
a right or liberty of action: and these speak to all the
subjects. Pena/ are those which declare what penalty
Shall be inflicted on those that violate the law; and speak
to the ministers and officers ordained for execution. For
though every one ought to be informed of the
punishments ordained beforehand for their transgression;
nevertheless the command is not addressed to the
delinquent (who cannot be supposed will faithfully
punish himself), but to public ministers appointed to see
the penalty executed. And these penal laws are for the
most part written together with the laws distributive, and
are sometimes called judgements. For all laws are general
judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every
particular judgement is a law to him whose case is
judged.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 26
47 To the care of the sovereign belongeth the making of
good laws. But what is a good law? By a good /aw, | mean
not a just law: for no law can be unjust. The law is made
by the sovereign power, and all that is done by such
power is warranted and owned by every one of the
people; and that which every man will have so, no man
can say is unjust. It is in the laws of a Commonwealth, as
in the laws of gaming: whatsoever the gamesters all
agree on is injustice to none of them. A good law is that
which is needful, for the good of the people, and withal
perspicuous.
For the use of laws (which are but rules authorized) is
not to bind the people from all voluntary actions, but to
direct and keep them in such a motion as not to hurt
themselves by their own impetuous desires, rashness, or
indiscretion; as hedges are set, not to stop travellers, but
to keep them in the way. And therefore a law that is not
needful, having not the true end of a law, is not good. A
law may be conceived to be good when it is for the
benefit of the sovereign, though it be not necessary for
the people, but it is not so. For the good of the sovereign
and people cannot be separated.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 30
48 Let not the Law of thy Country be the non ultra of thy
Honesty; nor think that always good enough which the
law will make good.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, I, I
49 | look at the law which they [the Jews] boast of having
obtained from God, and | find it admirable. It is the first
law of all and is of such a kind that, even before the term
law was in currency among the Greeks, it had, for nearly
a thousand years earlier, been uninterruptedly accepted
and observed by the Jews. | likewise think it strange that
the first law of the world happens to be the most perfect;
so that the greatest legislators have borrowed their laws
from it, as is apparent from the law of the Twelve Tables at
Athens, afterwards taken by the Romans, and as it would
be easy to prove, if Josephus and others had not
sufficiently dealt with this subject.
Pascal, Pensées, IX, 619
50 We cannot even conceive, that every citizen should be
allowed to interpret the commonwealth’s decrees or laws.
For were every citizen allowed this, he would thereby be
his own judge, because each would easily be able to give
a colour of right to his own deeds, which ... is absurd.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Ill, 4
51 Civil jurisorudence depends on the mere decree of the
commonwealth, which is not bound to please any but
itself, nor to hold anything to be good or bad, but what it
judges to be such for itself. And, accordingly, it has not
merely the right to avenge itself, or to lay down and
interpret laws, but also to abolish the same, and to
pardon any guilty person out of the fulness of its power.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, IV, 5
52 The obligations of the law of Nature cease not in society,
but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have, by
human laws, Known penalties annexed to them to enforce
their observation. Thus the law of Nature stands as an
external rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The
rules that they make for other men’s actions must, as well
as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to
the law of Nature— i.e., to the will of God, of which that is
a declaration, and the fundamental law of Nature being
the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be
good or valid against it.
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 135
53 These are the bounds which the trust that is put in them
by the society and the law of God and Nature have set to
the legislative power of every commonwealth, in all forms
of government. First: They are to govern by promulgated
established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but
to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at
Court, and the countryman at plough. Secondly: These
laws also ought to be designed for no other end
ultimately but the good of the people.
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 142
54 First, the law of God; secondly, the law of politic
societies; thirdly, the law of fashion, or private censure,
are those to which men variously compare their actions:
and it is by their conformity to one of these laws that they
take their measures, when they would judge of their
moral rectitude, and denominate their actions good or
bad.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXVIII,
13
55 | said that those who made profession of this science
[law] were exceedingly multiplied, being almost equal to
the caterpillars in number; that they were of diverse
degrees, distinctions, and denominations. The
numerousness of those that dedicated themselves to this
profession were such that the fair and justifiable
advantage and income of the profession was not
sufficient for the decent and handsome maintenance of
multitudes of those who followed it. Hence it came to
pass that it was found needful to supply that by artifice
and cunning, which could not be procured by just and
honest methods: the better to bring which about, very
many men among us were bred up from their youth in the
art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that
white is black, and black is white, according as they are
paid. The greatness of these mens assurance and the
boldness of their pretensions gained upon the opinion of
the vulgar, whom in a manner they made slaves of, and
got into their hands much the largest share of the
practice of their profession. These practitioners were by
men of discernment called pettifoggers, (that is,
confounders, or rather, destroyers of right).
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 5
56 Law, in a free Country, is, or ought to be, the
Determination of the Majority of those who have Property
in Land.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
57 Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but
let wasps and hornets break through.
Swift, A Tritical Essay Upon the Faculties of the Mind
58 The hungry Judges soon the sentence sign.
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.
Pope, The Rape of the Lock, III, 21
59 An attorney may feel all the miseries and distresses of his
fellow-creatures, provided he happens not to be
concerned against them.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XII, 10
60 Before laws were made, there were relations of possible
justice. To say that there is nothing just or unjust but
what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the
same as Saying that before the describing of a circle all
the radii were not equal.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, I, 1
61 If it be true that the temper of the mind and the passions
of the heart are extremely different in different climates,
the laws ought to be in relation both to the variety of
those passions and to the variety of those tempers.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIV, 1
62 | am told that there are laws among thieves, and also
laws of war. | ask what are these laws of war, | learn that
they mean hanging a brave officer who has held fast in a
bad post without cannon against a royal army; that they
mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged
one of yours; that they mean putting to the fire and the
sword villages which have not brought their sustenance
on the appointed day, according to the orders of the
gracious sovereign of the district. "Good," say I, "that is
the ‘Spirit of the Laws.' "
It seems to me that most men have received from
nature enough common sense to make laws, but that
everyone is not just enough to make good laws.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Laws
63 The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular
government, that is to say, of government whose object is
the good of the people, is ... to follow in everything the
general will. But to follow this will it is necessary to know
it, and above all to distinguish it from the particular will,
beginning with one’s self: this distinction is always very
difficult to make, and only the most sublime virtue can
afford sufficient illumination for it. As, in order to will, it is
necessary to be free, a difficulty no less great than the
former arises—that of preserving at once the public
liberty and the authority of government. Look into the
motives which have induced men, once united by their
common needs in a general society, to unite themselves
still more intimately by means of civil societies: you will
find no other motive than that of assuring the property,
life and liberty of each member by the protection of all.
But can men be forced to defend the liberty of any one
among them, without trespassing on that of others? And
how can they provide for the public needs, without
alienating the individual property of those who are forced
to contribute to them? With whatever sophistry all this
may be covered over, it is certain that if any constraint
can be laid on my will, | am no longer free, and that | am
no longer master of my own property, if any one else can
lay a hand on it. This difficulty, which would have seemed
insurmountable, has been removed, like the first, by the
most sublime of all human institutions, or rather by a
divine inspiration, which teaches mankind to imitate hem
below the unchangeable decrees of the Deity. By what
inconceivable art has a means been found of making men
free by making them subject; of using in the service of
the State the properties, the persons and even the lives
of all its members, without constraining and without
consulting them; of confining their will by their own
admission; of overcoming their refusal by that consent,
and forcing them to punish themselves, when they act
against their own will? How can it be that all should obey,
yet nobody take upon him to command, and that all
should serve, and yet have no masters, but be the more
free, as, in apparent subjection, each loses no part of his
liberty but what might be hurtful to that of another?
These wonders are the work of law. It is to law alone that
men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ of the
will of all which establishes, in civil right, the natural
equality between men. It is this celestial voice which
dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and
teaches him to act according to the rules of his own
judgment, and not to behave inconsistently with himself.
It is with this voice alone that political rulers should
speak when they command; for no sooner does one man,
setting aside the law, claim to subject another to his
private will, than he departs from the state of civil
society, and confronts him face to face in the pure state
of nature, in which obedience is prescribed solely by
necessity.
Rousseau, Political Economy
64 | mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any
sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being
taken as they are and laws as they might be.
Rousseau, Social Contract, |, Introduction
65 If there is, in each State, only one good system, the
people that is in possession of it should hold fast to this;
but if the established order is bad, why should laws that
prevent men from being good be regarded as
fundamental? Besides, in any case, a people is always in
a position to change its laws, however good; for, if it
choose to do itself harm, who can have a right to stop it?
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 12
66 Why ..,iS SO much respect paid to old laws? For this very
reason. We must believe that nothing but the excellence
of old acts of will can have preserved them so long: if the
Sovereign had not recognised them as throughout
salutary, it would have revoked them a thousand times.
This is why, so far from growing weak, the laws
continually gain new strength in any well constituted
State; the precedent of antiquity makes them daily more
venerable: while wherever the laws grow weak as they
become old, this proves that there is no longer a
legislative power, and that the State is dead.
Rousseau, Social Contract, III, II
67 A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of
the cause which he undertakes unless his client asks his
opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The
justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the
judge.
Johnson, Tour of the Western Islands of Scotland (Aug.
15,1773)
68 Johnson. |t is sufficient for our purpose that every just law
is dictated by reason; and that the practice of every legal
Court is regulated by equity. It is the quality of reason to
be invariable and constant; and of equity, to give to one
man what, in the same case, is given to another. The
advantage which humanity derives from law is this: that
the law gives every man a rule of action, and prescribes a
mode of conduct which shall entitle him to the support
and protection of society. That the law may be a rule of
action, it is necessary that it be known; it is necessary
that it be permanent and stable. The law is the measure
of civil right; but if the measure be changeable, the
extent of the thing measured never can be settled.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1772)
69 The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of
its history.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLIV
70 People, crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If
laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and
those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will
always be dangerous, more or less.
Burke, Letter to Charles James Fox (Oct 8, 1777)
71 Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Burke, Speech at Bristol (1780)
72 In the making of a new law it is undoubtedly the duty of
the legislator to see that no injustice be done even to an
individual: for there is then nothing to be unsettled, and
the matter is under his hands to mould it as he pleases;
and if he finds it untractable in the working, he may
abandon it without incurring any new inconvenience. But
in the question concerning the repeal of an old one, the
work is of more difficulty; because laws, like houses, lean
on one another, and the operation is delicate, and should
be necessary: the objection, in such a case, ought not to
arise from the natural infirmity of human institutions, but
from substantial faults which contradict the nature and
end of law itself,—faults not arising from the
imperfection, but from the misapplication and abuse of
our reason.
Burke, Tract on the Popery Laws, I, 3
73 The general object which all laws have, or ought to have,
in common, is to augment the total happiness of the
community; and therefore, in the first place, to exclude,
as far as may be, every thing that tends to subtract from
that happiness: in other words, to exclude mischief.
Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, XIII, 1
74 Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and
define their true meaning and operation.
Hamilton, Federalist 22
75 Nations pay little regard to rules and maxims calculated
in their very nature to run counter to the necessities of
society. Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering
the government with restrictions that cannot be
observed, because they know’ that every breach of the
fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs
that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in
the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country,
and forms a precedent for other breaches where the same
plea of necessity does not exist at all, or is less urgent
and palpable.
Hamilton, Federalist 25
76 It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are
made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so
voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent
that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or
revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such
incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law
is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is
defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule
which is little known and less fixed?
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 62
77 One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 24
78 The hatred of law, of right made determinate in law, is
the shibboleth whereby fanaticism, flabby-mindedness,
and the hypocrisy of good intentions are clearly and
infallibly recognized for what they are, disguise
themselves as they may.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 258, fn.
79 Laws are of two kinds—laws of nature and laws of the
land. The laws of nature simply are what they are and are
valid as they are; they are not liable to encroachment,
though in certain cases man may transgress them. To
know the law of nature, we must learn to know nature,
since its laws are rigid and it is only our ideas about them
that can be false. The measure of these laws is outside
us; knowing them adds nothing to them and does not
assist their operation; our knowledge of them can
expand, that is all. Knowledge of the laws of the land is in
one way similar, but in another way not. These laws too
we learn to know just as they exist; the citizen’s
knowledge of them is more or less of this sort, and the
student of positive law equally stops at What is given.
But the difference in the case of laws of the land is that
they arouse the spirit of reflection, and their diversity at
once draws attention to the fact that they are not
absolute. Positive laws are something posited, something
Originated by men. Between what is so originated and
man’s inner voice there may be an inevitable clash or
there may be agreement. Man does not stop short at the
existent, but claims to have in himself the measure of
what is right. He may be subjected to the compulsion and
dominion of an external authority, though never as he is
to the compulsion of nature, because his inner self always
tells him how things ought to be and he finds within
himself the confirmation or denial of what passes as valid.
In nature, the highest truth is that there is a /aw; in the
law of the land, the thing is not valid simply because it
exists; on the contrary, everyone demands that it shall
comply with his private criterion. Here then an
antagonism is possible between what ought to be and
what is, between the absolutely right which stands
unaltered and the arbitrary determination of what is to be
recognized as right. A schism and a conflict of this sort is
to be found only in the territory of mind, and because
mind’s privilege seems therefore to lead to discontent
and unhappiness, men are often thrown back from the
arbitrariness of life to the contemplation of nature and set
themselves to take nature as an example. But it is
precisely in these clashes between what is absolutely
right and what arbitrariness makes pass as right that
there lies the need for studying the fundamentals of
right. In the right, man must meet with his own reason;
consequently, he must consider the rationality of the
right, and this is the task of our science in contrast with
the positive study of law which often has to do only with
contradictions.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Preface
80 The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and
esteem the statute somewhat: so much life as it has in
the character of living men is its force. The statute stands
there to say, Yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel
ye this article to-day? Our statute is a currency which we
stamp with our own portrait: it soon becomes
unrecognizable, and in process of time will return to the
mint.
Emerson, Politics
81 Good men must not obey the laws too well.
Emerson, Politics
82 The less government we have the better—the fewer laws,
and the less confided power.
Emerson, Politics
83 Mr. Brownlow. "You were present on the occasion of the
destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the more
guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law
supposes that your wife acts under your direction."
"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble squeezing
his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass—a
idiot."
Dickens, Oliver Twist, LI
84 Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of
their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made
the agents of injusuce.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
85 Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or
shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey' them until
we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Men generally, under such a government as this, think
that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the
majority to alter them. They think that, if they should
resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is
the fault of the government itself that the remedy is
worse than the evil.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
86 The laws of most countries are far worse than the people
who execute them, and many of them are only able to
remain laws by being seldom or never carried into effect.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
87 Laws never would be improved, if there were not
numerous persons whose moral sentiments are better
than the existing laws.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
12.2 Justice and Injustice
Justice is traditionally classified as one of the four cardinal
virtues, along with temperance, fortitude, and prudence;
and it is usually distinguished from the others as being the
virtue whereby a man is disposed to act rightly or
righteously in relation to other men or to the community in
which he lives. A man of goodwill toward others, a man who
habitually avoids injuring others and renders to others what
is their due, is said to be a just man. Justice in this sense—as
a moral quality or an aspect of moral character—is discussed
in Chapter 9 on Ethics, Section 9.7 on Right and Wrong, as
well as here. The reader is advised to read that section in
conjunction with this one for a comprehensive view of
justice as an attribute of the morally good man and as a
property of conduct that is rightful or righteous. The reader
should also examine relevant passages in Section 9.10 on
Virtue and Vice. The treatment of injustice and wrongdoing
is, of course, to be found in the same contexts.
There is another application of the terms "justice" and
"injustice"—to human institutions and arrangements, to
states, constitutions, laws, social practices, and economic
systems or transactions. It is this application that gives rise
to the discussion of political or legal justice, social justice,
and economic justice. Justice in these various senses is
mainly treated here and not in Chapter 9 on Ethics;
however, closely related and even overlapping matters will
be found in Section 12.1 on Law and Lawyers, in Section
13.3 on Equality, in Section 11.1 on Property, and in many
of the sections of Chapter 10 on Politics, especially Sections
10.4, 10.6, 10.7, and 10,9.
The passages collected here offer diverse definitions of
justice, distinguish between distributive and commutative or
remedial justice, deal with the issues of right vs. might and
of justice vs. expediency, discuss the relation of justice to
equity, argue for and against the proposition that human
society cannot long endure without justice, and attempt to
answer the question whether it is preferable to do or to
suffer injustice.
Considerations of justice are to be found in other sections
of this chapter: not only in Section 12.1 on Law and Lawyers,
but also in Section 12.3 on Rights—Natural and Civil, and in
Section 12.4 on Crime and Punishment. The discussion of
human rights and the discussion of justice are so integrally
related that the reader would do well to make his own
synthesis of the quotations dealing with these two subjects.
1 If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall
destroy his eye.
Hammurabi, Code of Hammurabi, 196
2 And if any mischief follow, than thou shalt give life for life,
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for
foot,
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for
stripe.
Exodus 21:23-25
3 Chorus. It has been made long since and grown old among
men,
this saying: human wealth
grown to fulness of stature
breeds again nor dies without issue.
From high good fortune in the blood
blossoms the quenchless agony.
Far from others | hold my own
mind; only the act of evil
breeds others to follow,
young sins in its own likeness.
Houses dear in their right are given
children in all loveliness.
But Crime aging is made
in men’s dark actions
ripe with the young pride
late or soon when the dawn of destiny
comes and birth is given
to the spirit none may fight nor beat down,
sinful Daring; and in those halls
the black visaged Disasters stamped
in the likeness of their fathers.
And Righteousness is a shining in
the smoke of mean houses.
Her blessing is on the just man.
From high halls starred with gold by reeking hands
she turns back
with eyes that glance away to the simple in heart,
spurning the strength of gold
stamped false with flattery.
And all things she steers to fulfilment.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 750
4 Protagoras. Hermes asked Zeus how he should impart
justice and reverence among men:—Should he distribute
them as the arts are distributed; that is to say, toa
favoured few only, one skilled individual having enough
of medicine or of any other art for many unskilled ones?
"Shall this be the manner in which | am to distribute
justice and reverence among men, or shall | give them to
all?" "To all," said Zeus; "| should like them all to have a
Share; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the
virtues, as in the arts. And further, make a law by my
order, that he who has no part in reverence and justice
Shall be put to death, for he is a plague of the state."
Plato, Protagoras, 322B
5 Socrates. Not only custom but nature also affirms that to
do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that
justice is equality.
Plato, Gorgias, 489A
6 Socrates. Tell me then, O thou heir of the argument, what
did Simonides say, and according to you truly say, about
justice?
Polemarchus. He said that the repayment of a debt is
just, and in saying so he appears to me to be right.
| should be sorry to doubt the word of such a wise and
inspired man, but his meaning, though probably clear to
you, is the reverse of clear to me. For he certainly does
not mean, as we were just now saying, that | ought to
return a deposit of arms or of anything else to one who
asks for it when he is not in his right senses; and yet a
deposit cannot be denied to be a debt.
True.
Then when the person who asks me is not in his right
mind | am by no means to make the return?
Certainly not.
When Simonides said that the repayment o! a debt
was justice, he did not mean to include that case?
Certainly not; for he thinks that a friend ought always
to do good to a friend and never evil.
You mean that the return of a deposit of gold which is
to the injury of the receiver, if the two parties are friends,
is not the repayment of a debt—that is what you would
imagine him to say?
Yes.
And are enemies also to receive what we owe to them?
To be sure, he said, they are to receive what we owe
them, and an enemy, as | take it, owes to an enemy that
which is due and proper to him that is to say, evil,
Simonides, then, after the manner of poets, would
seem to have spoken darkly of the nature of justice; for
he really meant to say that justice is the giving to each
man what is proper to him, and this he termed a debt.
Plato, Republic, |, 331B
7 Socrates. Thrasymachus, as any one might see, was in
reality eager to speak; for he thought that he had an
excellent answer, and would distinguish himself. But at
first he affected to insist on my answering; at length he
consented to begin. Behold, he said, the wisdom of
Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about
learning of others, to whom he never even says Thank
you.
That | learn of others, | replied, is quite true; but that |
am ungrateful | wholly deny. Money 1 have none, and
therefore | pay in praise, which is all | have; and how
ready | am to praise any one who appears to me to speak
well you will very soon find out when you answer; for |
expect that you will answer well.
Listen, then, he said; | proclaim that justice is nothing
else than the interest of the stronger. And now why do
you not praise me? But of course you won't.
Let me first understand you, | replied. Justice, as you
say% is the interest of the stronger. What, Thrasymachus,
is the meaning of this? You cannot mean to say that
because Polydamas, the pancratiast, is stronger than we
are, and finds the eating of beef conducive to his bodily
strength, that to cat beef is therefore equally for our good
who are weaker than he is, and right and just for us?
That’s abominable of you, Socrates; you take the
words in the sense which is most damaging to the
argument.
Not at all, my good sir, | said; | am trying to
understand them; and | wish that you would be a little
clearer.
Well, he said, have you never heard that forms of
government differ; there are tyrannies, and there are
democracies, and there are aristocracies?
Yes, | know.
And the government is the ruling power in each state?
Certainly.
And the different forms of government make laws
democratical, aristocrat!cal, tyrannical, with a view to
their several interests; and these laws, which are made
by them for their own interests, are the justice which they
deliver to their subjects, and him who transgresses them
they punish as a breaker of the law, and unjust. And that
iS what | mean when | say that in all states there is the
same principle of justice, which is the interest of the
government; and as the government must be supposed
to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is, that
everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the
interest of the stronger.
Plato, Republic, |, 338A
8 Thrasymachus. The just is always a loser in comparison
with the unjust. First of all, in private contracts: wherever
the unjust is the partner of the just you will find that,
when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust man has
always more and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings
with the State: when there is an income-tax, the just man
will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of
income; and when there is anything to be received the
one gains nothing and the other much. Observe also
what happens when they take an office; there is the just
man neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other
losses, and getting nothing out of the public, because he
is just; moreover he is hated by his friends and
acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways.
But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust man.
Plato, Republic, |, 343B
9 Socrates. We have already shown that the just are clearly
wiser and better and abler than the unjust, and that the
unjust are incapable of common action; nay more, that to
speak as we did of men who are evil acting at any time
vigorously together, is not strictly true, for if they had
been perfectly evil, they would have laid hands upon one
another; but it is evident that there must have been some
remnant of justice in them, which enabled them to
combine; if there had not been they would have injured
one another as well as their victims; they were but half-
villains in their enterprises; for had they been whole
villains, and utterly unjust, they would have been utterly
incapable of action.
Plato, Republic, |, 352A
10 Socrates. Why, my good sir, at the beginning of our
enquiry, ages ago, there was justice tumbling out at our
feet, and we never saw her; nothing could be more
ridiculous. Like people who go about looking for what
they have in their hands—that was the way with us—we
looked not at what we were seeking, but at what was far
off in the distance; and therefore, | suppose, we missed
her.
Glaucon. What do you mean?
| mean to say that in reality for a long time past we
have been talking of justice, and have failed to recognise
her.
| grow impatient at the length of your exordium.
Well then, tell me, | said, whether | am right or not: You
remember the original principle which we were always
laying down at the foundation of the State, that one man
should practise one thing only, the thing to which his
nature was best adapted—now justice is this principle or
a part of it.
Yes, we often said that one man should do one thing
only.
Further, we affirmed that justice was doing one’s own
business, and not being a busybody; we said so again
and again, and many others have said the same to us.
Yes, we Said So.
Then to do one’s own business in a certain way may
be assumed to be justice. Can you tell me whence |
derive this inference?
| cannot, but | should like to be told.
Because | think that this is the only virtue which
remains in the State when the other virtues of
temperance and courage and wisdom are abstracted;
and, that this is the ultimate cause and condition of the
existence of all of them, and while remaining in them is
also their preservative; and we were saying that if the
three were discovered by us, justice would be the fourth
or remaining one.
That follows of necessity.
If we are asked to determine which of these four
qualities by its presence contributes most to the
excellence of the State, whether the agreement of rulers
and subjects, or the preservation in the soldiers of the
opinion which the law ordains about the true nature of
dangers, or wisdom and watchfulness in the rulers, or
whether this other which | am mentioning, and which is
found in children and women, slave and freeman, artisan,
ruler, subject—the quality, | mean, of every one doing his
own work, and not being a busybody, would claim the
palm—the question is not so easily answered.
Certainly, he replied, there would be a difficulty in
saying which.
Then the power of each individual in the State to do
his own work appears to compete with the other political
virtues, wisdom, temperance, courage.
Yes, he said.
And the virtue which enters into this competition is
justice?
Exactly.
Let us look at the question from another point of view;
are not the rulers in a State those to whom you would
entrust the office of determining suits at law?
Certainly.
And are suits decided on any other ground but that a
man may neither take what is another’s, nor be deprived
of what is his own?
Yes; that is their principle.
Which is a just principle?
Yes.
Then on this view also justice will be admitted to be
the having and doing what is a man’s own, and belongs
to him?
Very true.
Think, now, and say whether you agree with me or not.
Suppose a carpenter to be doing the business of a
cobbler, or a cobbler of a carpenter; and suppose them to
exchange their implements or their duties, or the same
person to be doing the work of both, or whatever be the
change; do you think that any great harm would result to
the State?
Not much.
But when the cobbler or any other man whom nature
designed to be a trader, having his heart lifted up by
wealth or strength or the number of his followers, or any
like advantage, attempts to force his way into the class of
warriors, or a warrior into that of legislators and
guardians, for which he is unfitted, and either to take the
implements or the duties of the other; or when one man
is trader, legislator, and warrior all in one, then | think
you will agree with me in saying that this interchange
and this meddling of one with another is the ruin of the
State.
Most true.
Seeing then, | said, that there are three distinct
classes, any meddling of one with another, or the change
of one into another, is the greatest harm to the State, and
may be most justly termed evil-doing?
Precisely.
And the greatest degree of evil-doing to one’s own city
would be termed by you injustice?
Certainly.
This then is injustice; and on the other hand when the
trader, the auxiliary, and the guardian each do their own
business, that is justice, and will make the city just.
| agree with you,
Plato, Republic, IV, 432B
11 This ... is what the just is—the proportional; the unjust is
what violates the proportion. Hence one term becomes
too great, the other too small, as indeed happens in
practice; for the man who acts unjustly has too much,
and the man who is unjustly treated too little, of what is
good. In the case of evil the reverse is true; for the lesser
evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater
evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the
greater, and what is worthy of choice is good, and what is
worthier of choice a greater good.
This, then, is one species of the just.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1131b17
12 The justice of a master and that of a father are not the
same as the justice of citizens, though they are like it; for
there can be no injustice in the unqualified sense towards
things that are one’s own, but a man’s chattel, and his
child until it reaches a certain age and sets up for itself,
are as it were part of himself, and no one chooses to hurt
himself (for which reason there can be no injustice
towards oneself). Therefore the justice or injustice of
citizens is not manifested in these relations.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1134b8
13 When men are friends they have no need of justice, while
when they are just they need friendship as well, and the
truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1155a26
14 Justice is the bond of men in states, for the
administration of justice, which is the determination of
what is just, is the principle of order in political society.
Aristotle, Politics, 1253a36
15 In all sciences and arts the end is a good, and the
greatest good and in the highest degree a good in the
most authoritative of all—this is the political science of
which the good is justice, in other words, the common
interest.
Aristotle, Politics, 1282b15
16 Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to
prevent men harming or being harmed.
Epicurus, Aphorism
17 There is no more ridiculous opinion than to believe that
all customs and laws of nations are inherently just. Would
one think such a thing of the decrees of dictators? Had
the notorious Thirty Tyrants decided to enact a code of
laws for Athens, or if all the citizens of Athens were happy
with the tyrants’ laws, would such a circumstance
indicate that those laws were just? It would hardly be
considered a just law if some Roman regent had decreed
that any dictator could be put to death with impunity by
any citizen, without even going to trial. Justice is integral.
It binds society together and is based on the one law of
right reason al > plied to commands and prohibitions.
Whoever is not acquainted with this law, whether it has
been put in writing or not, does not know justice.
If, as some people insist, justice is nothing more than a
conformity to written laws and national traditions, and if
everything is based on a standard of expediency, then
anyone who sees some thing in it for himself will go
ahead and break the law. If this were our point of view,
we could only conclude that there is no justice- For if it
does not exist in nature, and if simple expediency can
overthrow it, there is no justice. If nature is not based on
justice, then are the principles on which society is
founded destroyed. What would be the use of generosity,
patriotism, loyalty, of service to each other and gratitude
for favors done? Such virtues have their origin in our
natural propensity to love our fellow human beings. This
is the foundation of justice. If this is not true, then the
consideration we show to each other, as well as our
religious rites and piety towards the gods, are swept
away. But such rites ought to be kept, and not out of fear,
but out of the close relationship between man and God.
Were the basis of justice in the decrees of the people,
the rulings of kings, or in decisions of judges, then justice
would permit theft, adultery, even forgery of wills, if a
majority of the populace voted for them. But if sucha
power resides in the decisions and decrees of fools who
are sure natural law can be altered by votes, then why do
they not decide that what is bad and harmful shall be
considered good and worthwhile?
In fact, we can tell the difference between good and
bad laws only on the basis of nature. Nature not only
distinguishes between the just and the unjust, but also
between what is honorable and dishonorable. Since our
common sense helps us to understand and conceptualise
things, we do ascribe honorable actions to virtue and
dishonorable ones to vice. Only a lunatic would assert
that these judgments of ours are merely opinions and not
based on natural law. Even what we mistakenly call the
"virtue" of a tree or of a horse is not just a matter of
opinion, but is based on nature. If that IS true, then good
and bad actions can also be distinguished according to
nature. If the concept of virtue is to be tested by opinion,
then specific virtues must also be tested. Who would
judge a man of prudence and common sense by some
external state and not by his character? Virtue is fully
matured reason. Since this is natural, then everything
honorable is also natural.
Cicero, Laws, |, 15-16
18 We are confronted with three choices: to do injustice but
not to suffer it; both to do it and to suffer it: or neither to
do it nor to suffer it. The most fortuitous choice is to do it
with impunity. The second best alternative would be
neither to do it nor to suffer it. The worst choice is to have
to live ones life in a perpetual struggle between doing
and suffering injustice.
Cicero, Republic, Ill, 13
19 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth:
But | say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to
him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away
thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with
him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would
borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said. Thou shaft love
thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But | say unto you. Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for
them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matthew 5:38-45
20 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not,
and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be
forgiven:
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure,
pressed down, and shaken together, and running over,
Shall men give into your bosom. For with the same
measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you
again.
Luke 6:36-38
21 Justice is unstable and changeable? No, but the times
over which justice presides are not alike, for they are
times.
Augustine, Confessions, Ill, 7
22 Justice being taken away, then what are kingdoms but
great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but
little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is
ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by
the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the
law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men,
this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places,
fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues
peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a
kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred
on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the
addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true
reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate
who had been seized. For when that king had asked the
man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the
sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou meanest by
seizing the whole earth; but because | do it with a petty
ship, |am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a
great fleet art styled emperor."
Augustine, City of God, IV, 4
23 There are two kinds of justice. The one consists in mutual
giving and receiving, as in buying and selling, and other
kinds of intercourse and exchange. This the Philosopher
[Aristotle] calls commutative justice, that directs
exchange and the intercourse of business. This does not
belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: Who hath first
given to Him, and recompense shall be made him? The
other consists in distribution, and is called distributive
justice, whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what
his rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in
ruling a family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of
this kind in the ruler, so the order of the universe, which
is seen both in things of nature and in things of will,
shows forth the justice of God. Hence Dionysius says: "We
must see that God is truly just, in seeing how He gives to
all existing things what is proper to the condition of each,
and preserves the nature of each one in the order and
with the powers that properly belong to it."
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 21, 1
24 The matter of justice is an external operation, in so far as
either it or the thing we use by it is made proportionate
to some other person to whom we are related by justice.
Now each man's own is that which is due to him
according to equality of proportion. Therefore the proper
act of justice is nothing else than to render to each one
his own.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 58, 11
25 Retaliation {contrapassum) denotes equal passion repaid
for previous action; and the expression applies most
properly to injurious passions and actions, whereby a
man harms the person of his neighbor; for instance if a
man strike, that he be struck back. This kind of just is laid
down in the Law; He shall render life for life, eye for eye,
etc. And since also to take away what belongs to another
is to do an unjust thing, it follows that secondly
retaliation consists in this also, that whosoever causes
loss to another, should suffer loss in his belongings. This
just loss is also found in the Law: /f any man steal an ox
or a Sheep, and kill or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for
one ox and four sheep for one sheep. Thirdly retaliation is
transferred to voluntary commutations, where action and
passion are on both sides, although voluntariness
detracts from the nature of passion.
In all these cases, however, repayment must be made
on a basis of equality according to the requirements of
commutative justice, namely that the meed of passion be
equal to the action. Now there would not always be
equality if passion were in the same species as the action.
Because, in the first place, when a person injures the
person of one who is greater, the action surpasses any
passion of the same species that he might undergo,
wherefore he that strikes a prince, is not only struck back,
but is much more severely punished.
In like manner when a man despoils another of his
property against the latter’s will, the action surpasses the
passion if he be merely deprived of that thing, because
the man who caused another’s loss, himself would lose
nothing, and so he is punished by making restitution
several times over, because not only did he injure a
private individual, but also the common weal, the
security of whose protection he has infringed. Nor again
would there be equality of passion in voluntary
commutations, were one always to exchange one’s
chattel for another man’s, because it might happen that
the other man’s chattel is much greater than our own: so
that it becomes necessary to equalize passion and action
in commutations according to a certain proportionate
commensuration, for which purpose money was invented.
Hence retaliation is in accordance with commutative
Justice: but there is no place for it in distributive justice,
because in distributive justice we do not consider the
equality between thing and thing or between passion and
action (whence the expression contrapassum), but
according to proportion between things and persons.
Aquinas, Surnma Theologica, I/I-Il, 61,4
26 It is acting a most perverse part, to set up the measure of
human justice as the standard by which to measure the
justice of God.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ill, 24
27 Since the ethical laws, which concern the individual duty
of each man in himself, are so hard to frame, as we see
they are, it is no wonder if those that govern so many
individuals are more so. Consider the form of this justice
that governs us: it is a true testimony of human
imbecility, so full it is of contradiction and error. What we
find to be leniency and severity in justice—and we find so
much of them that | do not know whether the mean
between them is met with as often—are sickly parts and
unjust members of the very body and essence of justice.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
28 Polonius. My lord, | will use them according to their
desert.
Hamlet. God’s bodykins, man, much better. Use every
man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity; the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 552
29 Lear. What, art mad? A man may see bow this world goes
with no eyes. Look with thine cars: see how yond justice
rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change
places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is
the thief?
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, vi, 153
30 Edgar. Let’s exchange charity.
| am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;
If more, the more thou hast wrong’d me.
My name is Edgar, and thy father’s son.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes.
Edmund. Thou hast spoken right, ’tis true;
The wheel is come full circle; | am here,
Shakespeare, Lear, V, (ii, 166
31 While they sat refreshing themselves, a young Lad,
travelling that way, observ’d them, and, looking earnestly
on the whole Company, ran suddenly and fell down
before Don Quixote, addressing him in a very doleful
Manner. Alas, good Sir, said he, don’t you know me? don’t
you remember poor Andrew whom you caus’d to be
unty’d from the Tree? With that the Knight knew him; and
raising him up, turn’d to the Company, That you may all
know, said he, of how great Importance, to the redressing
of Injuries, punishing Vice, and the universal Benefit of
Mankind, the Business of Knight-Errantry may be, you
must understand, that riding through a Desart some Days
ago, | heard certain lamentable Screeks and Out-cries:
Prompted by the Misery of the Afflicted, and borne away
by the Zeal of my Profession | follow’d the Voice, and
found this Boy, whom you all see, bound to a great Oak;
I’m glad he’s present, because he can attest the Truth of
my Relation. | found him as 1 told you, bound to an Oak,
naked from the Waste upwards, and a bloody-minded
Peasant scourging his Back unmercifully with the Reins of
a Bridle. | presently demanded the Cause of his severe
Chastisement? The rude Fellow answer’d, that he had
Liberty to punish his own Servant, whom he thus us’d for
some Faults that argu’d him more Knave than Fool. Good
Sir, said the Boy, he can lay nothing to my Charge, but
demanding my Wages. His Master made some Reply,
which | would not allow as a just Excuse, and order’d him
immediately to unbind the Youth, and took his Oath that
he would lake him home and pay him all his Wages upon
the Nail, in good and lawful Coin. Is not this literally true,
Andrew? Did you not mark besides, with what Face of
Authority | commanded, and with how much Humility he
promis’d to obey all | impos’d, commanded and desir’d?
Answer me, Boy, and tell boldly all that pass’d of this
worthy Company, that it may appear how necessary the
Vocation of Knights-Errant is up and down the high
Roads.
AH you have said is true enough, answer’d Andraw,
but the Business did not end after that Manner you and |
hop’d it would. How? said the Knight, has not the Peasant
paid you? Ay, he has paid me with a Vengeance, said the
Boy, for no sooner was your Back turn’d, but he ty’d me
again to the same Tree, and lash’d me so cursedly, that |
look’d like St Bartholomew flea’d alive; and at every Blow
he had some Joke or another to laugh at you; and had he
not laid me on as he did, | fancy | could not have help’d
laughing myself. At last he left me in so pitiful Case, that |
was forc’d to crawl to an Hospital, where | have lain ever
since to get cur’d, so wofully the Tyrant had lash’d me.
And now | may thank You for this, for had you rid on your
Journey, and neither meddl’d nor made, seeing no Body
sent for you, and ‘twas none of your Business, my Master,
perhaps, had been satisfy’d with giving me ten or twenty'
leashes, and after that would have paid me what he ow’d
me; but you was so huffy, and call’d him so many Names,
that it made him mad, and so he vented all his Spite
against You upon My poor Back, aS soon as yours was
turn’d, insomuch that | fear | shall never be my own Man
again. The Miscarriage, answer’d the Knight, is only
chargeable on my Departure before | saw my Orders
executed; for! might, by Experience, have remembered,
that the Word of a Peasant is regulated, not by Honour,
but Profit.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 31
32 Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s
nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Bacon, Of Revenge
33 From that law of nature by which we are obliged to
transfer to another such rights as, being retained, hinder
the peace of mankind, there followeth a third; which is
this: that men perform their covenants made; without
which covenants are in vain, and but empty words; and
the right of all men to all things remaining, we are still in
the condition of war.
And in this law of nature consisteth the fountain and
Original of justice. For where no covenant hath preceded,
there hath no right been transferred, and every man has
right to everything; and consequently, no action can be
unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is
unjust: and the definition of injustice is no other than the
not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not
unjust is just.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 15
34 Before the names of just and unjust can have place, there
must be some coercive power to compel men equally to
the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some
punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the
breach of their covenant, and to make good that
propriety which by mutual contract men acquire in
recompense of the universal right they abandon: and
such power there is none before the erection of a
Commonwealth. And this is also to be gathered out of the
ordinary definition of justice in the Schools, for they say
that justice is the constant will of giving to every man his
own. And therefore when there is no own, that is, no
propriety, there is no injustice; and where there is no
coercive power erected, that is, where there is no
Commonwealth, there is no propriety, all men having
right to all things: therefore where there is no
Commonwealth, there nothing is unjust. So that the
nature of justice consisteth in keeping of valid covenants,
but the validity of covenants begins not but with the
constitution of a civil power sufficient to compel men to
keep them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 15
35 On what shall man found the order of the world which he
would govern? Shall it be on the caprice of each
individual? What confusion! Shall it be on justice? Man is
ignorant of it.
Certainly, had he known it, he would not have
established this maxim, the most general of all that
obtain among men, that each should follow the custom of
his own country. The glory of true equity would have
brought all nations under subjection, and legislators
would not have taken as their model the fancies and
caprice of Persians and Germans instead of this
unchanging justice. We would have seen it set up in all
the States on earth and in all times; whereas we see
neither justice nor injustice which does not change its
nature with change in climate. Three degrees of latitude
reverse all jurisorudence; a meridian decides the truth.
Fundamental laws change after a few years of possession;
right has its epochs; the entry of Saturn into the Lion
marks to us the origin of such and such a crime. A
strange justice that is bounded by a river! Truth on this
side of the Pyrenees, error on the other side,
Pascal, Pensées, V, 294
36 It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is
necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is
tyrannical. Justice without might is gainsaid, because
there are always offenders; might without justice is
condemned. We must then combine justice and might
and, for this end, make what is just strong, or what is
strong just.
Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised
and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice,
because might has gainsaid justice and has declared that
it is she herself who is just. And thus, being unable to
make what is just strong, we have made what is strong
just.
Pascal, Pensées, V, 298
37 No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to
cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to
obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have
justified might; so that the just and the strong should
unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign
good.
Pascal, Pensees, V, 299
38 It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust;
for they obey them only because they think them just.
Therefore it is necessary to tell them at the same time
that they must obey them because they are laws, just as
they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but
because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is
prevented, if this can be made intelligible and it be
understood what is the proper definition of justice.
Pascal, Pensees, V, 326
39 | have passed a great part of my life believing that there
was justice, and in this | was not mistaken; for there is
justice according as God has willed to reveal it to us. But |
did not take it so, and this is where | made a mistake; for |
believed that our Justice was essentially just, and that |
had that whereby to know and Judge of it. But | have so
often found my right judgement at fault, that at last |
have come to distrust myself and then others. | have seen
changes in all nations and men, and thus, after many
changes of judgement regarding true justice, | have
recognised that our nature was but in continual change,
and | have not changed since; and if | changed, | would
confirm my opinion.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 375
40 | had another reason which made me less forward to
enlarge his Majesty’s dominions by my discoveries: to say
the truth, | had conceived a few scruples with relation to
the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions.
For instance, a crew of pyrates are driven by a storm they
know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the
top-mast; they go on shoar to rob and plunder; they see
an harmless people, are entertained with kindness, they
give the country a new name, they take formal
possession of it for the king, they set up a rotten plank or
a stone for a memorial, they murder two or three dozen of
the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a
Sample, return home, and get their pardon. Here
commenceth a new dominion acquired with a title by
divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the
natives driven out or destroyed, their princes tortured to
discover their gold; a free licence given to all acts of
inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of
its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers
employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony
sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous
people.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 12
41 The rules of equity or justice depend entirely on the
particular state and condition in which men are placed,
and owe their origin and existence to that UTILITY, which
results to the public from their strict and regular
observance.
Hume, Concerning Principles of Morals, III
42 Commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in
any state which does not enjoy a regular administration
of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves
secure in the possession of their property, in which the
faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which
the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly
employed in enforcing the payment of debts from all
those who are able to pay. Commerce and manufactures,
in short, can seldom flourish in any state in which there is
not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of
government.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 3
43 Justice itself is the great standing policy of civil society;
and any eminent departure from it, under any
circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy
at all.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
44 |f justice and righteousness perish, human life would no
longer have any value in the world.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
45 Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil
society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it
be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a
society under the forms of which the stronger faction can
readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as
truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the
weaker individual is not secured against the violence of
the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger
individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their
condition, to submit to a government which may protect
the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state,
will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually
induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which
will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more
powerful.
Hamilton or Madison, Federalist 51
46 An integral part of justice is the confidence which
citizens have in it, and it is this which requires that
proceedings shall be public. The right of publicity
depends on the fact that (i) the aim of the court is justice,
which as universal falls under the cognizance of
everyone, and (ii) itis through publicity that the citizens
become convinced that the judgement was actually just.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 224
47 Foolish men imagine that because judgement for an evil
thing is delayed, there is no justice, but an accidental
one, here below. Judgement for an evil thing is many
times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but
it is sure as life, it is sure as death!
Carlyle, Past and Present, I, 2
48 After all, the practical reason why, when the power is
once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted,
and for a long period continue, to rule is not because
they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this
seems fairest to the minority, but because they are
physically the strongest. But a government in which the
majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even
as far as men understand it.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
49 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the
true place for a just man is also a prison,
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
50 Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that
faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it.
Lincoln, Address at Cooper Institute
51 Why should there not be a patient confidence in the
ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or
equal, hope in the world?
Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
52 The two essential ingredients in the sentiment of justice
are, the desire to punish a person who has done harm,
and the knowledge or belief that there is some definite
individual or individuals to whom harm has been done.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
53 Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which,
regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social
utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation,
than any others; though particular cases may occur in
which some other social duty is so important, as to
overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus,
to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to
steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or
to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified
medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call
anything justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not
that justice must give way to some other moral principle,
but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that
other principle, not just in the particular case. By this
useful accommodation of language, the character of
indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are
saved from the necessity of maintaining that there can be
laudable injustice.
The considerations which have now been adduced
resolve, | conceive, the only real difficulty in the
utilitarian theory of morals. It has always been evident
that all cases of justice are also cases of expediency: the
difference is in the peculiar sentiment which attaches to
the former, as contradistinguished from the latter. If this
characteristic sentiment has been sufficiently accounted
for; if there is no necessity to assume for it any
peculiarity of origin; if it is simply the natural feeling of
resentment, moralised by being made coextensive with
the demands of social good; and if this feeling not only
does but ought to exist in all the classes of cases to which
the idea of justice corresponds; that idea no longer
presents itself as a stumbling-block to the utilitarian
ethics.
Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social
utilities which are vastly more important, and therefore
more absolute and imperative, than any others are as a
class (though not more so than others may be in
particular cases); and which, therefore, ought to be, as
well as naturally are, guarded by a sentiment not only
different in degree, but also in kind; distinguished from
the milder feeling which attaches to the mere idea of
promoting human pleasure or convenience, at once by
the more definite nature of its commands, and by the
sterner character of its sanctions.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
12.3 Rights—Natural and Civil
When the word "right" is used in the singular, or when it is
paired with its antonym "wrong," it signifies the moral
quality of conduct that is lawful, just, or worthy of
approbation. Right and wrong in that sense are discussed in
Section 9.7 of Chapter 9 on Ethics; and related matters are
discussed in this chapter, in Section 12.2 on Justice and
Injustice. But when, as here, the word "rights" is used in the
plural, it signifies the claims that a man can rightfully make
concerning the things that belong to him, that are proper to
him, that are his due. Some of the writers quoted here—
Locke, for example—use the word "property" to stand for
what other authors call "rights." Where the Declaration of
Independence speaks of man’s natural and unalienable
rights, foremost among which are the rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, Locke says that the ultimate
objective of a just government is to protect and presence
the property of its subjects, their property consisting chiefly
in their lives, their liberties, and their estates.
As in the case of law, the fundamental distinction here is
between natural and civil rights: on the one hand, the rights
inherent in the very nature of man, and therefore equally
possessed by or proper to every human being; on the other
hand, the rights granted to its subjects by civil government.
The latter are at the disposal of government to rescind as
well as to confer; but the former, being antecedent to the
institutions of government and to society itself, are deemed
unalienable. Not being conferred by government, they
cannot rightfully be rescinded by government, and
according to the theory of natural rights, the justice of a
government and of its laws, of other institutions, and of the
conduct of one man toward another, consists in respecting
the natural rights of every human being. Injustice occurs
with the violation of these rights, taking away from a man
that which is by nature his.
The reader will find all these points made, argued, and
disputed in the quotations included here—both affirmations
and denials of unalienable, natural rights; different
enumerations of these rights; and applications of the
doctrine of natural rights to economic and social as well as
to political institutions. The reader will find questions about
the equality of rights, questions about which is the most
fundamental of all rights, and questions about the relation of
natural rights to natural law. For the discussion of related
matters, the reader should turn in this chapter to Section
12.1 on Law and Lawyers and Section 12.2 on Justice and
Injustice in other chapters, the reader should examine
Section 11.1 on Property, Section 10.4 on Government of
and by the People: Republic and Democracy, Section 10.6
on Despotism and Tyranny, Section 10.7 on Slavery, Section
13.3 on Equality, and Section 14.1 on Warfare and the State
of War.
1 Athenians. Right, as the world goes, is only in question
between equals in power, while the strong do what they
can and the weak suffer what they must.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, V, 89
2 A mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if
the poor must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in
the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of
justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be
more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich.
Plutarch, Poplicola and Solon Compared
3 The people... is an assemblage associated by a common
acknowledgment of right and by a community of
interests.... Where, ... there is no true justice there can
be no right. For that which is done by right is justly done,
and what is unjustly done cannot be done by right. For
the unjust inventions of men are neither to be considered
nor spoken of as rights; for even they themselves say that
right is that which flows from the fountain of justice, and
deny the definition which is commonly given by those
who misconceive the matter, that right is that which is
useful to the stronger party. Thus, where there is not true
justice there can be no assemblage of men associated by
a common acknowledgment of right, and therefore there
can be no people.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 21
4 The right or the just is a work that is adjusted to another
person according to some kind of equality. Now a thing
can be adjusted to a man in two ways: first by its very
nature, as when a man gives so much that he may
receive equal value in return, and this is called natural
right. In another way a thing is adjusted or
commensurated to another person, by agreement, or by
common consent, when, to wit, a man deems himself
satisfied, if he receive so much. This can be done in two
ways: first by private agreement, as that which is
confirmed by an agreement between private individuals;
secondly, by public agreement, as when the whole
community agrees that something should be deemed as
though it were adjusted and commensurated to another
person, or when this is decreed by the prince who is
placed over the people, and acts in its stead, and this is
called positive right.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—II, 57, 2
5 If ...a thing is, of itself, contrary to natural right, the
human will cannot make it just, for instance by decreeing
that it is lawful to steal or to commit adultery.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—II, 57, 2
6 The natural right or just is that which by its very nature is
adjusted to or commensurate with another person. Now
this may happen in two ways; first, according as it is
considered absolutely: thus a male by its very nature is
commensurate with the female to beget offspring by her,
and a parent is commensurate with the offspring to
nourish it. Secondly a thing is naturally commensurate
with another person, not according as it is considered
absolutely, but according to something resultant from it,
for instance the possession of property. For if a particular
piece of land be considered absolutely, it contains no
reason why it should belong to one man more than to
another, but if it be considered in respect of its
adaptability to cultivation, and the unmolested use of the
land, it has a certain commensuration to be the property
of one and not of another man.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il—II, 57,3
7 Right is a moral quality annexed to the person, justly
entitling him to possess some particular privilege, or to
perform some particular act. This right is annexed to the
person, although it sometimes follows the things, as the
services of lands, which are called Rea/ Rights, in
opposition to those merely Personal. Not because these
rights are not annexed to persons, but the distinction is
made, because they belong to the persons only who
possess some particular things.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, BK. I, |, 4
8 Natural right is the dictate of right reason, shewing the
moral turpitude, or moral necessity, of any act from its
agreement or disagreement with a rational nature, and
consequently that such an act is either forbidden or
commanded by God, the author of nature.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, BK. I, |, 10
9 God has given life to man, not to destroy, but to preserve
it; assigning to him for this purpose a right to the free
enjoyment of personal liberty, reputation, and the control
over his own actions.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, Bk. 11, XVII, 2
10 The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus
naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own
power as he will himself for the preservation of his own
nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of
doing anything which, in his own judgement and reason,
he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto....
A law of nature, lex naturalis, is a precept, or general
rule, found out by rezison, by which a man is forbidden to
do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the
means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which
he thinketh it may be best preserved. For though they
that speak of this subject use to confound /us and /ex,
right and law, yet they ought to be distinguished,
because right consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbear;
whereas /aw determineth and bindeth to one of them: so
that law and right differ as much as obligation and
liberty, which in one and the same matter are
inconsistent.
And because the condition of man (as hath been
declared in the precedent chapter) is a condition of war
of every one against every one, in which case every one
is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he
can make use of that may not be a help unto him in
preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in
such a condition every man has a right to every thing,
even to one another’s body. And therefore, as long as this
natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there
can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever
he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily
alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or
general rule of reason: that every man ought to
endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it;
and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use
all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which
rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature,
which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the
sum of the right of nature, which is: by a// means we can
to defend ourselves.
From this fundamental law of nature, by which men
are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this
second law: that a man be willing, when others are so
too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he
shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all
things; and be contented with so much liberty against
other men as he would allow other mm against himself.
For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing
anything he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of
war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well
as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself
of his: for that were to expose himself to prey, which no
man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace.
This is that law of gospel: Whatsoever you require that
others should do to you, that do ye to them. And that law
of all men, guod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.
To lay down a man’s right to anything is to divest
himself of the liberty of hindering another of the benefit
of his own right to the same. For he that renounceth or
passeth away his right giveth not to any other man a
right which he had not before, because there is nothing
to which every man had not right by nature, but only
standeth out of his way that he may enjoy his own
original right without hindrance from him, not without
hindrance from another. So that the effect which
redoundeth to one man by another man’s defect of right
is but so much diminution of impediments to the use of
his own right original.
Right is laid aside, either by simply renouncing it, or
by transferring it to another. By simply renouncing, when
he cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By
transferring, when he intendeth the benefit thereof to
some certain person or persons. And when a man hath in
either manner abandoned or granted away his right, then
is he said to be obliged, or bound, not to hinder those to
whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from the
benefit of it: and that he ought, and it is his duty, not to
make void that voluntary act of his own: and that such
hindrance is injustice, and injury as being sine jure; the
right being before renounced or transferred. So that
injury, or injustice, in the controversies of the world, is
somewhat like to that which in the disputations of
scholars is called absurdity. For as it is there called an
absurdity to contradict what one maintained in the
beginning; so in the world it is called injustice, and injury
voluntarily to undo that which from the beginning he had
voluntarily done. The way by which a man either simply
renounceth or transferreth his right is a declaration, or
signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign, or
signs, that he doth so renounce or transfer, or hath so
renounced or transferred the same, to him that accepteth
it. And these signs are either words only, or actions only;
or as it happeneth most often, both words and actions.
And the same are the bonds, by which men are bound
and obliged: bonds that have their strength, not from
their own nature (for nothing is more easily broken than a
man’s word), but from fear of some evil consequence
upon the rupture.
Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or
renounceth it, it is either in consideration of some right
reciprocally transferred to himself, or for some other good
he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act: and of the
voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to
himself. And therefore there be some rights which no man
can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have
abandoned or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down
the right of resisting them that assault him by force to
take away his life, because he cannot be understood to
aim thereby at any good to himself. The same may be
said of wounds, and chains, and imprisonment, both
because there is no benefit consequent to such patience,
as there is to the patience of suffering another to be
wounded or imprisoned, as also because a man cannot
tell when he seeth men proceed against him by violence
whether they intend his death or not. And lastly the
motive and end for which this renouncing and
transferring of right is introduced is nothing else but the
security of a man’s person, in his life, and in the means of
so preserving life as not to be weary of it. And therefore if
a man by words, or other signs, seem to despoil himself of
the end for which those signs were intended, he is not to
be understood as if he meant it, or that it was his will, but
that he was ignorant of how such words and actions were
to be interpreted.
The mutual transferring of right is that which men call
contract.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 14
11 Anything that exists in nature which we judge to be evil
or able to hinder us from existing and enjoying a rational
life, we are allowed to remove from us in that way which
seems the safest; and whatever, on the other hand, we
judge to be good or to be profitable for the preservation
of our being or the enjoyment of a rational life, we are
permitted to take for our use and use in any way we may
think proper; and absolutely, every one is allowed by the
highest right of nature to do that which he believes
contributes to his own profit.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix VIII
12 By natural right | understand the very laws or rules of
nature, in accordance with which everything takes place,
in other words, the power of nature itself. And so the
natural right of universal nature, and consequently of
every individual thing, extends as far as its power: and
accordingly, whatever any man does after the laws of his
nature, he does by the highest natural right, and he has
as much right over nature as he has power.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Il, 4
13 It will, perhaps, be objected to this, that if gathering the
acorns or other fruits of the earth, etc., makes a right to
them, then any one may engross as much as he will. To
which | answer. Not so. The same law of Nature that does
by this means give us property, does also bound that
property too. "God has given us all things richly." Is the
voice of reason confirmed by inspiration? But how far has
He given it us—"to enjoy"? As much as any one can make
use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much
he may by his labour fix a property in. Whatever is
beyond this is more than his share, and belongs to others.
Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.
Locke, II Civil Government, V, 30
14 A man, as has been proved, cannot subject himself to the
arbitrary power of another; and having, in the state of
Nature, no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or
possession of another, but only so much as the law of
Nature gave him for the preservation of himself and the
rest of mankind, this is all he doth, or can give up to the
commonwealth, and by it to the legislative power, so that
the legislative can have no more than this. Their power in
the utmost bounds of it is limited to the public good of
the society. It is a power that hath no other end but
preservation, and therefore can never have a right to
destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the
subjects.
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 135
15 The supreme power cannot take from any man any part
of his property without his own consent. For the
preservation of property being the end of government,
and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily
supposes and requires that the people should have
property, without which they must be supposed to lose
that by entering into society which was the end for which
they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man
to own. Men, therefore, in society having property, they
have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the
community are theirs, that nobody hath a right to take
them, or any part of them, from them without their own
consent; without this they have no property at all. For |
have truly no property in that which another can by right
take from me when he pleases against my consent.
Hence it is a mistake to think that the supreme or
legislative power of any commonwealth can do what it
will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily,
or take any part of them at pleasure. This is not much to
be feared in governments where the legislative consists
wholly or in part in assemblies which are variable, whose
members upon the dissolution of the assembly are
subjects under the common laws of their country, equally
with the rest. But in governments where the legislative is
in one lasting assembly, always in being, or in one man
as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they
will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the
rest of the community, and so will be apt to increase their
own riches and power by taking what they think fit from
the people. For a man’s property is not at all secure,
though there be good and equitable laws to set the
bounds of it between him and his fellow-subjects, if he
who commands those subjects have power to take from
any private man what part he pleases of his property, and
use and dispose of it as he thinks good.
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 138
16 He that is master of himself and his own life has a right,
too, to the means of preserving it-
Locke, II Civil Government, XV, 172
17 Every man is born with a double right. First, a right of
freedom to his person, which no other man has a power
over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a
right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren,
his father goods.
By the first of these, a man is naturally free from
subjection to any government, though he be born ina
place under its jurisdiction. But if he disclaim the lawful
government of the country he was born in, he must also
quit the right that belonged to him, by the law’s of it, and
the possessions there descending to him from his
ancestors if it were a government made by their consent.
Locke, II Civil Government, XVI, 190-191
18 Puffendorf says that we may divest ourselves of our
liberty in favour of other men, just as we transfer our
property from one to another by contracts and
agreements. But this seems a very weak argument. For in
the first place, the property | alienate becomes quite
foreign to me, nor can | suffer from the abuse of it; but it
very nearly concerns me that my liberty should not be
abused, and | cannot without incurring the guilt of the
crimes | may be compelled to commit, expose myself to
become an instrument of crime. Besides, the right of
property being only a convention of human institution,
men may dispose of what they possess as they please:
but this is not the case with the essential gifts of nature,
such as life and liberty, which every man is permitted to
enjoy, and of which it is at least doubtful whether any
have a right to divest themselves. By giving up the one,
we degrade our being; by giving up the other, we do our
best to annul it; and, as no temporal good can indemnify
us for the loss of either, it would be an offence against
both reason and nature to renounce them at any price
whatsoever.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Il
19 The State, in relation to its members, is master of all their
goods by the social contract, which, within the State, is
the basis of all rights; but, in relation to other powers, it is
so only by the right of the first occupier, which it holds
from its members.
The right of the first occupier, though more real than
the right of the strongest, becomes a real right only when
the right of property has already been established. Every
man has naturally a right to everything he needs; but the
positive act which makes him proprietor of one thing
excludes him from everything else. Having his share, he
ought to keep to it, and can have no further right against
the community. This is why the right of the first occupier,
which in the state of nature is so weak, claims the respect
of every man in civil society. In this right we are
respecting not so much what belongs to another as what
does not belong to ourselves.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 9
20 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed; that, whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new
government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
21 In the state of nature every man has a right to defend, by
force of arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or
even to prevent, the violence of his enemies, and to
extend his hostilities to a reasonable measure of
satisfaction and retaliation.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, L
22 The system of rights, viewed as a scientific system of
doctrines, is divided into natural right and positive right.
Natural right rests upon pure rational principles a priori;
positive or statutory right is what proceeds from the will
of a legislator.
The system of rights may again be regarded in
reference to the implied powers of dealing morally with
others as bound by obligations, that is, as furnishing a
legal title of action in relation to them. Thus viewed, the
system is divided into innate right and acquired right.
Innate right is that right which belongs to every one by
nature, independent of all juridical acts of experience.
Acquired right is that right which is founded upon such
juridical acts.
Innate right may also be called the "internal mine and
thine"; for external right must always be acquired.
Kant, Division of the Science of Right, B
23 Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of
another; and in so far as it can coexist with the freedom
of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole
Original, inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of
his humanity.
Kant, Division of the Science of Right, B
24 The commonwealth is the people viewed as united
altogether into a state. And thus it is not to be said that
the individual in the state has sacrificed a part of his
inborn external freedom for a particular purpose; but he
has abandoned his wild lawless freedom wholly, in order
to find all his proper freedom again entire and
undiminished, but in the form of a regulated order of
dependence, that is, in a civil state regulated by laws of
right. This relation of dependence thus arises out of his
own regulative law giving will.
Kant, Science of Right, 47
25 Those goods, or rather substantive characteristics, which
constitute my own private personality and the universal
essence of my self-consciousness are inalienable and my
right to them is imprescriptible. Such characteristics are
my personality as such, my universal freedom of will, my
ethical life, my religion...
The right to what is in essence inalienable is
imprescriptible, since the act whereby | take possession
of my personality, of my substantive essence, and make
myself a responsible being, capable of possessing rights
and with a moral and religious life, takes away from these
characteristics of mine just that externality which alone
made them capable of passing into the possession of
someone else. When | have thus annulled their
externality, | cannot lose them through lapse of time or
from any other reason drawn from my prior consent or
willingness to alienate them. This return of mine into
myself, whereby | make myself existent as Idea, as a
person with rights and moral principles, annuls the
previous position and the wrong done to my concept and
my reason by others and myself when the infinite
embodiment of self-consciousness has been treated as
something external, and that with my consent. This
return into myself makes clear the contradiction in
supposing that | have given into another’s possession my
capacity for rights, my ethical life and religious feeling;
for either | have given up what | myself did not possess,
orl am giving up what, so soon as | possess it, exists in
essence as mine alone and not as something external.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 66
26 After the general idea of virtue, | Know no higher
principle than that of right; or rather these two ideas are
united in one. The idea of right is simply that of virtue
introduced into the political world. It was the idea of right
that enabled men to define anarchy and tyranny, and
that taught them how to be independent without
arrogance and to obey without servility. The man who
submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but
when he submits to that right of authority which he
acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some
measure above the person who gives the command.
There are no great men without virtue; and there are no
great nations—it may almost be added, there would be
no society—without respect for right; for what is a union
of rational and intelligent beings who are held together
only by the bond of force?
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I, 14
27 One man is superior to another physically or mentally
and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can
labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a
measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity,
otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement.
This egual right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It
recognises no class differences, because everyone is only
a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises
unequal individual endowment and thus productive
Capacity as natural privileges. /t is therefore a right of
inequality in its content, like every right. Right by its very
nature can only consist in the application of an equal
standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be
different individuals if they were not unequal) are only
measurable by an equal standard in so far as they are
brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one
definite side only, e.g., in the present case are regarded
only as workers, and nothing more seen in them,
everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is
married, another not; one has more children than another
and so on and so forth. Thus with an equal output, and
hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one
will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer
than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right,
instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of
communist society as it is when it has just emerged after
prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can
never be higher than the economic structure of society
and the cultural development thereby determined.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the
enslaving subordination of individuals under division of
labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental
and physical labour, has vanished; after labour, from a
mere means of life, has itself become the prime necessity
of life; after the productive forces have also increased
with the all-round development of the individual, and all
the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly
—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be
fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from
each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs!
Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
28 To have a right... is, | conceive, to have something which
society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the
objector goes on to ask, why it ought? | can give him no
other reason than general utility. If that expression does
not seem to convey a sufficient feeling of the strength of
the obligation, nor to account for the peculiar energy of
the feeling, it is because there goes to the composition of
the sentiment, not a rational only, but also an animal
clement, the thirst for retaliation; and this thirst derives
its intensity, as well as its moral justification, from the
extraordinarily important and impressive kind of utility
which is concerned. The interest involved is that of
security, to every one’s feelings the most vital of all
interests. All other earthly benefits are needed by one
person, not needed by another; and many of them can, if
necessary, be cheerfully foregone, or replaced by
something else; but security no human being can
possibly do without; on it we depend for all our immunity
from evil, and for the whole value of all and every good,
beyond the passing moment; since nothing but the
gratification of the instant could be of any worth to us, if
we could be deprived of anything the next instant by
whoever was momentarily stronger than ourselves.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
29 The order of castes, order of rank, only formulates the
supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three
types is necessary for the preservation of society, for
making possible higher and higher types —/nequality of.
rights is the condition for the existence of rights at all.—A
right is a privilege.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LVI
30 If men have rights by birth, these rights must hold
against their fellow-men and must mean that somebody
else is to spend his energy to sustain the existence of the
persons so born. What then becomes of the natural rights
of the one whose energies are to be diverted from his own
interests? If it be said that we should all help each other,
that means simply that the race as a whole should
advance and expand as much and as fast as it can in its
career on earth; and the experience on which we are now
acting has shown that we shall do this best under liberty
and under the organization which we are now
developing, by leaving each to exert his energies for his
own success. The notion of natural rights is destitute of
sense, but it is captivating, and it is the more available on
account of its vagueness. It lends itself to the most
vicious kind of social dogmatism, for if a man has natural
rights, then the reasoning is clear up to the finished
socialistic doctrine that a man has a natural right to
whatever he needs, and that the measure of his claims is
the wishes which he wants fulfilled. If, then, he has a
need, who is bound to satisfy it for him? Who holds the
obligation corresponding to his right? It must be the one
who possesses what will satisfy that need, or else the
state which can take the possession from those who have
earned and saved it, and give it to him who needs it and
who, by the hypothesis, has not earned and saved it.
W, G. Sumner, Challenge of Facts
31 While admitting the abstract right of the community to
interfere with its members in order to secure the
biological necessaries to all, | cannot admit its right to
interfere in matters where what one man possesses is not
obtained at the expense of another. | am thinking of such
things as opinion and knowledge and art. The fact that
the majority of a community dislikes an opinion gives it
no right to interfere with those who hold it. And the fact
that the majority of a community wishes not to know
certain facts gives it no right to imprison those who wish
to know them.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, XIll
32 The obstacles to freedom, as we saw, are of two sorts,
social and physical. Given a social and a physical
obstacle which cause the same direct loss of liberty, the
social obstacle is more harmful, because it causes
resentment. If a boy wants to climb a tree and you forbid
him, he will be furious; if he finds that he cannot climb it,
he will acquiesce in the physical impossibility.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, XIll
33 If we are not to fall into Utopianism, we cannot imagine
that, having overthrown capitalism, people will at once
learn to work for society without any standards of right,
indeed, the abolition of capitalism does not immediately
lay the economic foundations for such a change.
And there is no other standard yet than that of
"bourgeois right." To this extent, therefore, a form of state
is still necessary, which, while maintaining public
ownership of the means of production, would preserve
the equality of labour and equality in the distribution of
products.
The state is withering away in so far as there are no
longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no
class can be suppressed.
But the state has not yet altogether withered away,
since there still remains the protection of "bourgeois
right" which sanctifies actual inequality. For the complete
extinction of the state, complete Communism is
necessary.
Lenin, State and Revolution, V, 3
34 The fundamental rights, like the right to existence and
life; the right to personal freedom or to conduct one’s
own life as master of oneself and of one’s acts,
responsible for them before God and the law of the
community; the right to the pursuit of the perfection of
moral and rational human life; the right to the pursuit of
eternal good (without this pursuit there is no true pursuit
of happiness); the right to keep one’s body whole; the
right to private ownership of material goods, which is a
safeguard of the liberties of the individual; the right to
many according to one’s choice and to raise a family
which will be assured of the liberties due it; the right of
association, the respect for human dignity in each
individual, whether or not he represents an economic
value for society— all these rights are rooted in the
vocation of the person (a spiritual and free agent) to the
order of absolute values and to a destiny superior to time.
Maritain, Rights of Man and Natural Law, I!
35 With respect to God and truth, one has not the right to
choose according to his own whim any path whatsoever,
he must choose the true path, in so far as it is in his
power to know it. But with respect to the State, to the
temporal community and to the temporal power, he is
free to choose his religious path at his own risk, his
freedom of conscience is a natural, inviolable right.
Maritain, Rights of Man and Natural Law, I!
36 If it is true that political authority has as its essential
function the direction of free men towards the common
good, it is normal for these free men to choose by
themselves those who have the function of leading them:
this is the most elementary form of active participation in
political life. That is why universal suffrage, by means of
which every adult human person has, as such, the right
to make his opinion felt regarding the affairs of the
community by casting his vote in the election of the
people’s representatives and the officers of the State—
that is why universal suffrage has a wholly fundamental
political and human value and is one of those rights
which a community of free men can never give up.
Maritain, Rights of Man and Natural Law, I!
37 Freedom of investigation is a fundamental natural right,
for man’s very nature is to seek the truth.
Maritain, Rights of Man and Natural Law, I!
12.4 Crime and Punishment
Two main subjects are treated in this section: on the one
hand, the nature, causes, and varieties of crime; on the
other, the purposes, justifications, and kinds of punishment.
The first of these subjects is closely related to matters
treated in Section 12.1 on Law and Lawyers and also in
Section 9.7 on Right AND Wrong, as well as in Section 9.10
on Virtue and Vice; in addition, the reader will find some
overlapping between the discussion of crime here and of sin
in Section 20.13 of Chapter 20 on Religion. Section 12.1 on
Law and Lawyers is also relevant to the second subject, but
even more so is Section 12.2 on Justice AND Injustice. For
example, the reader will find passages dealing with the /ex
talionis —an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—both here,
as relevant to punishment, and in the section on justice.
The central issue concerning punishment arises from the
question whether it should be entirely utilitarian in purpose,
aiming to deter potential criminal offenders as well as to
reform those who have committed criminal acts, or it should
be purely retributive in aim, righting the wrong and thus
restoring the balance of justice. Those who take the latter
view attempt to draw a sharp line between retribution and
revenge. Those who take the former view tend to regard
retribution as nothing but vengeance. Regarding
punishment as remedial or therapeutic, the utilitarian view
justifies a particular type of punishment in a particular case
by the degree to which it serves the purposes of deterrence
and reform. Regarding it as an act of justice, the retributive
view justifies the severity of the punishment by its
proportionality to the gravity of the crime being punished.
These considerations raise further questions, such as
whether only the guilty should be punished and whether
everyone who is guilty of criminal behavior should be
punished; as well as questions about the justice of capital
punishment, about the inhumanity of cruel and unusual
punishments, about the mitigation or attenuation of
punishment in particular cases, and about the desire for
punishment on the part of those who are plagued by their
sense of guilt.
It has already been pointed out that sin as violation of the
divine law, is discussed in Section 20.13; it should be
pointed out that divine justice in a purely retributive
manner, as discussed in Section 20.15.
1 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed: for in the image of God made he man.
Genesis 9:6
2 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children,
neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers:
every man Shall be put to death for his own sin.
Deuteronomy 24:16
3 Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest
him with the rod, he shall not die.
Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his
soul from hell.
Proverbs 23:13-14
4 Chorus. It is but law that when the red drops have been
spilled upon the ground they cry aloud for fresh blood.
For the death act calls out on Fury to bring out of those
who were slain before new ruin on ruin accomplished.
Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 400
5 Chorus. Here is overthrow of all
the young laws, if the claim
of this matricide shall stand
good, his crime be sustained.
Should this be, every man will find a way
to act at his own caprice;
over and over again in time
to come, parents shall await
the deathstroke at their children’s hands.
Aeschylus, Eumenides, 490
6 Tyndareus. Suppose a wife murders her husband.
Her son then follows suit by killing her,
and his son then must have his murder too
and so on.
Where, | want to know, can this chain
of murder end? Can it ever end, in fact,
since the last to kill is doomed to stand
under permanent sentence of death by revenge?
No, our ancestors handled these matters well
by banning their murderers from public sight,
forbidding them to meet or speak to anyone.
But the point is this: they purged their guilt
by banishment, not death. And by so doing,
they stopped that endless vicious cycle
of murder and revenge.
Do not mistake me.
| despise adultery and unfaithful wives,
and my daughter Clytemnestra, an adulteress
and murders to boot, most of all.
As for your wife Helen, | loathe her too
and never wish to speak to her again.
Nor, | might add, do | envy you
your trip to Troy to bring your whore back home.
No sir, not my daughters, but the law:
that is my concern. There | take my stand,
defending it with all my heart and strength
against the brutal and inhuman spirit of murder
that corrupts our cities and destroys this country.
Euripides, Orestes, 507
7 Socrates. The proper office of punishment is twofold: he
who is rightly punished ought either to become better
and profit by it, or he ought to be made an example to his
fellows, that they may see what he suffers, and fear and
become better. Those who are improved when they are
punished by gods and men, are those whose sins are
curable; and they are improved, as in this world so also in
another, by pain and suffering; for there is no other way
in which they can be delivered from their evil. But they
who have been guilty of the worst crimes, and are
incurable by reason of their crimes, are made examples;
for, as they are incurable, the time has passed at which
they can receive any benefit. They get no good
themselves, but others get good when they behold them
enduring for ever the most terrible and painful and
fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins.
Plato, Gorgias, 525A
8 Athenian Stranger. Aman may very likely commit...
crimes, either in a state of madness or when affected by
disease, or under the influence of extreme old age, orina
fit of childish wantonness, himself no better than a child.
And if this be made evident to the judges elected to try
the cause, on the appeal of the criminal or his advocate,
and he be judged to have been in this state when he
committed the offence, he shall simply pay for the hurt
which he may have done to another; but he shall be
exempt from other penalties, unless he have slain some
one, and have on his hands the stain of blood.
Plato, Laws, IX, 864B
9 Athenian Stranger. The law, like a good archer, should aim
at the right measure of punishment, and in all cases at
the deserved punishment.
Plato, Laws, XI, 934A
10 Athenian Stranger. |f aman steal anything belonging to
the public, whether that which he steals be much or little,
he shall have the same punishment. For he who steals a
little steals with the same wish as he who steals much,
but with less power, and he who takes up a greater
amount, not having deposited it, is wholly unjust.
Wherefore the law is not disposed to inflict a less penalty
on the one than on the other because his theft is less, but
on the ground that the thief may possibly be in one case
still curable, and may in another case be incurable. If any
one convict in a court of law a stranger or a slave of a
theft of public property, let the court determine what
punishment he shall suffer, or what penalty he shall pay,
bearing in mind that he is probably not incurable. But the
citizen who has been brought up as our citizens will have
been, if he be found guilty of robbing his country by
fraud or violence, whether he be caught in the act or not,
Shall be punished with death; for he is incurable.
Plato, Laws, XII, 941B
11 If the virtues are concerned with actions and passions,
and every passion and every action is accompanied by
pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be
concerned with pleasures and pains. This is indicated also
by the fact that punishment is inflicted by these means;
for it is a kind of cure, and it is the nature of cures to be
effected by contraries.
Aristotle, 1104b13
12 There are crimes of which the motive is want.... But want
is not the sole incentive to crime; men also wish to enjoy
themselves and not to be in a state of desire—they wish
to cure some desire, going beyond the necessities of life,
which preys upon them; nay, this is not the only reason—
they may desire superfluities in order to enjoy pleasures
unaccompanied with pain, and therefore they commit
crimes.
Now what is the cure of these three disorders? Of the
first, moderate possessions and occupation; of the
second, habits of temperance; as to the third, if any
desire pleasures which depend on themselves, they will
find the satisfaction of their desires nowhere but in
philosophy; for all other pleasures we are dependent on
others. The fact is that the greatest crimes are caused by
excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants
in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence great is
the honour bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on
him who kills a tyrant.
Aristotle, Politics, 1267a3
13 There is in life a dread of punishment for evil deeds,
signal as the deeds are signal, and for atonement of guilt,
the prison and the frightful hurling down from the rock,
scourgings, executioners, the dungeon of the doomed,
the pitch, the metal plate, torches; and even though
these are wanting, yet the conscience-stricken mind
through boding fears applies to itself goads and frightens
itself with whips, and sees not meanwhile what end there
can be of ills or what limit at last is to be set to
punishments, and fears lest these very evils be enhanced
after death. The life of fools at length becomes a hell here
on earth.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
14 There are some duties we owe even to those who have
wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and
punishment. Or rather, may | say that it is enough to get
a wrong-doer to repent of his misdeed, so that he may not
repeat the offense, and also as a means of deterring
others from doing wrong.
Cicero, De Officiis, 1,11
15 They lie below, on golden beds display’d;
And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.
The Queen of Furies by their sides is set,
And snatches from their mouths th’ untasted meat,
Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,
Tossing her torch, and thund’ring in their ears.
Then they, who brothers’ better claim disown,
Expel their parents, and usurp the throne;
Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold,
Sit brooding on unprofitable gold;
Who dare not give, and e’en refuse to lend
To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend.
Vast is the throng of these; nor less the train
Of lustful youths, for foul adult’ry slain:
Hosts of deserters, who their honor sold,
And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold.
All these within the dungeon’s depth remain,
Despairing pardon, and expecting pain.
Ask not what pains; nor farther seek to know
Their process, or the forms of law below.
Some roll a weighty stone; some, laid along,
And bound with burning wires, on spokes of wheels are
hung.
Unhappy Theseus, doom’d for ever there,
Is fix’d by Fate on his eternal chair;
And wretched Phlegyas warns the world with cries
(Could warning make the world more just or wise):
‘Learn righteousness, and dread th’ avenging deities.’
To tyrants others have their country sold,
Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold;
Some have old laws repeal’d, new statutes made,
Not as the people pleas’d, but as they paid;
With incest some their daughters’ bed profan’d;
All dar’d the worst of ills, and, what they dar’d, attain’d.
Had | a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,
And throats of brass, inspir’d with iron lungs,
| could not half those horrid crimes repeat.
Nor half the punishments those crimes have met.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
16 Draco’s laws were written not with ink but blood; and he,
himself, being once asked why he made death the
punishment of most offences, replied, "Small ones
deserve that, and | have no higher for the greater
crimes."
Plutarch, Solon
17 Any performance that sets an evil example displeases
Even its author himself: to begin with, punishment lies
In the fact that no man, if guilty, is ever acquitted
With himself as judge, though he may have won in the
courtroom
Bribing the praetor in charge, or stuffing the urn with
false ballots.
Juvenal, Satire XIII
18 The fates of criminals differ.
One gets the cross, another the crown, for the same
misdemeanor.
Juvenal, Satire XIII
19 If man were all of one piece—I| mean, if he were nothing
more than a made thing, acting and acted upon
according to a fixed nature—he could be no more subject
to reproach and punishment than the mere animals. But
as the scheme holds, man is singled out for
condemnation when he does evil; and this with justice.
For he is no mere thing made to rigid plan; his nature
contains a Principle apart and free.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, Ill, 4
20 Every disorder of the soul is its own punishment.
Augustine, Confessions, |, 12
21 Now when we ask why this or that particular evil act was
done, it is normal to assume that it could not have been
done save through the desire of gaining or the fear of
losing some one of these lower goods. For they have their
own charm and their own beauty, though compared with
the higher values of heaven they are poor and mean
enough. Such a man has committed a murder. Why? He
wanted the other man’s wife or his property; or he had
chosen robbery as a means of livelihood; or he feared to
lose this or that through his victim’s act; or he had been
wronged and was aflame for vengeance. Would any man
commit a murder for no cause, for the sheer delight of
murdering? The thing would be incredible. There is of
course the case of the man [Catiline] who was said to be
so stupidly and savagely cruel that he practised cruelty
and evil even when he had nothing to gain by them. But
even there a cause was stated—he did it, he said, lest
through idleness his hand or his resolution should grow
slack. And why did he want to prevent that? So that one
day by the multiplication of his crimes the city should be
his, and he would have gained honors and authority and
riches, and would no longer be in fear of the law or in the
difficulties that want of money and the awareness of his
crimes had brought him. So that not even Catiline loved
his crimes as crimes; he loved some other thing which
was his reason for committing them.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 5
22 What shall | say of these judgments which men
pronounce on men, and which are necessary in
communities, whatever outward peace they enjoy?
Melancholy and lamentable judgments they are, since
the judges are men who cannot discern the consciences
of those at their bar, and are therefore frequently
compelled to put innocent witnesses to the torture to
ascertain the truth regarding the crimes of other men.
What shall | say of torture applied to the accused
himself? He is tortured to discover whether he is guilty,
so that, though innocent, he suffers most undoubted
punishment for crime that is still doubtful, not because it
is proved that he committed it, but because it is not
ascertained that he did not commit it. Thus the ignorance
of the judge frequently involves an innocent person in
suffering- And what is still more unendurable—a thing,
indeed, to be bewailed, and, if that were possible,
watered with fountains of tears—is this, that when the
judge puts the accused to the question, that he may not
unwittingly put an innocent man to death, the HKult of
this lamentable ignorance is that this very person, whom
he tortured that he might not condemn him if innocent, is
condemned to death both tortured and innocent. For if he
has chosen, in obedience to the philosophical
instructions to the wise man, to quit this life rather than
endure any longer such tortures, he declares that he has
committed the crime which in fact he has not committed.
And when he has been condemned and put to death, the
judge is still in ignorance whether he has put to death an
innocent or a guilty person, though he put the accused to
the torture for the very purpose of saving himself from
condemning the innocent; and consequently he has both
tortured an innocent man to discover his innocence and
has put him to death without discovering it. If such
darkness shrouds social life, will a wise judge take his
seat on the bench or no? Beyond question he will. For
human society, which he thinks it a wickedness to
abandon, constrains him and compels him to this duty.
And he thinks it no wickedness that innocent witnesses
are tortured regarding the crimes of which other men are
accused; or that the accused are put to the torture, so
that they are often overcome with anguish, and, though
innocent, make false confessions regarding themselves,
and are punished; or that, though they be not
condemned to die, they often die during, or in
consequence of, the torture; or that sometimes the
accusers, who perhaps have been prompted by a desire
to benefit society by bringing criminals to justice, are
themselves condemned through the ignorance of the
judge, because they are unable to prove the truth of their
accusations though they are true, and because the
witnesses lie, and the accused endures the torture
without being moved to confession. These numerous and
important evils he does not consider sins; for the wise
judge does these things, not with any intention of doing
harm, but because his ignorance compels him, and
because human society claims him as a judge. But
though we therefore acquit the judge of malice, we must
none the less condemn human life as miserable. And if he
is compelled to torture and punish the innocent because
his office and his ignorance constrain him, is he a happy
as well as guiltless man? Surely it were proof of more
profound considerateness and finer feeling were he to
recognize the misery of these necessities, and shrink
from his own implication in that misery; and had he any
piety about him, he would cry to God "From my
necessities deliver Thou me."
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 6
23 Man can be punished with a threefold punishment
corresponding to the three orders to which the human
will is subject. In the first place a man’s nature is
subjected to the order of his own reason; secondly, it is
subjected to the order of another man who governs him
either in spiritual or in temporal matters, as a member
either of the state or of the household; thirdly, it is
subjected to the universal order of the Divine
government. Now each of these orders is disturbed by
sin, for the sinner acts against his reason, and against
human and Divine law. Hence he incurs a threefold
punishment; one, inflicted by himself, namely remorse of
conscience; another, inflicted by man; and a third,
inflicted by God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 87, 1
24 The punishment that is inflicted according to human laws
is not always intended as a medicine for the one who is
punished, but sometimes only for others; thus when a
thief is hanged, this is not for his own amendment, but
for the sake of others, that at least they may be deterred
from crime through fear of the punishment.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 87, 3
25 A severe punishment is inflicted not only on account of
the gravity of a fault, but also for other reasons. First, on
account of the greatness of the sin, because a greater sin,
other things being equal, deserves a greater punishment.
Secondly, on account of a habitual sin, since men are not
easily cured of habitual sin except by severe
punishments. Thirdly, on account of a great desire for ora
great pleasure in the sin; for men are not easily deterred
from such sins unless they be severely punished.
Fourthly, on account of the facility of committing a sin
and of concealing it; for such sins, when discovered,
should be more severely punished in order to deter
others from committing them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 105, 2
26 Both Divine and human laws command... sinners to be
put to death, [if] there is greater likelihood of their
harming others than of their mending their ways.
Nevertheless the judge puts this into effect not out of
hatred for the sinners, but out of the love of charity, by
reason of which he prefers the public good to the life of
the individual. Moreover, the death inflicted by the judge
profits the sinner, if he be converted, for the expiation of
his crime; and if he be not converted, it profits so as to
put an end to the sin, because the sinner is thus deprived
of the power to sin any more.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 25, 6
27 Saint Francis afterwards, when | was dead, came for me:
but one of the Black Cherubim said to him: 'Do not take
him; wrong me not.
He must come down amongst my menials; because he
gave the fraudulent counsel, since which | have kept fast
by his hair:
for he who repents not, cannot be absolved; nor is it
possible to repent and will a thing at the same time, the
contradiction not permitting it.’
O wretched me! how | started when he seized me,
saying to me: ‘May be thou didst not think that | was a
logician!’
Dante, Inferno, XXVIII, 112
28 When theft is punished by hanging, this occurs according
to positive law on acceptable grounds, but not as in the
case of the Draconian law which condemned every thief
to hang, even if he stole only a chicken; this has no
acceptable grounds and is contrary to nature.
Consequently it was said that this law was written in
blood. Yet the punishment must be applied more severely
among more unbridled peoples.
Luther, Table Talk, 3911
29 Some peasants have just informed me hastily that a
moment ago they left in a wood that belongs to me a man
stabbed in a hundred places, who is still breathing, and
who begged them for pity’s sake to bring him some water
and help him to get up. They say that they did not dare
go near him, and ran away, for fear that the officers of the
law would catch them there and hold them accountable
for the accident—as is done with those who are found
near a murdered man—to their total ruin, since they had
neither ability nor money to defend their innocence.
What could | say to them? It is certain that this act of
humanity would have got them into trouble.
How many innocent people we have found to have
been punished—I mean by no fault of their judges—and
how many there have been that we have not found out
about! Here is something that happened in my time.
Certain men are condemned to death for a murder, the
sentence being, if not pronounced, at least decided and
determined. At this point the judges are informed by the
officers of an inferior court nearby that they have some
prisoners who confess outright to this murder and throw a
decisive light on the whole business. They deliberate
whether because of this they should interrupt and defer
the execution of the sentence passed upon the first
accused. They consider the novelty of the case and the
precedent it would set in suspending the execution of
sentences; that the sentence has been passed according
to law, and that the judges have no right to change their
minds. In short, these poor devils ate sacrificed to the
forms of justice.
Philip, or some other, took care of a similar problem in
this manner. He had sentenced a man, by a definitive
judgment, to pay a heavy fine to another. The truth came
to light some time after, and it turned out that he had
decided unfairly. On one side were the rights of the case,
on the other side the rights of judicial forms. He gave
some Satisfaction to both, letting the sentence stand and
compensating the loss of the convicted man out of his
own purse. But he was dealing with a reparable accident;
my men were irreparably hanged. How many
condemnations | have seen more criminal than the crime!
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
30 Hamlet. Give me your pardon, sir. |'ve done you wrong;
But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how | am punish’d
With sore distraction. What | have done,
That might your nature, honour, and exception
Roughly awake, | here proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet!
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, ii, 237
31 Angelo. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Why, every fault’s condemn’d ere it be done.
Mine were the very cipher of a function,
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ti, 37
32 Isabella. Good, good my lord, bethink you;
Who is it that hath died for this offence?
There’s many have committed it.
Lucio. Ay, well said.
Angelo. The law hath not been dead, though it hath
Slept.
Those many had not dared to do that evil,
If the first that did the edict infringe
Had answer’d for his deed. Now ’tis awake.
Takes a note of what is done; and, like a prophet
Looks in a glass that shows what future evils,
Either new, or by remissness new-conceived,
And so in progress to be hatch’d and born,
are now to have no successive degrees,
But, ere they live, to end.
Isab. Yet show some pity.
Ang. | show it most of ail when | show justice;
For then | pity those | do not know.
Which a dismiss’d offence would after gall;
And do him right that, answering one foul wrong.
Lives not to act another.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ti, 87
33 My Lord, said he, a large River divides in two Parts one
and the same Lordship. | beg your Honour to lend me
your Attention, for ‘tis a Case of great Importance, and
some Difficulty—Upon this River there is a Bridge; at one
End of which there stands a Gallon’s, and a kind of Court
of Justice, where four Judges use to sit, for the Execution
of a certain Law made by the Lord of the Land and River,
which runs thus.
Whoever intends to pass from one End of this Bridge
to the other, must first upon his Oath declare whither he
goes, and what his Business Is. If he swear Truth, he may
go on; but if he swear false, he shall be hanged, and die
without Remission upon the Gibbet at the End of the
Bridge.
After due Promulgation of this Law, many People,
notwithstanding it’s Severity, adventur’d to go over this
Bridge, and as it appeared they swore true, the Judges
permitted ’em to pass unmolested. It happen’d one Day
that a certain Passenger being sworn, declar’d, that by
the Oath he had taken, he was come to die upon that
Gallows, and that was all his Business.
This put the Judges to a Nonplus; for, said they, If we
let this Man pass freely, he is forsworn, and according to
the Letter of the Law he ought to die: If we hang him, he
has sworn Truth, seeing he swore he was to die on that
Gibbet; and then by the same Law we should let him
pass.
Now your Lordship’s Judgment is desir’d what the
Judges ought to do with this Man? For they are still ata
stand, not knowing what to determine in this Case; and
having been inform’d of your sharp Wit, and great
Capacity in resolving difficult Questions, they sent me to
beseech your Lordship in their Names, to give your
Opinion in so intricate and knotty a Case....
Well, hark you me, honest Man, said Sancho, either |
am a Codshead, or there is as much Reason to put this
Same Person you talk of to Death as to let him live and
pass the Bridge; for if the Truth saves him, the Lye
condemns him. Now the Case stands thus, | would have
you tell those Gentlemen that sent you to me, since
there’s as much Reason to bring him off, as to condemn
him, that they e’en let him go free; for ‘tis always more
commendable to do Good than Hurt. And this | would
give you under my own Hand, if | could write. Nor do |
speak this of my own Head; but | remember one Precept,
among many others, that my Master Don Quixote gave
me the Night before | went to govern this Island, which
was, that when the Scale of Justice is even, or a Case is
doubtful, we should prefer Mercy before Rigour; and it
has pleas’d God | should call it to Mind so luckily at this
Juncture.
Cervantes, Don Quixote; Il, 51
34 The house of every man is his castle, and if thieves come
to a man’s house to rob or murder, and the owner or his
servants kill any of the thieves in defence of himself and
his house, it is no felony and he lose nothing.
Sir Edward Coke, Cokers Reports, Semayne's Case
35 In causes of life and death, judges ought (as far as the
law permitteth) in justice to remember mercy; and to cast
a severe eye upon the example, but a merciful eye upon
the person.
Bacon, Of Judicature
36 When a penalty is either annexed to the crime in the law
itself, or hath been usually inflicted in the like cases,
there the delinquent is excused from a greater penalty.
For the punishment foreknown, if not great enough to
deter men from the action, is an invitement to it: because
when men compare the benefit of their injustice with the
harm of their punishment, by necessity of nature they
choose that which appeareth best for themselves: and
therefore when they are punished more than the law had
formerly determined, or more than others were punished
for the same crime, it is the law that tempted and
deceiveth them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 27
37 If aman by the terror of present death be compelled to
do a fact against the law, he is totally excused; because
no law can oblige a man to abandon his own
preservation. And supposing such a law were obligatory,
yet a man would reason thus: "If | do it not, | die
presently; if | do it, | die afterwards; therefore by doing it,
there is time of life gained." Nature therefore compels
him to the fact.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 27
38 To kill against the law is a greater crime than any other
injury, life preserved.
And to kill with torment, greater than simply to kill.
And mutilation of a limb, greater than the spoiling a
man of his goods.
And the spoiling a man of his goods by terror of death
or wounds, than by clandestine surreption.
And by clandestine surreption, than by consent
fraudulently obtained.
And the violation of chastity by force, greater than by
flattery.
And of a woman married, than of a woman not
married.
For all these things are commonly so valued; though
some men are more, and some less, sensible of the same
offence. But the law regardeth not the particular, but the
general inclination of mankind.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 27
39 A punishment is an evil inflicted by public authority on
him that hath done or omitted that which is judged by
the same authority to be a transgression of the law, to the
end that the will of men may thereby the better be
disposed to obedience....
From the definition of punishment, | infer, first, that
neither private revenges nor injuries of private men can
properly be styled punishment, because they proceed not
from public authority...
Thirdly, that the evil inflicted by public authority,
without precedent public condemnation, is not to be
styled by the name of punishment, but of a hostile act,
because the fact for which a man is punished ought first
to be judged by public authority to be a transgression of
the law.
Fourthly, that the evil inflicted by usurped power, and
judges without authority from the sovereign, is not
punishment, but an act of hostility, because the acts of
power usurped have not for author the person
condemned, and therefore are not acts of public
authority.
Fifthly, that all evil which is inflicted without intention
or possibility of disposing the delinquent or, by his
example, other men to obey the laws is not punishment,
but an act of hostility, because without such an end no
hurt done is contained under that name....
Seventhly, if the harm inflicted be less than the
benefit of contentment that naturally followcth the crime
committed, that harm is not within the definition, and is
rather the price of redemption than the punishment of a
crime: because it is of the nature of punishment to have
for end the disposing of men to obey the law; which end
(if it be less than the benefit of the transgression) it
attain-cth not, but worketh a contrary effect.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 28
40 Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases;
rashness, with mischances; injustice, with the violence of
enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression;
negligent government of princes, with rebellion; and
rebellion, with slaughter. For seeing punishments are
consequent to the breach of laws, natural punishments
must be naturally consequent to the breach of the laws of
nature, and therefore follow them as their natural, not
arbitrary, effects.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 31
41 To impress your minds with a deeper horror at homicide,
remember that the first crime of fallen man was a murder,
committed on the person of the first holy man; that the
greatest crime was a murder, perpetrated on the person
of the King of saints; and that, of all crimes, murder is the
only one which involves in a common destruction the
Church and the state, nature and religion.
Pascal, Provincial Letters, XIV
42 When the supreme authority, constrained by the desire
of preserving peace, punishes a citizen who injures
another, | do not say that it is indignant with the citizen,
since it is not excited by hatred to destroy him, but
punishes him from motives of piety.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 51, Schol.
43 In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if
anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no
one by the law of nature is bound to please another,
unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or
evil, but what he himself, according to his own
temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak
generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature,
except what is beyond everyone's power. But wrong-
doing is action, which cannot lawfully be committed. But
if men by the ordinance of nature were bound to be led
by reason, then all of necessity would be so led.
For the ordinances of nature are the ordinances of
God, which God has instituted by the liberty, whereby he
exists, and they follow, therefore, from the necessity of
the divine nature, and, consequently, are eternal, and
cannot be broken. But men are chiefly guided by
appetite, without reason; yet for all this they do not
disturb the course of nature, but follow it of necessity.
And, therefore, a man ignorant and weak of mind, is no
more bound by natural law to order his life wisely, than a
sick man is bound to be sound of body.
Therefore wrong-doing cannot be conceived of, but
under dominion—that is, where, by the general right of
the whole dominion, it is decided what is good and what
evil, and where no one does anything rightfully, save
what he does in accordance with the general decree or
consent.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Il, 18-19
44 It is fit the ruler should have a power in many cases to
mitigate the severity of the law, and pardon some
offenders, since the end of government being the
preservation of all as much as may be, even the guilty are
to be spared where it can prove no prejudice to the
innocent.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIV, 159
45 Since it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to
the free actions of men, without annexing to it some
enforcement of good and evil to determine his will, we
must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some
reward or punishment annexed to that law. It would be in
vain for one intelligent being to set a rule to the actions
of another, if he had it not in his power to reward the
compliance with, and punish deviation from his rule, by
some good and evil, that is not the natural product and
consequence of the action itself. For that, being a natural
convenience or inconvenience, would operate of itself,
without a law. This, if | mistake not, is the true nature of
all law, properly so called.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXVIII,
6
46 There are some laws and customs in this [the
Lilliputians’] empire very peculiar; and if they were not so
directly contrary to those of my own dear country, |
should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is
only to be wished, that they were as well executed. The
first | shall mention, relateth to informers. All crimes
against the State, are punished here with the utmost
severity; but if the person accused make his innocence
plainly to appear upon his tryal, the accuser is
immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his
goods or lands, the innocent person is quadruply
recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he
underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for
all the charges he hath been at in making his defence.
Or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplyed by the
Crown. The emperor doth also confer on him some
publick mark of his favour; and proclamation is made of
his innocence through the whole city.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
47 They [the Lilliputians] look upon fraud as a greater crime
than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with
death: for, they alledge, that care and vigilance, with a
very common understanding, may preserve a man’s
goods from thieves; but honesty hath no fence against
superior cunning: and since it is necessary that there
should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling,
and dealing upon credit; where fraud is permitted or
connived at, or hath no law to punish it, the honest
dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the
advantage. | remember when | was once interceding with
the king for a criminal who had wronged his master of a
great sum of money, which he had received by order, and
ran away with; and happening to tell his Majesty, by way
of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust; the
emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer, as a
defence, the greatest aggravation of the crime: and truly,
| had little to say in return, farther than the common
ans\vcr, that different nations had different customs; for, |
confess, | was heartily ashamed.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
48 Ingratitude is among them [the Lilliputians] a capital
crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries:
for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill returns to his
benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest
of mankind, from whom they have received no obligation;
and therefore such a man is not fit to live.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
49 Experience shouts that in countries remarkable for the
lenity of their laws the spirit of the inhabitants is as much
affected by slight penalties as in other countries by
severer punishments.
If an inconvenience or abuse arises in the state, a
violent government endeavours suddenly to redress it;
and instead of putting the old laws in execution, it
establishes some cruel punishment, which instantly puts
a stop to the evil. But the spring of government hereby
loses its elasticity; the imagination grows accustomed to
the severe as well as the milder punishment; and as the
fear of the latter diminishes, they are soon obliged in
every case to have recourse to the former. Robberies on
the highway became common in some countries; in order
to remedy this evil, they invented the punishment of
breaking upon the wheel, the terror of which put a stop
for a while to this mischievous practice. But soon after
robberies on the highways became as common as ever...
Mankind must not be governed with too much
severity; we ought to make a prudent use of the means
which nature has given us to conduct them. If we inquire
into the cause of all human corruptions, we shall find that
they proceed from the impunity of criminals, and not from
the moderation of punishments.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VI, 12
50 The lawfulness of putting a malefactor to death arises
from this circumstance: the law by which he is punished
was made for his security. A murderer, for instance, has
enjoyed the benefit of the very law which condemns him;
it has been a continual protection to him; he cannot,
therefore, object to it.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XV, 2
51 When any man, even in political society, renders himself
by his crimes obnoxious to the public, he is punished by
the laws in his goods and person; that is, the ordinary
rules of justice are, with regard to him, suspended for a
moment; and it becomes equitable to inflict on him, for
the benefit of society, what otherwise he could not suffer
without wrong or injury.
Hume, Concerning Principles of Morals, III
52 Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged
man is good for nothing, and a man condemned to public
works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Civil Laws
53 "And why was this admiral killed?" "Because," said they,
“he did not kill men enough himself. He attacked the
French admiral, and was found guilty of not being near
enough to him." "But then, " said Candide, "was not the
French admiral as far off from the English admiral, as he
was from him?" "That is what cannot be doubted," replied
they. "But in this country it is of very great service to kill
an admiral now and then, in order to make the rest fight
better."
Voltaire, Candide, XXIII
54 The power of the laws depends still more on their own
wisdom than on the severity of their administrators, and
the public will derives its greatest weight from the reason
which has dictated it. Hence Plato looked upon it asa
very necessary precaution to place at the head of all
edicts a preamble, setting forth their justice and utility. In
fact, the first of all laws is to respect the laws: the
severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by
little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect
which they have no means of obtaining. It has constantly
been observed that in those countries where legal
punishments are most severe, they are also most
frequent; so that the cruelty of such punishments is a
proof only of the multitude of criminals, and, punishing
everything with equal severity, induces those who are
guilty to commit crimes, in order to escape being
punished for their faults.
Rousseau, Political Economy
55 It is not only upright men who know how to administer
the laws; but at bottom only good men know how to obey
them. The man who once gets the better of remorse, will
not shrink before punishments which are less severe, and
less lasting, and from which there is at least the hope of
escaping: whatever precautions are taken, those who
only require impunity in order to do wrong will not fail to
find means of eluding the law, and avoiding its penalties.
Rousseau, Political Economy
56 Every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on
forfeit a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its
laws he ceases to be a member of it; he even makes war
upon it. In such a case the preservation of the State is
inconsistent with his own, and one or the other must
perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so
much the citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment
are the proofs that he has broken the social treaty, and is
in consequence no longer a member of the State. Since,
then, he has recognised himself to be such by living
there, he must be removed by exile as a violator of the
compact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an
enemy is not a moral person, but merely a man; and in
such a case the right of war is to kill the vanquished.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 5
57 The frequency of capital punishments... rarely hinders
the commission of a crime, but naturally and commonly
prevents its detection, and is, if we proceed only upon
prudential principles, chiefly for that reason to be
avoided. Whatever may be urged by casuists or
politicians, the greater part of mankind, as they can
never think that to pick the pocket and to pierce the
heart is equally criminal, will scarcely believe that two
malefactors so different in guilt can be justly doomed to
the same punishment.
Johnson, Rambler No. 114
58 He [Johnson] said to Sir William Scott, "The age is
running mad after innovation; all the business of the
world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged
in anew way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of
innovation." It having been argued that this was an
improvement,—"No, Sir, (Said he, eagerly,) it is not an
improvement; they object that the old method drew
together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are
intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw
spectators they don't answer their purpose. The old
method was most satisfactory to all parties; the publick
was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported
by it. Why is all this to be swept away?" | perfectly agree
with Dr. Johnson upon this head, and am persuaded that
executions now, the solemn procession being
discontinued, have not nearly the effect which they
formerly had. Magistrates both in London, and elsewhere,
have, | am afraid, in this had too much regard to their
own ease.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1783)
59 The right of administering punishment is the right of the
sovereign as the supreme power to inflict pain upon a
subject on account of a crime committed by him. The
head of the state cannot therefore be punished; but his
supremacy may be withdrawn from him.
Kant, Science of Right, 49
60 Judicial or juridical punishment is to be distinguished
from natural punishment, in which crime as vice punishes
itself, and does not as such come within the cognizance
of the legislator. Juridical punishment can never be
administered merely as a means for promoting another
good either with regard to the criminal himself or to civil
society, but must in all cases be imposed only because
the individual on whom it is inflicted has committed a
crime. For one man ought never to be dealt with merely
aS a means subservient to the purpose of another, nor be
mixed up with the subjects of real right. Against such
treatment his inborn personality has a right to protect
him, even although he may be condemned to lose his
civil personality. He must first be found guilty and
punishable, before there can be any thought of drawing
from his punishment any benefit for himself or his fellow-
citizens. The penal law is a categorical imperative; and
w'oc to him who creeps through the serpent-windings of
utilitarianism to discover some advantage that may
discharge him from the justice of punishment, or even
from the due measure of it, according to the Pharisaic
maxim: "It is better that one man should die than that
the whole people should perish."
Kant, Science of Right, 49
61 Whoever has commited murder, must die. There is, in this
case, no juridical substitute or surrogate, that can be
given or taken for the satisfaction of justice. There is no
likeness or proportion between life, however painful, and
death; and therefore there is no equality between the
crime of murder and the retaliation of it but what is
judicially accomplished by the execution of the criminal.
His death, however, must be kept free from all
maltreatment that would make the humanity suffering in
his person loathsome or abominable. Even if a civil
society resolved to dissolve itself with the consent of all
its members—as might be supposed in the case of a
people inhabiting an island resolving to separate and
scatter themselves throughout the whole world—the last
murderer lying in the prison ought to be executed before
the resolution was carried out. This ought to be done in
order that every one may realize the desert of his deeds,
and that blood-guiltiness may not remain upon the
people; for otherwise they might all be regarded as
participators in the murder as a public violation of justice.
The equalization of punishment with crime is therefore
only possible by the cognition of the judge extending
even to the penalty of death, according to the right of
retaliation. This is manifest from the fact that it is only
thus that a sentence can be pronounced over all
criminals proportionate to their internal wickedness; as
may be seen by considering the case when the
punishment of death has to be inflicted, not on account
of a murder, but on account of a political crime that can
only be punished capitally.
Kant, Science of Rights, 49
62 The right of pardoning, viewed in relation to the criminal,
is the right of mitigating or entirely remitting his
punishment. On the side of the sovereign this is the most
delicate of all rights, as it may be exercised so as to set
forth the splendour of his dignity, and yet so as to doa
great wrong by it. It ought not to be exercised in
application to the crimes of the subjects against each
other; for exemption from punishment would be the
greatest wrong that could be done to them. It is only an
occasion of some form of treason, as a lesion against
himself, that the sovereign should make use of this right.
And it should not be exercised even in this connection, if
the safety of the people would be endangered by
remitting such punishment. This right is the only one
which properly deserves the name of a "right of majesty."
Kant, Science of Right, 49
63 Punishment is regarded as containing the criminal’s right
and hence by being punished he is honoured as a
rational being. He does not receive this due of honour
unless the concept and measure of his punishment are
derived from his own act. Still less does he receive it if he
is treated either as a harmful animal who has to be made
harmless, or with a view to deterring and reforming him.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 100
64 It seems to be a contradiction that a crime committed in
society appears more heinous and yet is punished more
leniently. But while it would be impossible for society to
leave a crime unpunished, since that would be to posit it
as right, still since society is sure of itself, a crime must
always be something idiosyncratic in comparison,
something unstable and exceptional. The very stability of
society gives a crime the status of something purely
subjective which seems to be the product rather of
natural impulse than of a prudent will.
In this light, crime acquires a milder status, and for
this reason its punishment too becomes milder. If society
is still internally weak, then an example must be made by
inflicting punishments, since punishment is itself an
example over against the example of crime. But in a
society which is internally strong, the commission of
crime is something so feeble that its annulment must be
commensurable with its feebleness. Harsh punishments,
therefore, are not unjust in and by themselves; they are
related to contemporary conditions, A criminal code
cannot hold good for all time, and crimes are only shows
of reality which may draw on themselves a greater or
lesser degree of disavowal.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 218
65 Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment
is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the
pleasure which concealed it.
Emerson, Compensation
66 Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit
a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the
ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every
partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall
the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you
cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew.
Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws
and substances of nature—water, snow, wind, gravitation
—become penalties to the thief.
Emerson, Compensation
67 There are some who Say, that it is unjust to punish any
one for the sake of example to others; that punishment is
just, only when intended for the good of the sufferer
himself. Others maintain the extreme reverse, contending
that to punish persons who have attained years of
discretion, for their own benefit, is despotism and
injustice, since if the matter at issue is solely their own
good, no one has a right to control their own judgment of
it; but that they may justly be punished to prevent evil to
others, this being the exercise of the legitimate right of
self-defence. Mr. Owen, again, affirms that it is unjust to
punish at all; for the criminal did not make his own
character; his education, and the circumstances which
surrounded him, have made him a criminal, and for these
he is not responsible. All these opinions are extremely
plausible; and so long as the question is argued as one of
justice simply, without going down to the principles
which lie under justice and are the source of its authority,
| am unable to see how any of these reasoners can be
refuted. For in truth every one of the three builds upon
rules of justice confessedly true. The first appeals to the
acknowledged injustice of singling out an individual, and
making him a sacrifice, without his consent, for other
people’s benefit. The second relies on the acknowledged
justice of self-defence, and the admitted injustice of
forcing one person to conform to another's notions of
what constitutes his good. The Owenite invokes the
admitted principle, that it is unjust to punish any one for
what he cannot help. Each is triumphant so long as he is
not compelled to take into consideration any other
maxims of justice than the one he has selected; but as
soon as their several maxims are brought face to face,
each disputant seems to have exactly as much to say for
himself as the others. No one of them can carry out his
own notion of justice without trampling upon another
equally binding.
These are difficulties; they have always been felt to be
such; and many devices have been invented to turn
rather than to overcome them. As a refuge from the last
of the three, men imagined what they called the freedom
of the will; fancying that they could not justify punishing
a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful state, unless it
be supposed to have come into that state through no
influence of anterior circumstances. To escape from the
other difficulties, a favourite contrivance has been the
fiction of a contract, whereby at some unknown period all
the members of society engaged to obey the laws, and
consented to be punished for any disobedience to them;
thereby giving to their legislators the right, which it is
assumed they would not otherwise have had, of
punishing them, either for their own good or for that of
society. This happy thought was considered to get rid of
the whole difficulty, and to legitimate the infliction of
punishment, in virtue of another received maxim of
justice, Volenti non fit injuria; that is not unjust which is
done with the consent of the person who is supposed to
be hurt by it. | need hardly remark, that even if the
consent were not a mere fiction, this maxim is not
superior in authority to the others which it is brought in
to supersede. It is, on the contrary, an instructive
specimen of the loose and irregular manner in which
supposed principles of justice grow up. This particular
one evidently came into use as a help to the coarse
exigencies of courts of law, which are sometimes obliged
to be content with very uncertain presumptions, on
account of the greater evils which would often arise from
any attempt on their part to cut finer. But even courts of
law are not able to adhere consistently to the maxim, for
they allow voluntary engagements to be set aside on the
ground of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mistake
or misinformation.
Again, when the legitimacy of inflicting punishment is
admitted, how many conflicting conceptions of justice
come to light in discussing the proper apportionment of
punishments to offences. No rule on the subject
recommends itself so strongly to the primitive and
spontaneous sentiment of justice, as the /ex talionis, an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Though this
principle of the Jewish and of the Mahometan law has
been generally abandoned in Europe as a practical
maxim, there is, | suspect, in most minds, a secret
hankering after it; and when retribution accidentally falls
on an offender in that precise shape, the general feeling
of satisfaction evinced bears witness how natural is the
sentiment to which this repayment in kind is acceptable.
With many, the test of justice in penal infliction is that
the punishment should be proportioned to the offence;
meaning that it should be exactly measured by the moral
guilt of the culprit (whatever be their standard for
measuring moral guilt): the consideration, what amount
of punishment is necessary to deter from the offence,
having nothing to do with the question of justice, in their
estimation: while there are others to whom that
consideration is all in all; who maintain that it is not just,
at least for man, to inflict on a fellow-creature, whatever
68
may be his offences, any amount of suffering beyond the
least that will suffice to prevent him from repeating, and
others from imitating, his misconduct.
Mill, Utilitarianism, V
"Why," began the elder, "all these sentences to exile with
hard labour, and formerly with flogging also, reform no
one, and what’s more, deter hardly a single criminal, and
the number of crimes does not diminish but is continually
on the increase. You must admit that. Consequently the
security of society is not preserved, for, although the
obnoxious member is mechanically cut off and sent far
away out of sight, another criminal always comes to take
his place at once, and often two of them. If anything does
preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate
and transform the criminal, it is only the law of Christ
Speaking in his conscience. It is only by recognising his
wrong-doing as a son of a Christian society—that is, of
the Church—that he recognises his sin against society—
that is, against the Church. So that it is only against the
Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-
day can recognise that he has sinned. If society, as a
Church, had jurisdiction, then it would know when to
bring back from exclusion and to reunite to itself. Now the
Church having no real jurisdiction, but only the power of
moral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from
punishing the criminal actively. She does not
excommunicate him but simply persists in motherly
exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even tries
to preserve all Christian communion with the criminal.
She admits him to church services, to the holy sacrament,
gives him alms, and treats him more as a captive than as
a convict. And what would become of the criminal, O
Lord, if even the Christian society—that is, the Church—
were to reject him even as the civil law rejects him and
cuts him off? What would become of him if the Church
punished him with her excommunication as the direct
consequence of the secular law? There could be no more
terrible despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for
Russian criminals still have faith. Though, who knows,
perhaps then a fearful thing would happen, perhaps the
despairing heart of the criminal would lose its faith and
then what would become of him? But the Church, like a
tender, loving mother, holds aloof from active
punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely
punished already by the civil law, and there must be at
least someone to have pity on him. The Church holds
aloof, above all, because its judgment is the only one that
contains the truth, and therefore cannot practically and
morally be united to any other judgment even as a
temporary compromise. She can enter into no compact
about that. The foreign criminal, they say, rarely repents,
for the very doctrines of to-day confirm him in the idea
that his crime is not a crime, but only a reaction against
an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off
completely by a force that triumphs over him
mechanically and (so at least they say of themselves in
Europe) accompanies this exclusion with hatred,
forgetfulness, and the most profound indifference as to
the ultimate fate of the erring brother."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, Il, 5
69 Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of
anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he
recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man
standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all
men to blame for that crime. When he understands that,
he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd,
it is true. If | had been righteous myself, perhaps there
would have been no criminal standing before me. If you
can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your
heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself,
and let him go without reproach. And even if the law
itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit so far as
possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more
bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes
away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that bea
stumbling-block to you. It show’s his time has not yet
come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not,
no matter; if not he, then another in his place \sill
understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself,
and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it
without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and faith of the
saints.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, Vl, 3
70 Raskolnikov smiled again. He saw the point at once, and
knew where they wanted to drive him. He decided to take
up the challenge.
“That wasn’t quite my contention," he began simply
and modestly. "Yet | admit that you have stated it almost
correctly; perhaps, if you like, perfectly so." (It almost
gave him pleasure to admit this.) "The only difference is
that | don’t contend that extraordinary people are always
bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In
fact, | doubt whether such an argument could be
published. | simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man
has the right. .. that is not an official right, but an inner
right to decide in his own conscience to overstep...
certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the
practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of
benefit to the whole of humanity). You say that my article
isn’t definite; | am ready to make it as clear as | can.
Perhaps | am right in thinking you want me to; very well. |
maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton
could not have been made known except by sacrificing
the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men,
Newton would have had the right, would indeed have
been in duty bound ... to e/iminate the dozen or the
hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries
known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow
from, that that Newton had a right to murder people right
and left and to steal every day in the market. Then, |
remember, | maintain in my article that all... well,
legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon,
Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without
exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a
new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed
down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people,
and they did not stop short at bloodshed either, if that
bloodshed—often of innocent persons fighting bravely in
defence of ancient law— were of use to their cause. It’s
remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these
benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of
terrible carnage. In short, | maintain that all great men or
even men a little out of the common, that is to say
capable of giving some new word, must from their very
nature be criminals—more or less, of course. Otherwise
it’s hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to
remain in the common rut is what they can’t submit to,
from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought
not, indeed, to submit to it. You see that there is nothing
particularly new in all that The same thing has been
printed and read a thousand times before. As for my
division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, |
acknowledge that it’s somewhat arbitrary, but | don’t
insist upon exact numbers. | only believe in my leading
idea that men are jn genera! divided by a law of nature
into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say,
material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men
who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word. There
are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the
distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well
marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men
conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live
under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it
is their duty to be controlled, because that’s their
vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them.
The second category all transgress the law; they are
destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their
capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative
and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied
ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the
better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea
to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, |
maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a
sanction for wading through blood—that depends on the
idea and its dimensions, note that. It’s only in that sense |
speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember
it began with the legal question). There’s no need for
such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever
admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or
less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative
vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a
pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more
or less). The first category is always the man of the
present, the second the man of the future. The first
preserve the world and people it, the second move the
world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right
to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me—and vive
la guerre eternelle —till the New Jerusalem, of course!"
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, III, 5
71 Porfiry began gaily, looking with extraordinary simplicity
at Raskolnikov (which startled him and instantly put him
on his guard), "certainly quite right in laughing so wittily
at our legal forms, he-he! Some of these elaborate
psychological methods are exceedingly ridiculous and
perhaps useless, if one adheres too closely to the forms.
Yes ... lam talking of forms again. Well, if | recognise, or
more strictly speaking, if | suspect some one or other to
be acriminal in any case entrusted to me... you’re
reading for the law, of course, Rodion Romanovitch?"
"Yes, | was ..."
"Well, then it is a precedent for you for the future—
though don’t suppose | should venture to instruct you
after the articles you publish about crime! No, | simply
make bold to state it by way of fact, if | took this man or
that for a criminal, why, | ask, should | worry’ him
prematurely, even though | had evidence against him? In
one case | may be bound, for instance, to arrest a man at
once, but another may be in quite a different position,
you know, so why shouldn't | let him wsdk about the town
a bit, he-he-he! But | see you don’t quite understand, so
I'll give you a clearer example. If | put him in prison too
soon, | may very likely give him, so to speak, moral
support, he-he! You’re laughing?"
Raskolnikov had no idea of laughing. He was sitting
with compressed lips, his feverish eyes fixed on Porfiry
Petrovitch’s.
"Yet that is the case, with some types especially, for
men are so different. You say evidence. Well, there may
be evidence. But evidence, you know, can generally be
taken two ways. | am an examining lawyer and a weak
man, | confess it. | should like to make a proof, so to say,
mathematically clear, | should like to make a chain of
evidence such as twice two are four, it ought to bea
direct, irrefutable proof! And if | shut him up too soon—
even though | might be convinced he was the man, |
should very likely be depriving myself of the means of
getting further evidence against him. And how? By giving
him, so to speak, a definite position, | shall put him out of
suspense and set his mind at rest, so that he will retreat
into his shell. They say that at Sevastopol, soon after
Alma, the clever people were in a terrible fright that the
enemy would attack openly and take Sevastopol at once.
But when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular
siege, they were delighted, | am told and reassured, for
the thing would drag on for two months at least. You’re
laughing, you don’t believe me again? Of course, you’re
right, too. You’re right, you’re right. These are all special
cases, | admit. But you must observe this, my dear Rodion
Romanovitch, the general case, the case (or which all
legal forms and rules are intended, for which they are
calculated and laid down in books, does not exist at all,
for the reason that every case, every crime for instance,
so soon as it actually occurs, at once becomes a
thoroughly special case and sometimes a case unlike any
that’s gone before. Very comic cases of that sort
sometimes occur. If | leave one man quite alone, if | don’t
touch him and don’t worry him, but let him know or at
least Suspect every moment that | know all about it and
am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual
suspicion and terror, he’ll be bound to lose his head. He'll
come of himself, or maybe do something which will make
it as plain as twice two are four—it’s delightful. It may be
so with a simple peasant, but with one of our sort, an
intelligent man cultivated on a certain side, it’s a dead
certainty. For, my dear fellow, it’s a very important matter
to know on what side a man is cultivated. And then there
are nerves, there are nerves, you have overlooked them!
Why, they are all sick, nervous and irritable!... And then
how they all suffer from spleen! That | assure you is a
regular gold mine for us. And it’s no anxiety to me, his
running about the town free! Let him, let him walk about
for a bit! | Know well enough that I’ve caught him and
that he won’t escape me. Where could he escape to, he-
he? Abroad, perhaps? A Pole will escape abroad, but not
here, especially as |am watching and have taken
measures. Will he escape into the depths of the country
perhaps? But you know, peasants five there, real rude
Russian peasants. A modem cultivated man would prefer
prison to living with such strangers as our peasants. He-
he! But that’s all nonsense, and on the surface. It’s not
merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is
psychologically unable to escape me, he-he! What an
expression! Through a law of nature he can’t escape me if
he had anywhere to go. Have you seen a butterfly round
a candle? That’s how he will keep circling and circling
round me. Freedom will lose its attractions. He’ll begin to
brood, he’ll weave a tangle round himself, he’ll worry
himself to death! What’s more he will provide me with a
mathematical proof—if | only give him long enough
interval... . And he'll keep circling round me, getting
nearer and nearer and then— flop! He'll fly straight into
my mouth and I'll swallow him, and that will be very
amusing, he-he-he-he! You don’t believe me?"
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, IV, 5
72 When we do not at all understand the cause of an action,
whether a crime, a good action, or even one that is
simply nonmoral, we ascribe a greater amount of freedom
to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently demand the
punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act
we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we
recognize in it more individuality, originality, and
independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes
of the act is known to us we recognize a certain element
of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the
crime, or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous
act, or the freedom of the apparently original action. That
a criminal was reared among malefactors mitigates his
fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or mother,
or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and
therefore seems less deserving of sympathy and less the
result of free will. The founder of a sect or party, or an
inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by what
the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large
range of examples, if our observation is constantly
directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in
people’s actions, their actions appear to us more under
compulsion and less free the more correctly we connect
the effects with the causes. If we examined simple
actions and had a vast number of such actions under
observation, our conception of their inevitability would
be still greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a
dishonest father, the misconduct of a woman who had
fallen into bad company, a drunkard’s relapse into
drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less
free the better we understand their cause. If the man
whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage
of mental development, like a child, a madman, ora
simpleton—then, knowing the causes of the act and the
simplicity of the character and intelligence in question,
we see so large an element of necessity and so little free
will that as soon as we know the cause prompting the
action we can foretell the result.
On these three considerations alone is based the
conception of irresponsibility for crimes and the
extenuating circumstances admitted by all legislative
codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the
circumstances in which the man was placed whose action
is being judged, and according to the greater or lesser
interval of time between the commission of the action
and its investigation, and according to the greater or
lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, IX
73 The lawyers defending a criminal are rarely artists
enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of his deed to
his advantage.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1V, 110
74 The criminal type is the type of the strong human being
under unfavourable conditions, a strong human being
made sick. What he lacks is the wilderness, a certain freer
and more perilous nature and form of existence in which
all that is attack and defence in the instinct of the strong
human being comes into its own.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
75 Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by
the hands of other men.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
76 Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of
assassination, because there it is invested with the
approval of society.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
77 Grime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale,
we call penal law.
Shaw, Alan and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
Chapter 13
LIBERTY and EQUALITY
Chapter 13 is divided into three sections: Section 13.1
Freedom in Society, Section 13.2 Freedom of Thought and
Expression: Censorship, and 13.3 Equality.
This chapter, like Chapters 12 and 14, is closely related
to Chapter 10 on Politics. Since economic considerations
enter into the discussion of social freedom in Section 13.1
and into the discussion of social equality in Section 13.3, the
chapter also touches on matters treated in Chapter 11 on
Economics.
The terms "freedom" and "liberty" are interchangeable.
Some authors prefer to use one, some the other, and some
shift from one to the other. The freedom or liberty discussed
in this chapter, and especially in Section 13.1, is the
individual’s freedom of action in society—the liberty of the
individual in conduct affecting others. Other aspects of
freedom are discussed in other contexts— moral freedom in
Section 9.4 of the chapter on Ethics, and free will or free
choice in Section 5.7 of the chapter on Mind.
Section 13.2 turns from the consideration of freedom in
the sphere of action, and specifically of social conduct, to
freedom in the sphere of thought and in the communication
of thought. It is appropriate, therefore, to include there
quotations dealing with the pros and cons of censorship, and
other impediments to the communication of ideas and the
expression of thought.
Equality—the subject of Section 13.3—is often discussed
in relation to liberty, but it also has connections with other
subjects treated elsewhere, such as justice and injustice
(treated in Section 12.2) and man (treated in Chapter 1).
13.1 Freedom in Society
As the title of this section indicates, the subject treated is
not freedom in general, nor liberty in all its diverse forms,
but the individual’s freedom of action within the social
group and in relation to other individuals, This freedom is
variously described, in the quotations assembled, as
freedom from coercion, impediment, or duress; freedom to
do as one pleases or wishes; the liberty to live or act as one
chooses; or the liberty to act according to one’s own rules or
directions, not those of another.
The last of these formulations raises one of the central
issues disputed by the authors represented here. On the one
hand, there are those—for example, Montesquieu, Locke,
and Rousseau—who maintain that just laws or laws made
with the consent and suffrage of the governed in no way
infringe or diminish individual freedom; freedom in society
cannot be an unlimited freedom; it is a freedom regulated by
law, and to act contrary to law is not liberty, but license. On
the other hand, the reader will find passages from Hobbes,
Bentham, and J. S. Mill setting forth the contrary view: that
one has freedom of action only about matters concerning
which the law is silent; and that as the sphere of law
enlarges, the sphere of liberty diminishes. Yet both groups of
authors agree that freedom in society must be limited
freedom, a liberty to do as one pleases only to the extent
that one’s actions cause no injury to others or do not have
an adverse effect on the welfare of the community itself.
Other problems or issues are discussed: the relation of
liberty and equality, the character of freedom ina
democracy, the difference between freedom in a state of
nature and freedom in civil society, and the relation of
political liberty to moral freedom. For the consideration of
moral freedom, which is quite a different thing from social or
political freedom, the reader is referred to Section 9.4; and
for the controversy over freedom of choice, or of the will, the
reader is referred to Section 5.7. The discussion of subjects
related to the materials covered here will also be found in
Section 13.2 on Freedom of Thought and Expression:
Censorship, Section 13.3 on Equality, Section 10.4 on
Government of and by the People: Republic and Democracy,
and Section 10.7 on Slavery.
1 Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof.
Leviticus 25:10
2 Pericles. Our constitution... favours the many instead of
the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to
the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private
differences; if no social standing, advancement in public
life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations
not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does
poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state,
he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The
freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also
to our ordinary life.
There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over
each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with
our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge
in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive,
although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease
in our private relations does not make us lawless as
citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching
us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such
as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are
actually on the statute book, or belong to that code
which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without
acknowledged disgrace.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Il, 37
3 Socrates. The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy;
the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty
overmasters democracy—the truth being that the
excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in
the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the
seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in
forms of government....
The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals,
seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Plato, Republic, Vill, 563B
4 Every man should be responsible to others, nor should any
one be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where
absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain
the evil which is inherent in every man.
Aristotle, Politics, 1318b39
5 The measures which are taken by tyrants appear all of
them to be democratic; such, for instance, as the licence
permitted to slaves (which may be to a certain extent
advantageous) and also that of women and children, and
the allowing everybody to live as he likes. Such a
government will have many supporters, for most persons
would rather live in a disorderly than in a sober manner.
Aristotle, Politics, 1319b27
6 If the people are sovereign in a state and the government
is run according to their will, it is called liberty. But it is
really licence.
Cicero, Republic, Ill, 13
7 Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
I! Corinthians 3:17
8 By /iberty is understood... the absence of external
impediments; which impediments may oft take away part
of a man’s power to do what he would, but cannot hinder
him from using the power left him according as his
judgement and reason shall dictate to him.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 14
9 Liberties. .. depend on the silence of the law. In cases
where the sovereign has prescribed no rule, there the
subject hath the liberty to do, or forbear, according to his
own discretion. And therefore such liberty is in some
places more, and in some less; and in some times more,
in other times less, according as they that have the
sovereignty shall think most convenient.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 21
10 | did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs
By the known rules of antient libertie.
When strait a barbarous noise environs me
Of Owles and Cuckocs, Asses, Apes and Doggs.
As when those Hinds that were transform’d to Froggs
Raild at Latona's twin-born progenie
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
But this is got by casting Pearl to Hoggs;
That bawle for freedom in their senceless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry libertie;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they roave we see
For all this wast of wealth, and loss of blood.
Milton, | did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs
11 None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest
love not freedom but license, which never hath more
scope or more indulgence than under tyrants.
Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
12 The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior
power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative
authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for
his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no
other legislative power but that established by consent in
the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will,
or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall
enact according to the trust put in it. Freedom, then, is
not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us: "A liberty for every
one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to
be tied by any laws"; but freedom of men under
government is to have a standing rule to live by, common
to every one of that society, and made by the legislative
power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all
things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to
the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of
another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no
other restraint but the law of Nature.
Locke, II Civil Government, IV, 21
13 The freedom ... of man, and liberty of acting according to
his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is
able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by,
and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of
his own will. To turn him loose to an unrestrained liberty,
before he has reason to guide him, is not the allowing
him the privilege of his nature to be free, but to thrust
him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as
wretched and as much beneath that of a man as theirs.
Locke, II Civil Government, VI, 63
14 | think the question is not proper, whether the will be
free, but whether a man be free. Thus, | think.
First, That so far as any one can, by the direction or
choice of his mind, preferring the existence of any action
to the non-existence of that action, and vice versa, make
it to exist or not exist, so far he is free. For if | can, by a
thought directing the motion of my finger, make it move
when it was at rest, or vice versa, it is evident, that in
respect of that | am free: and if | can, by a like thought of
my mind, preferring one to the other, produce either
words or silence, | am at liberty to speak or hold my
peace: and as far as this power reaches, of acting or not
acting, by the determination of his own thought
preferring either, so far is a man free. For how can we
think any one freer, than to have the power to do what he
will? And so far as any one can, by preferring any action
to its not being, or rest to any action, produce that action
or rest, so far can he do what he will. For such a preferring
of action to its absence, is the willing of it: and we can
scarce tell how to imagine any being freer, than to be
able to do what he wills. So that in respect of actions
within the reach of such a power in him, a man seems as
free as it is possible for freedom to make him.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XX1, 21
15 Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play
the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man’s self?
If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to want
that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps
us from choosing or doing the worse, be liberty, true
liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen: but yet, |
think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of
such liberty, but he that is mad already.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXI, 51
16 He that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors
set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may
either go or stay, as he best likes; though his preference
be determined to stay, by the darkness of the night, or
illness of the weather, or want of other lodging. He ceases
not to be free; though the desire of some convenience to
be had there absolutely determines his preference, and
makes him stay in his prison.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 11, XXI,
51
17 It is true that in democracies the people seem to act as
they please; but political liberty does not consist in an
unlimited freedom. In governments, that is, in societies
directed by laws, liberty can consist only in the power of
doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained
to do what we ought not to will.
We must have continually present to our minds the
difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a
right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen
could do what they forbid he would be no longer
possessed of liberty, because all his fellow-citizens would
have the same power.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XI, 3
18 Liberty consists principally in not being forced to doa
thing, where the laws do not oblige: people are in this
state only as they are governed by civil laws; and
because they live under those civil laws, they are free.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXVI, 20
19 Liberty ... is only and can be only the power to do what
one will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But if one
considers liberty in the theological sense, it is a matter so
sublime that profane eyes dare not raise themselves to it.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Free-Will
20 To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to
surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For
him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible.
Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to
remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality
from his acts.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 4
21 In order... that the social compact may not be an empty
formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone
can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey
the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole
body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced
to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each
citizen to his country, secures him against all personal
dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the
political machine; this alone legitimises civil
undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd,
tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses.
Rousseau, Social Contract, |, 7
22 What man loses by the social contract is his natural
liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to
get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty
and the proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to
avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must
clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only
by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which
is limited by the general will; and possession, which is
merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier,
from property, which can be founded only on a positive
title.
We might, over and above all this, add, to what man
acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone
makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse
of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we
prescribe to ourselves is liberty.
Rousseau, Social Contract. I, 8
23 Johnson. We are all agreed as to our own liberty; we
would have as much of it as we can get; but we are not
agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we
take, others must lose.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 8, 1779)
24 In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of
labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more
general the competition, it will always be the more so.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, II, 2
25 That degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness
can be tolerated only in countries where the sovereign is
secured by a well-regulated standing army. It is in such
countries only that the public safety does not require that
the sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary
power for suppressing even the impertinent wantonness
of this licentious liberty.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, |
26 The liberty, the only liberty, | mean is a liberty connected
with order; that not only exists along with order and
virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It
inheres in good and steady government, as in its
substance and vital principle.
Burke, Speech on Arrival at Bristol (Oct, 13, 1774)
27 The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract perfection,
but its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain
any-where; because extremes, as we all know, in every
point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in
life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment.
Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed. The
degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle
precisely. But it ought to be the constant aim of every
wise public counsel to find out by cautious experiments,
and rational, cool endeavors, with how little, not how
much, of this restraint the community can subsist: for
liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be
lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first
order, but the vital spring and energy of the state itself,
which has just so much life and vigor as there is liberty in
it.
Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (Apr. 3, 1777)
28 The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do
what they please: we ought to see what it will please
them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be
soon turned into complaints.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
29 There is, indeed, an innate equality belonging to every
man which consists in his right to be independent of
being bound by others to anything more than that to
which he may also reciprocally bind them. It is,
consequently, the inborn quality of every man in virtue of
which he ought to be his ow-n master by right.
Kant, Division of the Science of Right, B
30 The liberty which the law ought to allow of, and leave in
existence—leave uncoerced, unremoved—is the liberty
which concerns those acts only, by which, if exercised, no
damage would be done to the community as a whole;
that is, either no damage at all, or none but what
promises to be compensated by at least equal benefit.
Accordingly, the exercise of the rights allowed to and
conferred upon each individual, ought to have no other
bounds set to it by law, than those which are necessary to
enable it to maintain every other individual in the
possession and exercise of such rights as...is consistent
with the greatest good of the community.
Bentham, Anarchical Fallacies, 4
31 Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without
which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to
abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because
it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the
annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life,
because h imparts to fire its destructive agency.
Madison, Federalist 10
32 If aman has freedom enough to live healthy, and to work
at his craft, he has enough; and so much all can easily
obtain,
Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (Jan. 18, 1827)
33 Me this unchartered freedom tires;
| feel the weight of chance-desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
| long for a repose that ever is the same.
Wordsworth, Ode to Duty
34 Two Voices are there; one is of the sea.
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice.
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!
Wordsworth, Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of
Switzerland
35 Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells....
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 't was pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty.
Should find brief solace there, as | have found.
Wordsworth, Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow
Room
36 Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.
Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV, 98
37 My very chains and | grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even |
Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.
Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon, XIV, 389
38 The idea which people most commonly have of freedom
is that it is arbitrariness—the mean, chosen by abstract
reflection, between the will wholly determined by natural
impulses, and the will free absolutely. If we hear it said
that the definition of freedom is ability to do what we
please, such an idea can only be taken to reveal an utter
immaturity of thought, for it contains not even an inkling
of the absolutely free will, of right, ethical life, and so
forth. Reflection, the formal universality and unity of self-
consciousness, is the will’s abstract certainty of its
freedom, but it is not yet the truth of freedom, because it
has not yet got itself as its content and aim, and
consequently the subjective side is still other than the
objective; the content of this self-determination,
therefore, also remains purely and simply finite. Instead
of being the will in its truth, arbitrariness is more like the
will as contradiction.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction, 15
39 The conjunction of duty and right has a twofold aspect:
what the state demands from us as a duty is eo /pso our
right as individuals, since the state is nothing but the
articulation of the concept of freedom. The
determinations of the individual will are given an
objective embodiment through the state and thereby
they attain their truth and their actualization for the first
time. The state is the one and only prerequisite of the
attainment of particular ends and welfare.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 261
40 Freedom is nothing but the recognition and adoption of
such universal substantial objects as right and law, and
the production of a reality that is accordant with them—
the state.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
41 Freedom has appeared in the world at different times and
under various forms; it has not been exclusively bound to
any social condition, and it is not confined to
democracies. Freedom cannot, therefore, form the
distinguishing characteristic of democratic ages. The
peculiar and preponderant fact that marks those ages as
its own is the equality’ of condition; the ruling passion of
men in those periods is the love of this equality...
| think that democratic communities have a natural
taste for freedom; left to themselves, they will seek it,
cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for
equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant,
invincible; they call for equality in freedom; and if they
cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism, but they
will not endure aristocracy.
This is true at all times, and especially in our own day.
All men and all powers seeking to cope with this
irresistible passion will be overthrown and destroyed by
it. In our age freedom cannot be established without it,
and despotism itself cannot reign without its support.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 1
42 Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about
liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant
mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a
Declaration of Independence or the statute right to vote,
by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Emerson, Fate
43 Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet;
Above her shook the starry lights;
She heard the torrents meet.
Tennyson, Of old sat Freedom on the heights
44 Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as
a dog does his master’s chaise. Do what you love. Know
your own bone; gnaw it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it
still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of
much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be
good for something. All fables, indeed, have their morals;
but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come
between you and the light. Respect men and brothers
only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter
of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,—none
of the servants. In what concerns you much, do not think
that you have companions: know that you are alone in
the world.
Thoreau, Letter to Mr. B (Mar. 27, 1848)
45 Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed
and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not
keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he
hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music
which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not
important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree
or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the
condition of things which we were made for is not yet,
what were any reality which we can substitute?
Thoreau, Walden: Conclusion
46 The soul selects her own society
Then shuts the door.
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariots pausing
At her low gate.
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one,
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
Emily Dickinson, The Soul Selects
47 The world has never had a good definition of the word
liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in
want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the
Same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some
the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he
pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while
with others the same word may mean for some men to do
as they please with other men, and the product of other
men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but
incompatable things, called by the same name—liberty.
And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective
parties, called by two different and incompatable names
—liberty and tyranny.
Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair (Apr. 18, 1864)
48 The realm of freedom does not commence until the point
is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity
and of external utility is required. In the very nature of
things it lies beyond the sphere of material production in
the strict meaning of the term. Just as the savage must
wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy his wants, in order
to maintain his life and reproduce it, so civilized man has
to do it and he must do it in all forms of society and under
all possible modes of production. With his development
the realm of natural necessity expands, because his
wants increase; but at the same time the forces of
production increase by which these wants are satisfied.
Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Vil, 48
49 In bourgeois society... the past dominates the present; in
Communist society, the present dominates the past. In
bourgeois society capital is independent and has
individuality, while the living person is dependent and
has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom 1 And
rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality,
bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is
undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois
conditions of production, free trade, free selling and
buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and
buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and
buying, and ail the other "brave words" of our bourgeoisie
about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in
contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the
fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning
when opposed to the Communist abolition of buying and
selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of
the bourgeoisie itself.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I!
50 What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this
bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the
power of the State. The proletarian is, therefore, in law
and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can
decree his life or death. It offers him the means of living,
but only for an "equivalent" for his work. It even lets him
have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of
making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a
responsible agent who has attained his majority.
Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other
choice than that of either accepting the conditions which
the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to
death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!
A fine "equivalent" valued at pleasure by the bourgeoisie.
And if one proletarian is such a fool as to starve rather
than to agree to the equitable propositions of the
bourgeoisie, his "natural superiors," another is easily
found in his place; there are proletarians enough in the
world, and not all so insane as to prefer dying to living,
Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England tn
1844, Ill
51 The state is the sum of all the negations of the individual
liberty of all its members; or rather that of the sacrifices
which all its members make, in renouncing one portion of
their liberty to the profit of the common good. We have
seen that, according to the individualist theory, the
liberty of each is the limit or rather the natural negation
of the liberty of all the others. Well! this absolute
limitation, this negation of the liberty of each in the name
of the liberty of all or of the common right—that is the
State. Thus, where the State begins, individual liberty
ceases, and vice versa.
Bakunin, Philosophical Considerations
52 The sole end for which mankind are warranted,
individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty
of action of any of their number, is self-protection. .., The
only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilised community, against his
will, is to prevent harm to others.
Mill, On Liberty, |
53 As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there
should be different opinions, so it is that there should be
different experiments of living; that free scope should be
given to varieties of character, short of injur>» to others;
and that the worth of different modes of life should be
proved pracdcally, when any one thinks fit to try them. It
is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily
concern others, individuality should assert itself.
Mill, On Liberty, III
54 There is no reason that all human existence should be
constructed on some one or some small number of
patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of
common sense and experience, his own mode of laying
out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in
itself, but because it is his own mode. Human beings are
not like sheep.... The same things which are helps to one
person towards the cultivation of his higher nature are
hindrances to another. The same mode of life is a healthy
excitement to one, keeping all his faculties of action and
enjoyment in their best order, while to another it is a
distracting burthen, which suspends or crushes all
internal life. Such are the differences among human
beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities
of pain, and the operation on them of different physical
and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding
diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their
fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral,
and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable.
Mill, On Liberty, III
55 As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects
prejudicially the interests of others, society has
jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general
welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it,
becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for
entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct
affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or
needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons
concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of
understanding). In all such cases, there should be perfect
freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the
consequences.
Mill, On Liberty, 1V
56 The preventive function of government... is far more
liable to be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, than the
punitory function. ... lf either a public officer or any one
else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had
been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were no time to
warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn
him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for
liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does
not desire to fall into the river. Nevertheless, when there
is not a certainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one
but the person himself can judge of the sufficiency of the
motive which may prompt him to incur the risk: in this
case, therefore (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in
some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with
the full use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, |
conceive, to be only warned of the danger; not forcibly
prevented from exposing himself to it.
Mill, On Liberty, V
57 First and foremost of the necessary means towards man’s
civilisation we must name expansion. The need of
expansion is aS genuine an instinct in man as the need in
plants for the light, or the need in man himself for going
upright. All the conveniences of life by which man has
enlarged and secured his existence—railroads and the
penny post among the number—are due to the working
in man of this force or instinct of expansion....
The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for
expansion. Not only to find oneself tyrannised over and
outraged is a defeat to this instinct, but in general, to feel
oneself over-tutored, over-governed, sate upon (as the
popular phrase is) by authority, is a defeat to it.
Arnold, Mixed Essays, Pref.
58 It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have
those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of
speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never
to practise either of them.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, XX
59 Freedom means that the manly instincts that delight in
war and victory have gained mastery over the other
instincts—for example, over the instinct for happiness’.
The man who has become free -and how much more the
mind that has become free— spurns the contemptible
sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians,
cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
60 Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread
it.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
61 "Freedom" in its most abstract sense means the absence
of external obstacles to the realization of desires. Taken in
this abstract sense, freedom may be increased either by
maximizing power or by minimizing wants. An insect
which lives for a few days and then dies of cold may have
perfect freedom according to the definition, since the
cold may alter its desires, so that there is no moment
when it wishes to achieve the impossible. Among human
beings, also, this way of reaching freedom is possible. ...
It is obvious that a community who all wish to murder
each other cannot be so free as a community with more
peaceable desires. Modification of desire may, therefore,
involve just as great a gain to freedom as increase of
power.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, XIll
62 The freedom we should seek is not the right to oppress
others, but the right to live as we choose and think as we
choose where our doing so does not prevent others from
doing likewise.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, XIll
63 Choice would hardly be significant if it did not take effect
in outward action, and if it did not, when expressed in
deeds, make a difference in things. Action as power
would hardly be prized if it were power like that of an
avalanche or an earthquake. The power, the ability to
command issues and consequences, that forms freedom
must, it should seem, have some connection with that
something in personality that is expressed in choice. At
all events, the essential problem of freedom, it seems to
me, is the problem of the relation of choice and
unimpeded effective action to each other.... There is an
intrinsic connection between choice as freedom and
power of action as freedom. A choice which intelligently
manifests individuality enlarges the range of action, and
this enlargement in turn confers upon our desires greater
insight and foresight, and makes choice more intelligent.
There is a circle, but an enlarging circle, or, if you please,
a widening spiral.
Dewey, Philosophies of Freedom
64 If we want individuals to be free we must see to it that
Suitable conditions exist:—a truism which at least
indicates the direction in which to look and move.
It tells us among other things to get rid of the ideas
that lead us to believe that democratic conditions
automatically maintain themselves, or that they can be
identified with fulfillment of prescriptions laid down ina
constitution. Beliefs of this sort merely divert attention
from what is going on, just as the patter of the
prestidigitator enables him to do things that are not
noticed by those whom he is engaged in fooling. For what
is actually going on may be the formation of conditions
that are hostile to any kind of democratic liberties. This
would be too trite to repeat were it not that so many
persons in the high places of business talk as if they
believed or could get others to believe that the
observance of formulae that have become ritualistic are
effective safeguards of our democratic heritage.
Dewey, Freedom and Culture, 11
65 The only freedom that is of enduring importance is
freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of
observation and of judgment exercised in behalf of
purposes that are intrinsically worth while.
Dewey, Experience and Education, V
66 Freedom from restriction... is to be prized only as a means
to a freedom which is power: power to frame purposes, to
Judge wisely, to evaluate desires by the consequences
which will result from acting upon them; power to select
and order means to carry chosen ends into operation.
Dewey, Experience and Education, V
67 To say that a man is free to choose to walk while the only
walk he can take will lead him over a precipice is to strain
words as well as facts.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, IV, 3
68 To admit ignorance and uncertainty in man while denying
them to nature involves a curious dualism. Variability,
initiative, innovation, departure from routine,
experimentation are empirically the manifestation of a
genuine nisus in things. At all events it is these things
that are precious to us under the name of freedom. It is
their elimination from the life of a slave which makes his
life servile, intolerable to the freeman who has once been
on his own, no matter what his animal comfort and
security. A free man would rather take his chance in an
open world than be guaranteed in a closed world.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, IV, 3
69 A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual,
but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his
epoch and his contemporaries.... All sorts of personal
aims, ends, hopes, prospects, hover before the eyes of
the individual, and out of these he derives the impulse to
ambition and achievement. Now, if the life about him, if
his own time seem, however outwardly stimulating, to be
at bottom empty of such food for his aspirations; if he
privately recognize it to be hopeless, viewless, helpless,
opposing only a hollow silence to all the questions man
puts, consciously or unconsciously, yet somehow puts, as
to the final, absolute, and abstract meaning in all his
efforts and activities; then, in such a case, a certain
laming of the personality is bound to occur, the more
inevitably the more upright the character in question; a
sort of palsy, as it were, which may even extend from his
Spiritual and moral over into his physical and organic
part. In an age that affords no satisfying answer to the
eternal question of "Why?" "To what end?" a man who is
capable of achievement over and above the average and
expected modicum must be equipped either with a moral
remoteness and single-mindedness which is rare indeed
and of heroic mould, or else with an exceptionally robust
vitality.
Mann, Magic Mountain, I
70 If we have defined man's situation as a free choice, with
no excuses and no recourse, every man who takes refuge
behind the excuse of his passions, every man who sets up
a determinism is a dishonest man.
The objection may be raised, "But why mayn't he
choose himself dishonestly?" | reply that | am not obliged
to pass moral judgment on him, but that | do define his
dishonesty as an error. One cannot help considering the
truth of the matter. Dishonesty is obviously a falsehood
because it belies the complete freedom of involvement.
On the same grounds, | maintain that there is also
dishonesty if | choose to state that certain values exist
prior to me; it is self-contradictory for me to want them
and at the same state that they are imposed on me.
Suppose someone says to me, "What if 1 want to be
dishonest?" I'll answer, "There’s no reason for you not to
be, but I’m saying that that's what you are, and that the
strictly coherent attitude is that of honesty."
Besides, | can bring moral judgment to bear. When |
declare that freedom in every concrete circumstance can
have no other aim than to w-ant itself, if man has once
become aware that in his forlornness he imposes values,
he can no longer want but one thing, and that is freedom,
as the basis of all values. That doesn’t mean that he
wants it in the abstract. It means simply that the ultimate
meaning of the acts of honest men is the quest for
freedom as such. A man who belongs to a Communist or
revolutionary union wants concrete goals; these goals
imply an abstract desire for freedom; but this freedom is
wanted in something concrete. We want freedom for
freedom’s sake and in every particular circumstance. And
in wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely
on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others
depends on ours. Of course, freedom as the definition of
man does not depend on others, but as soon as (here is
involvement, | am obliged to want others to have freedom
at the same time that | want my own freedom. | can take
freedom as my goal only if | take that of others as a goal
as well. Consequently, when, in all honesty. I've
recognized that man is a being in whom existence
precedes essence, that he is a free being who, in various
circumstances, can want only his freedom, | have at the
same time recognized that | can want only the freedom of
others.
Therefore, in the name of this will for freedom, which
freedom itself implies, 1 may pass judgment on those
who seek to hide from themselves the complete
arbitrariness and the complete freedom of their
existence. Those who hide their complete freedom from
themselves out of a spirit of seriousness or by means of
deterministic excuses, | shall call cowards.
Sartre, Existentialism
13.2 Freedom of Thought and
Expression
CENSORSHIP
Closely akin to freedom of action in society, discussed in
Section 13.1, is freedom from interference in the expression
of one’s opinions, freedom from censorship in the
publication of one’s thought, and freedom in the production
and, dissemination of works of art. The basic issue here is, of
course, the one about state censorship of works of art and
other forms of expression. Is the state ever justified in
prohibiting the expression of opinion, or in condemning and
repressing the communication of certain doctrines or views?
The reader will find quotations on both sides of the issue:
those that argue for censorship on the grounds that the
materials in question would, if allowed publication or
dissemination, exert an injurious effect on the community or
its members; and those that argue for complete, or almost
complete, toleration of every variety of opinion or doctrine.
Questions are raised about the extension of toleration to
material that is obscene, libelous, seditious, heretical, and
schismatic. The reader will observe that the passages drawn
from antiquity and the Middle Ages tend to draw a sharp line
between what should and should not be tolerated.
Beginning with Milton’s Areopagitica and coming down
through Locke and Voltaire to J. S. Mill, the argument moves
in the opposite direction—toward greater tolerance, based
on increasing doubt that injury is ever done by the free
expression of thought and opinion.
Related matters are discussed in Chapter 20, especially
Section 20.9 on Heresy and Unbelief; and also in Chapter 6,
especially Section 6.5 on Opinion, Belief, and Faith, and
Section 6.6 on Doubt and Skepticism.
1 Artabanus. It is impossible, if no more than one opinion is
uttered, to make choice of the best: a man is forced then
to follow whatever advice may have been given him; but
if opposite speeches are delivered, then choice can be
exercised. In like manner pure gold is not recognised by
itself; but when we test it along with baser ore, we
perceive which is the better.
Herodotus, History, VII, 10
2 Socrates. If you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not
mind Anytus, and you shall be let off, but upon one
condition, that you are not to enquire and speculate in
this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so
again you Shall die;—if this was the condition on which
you let me go, | should reply: Men of Athens, | honour and
love you; but | shall obey God rather than you, and while
| have life and strength | shall never cease from the
practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one
whom | meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my
friend,—a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of
Athens,— are you not ashamed of heaping up the
greatest amount of money and honour and reputation,
and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the
greatest improvement of the soul, which you never
regard or heed at all? And if the person with whom | am
arguing, says: Yes, but 1 do care; then | do not leave him
or let him go at once; but | proceed to interrogate and
examine and cross-examine him, and if | think that he
has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, | reproach
him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the
less. And | shall repeat the same words to every one
whom | meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but
especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my
brethren. For know that this is the command of God; and |
believe that no greater good has ever happened in the
state than my service to the God.
Plato, Apology, 29B
3 Socrates. The beginning is the most important part of any
work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing;
for that is the time at which the character is being formed
and the desired impression is more readily taken.... And
Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual
tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to
receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very
opposite of those which we should wish them to have
when they are grown up?
Adeimantus. We cannot.
Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of
the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale
of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will
desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the
authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with
such tales.... A young person cannot judge what is
allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives
into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and
unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the
tales which the young first hear should be models of
virtuous thoughts.
Plato, Republic, Il, 377A
4 Socrates. Poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the
gravest mis-statements when they tell us that wicked
men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that
injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is
a man’s own loss and another’s gain—these things we
Shall forbid them to utter, and command them to sing
and say the opposite.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 392A
5 Socrates. Shall our superintendence go no further, and are
the poets only to be required by us to express the image
of the good in their works, on pain, if they do anything
else, of expulsion from our State? Or is the same control
to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be
prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and
intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture
and building and the other creative arts; and is he who
cannot conform to this rule of ours to be prevented from
practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our
citizens be corrupted by him? We would not have our
guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in
some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon
many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by
little, until they silently gather a festering mass of
corruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be
those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the
beautiful and graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land
of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the
good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair
works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving
breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul
from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the
beauty of reason.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 401A
6 Socrates. The imitative poet who aims at being popular is
not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or
to affect the rational principle in the soul; but he will
prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily
imitated... . Therefore we shall be right in refusing to
admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens
and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs
the reason.
Plato, Republic, X, 605A
7 There is nothing which the legislator should be more
careful to drive away than indecency of speech; for the
light utterance of shameful words leads soon to shameful
actions. The young especially should never be allowed to
repeat or hear anything of the sort.... And since we do not
allow improper language, clearly we should also banish
pictures or speeches from the stage which are indecent.
Aristotle, Politics, 1336b3
8 Our Twelve Tables of law only carried the death penalty for
a few crimes. Among these crimes was singing or
composing a song that was derogatory or insulting to
someone. This was a good law. Our way of life should be
open to judgment by the magistrates and law courts and
not left to the Commentary of clever playwrights. We
should not be subjected to public disgrace unless we can
answer and defend ourselves in a court of law. The early
Romans did not want any living man to be the object of
praise or blame on the stage.
Cicero, Republic, IV, 10
9 One is... inclined to laugh at the stupidity of men who
suppose that the despotism of the present can actually
efface the remembrances of the next generation. On the
contrary, the persecution of genius fosters its influence;
foreign tyrants, and all who have imitated their
oppression, have merely procured infamy for themselves
and glory for their victims.
Tacitus, Annals, IV, 35
10 This was the most dreadful feature of the age, that
leading members of the Senate, some openly, some
secretly employed themselves in the very lowest work of
the informer. One could not distinguish between aliens
and kinsfolk, between friends and strangers, or say what
was quite recent, or what half-forgotten from lapse of
time. People were incriminated for some casual remark in
the forum or at the dinner-table, for every one was
impatient to be the first to mark his victim, some to
screen themselves, most from being, as it were, infected
with the contagion of the malady.
Tacitus, Annals, VI, 7
11 The laws of the Romans and the speculations of Plato
have this resemblance, that the latter pronounce a
wholesale condemnation of poetical fictions, while the
former restrain the licence of satire, at least so far as men
are the objects of it. Plato will not suffer poets even to
dwell in his city: the laws of Rome prohibit actors from
being enrolled as citizens; and if they had not feared to
offend the gods who had asked the services of the
players, they would in all likelihood have banished them
altogether. It is obvious, therefore, that the Romans could
not receive, nor reasonably expect to receive, laws for the
regulation of their conduct from their gods, since the laws
they themselves enacted far surpassed and put to shame
the morality of the gods. The gods demand stageplays in
their own honour; the Romans exclude the players from
all civic honours; the former commanded that they
should be celebrated by the scenic representation of their
own disgrace; the latter commanded that no poet should
dare to blemish the reputation of any citizen. But that
demigod Plato resisted the lust of such gods as these and
showed the Romans what their genius had left
incomplete; for he absolutely excluded poets from his
ideal state, whether they composed fictions with no
regard to truth or set the worst possible examples before
wretched men under the guise of divine actions.
Augustine, City of God, Il, 14
12 Human government is derived from the Divine
government, and should imitate it. Now although God is
all-powerful and supremely good, nevertheless He allows
certain evils to take place in the universe, which He
might prevent, lest, without them, greater goods might
be forfeited, or greater evils ensue. Accordingly in human
government also, those who are in authority, rightly
tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain
greater evils be incurred.... Hence, though unbelievers sin
in their rites, they may be tolerated, either on account of
some good that ensues therefrom, or because of some
evil avoided.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 10, 11
13 People are right to give the tightest possible barriers to
the human mind. In study, as in everything else, its steps
must be counted and regulated for it; the limits of the
chase must be artificially determined for it. They bridle
and bind it with religions, laws, customs, science,
precepts, mortal and immortal punishments and rewards;
and still we see that by its whirling and its
incohesiveness it escapes all these bonds. It is an empty
body, with nothing by which it can be seized and
directed; a varying and formless body, which can be
neither tied nor grasped.
Indeed there are few souls so orderly, so strong and
wellborn, that they can be trusted with their own
guidance, and that can sail with moderation and without
temerity, in the freedom of their judgments, beyond the
common opinions. It is more expedient to place them in
tutelage.
The mind is a dangerous blade, even to its possessor,
for anyone who does not know how to wield it with order
and discretion. And there is no animal that must more
rightly be given blinkers to hold its gaze, in subjection
and constraint, in front of its feet, and to keep it from
straying here or there outside the ruts that custom and
the laws trace for it.
Wherefore it will become you better to confine yourself
to the accustomed routine, whatever it is, than to fly
headlong into this unbridled license.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
14 It is annexed to the sovereignty to be judge of what
opinions and doctrines are averse, and what conducing to
peace; and consequently, on what occasions, how far,
and what men are to be trusted withal in speaking to
multitudes of people; and who shall examine the
doctrines of all books before they be published. For the
actions of men proceed from their opinions, and in the
well governing of opinions consisteth the well governing
of men’s actions in order to their peace and concord. And
though in matter of doctrine nothing ought to be
regarded but the truth, yet this is not repugnant to
regulating of the same by peace. For doctrine repugnant
to peace can no more be true, than peace and concord
can be against the law of nature.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 18
15 Disobedience may lawfully be punished in them that
against the laws teach even true philosophy.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, 46
16 For books are as meats and viands are; some of good,
some of evil substance; and yet God, in that
unapocryphal vision, said without exception, Rise, Peter,
kill and eat, leaving the choice to each man’s discretion.
Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or
nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty
mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats
will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest
concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that
they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many
respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to
illustrate. ... | conceive, therefore, that when God did
enlarge the universal diet of man’s body, saving ever the
rules of temperance, He then also, as before, left arbitrary
the dieting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every
mature man might have to exercise his own leading
Capacity.
Milton, Areopagitica
17 If every action, which is good or evil in man at ripe years,
were to be under pittance and prescription and
compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise
could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be
sober, just, or continent? Many there be that complain of
Divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress;
foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, He gave
him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had
been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is
in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that
obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore
left him free, set before him a provoking object, ever
almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the
right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence.
Wherefore did He create passions within us, pleasures
round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the
very ingredients of virtue?...
This justifies the high providence of God, who, though
He commands us temperance, justice, continence, yet
pours out before us, even to a profuseness, all desirable
things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all
limit and satiety. Why should we then affect a rigour
contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by
abridging or scanting those means, which books freely
permitted are, both to the trial of virtue and the exercise
of truth? It would be better done, to learn that the law
must needs be frivolous, which goes to restrain things,
uncertainly and yet equally working to good and to evil.
And were | the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be
preferred before many times as much the forcible
hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth
and completing of one virtuous person more than the
restraint of ten vicious.
Milton, Areopagitica
18 | Know nothing of the licenser, but that | have his own
hand here for his arrogance; who shall warrant me his
judgment? The State, sir, replies the stationer, but has a
quick return: The State shall be my governors, but not my
critics; they may be mistaken in the choice of a licenser,
as easily as this licenser may be mistaken in an author;
this is some common stuff; and he might add from Sir
Francis Bacon, That such authorised books are but the
language of the times. For though a licenser should
happen to be judicious more than ordinary, which will be
a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very
office and his commission enjoins him to let pass nothing
but what is vulgarly received already.
Milton, Areopagitica
19 Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely
according to conscience, above all liberties.
Milton, Areopagitica
20 Whilst the parties of men cram their tenets down all
men’s throats whom they can get into their power,
without permitting them to examine their truth or
falsehood; and will not let truth have fair play in the
world, nor men the liberty to search after it: what
improvements can be expected of this kind? What
greater light can be hoped for in the moral sciences? The
subject part of mankind in most places might, instead
thereof, with Egyptian bondage, expect Egyptian
darkness, were not the candle of the Lord set up by
himself in men’s minds, which it is impossible for the
breath or power of man wholly to extinguish.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, III, 20
21 Since... it is unavoidable to the greatest part of men, if
not all, to have several opinions, without certain and
indubitable proofs of their truth; and it carries too great
an imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly for men to
quit and renounce their former tenets presently upon the
offer of an argument which they cannot immediately
answer, and show the insufficiency of: it would, methinks,
become all men to maintain peace, and the common
offices of humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of
Opinions; since we cannot reasonably expect that any
one should readily and obsequiously quit his own
opinion, and embrace ours, with a blind resignation to an
authority which the understanding of man acknowledges
not. For however it may often mistake, it can own no
other guide but reason, nor blindly submit to the will and
dictates of another.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XVI, 4
22 He knew no reason, why those who entertain opinions
prejudicial to the publick, should be obliged to change, or
should not be obliged to conceal them. And, as it was
tyranny in any Government to require the first, so it was
weakness not to enforce the second: for, aman may be
allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend
them about as cordials.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Il, 6
23 In what kind of government are censors necessary? My
answer is, that they are necessary in a republic, where
the principle of government is virtue. We must not
imagine that criminal actions only are destructive of
virtue; it is destroyed also by omissions, by neglects, by a
certain coolness in the love of our country, by bad
examples, and by the seeds of corruption: whatever does
not openly violate but elude the laws, does not subvert
but weaken them, ought to fall under the inquiry and
correction of the censors....
In monarchies there should be no censors; the former
are founded on honour, and the nature of honour is to
have the whole world for its censor. Every man who fails
in this article is subject to the reproaches even of those
who are void of honour.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, V, 19
24 | think, that the state ought to tolerate every principle of
philosophy; nor is there an instance, that any
government has suffered in its political interests by such
indulgence. There is no enthusiasm among philosophers;
their doctrines are not very alluring to the people; and no
restraint can be put upon their reasonings, but what must
be of dangerous consequence to the sciences, and even
to the state, by paving the way for persecution and
oppression in points, where the generality of mankind are
more deeply interested and concerned.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XI, 114
25 The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in
order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of
rousing this spirit must be employed to prevent that
ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the
liberty of the press; by which all the learning, wit, and
genius of the nation, may be employed on the side of
freedom, and every one be animated to its defence. As
long, therefore, as the republican part of our government
can maintain itself against the monarchical, it will
naturally be careful to keep the press open, as of
importance to its own preservation.
Hume, Of the Liberty of the Press
26 The men of letters who have rendered the greatest
services to the small number of thinking beings spread
over the world, are the isolated writers, the true scholars
shut in their studies, who have neither argued on the
benches of the universities, nor told half-truths in the
academies; and almost all of them have been persecuted-
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on
the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who
are showing a new road.
Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves’
eyes, so that they might be less distracted while they
were churning their butter; that is just how the
inquisition functions, and in the land where this monster
reigns almost everybody is blind. In England people have
had two eyes for more than two hundred years; the
French are starting to open one eye; but sometimes there
are men in power who do not want the people to have
even this one eye open.
These poor persons in power are like Doctor Balouard
of the Italian Comedy, who does not want to be served by
anyone but the dolt Harlequin, and who is afraid of
having too shrewd a valet.
Compose some odes in praise of My Lord Superbus
Fadus, some madrigals for his mistress; dedicate a book
on geography to his door-keeper, you will be well-
received; enlighten mankind, you will be exterminated.
Descartes was forced to leave his country, Gassendi
was calumniated, Arnauld dragged out his days in exile;
every philosopher is treated as the prophets were among
the Jews.
Who would believe that in the eighteenth century a
philosopher was dragged before the secular tribunals,
and treated as impious by the tribunals of arguments, for
having said that men could not practise the arts if they
had no hands? | do not despair that soon the first person
who is so insolent as to say that men could not think if
they had no heads will be immediately condemned to the
galleys; "for," some young graduate will say to him, "the
soul is a pure spirit, the head is only matter; God can put
the soul in the heel, as well as in the brain; therefore |
denounce you as impious."
The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not
perhaps being the object of his confreres’ jealousy, the
victim of the cabal, the despised of the men of power; but
of being judged by fools,
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Men of Letters
27 Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one
which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now
the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
The Christian Church was divided in its cradle, and was
divided even in the persecutions which under the first
emperors it sometimes endured. Often the martyr was
regarded as an apostate by his brethren, and the
Carpocratian Christian expired beneath the sword of the
Roman executioners, excommunicated by the Ebionite
Christian, the which Ebionite was anathema to the
Sabellian.
This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many
centuries, is a very striking lesson that we should pardon
each other’s errors; discord is the great ill of mankind;
and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
There is nobody who is not in agreement with this
truth, whether he meditates soberly in his study, or
peaceably examines the truth with his friends. Why then
do the same men who admit in private indulgence,
kindness, justice, rise in public with so much fury against
these virtues? Why? it is that their own interest is their
god, and that they sacrifice everything to this monster
that they worship.
| possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance
and credulity; | walk on the heads of the men who lie
prostrate at my feet; if they should rise and look me in
the face, | am lost; | must bind them to the ground,
therefore, with iron chains.
Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of
bigotry have made powerful. They have other powerful
men beneath them, and these have still others, who all
enrich themselves with the spoils of the i>oor, grow fat
on their blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all
detest tolerance, as partisans grown rich at the public
expense fear to render their accounts, and as tyrants
dread the word liberty. And then, to crown everything,
they hire fanatics to cry at the top of their voices:
“Respect my master’s absurdities, tremble, pay, and keep
your mouths shut."
It is thus that a great part of the world long was
treated; but to-day when so many sects make a balance
of power, what course to take with them? Every sect, as
one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects of
geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the
propositions of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are
true. In every other science one may be deceived. What
Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare say seriously
that he is sure of his case?
If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious
matters, it is clear that we all ought to become Jews,
because Jesus Christ our Saviour was born a Jew, lived a
Jew, died a Jew, and that he said expressly that he was
accomplishing, that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion.
But it is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one
another, because We are all weak, inconsistent, liable to
fickleness and error. Shall a reed laid low in the mud by
the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the opposite
direction: "Crawl as | crawl, wretch, or! shall petition that
you be torn up by the roots and burned?"
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Tolerance
28 Johnson. "They make a rout about universal liberty,
without considering that all that is to be valued, or
indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private
liberty. Now, Sir, there is the liberty of the press, which
you know' is a constant topick. Suppose you and | and
two hundred more were restrained from printing our
thoughts: what then? What proportion would that
restraint upon us bear to the private happiness of the
nation?"
This mode of representing the inconveniences of
restraint as light and insignificant, was a kind of sophistry
in which he delighted to indulge himself, in opposition to
the extreme laxity for which it has been fashionable for
too many to argue, when it is evident, upon reflection,
that the very essence of government is restraint; and
certain it is, that as government produces rational
happiness, too much restraint is better than too little. But
when restraint is unnecessary, and so close as to gall
those who are subject to it, the people may and ought to
remonstrate; and, if relief is not granted, to resist. Of this
manly and spirited principle, no man was more convinced
than Johnson himself.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 1768)
29 Johnson. "Every society has a right to preserve publick
peace and order, and therefore has a good right to
prohibit the propagation of opinions which have a
dangerous tendency. To say the magistrate has this right,
is using an inadequate word: it is the society for which
the magistrate is agent. He may be morally or
theologically wrong in restraining the propagation of
opinions which he thinks dangerous, but he is politically
right." Mayo. "| am of opinion, Sir, that every man is
entitled to liberty of conscience in religion; and that the
magistrate cannot restrain that right." Johnson. "Sir, |
agree with you. Every man has a right to liberty of
conscience, and with that the magistrate cannot
interfere. People confound liberty of thinking with liberty
of talking; nay, with liberty of preaching. Every man has a
physical right to think as he pleases; for it cannot be
discovered how he thinks. He has not a moral right, for he
ought to inform himself, and think Justly. But, Sir, no
member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine
contrary to what the society holds to be true. The
magistrate, | say, may be wrong in what he thinks: but
while he thinks himself right, he may and ought to
enforce what he thinks." Mayo. "Then, Sir, we are to
remain always in errour, and truth never can prevail; and
the magistrate was right in persecuting the first
Christians." Johnson. "Sir, the only method by which
religious truth can be established is by martyrdom. The
magistrate has a right to enforce what he thinks; and he
who is conscious of the truth has a right to suffer. | am
afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the truth, but
by persecution on the one hand and enduring it on the
other." Goldsmith. "But how is a man to act, Sir? Though
firmly convinced of the truth of his doctrine, may he not
think it wrong to expose himself to persecution? Has hea
right to do so? Is it not, as it were, committing voluntary
suicide?" Johnson. "Sir, as to voluntary suicide, as you
call it, there are twenty thousand men in an army who
will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount a breach
for five-pence a day." Goldsmith. "But have they a moral
right to do this?" Johnson. "Nay, Sir, if you will not take
the universal opinion of mankind, | have nothing to Say. If
mankind cannot defend their own way of thinking, |
cannot defend it. Sir, if a man is in doubt whether it
would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom
or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he
has a delegation from heaven."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 7, 1773)
30 The Beggar's Opera, and the common question, whether
it was pernicious in its effects, having been introduced;—
Johnson. "As to this matter, which has been very much
contested, | myself am of opinion, that more influence
has been ascribed to The Beggar's Opera, than it in
reality ever had; for | do not believe that any man was
ever made a rogue by being present at its representation.
At the same time | do not deny that it may have some
influence, by making the character of a rogue familiar,
and in some degree pleasing."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 18, 1775)
31 Johnson. Every man has a right to utter what he thinks
truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down
for it.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (1780)
32 | mentioned Dr. Johnson’s excellent distinction between
liberty of conscience and liberty of teaching. Johnson.
“Consider, Sir; if you have children whom you wish to
educate in the principles of the Church of England, and
there comes a Quaker who tries to pervert them to his
principles, you would drive away the Quaker. You would
not trust to the predomination of right, which you believe
is in your opinions; you would keep wrong out of their
heads. Now the vulgar are the children of the State. If any
one attempts to teach them doctrines contrary to what
the State approves, the magistrate may and ought to
restrain him." Seward. "Would you restrain private
conversation, Sir?" /ohnson. "Why, Sir, it is difficult to say
where private conversation begins, and where it ends. If
we three should discuss even the great question
concerning the existence of a Supreme Being by
ourselves, we should not be restrained; for that would be
to put an end to all improvement. But if we should
discuss it in the presence of ten boarding-school girls,
and as many boys, | think the magistrate would do well to
put us in the stocks, to finish the debate there."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 29, 1783)
33 The people are the only censors of their governors; and
even their errors will tend to keep these to the true
principles of their institution. To punish these errors too
severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the
public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular
interpositions of the people is to give them full
information of their affairs through the channel of the
public papers, and to contrive that those papers should
penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our
governments being the opinion of the people, the very
first object should be to keep that right; and were it left
to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, | should not hesitate a moment to prefer the
latter.
Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington (Jan. 16, 1787)
34 Every difference of opinion is not a difference of
principle. We have called by different names brethren of
the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all
Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to
dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let
them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with
which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is
left free to combat it.
Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
35 Let each thinker pursue his own path; if he shows talent,
if he gives evidence of profound thought, in one word, if
he shows that he possesses the power of reasoning—
reason is always the gainer. If you have recourse to other
means, if you attempt to coerce reason, if you raise the
cry of treason to humanity, if you excite the feelings of
the crowd, which can neither understand nor sympathize
with such subtle speculations—you will only make
yourselves ridiculous. For the question does not concern
the advantage or disadvantage which we are expected to
reap from such inquiries; the question is merely how far
reason can advance in the field of speculation, apart from
all kinds of interest, and whether we may depend upon
the exertions of speculative reason, or must renounce all
reliance on it.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
36 To define freedom of the press as freedom to say and
write whatever we please is parallel to the assertion that
freedom as such means freedom to do as we please. Talk
of this kind is due to wholly uneducated, crude, and
superficial ideas. Moreover, it is in the very nature of the
thing that abstract thinking should nowhere be so
stubborn, so unintelligent, as in this matter of free
speech, because what it is considering is the most
fleeting, the most contingent, and the most personal side
of opinion in its infinite diversity of content and
tergiversation. Beyond the direct incitation to theft,
murder, rebellion, etc., there lies its artfully constructed
expression—an expression which seems in itself quite
general and vague, while all the time it conceals a
meaning anything but vague or else is compatible with
inferences which are not actually expressed, and it is
impossible to determine whether they rightly follow from
it, or whether they were meant to be inferred from it. This
vagueness of matter and form precludes laws on these
topics from attaining the requisite determinacy of law,
and since the trespass, wrong, and injury here are so
extremely personal and subjective in form, judgement on
them is reduced equally to a wholly subjective verdict.
Such an injury is directed against the thoughts, opinions,
and wills of others, but apart from that, these form the
clement in which alone it is actually anything. But this
element is the sphere of the freedom of others, and it
therefore depends on them whether the injurious
expression of opinion is or is not actually an effective act.
Laws then [against libel, etc.] may be criticized by
exhibiting their indeterminacy as well as by arguing that
they leave it open to the speaker or writer to devise turns
of phrase or tricks of expression, and so evade the laws or
claim that judicial decisions are mere subjective verdicts.
Further, however, against the view that the expression of
opinion is an act with injurious effects, it may be
maintained that it is not an act at all, but only opining
and thinking, or only talking. And so we have before us a
claim that mere opining and talking is to go unpunished
because it is of a purely subjective character both in form
and content, because it does not mean anything and is of
no importance. And yet in the same breath we have the
claim that this same opining and talking should be held
in high esteem and respect—the opining because it is
personal property and in fact pre-eminently the property
of mind; the talking because it is only this same property
being expressed and used.
But the substance of the matter is and remains that
traducing the honour of anyone, slander, abuse, the
contemptuous caricature of government, its ministers,
officials, and in particular the person of the monarch,
defiance of the laws, incitement to rebellion, etc., etc.,
are all crimes or misdemeanours in one or other of their
numerous gradations. The rather high degree of
indeterminability which such actions acquire on account
of the element in which they are expressed does not
annul this fundamental character of theirs. Its only effect
is that the subjective field in which they are committed
also determines the nature and form of the reaction to
the offence. It is the field in which the offence was
committed which itself necessitates subjectivity of view,
contingency, etc., in the reaction to the offence, whether
the reaction takes the form of punishment proper or of
police action to prevent crimes. Here, as always, abstract
thinking sets itself to explain away the fundamental and
concrete nature of the thing by concentrating on isolated
aspects of its external appearance and on abstractions
drawn therefrom.
The sciences, however, are not to be found anywhere
in the field of opinion and subjective views, provided of
course that they be sciences in other respects. Their
exposition is not a matter of clever turns of phrase,
allusivness, half-utterances, and semi-reticences, but
consists in the unambiguous, determinate, and open
expression of their meaning and purport. It follow that
they do not fall under the category of public opinion.
Apart from this, however, as | said just now, the element
in which views and their expression become actions in
the full sense and exist effectively, consists of the
intelligence, principles, and opinions of others. Hence
this aspect of these actions, that is their effectiveness
proper and their danger to individuals, society, and the
state depends on the character of the ground on which
they fall, just as a spark falling on a heap of gunpowder is
more dangerous than if it falls on hard ground where it
vanishes without trace. Thus, just as the right of science
to express itself depends on and is safeguarded by its
subject-matter and content, so an illegitimate expression
may also acquire a measure of security, or at least
sufferance, in the scorn which it has brought upon itself.
Hegel, Philosophy of Rights 319
37 Every’ burned book or house enlightens the world.
Emerson, Compensation
38 The great writers to whom the world owes what religious
liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of
conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied
absolutely that a human being is accountable to others
for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is
intolerance in whatever they really care about, that
religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically
realised, except where religious indifference, which
dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological
quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.
Mill, On Liberty, |
39 If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only
one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would
be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he,
if he had the power, would be justified in silencing
mankind.
Mill, On Liberty, II
40 We have now recognised the necessity to the mental
well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being
depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the
expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we
will now briefly recapitulate.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that
opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To
deny’ this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, if
may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth;
and since the general or prevailing opinion on any
subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the
collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the
truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true,
but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and
actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by
most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a
prejudice, with litthe comprehension or feeling of its
rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the
meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being
lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the
character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere
formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering
the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and
heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Mill, On Liberty, II
41 Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—
more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is
subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible;
thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions,
and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless,
indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom
of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not
afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by
unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself
proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe.
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world,
and the chief glory of man.
But if thought is to become the possession of many,
not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear.
It is fear that holds men back— fear lest their cherished
beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions
by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they
themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they
have supposed themselves to be. "Should the working
man think freely about property? Then what will become
of us, the rich? Should young men and young women
think freely about sex? Then what will become of
morality? Should soldiers think freely about war? Then
what will become of military discipline? Aw-ay with
thought! Back into the shades of prejudice, lest property,
morals, and war should be endangered! Better men
should be stupid, slothful, and oppressive than that their
thoughts should be free. For if their thoughts were free
they might not think as we do. And at all costs this
disaster must be averted." So the opponents of thought
argue in the unconscious depths of their souls. And so
they act in their churches, their schools, and their
universities.
Russell, Education
42 The fundamental argument for freedom of opinion is the
doubtfulness of all our beliefs. If wt certainly knew the
truth, there would be something to be said for teaching it.
But in that ease it could be taught without invoking
authority, by means of its inherent reasonableness. It is
not necessary to make a law that no one shall be allowed
to teach arithmetic if he holds heretical opinions on the
multiplication table, because here the truth is clear, and
does not require to be enforced by penalties. When the
State intervenes to ensure the teaching of some doctrine,
it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in
favour of that doctrine.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, XIV
13.3 Equality
Two main questions are discussed in the passages
assembled here. One is whether persons are by nature equal
in any sense. The question is not whether individuals are
unequal in a wide variety of respects—in their natural
endowments and in their personal attainments; no one has
ever denied that; but whether there is any truth in the
proposition that men are created equal or are by nature
equal in any sense of the term. The other question is
whether men should be accorded equality of status or of
opportunity and should be given an equality of external
conditions. The question that involves the word "should," as
contrasted with the question that involves the word "are,"
elicits a range of diverse answers, from the advocacy of a
complete equality of conditions to the opposite extreme of
contending that the inequalities that exist among men, in
their natural endowments and their personal attainments,
call for inequality of treatment, status, and opportunity.
Closely related to the issue raised by the second question
is the issue concerning the relation of liberty and equality.
The reader will find famous passages from John G. Calhoun,
Alexis de Tocqueville, and William Graham Sumner arguing
that liberty and equality are incompatible: every movement
toward equality of treatment or the establishment of an
equality of conditions tends to interfere with or diminish
individual liberty. On the opposite side, the reader will find
Henry George and R, H. Tawney arguing that equality of
conditions, especially in economic matters, is indispensable
to the operation and preservation of political liberty.
Crucial to both issues, of course, is the position one takes
on the question of human equality: whether there is any
significant respect in which all men are naturally or
personally equal, and whether such equality is more
fundamental than the many respects in which individuals
are unequal. Relevant to this question is the discussion of
natural slavery in Section 10.7 on Slavery; also relevant are
the arguments for and against democracy that will be found
in Section 10.4 on Government of and by the People:
Republic AND Democracy. Other sections in which equality is
a pivotal term are 12.2 on Justice AND Injustice, 12.3 on
Rights—Natural and Civil, and 10.8 on Classes and Glass
Conflict.
The reader should observe that the main concern in
certain of these contexts is political equality, equality of
rights, or equality before the law; in other contexts it is
economic equality—equality of wealth, in possessions, or in
economic opportunity; and in still others it is social equality,
achieved through the elimination of all discriminations
based on gender, race, or ethnic origin.
1 Jocasta. It's better...
to honor Equality who tics friends to friends,
cities to cities, allies to allies.
For equality is stable among men.
If not, the lesser hates the greater force,
and so begins the day of enmity.
Equality set up men's weights and measures,
gave them their numbers.
Euripides, Phoenician Women, 535
2 Athenian Stranger. The old saying, that "equality makes
friendship," is happy and also true; but there is obscurity
and confusion as to what sort of equality is meant. For
there are two equalities which are called by the same
name, but are in reality in many ways almost the
opposite of one another; one of them may be introduced
without difficulty, by any state or any legislator in the
distribution of honours: this is the rule of measure,
weight, and number, which regulates and apportions
them. But there is another equality, of a better and
higher kind, which is not so easily recognized. This is the
judgment of Zeus; among men it avails but little; that
little, however, is the source of the greatest good to
individuals and states. For it gives to the greater more,
and to the inferior less and in proportion to the nature of
each; and, above all, greater honour always to the
greater virtue, and to the less less; and to either in
proportion to their respective measure of virtue and
education. And this is justice, and is ever the true
principle of states, at which we ought to aim, and
according to this rule order the new city which is now
being founded, and any other city which may be
hereafter founded. To this the legislator should look—not
to the interests of tyrants one or more, or to the power of
the people, but to justice always; which, as | was saying,
is the distribution of natural equality among unequals in
each case. But there are times at which every state is
compelled to use the words, "just," "equal," ina
secondary sense, in the hope of escaping in some degree
from factions. For equity and indulgence are infractions of
the perfect and strict rule of justice. And this is the
reason why we are obliged to use the equality of the lot,
in order to avoid the discontent of the people; and so we
invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they
themselves will direct the lot with a view to supreme
justice. And therefore, although we are compelled to use
both equalities, we should use that into which the
clement of chance enters as seldom as possible.
Plato, Laws, VI, 757A
3 The justice in transactions between man and man is a sort
of equality indeed, and the injustice a sort of inequality;
not according to that kind [geometrical] of proportion,
however, but according to arithmetical proportion. For it
makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded
a bad man or a bad man a good one, nor whether it is a
good ora bad man that has committed adultery; the law
looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and
treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the
other is being wronged, and if one inflicted injury and the
other has received it. Therefore, this kind of injustice
being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize it; for in
the case also in which one has received and the other has
inflicted a wound, or one has slain and the other been
Slain, the suffering and the action have been unequally
distributed; but the judge tries to equalize by means of
the penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant....
Therefore the equal is intermediate between the greater
and the less, but the gain and the loss are respectively
greater and less in contrary ways; more of the good and
less of the evil are gain, and the contrary is loss;
intermediate between them is, as we saw, the equal,
which we Say is just; therefore corrective justice will be
the intermediate between loss and gain. This is why,
when people dispute, they take refuge in the judge; and
to go to the judge is to go to justice; for the nature of the
judge is to be a sort of animate justice; and they seek the
judge as an intermediate, and in some states they call
judges mediators, on the assumption that if they get
what is intermediate they will get what is just. The just,
then, is an intermediate, since the judge is so. Now the
judge restores equality; it is as though there were a line
divided into unequal parts, and he took away that by
which the greater segment exceeds the half, and added it
to the smaller segment. And when the whole has been
equally divided, then they say they have 'their own’—
that is, when they have got what is equal.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1131b34
4 Equality does not seem to take the same form in acts of
justice and in friendship; for in acts of jastice what is
equal in the primary sense is that which is in proportion
to merit, while quantitative equality is secondary, but in
friendship quantitative equality is primary and proportion
to merit secondary.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1158b29
5 The only stable principle of government is equality
according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his
own.
Aristotle, Politics, 1307a26
6 The third and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver
[Lycurgus] by which he struck a yet more effectual blow
against luxury and the desire of riches, was the
ordinance, he made, that they should all eat in common,
of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that were
specified, and should not spend their Jives at home, laid
on costly couches at splendid tables, delivering
themselves up into the hands of their tradesmen and
cooks, to fatten them in corners, like greedy brutes, and
to ruin not their minds only but their very bodies which,
enfeebled by indulgence and excess, would stand in need
of long sleep, warm bathing, freedom from work, and, ina
word, of as much care and attendance as if they were
continually sick.
It was certainly an extraordinary thing to have brought
about such a result as this, but a greater yet to have
taken away from wealth, as Theophrastus observes, not
merely the property of being coveted, but its very nature
of being wealth. For the rich, being obliged to go to the
same table with the poor, could not make use of or enjoy
their abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by
looking at or displaying it. So that the common proverb,
that Plutus, the god of riches, is blind, was nowhere in all
the world literally verified but in Sparta. There, indeed,
he was not only blind, but like a picture, without either
life or motion. Nor were they allowed to take food at
home first, and then attend the public tables, for every"
one had an eye upon those who did not eat and drink like
the rest, and reproached them with being dainty and
effeminate.
Plutarch, Lycurgus
7 These reasonings have no logical connection: "I am richer
than you, therefore | am your superior." "| am more
eloquent than you, therefore | am your superior." The true
logical connection is rather this: "| am richer than you,
therefore my possessions must exceed yours." "| am more
eloquent than you, therefore my style must surpass
yours." But you, after all, consist neither in property nor
in style.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XLIV
8 The instincts of human nature... prompt men to
scrutinize with keen eyes the recent elevation of their
fellows, and to demand a temperate use of prosperity
from none more rigorously than from those whom they
have seen on a level with themselves.
Tacitus, Histories, Il, 20
9 Equality of justice has its place in retribution, since equal
rewards or punishments are due to equal merit or
demerit. But this does not apply to things as at first
instituted. For just as an architect, without injustice,
places stones of the same kind in different parts of a
building not on account of any antecedent difference in
the stones, but with a view to securing that perfection of
the entire building, which could not be obtained except
by the different positions of the stones, even so, God from
the beginning, to secure perfection in the universe, has
set therein creatures of various and unequal natures,
according to His wisdom, and without injustice, since no
diversity of merit is presupposed.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 65, 2
10 The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same
mold. Considering the importance of the actions of
princes and their weightiness, we persuade ourselves
that they are produced by some causes equally weighty
and important. We are wrong: they are led to and fro in
their movements by the same springs as we are in ours.
The same reason that makes us bicker with a neighbor
creates a war between princes; the same reason that
makes us whip a lackey, when it happens in a king makes
him ruin a province. Their will is as frivolous as ours, but
their power is greater.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
11 Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body
and mind as that, though there be found one man
sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind
than another, yet when all is reckoned together the
difference between man and man is not so considerable
as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any
benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.
For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength
enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination
or by confederacy with others that are in the same
danger with himself.
And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the
arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of
proceeding upon general and infallible rules, called
science, which very few have and but in few things, as
being not a native faculty born with us, nor attained, as
prudence, while we look after somewhat else, | find yet a
greater equality amongst men than that of strength. For
prudence is but experience, which equal time equally
bestows on all men in those things they equally apply
themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such
equality incredible is but a vain conceit of one’s own
wisdom, which almost all men think they have ina
greater degree than the vulgar; that is, than all men but
themselves, and a few others, whom by fame, or for
concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the
nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge
many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more
learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so
wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand,
and other men’s at a distance. But this proveth rather
that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there
is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of
anything than that every man is contented with his
Share.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 13
12 The question who is the better man has no place in the
condition of mere nature, where ... all men are equal. The
inequality that now is has been introduced by the laws
civil. | know that Aristotle in the first book of his Politics,
for a foundation of his doctrine, maketh men by nature,
some more worthy to command, meaning the wiser sort,
such as he thought himself to be for his philosophy;
others to serve, meaning those that had strong bodies,
but were not philosophers as he; as if master and servant
were not introduced by consent of men, but by difference
of wit: which is not only against reason, but also against
experience. For there are very few so foolish that had not
rather govern themselves than be governed by others:
nor when the wise, in their own conceit, contend by force
with them who distrust their own wisdom, do they always,
or often, or almost at any time, get the victory. If nature
therefore have made men equal, that equality is to be
acknowledged: or if nature have made men unequal, yet
because men that think themselves equal will not enter
into conditions of peace, but upon equal terms, such
equality must be admitted. And therefore for the ninth
law of nature, | put this: that every man acknowledge
another for his equal by nature.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 15
13 The safety of the people requireth further, from him or
them that have the sovereign power, that justice be
equally administered to all degrees of people; that is,
that as well the rich and mighty, as poor and obscure
persons, may be righted of the injuries done them; so as
the great may have no greater hope of impunity, when
they do violence, dishonour, or any injury to the meaner
sort, than when one of these does the like to one of them:
for in this consisteth equity; to which, as being a precept
of the law of nature, a sovereign is as much subject as
any of the meanest of his people.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 30
14 To understand political power aright, and derive it from
its original, we must consider what estate all men are
naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to
order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and
persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of
Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will
of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and
jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than
another, there being nothing more evident than that
creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously
born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of
the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst
another, without subordination or subjection, unless the
lord and master of them all should, by any manifest
declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer
on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an
undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
Locke, II Civil Government, II, 4
15 Though | have said above "That all men by nature are
equal," | cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of
"equality." Age or virtue may give men a just precedency.
Excellency of parts and merit may place others above the
common level. Birth may subject some, and alliance or
benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom
Nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it
due; and yet all this consists with the equality which all
men are in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over
another, which was the equality | there spoke of as proper
to the business in hand, being that equal right that every
man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected
to the will or authority of any other man.
Locke, II Civil Government, VI, 54
16 The love of equality in a democracy limits ambition to the
sole desire, to the sole happiness, of doing greater
services to our country than the rest of our fellow-
citizens. They cannot all render her equal services, but
they all ought to serve her with equal alacrity. At our
coming into the world, we contract an immense debt to
our country, which we can never discharge.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, V, 3
17 As distant as heaven is from earth, so is the true spirit of
equality from that of extreme equality. The former does
not imply that everybody should command, or that no
one should be commanded, but that we obey or
command our equals. It endeavours not to shake off the
authority of a master, but that its masters should be none
but its equals.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VIII, 3
18 All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for
domination, wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for
idleness; consequently, all men want their money and
the wives or daughters of others, to be their master, to
subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at
least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly
that with these fine inclinations it is as impossible for
men to be equal as it is impossible for two predicants or
two professors of theology not to be jealous of each other.
The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless
there is an infinity of useful men who possess nothing at
all; for it is certain that a man who is well off will not
leave his own land to come to till yours; and if you have
need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary to the Privy
Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore,
is at once the most natural thing and the most
fantastic...
All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to
think themselves entirely equal to other men: it does not
follow from that that the cardinal’s cook should order his
master to prepare him his dinner; but the cook can say: "I
am aman like my master; like him | was born crying; like
me he will die with the same pangs and the same
ceremonies. Both of us perform the same animal
functions. If the Turks take possession of Rome, and if
then | am cardinal and my master cook, | shall take him
into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just;
but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of
Rome, the cook must do his duty, or else all human
society is perverted.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Equality
19 | conceive that there are two kinds of inequality among
the human species; one, which | call natural or physical,
because it is established by nature, and consists in a
difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the
qualities of the mind or of the soul: and another, which
may be called moral or political inequality, because it
depends on a kind of convention, and is established, or at
least authorised by the consent of men. This latter
consists of the different privileges, which some men enjoy
to the prejudice of others; such as that of being more
rich, more honoured, more powerful or even in a position
to exact obedience.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Intro.
20 | have endeavoured to trace the origin and progress of
inequality, and the institution and abuse of political
societies, as far as these are capable of being deduced
from the nature of man merely by the light of reason, and
independently of those sacred dogmas which give the
sanction of divine right to sovereign authority. It follows
from this survey that, as there is hardly any inequality in
the state of nature, all the inequality which now prevails
owes its strength and growth to the development of our
faculties and the advance of the human mind, and
becomes at last permanent and legitimate by the
establishment of property and laws. Secondly, it follows
that moral inequality, authorised by positive right alone,
clashes with natural right, whenever it is not
proportionate to physical inequality; a distinction which
sufficiently determines what we ought to think of that
species of inequality which prevails in all civilised
countries; since it is plainly contrary to the law of nature,
however defined, that children should command old men,
fools wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge
themselves with superfluities, while the starving
multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Il
21 1 shall end this chapter and this book by remarking ona
fact on which the whole social system should rest: that is,
that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the
fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical
inequality as nature may have set up between men, an
equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who
may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every
one equal by convention and legal right.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 9
22 Johnson. Sir, there is one Mrs. Macaulay in this town, a
great republican. One day when | was at her house, | put
on avery grave countenance, and said to her, ‘Madam, |
am now become a convert to your way of thinking. | am
convinced that all mankind are upon an equal footing;
and to give you an unquestionable proof, Madam, that |
am in earnest, here is a very sensible, civil, well-behaved
fellow-citizen, your footman; | desire that he may be
allowed to sit down and dine with us.' | thus, Sir, shewed
her the absurdity of the levelling doctrine. She has never
liked me since. Sir, your levellers wish to level down as
far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to
themselves. They would all have some people under
them; why not then have some people above them?
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 21, 1763)
23 On his favourite subject of subordination, Johnson said,
"So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal,
that no two people can be half an hour together, but one
Shall acquire an evident superiority over the other."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Feb. 15, 1766)
24 | told him [Johnson] that Mrs. Macaulay said, she
wondered how he could reconcile his political principles
with his moral; his notions of inequality and
subordination with wishing well to the happiness of all
mankind, who might live so agreeably, had they all their
portions of land, and none to domineer over another.
Johnson. "Why, Sir, | reconcile my principles very well,
because mankind are happier in a state of inequality and
subordination. Were they to be in this pretty state of
equality, they would soon degenerate into brutes;-they
would become Monboddo’s nation;—their tails would
grow. Sir, all would be losers were all to work for all:—
they would have no intellectual improvement. All
intellectual improvement arises from leisure; all leisure
arises from one working for another."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 13, 1773)
25 Observing some beggars in the street as we walked
along, | said to him | supposed there was no civilized
country in the world, where the misery of want in the
lowest classes of the people was prevented. Johnson. "|
believe. Sir, there is not; but it is better that some should
be unhappy, thzm that none should be happy, which
would be the case in a general state of equality."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 7, 1776)
26 The difference of natural talents in different men is in
reality, much less than we are aware of.... The difference
between the most dissimilar characters, between a
philosopher and a common street porter, for example,
seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit,
custom, and education. When they came into the world,
and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they
were perhaps very much alike, and neither their parents
nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference.
About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed
in very different occupations. The difference of talents
comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees,
till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to
acknowledge scarce any resemblance,
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 2
27 Whatever each man can separately do, without
trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself;
and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society,
with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his
favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but
not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the
partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five
hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has
not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint
stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and
direction which each individual ought to have in the
management of the state, that | must deny to be amongst
the direct original rights of man in civil society; for | have
in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It
is a thing to be settled by convention.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
28 The equality which might be set up, for example, in
connexion with the distribution of goods, would all the
Same soon be destroyed again, because wealth depends
on diligence. But if a project cannot be executed, it ought
not to be executed. Of course men are equal, but only
qua persons, that is, with respect only to the source from
which possession springs; the inference from this is that
everyone must have property. Hence, if you wish to talk
of equality, it is this equality which you must have in
view. But this equality is something apart from the fixing
of particular amounts, from the question of how much |
own. From this point of view it is false to maintain that
justice requires everyone’s property to be equal, since it
requires only that everyone shall own property. The truth
is that particularity is just the sohere where there is room
for inequality and where equality would be wrong. True
enough, men often lust after the goods of others, but that
is just doing wrong, since right is that which remains
indifferent to particularity.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Additions, Par. 49
29 It is impossible to believe that equality wall not
eventually find its way into the political world, as it does
everywhere else. To conceive of men remaining forever
unequal upon a single point, yet equal on all others, is
impossible; they must come in the end to be equal upon
all.
Now, | know of only two methods of establishing
equality in the political world; rights must be given to
every citizen, or none at all to anyone. For nations which
are arrived at the same stage of social existence as the
Anglo-Americans, it is, therefore, very difficult to discover
a medium between the sovereignty of all and the
absolute power of one man: and it would be vain to deny
that the social condition which | have been describing is
just as liable to one of these consequences as to the
other.
There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for
equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and
honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the
rank of the great; but there exists also in the human
heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the
weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level
and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to
inequality with freedom. Not that those nations whose
social condition is democratic naturally despise liberty;
on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But
liberty is not the chief and constant object of their
desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and
sudden efforts to obtain liberty and, if they miss their
aim, resign themselves to their disap-f)ointment; but
nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they
would rather perish than lose it.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 3
30 It cannot be denied that democratic institutions strongly
tend to promote the feeling of envy in the human heart;
not so much because they afford to everyone the means
of rising to the same level with others as because those
means perpetually disappoint the persons who employ
them. Democratic institutions awaken and foster a
passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy.
This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at
the very moment when they think they have grasped it,
and "flies," as Pascal says, "with an eternal flight"; the
people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which
iS more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to
be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed. The lower
orders are agitated by the chance of success, they are
irritated by its uncertainty; and they pass from the
enthusiasm of pursuit to the exhaustion of ill success,
and lastly to the acrimony of disappointment. Whatever
transcends their own limitations appears to be an
obstacle to their desires, and there is no superiority,
however legitimate it may be, which is not irksome in
their sight.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, |, 13
31 In proportion as castes disappear and the classes of
society draw together, as manners, customs, and laws
vary, because of the tumultuous intercourse of men, as
new facts arise, as new truths are brought to light, as
ancient opinions are dissipated and others take their
place, the image of an ideal but always fugitive
perfection presents itself to the human mind. Continual
changes are then every instant occurring under the
observation of every man; the position of some is
rendered worse, and he learns but too well that no people
and no individual, however enlightened they may be, can
lay claim to infallibility; the condition of others is
improved, whence he infers that man is endowed with an
indefinite faculty for improvement. His reverses teach
him that none have discovered absolute good; his
success stimulates him to the never ending pursuit of it.
Thus, forever seeking, forever falling to rise again, often
disappointed, but not discouraged, he tends unceasingly
towards that unmeasured greatness so indistinctly visible
at the end of the long track which humanity has yet to
tread.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. Il, 1, 8
32 Political liberty bestows exalted pleasure from time to
time upon a certain number of citizens. Equality every
day confers a number of small enjoyments on every man.
The charms of equality are every instant felt and are
within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not
insensible to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in
them. The passion that equality creates must therefore be
at once strong and general. Men cannot enjoy political
liberty unpurchased by some sacrifices, and they never
obtain it without great exertions. But the pleasures of
equality are self-proffered; each of the petty incidents of
life seems to occasion them, and in order to taste them,
nothing is required but to live.
Democratic nations are at all times fond of equality,
but there are certain epochs at which the passion they
entertain for it swells to the height of fury. This occurs at
the moment when the old social system, long menaced, is
overthrown after a severe internal struggle, and the
barriers of rank are at length thrown down. At such times
men pounce upon equality as their booty, and they cling
to it as to some precious treasure which they fear to
loose. The passion for equality penetrates on every side
into men's hearts, expands there, and fills them entirely.
Tell them not that by this blind surrender of themselves
to an exclusive passion they risk their dearest interests;
they are deaf. Sow them not freedom escaping from their
grasp while they are looking another way; they are blind,
or rather they can discern but one object to be desired in
the universe.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, II, 1
33 When all the privileges of birth and fortune are
abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and
a man’s own energies may place him at the top of any
one of them, an easy and unbounded career seems open
to his ambition and he will readily persuade himself that
he is born to no common destinies. But this is an
erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience.
The same equality that allows every citizen to conceive
these lofty hopes renders all the citizens less able to
realize them; it circumscribes their powers on every side,
while it gives freer scope to their desires. Not only are
they themselves powerless, but they are met at every
step by immense obstacles, which they did not at first
perceive. They have swept away the privileges of some of
their fellow creatures which stood in their way, but they
have opened the door to universal competition; the
barrier has changed its shape rather than its position.
When men are nearly alike and all follow the same track,
it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quickly
and cleave a way through the dense throng that
surrounds and presses on him. This constant strife
between the inclination springing from the equality of
condition and the means it supplies to satisfy them
harasses an wearies the mind.
It is possible to conceive of men arrived at a degree of
freedom that should completely content them; they
would then enjoy their independence without anxiety
and without impatience. But men will never establish any
equality with which they can be contented. Whatever
efforts a people may make, they will never succeed in
reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level;
and even if they unhappily attained that absolute and
complete equality of position, the inequality of minds
would still remain, which, coming directly from the hand
of God, will forever escape the laws of man. However
democratic, then, the social state and the political
constitution of a people may be, it is certain that every
member of the community will always find out several
points about him which overlook his own position; and we
may foresee that his looks will be doggedly fixed in that
direction. When inequality of conditions is the common
law of society, the most marked inequalities do not strike
the eye; when everything is nearly on the same level, the
slightest are marked enough to hurt it. Hence the desire
of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion
as equality is more complete.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 13
34 There is another error, not less great and dangerous,
usually associated with the one which has just been
considered. | refer to the opinion that liberty and equality
are so intimately united that liberty cannot be perfect
without perfect equality.
That they are united to a certain extent and that
equality of citizens, in the eyes of the law, is essential to
liberty in a popular government is conceded. But to go
further and make equality of condition essential to liberty
would be to destroy both liberty and progress. The reason
is that inequality of condition, while it is a necessary
consequence of liberty, is, at the same time,
indispensable to progress. In order to understand why
this is so, it is necessary to bear in mind that the
mainspring to progress is the desire of individuals to
better their condition and that the strongest impulse
which can be given to it is to leave individuals free to
exert themselves in the manner they may deem best for
that purpose, as far at least as it can be done consistently
with the ends for which government is ordained—and to
secure to all the fruits of their exertions. Now, as
individuals differ greatly from each other, in intelligence,
sagacity, energy, perseverance, skill, habits of industry
and economy, physical power, position, and opportunity,
the necessary effect of leaving all free to exert
themselves to better their condition must be a
corresponding inequality between those who may
possess these qualities and advantages in a high degree
and those who may be deficient in them. The only means
by which this result can be prevented are either to
impose such restrictions on the exertions of those who
may possess them in a high degree as will place them on
a level with those who do not or to deprive them of the
fruits of their exertions. But to impose such restrictions on
them would be destructive of liberty, while to deprive
them of the fruits of their exertions would be to destroy
the desire of bettering their condition. It is, indeed, this
inequality of condition between the front and rear ranks,
in the march of progress, which gives so strong an
impulse to the former to maintain their position and to
the latter to press forward into their files. This gives to
progress its greatest impulse. To force the front rank back
to the rear, or attempt to push forward the rear into line
with the front, by the interposition of the government,
would put an end to the impulse and effectually arrest
the march of progress.
J. C. Calhoun, Disquisition on Government
35 Men are certainly not born free and equal in natural
qualities; when they are born, the predicates “free” and
“equal” in the political sense arc not applicable to them;
and as they develop year by year, the differences in the
political potentialities with which they really are born,
become more and more obviously converted into actual
differences—the inequality of political faculty shows itself
to be a necessary consequence of the inequality of
natural faculty.
T. H. Huxley, On the Natural Inequality of Men
36 It is... conceded on all hands that men are not born
physically, morally, or intellectually equal— some are
males, some females, some from birth, large, strong, and
healthy, others weak, small, and sickly—some are
naturally amiable, others prone to all kinds of
wickednesses—some brave, others timid. Their natural
inequalities beget inequalities of rights. The weak in
mind or body require guidance, support, and protection;
they must obey and work for those who protect and guide
them—they have a natural right to guardians,
committees, teachers, or masters. Nature has made them
Slaves; all that law and government can do is to regulate,
modify, and mitigate their slavery. In the absence of
legally instituted slavery, their condition would be worse
under that natural slavery of the weak to the strong, the
foolish to the wise and cunning. The wise and virtuous,
the brave, the strong in mind and body, are by nature
born to command and protect, and law but follows nature
in making them rulers, legislators, judges, captains,
husbands, guardians, committees, and masters. The
naturally depraved class, those born prone to crime, are
our brethren too; they are entitled to education, to
religious instruction, to all the means and appliances
proper to correct their evil propensities, and all their
failings; they have a right to be sent to the penitentiary—
for there, if they do not reform, they cannot at least
disturb society. Our feelings and our consciences teach us
that nothing but necessity can justify taking human life.
Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South
37 | think the authors of that notable instrument [the
Declaration of Independence] intended to include a//
men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in
all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in
color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social
capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in
what respects they did consider all men created equal—
equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and
this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious
untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that
equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it
immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to
confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the
right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as
circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a
standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar
to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly
labored for, and even though never perfectly attained,
constantly approximated, and thereby constantly
spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting
the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors
everywhere.
Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Ill. (une 26, 1857)
38 There is no reason in the world why the negro is not
entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the
Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. | hold that he is as much
entitled to these as the white man. | agree with Judge
Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly
not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual
endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without
leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is
my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal
of every living man.
Lincoln, Debate with Douglas (Aug. 21, 1858)
39 Democracy, in its very essence, insists so much more
forcibly on the things in which all are entitled to be
considered equally, than on those in which one person is
entitled to more consideration than another, that respect
for even personal superiority is likely to be below the
mark. It is for this, among other reasons, | hold it of so
much importance that the institutions of the country
should stamp the opinions of persons of a more educated
class as entitled to greater weight than those of the less
educated: and | should still contend for assigning
plurality of votes to authenticated superiority of
education, were it only to give the tone to public feeling,
irrespective of any direct political consequences.
Mill, Representative Government, XII
40 Though the truth may not be felt or generally
acknowledged for generations to come, the only school of
genuine moral sentiment is society between equals. The
moral education of mankind has hitherto emanated
chiefly from the law of force, and is adapted almost solely
to the relations which force creates. In the less advanced
states of society, people hardly recognize any relation
with their equals. To be an equal is to be an enemy.
Society, from its highest place to its lowest, is one long
chain, or rather ladder, where every individual is either
above or below his nearest neighbour, and whereever he
does not command he must obey. Existing moralities,
accordingly, are mainly fitted to a relation of command
and obedience. Yet command and obedience are but
unfortunate necessities of human life: society in equality
is its normal state. Already in modern life, and more and
more as it progressively improves, command and
obedience become exceptional facts in life, equal
association its general rule. The morality of the first ages
rested on the obligation to submit to power; that of the
ages next following, on the right of the weak to the
forbearance and protection of the strong. How much
longer is one form of society and life to content itself with
the morality made for another? We have had the morality
of submission, and the morality of chivalry and
generosity; the time is now come for the morality of
justice.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
41 A thousand arguments may be discovered in favour of
inequality, just as a thousand arguments may be
discovered in favour of absolutism. And the one
insuperable objection to inequality is the same as the one
insuperable objection to absolutism: namely, that
inequality, like absolutism, thwarts a vital instinct, and
being thus against nature, is against our humanisation.
On the one side, in fact, inequality harms by pampering;
on the other, by vulgarising and depressing. A system
founded on it is against nature, and in the long run
breaks down.
Arnold, Mixed Essays, Pref.
42 Association in equality is the law of progress. Association
frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and
equality, or justice, or freedom—for the terms here signify
the same thing, the recognition of the moral law—
prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless
struggles.
Here is the law of progress, which will explain all
diversities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions.
Men tend to progress just as they come closer together,
and by co-operation with each other increase the mental
power that may be devoted to improvement, but just as
conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of
condition and power, this tendency to progression is
lessened, checked, and finally reversed.
Henry George, Progress and Poverty, X, 3
43 The first effect of the tendency to political equality was
to the more equal distribution of wealth and power; for,
while population is comparatively sparse, inequality in
the distribution of wealth is principally due to the
inequality of personal rights, and it is only as material
progress goes on that the tendency to inequality involved
in the reduction of land to private ownership strongly
appears. But it is now manifest that absolute political
equality does not in itself prevent the tendency to
inequality involved in the private ownership of land, and
it is further evident that political equality, co-existing
with an increasing tendency to the unequal distribution
of wealth, must ultimately beget either the despotism of
organized tyranny or the worse despotism of anarchy.
Henry George, Progress and Poverty, X, 4
44 Where there is anything like an equal distribution of
wealth—that is to say, where there is general patriotism,
virtue, and intelligence—the more democratic the
government the better it will be; but where there is gross
inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more
democratic the government the worse it will be; for, while
rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten
autocracy, its effects upon national character will be
worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to men
to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who must
beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruction. To put
political power in the hands of men embittered and
degraded by poverty is to tic firebrands to foxes and turn
them loose amid the standing com; it is to put out the
eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the pillars
of national life.
Henry George, Progress and Poverty, X, 4
45 The doctrine of equality!... But there exists no more
poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice
itself, while it is the end of justice.... ‘Equality for equals,
inequality for unequals’— that would be the true voice of
justice: and, what follows from it, ‘Never make equal what
is unequal’.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
46 The poison of the doctrine 'equa/ rights for all’— this has
been more thoroughly sowed by Christianity than by
anything else; from the most secret recesses of base
instincts, Christianity has waged a war to the death
against every feeling of reverence and distance between
man and man, against, that is, the precondition of every
elevation, every increase in culture—it has forged out of
the ressentiment of the masses its chief weapon against
us, against everything noble, joyful, high-spirited on
earth, against our happiness on earth.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XLII/
47 lf... there be liberty, men get from her just in proportion
to their works, and their having and enjoying are just in
proportion to their being and their doing. Such is the
system of nature. If we do not like it, and if we try to
amend it, there is only one way in which we can do it. We
can take from the better and give to the worse. We can
deflect the penalties of those who have done ill and throw
them on those who have done better. We can take the
rewards from those who have done better and give them
to those who have done worse. We shall thus lessen the
inequalities. We shall favor the survival of the unfittest,
and we shall accomplish this by destroying liberty. Let it
be understood that we cannot go outside of this
alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-
liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former
carries society forward and favors all its best members;
the latter carries society downwards and favors all its
worst members.
W. G. Sumner, Challenge of Facts
48 Socialists are filled with the enthusiasm of equality. Every
scheme of theirs for securing equality has destroyed
liberty. The student of political philosophy has the
antagonism of equality and liberty constantly forced
upon him. Equality of possession or of rights and equality
before the law are diametrically opposed to each other.
The object of equality before the law is to make the state
entirely neutral. The state, under that theory, takes no
cognizance of persons. It surrounds all, without
distinctions, with the same conditions and guarantees. If
it educates one, it educates all—black, white, red, or
yellow; Jew or Gentile; native or alien. If it taxes one, it
taxes all, by the same system and under the same
conditions. If it exempts one from police regulations in
home, church, and occupation, it exempts all. From this
statement it is at once evident that pure equality before
the law is impossible. Some occupations must be
subjected to police regulation. Not all can be made
subject to militia duty even for the same limited period.
The exceptions and special cases furnish the chance for
abuse. Equality before the law, however, is one of the
cardinal principles of civil liberty, because it leaves each
man to run the race of life for himself as best he can. The
state stands neutral but benevolent. It does not
undertake to aid some and handicap others at the outset
in order to offset hereditary advantages and
disadvantages, or to make them start equally. Such a
notion would belong to the false and spurious theory of
equality which is socialistic. If the state should attempt
this it would make itself the servant of envy. | am entitled
to make the most | can of myself without hindrance from
anybody, but | am not entitled to any guarantee that |
shall make as much of myself as somebody else makes of
himself.
W. G. Sumner, Challenge of Facts
49 Higgins, The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad
manners or good manners or any other particular sort of
manners, but having the same manner for all human
souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where
there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good
as another.
Shaw, Pygmalion, V
50 Today a surgeon who is too lazy or too uppish to put on
his boots and pull off his trousers can find a valet who will
do both for him, and will even submit to be sworn at and
addressed on all occasions as an inferior, for a sufficient
consideration. | am afraid this luxury will be untenable
under an equalitarian constitution. All able-bodied
persons will have to valet themselves; and the ladies who
ring for a maid in the middle of the night to pick up a
book they have dropped out of bed, will have to get up
and pick up the book for themselves, or take more care
not to drop it. But though the surgeon may have to put
on his own boots, it does not follow that he will have to
clean them. A state of society in which a surgeon would
have to clean the boots and knives; make the beds; lay
and light the fires; and answer the door, is as unthinkable
as one in which the housemaids would have to cut off
their own legs. What is quite thinkable is that the
surgeon and person who makes the surgeon’s bed should
have the same income and be equally polite to one
another. As it is, the hospital nurse is sometimes better
bred, as we call it, than the surgeon; and there are
periods of their respective careers in which she has a
larger income. There is certainly no reason why she
should at any lime have a smaller one.
Shaw, Redistribution of Income
51 The arguments for equality of income do not lie on the
surface of individual interest. They are, as 1 have
formulated them, first, the economic argument that as
national needs should be satisfied in the order of their
importance, equality of purchasing power is needed to
prevent Ritz hotels from being built for idlers whilst
workers are paying half a crown a week for half a bed in
an overcrowded cottage; second, the political and legal
argument that really representative parliaments and
juries are impossible in a community broken up into
antagonistic classes by differences of income; and last,
that the supreme importance to the race of the fullest
and widest sexual selection makes it imperative that the
whole community should consist of intermarriageable
persons, and not, as at present, of individuals whose
choice is limited to the narrow social circle formed by the
local people of the same income. All these arguments are
essentially comprehensive arguments: they do not occur
to politicians who are pursuing merely individual
interests for themselves and their constituents.
Shaw, Socialism and Culture
52 Throughout past history power has been used to give to
the strong an undue share of good things and to leave to
the weak a life of toil and misery.
Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, Il, 1
53 The doctrine of equality never meant what some of its
critics Supposed it to mean. It never asserted equality of
natural gifts. It was a moral, a political and legal
principle, not a psychological one. Thomas Jefferson
believed as truly in a "natural aristocracy" as did John
Adams, The existence of marked psychological
inequalities was indeed one of the reasons why it was
considered so important to establish political and legal
equality. For otherwise those of superior endowment
might, whether intentionally or without deliberation,
reduce those of inferior capacity to a condition of virtual
servitude. The words "nature" and "natural" are among
the most ambiguous of all the words used to justify
courses of action. Their very ambiguity is one source of
their use in defense of any measure and end regarded as
desirable. The words mean what is native, what is original
or innate, what exists at birth in distinction from what is
acquired by cultivation and as a consequence of
experience. But it also means that which men have got
used to, inured to by custom, that imagination can hardly
conceive of anything different. Habit is second nature
and second nature under ordinary circumstances is as
potent and urgent as first nature. Again, nature has a
definitely moral import; that which is normal and hence is
right; that which should be.
The assertion that men are free and equal by nature
unconsciously, possibly deliberately, took advantage of
the prestige possessed by what is "natural" in the first
two senses to reinforce the moral force of the word. That
"naturalness" in the moral sense provided the imperative
ethical foundation of politics and law was, however, the
axiomatic premise of democratic theory. Exercise of a
liberty which was taken to be a moral right has in the
course of events, especially economic events, seriously
threatened the moral right to legal and political equality.
While we may not believe that the revolutionary effect of
steam, electricity, etc., has nullified moral faith in
equality, their operation has produced a new difficult
problem. The effect of statutes, of administrative
measures, of judicial decision, upon the maintenance of
equality and freedom cannot be estimated in terms of
fairly direct personal consequences. we have first to
estimate their effects upon complicated social conditions
(largely a matter of guesswork), and then speculate what
will be the effect of the new social conditions upon
individual persons....
The point which is here pertinent is that early theory
and practice assumed an inherent, and so to say pre-
established, harmony between liberty and equality. As
liberty has been practiced in industry and trade, the
economic inequalities produced have reacted against the
existence of equality of opportunity. Only those who have
a special cause to plead will hold that even in the most
democratic countries, under the most favorable
conditions, have children of the poor the same chances
as those of the well-to-do, even in a thing like schooling
which is supported at public expense. And it is no
consoling offset that the children of the rich often suffer
because of the onesided conditions under which they
grow up.
Dewey, Freedom and Culture, III
54 It is obvious... that the word ‘Equality’ possesses more
than one meaning, and that the controversies
surrounding it arise partly, at least, because the same
term is employed with different connotations. Thus it may
either purport to state a fact, or convey the expression of
an ethical judgment. On the one hand, it may affirm that
men are, on the whole, very similar in their natural
endowments of character and intelligence. On the other
hand, it may assert that, while they differ profoundly as
individuals in capacity and character, they are equally
entitled as human beings to consideration and respect,
and that the well-being of a society is likely to be
increased if it so plans its organization that, whether their
powers are great or small, all its members may be equally
enabled to make the best of such powers as they possess.
R. H. Tawney, Equality, |
55 It is true... that some men are inferior to others in respect
of their intellectual endowments, and it is possible—
though the truth of the possibility has not yet been
satisfactorily established—that the same is true of certain
classes. It does not, however, follow from this fact that
such individuals or classes should receive less
consideration than others, or should be treated as inferior
in respect of such matters as legal status, or health, or
economic arrangements, which are within the control of
the community.
It may, of course, be deemed expedient so to treat
them. It may be thought advisable, as Aristotle argued, to
maintain the institution of slavery on the ground that
some men are fit only to be living tools; or, as was
customary in a comparatively recent past, to apply to the
insane a severity not used towards the sane; or, as is
sometimes urged today, to spend less liberally on the
education of the slow than on that of the intelligent; or,
in accordance with the practice of all ages, to show less
respect for the poor than for the rich. But, in order to
establish an inference, a major premise is necessary as
well as a minor; and, if such discrimination on the part of
society is desirable, its desirability must be shown by
some other argument than the fact of inequality of
intelligence and character....
Everyone recognizes the absurdity of such an
argument when it is applied to matters within his
personal knowledge and professional competence.
Everyone realizes that, in order to justify inequalities of
circumstance or opportunity by reference to differences
of personal quality, it is necessary, as Professor Ginsberg
observes, to show that the differences in question are
relevant to the inequalities. Everyone now sees, for
example, that it is not a valid argument against women’s
suffrage to urge, as used to be urged not so long ago,
that women are physically weaker than men, since
physical strength is not relevant to the question of the
ability to exercise the franchise, or a valid argument in
favour of slavery that some men are less intelligent than
others, since it is not certain that slavery is the most
suitable penalty for lack of intelligence.
R. H. Tawney, Equality, |
56 A society which values equality will attach a high degree
of significance to differences of character and
intelligence between different individuals, and a low
degree of significance to economic and social differences
between different groups. It will endeavour, in shaping its
policy and organization, to encourage the former and to
neutralize and suppress the latter, and will regard it as
vulgar and childish to emphasize them when,
unfortunately, they still exist.
R. H. Tawney, Equality, II
57 It is possible to conceive a community in which the
necessary diversity of economic functions existed side by
side with a large measure of economic and social
equality. In such a community, while the occupations and
incomes of individuals varied, they would live,
nevertheless, in much the same environment, would
enjoy similar standards of health and education, would
find different positions, according to their varying
abilities, equally accessible to them, would intermarry
freely with each other, would be equally immune from the
more degrading forms of poverty, and equally secure
against economic oppression.
R. H. Tawney, Equality, Il, 2
58 Since political arrangements may be such as to check
excess of power, while economic arrangements permit or
encourage them, a society, or a large part of it, may be
both politically free and economically the opposite. It
may be protected against arbitrary action by the agents
of government, and be without the security against
economic oppression which corresponds to civil liberty. It
may possess the political institutions of an advanced
democracy, and lack the will and ability to control the
conduct of those powerful in its economic affairs, which is
the economic analogy of political freedom.
The extension of liberty from the political to the
economic sphere is evidently among the most urgent
tasks of industrial societies. It is evident also, however,
that, in so far as this extension takes place, the
traditional antithesis between liberty and equality will no
longer be valid..,.
In conditions which impose co-operative, rather than
merely individual, effort, liberty is, in fact, equality in
action, in the sense, not that all men perform identical
functions or wield the same degree of power, but that all
men are equally protected against the abuse of power,
and equally entitled to insist that power shall be used,
not for personal ends, but for the general advantage.
Civil and political liberty obviously imply, not that all
men shall be members of parliament, cabinet ministers,
or civil servants, but the absence of such civil and
political inequalities as enable one class to impose its will
on another by legal coercion. It should be not less
obvious that economic liberty implies, not that all men
Should initiate, plan, direct, manage, or administer, but
the absence of such economic inequalities as can be used
as a means of economic constraint.
R. H. Tawney, Equality, V, 2
59 Along with the ethical urge of each individual to affirm
his subjective existence, there is also the temptation to
po liberty and become a thing. This is an inauspicious
road, for he who takes it—passive, lost, ruined—becomes
henceforth the creature of another’s will, frustrated in his
transcendence and deprived of every value. But it is an
easy road; on it one avoids the strain involved in
undertaking an authentic existence. When man makes of
woman the Other, he may, then, expect her to manifest
deep-seated tendencies toward complicity. Thus, woman
may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she
lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary
bond that tics her to man regardless of reciprocity, and
because she is often very well pleased with her role as
the Other.
Simone dc Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Intro.
Chapter 14
WAR and PEACE
Chapter 14 is divided into three sections: 14.1 Warfare and
the State of War, 14.2 The Instrumentalities ofF War: The
Military, and 14.3 The Conditions of Peace.
Like Chapters 12 and 13, this chapter treats topics
closely related to those treated in Chapter 10 on Politics. The
discussion of war covers both civil war, or war within the
boundaries of a state, and international war, or war between
states. So, too, the discussion of peace considers the nature
and conditions of civil peace as well as the prerequisites for
international or world peace. The reader should, therefore,
expect to find quotations in Sections 14.1 and 14.3 that deal
with matters also treated in Chapter 10; and, in addition, the
reader will find passages that are about equally relevant to
war and to peace, which we have, nevertheless, placed in
one or the other section, but not in both.
Section 14.2 on The Instrumentalities of War: The Military
deals with armed force, in all its forms or varieties, as an
instrument of the state, mainly in its relation with other
states, but also as used against domestic insurrections. It
includes passages describing the characteristics of military
men.
The quotations collected in Section 14.2 are, of course,
more closely related to those in Section 14.1 than to those in
Section 14.3, though some passages will be found that
argue for dominant military force as preventive of war even
though not productive of peace in the fullest sense of that
term.
14.1 Warfare and the State of War
With a few exceptions to be noted, the predominant
sentiment expressed by the writers represented here—poets,
historians, and philosophers—deplores the horror and the
folly of war. The poets and novelists, from Homer and Virgil
to Tolstoy, depict the face of war in all its grimness and
fiendishness: the episodes and encounters that they present
with imaginative intensity support the philosopher’s
definition of war as the realm of pure force—force without
right. The historians add confirmation by their accounts of
Campaigns and battles, accompanied by such comments as
that war is "the greatest of follies," or that no one is "so
foolish as to prefer war to peace."
The exceptions mentioned above are to be found in
Machiavelli’s statement that war is the proper business of
princes; in Kant’s observation that war, if conducted ina
proper manner, has something ennobling about it; in Hegel’s
praise of war as a healthy disturbance that remedies the
stagnation resulting from a prolonged peace; in Clausewitz’s
declaration that war is in essence nothing but politics itself
carried on by other means; and in Nietzsche’s insistence
that war is necessary for human survival.
The reader will find passages in which the effort is made
to distinguish between just and unjust wars, and passages in
which certain kinds of war are said to be better than others
—for example, foreign as compared with civil wars. But the
most important distinction noted here is the distinction
between actual warfare and the state of war— a distinction
that has only recently become generally recognized as the
difference between "hot" and "cold" war.
The reader’s attention is directed particularly to
Thucydides’ observation that the periods of no fighting
during the thirty years of the Peloponnesian War were an
armed truce, not a condition of peace; to Hobbes’ statement
that war is not a state of battle only, but, like the climate, a
prevailing condition in which conflicts between sovereigns
cannot be settled except by force; and to Locke’s insight
that peace is not merely the absence of fighting, but a state
of affairs in which a duly constituted government has the
authority and power to settle differences without recourse to
violence on the parts of those in conflict.
If sovereigns are always in a State of war because, in
relation to one another, they are in a state of anarchy, then
it would seem to follow that government, the opposite of
anarchy, is the indispensable prerequisite for the
establishment and preservation of peace. The reader will
find this insight developed in Section 14.3 on The
Conditions of Peace and in Section 10.3 on Government: Its
Nature, Necessity, and Forms. The reader will also find some
consideration of the rights of war in Section 12.3 on Rights—
Natural and Civil. Section 14.2 has a discussion of the
instrumentalities employed in actual warfare—military
personnel and equipment.
1 Thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the
alarm of war.
Jeremiah 4:19
2 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my
people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no
peace.
Jeremiah 6:14
3 Menelaos. There is satiety in all things, in sleep, and love-
making,
in the loveliness of singing and the innocent dance. In
all these
things a man will strive sooner to win satisfaction than
In war.
Homer, Iliad, 636
4 Aineias. Warfare’s finality lies in the work of hands, that of
words in counsel.
It is not for us now to pile up talk, but to fight in battle.
Homer, Iliad, XVI, 629
5 Chorus. The god of war, money changer of dead bodies,
held the balance of his spear in the fighting,
and from the corpse-fires at Ilium
sent to their dearest the dust
heavy and bitter with tears shed
packing smooth the urns with
ashes that once were men.
They praise them through their tears, how this man
knew well the craft of battle, how another
went down splendid in the slaughter:
and all for some strange woman.
Thus they mutter in secrecy,
and the slow anger creeps below their grief
at Atreus’ sons and their quarrels.
There by the walls of Ilium
the young men in their beauty keep
graves deep in the alien soil
they hated and they conquered.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 437
6 Meanwhile Croesus, taking the oracle in a wrong sense, led
his forces into Cappadocia, fully expecting to defeat
Cyrus and destroy the empire of the Persians. While he
was still engaged in making preparations for his attack, a
Lydian named Sandanis, who had always been looked
upon as a wise man, but who after this obtained a very
great name indeed among his countrymen, came forward
and counselled the king in these words:
"Thou art about, oh | king, to make war against men
who wear leathern trousers, and have all their other
garments of leather; who feed not on what they like, but
on what they can get from a soil that is sterile and
unkindly; who do not indulge in wine, but drink water;
who possess no figs nor anything else that is good to eat.
If, then, thou conquerest them, what canst thou get from
them, seeing that they have nothing at all? But if they
conquer thee, consider how much that is precious thou
wilt lose: if they once get a taste of our pleasant things,
they will keep such hold of them that we shall never be
able to make them loose their grasp. For my part, | am
thankful to the gods that they have not put it into the
hearts of the Persians to invade Lydia."
Herodotus, History, |, 71
7 Croesus. No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in
which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury
their sons.
Herodotus, History, |, 87
8 Xerxes, when he fled away out of Greece, left his war-tent
with Mardonius: when Pausanias, therefore, saw the tent
with its adornments of gold and silver, and its hangings
of divers colours, he gave commandment to the bakers
and the cooks to make him ready a banquet in such
fashion as was their wont for Mardonius. Then they made
ready as they were bidden; and Pausanius, beholding the
couches of gold and silver daintily decked out with their
rich covertures, and the tables of gold and silver laid, and
the feast itself prepared with all magnificence, was
astonished at the good things which were set before him,
and, being in a pleasant mood, gave commandment to
his own followers to make ready a Spartan supper. When
the suppers were both served, and it was apparent how
vast a difference lay between the two, Pausanias laughed,
and sent his servants to call to him the Greek generals.
On their coming, he pointed to the two boards, and said:
"| sent for you, O Greeks, to show you the folly of this
Median captain, who, when he enjoyed such fare as this,
must needs come here to rob us of our penury."
Herodotus, History, IX, 82
9 Neoptolemus. War never takes a bad man but by chance,
the good man always,
Sophocles, Philoctetes, 436
10 Chorus. Mindless, all of you, who in the strength of spears
and the tearing edge win your valors
by war, thus stupidly trying
to halt the grief of the world.
For if bloody debate shall settle
the issue, never again
shall hate be gone out of the cities of men.
By hate they won the chambers of Priam’s city;
they could have solved by reason and words
the quarrel, Helen, for you.
Now these are given to the Death God below.
On the walls the flame, as of Zeus, lightened and fell.
And you, Helen, on your sorrows bear
more hardships still, and more matter for grieving.
Euripides, Helen, 1151
11 Herald. Your city is free;
That does not make it powerful. Hope has driven
Many cities against each other; she stirs
An overreaching heart; she is not to be trusted.
When the people vote on war, nobody reckons
On his own death; it is too soon; he thinks
Some other man will meet that wretched fate.
But if death faced him when he cast his vote,
Hellas would never perish from battle-madness.
And yet we men all know which of two words
Is better, and can weigh the good and bad
They bring: how much better is peace than war!
First and foremost, the Muses love her best;
And the goddess of vengeance hates her. She delights
In healthy children, and she glories in wealth.
But wickedly we throw all this away
To start our wars and make the losers slaves—
Man binding man and city chaining city.
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 477
12 The Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense
length, and, long as it was, it was short without parallel
for the misfortunes that it brought upon Hellas. Never
had so many cities been taken and laid desolate, here by
the barbarians, here by the parties contending (the old
inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for
others); never was there so much banishing and blood-
shedding, now on the field of battle, now in the strife of
faction. Old stories of occurrences handed down by
tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly
ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of
unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun
occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history;
there were great droughts in sundry places and
consequent famines, and that most calamitous and
awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon
them with the late war, which was begun by the
Athenians and Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the
thirty years’ truce made after the conquest of Euboea. To
the question why they broke the treaty, | answer by
placing first an account of their grounds of complaint and
points of difference, that no one may ever have to ask the
immediate cause which plunged the Hellenes into a war
of such magnitude. The real cause | consider to be the
one which was formally most kept out of sight. The
growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this
inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 23
13 Corinthians. Men are wont in their efforts against their
enemies to forget everything for the sake of victory,
regarding him who assists them then as a friend, even if
thus far he has been a foe, and him who opposes them
then as a foe, even if he has thus far been a friend;
indeed they allow their real interests to suffer from their
absorbing preoccupation in the struggle.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 41
14 Corinthians. War of all things proceeds least upon
definite rules, but draws principally upon itself for
contrivances to meet an emergency; and in such cases
the party who faces the struggle and keeps his temper
best meets with most security, and he who loses his
temper about it with correspondent disaster.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 122
15 Corinthians. Out of war peace gains fresh stability, but to
refuse to abandon repose for w'ar is not so sure a method
of avoiding danger.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 124
16 Pericles. For those of course who have a free choice in the
matter and whose fortunes are not at stake, war is the
greatest of follies. But if the only choice was between
submission with loss of independence, and danger with
the hope of preserving that independence, in such a case
it is he who will not accept the risk that deserves blame,
not he who will.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, II, 61
17 Hermocrates. No one is forced to engage in it by
ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies there is
anything to be gained by it. To the former the gain
appears greater than the danger, while the latter would
rather stand the risk than pul up with any immediate
sacrifice. But if both should happen to have chosen the
wrong moment for acting in this way, advice to make
peace would not be unserviceable.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, IV, 59
18 Socrates. Wars are occasioned by the love of money.
Plato, Phaedo, 66B
19 Socrates. A slice of our neighbours’ land will be wanted
by us for pasture and tillage, and they will want a slice of
ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed the limit of necessity,
and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of
wealth?
Glaucon. That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
And so we shall go to war.
Plato, Republic, Il, 373B
20 Socrates. Atyrant ... is always stirring up Some war or
other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato, Republic, Vill, 566B
21 Cleinias [a Cretan]. | think... that the aim of our
institutions is easily intelligible to any one. Look at the
character of our country; Crete is not like Thessaly, a
large plain; and for this reason they have horsemen in
Thessaly, and we have runners—the inequality of the
ground in our country is more adapted to locomotion on
foot; but then, if you have runners you must have light
arms—no one can carry a heavy weight when running,
and bows and arrows are convenient because they are
light. Now all these regulations have been made with a
view to war, and the legislator appears to me to have
looked to this in all his arrangements:—the common
meals, if | am not mistaken, were instituted by him for a
similar reason, because he saw that while they are in the
field the citizens are by the nature of the case compelled
to take their meals together for the sake of mutual
protection. He seems to me to have thought the world
foolish in not understanding that all men are always at
war with one another; and if in war there ought to be
common meals and certain persons regularly appointed
under others to protect an army, they should be
continued in peace. For what men in general term peace
would be said by him to be only a name; in reality every
city is in a natural state of war with every other, not
indeed proclaimed by heralds, but everlasting. And if you
look closely, you will find that this was the intention of
the Cretan legislator; all institutions, private as well as
public, were arranged by him with a view to war; in
giving them he was under the impression that no
possessions or institutions are of any value to him who is
defeated in battle; for all the good things of the
conquered pass into the hands of the conquerors.
Plato, Laws, |, 623B
22 In one point of view, the art of war is a natural art of
acquisition, for the art of acquisition includes hunting, an
art which we ought to practise against wild beasts, and
against men who, though intended by nature to be
governed, will not submit; for war of such a kind is
naturally just.
Aristotle, Politics, 1256b22
23 Then, after length of time, the labouring swains
Who turn the turfs of those unhappy plains,
Shall rusty piles from the ploughed furrows take.
And over empty helmets pass the rake—
Amazed at antique titles on the stones,
And mighty relics of gigantic bones.
Virgil, Georgics, |
24 Long the gods, we know.
Have grudged thee, Caesar, to the world below,
Where fraud and rapine right and wrong confound,
Where impious arms from every part resound,
And monstrous crimes in every shape are crowned.
The peaceful peasant to the wars is pressed;
The fields lie fallow in inglorious rest;
The plain no pasture to the flock affords;
The crooked scythes are straightened into swords:
And there Euphrates her soft offspring arms,
And here the Rhine rebellows with alarms;
The neighbouring cities range on several sides;
Perfidious Mars long-pHghtcd leagues divides.
And o’er the wasted world in triumph rides.
So four fierce coursers, starting to the race,
Scour through the plain, and lengthen every pace;
Nor reins, nor curbs, nor threatening cries, they fear.
But force along the trembling charioteer.
Virgil, Georgics, |
25 The rustic honors of the scythe and share
Give place to swords and plumes, the pride of war.
Virgil, Aeneid, VII
26 Think not that | am come to send peace on earth:
| came not to send peace, but a sword.
Matthew 10:34
27 Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars.
Matthew 24:6
28 Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.
And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus
stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a
servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his car.
Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into
his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with
the sword.
Matthew 26:50-52
29 For men whose ambition neither seas, nor mountains, nor
unpeopled deserts can limit, nor the bounds dividing
Europe from Asia confine their vast desires, it would be
hard to expect to forbear from injuring one another when
they touch and are close together. These are ever
naturally at war, envying and seeking advantages of one
another.
Plutarch, Pyrrhus
30 Tiridates. |It is not ... by weak inaction that great empires
are held together; there must be the struggle of brave
men in arms; might is right with those who are at the
summit of power. And though it is the glory of a private
house to keep its own, it is the glory of a king to fight for
the possessions of others.
Tacitus, Annals, XV, 1
31 Men directing their weapons against each other— under
doom of death yet neatly lined up to fight as in the
pyrrhic sword-dances of their sport—this is enough to tell
us that all human intentions are but play, that death is
nothing terrible, that to die in a war or in a fight is but to
taste a little beforehand what old age has in store, to go
away earlier and come back the sooner.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, Il, 15
32 Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have
been so widely extended, nor so glorious, save by
constant and unintermitting wars? A fit argument, truly!
Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to be great?
In this little world of man’s body, is it not better to havea
moderate stature, and health with it, than to attain the
huge dimensions of a giant by unnatural torments, and
when you attain it to find no rest, but to be pained the
more in proportion to the size of your members?
Augustine, City of God, III, 10
33 The imperial city [Rome] has endeavoured to impose on
subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a
bond of peace, so that interpreters, far from being scarce,
are numberless. This is true; but how many great wars,
how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this
unity! And though these are past, the end of these
miseries has not yet come. For though there have never
been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations
beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and
are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations,
the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of
a more obnoxious description—social and civil wars—and
with these the whole race has been agitated either by the
actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 7
34 In order for a war to be just... it is necessary that the
belligerents should have a right intention, so that they
intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of
evil.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 40, |
35 Upon this [cry of "War!"], one of the old wise ones arose,
and with his hand commanding silence and attention, he
said: "Masters, there is many a man to cry ‘War, War!’
who yet knows but little of the meaning of it. War, in the
beginning, has so high an entrance, and so wide, that
every man may enter when he pleases, and may find war
easily. But truly, what the end of war shall be is not so
easy to know. For when a war is once begun, many an
unborn child shall die in the womb because of the strife,
or else shall be born into sorrow and die in wretchedness.
Therefore, ere any war begins, men should take much
counsel together and act only after much deliberation."
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Tale of Melibeus
36 A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor
select anything else for his study, than war and its rules
and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him
who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds
those who are born princes, but it often enables men to
rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the
contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more
of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the
first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what
enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.
Machiavelli, Prince, XIV
37 War is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed
when there is no other hope but in them.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXVI
38 The object of those who make war, either from choice or
ambition, is to conquer and to maintain their conquests,
and to do this in such a manner as to enrich themselves
and not to impoverish the conquered country. To do this,
then, the conqueror should take care not to spend too
much, and in all things mainly to look to the public
benefit; and therefore he should imitate the manner and
conduct of the Romans, which was first of all to make the
war short and sharp.
Machiavelli, Discourses, II, 6
39 Every one may begin a war at his pleasure, but cannot so
finish it.
Machiavelli, Discourses, II, 10
40 | maintain, then, contrary to the general opinion, that the
sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold
alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will
always procure gold.
Machiavelli, Discourses, 11, 10
41 Although deceit is detestable in all other things, yet in
the conduct of war it is laudable and honorable; and a
commander who vanquishes an enemy by stratagem is
equally praised with one who gains victory by force.
Machiavelli, Discourses, III, 40
42 Friar John. War, begun without good provision of money
before-hand for going through with it, is but as a
breathing of strength, and blast that will quickly pass
away. Coin is the sinews of war.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1, 46
43 Very little withholds me from the opinion of good
Heraclitus, which affirmeth war, to be the father of all
good things; and therefore do | believe that war is in
Latin called Be//lum, and not by antiphrasis, as some
patchers of old rusty Latin would have us to think,
because in war there is little beauty to be seen; but
absolutely and simply, for that in war appeareth all that is
good and graceful, and that by the wars is purged out all
manner of wickedness and deformity. For proof whereof
the wise and pacific Solomon could no better represent
the unspeakable perfection of the divine wisdom, than by
comparing it to the due disposure and ranking of an army
in battle array, well provided and ordered.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, III, Prologue
44 As it is sometimes necessary for kings and nations to take
up arms for the infliction of such public vengeance, the
Same reason will lead us to infer the lawfulness of wars
which are undertaken for this end. For if they have been
intrusted with power to preserve the tranquillity of their
own territories, to suppress the seditious tumults of
disturbers, to succour the victims of oppression, and to
punish crimes,—can they exert this power for a better
purpose, than to repel the violence of him who disturbs
both the private repose of individuals and the general
tranquillity of the nation; who excites insurrections, and
perpetrates acts of oppression, cruelty, and every species
of crime? If they ought to be the guardians and defenders
of the laws, it is incumbent upon them to defeat the
efforts of all by whose injustice the discipline of the laws
is corrupted. And if they justly punish those robbers,
whose injuries have only extended to a few persons, shall
they suffer a whole district to be plundered and
devastated with impunity? For there is no difference,
whether he, who in a hostile manner invades, disturbs,
and plunders the territory of another to which he has no
right, be a king, or one of the meanest of mankind: all
persons of this description are equally to be considered
as robbers, and ought to be punished as such. It is the
dictate both of natural equity, and of the nature of the
office, therefore, that princes are armed, not only to
restrain the crimes of private individuals by judicial
punishments, but also to defend the territories committed
to their charge by going to war against any hostile
aggression.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 20
45 King Henry. Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base.
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height.
Shakespeare, Henry V, Ill, i, 1
46 Virgilia. His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!
Volumnia. Away, you fool! it more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, look’d not lovelier
Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood
At Grecian sword, contemning.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, I, iii, 41
47 Ist Servant. But when goes this forward?
3rd Servant. To-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall
have the drum struck up this afternoon. 'Tis, as it were, a
parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe
their lips.
2nd Servant. Why, then we shall have a stirring world
again. This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase
tailors, and breed ballad-makers.
Ist Serv. Let me have war, say |; it exceeds peace as
far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and
full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled,
deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children
than war’s a destroyer of men.
2nd Serv. 'Tis so; and as war, in some sort, may be
said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is
a great maker of cuckolds.
Ist Serv. Ay, and it makes men hate one another.
3rd Serv. Reason; because they then less need one
another. The wars for my money.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, IV, V, 228
48 No nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look
to have greatness fall into their mouths.
Bacon, Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
49 There is that justice imprinted in the nature of men, that
they enter not upon wars (whereof so many calamities do
ensue) but upon some, at the least specious, grounds and
quarrels.
Bacon, Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
50 A civil war, indeed, is like the heat of a fever; but a
foreign war is like the heat of exercise, and serveth to
keep the body in health; for in a slothful peace, both
courages will effeminate and manners corrupt.
Bacon, Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
51 It is manifest that during the time men live without a
common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that
condition which is called war; and such a war as is of
every man against every man. For war consisteth not in
battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time,
wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently
known: and therefore the notion of time is to be
considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of
weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not ina
shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of
many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not
in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto
during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.
All other time is peace.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 13
52 Though there had never been any time wherein
particular men were in a condition of war one against
another, yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign
authority, because of their independency, are in
continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of
gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes
fixed on one another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and
guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual
spies upon their neighbours, which is a posture of war.
But because they uphold thereby the industry of their
subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which
accompanies the liberty of particular men.
To this war of every man against every man, this also
is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of
right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no
place. Where there is no common power, there is no law;
where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the
Uvo cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the
faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they
might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as
his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to
men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to
the same condition that there be no propriety, no
dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be
every man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can
keep it. And thus much for the ill condition which man by
mere nature is actually placed in; though with a
possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the
passions, partly in his reason.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 13
53 When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then
the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every
man, by victory or death.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 30
54 Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should
have the right to kill me because he lives on the other
side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with
mine, though | have none with him?
Pascal, Pensées, V, 294
55 So under fierie Cope together rush’d
Both Battels maine, with ruinous assault
And inextinguishable rage; all Heav’n
Resounded, and had Earth bin then, all Earth
Had to her Center shook. What wonder? when
Millions of fierce encountring Angels fought
On either side, the least of whom could weild
These Elements, and arm him with the force
Of all thir Regions: how much more of Power
Armie against Armic numberless to raise
Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb,
Though not destroy, thir happie Native seat.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 215
56 Such were these Giants, men of high renown;
For in those dayes Might onely shall be admir’d,
And Valour and Heroic Vertu call’d;
To overcome in Battel, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human Glorie, and for Glorie done
Of triumph, to be styl’d great Conquerours,
Patrons of Mankind, Gods, and Sons of Gods,
Destroyers rightlier call’d and Plagues of men.
Thus Fame shall be achiev’d, renown on Earth,
And what most merits fame in silence hid.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XI, 684
57 If one commonwealth wishes to make war on another and
employ extreme measures to make that other dependent
on itself, it may lawfully make the attempt, since it needs
but the bare will of the commonwealth for war to be
waged. But concerning peace it can decide nothing, save
with the concurrence of another commonwealth’s will.
Whence it follows, that laws of war regard every
commonwealth by itself, but laws of peace regard not
one, but at the least two commonwealths, which are
therefore called "contracting powers."
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Ill, 13
58 The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction; and
therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate
and hasty, but sedate, settled design upon another man’s
life puts him in a state of war with him against whom he
has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his
life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any
one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his
quarrel; it being reasonable and just | should have a right
to destroy that which threatens me with destruction; for
by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be
preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be
preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred,
and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or
has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same
reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion, because they are
not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no
other rule but that of force and violence, and so may be
treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious
creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he
falls into their power.
And hence it is that he who attempts to get another
man into his absolute power does thereby put himself
into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as
a declaration of a design upon his life. For | have reason
to conclude that he who would get me into his power
without my consent would use me as he pleased when he
had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a
fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his
absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that
which is against the right of my freedom— make me a
Slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my
preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an
enemy to my preservation who would take away that
freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an
attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state
of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take
away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state
must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take
away everything else, that freedom being the foundation
of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would
take away the freedom belonging to those of that society
or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take
away from them everything else, and so be looked on as
in a state of war.
Locke, II Civil Government, I/l, 16-17
59 Here we have the plain difference between the state of
Nature and the state of war, which however some men
have confounded, are as far distant as a state of peace,
goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation; anda
state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction
are one from another. Men living together according to
reason without a common superior on earth, with
authority to judge between them, is properly the state of
Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the
person of another, where there is no common superior on
earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war; and it is
the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war
even against an aggressor, though he be in society anda
fellow-subject.... Want of a common judge with authority
puts all men in a state of Nature; force without right upon
a man's person makes a state of war both where there is,
and is not, a common judge.
Locke, II Civil Government, III, 19
60 Whosoever uses force without right—as every one does in
society who does it without law—puts himself into a state
of war with those against whom he so uses it, and in that
state all former tics are cancelled, all other rights cease,
and every one has a right to defend himself, and to resist
the aggressor.
Locke, II Civil Government, XIX, 232
61 He [the Houyhnhnm master] asked me what were the
usual causes or motives, that made one country go to war
with another. | answered they were innumerable; but |
should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the
ambition of princes, who never think they have land or
people enough to govern: sometimes the corruption of
ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to
stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their
evil administration. ., . Neither are any wars so furious
and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those
occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in
things indifferent.
Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to
decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his
dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right.
Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear
the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is
entered upon, because the enemy is too strong, and
sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our
neighbours want the things which we have, or have the
things which we want; and we both fight, until they take
ours, or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of war,
to invade a country after the people have been wasted by
famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions
amongst themselves. It is justifiable to enter into a war
against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lie
convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render
our dominions round and compact. If a prince send forces
into a nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he
may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves
of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their
barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable,
and frequent practice, when one prince desires the
assistance of another to secure him against an invasion,
that the assistant, when he hath driven out the invader,
should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison,
or banish the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by blood
or marriage, is a sufficient cause of war between princes;
and the nearer the kindred is, the greater is their
disposition to quarrel.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 5
62 The life of governments is like that of man. The latter has
a right to kill in case of natural defence: the former have
a right to wage war for their own preservation.
In the case of natural defence | have a right to kill,
because my life is in respect to me what the life of my
antagonist is to him: in the same manner a state wages
war because its preservation is like that of any other
being.
With individuals the right of natural defence does not
imply a necessity of attacking. Instead of attacking they
need only have recourse to proper tribunals. They cannot
therefore exercise this right of defence but in sudden
cases, when immediate death would be the consequence
of waiting for the assistance of the law. But with states
the right of natural defence carries along with it
sometimes the necessity of attacking; as for instance,
when one nation sees that a continuance of peace will
enable another to destroy her, and that to attack that
nation instantly is the only way to prevent her own
destruction.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, X, 2
63 It is a conqueror’s business to repair a part of the
mischief he has occasioned. The right, therefore, of
conquest | define thus: a necessary, lawful, but unhappy
power, which leaves the conqueror under a heavy
obligation of repairing the injuries done to humanity.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, X, 4
64 Bodies politic, remaining thus in a state of nature among
themselves, presently experienced the inconveniences
which had obliged individuals to forsake it; for this state
became still more fatal to these great bodies than it had
been to the individuals of whom they were composed.
Hence arose national wars, battles, murders, and
reprisals, which shock nature and outrage reason;
together with all those horrible prejudices which class
among the virtues the honour of shedding human blood.
The most distinguished men hence learned to consider
cutting each other’s throats a duty; at length men
massacred their fellow-creatures by thousands without so
much as knowing why, and committed more murders in a
single day’s fighting, and more violent outrages in the
sack of a single town, than were committed in the state of
nature during whole ages over the whole earth. Such
were the first effects which we can see to have followed
the division of mankind into different communities.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, II
65 War... is a relation, not between man and man, but
between State and State, and individuals are enemies
only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as
soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its
defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only
other States, and not men.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 4
66 In real war, a just prince, while laying hands, in the
enemy’s country, on all that belongs to the public,
respects the lives and goods of individuals: he respects
rights on which his own are founded. The object of the
war being the destruction of the hostile State, the other
side has a right to kill its defenders, while they are
bearing arms; but as soon as they lay them down and
surrender, they cease to be enemies or instruments of the
enemy, and become once more merely men, whose life
no one has any right to take. Sometimes it is possible to
kill the State without killing a single one of its members;
and war gives no right which is not necessary to the
gaining of its object.
Rousseau, Social Contract, I, 4
67 Anyone can understand that w'ar and conquest without
and the encroachments of despotism within give each
other mutual support; that money and men are habitually
taken at pleasure from a people of slaves, to bring others
beneath the same yoke; and that conversely war
furnishes a pretext for exactions of money and another,
no less plausible, for keeping large armies constantly on
foot, to hold the people in awe. In a word, anyone can see
that aggressive princes wage war at least as much on
their subjects as on their enemies, and that the
conquering nation is left no better off than the
conquered. "| have beaten the Romans," so Hannibal
used to write to Carthage, "send me more troops. | have
exacted an indemnity from Italy, send me more money."
That is the real meaning of the 7e Drums, the bonfires
and rejoicings with which the people hail the triumphs of
their masters.
Rousseau, A Lasting Peace
68 Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the
diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which
interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will
equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute
of employment; and | know not whether more is to be
dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to
plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed
to lie.
Johnson, Idler No, 30
69 It is not always necessary to accumulate gold and silver
in order to enable a country to carry on foreign wars, and
to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries. Fleets
and armies are maintained, not with gold and silver, but
with consumable goods. The nation which, from the
annual produce of its domestic industry, from the annual
revenue arising out of its lands, labour, and consumable
stock, has wherewithal to purchase those consumable
goods in distant countries, can maintain foreign wars
there.
A nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an
army in a distant country three different ways: by
sending abroad either, first, some part of its accumulated
gold and silver; or, secondly, some part of the annual
produce of its manufactures; or, last of all, some part of
its annual rude produce.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 1
70 In modern times many different causes contribute to
render the defence of the society more expensive. The
unavoidable effects of the natural progress of
improvement have, in this respect, been a good deal
enhanced by a great revolution in the art of war, to which
a mere accident, the invention of gunpowder, seems to
have given occasion.
In modern war the great expense of firearms gives an
evident advantage to the nation which can best afford
that expense, and consequently to an opulent and
civilised over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient
times the opulent and civilised found it difficult to defend
themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In
modern times the poor and barbarous find it difficult to
defend themselves against the opulent and civilised. The
invention of firearms, an invention which at first sight
appears to be so pernicious, is certainly favourable both
to the permanency and to the extension of civilisation.
Adam Smith, Wealth, of Nations, V, 1
71 The want of parsimony in time of peace imposes the
necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When war
comes, there is no money in the treasury but what is
necessary for carrying on the ordinary expense of the
peace establishment. In war an establishment of three or
four times that expense becomes necessary for the
defence of the state, and consequently a revenue three
or four times greater than the peace revenue. Supposing
that the sovereign should have, what he scarce ever has,
the immediate means of augmenting his revenue in
proportion to the augmentation of his expense, yet still
the produce of the taxes, from which this increase of
revenue must be drawn, will not begin to come into the
treasury till perhaps ten or twelve months after they are
imposed. But the moment in which war begins, or rather
the moment in which it appears likely to begin, the army
must be augmented, the fleet must be fitted out, the
garrisoned towns must be put into a posture of defence;
that army, that fleet, those garrisoned towns must be
furnished with arms, ammunition, and provisions. An
immediate and great expense must be incurred in that
moment of immediate danger, which will not wait for the
gradual and slow returns of the new taxes. In this
exigency government can have no other resource but in
borrowing.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 3
72 To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means
of preserving peace.
Washington, First Annual Address
73 War in its fairest form implies a perpetual violation of
humanity and justice.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXII
74 The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national
rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of
substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent
benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of
conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation
which we inflict on the enemy’s country may be
retaliated on our own.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXIV
75 It was the opinion of (the Emperor] Marcian, that war
should be avoided as long as it is possible to preserve a
secure and honourable peace; but it was likewise his
opinion that peace cannot be honourable or secure, if the
sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXV
76 Every age, however destitute of science or virtue,
sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military
renown.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVIII
77 |t is the duty of a patriot to prefer and promote the
exclusive interest and glory of his native country: but a
philosopher may be permitted to enlarge his views, and
to consider Europe as one great republic, whose various
inhabitants have attained almost the same level of
politeness and cultivation, The balance of power will
continue to fluctuate, and the prosperity of our own or
the neighbouring kingdoms may be alternately exalted or
depressed; but these partial events cannot essentially
injure our general state of happiness, the system of arts,
and laws, and manners, which so advantageously
distinguish, above the rest of mankind, the Europeans
and their colonies. The savage nations of the globe are
the common enemies of civilised society; and we may
inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still
threatened with a repetition of those calamities which
formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.
Perhaps the same reflections will illustrate the fall of that
mighty empire, and explain the probable causes of our
actual security.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVIII
78 The sword of the Saracens became less formidable when
their youth was drawn away from the camp to college,
when the armies of the faithful presumed to read and to
reflect.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LI
79 [When Constantinople fell to the crusaders] at the first
view it should seem that the wealth of Constantinople
was only transferred from one nation to another, and that
the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by
the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable
account of war the gain is never equivalent to the loss,
the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins were
transient and fallacious; the Greeks for ever wept over
the ruins of their country, and their real calamities were
aggravated by sacrilege and mockery. What benefits
accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which
annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches
of the city? What a stock of such things as could neither
be used nor transported was maliciously or wantonly
destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in
gaming, debauchery, and riot!
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LX
80 If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous
discovery [gunpowder] with the slow and laborious
advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a
philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep
at the folly of mankind.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LXV
81 The determination of what constitutes right in war, is the
most difficult problem of the right of nations and
international law. It is very difficult even to form a
conception of such a right, or to think of any law in this
lawless state without falling into a contradiction. It must
then be just the right to carry on war according to such
principles as render it always still possible to pass out of
that natural condition of the states in their external
relations to each other and to enter into a condition of
right.
Kant, Science of Right, 57
82 The right that follows after war, begins at the moment of
the treaty of peace and refers to the consequences of the
war. The conqueror lays down the conditions under which
he will agree with the conquered power to form the
conclusion of peace. Treaties are drawn up; not indeed
according to any right that it pertains to him to protect,
on account of an alleged lesion by his opponent, but as
taking this question upon himself, he bases the right to
decide it upon his own power. Hence the conqueror may
not demand restitution of the cost of the war; because he
would then have to declare the war of his opponent to be
unjust. And even although he should adopt such an
argument, he is not entitled to apply it; because he would
have to declare the war to be punitive, and he would thus
in turn inflict an injury. To this right belongs also the
exchange of prisoners, which is to be carried out without
ransom and without regard to equality of numbers.
Kant, Science of Right, 58
83 The right of a state against an unjust enemy has no
limits, at least in respect of quality as distinguished from
quantity or degree. In other words, the injured state may
use—not, indeed any means, but yet—all those means
that are permissible and in reasonable measure in so far
as they are in its power, in order to assert its right to what
is its own. But what then is an unjust enemy according to
the conceptions of the right of nations, when, as holds
generally of the state of nature, every state is judge in its
own cause? It is one whose publicly expressed will,
whether in word or deed, betrays a maxim which, if it
were taken as a universal rule, would make a state of
peace among the nations impossible, and would
necessarily perpetuate the state of nature.
Kant, Science of Right, 60
84 War itself, provided it is conducted with order and a
sacred respect for the rights of civilians, has something
sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on in
such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime
the more numerous the dangers to which they are
exposed, and which they are able to meet with fortitude.
On the other hand, a prolonged peace favours the
predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a
debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy and
tends to degrade the character of the nation.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 28
85 To look for a continuation of harmony between a number
of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same
neighbourhood, would be to disregard the uniform course
of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated
experience of ages.
Hamilton, Federalist 6
86 That there may happen cases in which the national
government may be necessitated to resort to force,
cannot be denied. Our own experience has corroborated
the lessons taught by the Examples of other nations; that
emergencies of this sort will sometimes arise in all
societies, however constituted; that seditions and
insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable
from the body politic as tumours and eruptions from the
natural body; that the idea of governing at all times by
the simple force of law (which we have been told is the
only admissible principle of republican government) has
no place but in the reveries of those political doctors
whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental
instruction.
Hamilton, Federalist 28
87 To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be
compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive
passions of war reign in the human breast with much
more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent
sentiments of peace; and that to model our political
systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility is to
calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
Hamilton, Federalist 34
88 There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;—
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising
knell!
Did ye not hear it?—No; ‘t was but the wind,
Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet—
But hark!—that heavy sound breaks in once more
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! Arm! it is—it is—the cannon’s opening roar!
Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, 21-22
89 War is the state of affairs which deals in earnest with the
vanity of temporal goods and concerns— a vanity at
other times a common theme of edifying sermonizing.
This is what makes it the moment in which the ideality of
the particular attains its right and is actualized. War has
the higher significance that by its agency... the ethical
health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the
stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of
the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which
would be the result of a prolonged calm, so also
corruption in nations would be the product of prolonged,
let alone ‘perpetual,’ peace.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 324
90 War is an act of force, and to the application of that force
there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand
of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in
theory can have no limit.
Von Clausewitz, On War, I, 3
91 If the aim of the military action is an equivalent for the
political object, that action will in general diminish as the
political object diminishes. The more this object comes to
the front, the more will this be so. This explains how,
without self-contradiction, there can be wars of all
degrees of importance and energy, from a war of
extermination down to a mere state of armed
observation.
Von Clausewitz, On War, I, 11
92 There is no human activity that stands in such constant
and universal contact with chance as does war.
Von Clausewitz, On War, I, 20
93 War is not merely a political act but a real political
instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a
carrying out of the same by other means.
Von Clausewitz, On War, I, 24
94 No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a
democratic country. Not indeed that after every victory it
is to be apprehended that the victorious generals will
possess themselves by force of the supreme power, after
the manner of Sulla and Caesar; the danger is of another
kind. War does not always give over democratic
communities to military government, but it must
invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil
government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the
direction of all men and the management of all things in
the hands of the administration. If it does not lead to
despotism by sudden violence, it prepares men for it
more gently by their habits. All those who seek to destroy
the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that
war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 22
95 Among a nation in which equality of condition prevails,
on the contrary, each citizen has but a slender share of
political power, and often has no share at all. On the
other hand, all are independent, and all have something
to lose; so that they are much less afraid of being
conquered and much more afraid of war than an
aristocratic people. It will always be very difficult to
convince a democratic people to take up arms when
hostilities have reached its own territory. Hence the
necessity of giving to such a people the rights and the
political character which may impart to every citizen
some of those interests that cause the nobles to act for
the public welfare in aristocratic countries.
It should never be forgotten by the princes and other
leaders of democratic nations that nothing but the love
and the habit of freedom can maintain an advantageous
contest with the love and the habit of physical well-
being. | can conceive nothing better prepared for
subjection, in case of defeat, than a democratic people
without free institutions.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 26
96 Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with
clenched teeth, and hellfire eyes, hacking one another’s
flesh; converting precious living bodies, and priceless
living souls, into nameless masses of putrescence, useful
only for turnip manure.
Carlyle, Past and Present, III, 10
97 A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is
so far valuable that it puts every man on trial.
Emerson, The Conservative
98 The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an
unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the
unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by
those whose own act and authority he desregards and
sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that
degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but
not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
99 The shield may be as important for victory, as the sword
or spear.
Darwin, Origin of Species, IV
100 In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by
another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by
another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the
antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes,
the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, I/
101 "If no one fought except on his own conviction, there
would be no wars," he said.
"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never
come about. ..."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, I, 6
102 The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be
present at the battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of
his courtiers, at twelve o’clock left the third column with
which he had been and galloped toward the vanguard.
Before he came up with the hussars, several adjutants
met him with news of the successful result of the action.
This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French
squadron, was represented as a brilliant victory over the
French, and so the Emperor and the whole army,
especially while the smoke hung over the battlefield,
believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the
Emperor had passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered
to advance. In Wischau itself, a petty German town,
Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the market place,
where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers
whom there had not been time to move. The Emperor,
surrounded by his suite of officers and courtiers, was
riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a different one from
that which he had ridden at the review, and bending to
one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes
and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his
uncovered head. The wounded soldier was so dirty,
coarse, and revolting that his proximity to the Emperor
shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the Emperor’s rather
round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run
down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping
the horse’s side with the spur, and how the well-trained
horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir. An
adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms
to place him on a stretcher that had been brought. The
soldier groaned.
"Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?" said the
Emperor apparently suffering more than the dying
soldier, and he rode away.
Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard
him, as he was riding away, say to Czarto-ryski: "What a
terrible thing war is: what a terrible thing! Qui/le terrible
chose que la guerre!"
Tolstoy, War and Peace, III, 10
103 One has renounced grand life when one renounces war.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idol, Morality as Anti-Nature
104 Many... substitutes for war will be discovered, but
perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more
obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore
necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modem Europe
not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible
wars,—consequently occasional relapses into barbarism,
—lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture
and its ver>' existence.
Nietzsche, Human, All~ Too~ Human, 477
105 The beauty of war... is that it is so congruous with
ordinary human nature. Ancestral evolution has made us
all potential warriors; so the most insignificant individual,
when thrown into an army in the field, is weaned from
whatever excess of tenderness towards his precious
person he may bring with him, and may easily develop
into a monster of insensibility.... The immediate aim of
the soldier’s life is... destruction, and nothing but
destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in
are remote and non-military. Consequently the soldier
cannot train himself to be too feelingless to all those
usual sympathies and respects, whether for persons or for
things, that make for conservation. Yet the fact remains
that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and,
being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school
that as yet is universally available. But when we gravely
ask ourselves whether this wholesale organization of
irrationality and crime be our only bulwark against
effeminacy, we stand aghast at the thought, and think
more kindly of ascetic religion. One hears of the
mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to
discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of
war: something heroic that will soeak to men as
universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible
with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be
incompatible. | have often thought that in the old
monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which
infested it, there might be something like that moral
equivalent of war which we are seeking. May not
voluntarily accepted poverty be 'the strenuous life,’
without the need of crushing weaker peoples?
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XIV-XV
106 | have spoken of liberty as a good, but it is not an
absolute good. We all recognize the need to restrain
murderers, and it is even more important to restrain
murderous states. Liberty must be limited by law, and its
most valuable forms can only exist within a framework of
law. What the world most needs is effective laws to
control international relations. The first and most difficult
step in the creation of such law is the establishment of
adequate sanctions, and this is only possible through the
creation of a single armed force in control of the whole
world. But such an armed force, like a municipal police
force, is not an end in itself; it is a means to the growth of
a social system governed by law, where force is not the
prerogative of private individuals or nations, but is
exercised only by a neutral authority in accordance with
rules laid down in advance. There is hope that law, rather
than private force, may come to govern the relations of
nations within the present century. If this hope is not
realized we face utter disaster; if it is realized, the world
will be far better than at any previous period in the
history of man.
Russell, Unpopular Essays, III
107 Wars can never cease so long as nations live under such
widely differing conditions, so long as the value of
individual life is in each nation so variously computed,
and so long as the animosities which divide them
represent such powerful instinctual forces in the mind.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, |
108 Then the war [World War I] in which we had refused to
believe broke out, and brought—disillusionment. Not only
is it more sanguinary and more destructive than any war
of other days, because of the enormously increased
perfection of weapons of attack and defence; but it is at
least as cruel, as embittered, as implacable as any that
has preceded it. It sets at naught all those restrictions
known as International Law, which in peace-time the
states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the
prerogatives of the wounded and the medical service, the
distinction between civil and military sections of the
population, the claims of private property. It tramples in
blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there
were to be no future and no goodwill among men after it
has passed. It rends all bonds of fellowship between the
contending peoples, and threatens to leave such a legacy
of embitterment as will make any renewal of such bonds
impossible for a long time to come.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, |
109 Clans, tribes, races, cities, empires, nations, states have
made war. The argument that this fact proves an
ineradicable belligerent instinct which makes war forever
inevitable is much more respectable than many
arguments about the immutability of this and that social
tradition.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Il, 3
110 Pugnacity, rivalry, vainglory, love of booty, fear,
suspicion, anger, desire for freedom from the conventions
and restrictions of peace, love of power and hatred of
oppression, opportunity for novel displays, love of home
and soil, attachment to one’s people and to the altar and
the hearth, courage, loyalty, opportunity to make a name,
money or a career, affection, piety to ancestors and
ancestral gods—all of these things and many more make
up the war-like force. To suppose there is some one
unchanging native force which generates war is as naive
as the usual assumption that our enemy is actuated
solely by the meaner of the tendencies named and we
only by the nobler.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Il, 3
111 The more horrible a depersonalized scientific mass war
becomes, the more necessary it is to find universal ideal
motives to justify it.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Il, 3
112 War in our own civilization is as good an illustration as
one can take of the destructive lengths to which the
development of a culturally selected trait may go. If we
justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the
traits of which they find themselves possessed, not
because war will bear an objective examination of its
merits.
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, I]
14.2 The Instrumentalities of War
THE MILITARY
The quotations collected here deal, in large part, with the
technical and technological details of warfare—the military
personnel and the military equipment needed to wage war
and to bring it to a successful conclusion. They touch on
such considerations as the different kinds of troops and
armaments, the qualities desired in a commander and in his
soldiers, the quantities or masses of men that are needed to
attain certain military objectives, the relative advantages of
naval and land operations, and the pros and cons of
employing mercenaries.
The poets, novelists, historians, and biographers give us
descriptions of eminent commanders, and discuss the
personalities and character of military leaders. This often
leads into some consideration of strategy and tactics, but
the arts of war are not discussed in detail. In this connection,
the reader will be struck by Tolstoy’s extremely negative
view, personified in General Kutuzov, in War and Peace, as
well as explicitly stated by Tolstoy himself, that the planning
of battles or campaigns is utterly futile.
The two main issues debated in this section are, first, the
question about the value of mercenary troops as compared
with a citizen army, and, second, the effect of standing
armies and elaborate military installations upon the political
health of republics and democracies.
1 And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto
me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go
forward:
But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand
over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall
go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.
And I, behold, | will harden the hearts of the
Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and 1 will get me
honour upon Phar-aoh, and upon all his host, upon his
chariots, and upon his horsemen.
And the Egyptians shall know that | am the Lord, when
| have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his
chariots, and upon his horsemen.
And the angel of God, which went before the camp of
Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of
the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind
them:
And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and
the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to
them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one
came not near the other all the night.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and
the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong cast wind
all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters
were divided.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the
sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto
them on their right hand, and on their left.
And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to
the midst of the sea, even all Phar-aoh's horses, his
chariots, and his horsemen.
And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the
Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the
pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the
Egyptians,
And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave
them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from
the face of Israel; for the Lord fighteth for them against
the Egyptians.
Exodus 14:15-25
2 Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of
Israel: none went out, and none came in.
And the Lord said unto Joshua, Sec, | have given into
thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty
men of valour...
And it came to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the
people, that the seven priests bearing the seven
trumpets of rams' horns passed on before the Lord, and
blew with the trumpets: and the ark oi the covenant of
the Lord followed them.
And the armed men went before the priests that blew
with the trumpets, and the rereward came after the ark,
the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets.
And Joshua had commanded the people, saying. Ye
Shall not shout, nor make any noise with your voice,
neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until
the day | bid you shout; then shall ye shout.
So the ark of the Lord compassed the city, going about
it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the
camp....
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose
early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the
city after the same manner seven times: only on that day
they compassed the city seven times.
And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the
priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the
people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city. ...
So the people shouted when the priests blew with the
trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the
sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a
great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the
people went up into the city, every man straight before
him, and they took the city.
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep,
and ass, with the edge of the sword.
Joshua 6:1-21
3 And they, the god-supported kings, about Agamemnon
ran marshalling the men, and among them grey-eyed
Athene
holding the dear treasured aegis, ageless, immortal,
from whose edges float a hundred all-golden tassels,
each one carefully woven, and each worth a hundred
oxen.
With this fluttering she swept through the host of the
Achaians
urging them to go forward. She kindled the strength in
each man’‘s
heart to take the battle without respite and keep on
fighting.
And now battle became sweeter to them than to go
back
in their hollow ships to the beloved land of their
fathers.
As obliterating fire lights up a vast forest along the
crests of a mountain, and the flare show3 far off,
so as they marched, from the magnificent bronze the
gleam went
dazzling all about through the upper air to the
heaven.
These, as the multitudinous nations of birds winged,
of geese, and of cranes, and of swans long-throated
in the Asian meadow beside the Kaystrian waters this
way and that way make their flights in the pride of their
wings, then
settle in clashing swarms and the whole meadow
echoes with them,
so of these the multitudinous tribes from the ships and
shelters poured to the plain of Skamandros, and the
earth beneath their
feet and under the feet of their horses thundered
horribly.
They took position in the blossoming meadow of
Skamandros,
thousands of them, as leaves and flowers appear in
their season.
Like the multitudinous nations of swarming insects
who drive hither and thither about the stalls of the
sheepfold
in the season of spring when the milk splashes in the
milk pails:
in such numbers the flowing-haired Achaians stood up
through the plain against the Trojans, hearts burning
to break them.
These, aS men who are goatherds among the wide
goatflocks
easily separate them in order as they take to the
pasture,
thus the leaders separated them this way and that
way
toward the encounter, and among them powerful
Agamemnon,
with eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder,
like Ares for girth, and with the chest of Poseidon;
like some ox of the herd pre-eminent among the
others,
a bull, who stands conspicuous in the huddling cattle;
such was the son of Atreus as Zeus made him that
day,
conspicuous among men, and foremost among the
fighters.
Homer, Iliad, Il, 445
4 As when along thundering beach the surf of the sea strikes
beat upon beat as the west wind drives it onward; far
out
cresting first on the open water, it drives thereafter
to smash roaring along the dry land, and against the
rock jut
bending breaks itself into crests soewing back the salt
wash;
so thronged beat upon beat the Danaans' close
battalions
steadily into battle, with each of the lords
commanding
his own men; and these went silently, you would not
think
all these people with voices kept in their chests were
marching;
silently, in fear of their commanders; and upon all
glittered as they marched the shining armour they
carried.
But the Trojans, as sheep in a man of possessions’
steading
stand in their myriads waiting to be drained of their
white milk
and bleat interminably as they hear the voice of their
lambs, so
the crying of the Trojans went up through the wide
army.
Homer, Iliad, IV, 422
5 Now pitifully the Trojans might have gone back from the
shelters
and the ships, to windy Ilion, had not Poulydamas
come and stood beside bold Hektor and spoken a word to
him:
‘Hektor, you are too intractable to listen to reason.
Because the god has granted you the actions of
warfare
therefore you wish in counsel also to be wise beyond
others.
But you cannot choose to have all gifts given to you
together.
To one man the god has granted the actions of
warfare,
to one to be a dancer, to another the lyre and the
singing,
and in the breast of another Zeus of the wide brows
establishes
wisdom, a lordly thing, and many take profit beside
him
and he saves many, but the man’s own thought
surpasses all others.
Now | will tell you the way that it seems best to my
mind.
For you, everywhere the fighting burns in a circle
around you,
but of the great-hearted Trojans since they crossed
over the rampart
some are standing back in their war gear, others are
fighting
fewer men against many, being scattered among the
vessels.
Draw back now, and call to this place all of our
bravest,
and then we might work out together our general
counsel.’
Homer, Iliad, XIII, 723
6 The Scythians... have in one respect... shown themselves
wiser than any nation upon the face of the earth. Their
customs otherwise are not such as! admire. The one
thing of which | speak is the contrivance whereby they
make it impossible for the enemy who invades them to
escape destruction, while they themselves are entirely
out of his reach, unless it please them to engage with
him. Having neither cities nor forts, and carrying their
dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed,
moreover, one and all of them, to shoot from horseback;
and living not by husbandry but on their cattle, their
waggons the only houses that they possess, how can they
fail of being unconquerable, and unassailable even?
Herodotus, History, IV, 46
7 Chorus. Swift-footed Achilles | saw—
His feet like the stormwind—running,
Achilles whom Thetis bore,
and Chiron trained into manhood.
| saw him on the seashore.
In full armor over the sands racing.
He strove, his legs in contest
With a chariot and four,
Toward victory racing and rounding
The course.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, 206
8 Brasidas. Where an enemy seems strong but is really
weak, a true knowledge of the facts makes his adversary
the bolder, just as a serious antagonist is encountered
most confidently by those who do not know him.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, IV, 126
9 The armies being now on the eve of engaging, each
contingent received some words of encouragement from
its own commander. The Mantineans were reminded that
they were going to fight for their country and to avoid
returning to the experience of servitude after having
tasted that of empire; the Argives, that they would
contend for their ancient supremacy, to regain their once
equal share of Peloponnese of which they had been so
long deprived, and to punish an enemy and a neighbour
for a thousand wrongs; the Athenians, of the glory of
gaining the honours of the day with so many and brave
allies in arms, and that a victory over the
Lacedaemonians in Peloponnese would cement and
extend their empire, and would besides preserve Attica
from all invasions in future. These were the incitements
addressed to the Argives and their allies. The
Lacedaemonians meanwhile, man to man, and with their
war-songs in the ranks, exhorted each brave comrade to
remember what he had learnt before; well aware that the
long training of action was of more saving virtue than any
brief verbal exhortation, though never so well delivered.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, V, 69
10 Alcibiades. [Socrates] and | went on the expedition to
Potidaea; there we messed together, and | had the
opportunity of observing his extraordinary power of
sustaining fatigue. His endurance was simply marvellous
when, being cut off from our supplies, we were compelled
to go without food— on such occasions, which often
happen in time of war, he was superior not only to me but
to everybody; there was no one to be compared to him.
Yet at a festival he was the only person who had any real
powers of enjoyment; though not willing to drink, he
could if compelled beat us all at that,—wonderful to
relate! no human being had ever seen Socrates drunk;
and his powers, if | am not mistaken, will be tested before
long. His fortitude in enduring cold was also surprising.
There was a severe frost, for the winter in that region is
really tremendous, and everybody else either remained
indoors, or if they went out had on an amazing quantity
of clothes, and were well shod, and had their feet
swathed in felt and fleeces: in the midst of this, Socrates
with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress
marched better than the other soldiers who had shoes,
and they looked daggers at him because he seemed to
despise them.... There was another occasion on which his
behaviour was very remarkable—in the flight of the army
after the battle of Delium, where he served among the
heavy-armed—|I had a better opportunity of seeing him
than at Potidaea, for | was myself on horseback, and
therefore comparatively out of danger. He and Laches
were retreating, for the troops were in flight, and | met
them and told them not to be discouraged, and promised
to remain with them; and there you might see him,
Aristophanes, as you describe, just as he is in the streets
of Athens, stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes,
calmly contemplating enemies as well as friends, and
making very intelligible to anybody, even from a
distance, that whoever attacked him would be likely to
meet with a stout resistance; and in this way he and his
companion escaped—for this is the sort of man who is
never touched in war; those only are pursued who are
running away headlong.
Plato, Symposium, 219B
11 Socrates. Nothing can be more important than that the
work of a soldier should be well done. But is war an art so
easily acquired that a man may be a warrior who is also a
husbandman, or shoemaker, or other artisan; although no
one in the world would be a good dice or draught player
who merely took up the game as a recreation, and had
not from his earliest years devoted himself to this and
nothing else? No tools will make a man a skilled
workman, or master of defence, nor be of any use to him
who has not learned how to handle them, and has never
bestowed any attention upon them. How then will he who
takes up a shield or other implement of war become a
good fighter all in a day, whether with heavy-armed or
any other kind of troops?
Glaucon. Yes... the tools which would teach men their
own use would be beyond price.
And the higher the duties of the guardian, | said, the
more time, and skill, and art, and application will be
needed by him?
No doubt....
Will he not also require natural aptitude for his
calling?
Certainly.
Then it will be our duty to select, if we can, natures
which are fitted for the task of guarding the city.
Plato, Republic, Il, 374A
12 Athenian Stranger. For expeditions of war much
consideration and many laws are required; the great
principle of all is that no one of either sex should be
without a commander; nor should the mind of any one be
accustomed to do anything, either in jest or earnest, of
his own motion, but in war and in peace he should look to
and follow his leader, even in the least things being
under his guidance; for example, he should stand or
move, or exercise, or wash, or take his meals, or get up in
the night to keep guard and deliver messages when he is
bidden; and in the hour of danger he should not pursue
and not retreat except by order of his superior; and ina
word, not teach the soul or accustom her to know or
understand how to do anything apart from others. Of all
soldiers the life should be always and in all things as far
as possible in common and together; there neither is nor
ever will be a higher, or better, or more scientific
principle than this for the attainment of salvation and
victory in war. And we ought in time of peace from youth
upwards to practise this habit of commanding others, and
of being commanded by others; anarchy should have no
place in the life of man or of the beasts who are subject to
man.
Plato, Laws, XII, 942A
13 Socrates. A general must also be capable of furnishing
military equipment and providing supplies for the men;
he must be resourceful, active, careful, hardy and quick-
witted; he must be both gentle and brutal, at once
straightforward and designing, capable of both caution
and surprise, lavish and rapacious, generous and mean,
skilful in defence and attack; and there are many other
qualifications, some natural, some acquired, that are
necessary to one who would succeed as a general.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, Ill, 1
14 In the choice of a general, we should regard his skill
rather than his virtue; for few have military skill, but
many have virtue.
Aristotle, Politics, 1309b3
15 There are four kinds of military forces,—the cavalry, the
heavy infantry, the light-armed troops, the navy. When
the country is adapted for cavalry, then a strong
oligarchy is likely to be established. For the security of
the inhabitants depends upon a force of this sort, and
only rich men can afford to keep horses. The second form
of oligarchy prevails when the country is adapted to
heavy infantry; for this service is better suited to the rich
than to the poor. But the light-armed and the naval
element are wholly democratic; and nowadays, where
they are numerous, if the two parties quarrel, the
oligarchy are often worsted by them in the struggle. A
remedy for this state of things may be found in the
practice of generals who combine a proper contingent of
light-armed troops with cavalry and heavy-armed. And
this is the way in which the poor get the better of the rich
in civil contests; being lightly armed, they fight with
advantage against cavalry and heavy infantry. An
oligarchy which raises such a force out of the lower
classes raises a power against itself. And therefore, since
the ages of the citizens vary and some are older and
some younger, the fathers should have their own sons,
while they are still young, taught the agile movements of
light-armed troops; and these, when they have been
taken out of the ranks of the youth, should become light-
armed warriors in reality.
Aristotle, Politics, 1321a7
16 Weapons are of little use on the field of battle if there is
no wise counsel at home.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 22
17 Aeneas. ‘Brave souls!’ said |,—‘but brave, alas! in vain—
Come, finish what our cruel fates ordain.
You see the desperate state of our affairs.
And heav'n’s protecting pow'rs are deaf to pray’rs.
The passive gods behold the Greeks defile
Their temples, and abandon to the spoil
Their own abodes: we, feeble few, conspire
To save a sinking town, involv'd in fire.
Then let us fall, but fall amidst our foes:
Despair of life the means of living shows.’
So bold a speech incourag’d their desire
Of death, and added fuel to their fire.
"As hungry wolves, with raging appetite,
Scour thro’ the fields, nor fear the stormy night—
Their whelps at home expect the promis’d food.
And long to temper their dry chaps in blood—
So rush’d we forth at once; resolv’d to die,
Resolv’d, in death, the last extremes to try.
We leave the narrow lanes behind, and dare
Th' unequal combat in the public square:
Night was our friend; our leader was despair."
Virgil, Aeneid, II
18 Nor was he [Aemilius Paulus] less severe in requiring and
observing the ancient Roman discipline in military affairs;
not endeavouring, when he had the command, to
ingratiate himself with his soldiers by popular flattery,
though this custom prevailed at that time amongst many,
who, by favour and gentleness to those that were under
them in their first employment, sought to be promoted to
a second; but, by instructing them in the laws of military
discipline with the same care and exactness a priest
would use in teaching ceremonies and dreadful
mysteries, and by severity to such as transgressed and
contemned those laws, he maintained his country in its
former greatness, esteeming victory over enemies itself
but as an accessory to the proper training and
disciplining of the citizens.
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus
19 As horses run brisker in a chariot than singly, not that
their joint force divides the air with greater ease, but
because being matched one against the other emulation
kindles and inflames their courage; thus he [Pelopidas]
thought brave men, provoking one another to noble
actions, would prove most serviceable, and most resolute,
where all were united together.
Plutarch, Pelopidas
20 Any voluntary partaking with people in their labour is felt
as an casing of that labour, as it seems to take away the
constraint and necessity of it. It is the most obliging sight
in the world to the Roman soldier to see a commander eat
the same bread as himself, or lie upon an ordinary bed, or
assist the work in the drawing a trench and raising a
bulwark. For they do not so much admire those that
confer honours and riches upon them, as those that
partake of the same labour and danger with themselves;
but love them better that will vouchsafe to Join in their
work, than those that encourage their idleness.
Plutarch, Caius Marius
21 It grieved Nicias to hear of flight and departing home, not
that he did not fear the Syracusans, but he was worse
afraid of the Athenians, their impeachments and
sentences; he professed that he apprehended no further
harm there, or if it must be, he would rather die by the
hand of an enemy than by his fellow-citizens.... But fresh
forces now coming to the Syracusans and the sickness
growing worse in his camp, he, also, now approved of
their retreat, and commanded the soldiers to make ready
to go abroad.
And when all were in readiness, and none of the
enemy had observed them, not expecting such a thing,
the moon was eclipsed in the night, to the great fright of
Nicias and others, who, for want of experience, or out of
superstition, felt alarm at such appearances. That the sun
might be darkened about the close of the month, this
even ordinary people now understood pretty well to be
the effect of the moon; but the moon itself to be
darkened, how that could come about, and how, on the
sudden, a broad full moon should lose her light, and show
such various colours, was not easy to be comprehended;
they concluded it to be ominous, and a divine intimation
of some heavy calamities. ... It so fell out with Nicias, that
he had not at this time a skilful diviner with him; his
former habitual adviser who used to moderate much of
his superstition, Stilbides, had died a little before. For, in
fact, this prodigy, as Philochorus observes, was not
unlucky for men wishing to flee, but on the contrary very
favourable; for things done in fear require to be hidden,
and the light is their foe. Nor was it usual to observe
signs in the sun or moon more than three days, as Auto-
clides states in his Commentaries, But Nicias persuaded
them to wait another full course of the moon, as if he had
not seen it clear again as soon as ever it had passed the
region of shadow where the light was obstructed by the
earth.
In a manner abandoning all other cares, he betook
himself wholly to his sacrifices, till the enemy came upon
them with their infantry, besieging the forts and camp,
and placing their ships in a circle about the harbour. Nor
did the men in the galleys only, but the little boys
everywhere got into the fishing-boats and rowed up and
challenged the Athenians, and insulted over them....
The Athenians, their loss and slaughter being very
great, their flight by sea cut off, their safety by land so
difficult, did not attempt to hinder the enemy towing
away their ships, under their eyes, nor demanded their
dead, as, indeed, their want of burial seemed a less
calamity than the leaving behind the sick and wounded
which they now had before them. Yet more miserable still
than those did they reckon themselves, who were to work
on yet, through more such sufferings, after all to reach
the same end.
Plutarch, Nicias
22 Peace is only too apt to lower the reputation of men that
have grown great by arms, who naturally find difficulty in
adapting themselves to the habits of civil equality.
Plutarch, Pompey
23 [Caesar] was so much master of the good-will and hearty
service of his soldiers that those who in other expeditions
were but ordinary men displayed a courage past
defeating or withstanding when they went upon any
danger where Caesar’s glory was concerned.
Plutarch, Caesar
24 Cato himself acquired in the fullest measure what it had
been his least desire to seek, glory and good repute; he
was highly esteemed by all men, and entirely beloved by
the soldiers. Whatever he commanded to be done, he
himself took part in the performing; in his apparel, his
diet, and mode of travelling, he was more like a common
soldier than an officer; but in character, high purpose,
and wisdom, he far exceeded all that had the names and
titles of commanders, and he made himself, without
knowing it, the object of general affection.
Plutarch, Cato the Younger
25 Iphicrates the Athenian used to say that it is best to have
a mercenary soldier fond of money and of pleasures, for
thus he will fight the more boldly, to procure the means
to gratify his desires. But most have been of opinion that
the body of an army, as well as the natural one, when in
its healthy condition, should make no efforts apart, but in
compliance with its head.
Plutarch, Galba
26 [In] the events that followed among the Romans upon
the death of Nero, ., plain proofs were given that nothing
is more terrible than a military force moving about in an
empire upon uninstructed and unreasoning impulses.
Plutarch, Galba
27 You can find, much more quickly, a witness
Who will perjure himself against a civilian’s lawsuit
Than you will get one to tell the truth if it injures the
interests
Or the good name of a soldier.
Juvenal, Satire XVI
28 The worthiest. . . [soldiers] were moved by patriotism;
many were wrought upon by the attractions of plunder;
some by their private embarrassments. And so, good and
bad, from different motives, but with equal zeal, were all
eager for war.
Tacitus, Histories, Il, 7
29 The arms with which a prince defends his state are either
his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed.
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous;
and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will
stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited,
ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant
before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have
neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and
destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in
peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.
The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for
keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not
sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are
ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make
war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run
from the foe.
Machiavelli, Prince, XII
30 Mercenary captains are either capable men or they are
not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they
always aspire to their own greatness, either by
oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary
to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are
ruined in the usual way.
And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the
Same way, whether mercenary or not, | reply that when
arms have to be resorted to, either by a prince ora
republic, then the prince ought to go in person and
perform the duty of captain; the republic has to send its
citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out
satisfactorily, it ought to recall him, and when one is
worthy, to hold him by the laws so that he does not leave
the command. And experience has shown princes and
republics, single-handed, making the greatest progress,
and mercenaries doing nothing except damage; and it is
more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own
arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to
bring one armed with foreign arms.
Machiavelli, Prince, XII
31 David offered himself to Saul to fight with Goliath, the
Philistine champion, and, to give him courage, Saul
armed him with his own weapons; which David rejected
as soon as he had them on his back, saying he could
make no use of them, and that he wished to meet the
enemy with his sling and his knife. In conclusion, the
arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh
you down, or they bind you fast.
Machiavelli, Prince, XIII
32 A general who disposes his army in such manner that it
can rally three several times in the course of a battle,
must have fortune against him three times before being
defeated, and must have an enemy opposed to him
sufficiently superior to overcome him three times. But if
an army can resist only a single shock, as is the case
nowadays with the Christian armies, it may easily lose the
battle.
Machiavelli, Discourses, II, 16
33 To make an army victorious in battle it is necessary to
inspire them with confidence, so as to make them believe
that the victory will be theirs under any circumstances.
But to give an army such confidence they must be well
armed and disciplined, and the men must know each
other; such confidence and discipline, however, can exist
only where the troops are natives of the same country,
and have lived together for some time. It is necessary
also that they should esteem their general, and have
confidence in his ability; zmd this will not fail to be the
case when they see him orderly, watchful, and
courageous, and that he maintains the dignity of his rank
by a proper reputation. All this he will do by punishing
faults, by not fatiguing his troops unnecessarily, by
Strictly fulfilling his promises, by showing them that
victory is easy, and by concealing or making light of the
dangers which he discerns from afar.
Machiavelli, Discourses, III, 33
34 There is no occupation so pleasant as the military one, an
occupation both noble in execution (for the strongest,
most generous, and proudest of all virtues is valor) and
noble in its cause; there is no more just and universal
service than the protection of the peace and greatness of
your country. ... Death is more abject, more lingering
and distressing, in bed than in battle; fevers and catarrhs
are as painful and fatal as a harquebus shot. Whoever is
prepared to bear valiantly the accidents of everyday life
would not have to swell his courage to become a soldier.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
35 Hotspur. | remember, when the fight was done,
When | was dry with rage and extreme toil.
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress’d,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap’d
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;
He was perfumed like a milliner;
And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took’t away again:
Who therewith angry, when it next came there.
Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk’d.
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by.
He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He question’d me; amongst the rest, demanded
My prisoners in your Majesty’s behalf.
| then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester’d with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience.
Answer’d neglectingly | Know not what.
He should, or he should not; for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman
Of guns and drums and wounds—God save the mark! —
And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was.
This villainous salt-petre should be digg’d
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, I, iii, 30
36 Vernon. | have learn’d,
The King himself in person is set forth,
Or hitherwards intended speedily,
With strong and mighty preparation.
Hotspur. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son,
The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,
And his comrades, that daff'd the world aside.
And bid it pass?
Ver. Ail fumish'd, all in arms;
All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed;
Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
| saw young Harry, with his beaver on.
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d,
Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury,
And vaulted with such case into his seat,
As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
Shakespeare, IV, IV, i, 90
37 Prince of Wales. Tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these
that come after?
Falstaff. Mine, Hal, mine.
Prince. | did ncvxr see such pitiful rascals,
Fal. Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder,
food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better: tush,
man, mortal men, mortal men.
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, IV, il, 67
38 Othello. O, now, for ever
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump.
The spirit-stirring drum, the car-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit.
Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!
Shakespeare, Othello, III, tii, 347
39 Blessed be those happy Ages that were Strangers to the
dreadful Fury of these devilish Instruments of Artillery,
whose Inventor | am satisfy’d is now in Hell, receiving the
Reward of his cursed Invention, which is the Cause that
very often a cowardly base Hand takes away the Life of
the bravest Gentleman, and that in the midst of that
Vigour and Resolution which animates and inflames the
Bold, a chance Bullet (shot perhaps by one that fled, and
was frighted at the very Flash the mischievous Piece
gave, when it went off) coming no Body knows how, or
from whence, in a Moment puts a Period to the brave
Designs, and the Life of one, that deserv’d to have
Surviv'd many Years.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 38
40 | know not how, but martial men are given to love: | think
it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly
ask to be paid in pleasures.
Bacon, Of Lore
41 A commander of an army in chief, if he be not popular,
Shall not be beloved, nor feared as he ought to be by his
army, and consequently cannot perform that office with
good success. He must therefore be industrious, valiant,
affable, liberal and fortunate, that he may gain an
opinion both of sufficiency and of loving his soldiers. This
is popularity, and breeds in the soldiers both desire and
courage to recommend themselves to his favour; and
protects the severity of the general, in punishing, when
need is, the mutinous or negligent soldiers. But this love
of soldiers, if caution be not given of the commander’s
fidelity, is a dangerous thing to sovereign power;
especially when it is in the hands of an assembly not
popular. It belongeth therefore to the safety of the
people, both that they be good conductors and faithful
subjects, to whom the sovereign commits his armies.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 30
42 Satan. Innumerable force of Spirits arm’d
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power oppos’d
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav’n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 101
43 The preservation of the army, and in it of the whole
commonwealth, requires an absolute obedience to the
command of every superior officer, and it is justly death
to disobey or dispute the most dangerous or
unreasonable of them.
Locke, II Civil Government, XI, 139
44 He [the king of Brobdingnag] was amazed to hear me
talk of a mercenary standing army in the midst of peace,
and among a free people. He said, if we were governed by
our own consent in the persons of our representatives, he
could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against
whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion,
whether a private man’s house might not better be
defended by himself, his children, and family; than by
half a dozen rascals picked up at a venture in the streets,
for small wages, who might gel an hundred times more by
cutting their throats.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Il, 6
45 The trade of a so/dier is held the most honourable of all
others: because a so/dieris a Yahoo hired to kill in cold
blood as many of his own species, who have never
offended him, as possibly he can.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 3
46 Desertion in our day’s has grown to a very great height;
in consequence of which it was judged proper to punish
those delinquents with death; and yet their number did
not diminish. The reason is very natural; a soldier,
accustomed to venture his life, despises, or affects to
despise, the danger of losing it. He is habituated to the
fear of shame; it would have been therefore much better
to have continued a punishment which branded him with
infamy for life; the penalty was pretended to be
increased, while it really diminished.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, VI, 12
47 \|t is said that God is always for the big battalions.
Voltaire, Letter to M. Le Riche (Feb. 6, 1770)
48 We talked of war. Johnson. "Every man thinks meanly of
himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been
at sea." Boswell. "Lord Mansfield does not." Johnson. "Sir,
if Lord Mansfield were in a company of General Officers
and Admirals who have been in service, he would shrink;
he’d wish to creep under the table." Boswell. "No; he’d
think he could try them all." Johnson. "Yes, if he could
catch them: but they’d try him much sooner. No, Sir; were
Socrates and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden both present
in any company, and Socrates to say, ‘Follow me, and
hear a lecture on philosophy’; and Charles, laying his
hand on his sword, to say, ‘Follow me, and dethrone the
Czar’; aman would be ashamed to follow Socrates. Sir,
the impression is universal; yet it is strange. As to the
sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck to the
Space below, you see the utmost extremity of human
misery; such crowding, such filth, such stench!" Boswell.
"Yet sailors are happy." Johnson. "They are happy as
brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh meat,—with the
grossest sensuality. But, Sir, the profession of soldiers and
sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence
those who have got over fear, which is so general a
weakness."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 10, 1778)
49 Without regarding the danger... young volunteers never
enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war; and
though they have scarce any chance of preferment, they
figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a thousand
occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which
never occur. These romantic hopes make the whole price
of their blood. Their pay is less than that of common
labourers, and in actual service their fatigues are much
greater.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 10
50 The art of war... as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so
in the progress of improvement it necessarily becomes
one of the most complicated among them. The state of
the mechanical, as well as of some other arts, with which
it is necessarily connected, determines the degree of
perfection to which it is capable of being carried at any
particular time. But in order to carry it to this degree of
perfection, it is necessary that it should become the sole
or principal occupation of a particular class of citizens,
and the division of labour is as necessary for the
improvement of this, as of every other art. Into other arts
the division of labour is naturally introduced by the
prudence of individuals, who find that they promote their
private interest better by confining themselves to a
particular trade than by exercising a great number. But it
is the wisdom of the state only which can render the
trade of a soldier a particular trade separate and distinct
from all others. A private citizen who, in time of profound
peace, and without any particular encouragement from
the public, should spend the greater part of his time in
military exercises, might, no doubt, both improve himself
very much in them, and amuse himself very well; but he
certainly would not promote his own interest. It is the
wisdom of the state only which can render it for his
interest to give up the greater part of his time to this
peculiar occupation: and states have not always had this
wisdom, even when their circumstances had become
such that the preservation of their existence required
that they should have it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
51 Before the invention of firearms, that army was superior
in which the soldiers had, each individually, the greatest
skill and dexterity in the use of their arms. Strength and
agility of body were of the highest consequence, and
commonly determined the state of battles. But this skill
and dexterity in the use of their arms could be acquired
only, in the same manner as fencing is at present, by
practising, not in great bodies, but each man separately,
in a particular school, under a particular master, or with
his own particular equals and companions. Since the
invention of firearms, strength and agility of body, or
even extraordinary dexterity and skill in the use of arms,
though they are far from being of no consequence, are,
however, of less consequence. The nature of the weapon,
though it by no means puts the awkward upon a level
with the skilful, puts him more nearly so than he ever was
before. All the dexterity and skill, it is supposed, which
are necessary for using it, can be well enough acquired
by practising in great bodies.
Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command
are qualititt which, in modern armies, are of more
importance towards determining the fate of battles than
the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their
arms. But the noise of firearms, the smoke, and the
invisible death to which every man feels himself every
moment exposed as soon as he comes within cannon-
shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be
well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to
maintain any considerable degree of this regularity,
order, and prompt obedience, even in the beginning of a
modem battle. In an ancient battle there was no noise but
what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke,
there was no invisible cause of wounds or death. Every
man, till some mortal weapon actually did approach him,
saw clearly that no such weapon was near him. In these
circumstances, and among troops who had some
confidence in their own skill and dexterity in the use of
their arms, it must have been a good deal less difficult to
preserve some degree of regularity and order, not only in
the beginning, but through the whole progress of an
ancient battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly
defeated. But the habits of regularity, order, and prompt
obedience to command can be acquired only by troops
which are exercised in great bodies.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
52 A militia ... in whatever manner it may be either
disciplined or exercised, must always be much inferior to
a well-disciplined and well-exercised standing army.
The soldiers who are exercised only once a week, or
once a month, can never be so expert in the use of their
arms as those who are exercised every day, or every
other day.... The soldiers who are bound to obey their
officer only once a week or once a month, and who are at
all other times at liberty to manage their own affairs their
own way, without being in any respect accountable to
him, can never be under the same awe in his presence,
can never have the same disposition to ready obedience,
with those whose whole life and conduct are every day
directed by him, and who every day even rise and go to
bed, or at least retire to their quarters, according to his
orders. In what is called discipline, or in the habit of
ready' obedience, a militia must always be still more
inferior to a standing army than it may sometimes be in
what is called the manual exercise, or in the management
and use of its arms. But in modern war the habit of ready
and instant obedience is of much greater consequence
than a considerable superiority in the management of
arms.,..
A militia of any kind... however, which has served for
several successive campaigns in the field, becomes in
every respect a standing army. The soldiers are every day
exercised in the use of their arms, and, being constantly
under the command of their officers, are habituated to
the same prompt obedience which takes place in
standing armies. What they were before they took the
field IS of little importance. They necessarily become in
every respect a standing army after they have passed a
few campaigns in it. Should the war in America drag out
through another campaign, the American militia may
Income in every respect a match for that standing army
of which the valour appeared, in (he last war, at least not
inferior to that of the hardiest veterans of France and
Spain.
This distinction being well understood, the history of
all ages, it will be found, bears testimony to the
irresistible superiority which a well-regulated standing
army has over a militia.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
53 Men of republican principles have been jealous of a
standing army as dangerous to liberty. It certainly is so
wherever the interest of the general and that of the
principal officers are not necessarily connected with the
support of the constitution of the state, .. , But where the
sovereign is himself the general, and the principal
nobility and gentry of the country the chief officers of the
army, where the military force is placed under the
command of those who have the greatest interest in the
support of the civil authority, because they have
themselves the greatest share of that authority, a
standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. On the
contrary, it may in some eases be favourable to liberty.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
54 The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity
to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved peace
by a constant preparation for war; and while justice
regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations
on their confines that they were as little disposed to
endure as to offer an injury.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, |
55 In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms
was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a
country to love, a property to defend, and some share in
enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as
duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom
was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually
improved into an art, and degraded into a trade.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, |
56 In the various states of society armies are recruited from
very different motives. Barbarians are urged by their love
of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by
a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of
a monarchy are animated by a sentiment of honour; but
the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire
must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or
compelled by the dread of punishment.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XVII
57 Cold, poverty, and a life of danger and fatigue fortify the
strength and courage of barbarians. In every age they
have oppressed the polite and peaceful nations of China,
India, and Persia, who neglected, and still neglect, to
counterbalance these natural powers by the resources of
military art. The warlike states of antiquity, Greece,
Macedonia, and Rome, educated a race of soldiers;
exercised their bodies, disciplined their courage,
multiplied their forces by regular evolutions, and
converted the iron which they possessed into strong and
serviceable weapons. But this superiority insensibly
declined with their laws and manners: and the feeble
policy of Constantine and his successors armed and
instructed, for the ruin of the empire, the rude valour of
the barbarian mercenaries. The military art has been
changed by the invention of gunpowder; which enables
man to command the two most powerful agents of nature,
air and fire. Mathematics, chemistry, mechanics,
architecture, have been applied to the service of war; and
the adverse parties oppose to each other the most
elaborate modes of attack and of defence. Historians may
indignantly observe that the preparations of a siege
would found and maintain a flourishing colony; yet we
cannot be displeased that the subversion of a city should
be a work of cost and difficulty; or that an industrious
people should be protected by those arts which survive
and supply the decay of military virtue. Cannon and
fortifications now form an impregnable barrier against the
Tartar horse; and Europe is secure from any future
irruption of barbarians; since, before they can conquer,
they must cease to be barbarous. Their gradual advances
in the science of war would always be accompanied, as
we may learn from the example of Russia, with a
proportionable improvement in the arts of peace and civil
policy; and they themselves must deserve a place among
the polished nations whom they subdue.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVIII
58 The discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather
than by study: the talents of a commander are
appropriated to those calm, though rapid, minds, which
nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations:
the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a
moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may
be numbered with the epic poems created from the rules
of criticism.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Lill
59 The disciplined armies always kept on foot on the
continent of Europe, though they bear a malignant
aspect to liberty and economy, have, notwithstanding,
been productive of the signal advantage of rendering
sudden conquests impracticable, and of preventing that
rapid desolation which used to mark the progress of war
prior to their introduction.
Hamilton, Federalist 8
60 The authorities essential to the common defence are
these: to raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to
prescribe rules for the government of both; to direct their
operations; to provide for their support. These powers
ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible
to foresee or define the extent and variety of national
exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of
the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.
Hamilton, Federalist 23
61 As far as an army may be considered as a dangerous
weapon of power, it had better be in those hands of
which the people are most likely to be jealous than in
those of which they are least likely to be jealous- For it is
a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that
the people are always most in danger when the means of
injuring their rights are in the possession of those of
whom they entertain the least suspicion.
Hamilton, Federalist 25
62 Soldiers. Castles with lofty
Ramparts retaining,
Maids who are haughty,
Scornful, disdaining,
Fain I'd be gaining!
Bold is the venture,
Grand is the pay!
We let the trumpet
Summon us, wooing,
Calling to pleasure.
Oft to undoing.
That is a storming!
Life in its splendour!
Maidens and castles
Both must surrender.
Bold is the venture,
Grand is the pay!
Then are the soldiers
Off and away.
Goethe, Faust, |, 884
63 Of all armies, those most ardently desirous of war are
democratic armies, and of all nations, those most fond of
peace are democratic nations; and what makes these
facts still more extraordinary is that these contrary
effects are produced at the same time by the principle of
equality.
All the members of the community, being alike,
constantly harbor the wish and discover the possibility of
changing their condition and improving their welfare; this
makes them fond of peace, which is favorable to industry
and allows every man to pursue his own little
undertakings to their completion. On the other hand, this
Same equality makes soldiers dream of fields of battle, by
increasing the value of military honors in the eyes of
those who follow the profession of arms and by rendering
those honors accessible to all. In either case the
restlessness of the heart is the same, the taste for
enjoyment is insatiable, the ambition of success as great;
the means of gratifying it alone are different.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ill, 22
64 Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!’ he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why.
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them.
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred....
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
65 Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines
honouring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best,
our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business;
and that when actively engaged therein, we are
surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we
are, that is true. But butchers also, and butchers of the
bloodiest badge, have been all martial commanders
whom the world, invariably delights to honour. And as for
the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business,
ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty
generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will
triumphantly plant the sperm whaleship at least among
the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting
the charge in question to be true, what disordered
slippery decks of a whale ship are comparable to the
unspeakable carrion of those battlefields from which so
many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if
the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of
the soldier’s profession; let me assure ye that many a
veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would
quickly recoil at the apparition of the soerm whale’s vast
tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what
are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the
interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
Melville, Moby Dick, XXIV
66 The soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying,
but being slain. This, without well knowing its own
meaning, the world honours it for.
Ruskin, Unto This Last, |, 17
67 In war the most deeply considered plans have no
significance. ... All depends on the way unexpected
movements of the enemy—that cannot be foreseen—are
met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is
handled.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 9
68 Prince Andrew. Not only does a good army commander
not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs
the absence of the highest and best human attributes—
love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 11
69 Rostov knew by experience that men always lie when
describing military exploits... that nothing happens in war
at all as we can imagine or relate it.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 12
70 Prince Andrew. But what is war? What is needed for
success in warfare? What are the habits of the military?
The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying,
treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a
country’s inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to
provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed
military craft. The habits of the military class are the
absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness,
ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in
spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by
everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military
uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the
highest rewards.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 25
71 The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and
orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist
criticizes them with looks of importance, when they relate
to a battle that has been lost, and the very worst
dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious
people fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits,
when they relate to a battle that has been won.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 28
72 The result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a
commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are
stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered
men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the
army.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 35
73 The activity of a commander in chief does not at all
resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we
sit at ease in our studies examining some campaign on
the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that
side in a certain known locality, and begin our plans from
some given moment. A commander in chief is never
dealing with the beginning of any event—the position
from which we always contemplate it. The commander in
chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events
and so he never can at any moment consider the whole
import of an event that is occurring.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XI, 2
74 The army has always been the basis of power, and it is so
today. Power is always in the hands of those who
command it.
Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
75 An army, considered ideally, is an organ for the state’s
protection; but it is far from being such in its origin, since
at first an army is nothing but a ravenous and lusty horde
quartered in a conquered country; yet the cost of such an
incubus may come to be regarded as an insurance
against further attack, and so what is in its real basis an
inevitable burden resulting from a chance balance of
forces may be justified in afterthought as a rational
device for defensive purposes.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 3
76 The military classes, since they inherit the blood and
habits of conquerors, naturally love war and their
irrational combativeness is reinforced by interest; for in
war officers can shine and rise, while the danger of death,
to a brave man, is rather a spur and a pleasing
excitement than a terror. A military class is therefore
always recalling, foretelling, and meditating war; it
fosters artificial and senseless Jealousies toward other
governments that possess armies; and finally, as often as
not, it precipitates disaster by bringing about the
objectless struggle on which it has set its heart.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Il, 3
14.3 The Conditions of Peace
It is said, in some of the passages below, that war is for the
sake of peace; and it is also said that an unjust peace is to
be preferred to a just war. The latter statement is challenged
by those who question the genuineness of peace without
justice and who point out that oppressive injustice breeds
violence and rebellion which, as Locke observes in
commenting on the etymology of the word (re-bellare), is a
return to war. This difference of opinion is epitomized in two
views of the Pax Romana —the Virgilian view of it as a boon
that Rome conferred by conquest and the opposite view that
Tacitus gives voice to in the words of the defeated British
chieftain, Galgacus: the Romans make a desolation, he said,
and call it peace.
The basic distinction that emerges in Section 14.1 on
Warfare and the State of War is of primary relevance to the
conception of peace as a positive, not merely a negative,
state of affairs—not just the absence of actual fighting, but
the elimination of the need for recourse to violence in order
to settle disputes. Animals, it has been asserted, have only
one way of settling their differences— by fighting; but men
have two ways—by fighting and by law. Civil society, Locke
tells us, is a state of peace in which the umpirage of
government and the reign of law provide the
instrumentalities for settling disputes without recourse to
violence; for the use of authorized force by government is
not violence. Other writers, notably Augustine and Aquinas,
fill out this positive conception of peace by the notion that
genuine concord is essential to the tranquility of order and
by the insistence that genuine concord is impossible without
justice and love.
Both here and in Section 14.1, there is some discussion of
the possibility of abolishing war—not merely actual warfare,
but also the state of war. The negative voices on this
subject, found mainly in Section 14.1, regard war as
inevitable and irremediable, given man as he is and
societies as they are. Sometimes this is said with regret, as
by Freud, and sometimes with acquiescence, as by Hegel. Of
an opposite tenor is the hope that emerges here from the
recognition that, the ultimate cause of war being anarchy,
the ultimate condition of peace is government. If local civil
peace has been established here and there by local
government, then perhaps there is some prospect for world
civil peace through world government. The reader will find
this insight presented and this hope weighed in passages
drawn from Dante, Kant, The Federalist, and Tennyson; but
in the absence of twentieth-century voices, the impact of
the discussion is not as encouraging as it might be.
As already indicated, materials of relevance to the future
of war and peace will be found in Section 14.1; and with
regard to the role of government in the establishment of civil
peace, turn to Section 10.3 on Government: Its Nature,
Necessity, and Forms.
1 Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing
Shall offend them.
Psalm 119:165
2 When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his
enemies to be at peace with him.
Proverbs 16:7
3 (The Lord] shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke
many people: and they shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation
Shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they
leam war any more.
Isaiah 2:4
4 The wolf... shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and
the fading together; and a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11:6
5 Trygaeus. Think of all the thousand pleasures.
Comrades, which to Peace we owe,
All the life of ease and comfort
Which she gave us long ago:
Figs and olives, wine and myrtles,
Luscious fruits preserv’ed and dried,
Banks of fragrant violets, blowing
By the ciystal fountain’s side;
Scenes for which our hearts are yearning,
Joys that we have missed so long-
—Comrades, here is Peace returning,
Greet her back with dance and song!
Chorus. Welcome, welcome, best and dearest,
welcome, welcome, welcome, home.
We have looked and longed for thee,
Looking, longing, wondrously,
Once again our farms to see.
O the joy, the bliss, the rapture, really to behold thee
come.
Thou wast aye our chief enjoyment, thou wast aye our
greatest gain.
We who ply the farmer’s trade Used, through thy
benignant aid,
All the joys of life to hold.
Ah! the unbought pleasures free
Which we erst received of thee
In the merry days of old,
When thou wast our one salvation and our roasted
barley grain.
Now will all the tiny shoots.
Sunny vine and fig-tree sweet,
All the happy flowers and fruits.
Laugh for joy thy steps to greet.
Aristophanes, Peace, 571
6 Lacedaemonian envoys. lf great enmities are ever to be
really settled, we think it will be, not by the system of
revenge and military success, and by forcing an
opponent to swear to a treaty to his disadvantage, but
when the more fortunate combatant waives these his
privileges, to be guided by gentler feelings, conquers his
rival in generosity, and accords peace on more moderate
conditions than he expected. From that moment, instead
of the debt of revenge which violence must entail, his
adversary owes a debt of generosity to be paid in kind,
and is inclined by honour to stand to his agreement. And
men oftener act in this manner towards their greatest
enemies than where the quarrel is of less importance;
they are also by nature as glad to give way to those who
first yield to them, as they are apt to be provoked by
arrogance to risks condemned by their own judgment.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, IV, 19
7 Hermocrates. In the face of the universal consent that
peace is the first of blessings, how can we refuse to make
it amongst ourselves; or do you not think that the good
which you have, and the ills that you complain of, would
be better preserved and cured by quiet than by war; that
peace has its honours and splendours of a less perilous
kind, not to mention the numerous other blessings that
one might dilate on, with the not less numerous miseries
of war?
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, IV, 62
8 Athenian Stranger. No one can be a true statesman,
whether he aims at the happiness of the individual or
state, who looks only, or first of all, to external warfare;
nor will he ever be a sound legislator who orders peace
for the sake of war, and not war for the sake of peace.
Plato, Laws, |, 628B
9 Facts, as well as arguments, prove that the legislator
should direct all his military and other measures to the
provision of leisure and the establishment of peace. For
most of these military states are safe only while they are
at war, but fall when they have acquired their empire;
like unused iron they lose their temper in time of peace.
And for this the legislator is to blame, he never having
taught them how to lead the life of peace.
Aristotle, Politics, 1334a3
10 An unjust peace is better than a just war.
Cicero, Ad Atticum, VII, 14
11 The only excuse for going to war is to be able to live in
peace undisturbed. When victory is won we should spare
those who have not been bloodthirsty or barbarous in
their warfare.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 11
12 Rome, 't is thine alone, with awful sway. To rule mankind,
and make the world obey. Disposing peace and war by
thy own majestic way;
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free: These are
imperial arts, and worthy thee.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
13 There is no employment that gives so keen and quick a
relish for peace as husbandry and a country life, which
leave in men all that kind of courage that makes them
ready to fight in defence of their own, while it destroys
the licence that breaks out into acts of injustice and
rapacity.
Plutarch, Numa Pompilius
14 Janus, whether in remote antiquity he were a demigod or
a king, was certainly a great lover of civil and social
unity, and one who reclaimed men from brutal and
savage living; for which reason they figure him with two
faces, to represent the two states and conditions out of
the one of which he brought mankind, to lead them into
the other. His temple at Rome has two gates, which they
call the gates of war, because they stand open in the
time of war, and shut in the times of peace; of which
latter there was very seldom an example, for, as the
Roman empire was enlarged and extended, it was so
encompassed with barbarous nations and enemies to be
resisted, that it was seldom or never at peace. Only in the
time of Augustus Cscsar, after he had overcome Antony,
this temple was shut; as likewise once before, when
Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls; but then it
was not long before, wars breaking out, the gates were
again opened.
But, during the reign of Numa, those gates were never
seen open a single day, but continued constantly shut for
a space of forty-three years together; such an entire and
universal cessation of war existed. For not only had the
people of Rome itself been softened and charmed into a
peaceful temper by the just and mild rule of a pacific
prince, but even the neighbouring cities, as if some
salubrious and gentle air had blown from Rome upon
them, began to experience a change of feeling, and
partook in the general longing for the sweets of peace
and order, and for life employed in the quiet tillage of
soil, bringing up of children, and worship of the gods.
Festival days and sports, and the secure and peaceful
interchange of friendly visits and hospitalities prevailed
all through the whole of Italy.
Plutarch, Numa Pompilius
15 To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they [the Romans] give
the lying name of empire; they make a desolation and
call it peace.
Tacitus, Agricola
16 [The earthly city] desires earthly peace for the sake of
enjoying earthly goods, and it makes war in order to
attain to this peace; since, if it has conquered, and there
remains no one to resist it, it enjoys a peace which it had
not while there were opposing parties who contested for
the enjoyment of those things which were too small to
satisfy both This peace is purchased by toilsome wars; it
is obtained by what they style a glorious victory. Now,
when victory remains with the party which had the juster
cause, who hesitates to congratulate the victor, and style
it a desirable peace? These things, then, are good things,
and without doubt the gifts of God. But if they neglect
the better things of the heavenly city, which are secured
by eternal victory and peace never-ending, and so
inordinately covet these present good things that they
believe them to be the only desirable things, or love
them better than those things which are believed to be
better—if this be so, then it is necessary that misery
follow and ever increase.
Augustine, City of God, XV, 4
17 Peace is a good so great, that even in this earthly and
mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure,
nothing we desire with such zest, or find to be more
thoroughly gratifying.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 11
18 It is... with the desire for peace that wars are waged,
even by those who take pleasure in exercising their
warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is
obvious that peace is the end sought for by war. For every
man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war
by making peace. For even they who intentionally
interrupt the peace in which they are living have no
hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace
that suits them better. They do not, therefore, wish to
have no peace, but only one more to their mind.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 12
19 Even wicked men wage war to maintain the peace of
their own circle, and wish that, if possible, all men
belonged to them, that all men and things might serve
but one head, and might, either through love or fear,
yield themselves to peace with him!
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 12
20 Peace between man and man is well-ordered concord.
Domestic peace is the well-ordered concord between
those of the family who rule and those who obey. Civil
peace is a similar concord among the citizens. The peace
of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and
harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in
God. The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 13
21 If one man concord with another, not by a spontaneous
will but through being forced, as it were, by the fear of
some evil that threatens him, such concord is not really
peace, because the order of each concordant is not
observed, but is disturbed by some fear-inspiring cause.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—lII, 29, 1
22 Even those who seek war and dissension desire nothing
but peace, which they do not consider themselves to
have. For... there is no peace when a man agrees with
another man counter to what he would prefer.
Consequently men seek by means of war to break this
concord, because it is a defective peace, in order that
they may obtain a peace in which nothing is contrary to
their will. Hence all wars are waged that men may find a
more perfect peace than that which they had before.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—lII, 29, 2
23 Peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice
removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of
charity directly, since charity, according to its very
notion, causes peace.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il—Il, 29, 3
24 The proper work of mankind taken as a whole is to
exercise continually its entire capacity for intellectual
growth, first, in theoretical matters, and, secondarily, as
an extension of theory in practice. And since the partisa
Sample of the whole, and since individual men find that
they grow in prudence and wisdom when they can sit
quietly, it is evident that mankind, too, is most free and
easy to carry on its work when it enjoys the quiet and
tranquillity of peace.
Dante, De Monarchia, I, 4
25 Wherever there can be contention, there judgment
should exist; otherwise things would exist imperfectly,
without their own means of adjustment or correction,
which is impossible, since in things necessary, God or
Nature is not defective. Between any two governments,
neither of which is in any way subordinate to the other,
contention can arise either through their own fault or that
of their subjects. This is evident. Therefore there should
be judication between them. And since neither can know
the affairs of the other, not being subordinated (for
among equals there is no authority), there must bea
third and wider power which can rule both within its own
jurisdiction. This third power is either the world-
government or it is not. If it is, we have reached our
conclusion; if it is not, it must in turn have its equal
outside its jurisdiction, and then it will need a third party
as judge, and so ad infinitum, which is impossible. So we
must arrive at a first and supreme judge for whom all
contentions are judicia-ble either directly or indirectly;
and this will be our world-governor or emperor. Therefore,
world-government is necessary for the world.
Dante, De Monarchia, I, 10
26 World government... must be understood in the sense
that it governs mankind on the basis of what all have in
common and that by a common law it leads all toward
peace. This common norm or law should be received by
local governments in the same way that practical
intelligence in action receives its major premises from the
speculative intellect. To these it adds its own particular
minor premises and then draws particular conclusions for
the sake of its action. These basic norms not only can
come from a single source, but must do so in order to
avoid confusion among universal principles. Moses
himself followed this pattern in the law which he
composed, for, having chosen the chiefs of the several
tribes, he left them the lesser judgments, reserving to
himself alone the higher and more general. These
common norms were then used by the tribal chiefs
according to their special needs. Therefore, it is better for
mankind to be governed by one, not by many; and hence
by a single governor, the world ruler; and if it is better, it
is pleasing to God, since He always wills the better. And
when there are only two alternatives—the better is also
the best, and is consequently not only pleasing to God,
but the choice of "one" rather than "many" is what most
pleases Him. Hence it follows that mankind lives best
under a single government, and therefore that such a
government is necessary for the well-being of the world.
Dante, De Monorchia, I, 14
27 The reins of man are held by a double driver according to
man’s twofold end; one is the supreme pontiff, who
guides mankind with revelations to life eternal, and the
other is the emperor, who guides mankind with
philosophical instructions to temporal happiness. And
since none or very few (and these with difficulty) can
reach this goal, unless a free mankind enjoys the
tranquility of peace and the waves of distracting greed
are stilled, this must be the constant aim of him who
guides the globe and whom we call Roman Prince, in
order that on this threshing floor of life mortals may exist
free and in peace.
Dante, De Monorchia, III, 16
28 Let none presume to tell me that the Pen is preferable to
the Sword; for be they who they will, | shall tell them they
know not what they say: For the Reason they give, and on
which chiefly they rely, is, that the Labour of the Mind
exceeds that of the Body, and that the Exercise of Arms
depends only the Body, as if the use of them were the
Business of Porters, which requires nothing but much
Strength. Or, as if This, which we who profess it call
Chivalry, did not include the Acts of Fortitude, which
depend very much upon the Understanding. Or else, as if
that Warriour, who commands an Army or defends a City
besieg’d, did not labour as much with the Mind as with
the Body. If this be not so, let Experience teach us
whether it be possible by bodily Strength to discover or
guess the Intentions of an Enemy. The forming Designs,
laying of Stratagems, overcoming of Difficulties, and
shunning of Dangers, are all Works of the Understanding,
wherein the Body has no Share, It being therefore
evident, that the Exercise of Arms requires the Help of the
Mind as well as Learning, let us see in the next place,
whether the Scholar or the Soldier’s Mind undergoes the
greatest Labour. Now this may be the better known, by
regarding the End and Object each of them aims at; for
that Intention is to be most valued, which makes the
noblest End its Object. The Scope and End of Learning, |
mean, human Learning (in this Place | speak not of
Divinity, whose aim is to guide Souls to Heaven, for no
other can equal a Design so infinite as that) Is to give a
Perfection to distributive Justice, bestowing upon every
one his due, and to procure and cause good Laws to be
observ’d; an End really Generous, Great, and worthy of
high Commendation; but yet not equal to that which
Knight-Errantry tends to, whose Object and End is Peace,
which is the greatest Blessing Man can \vish for in this
Life. And therefore the first good News the World receiv’d,
was that the Angels brought in the Night, which was the
Beginning of our Day, when they sang in the Air, Glory to
God on high. Peace upon Earth, and to Men Good-will.
And the only manner of Salutation taught by the best
Master in Heaven, or upon Earth, to his Friends and
Favourites, was, that entring any House they should say.
Peace be to this House. And at other times he said to
them. My Peace 1 give to you. My Peace | leave to you.
Peace be among you. A Jewel and Legacy worthy of such
a Donor, a Jewel so precious, that without it there can be
no Happiness either in Earth or Heaven. This Peace is the
true End of War; for Arms and War are one and the same
thing.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 37
29 In the very heat of war the greatest security and
expectation of divine support must be in the unabated
desire, and invariable prospect of peace, as the only end
for which hostilities can be lawfully begun. So that in the
prosecution of war we must never carry the rage of it so
far, as to unlearn the nature and dispositions of men.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, Bk. IIl, XXV, 2
30 How rightly do we distinguish men by external
appearances rather than by internal qualities | Which of
us two Shall have precedence? Who will give place to the
other? The least clever. But | am as clever as he. We
should have to fight over this. He has four lackeys, and |
have only one. This can be seen; we have only to count. It
falls to me to yield, and | am a fool if | contest the matter.
By this means we are at peace, which is the greatest of
boons.
Pascal, Pensées, V, 319
31 No War, or Battails sound
Was heard the World around,
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked Chariot stood
Unstain’d with hostile blood,
The Trumpet spake not to the armed throng,
And Kings sate still with awfull eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
Milton, On the Morning of Christs Nativity, 53
32 Peace hath her victories
No less renownd then warr, new foes aries
Threatning to bind our soules with secular chaines:
Helpe us to save free Conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves whose Gospell is their maw.
Milton, To the Lord General! Cromwell May 1652
33 The more commonwealths there are, that have
contracted a joint treaty of peace, the less each of them
by itself is an object of fear to the remainder, or the less it
has the authority to make war. But it is so much the more
bound to observe the conditions of peace; that is, the less
independent, and the more bound to accommodate itself
to the general will of the contracting parties.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, Ill, 16
34 If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has
for peace sake to him who will lay violent hands upon it, |
desire it may be considered what kind of a peace there
will be in the world which consists only in violence and
rapine, and which is to be maintained only for the benefit
of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an
admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when
the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn
by the imperious wolf?
Locke, II Civil Government, XIX, 228
35 | should have wished to choose myself a country,
diverted, by a fortunate impotence, from the brutal love
of conquest, and secured, by a still more fortunate
situation, from the fear of becoming itself the conquest of
other States: a free city situated between several nations,
none of which should have any interest in attacking it,
while each had an interest in preventing it from being
attacked by the others; in short, a Republic which should
have nothing to tempt the ambition of its neighbours, but
might reasonably depend on their assistance in case of
need. It follow's that a republican State so happily
situated could have nothing to fear but from itself; and
that, if its members trained themselves to the use of
arms, it would be rather to keep alive that military ardour
and courageous spirit which are so proper among
freemen, and tend to keep up their taste for liberty, than
from the necessity of providing for their defence.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Dedication
36 Johnson. |t is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in
peace. Were one half of mankind brave, and one half
cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards.
Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all
would be continually fighting: but being all cowards, we
go on very well.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 28, 1778)
37 Hereafter, perhaps,.. . the inhabitants of all the different
quarters of the world may arrive at that equality of
courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear, can
alone overaw'e the injustice of independent nations into
some sort of respect for the rights of one another. But
nothing seems more likely to establish this equality of
force than that mutual communication of knowledge and
of all sorts of improvements which an extensive
commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or
rather necessarily, carries along with it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 7
38 The... daring [Roman General] Probus pursued his Gathe
victories, passed the Rhine, and displayed his invincible
eagles on the banks of the Elbe and the Neckar. He was
fully convinced that nothing could reconcile the minds of
the barbarians to peace, unless they experienced in their
own country the calamities of war.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XI!
39 The natural state of nations as well as of individual men
is a State which it is a duty to pass out of, in order to
enter into a legal state. Hence, before this transition
occurs, all the right of nations and all the external
property of states acquirable or maintainable by war are
merely provisory; and they can only become peremptory
in a universal union of states analogous to that by which
a nation becomes a state. It is thus only that a real state
of peace could be established. But with the too great
extension of such a union of states over vast regions, any
government of it, and consequently the protection of its
individual members, must at last become impossible; and
thus a multitude of such corporations would again bring
round a state of war. Hence the perpetual peace, which is
the ultimate end of all the right of nations, becomes in
fact an impracticable idea. The political principles,
however, which aim at such an end, and which enjoin the
formation of such unions among the states as may
promote a continuous approximation to a perpetual
peace, are not impracticable; they are as practicable as
this approximation itself, which is a practical problem
involving a duty, and founded upon the right of
individual men and states.
Kant, Science of Right, 61
40 The morally practical reason utters within us its
irrevocable veto: There shall be no war. So there ought to
be no war, neither between me and you in the condition
of nature, nor between us as members of states which,
although internally in a condition of law, are still
externally in their relation to each other in a condition of
lawlessness; for this is not the way by which any one
should prosecute his right. Hence the question no longer
is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or nota
real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving
ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we
must act on the supposition of its being real. We must
work for what may perhaps not be realized, and establish
that constitution which yet seems best adapted to bring
it about (mayhap republicanism in all states, together
and separately). And thus we may put an end to the evil
of wars, which have been the chief interest of the internal
arrangements of all the states without exception. And
although the realization of this purpose may always
remain but a pious wish, yet we do certainly not deceive
ourselves in adopting the maxim of action that will guide
us in working incessantly for it; for it is a duty to do this.
To suppose that the moral law within us is itself
deceptive, would be sufficient to excite the horrible wish
rather to be deprived of all reason than to live under such
deception, and even to see oneself, according to such
principles, degraded like the lower animals to the level of
the mechanical play of nature.
Kant, Science of Right, Conclusion
41 Confidence in the principles of an enemy must remain
even during war, otherwise a peace could never be
concluded; and hostilities would degenerate into a war of
extermination since war in fact is but the sad resource
employed in a state of nature in defence of rights; force
standing there in lieu of juridical tribunals. Neither of the
two parties can be accused of injustice, since for that
purpose a juridical decision would be necessary. But here
the event of a battle (as formerly the judgments of God)
determine the justice of either party; since between
states there cannot be a war of punishment no
subordination existing between them. A war, therefore,
which might cause the destruction of both parties at
once, together with the annihilation of every right, would
permit the conclusion of a perpetual peace only upon the
vast burial-ground of the human species.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Section I, 6
42 With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but
of war; though not of open war, at least, ever ready to
break out. A state of peace must therefore be established;
for, in order to be sheltered against every act of hostility,
it is not sufficient that none is committed; one neighbour
must guarantee to another his personal security, which
cannot take place except in a state of legislation; without
which one may treat another as an enemy, after having in
vain demanded this protection.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Section II, Intro.
43 If it is a duty, if the hope can even be conceived, of
realizing, though by an endless progress, the reign of
public right—perpetual peace, which will succeed to the
suspensions of hostilities, hitherto named treaties of
peace, is not then a chimera, but a problem, of which
time, probably abridged by the uniformity of the progress
of the human mind, promises us the solution.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Appendix, 2
44 In cases where it may be doubtful on which side justice
lies, what better umpires could be desired by two violent
factions, flying to arms and tearing a State to pieces,
than the representatives of confederate Slates not heated
by the local flame? To the impartiality of judges they
would unite the affection of friends. Happy would it be if
such a remedy for its infirmities could be enjoyed by all
free governments; if a project equally effectual could be
established for the universal peace of mankind!
Madison, Federalist 43
45 War is on its last legs; and a universal peace is as Sure as
is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal
governments over feudal forms. The question for us is
only How soon?
Emerson, War
46 The war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags
were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful
realm in awe.
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal
law.
Tennyson, Lacksley Hall, 127
47 | devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the
gradual advent of some sort of a socialistic equilibrium.
The fatalistic view of the war-function is to me nonsense,
for | Know that war-making is due to definite motives and
subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms,
just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole
nations are the armies, and the science of destruction
vies in intellectual refinement with the sciences of
production, | see that war becomes absurd and
impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant
ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims,
and nations must make common cause against them. |
see no reason why all this should not apply to yellow as
well as to white countries, and | look forward to a future
when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between
civilized peoples.
William James, Moral Equivalent of War
48 The only way to abolish war [is] to make peace heroic.
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, Il, 3
Chapter 15
HISTORY
Chapter 15 is divided into three sections: 15.1 History: The
Record of Events, 15.2 Progress, Regress, and Cycles in
History, and 15.3 Fate, Fortune, and Destiny.
Two meanings of the word "history" separate the texts
that we have placed in Section 15.1 and in Section 15.2. On
the one hand, we use the word to refer to an intellectual
discipline, a field of research and of scholarship, and a type
of literature. Thus understood, history is a subject taught
and studied; histories are books of a certain sort, having a
distinctive subject matter and style; and history is a kind of
knowledge to be contrasted with science and philosophy. On
the other hand, history consists of what has in fact
happened; anything that has a development through a span
of time or involves a sequence of events, has a history. In
both meanings of the term, history involves a reference to
the past and a location of events in time; and it usually
involves the ordering of events in a temporal sequence.
In Section 15.1, we have placed passages that discuss
the task of the historian as a student of the past and asa
writer about it, and that deal with history as an intellectual
discipline and as a form of literature. The quotations that we
have placed in Section 15.2 express reflections about the
course of history—the patterns of change that men think
they have discovered in the temporal sequence of events.
This leaves for Section 15.3 a third group of texts in which
writers speculate about the forces, factors, or agencies that
govern the course of history and wonder about the role of
human freedom in determining -the direction that history
takes.
15.1 History: The Record of Events
Among the passages included here are quotations from
eminent historians—Herodotus and Thucydides, Plutarch
and Tacitus, Hume, Gibbon, and Toynbee—in which they
reflect about the art of writing history and about the task of
the historian as a reporter and interpreter of the past. They
are concerned with the credibility of the stories they tell,
with the reliability of the evidence they advance for the
interpretations they give, with the significance of the past
for the present, and with the utility of studying history. Just
as the histories they have written differ in style, so they
differ in their accounts of the method or approach deemed
proper for the historian.
Included also are quotations from philosophers and
others who have thought about the character of history as
an intellectual discipline and as a distinct branch of human
knowledge. In certain respects, history is said to be more like
science than like poetry, at least in the kind of truth it claims
to have; but in other respects, it is said to be more like
poetry, not only in its narrative form but also in its
reflections on human life. In addition, there are passages
that take opposite sides on the question whether biography
is the core of history as the record of the influence that great
men have had upon the course of events; and passages that
express opposite views about whether the human race has
ever learned anything from the study of history, or learned
enough not to repeat the mistakes that have been made in
the past.
Some of the quotations attempt to distinguish different
kinds of history by reference to differences in subject matter,
and a few propose the project of a universal history— world
history or the history of the human race as a whole. There
are passing comments here on the laws or factors that
govern the course of history, but a fuller treatment of that
subject is reserved for Section 15.3.
1 For myself, my duty is to report all that is said; but | am
not obliged to believe it all alike—a remark which may be
understood to apply to my whole History.
Herodotus, History, Vil, 152
2 The way that most men deal with traditions, even
traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike
as they are delivered, without applying any critical test
whatever.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 20
3 With reference to the speeches in this history, some were
delivered before the war began, others while it was going
on; some | heard myself, others | got from various
quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry’ them word
for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make
the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of
them by the various occasions, of course adhering as
closely as possible to the general sense of what they
really said. And with reference to the narrative of events,
far from permitting myself to derive it from the first
source that came to hand, | did not even trust my own
impressions, but it rests partly on what | saw myself,
partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the
report being always tried by the most severe and detailed
tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour
from the want of coincidence between accounts of the
Same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising
sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from
undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of
romance in my history will, | fear, detract somewhat from
its interest, but if it be judged useful by those inquirers
who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to
the interpretation of the future, which in the course of
human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, |
Shall be content. In fine, | have written my work, not as
an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but
as a possession for all time.
Thucydides, Peloponnaian Wary I, 22
4 The Corinthians. There is ... no advantage in reflections on
the past further than may be of service to the present.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 123
5 Socrates. Because we do not know the truth about ancient
times, we make falsehood as much like truth as we can,
and so turn it to account.
Plato, Republic, Il, 382B
6 A history has to deal not with one action, but with one
period and all that happened in that to one or more
persons, however disconnected the several events may
have been.
Aristotle, Politics, 1459a22
7 The study of history is in the truest sense an education
and a training for political life.... The most instructive, or
rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity
the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of
others.
Polybius, Histories, |, 1
8 By far the greater number of historians concern
themselves with isolated wars and the incidents that
accompany them: while as to a general and
comprehensive scheme of events, their date, origin, and
catastrophe, no one as far as | Know has undertaken to
examine it. | thought it, therefore, distinctly my duty
neither to pass by myself, nor allow any one else to pass
by, without full study, a characteristic soecimen of the
dealings of Fortune at once brilliant and instructive in the
highest degree.
Polybius, Histories, |, 4
9 Men, who are persuaded that they get a competent view of
universal from episodical history, are very like persons
who should see the limbs of some body, which had once
been living and beautiful, scattered and remote; and
should imagine that to be quite as good as actually
beholding the activity and beauty of the living creature
itself.
Polybius, Histories, I, 4
10 If you take truth from history what is left is but an idle
unprofitable tale. Therefore, one must not shrink either
from blaming one’s friends or praising one’s enemies; nor
be afraid of finding fault with and commending the same
persons at different times. For it is impossible that men
engaged in public affairs should always be right, and
unlikely that they should always be wrong. Holding
ourselves, therefore, entirely aloof from the actors, we
must as historians make statements and pronounce
judgment in accordance with the actions themselves.
Polybius, Histories, |, 14
11 Surely an historian’s object should not be to amaze his
readers by a series of thrilling anecdotes; nor should he
aim at producing speeches which might have been
delivered, nor study dramatic propriety in details like a
writer of tragedy: but his function is above all to record
with fidelity what was actually said or done, however
commonplace it may be. For the purposes of history and
of the drama are not the same, but widely opposed to
each other. In the latter the object is to strike and delight
by words as true to nature as possible; in the former to
instruct and convince by genuine words and deeds.
Polybius, Histories, 11, 56
12 To remain ignorant of things that happened before you
were born is to remain a child- What is a human life worth
unless it is incorporated into the lives of one’s ancestors
and set in an historical context?
Cicero, Orator, XXXIV
13 The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind;
for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of
human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in
that record you can find for yourself and your country
both examples and warnings: fine things to lake as
models, base things, rotten through and through, to
avoid.
Livy, Early History of Rome, I, 1
14 In this work of mine, in which | have compared the lives
of the greatest men with one another, after passing
through those periods which probable reasoning can
reach to and real history find a footing in, | might very
well say of those that are farther off: "Beyond this there is
nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants
are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or
certainty any farther."
Plutarch, Theseus
15 So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the
truth of anything by history, when, on the one hand,
those who afterwards write it find long periods of lime
intercepting their view, and, on the other hand, the
contemporary records of any actions and lives, partly
through envy and ill-will, partly through favour and
flattery, pervert and distort truth.
Plutarch, Pericles
16 It was for the sake of others that | first commenced
writing biographies; but | find myself proceeding and
attaching myself to it for my own; the virtues of these
great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which |
may see how to adjust and adorn my own life.
Plutarch, Timoleon
17 My method ... is, by the study of history, and by the
familiarity acquired in writing, to habituate my memory
to receive and retain images of the best and worthiest
characters. | thus am enabled to free myself from any
ignoble, base, or vicious impressions, contracted from the
contagion of ill company that | may be unavoidably
engaged in, by the remedy of turning my thoughts ina
happy and calm temper to view these noble examples.
Plutarch, Timoleon
18 As we would wish that a painter who is to draw a
beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection,
should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly
express what is defective, because this would deform it,
and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or
indeed perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man
wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must
follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses or faults
that occur, through human passions or political
necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of
some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice;
and may be content without introducing them, curiously
and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of
tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never
succeeded in producing any human character so perfect
in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no
criticism.
Plutarch, Cimon
19 Such things as are not commonly known, and lie
scattered here and there in other men’s writings, or are
found amongst the old monuments and archives, | shall
endeavour to bring together; not collecting mere useless
pieces of learning, but adducing what may make his
disposition and habit of mind understood.
Plutarch, Nicias
20 If any man undertake to write a history that has to be
collected from materials gathered by observation and the
reading of works not easy to be got in all places, nor
written always in his own language, but many of them
foreign and dispersed in other hands, for him,
undoubtedly, it is in the first place and above all things
most necessary to reside in some city of good note,
addicted to liberal arts, and populous; where he may
have plenty of all sorts of books, and upon inquiry may
hear and inform himself of such particulars as, having
escaped the pens of writers, are more faithfully preserved
in the memories of men, lest his work be deficient in
many things, even those which it can least dispense with.
Plutarch, Demosthenes
21 Are you so much better off, O writer of history? Surely
You waste more time and more oil and thousands of
pages of paper
Costing a fortune: still, the laws of the craft are
demanding,
What with footnotes and research, cross references
and index.
But how does the harvest pay off? What profit in all of
this delving?
What historian gets as much as a clerk in a courtroom?
Juvenal, Satire VII
22 This | regard as history’s highest function, to let no
worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the
reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and
deeds.
Tacitus, Annals, Ill, 65
23 Now, after a revolution, when Rome is nothing but the
realm of a single despot, there must be good in carefully
noting and recording this period, for it is but few who
have the foresight to distinguish right from wrong or what
is sound from what is hurtful, while most men learn
wisdom from the fortunes of others. Still, though this is
instructive, it gives very little pleasure. ... | have to
present in succession the merciless biddings of a tyrant,
incessant prosecutions, faithless friendships, the ruin of
innocence, the same causes issuing in the same results,
and | am everywhere confronted by a wearisome
monotony in my subject matter. Then, again, an ancient
historian has but few disparagers, and no one cares
whether you praise more heartily the armies of Carthage
or Rome.
Tacitus, Annals, IV, 33
24 This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing
about men should look also at earthly things as if he
viewed them from some higher place; should look at
them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labours,
marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of
justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians,
feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and
an orderly combination of contraries.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 48
25 The historian’s one task is to tell the thing as it
happened. This he cannot do if he is Artaxerxes’
physician, trembling before him, or hoping to get a
purple cloak, a golden chain, a horse of the Nisaean
breed in payment for his laudations. A fair historian, a
Xenophon, a Thucydides, will not accept that position. He
may nurse some private dislikes, but he will attach far
more importance to the public good, and set the truth
high above his hate; he may have his favorites, but he
will not spare their errors. For history, | say again, has this
and this only for its own; if a man will start upon it, he
must sacrifice to no god but Truth; he must neglect all
else; his sole rule and unerring guide is this—to think not
of those who are listening to him now, but of the yet
unborn who shall seek his converse,
Lucian, Way to Write History
26 | sometimes fall to thinking whether it befits a
theologian, a philosopher, and such people of exquisite
and exact conscience and prudence, to write history. How
can they stake their fidelity on the fidelity of an ordinary
person? How be responsible for the thoughts of persons
unknown and give their conjectures as coin of the realm?
Of complicated actions that happen in their presence
they would refuse to give testimony if placed under oath
by a judge; and they know no man so intimately that
they would undertake to answer fully for his intentions. |
consider it less hazardous to write of things past than
present, inasmuch as the writer has only to give an
account of a borrowed truth.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 21, Power of the Imagination
27 | like historians who are either very simple or
outstanding. The simple, who have not the wherewithal
to mix in anything of their own, and who bring to it only
the care and diligence to collect all that comes to their
attention and to record everything faithfully without
choice or discrimination, leave our judgment intact to
discern the truth...
The really outstanding ones have the capacity to
choose what is worth knowing; they can pick out of two
reports the one that is more likely. From the nature and
humors of princes they infer their intentions and attribute
appropriate words to them. They are right to assume the
authority to regulate our belief by their own; but certainly
this privilege belongs to very few people.
Those in between (which are the commonest sort)
spoil everything for us. They want to chew our morsels for
us; they give themselves the right to judge, and
consequently to slant history to their fancy; for once the
judgment leans to one side, one cannot help turning and
twisting the narrative to that bias. They undertake to
choose the things worth knowing, and often conceal from
us a given word, a given private action, that would
instruct us better; they omit as incredible the things they
do not understand.... Let them boldly display their
eloquence and their reasonings, let them judge all they
like; but let them also leave us the wherewithal to judge
after them, and not alter or arrange by their abridgments
and selection anything of the substance of the matter,
but pass it on to us pure and entire in all its dimensions.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 10, Of Books
28 The only good histories are those that have been written
by the very men who were in command in the affairs, or
who were participants in the conduct of them, or who at
least have had the fortune to conduct others of the same
sort.... What can you expect of a doctor discussing war,
or a schoolboy discussing the intentions of princes?
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 10, Of Books
29 We have not the thousandth part of the writings of the
ancients: it is Fortune that gives them life, longer or
shorter according to her favor; and it is permissible to
wonder whether what we have is not the worst, since we
have not seen the rest.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 16, Of Glory
30 King. O God! that one might read the book of fate.
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewng his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
Shakespeare, II Henry IV, Ill, 1, 45
31 As it happeneth sometimes that the grandchild, or other
descendant, resembleth the ancestor more than the son;
SO many times occurrences of present times may sort
better with ancient examples than with those of the later
or immediate times.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, Il, 3
32 History is natural, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary;
whereof the three first | allow as extant, the fourth | note
as deficient. For no man hath propounded to himself the
general state of learning to be described and represented
from age to age, as many have done the works of nature,
and the state civil and ecclesiastical; without which the
history of the world seemeth to me to be as the statue of
Polyphemus with his eye out; that part being wanting
which doth most show the spirit and life of the person.
And yet | am not ignorant that in divers particular
sciences, as of the juris-consults, the mathematicians, the
rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set down some
small memorials of the schools, authors, and books; and
so likewise some barren relations touching the invention
of arts or usages. But a just story of learning, containing
the antiquities and originals of knowledges and their
sects, their inventions, their traditions, their diverse
administrations and managingsg, their flourishings, their
oppositions, decays, depressions, oblivions, removes,
with the causes and occasions of them, and all other
events concerning learning, throughout the ages of the
world, | may truly affirm to be wanting. The use and end
of which work | do not so much design for curiosity or
satisfaction of those that are the lovers of learning, but
chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose, which is
this in few words, that it make learned men wise in the
use and administration of learning.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, I, 2
33 It is the true office of history to represent the events
themselves together with the counsels, and to leave the
observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty
and faculty of every man’s judgement.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, Il, 12
34 It is good to know something of the customs of different
peoples in order to judge more sanely of our own, and not
to think that everything of a fashion not ours is absurd
and contrary to reason, as do those who have seen
nothing. But when one employ’s too much time in
travelling, one becomes a stranger in one’s own country,
and when one is too curious about things which were
practised in past centuries, one is usually very ignorant
about those which are practised in our own time. Besides,
fables make one imagine many events possible which in
reality’ are not so, and even the most accurate of
histories, if they do not exactly misrepresent or
exaggerate the value of things in order to render them
more worthy of being read, at least omit in them all the
circumstances which are basest and least notable; and
from this fact it follows that what is retained is not
portrayed as it really is, and that those who regulate their
conduct by examples which they derive from such a
source, are liable to fall into the extravagances of the
knights-errant of Romance, and form projects beyond
their power of performance.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, |
35 In a good history’, the judgement must be eminent;
because the goodness consisteth in the method, in the
truth, and in the choice of the actions that are most
profitable to be known. Fancy’ has no place, but only in
adorning the sty’le,
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 8
36 When testimonies contradict common experience, and
the reports of history and witnesses clash with the
ordinary course of nature, or with one another; there it is,
where diligence, attention, and exactness are required, to
form a right judgment, and to proportion the assent to
the different evidence and probability of the thing: which
rises and falls, according as those two foundations of
credibility, viz) common observation in like cases, and
particular testimonies in that particular instance, favour
or contradict it.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XVI, 9
37 | would not be thought here to lessen the credit and use
of history: it is all the light we have in many cases, and
we receive from it a great part of the useful truths we
have, with a convincing cadence. | think nothing more
valuable than the records of antiquity; | wish we had
more of them, and more uncorrupted. But this truth itself
forces me to say. That no probability can rise higher than
its first original. What has no other evidence than the
single testimony of one only witness must stand or fall by
his only testimony, whether good, bad, or indifferent; and
though cited afterwards by hundreds of others, one after
another, is so far from receiving any strength thereby,
that it is only the weaker. Passion, interest, inadvertency,
mistake of his meaning, and a thousand odd reasons, or
Capricios, men’s minds are acted by, (impossible to be
discovered,) may make one man quote another man’s
words or meaning wrong. He that has but ever so little
examined the citations of writers, cannot doubt how little
credit the quotations deserve, where the originals are
wanting; and consequently how much less quotations of
quotations can be relied on. This is certain, that what in
one age was affirmed upon slight grounds, can never
after come to be more valid in future ages by being often
repeated. But the further still it is from the original, the
less valid it is, and has always less force in the mouth or
writing of him that last made use of it than in his from
whom he received it.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XVI, 11
38 Our new Science must... be a demonstration, so to speak,
of the historical fact of providence, for it must be a
history of the forms of order which, without human
discernment or intent, and often against the designs of
men, providence has given to this great city of the
human race. For though this world has been created in
time and particular, the orders established therein by
providence are universal and eternal.
Vico, The New Science, |
39 In monarchies extremely absolute, historians betray the
truth, because they are not at liberty to speak it; in states
remarkably free, they betray the truth, because of their
liberty itself; which always produces divisions, every one
becoming as great a slave to the prejudices of his faction
as he could be in a despotic state.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIX, 27
40 Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places,
that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this
particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant
and universal principles of human nature, by showing
men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and
furnishing us with materials from which we may form our
observations and become acquainted with the regular
springs of human action and behaviour. These records of
wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions, are so many
collections of experiments, by which the politician or
moral philosopher fixes the principles of his science, in
the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher
become acquainted with the nature of plants, minerals,
and other external objects, by the experiments which he
forms concerning them.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings, VIII, 65
41 In reality, what more agreeable entertainment to the
mind, than to be transported into the remotest ages of
the world, and to observe human society, in its infancy,
making the first faint essays towards the arts and
sciences; to see the policy of government, and the civility
of conversation refining by degrees, and every thing
which is ornamental to human life advancing toward its
perfection? To remark the rise, progress, declension, and
final extinction of the most flourishing empires; the
virtues which contributed to their greatness, and the
vices which drew on their ruin? In short, to see all the
human race, from the beginning of time, pass, as it were,
in review before us, appearing in their true colours,
without any of those disguises which, during their
lifetime, so much perplexed the judgment of the
beholders. What spectacle can be imagined so
magnificent, so various, so interesting? What
amusement, either of the senses or imagination, can be
compared with it?
Hume, Of the Study of History
42 History is not only a valuable part of knowledge, but
opens the door to many other parts, and affords materials
to most of the sciences. And, indeed, if we consider the
shortness of human life, and our limited knowledge, even
of what passes in our own time, we must be sensible that
we should be forever children in understanding, were it
not for this invention, which extends our experience to all
past ages, and to the most distant nations; making them
contribute as much to our improvement in wisdom, as if
they had actually lain under our observation. A man
acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to
have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have
been making continual additions to his stock of
knowledge in every century.
Hume, Of the Study of History
43 Historians have been, almost without exception, the true
friends of virtue, and have always represented it in its
proper colours, however they may have erred in their
judgments of particular persons.
Hume, Of the Study of History
44 The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the
fathers to the children, transmitted afterward from one
generation to another; at their origin they are at the very
most probable, when they do not shock common sense,
and they lose one degree of probability in each
generation. With time the fable grows and the truth
grows less; from this it comes that all the origins of
peoples are absurd.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: History
45 Let us judge of what can be done by what has been done.
Rousseau, Social Contracts, III, 12
46 What are all the records of history but narratives of
successive villainies, of treasons and usurpations,
massacres and wars?
Johnson, Rambler No. 175
47 Johnson. Great abilities are not requisite for an historian;
for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of
the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his
hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is
not required in any high degree; only about as much as is
used in the lower kinds of poetry. Some penetration,
accuracy, and colouring will fit a man for the task, if he
can give the application which is necessary.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 6, 1763)
48 Johnson. We must consider how very little history there
is; | mean real authentick history. That certain Kings
reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend
upon as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy of
history is conjecture.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 16, 1775)
49 Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the
greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare
advantage of furnishing very few’ materials for history;
which is, indeed, little more than the register of the
crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, III
50 There is not anywhere upon the globe a large tract of
country which we have discovered destitute of
inhabitants, or whose first population can be fixed with
any degree of historical certainty. And yet, as the most
philosophic minds can seldom refrain from investigating
the infancy of great nations, our curiosity consumes itself
in toilsome and disappointed efforts.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1X
51 The confusion of the times, and the scarcity of authentic
memorials, oppose equal difficulties to the historian, who
attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of
narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always
concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he
is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture: and
though he ought never to place his conjectures in the
rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of
the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions,
might, on some occasions, supply the want of historical
materials.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, X
52 A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same
faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would
cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and
follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span, to
grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment. It is thus
that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the
horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition of some
days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have
rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is
contracted to a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside
the throne; the success of a criminal is almost instantly
followed by the loss of his prize.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLVIII
53 The Greeks of Constantinople, after purging away the
impurities of their vulgar speech, acquired the free use of
their ancient language, the most happy composition of
human art, and a familiar knowledge of the sublime
masters who had pleased or instructed the first of
nations. But these advantages only tend to aggravate the
reproach and shame of a degenerate people. They held in
their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers, without
inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that
sacred patrimony: they read, they praised, they compiled,
but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought
and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single
discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the
happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added
to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession
of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic
teachers of the next servile generation.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LiIl
54 It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as | sat
musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot
friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that
the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first
started to my mind.
Gibbon, Autobiography
55 | have presumed to mark the moment of conception: |
shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance.
It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June
1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that |
wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in
my garden. After laying down my pen | took several turns
in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which
commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the
mountains. The air was is temperate, the sky was serene,
the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters,
and all nature was silent. | will not dissemble the first
emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps,
the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon
humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my
mind, by the idea that | had taken an everlasting leave of
an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever
might be the future date of my History, the life of the
historian must be short and precarious.
Gibbon, Autobiography
56 My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are
left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.
Gibbon, Autobiography
57 Men, viewed as a whole, are not guided in their efforts
merely by instinct, like the lower animals; nor do they
proceed in their actions, like the citizens of a purely
rational world, according to a preconcerted plan. And so
it appears as if no regular systematic history of mankind
would be possible, as in the case, for instance, of bees
and beavers. Nor can one help feeling a certain
repugnance in looking at the conduct of men as it is
exhibited on the great stage of the world. With glimpses
of wisdom appearing in individuals here and there, it
seems, on examining it externally as if the whole web of
human history were woven out of folly and childish vanity
and the frenzy of destruction, so that at the end one
hardly knows what idea to form of our race, albeit so
proud of its prerogatives.
Kant, Idea of a Universal History, Intro.
58 A philosophical attempt to work out the universal history
of the world according to the plan of nature in its aiming
at a perfect civil union must be regarded as possible, and
as even capable of helping forward the purpose of nature.
Kant, Idea of a Universal History, 1X
59 How admirably calculated is this picture of the human
race, freed from all these chains, secure from the
domination of chance, as from that of the enemies of its
progress, and advancing with firm and sure steps towards
the attainment of truth, virtue, and happiness, to present
to the philosopher a spectacle which shall console him for
the errors, the crimes, the injustice, with which the earth
is still polluted, and whose victim he often is! It is in the
contemplation of this picture that he receives the reward
of his efforts towards the progress of reason and the
defense of liberty. He dares then to link these with the
eternal chain of human destiny; and thereby he finds
virtue’s true recompense, the joy of having performed a
lasting service, which no fatality can ever destroy by
restoring the evils of prejudice and slavery. This
contemplation is for him a place of refuge, whither the
memory of his persecutors cannot follow him, where,
living in imagination with man restored to his rights and
his natural dignity, he forgets him whom greed, fear, or
envy torment and corrupt; there it is that he exists in
truth with his kin, in an elysium which his reason has
been able to create for him, and which his love for
humanity enhances with the purest enjoyments.
Condorcet, Historical Picture of the Progress of the
Human Mind, 10
60 Original historians... change the events, the deeds, and
the states of society with which they are conversant, into
an object for the conceptive faculty.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 1
61 A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time,
or to be universal, must... forego the attempt to give
individual representations of the past as it actually
existed. It must foreshorten its pictures by abstractions;
and this includes not merely the omission of events and
deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that thought
is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a
great victory, a siege, no longer maintains its original
proportions, but is put off with a bare mention.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 2
62 What experience and history teach is this—that peoples
and governments never have learned anything from
history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 2
63 The history of the world begins with its general aim, the
realization of the idea of spirit, only in an implicit form,
that is, as nature; a hidden, most profoundly hidden,
unconscious instinct; and the whole process of history (as
already observed) is directed to rendering this
unconscious impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in
the form of merely natural existence, natural will—that
which has been called the subjective side—physical
craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion
and subjective conception—spontaneously present
themselves at the very commencement. This vast
congeries of volitions, interests and activities, constitute
the instruments and means of the world-spirit for
attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness, and
realizing it. And this aim is none other than finding itself,
coming to itself, and contemplating itself in concrete
actuality. But that those manifestations of vitality on the
part of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and
satisfy their own purposes, are, at the same time, the
means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose
of which they know nothing—which they realize
unconsciously—might be made a matter of question;
rather has been questioned, and in every variety of form
negatived, decried and contemned as mere dreaming
and "philosophy." But on this point | announced my view
at the very outset, and asserted our hypothesis—which,
however, will appear in the sequel, in the form of a
legitimate inference—and our belief that reason governs
the world, and has consequently governed its history. In
relation to this independently universal and substantial
existence—all else is subordinate, subservient to it, and
the means for its development.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
64 Light is a simply self-involved existence; but though
possessing thus in itself universality, it exists at the same
time as an individuality in the sun. Imagination has often
pictured to itself the emotions of a blind man suddenly
becoming possessed of sight, beholding the bright
glimmering of the dawn, the growing light, and the
flaming glory of the ascending sun. The boundless
forgetfulness of his individuality in this pure splendor, is
his first feeling—utter astonishment. But when the sun is
risen, this astonishment is diminished; objects around are
perceived, and from them the individual proceeds to the
contemplation of his own inner being, and thereby the
advance is made to the perception of the relation
between the two. Then inactive contemplation is quitted
for activity; by the close of day man has erected a
building constructed from his own inner sun; and when in
the evening he contemplates this, he esteems it more
highly than the original external sun. For now he stands
in a conscious relation to his spirit, and therefore a free
relation. If we hold this image fast in mind, we shall find it
symbolizing the course of history, the great day’s work of
spirit.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Intro.
65 History, which | like to think of as the contrary of poetry
[ historoumenon (investigated )—pepoiemenon
(invented)], is for time what geography is for space; and
it is no more to be called a science, in any strict sense of
the word, than is geography, because it does not deal
with universal truths but only with particular details.
History has always been the favorite study of those who
wish to learn something without having to face the effort
demanded by any branch of real knowledge, which taxes
the intelligence.
Schopenhauer, Some forms of Literature
66 The preference shown for history by the greater public in
all ages may be illustrated by the kind of conversation
which is so much in vogue everywhere in society. It
generally consists in one person relating something and
then another person relating something else; so that in
this way everyone is sure of receiving attention. Both
here and in the case of history it is plain that the mind is
occupied with particular details. But as in science, so also
in every worthy conversation, the mind rises to the
consideration of some general truth.
This objection does not, however, deprive history of its
value. Human life is short and fleeting, and many millions
of individuals share in it, who are swallowed by that
monster of oblivion which is waiting for them with ever
open jaws. It is thus a very thankworthy task to try to
rescue something—the memory of interesting and
important events, or the leading features and personages
of some epoch—from the general shipwreck of the world.
From another point of view, we might look upon
history as the sequel to zoology; for while with all other
animals it is enough to observe the species, with man
individuals, and therefore individual events, have to be
studied; because every man possesses a Character as an
individual. And since individuals and events are without
number or end, an essential imperfection attaches to
history. In the study of it, all that a man learns never
contributes to lessen that which he has still to learn. With
any real science, a perfection of knowledge is, at any
rate, conceivable.
Schopenhauer, Some Forms of Literature
67 Only through history does a nation become completely
conscious of itself. Accordingly history is to be regarded
as the rational consciousness of the human race, and is to
the race what the reflected and connected consciousness
is to the individual who is conditioned by reason, a
consciousness through the want of which the brute is
confined to the narrow, perceptible present.... In this
sense, then, history... takes the place of an immediate
self-consciousness common to the whole race, so that
only by virtue of it does the human race come to be a
whole, come to be a humanity. This is the true value of
history.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, III, 38
68 Universal History, the history of what man has
accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the
Great Men who have worked here.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
69 | have no expectation that any man will read history
aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by
men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper
sense than what he is doing to-day.
Emerson, History
70 All history becomes subjective; in other words there is
properly no history, only biography.
Emerson, History
71 The advancing man discovers how deep a property he
has in literature—in all fable as well as in all history....His
own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully
intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born. One
after another he comes up in his private adventures with
every fable of Aesop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of
Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them with his own head
and hands.
Emerson, History
72 Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are
conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.
Time and space are but physiological colors which the
eye makes, but the soul is light: where it is, is day; where
it was, iS night; and history is an impertinence and an
injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or
parable of my being and becoming.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
73 We go eastward to realize history and study the works of
art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go
westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and
adventure.
Thoreau, Walking
74 Many are concerned about the monuments of the West
and the East—to know who built them. For my part, |
should like to know who in those days did not build them.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
75 One nation can and should learn from others. And even
when a society has got upon the right track for the
discovery of the natural laws of its movement... it can
neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal
enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive
phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and
lessen the birth-pangs.
Marx, Capital, Pref. to 1st Ed.
76 Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive
science begins: the representation of the practical
activity, of the practical process of development of men.
Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real
knowledge has to take its place. When reality is depicted,
philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its
medium of existence. At the best its place can only be
taken by a summing-up of the most general results,
abstractions which arise from the observation of the
historical development of men. Viewed apart from real
history, these abstractions have in themselves no value
whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the
arrangement of historical material, to indicate the
sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means
afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly
trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our
difficulties begin only when we set about the observation
and the arrangement—the real depiction—of our
historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the
present.
Marx and Engels, German Ideology, I, 1
77 "Yes, universal history! It’s the study of the successive
follies of mankind and nothing more. The only subjects |
respect are mathematics and natural science," said Kolya.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. IV, X, 5
78 In historic events, the so-called great men are labels
giving names to events, and like labels they have but the
smallest connection with the event itself.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 1
79 The movement of humanity, arising as it does from
innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous.
To understand the law's of this continuous movement
is the aim of history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting
from the sum of all those human wills, man’s mind
postulates arbitrary and disconnected units. The first
method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected series
of continuous events and examine it apart from others,
though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for
one event always flows uninterruptedly from another.
The second method is to consider the actions of some
one man—a king or a commander—as equivalent to the
sum of many individual wills; whereas the sum of
individual wills is never expressed by the activity ofa
single historic personage.
Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to
truth continually takes smaller and smaller units for
examination. But however small the units it takes, we feel
that to take any unit disconnected from others, or to
assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that
the will of many men is expressed by the actions of any
one historic personage, is in itself false.
It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust
any deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary
to select some larger or smaller unit as the subject of
observation—as criticism has every right to do, seeing
that whatever unit history observes must always be
arbitrarily selected.
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for
observation (the differential of history, that is, the
individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of
integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these
infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of
history.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XI, 1
80 In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only
unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part in
an historic event never understands its significance. If he
tries to realize it his efforts are fruitless.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XII, 4
81 Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their
completeness, but the desire to find those causes is
implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the
multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of
which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he
snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems
to him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In
historical events (where the actions of men are the
subject of observation) the first and most primitive
approximation to present itself was the will of the gods
and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most
prominent position—the heroes of history. But we need
only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—
which lies in the activity of the general mass of men who
take part in it—to be convinced that the will of the
historic hero does not control the actions of the mass but
is itself continually controlled. It may seem to be a matter
of indifference whether we understand the meaning of
historical events this way or that; yet there is the same
difference between a man who says that the people of
the West moved on the East because Napoleon wished it
and aman who says that this happened because it had to
happen, as there is between those who declared that the
earth was stationary and that the planets moved round it
and those who admitted that they did not know what
upheld the earth, but knew there were laws directing its
movement and that of the other planets. There is, and
can be, no cause of an historical event except the one
cause of all causes. But there are laws directing events,
and some of these laws are known to us while we are
conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The
discovery of these laws is only possible when we have
quite abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will
of some one man, just as the discovery of the laws of the
motion of the planets was possible only when men
abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIII, 1
82 Science does not admit the conception of the ancients as
to the direct participation of the Deity in human affairs,
and therefore history ought to give other answers.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, |
83 If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man
could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of
disconnected incidents.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, I! Epilogue, VIII
84 A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the
doing of all the Known participants, but with a more
remote event we already see its inevitable results which
prevent our considering anything else possible. And the
farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary
do they appear.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, IX
85 The recognition of man’s free will as something capable
of influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to
laws, is the same for history as the recognition of a free
force moving the heavenly bodies would be for
astronomy.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, XI!
86 It is folly ... to soeak of the "laws of history" as of
something inevitable, which science has only to discover,
and whose consequences anyone can then foretell but do
nothing to alter or avert. Why, the very laws of physics
are conditional, and deal with /fs. The physicist does not
say, "The water will boil anyhow;" he only says it %vill
boil if a fire be kindled beneath it. And so the utmost the
student of sociology can ever predict is that /fa genius of
a certain sort shows the way, society will be sure to
follow.
William James, Great Men and Their Environment
87 Alas! Hegel was right when he said that we learn from
history that men never learn anything from history.
Shaw, Heartbreak House, Pref.
88 This notion of historians, of history devoid of aesthetic
prejudice, of history devoid of any reliance on
metaphysical principles and cosmological
generalizations, is a figment of the imagination. The
belief in it can only occur to minds steeped in
provinciality,—the provinciality of an epoch, of a race, of
a school of learning, of a trend of inter-est~ , minds
unable to divine their own unspoken limitations.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, |, 1
89 The historian in his description of the past depends on
his own judgment as to what constitutes the importance
of human life. Even when he has rigorously confined
himself to one selected aspect, political or cultural, he
still depends on some decision as to what constitutes the
culmination of that phase of human experience and as to
what constitutes its degradation.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, |, 1
90 It is a curious delusion that the rock upon which our
beliefs can be founded is an historical investigation. You
can only interpret the past in terms of the present. The
present is all that you have; and unless in this present
you can find general principles which interpret the
present as including a representation of the whole
community of existents, you cannot move a step beyond
your little patch of immediacy.
Thus history presupposes a metaphysic. It can be
objected that we believe in the past and talk about it
without settling our metaphysical principles, That is
certainly the case. But you can only deduce metaphysical
dogmas from your interpretation of the past on the basis
of a prior metaphysical interpretation of the present.
In so far as your metaphysical beliefs are implicit, you
vaguely interpret the past on the lines of the present. But
when it comes to the primary metaphysical data, the
world of which you are immediately conscious is the
whole datum.
Whitehead, Religion in the Making, III, 1
91 History, in every country, is so taught as to magnify that
country: children learn to believe that their own country
has always been in the right and almost always
victorious, that it has produced almost all the great men,
and that it is in all respects superior to all other countries.
Russell, Education
92 For whom is there History? The question is seemingly
paradoxical, for history is obviously for everyone to this
extent, that every man, with his whole existence and
consciousness, is a part of history. But it makes a great
difference whether anyone lives under the constant
impression that his life is an element in a far wider life-
course that goes on for hundreds and thousands of years,
or conceives of himself as something rounded off and
self-contained. For the latter type of consciousness there
is certainly no world-history, no world-as-history.
Spengler, Decline of the West, I, 1
93 Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this
hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that
reach us from others, we have but a shifting and
unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of
the past changes continually and grows every day less
similar to the original experience which it purports to
describe.
Santayana, Life of Reason, V, 2
94 The historian’s politics, philosophy, or romantic
imagination furnishes a vital nucleus for reflection. All
that falls within that particular vortex is included in the
mental picture, the rest is passed over and tends to drop
out of sight. It is not possible to say, nor to think,
everything at once; and the private interest which guides
a man in selecting his materials imposes itself inevitably
on the events he relates and especially on their grouping
and significance.
History is always written wrong, and so always needs
to be rewritten.
Santayana, Life of Reason, V, 2
95 Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and
character of events throughout past time in all places.
The task is frankly superhuman, because no block of real
existence, with its infinitesimal detail, can be recorded,
nor if somehow recorded could it be dominated by the
mind; and to carry on a survey of this social continuum
ad infinitum would multiply the difficulty.
Santayana, Life of Reason, V, 2
96 It is not enough to say that history is historical judgment,
it is necessary to add that every judgment is an historical
judgment or, quite simply, history. If judgment is a
relation between a subject and a predicate, then the
subject or the event, whatever it is that is being judged,
is always an historical fact, a becoming, a process under
way, for there are no immobile facts nor can such things
be envisaged in the world of reality. Historical judgment
is embodied even in the merest perception of the judging
mind (if it did not judge there would not even be
perception but merely blind and dumb sensation)...
Historical judgment is not a variety of knowledge, but
it is knowledge itself; it is the form which completely fills
and exhausts the field of knowing, leaving no room for
anything else.
Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, |, 5
97 We are products of the past and we live immersed in the
past, which encompasses us. How can we move towards
the new life, how create new activities without getting
out of the past and without placing ourselves above it?
And how can we place ourselves above the past if we are
in it and it is in us? There is no other way out except
through thought, which does not break off relations with
the past but rises ideally above it and converts it into
knowledge. The past must be faced or, not to speak in
metaphors, it must be reduced to a mental problem
which can find its solution in a proposition of truth, the
ideal premise for our new activity and our new life. This is
how we daily behave, when, instead of being prostrated
by the vexations which beset us, and of bewailing and
being shamed by errors we have committed, we examine
what has happened, analyse its origin, follow its history,
and, with an informed conscience and under an intimate
inspiration, we outline what ought and should be
undertaken and willingly and brightly get ready to
undertake it.
Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, I, 8
98 The writing of histories—as Goethe once noted— is one
way of getting rid of the weight of the past.... The
writing of history liberates us from history.
Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, |, 8
99 | find it hard to have patience with historians who boast,
as some modern Western historians do, that they keep
entirely to the facts of history and don’t go in for theories.
Why, every so-called fact that they present to you had
some pattern of theory behind it. Historians who
genuinely believe they have no general ideas about
history are, | would suggest to them, simply ignorant of
the workings of their own minds, and such willful
ignorance Is, isn’t it, really unpardonable.
Toynbee, Radio Debate (1948)
100 Historians generally illustrate rather than correct the
ideas of the communities within which they live and
work.
Toynbee, A Study of History, I, |
101 History, in the sense of the histories of the human
societies called civilizations, revealed itself as a sheaf of
parallel, contemporary, and recent essays in a new
enterprise: a score of attempts, up to date, to transcend
the level of primitive human life at which man, after
having become himself, had apparently lain torpid for
some hundreds of thousands of years.
Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, |
15.2 Progress, Regress, and Cycles in
History
One of the central issues in the philosophy of history
concerns the pattern of change that has occurred in human
affairs in the course of time. According to one view, the
pattern is cyclical, like that of birth, growth, decline, and
death in the life of living organisms. The point is not simply
that history repeats itself in the recurrence of similar events,
but that the whole sequence of historical development
endlessly repeats itself. According to another view, history
manifests a regression, a falling away from a golden age.
According to still another view, history advances from age to
age, either in a line of steady and uninterrupted progress or
with intervals of stability or even of regression.
Of these three main views, the first is the one that
predominates in the quotations drawn from antiquity,
though there are also some expressions of the second view
in ancient texts, notably the ones by Hesiod and Ovid; and
in addition, the opinion that in all essential respects the
future will resemble the past. It is not until the seventeenth
century that we find explicit affirmations of progress in
human affairs—in the sphere of science, in human
institutions, in population, in the production of wealth.
Though progress has many votaries among modern writers,
it also has its doubters or deniers— those who point out that
regressive change counterbalances the evidences of
progress, or that advances in such external matters as
science, technology, and wealth do not carry with them
essential improvements in the quality of human life.
1 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new?
it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither
Shall there be any remembrance of things that are to
come with those that shall come after.
Ecclesiastes 1:10-11
2 When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
Th' immortals formed a golden race on earth
Of many-languaged men; they lived of old
When Saturn reign’d in heaven; an age of gold.
Like gods they lived, with calm, untroubled mind.
Free from the toil and anguish of our kind:
Nor e’er decrepid age mis-shaped their frame,
The hand’s, the foot’s proportions, still the same.
Pleased with earth’s unbought feasts; all ills removed,
Wealthy in flocks, and of the bless’d beloved.
Death as a slumber press’d their eyelids down;
All nature’s common blessings were their own.
The life-bestowing tilth its fruitage bore,
A full, soontaneous, and ungrudging store:
They with abundant goods, midst quiet lands.
All willing shared the gatherings of their hands.
When earth’s dark breast had closed this race around.
Great Jove as demons raised them from the ground.
Earth-hovering spirits, they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth, and pass on every side;
And mark, with earnest vigilance of eyes,
Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise;
And shower the wealth of seasons from above,
Their kingly office, delegate from Jove.
The gods then form’d a second race of man,
Degenerate far, and silver years began;
Unlike the mortals of a golden kind,
Unlike in frame of limbs, and mould of mind.
Yet still a hundred years beheld the boy
Beneath the mother’s roof, her infant joy,
All tender and unform’d: but when the flower
Of manhood bloom’d, it wither’d in an hour.
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe;
Nor mutual outrage would their hands forego:
Nor would they serve the gods, nor altars raise,
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove ingulf’d; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues:
Yet named the second bless’d, in earth they lie.
And second honours grace their memory.
The sire of heaven and earth created then
A race, the third, of many-languaged men:
Unlike the silver they; of brazen mould,
Strong with the ashen spear, and fierce, and bold;
Their thoughts were bent on violence alone,
The deed of battle, and the dying groan.
Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food unbless’d;
Of adamant was each unyielding breast.
Huge, nerved with strength, each hardy giant stands,
And mocks approach with unresisted hands.
Their mansions, implements, and armour shine
In brass; dark iron slept within the mine.
They by each other’s hands inglorious fell,
In freezing darkness plunged, the house of hell:
Fierce though they were, their mortal course was run;
Death gloomy seized and snatch'd them from the sun.
Them when th' abyss had cover'd from the skies,
Lo! the fourth age on nurt'ring earth arise:
Jove form’d the race a better, juster line;
A race of heroes, and of stamp divine:
Lights of the age that rose before our own;
As demigods o'er earth’s wide regions known.
Yet these dread battle hurried to their end;
Some where the seven-fold gates of Thebes ascend,
The Cadmian realm; where they with fatal might
Strove for the flocks of Oedipus in fight.
Some war in navies led to Troy’s far shore;
O'er the great space of sea their course they bore,
For sake of Helen with the beauteous hair;
And death for Helen’s sake o’erwhelm’d them there.
Them on earth’s utmost verge the god assign’d
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind;
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,
In those bless’d isles where Saturn holds his reign,
Apart from heaven’s immortals: calm they share
A rest, unsullied by the clouds of care;
And yearly thrice, with sweet luxuriance crown’d,
Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground.
Oh! would that Nature had denied me birth
Midst this fifth race, this iron age of earth;
That long before within the grave | lay,
Or long hereafter could behold the day!
Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs oppress’d,
Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest:
Still do the gods a weight of care bestow,
Though still some good is mingled with the woe.
Jove on this race of many-languaged man
Speeds the swift ruin, which but slow began;
For scarcely spring they to the light of day,
E’er age untimely strews their temples gray.
No fathers in the sons their features trace;
The sons reflect no more the father’s face:
The host with kindness greets his guest no more;
And friends and brethren love not as of yore.
Reckless of Heaven’s revenge, the sons behold
The hoary parents wax too swiftly old,
And impious point the keen dishonouring tongue,
With hard reproofs, and bitter mockeries hung;
Nor grateful in declining age repay
The nurturing fondness of their better day.
Now man’s right hand is law; for spoil they wait,
And lay their mutual cities desolate.
Unhonour’d he, by whom his oath is fear’d,
Nor are the good beloved, the just revered.
With favour graced, the evil doer stands.
Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands;
With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man,
And stamps with perjury what hate began.
Lo! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing’d with lies.
Scattering calumnious rumours as she flies.
The steps of miserable men pursue.
With haggard aspect, blasting to the view:
Till those fair forms, in snowy raiment bright,
Quit the broad earth, and heavenward soar from sight:
Justice and Modesty, from mortals driven,
Rise to th’ immortal family of heaven:
Dread sorrow's to forsaken man remain;
No cure of ills; no remedy of pain.
Hesiod, Works and Days
3 Prometheus. Men at first had eyes but saw to no purpose;
they had cars but did not hear. Like the shapes of dreams
they dragged through their long lives and handled all
things in bewilderment and confusion. They did not know
of building houses with bricks to face the sun; they did
not know how to work in wood. They lived like swarming
ants in holes in the ground, in the sunless caves of the
earth. For them there was no secure token by which to
tell winter nor the flowering spring nor the summer with
its crops; all their doings were indeed without intelligent
calculation until | showed them the rising of the stars,
and the settings, hard to observe. And further |
discovered to them numbering, pre-eminent among
subtle devices, and the combining of letters as a means
of remembering all things, the Muses’ mother, skilled in
craft. It was | who first yoked beasts for them in the yokes
and made of those beasts the slaves of trace chain and
pack saddle that they might be man’s substitute in the
hardest tasks; and | harnessed to the carriage, so that
they loved the rein, horses, the crowning pride of the rich
man’s luxury. It was | and none other who discovered
ships, the sail-driven wagons that the sea buffets, Such
were the contrivances that | discovered for men—alas for
me! For | myself am without contrivance to rid myself of
my present affliction.... Hear the rest, and you will marvel
even more at the crafts and resources | contrived.
Greatest was this: in the former times if a man fell sick he
had no defense against the sickness, neither healing food
nor drink, nor unguent; but through the lack of drugs
men wasted away, until | showed them the blending of
mild simples wherewith they drive out all manner of
diseases. It was | who arranged all the ways of seercraft,
and | first adjudged what things come verily true from
dreams; and to men | gave meaning to the ominous cries,
hard to interpret. It was | who set in order the omens of
the highway and the flight of crooked-taloned birds,
which of them were propitious or lucky by nature, and
what manner of life each led, and what were their mutual
hates, loves, and companionships; also | taught of the
smoothness of the vitals and what color they should have
to pleasure the Gods and the dappled beauty of the gall
and the lobe. It was | who burned thighs wrapped in fat
and the long shank bone and set mortals on the road to
this murky craft. It was | who made visible to men’s eyes
the flaming signs of the sky that were before dim. So
much for these. Beneath the earth, man’s hidden
blessing, copper, iron; silver, and gold—will anyone claim
to have discovered these before | did? No one, | am very
sure, who wants to speak truly and to the purpose. One
brief word will tell the whole story: all arts that mortals
have come from Prometheus.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bounds 445
4 | shall go forward with my history, describing equally the
greater and the lesser cities. For the cities which were
formerly great have most of them become insignificant;
and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the
olden time. | shall therefore discourse equally of both,
convinced that human happiness never continues long in
one stay.
Herodotus, History, |, 5
5 Critias. Just when you and other nations are beginning to
be provided with letters and the other requisites of
civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from
heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and
leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and
education; and so you have to begin all over again like
children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient
times, either among us or among yourselves.
Plato, Timaeus, 23A
6 Human affairs form a circle, and... there is a circle in all
other things that have a natural movement and coming
into being and passing away. This is because all other
things are discriminated by time, and end and begin as
though conforming to a circle; for even time itself is
thought to be a circle. And this opinion again is held
because time is the measure of this kind of locomotion
and is itself measured by such. So that to say that the
things that come into being form a circle is to say that
there is a circle of time; and this is to say that it is
measured by the circular movement; for apart from the
measure nothing else to be measured is observed; the
whole is just a plurality of measures.
Aristotle, Physics, 223b25
7 In most respects the future will be like what the past has
been.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1394b8
8 We must suppose that human nature. ,. was taught and
constrained to do many things of every kind merely by
circumstances; and that later on reasoning elaborated
what had been suggested by nature and made further
inventions, in some matters quickly, in others slowly, at
some epochs and times making great advances, and
lesser again at others.
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus
9 There is in every body, or polity, or business a natural
stage of growth, zenith, and decay.
Polybius, Histories, VI, 51
10 The aged ploughman shakes his head and sighs again
and again to think that the labours of his hands have
come to nothing; and when he compares present times
with times past, he often praises the fortunes of his sire
and harps on the theme, how the men of old rich in piety
comfortably supported life on a scanty plot of ground,
since the allotment of land to each man was far less of
yore than now. The sorrowful planter too of the exhausted
and shrivelled vine impeaches the march of time and
wearies heaven, and comprehends not that all things are
gradually wasting away and passing to the grave, quite
forspent by age and length of days.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
11 Our father’s age, than their sires’ not so good.
Bred us ev’n worse than they; a brood
We'll leave that’s viler still.
Horace, Odes, III, 6
12 What is free from the risk of change? Neither earth, nor
sky, nor the whole fabric of our universe, though it be
controlled by the hand of God. It will not always preserve
its present order; it will be thrown from its course in days
to come. All things move in accord with their appointed
times; they are destined to be born, to grow, and to be
destroyed. The stars which you see moving above us, and
this seemingly immovable earth to which we cling and on
which we are set, will be consumed and will cease to
exist. There is nothing that does not have its old age; the
intervals are merely unequal at which Nature sends forth
all these things towards the same goal. Whatever is will
cease to be, and yet it will not perish, but will be resolved
into its elements.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 71
13 The elements of the earth must all be dissolved or utterly
destroyed in order that they may be created anew in
innocence, and that no remnant may be left to tutor men
in vice.... A single day will see the burial of all mankind.
All that the long forbearance of fortune has produced, all
that has been reared to eminence, all that is famous and
all that is beautiful, great thrones, great nations— all will
descend into the one abyss, will be overthrown in one
hour...
When the destruction of the human race is
consummated, and when wild beasts, whose nature men
had come to share, have been consigned together to a
like fate, the earth will once more drink up the waters.
Nature will force the sea to stay its course, and to expend
its rage within its wonted bounds. Ocean will be banished
from our abodes into his own secret dwelling place. The
ancient order of things will be recalled. Every living
creature will be created afresh. The earth will receive a
new man ignorant of sin, born under happier stars. But
they, too, will retain their innocence only while they are
new.
Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales, III, 29-30
14 In the beginning was the Golden Age, when men of their
own accord, without threat of punishment, without laws,
maintained good faith and did what was right. There were
no penalties to be afraid of, no bronze tablets were
erected, carrying threats of legal action, no crowd of
wrong-doers, anxious for mercy, trembled before the face
of their judge: indeed, there were no Judges, men lived
securely without them. Never yet had any pine tree, cut
down from its home on the mountains, been launched on
ocean’s waves, to visit foreign lands: men knew only their
own shores. Their cities were not yet surrounded by sheer
moats, they had no straight brass trumpets, no coiling
brass horns, no helmets and no swords. The peoples of
the world, untroubled by any fears, enjoyed a leisurely
and peaceful existence, and had no use for soldiers. The
earth itself, without compulsion, untouched by the hoe,
unfurrowed by any share, produced all things
spontaneously, and men were content with foods that
grew without cultivation. They gathered arbute berries
and mountain strawberries, wild cherries and blackberries
that cling to thorny bramble bushes; or acorns, fallen
from Jupiter’s spreading oak. It was a season of
everlasting spring, when peaceful zephyrs, with their
warm breath, caressed the flowers that sprang up without
having been planted. In time the earth, though untilled,
produced corn too, and fields that never lay fallow
whitened with heavy cars of grain. Then there flowed
rivers of milk and rivers of nectar, and golden honey
dripped from the green holm-oak.
When Saturn was consigned to the darkness of
Tartarus, and the world passed under the rule of Jove, the
age of silver replaced that of gold, inferior to it, but
superior to the age of tawny bronze. Jupiter shortened the
springtime which had prevailed of old, and instituted a
cycle of four seasons in the year, winter, summer,
changeable autumn, and a brief spring. Then, for the first
time, the air became parched and arid, and glowed with
white heat, then hanging icicles formed under the
chilling blasts of the wind. It was in those days that men
first sought covered dwelling places: they made their
homes in caves and thick shrubberies, or bound branches
together with bark. Then corn, the gift of Ceres, first
began to be sown in long furrows, and straining bullocks
groaned beneath the yoke.
After that came the third age, the age of bronze, when
men were of a fiercer character, more ready to turn to
cruel warfare, but still free from any taint of wickedness.
Last of all arose the age of hard iron: immediately, in
this period which took its name from a baser ore, all
manner of crime broke out; modesty, truth, and loyalty
fled. Treachery and trickery took their place, deceit and
violence and criminal greed. Now sailors spread their
canvas to the winds, though they had as yet but little
knowledge of these, and trees which had once clothed
the high mountains were fashioned into ships, and tossed
upon the ocean waves, far removed from their own
element. The land, which had previously been common to
all, like the sunlight and the breezes, was now divided up
far and wide by boundaries, set by cautious surveyors.
Nor was it only corn and their due nourishment that men
demanded of the rich earth: they explored its very
bowels, and dug out the wealth which it had hidden
away, close to the Stygian shades; and this wealth was a
further incitement to wickedness. By this time iron had
been discovered, to the hurt of mankind, and gold, more
hurtful still than iron. War made its appearance, using
both those metals in its conflict, and shaking clashing
weapons in bloodstained hands. Men lived on what they
could plunder: friend was not safe from friend, nor father-
in-law from son-in-law, and even between brothers
affection was rare. Husbands waited eagerly for the death
of their wives, and wives for that of their husbands.
Ruthless stepmothers mixed brews of deadly aconite, and
sons pried into their fathers’ horoscopes, impatient for
them to die. All proper affection lay vanquished and, last
of the immortals, the maiden Justice left the blood-soaked
earth.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, |
15 These two things then thou must bear in mind; the one,
that all things from eternity are of like forms and come
round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether
a man Shall see the same things during a hundred years
or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that
the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the
same.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Il, H
16 On the occasion of everything which happens keep this
in mind, that it is that which thou hast often seen.
Everywhere up and down thou wilt find the same things,
with which the old histories are filled, those of the middle
ages and those of our own day.... There is nothing new: all
things are both familiar and short-lived.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 1
17 Constantly consider how all things such as they now are,
in time past also were; and consider that they will be the
same again. And place before thy eyes entire dramas and
stages of the same form, whatever thou hast learned from
thy experience or from older history ... for all those were
such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, 27
18 This controversy some philosophers have seen no other
approved means of solving than by introducing cycles of
time, in which there should be a constant renewal and
repetition of the order of nature; and they have therefore
asserted that theses cycles will ceaselessly recur, one
passing away and another coming, though they are not
agreed as to whether one permanent world shall pass
through all these cycles, or whether the world shall at
fixed intervals die out and be renewed so as to exhibit a
recurrence of the same phenomena—the things which
have been and those which are to be coinciding. And
from this fantastic vicissitude they exempt not even the
immortal soul that has attained wisdom, consigning it to
a ceaseless transmigration between delusive blessedness
and real misery. For how can that be truly called blessed
which has no assurance of being so eternally, and is
either in ignorance of the truth, and blind to the misery
that is approaching, or, Knowing it, is in misery and fear?
Or if it passes to bliss, and leaves miseries forever, then
there happens in time a new thing which time shall not
end. Why not, then, the world also? Why may not man,
too, be a similar thing? So that, by following the straight
path of sound doctrine, we escape, | Know not what
circuitous paths, discovered by deceiving and deceived
sages.
Augustine, City of God, X/l, 13
19 Over and above those arts which are called virtues, and
which teach us how we may spend our life well, and
attain to endless happiness—arts which are given to the
children of the promise and the kingdom by the sole
grace of God which is in Christ—has not the genius of
man invented and applied countless astonishing arts,
partly the result of necessity, partly the result of
exuberant invention, so that this vigour of mind, which is
so active in the discovery not merely of superfluous but
even of dangerous and destructive things, betokens an
inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent,
learn, or employ such arts? What wonderful—one might
say stupefying—advances has human industry made in
the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and
navigation! With what endless variety are designs in
pottery, painting, and sculpture produced, and with what
skill executed! What wonderful spectacles are exhibited
in the theatres, which those who have not seen them
cannot credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching,
killing, or taming wild beasts! And for the injury of men,
also, how many kinds of poisons, weapons, engines of
destruction, have been invented, while for the
preservation or restoration of health the appliances and
remedies are infinite! To provoke appetite and please the
palate, what a variety of seasonings have been
concocted! To express and gain entrance for thougNts,
what a multitude and variety of signs there are, among
which speaking and writing hold the first place! what
ornaments has eloquence at command to delight the
mind! what wealth of song is there to captivate the ear!
how many musical instruments and strains of harmony
have been devised! What skill has been attained in
measures and numbers! with what sagacity have the
movements and connections of the stars been
discovered! Who could tell the thought that has been
spent upon nature, even though, despairing of
recounting it in detail, he endeavoured only to give a
general view of it? In fine, even the defence of errors and
misapprehensions, which has illustrated the genius of
heretics and philosophers, cannot be sufficiently
declared. For at present it is the nature of the human
mind which adorns this mortal life which we are extolling,
and not the faith and the way of truth which lead to
immortality. And since this great nature has certainly
been created by the true and supreme God, Who
administers all things He has made with absolute power
and justice, it could never have fallen into these miseries,
nor have gone out of them to miseries eternal—saving
only those who are redeemed—had not an exceeding
great sin been found in the first man from whom the rest
have sprung.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 24
20 This Sabbath shall appear still more clearly if we count
the ages as days, in accordance with the periods of time
defined in Scripture, for that period will be found to be
the seventh. The first age, as the first day, extends from
Adam to the deluge; the second from the deluge to
Abraham, equalling the first, not in length of time, but in
the number of generations, there being ten in each. From
Abraham to the advent of Christ there are, as the
evangelist Matthew calculates, three periods, in each of
which are fourteen generations—one period from
Abraham to David, a second from David to the captivity, a
third from the captivity to the birth of Christ in the flesh.
There are thus five ages in all. The sixth is now passing,
and cannot be measured by any number of generations,
as it has been said, "It is not for you to know the times,
which the Father hath put in His own power." After this
period God shall rest as on the seventh day, when He
Shall give us (who shall be the seventh day) rest in
Himself. But there is not now space to treat of these ages;
suffice it to say that the seventh shall be our Sabbath,
which shall be brought to a close, not by an evening, but
by the Lord’s day, as an eighth and eternal day,
consecrated by the resurrection of Christ and prefiguring
the eternal repose not only of the spirit, but also of the
body. There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and
praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For
what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain
to the kingdom of which there is no end?
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 30
21 Whoever considers the past and the present will readily
observe that all cities and all peoples are and ever have
been animated by the same desires and the same
passions; so that it is easy, by diligent study of the past,
to foresee what is likely to happen in the future in any
republic, and to apply those remedies that were used by
the ancients, or, not finding any that were employed by
them, to devise new ones from the similarity of the
events.
Machiavelli, Discourses, |, 39
22 Nations, as a rule, when making a change in their system
of government pass from order to disorder, and
afterwards from disorder to order, because nature permits
no stability in human affairs. When nations reach their
final perfection and can mount no higher they commence
to descend; and equally when they have descended and
reached a depth where they can fall no lower, necessity
compels them to rise again. Thus states will always be
falling from prosperity to adversity, and from adversity
they will ascend again to prosperity. Because valour
brings peace, peace idleness, idleness disorder, and
disorder ruin; once more from ruin arises good order, from
order valour, and from valour success and glory.
Machiavelli, Florentine History, V
23 And now Don Quixote having satisfy’d his Appetite, he
took a Handful of Acorns, and looking earnestly upon
"em; O happy Age, cry’d he, which our first Parents call’d
the Age of Gold! not because Gold, so much ador’d in this
lron-Age, was then easily purchas’d, but because those
two fatal Words, Mine and Thine, were Distinctions
unknown to the People of those fortunate Times; for all
Things were in common in that holy Age: Men, for their
Sustenance, needed only to lift their Hands, and take it
from the sturdy Oak, whose spreading Arms liberally
invited them to gather the wholsome savoury Fruit; while
the clear Springs, and silver Rivulets, with luxuriant
Plenty, offer’d them their pure refreshing Water. In hollow
Trees, and in the Clefts of Rocks, the labouring and
industrious Bees erected their litthe Commonwealths, that
Men might reap with Pleasure and with Ease the sweet
and fertile Harvest of their Toils. The tough and strenuous
Cork-Trees did of themselves, and without other Art than
their native Liberality, dismiss and impart their broad
light Bark, which serv’d to cover those lowly Huts,
propp’d up with rough-hewn Stakes, that were first built
as a Shelter against the Inclemencies of the Air: All then
was Union, all Peace, all Love and Friendship in the
World: As yet no rude Plough-share presum’d with
Violence to pry into the pious Bowels of our Mother Earth,
for she without Compulsion kindly yielded from every Part
of her fruitful and spacious Bosom, whatever might at
once satisfy, sustain and indulge her frugal Children.
Then was the Time when innocent beautiful young
Shepherdesses went tripping o’er the Hills and Vales:
Their lovely Hair sometimes plaited, sometimes loose and
flowing, clad in no other Vestment but what was
necessary to cover decently what Modesty would always
have conceal’d: The Tyrian Die, and the rich glossy Hue of
Silk, martyr’d and dissembled into every Colour, which
are now esteem’d so fine and magnificent, were unknown
to the innocent Plainness of that Age; yet bedeck’d with
more becoming Leaves and Flowers, they may be said to
outshine the proudest of the vain-dressing Ladies of our
Age, array’d in the most magnificent Garbs and all the
most sumptuous Adorings which Idleness and Luxury
have taught succeeding Pride: Lovers then express’d the
Passion of their Souls in the unaffected Language of the
Heart, with the native Plainness and Sincerity in which
they were conceiv’d and divested of all that artificial
Contexture, which enervates what it labours to enforce:
Imposture, Deceit and Malice had not yet crept in, and
impos’d themselves unbrib’d upon Mankind in the
Disguise of Truth and Simplicity: Justice, unbiass’d either
by Favour or Interest, which now so fatally pervert it, was
equally and impartially dispensed; nor was the Judges
Fancy Law, for then there were neither Judges, nor Causes
to be judg’d; the modest Maid might walk where-ever she
pleas’d alone, free from the Attacks of lewd lascivious
Importuners. But in this degenerate Age, Fraud anda
Legion of Ills infecting the World, no Virtue can be safe,
no Honour be secure; while wanton Desires, diffus’d into
the Hearts of Men, corrupt the strictest Watches, and the
closest Retreats; which, though as intricate and unknown
as the Labyrinth of Crete, are no Security for Chastity.
Thus that Primitive Innocence being vanish’d, and
Oppression daily prevailing, there was a Necessity to
oppose the Torrent of Violence: For which Reason the
Order of Knighthood-Errant was instituted, to defend the
Honour of Virgins, protect Widows, relieve Orphans, and
assist all the Distress’d in general. Now | my self am one
of this Order, honest Friends; and though all People are
oblig’d by the Law of Nature to be kind to Persons of My
Order; yet since you, without knowing any thing of this
Obligation, have so generously entertain’d me, | ought to
pay you my utmost Acknowledgment; and, accordingly,
return you my most hearty Thanks for the same.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1,11
24 By far the greatest obstacle to the advancement of the
sciences, and the undertaking of any new attempt or
department, is to be found in men’s despair and the idea
of impossibility; for men of a prudent and exact turn of
thought are altogether diffident in matters of this nature,
considering the obscurity of nature, the shortness of life,
the deception of the senses, and weakness of the
judgment. They think, therefore, that in the revolutions of
ages and of the world there are certain floods and ebbs of
the sciences, and that they grow and flourish at one time,
and wither and fall off at another, that when they have
attained a certain degree and condition they can proceed
no further.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 92
25 We should notice the force, effect, and consequences of
inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in
those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely,
printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three
have changed the appearance and state of the whole
world: first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in
navigation; and innumerable changes have been thence
derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have
exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs
than these mechanical discoveries.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 129
26 Beehives were as well laid out a thousand years ago as
today, and each bee forms that hexagon as exactly the
first time as the last. It is the same with everything
animals make by that hidden motion. Nature teaches
them in response to the pressure of necessity; but this
frail knowledge dies with its need: as they receive it
without study, they do not have the happiness of
preserving it; and every time they are given it, they find
it new, because nature, whose object is merely to
maintain animals in an order of limited perfection, infuses
in them this necessary knowledge, always the same, lest
they perish, and does not allow them to add to it lest they
go beyond the boundaries prescribed to them. It is
different with man, made only for infinity. He is ignorant
in his life’s first age, but he never ceases to learn as he
goes forward, for he has the advantage not only of his
own experience but also of his predecessors’, because he
always keeps in his memory the knowledge he has once
acquired, and that of the ancients is always at hand in
the books they have left. And since he keeps his
knowledge, he can also easily increase it, so that men
today are in a certain sense in the same condition in
which those ancient philosophers would be if they could
have prolonged their old age until now, adding to the
knowledge they had what their studies might have won
for them by the grace of so many centuries. Hence it is
that by a special prerogative not only does each man
advance from day to day in the sciences, but all men
together make a continual progress as the universe grows
old, because the same thing happens in the succession of
men as in the different ages of an individual man. So that
the whole series of men during the course of So many
centuries should be considered as one selfsame man,
always in existence and continually learning. Whence it is
seen with what injustice we respect antiquity in the
persons of its philosophers; for since old age is the age
furthest removed from childhood, who does not see that
the old age of this universal man should be sought not in
the limes near his birth but in those which are most
distant from it? Those whom we call ancients were in
truth new in every respect, and actually formed The
childhood of man; and since we have added to their
knowledge the experience of the succeeding centuries, it
is in ourselves that that antiquity can be found which we
revere in others.
Pascal. Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum
27 Chorus of All. All, all of a piece throughout:
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
"T is well an old age is out,
And time to begin a new.
Dryden, The Secular Masque (1700)
28 To realize in its completeness the universal beauty and
perfection of the works of God, we must recognize a
certain perpetual and very free progress of the whole
universe, such that it is always going forward to greater
improvement. So even now a great part of our earth has
received cultivation and will receive it more and more.
And although it is true that sometimes certain parts of it
grow wild again, or again suffer destruction or
degeneration, yet this is to be understood in the way in
which affliction was explained above, that is to say, that
this very destruction and degeneration leads to some
greater end, so that somehow we profit by the loss itself.
And to the possible objection that, if this were so, the
world ought long ago to have become a paradise, there is
a ready answer. Although many substances have already
attained a great perfection, yet on account of the infinite
divisibility of the continuous, there always remain in the
abyss of things slumbering parts which have yet to be
awakened, to grow in size and worth, and, in a word, to
advance to a more perfect state. And hence no end of
progress is ever reached.
Leibniz, On the Ultimate Origination of Things
29 | have perused many of their [the Lorbrulgrudians’]
books, especially those in history and morality. Among
the latter | was much diverted with a little old treatise,
which always lay in Glumdalclitch's bed-chamber, and
belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman,
who dealt in writings of morality and devotion. The book
treats of the weakness of human kind; and is in little
esteem, except among women and the vulgar. However, |
was curious to see what an author of that country could
Say upon such a subject. This writer went through all the
usual topicks of European moralists; shewing how
diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was
man in his own nature; how unable to defend himself
from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts;
how much he was excelled by one creature in strength,
by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in
industry. He added, that nature was degenerated in these
latter declining ages of the world, and could now produce
only small abortive births, in comparison of those in
ancient times. He said, it was very reasonable to think,
not only that the species of man were originally much
larger, but also, that there must have been giants in
former ages; which, as it is asserted by history and
tradition, so it hath been confirmed by huge bones and
sculls, casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom,
far exceeding the common dwindled race of man in our
days.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Il, 7
30 Our Science... comes to describe ... an ideal eternal
history traversed in time by the history of every nation in
its rise, progress, maturity, decline and fall. Indeed we go
so far as to assert that whoever meditates this Science
tells himself this ideal eternal history only so far as he
makes it by that proof "it had, has, and will have to be."
Vico, The New Science, |
31 This world without doubt has issued from a mind often
diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to
the particular ends that men had proposed to
themselves; which narrow ends, made means to serve
wider ends, it has always employed to preserve the
human race upon this earth. Men mean to gratify their
bestial lust and abandon their offspring, and they
inaugurate the chastity of marriage from which the
families arise. The fathers mean to exercise without
restraint their paternal power over their clients, and they
subject them to the civil powers from which the cities
arise. The reigning orders of nobles mean to abuse their
lordly freedom over the plebeians, and they are obliged
to submit to the laws which establish popular liberty. The
free peoples mean to shake off the yoke of their laws, and
they become subject to monarchs. The monarchs mean to
strengthen their own positions by debasing their subjects
with all the vices of dissoluteness, and they dispose them
to endure slavery at the hands of stronger nations. The
nations mean to dissolve themselves, and their remnants
flee for safety to the wilderness, whence, like the
phoenix, they rise again.
Vico, The New Science, Conclusion
32 Thus—thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this
great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our
eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our
knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological,
polemical, nautical, mathematical, enigmatical, technical,
biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with
fifty other branches of it, (most of ’em ending as these do,
in ical) have for these two centuries and more, gradually
been creeping upwards towards that acme of their
perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from
the advances of these last seven years, we cannot
possibly be far off.
When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an
end to all kind of writings whatsoever;—the want of all
kind of writing will put an end to all kind of reading;—and
that in time, As war begets poverty; poverty peace,—
must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—
and then—we shall have all to begin over again; or, in
other words, be exactly where we started.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, |, 21
33 A famous author, reckoning up the good and evil of
human life, and comparing the aggregates, finds that our
pains greatly exceed our pleasures: so that, all things
considered, human life is not at all a valuable gift. This
conclusion does not surprise me; for the writer drew all
his arguments from man in civilisation. Had he gone back
to the state of nature, his inquiries would clearly have
had a different result, and man would have been seen to
be subject to very few evils not of his own creation. It has
indeed cost us not a little trouble to make ourselves as
wretched as we are. When we consider, on the one hand,
the immense labours of mankind, the many sciences
brought to perfection, the arts invented, the powers
employed, the deeps filled up, the mountains levelled,
the rocks shattered, the rivers made navigable, the tracts
of land cleared, the lakes emptied, the marshes drained,
the enormous structures erected on land, and the
teeming vessels that cover the sea; and, on the other
hand, estimate with ever so little thought, the real
advantages that have accrued from all these works to
mankind, we cannot help being amazed at the vast
disproportion there is between these things, and
deploring the infatuation of man, which, to gratify his
silly pride and vain self-admiration, induces him eagerly
to pursue all the miseries he is capable of feeling, Though
beneficent nature had kindly placed them out of his way.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Appendix
34 Savage man, when he has dined, is at peace with all
nature, and the friend of all his fellow-creatures. If a
dispute arises about a meal, he rarely comes to blows,
without having first compared the difficulty of conquering
his antagonist with the trouble of finding subsistence
elsewhere: and, as pride does not come in, it all endsina
few blows; the victor cats, and the vanquished seeks
provision somewhere else, and all is at peace. The ease is
quite different with man in the stale of society, for whom
first necessaries have to be provided, and then
superfluities; delicacies follow next, then immense
wealth, then subjects, and then slaves. He enjoys nota
mementos relaxation; and what is yet stranger, the less
natural and pressing his wants, the more headstrong are
his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in his
power to gratify them; so that after a long course of
prosperity, after having swallowed up treasures and
ruined multitudes, the hero ends up by cutting every
throat till he finds himself, at last, sole master of the
world. Such is in miniature the moral picture, if not of
human life, at least of the secret pretensions of the heart
of civilised man.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, Appendix
35 Johnson. \t is in refinement and elegance that the
civilized man differs from the savage. A great pan of our
industry, and all our ingenuity is exercised in procuring
pleasure; and, Sir, a hungry man has not the same
pleasure in eating a plain dinner, That a hungry man has
in eating a luxurious dinner.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr, 14, 1778)
36 Natural phenomena, governed by constant la\%'s,
traverse forever certain fixed cycles of change. All things
perish, all things revive; and in those successive
generations which mark the reproduction of plants and of
animals, time but restores continually the likeness of
what it has annihilated.
The succession of mankind, on the contrary, presents
from age to age an ever-varied spectacle. Reason, the
passions, liberty, continually give rise to new events. All
the ages are linked together by a chain of causes and
effects which unite the existing state of the world with all
that has gone before. The arbitrary signs of speech and of
writing giving to men the means of insuring the
possession of their ideas and of communicating them to
others, have made a common treasure-store of all
individual knowledge, which one generation bequeaths
to the next, a heritage constantly augmented by the
discoveries of each age; and mankind, viewed from its
origin, appears to the eyes of a philosopher as one vast
whole, which itself, like each individual, has its infancy
and its growth.
Turgot, Progress of the Human Mind, 1
37 What a host of inventions unknown to the ancients, and
credited to an age of barbarism! Our art of recording
music, our bills of exchange, our paper, window-glass,
plate-glass, windmills, watches, spectacles, gunpowder,
the magnetic needle and the consequent perfection of
navigation and commerce. The arts are but the utilization
of nature, and the exercise of the arts is a series of
physical experiments which progressively unveil her.
Facts were accumulating in the darkness of the age of
ignorance, and the sciences, whose progress, for all that
it was hidden, was none the less actual, were destined to
reappear in time increased by these new riches; like
those rivers which, after having disappeared from view
for a space in some subterranean channel, reappear
farther on augmented by all the waters which have
filtered through the earth.
Turgot, Progress of the Human Mind, |
38 The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every
man to better his condition, the principle from which
public and national, as well as private opulence is
originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to
maintain the natural progress of things towards
improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of
government and of the greatest errors of administration.
Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently
restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite,
not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of
the doctor.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Il, 3
39 Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the
progress of the human mind. As that becomes more
developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are
made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions
change with the change of circumstances, institutions
must advance also, and keep pace with the times.
Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kerchaval (July 12, 1816)
40 We imperceptibly advance from youth to age without
observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human
affairs; and even in our larger experience of history, the
imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of
causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions.
But if the interval between two memorable eras could be
instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a
momentary slumber of two hundred years, to display the
new world to the eyes of a spectator who still retained a
lively and recent impression of the o/d, his surprise and
his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a
philosophical romance.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXII
41 Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and
religious zeal have diffused among the savages of the Old
and New World these inestimable gifts: they have been
successively propagated; they can never be lost. We may
therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every
age of the world has increased and still increases the real
wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the
virtue, of the human race.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVIII
42 The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may
be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature
to bring about a political constitution, internally, and, for
this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in
which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can
be fully developed.
Kant, Idea of a Universal History, VIII
43 | will... venture to assume that as the human race is
continually advancing in civilisation and culture as its
natural purpose, so it is continually making progress for
the better in relation to the moral end of its existence,
and that this progress although it may be sometimes
interrupted, will never be entirely broken off or stopped.
It is not necessary for me to prove this assumption; the
burden of proof lies on its opponents. For | take my stand
upon my innate sense of duty in this connection. Every
member in the series of generations to which | belong as
a man—although mayhap not so well equipped with the
requisite moral qualifications as | ought to be, and
consequently might bo—is, in fact, prompted by his sense
of duty so to act in reference to posterity that they may
always become better, and the possibility of this must be
assumed. This duty can thus be rightfully transmitted
from one member of the generations to another. Now
whatever doubts may be drawn from history against my
hopes, and were they even of such a kind as, in case of
their being demonstrated, might move me to desist from
efforts which according to all appearances would be vain,
yet so long as this is not made out with complete
certainty, | am not entitled to give up the guidance of
duty which is clear, and to adopt the prudential rule of
not working at the impracticable, since this is not clear
but is mere hypothesis. And, however uncertain | may
always be as to whether we may rightly hope that the
human race will attain to a better condition, yet this
individual uncertainty cannot detract from the general
rule of conduct, or from the necessary assumption in the
practical relation that such a condition is practicable.
Kant, On the Saying: That a Thing may he Right in
Theory, but may not Hold in Practice
44 The question next arises as to the means by which this
continuous progress to the better may be maintained and
even hastened. When carefully considered, we soon see
that as this process must go on to an incalculable
distance of time, it cannot depend so much on what we
may do of ourselves, for instance, on the education we
give to the younger generation, or on the method by
which we may proceed in order to realise it, as on what
human Nature as such will do in and with us, to compel
us to move in a track into which we would not readily
have betaken ourselves. For, it is from human Nature in
general, or rather— since supreme wisdom is requisite for
the accomplishment of this end—it is from Providence
alone that we can expect a result which proceeds by
relation to the whole and reacts through the whole upon
the parts. Men with their p/ans start, on the contrary, only
from the parts, and even continue to regard the parts
alone, while the whole as such is viewed as too great for
them to influence and as attainable by them only in idea.
Kant, On the Saying: That a Thing may be Right in
Theory, but may not Hold in Practice
45 Human Reason pursues her course in the species in
general: she invents, before she can apply; she discovers,
though evil hands may long abuse her discoveries. Abuse
will correct itself; and, through the unwearied zeal of
ever-growing Reason, disorder will in time become order.
By contending against passions, she strengthens and
enlightens herself: from being oppressed in this place,
she will fly to that, and extend the sphere of her sway
over the Earth. There is nothing enthusiastical in the
hope, that, wherever men dwell, at some future period
will dwell men rational, just, and happy: happy, not
through the means of their own reason alone, but of the
common reason of their whole fraternal race.
Herder, Philosophy of the History of Man, XV
46 The organic perfectibility or degeneration of species in
the case of plants or of animals can be regarded as one of
the general laws of nature.
This law extends to the human race, and no one
probably will doubt that progress in preventive medicine,
the use of more healthful foods and habitations, a mode
of living which should develop the strength through
exercise without impairing it through excess, that, finally,
the destruction of the two most active causes of
degeneracy, extreme poverty and excessive wealth, will
necessarily prolong the average duration of man’s life
and secure him a more constant health and a more robust
constitution. It is felt that the progress of preventive
medicine, become more efficacious through the progress
of reason and that of the social order, must do away in
time with transmissible or contagious diseases, and those
general disorders which owe their origin to climates,
foods, or the nature of occupations. It would not be
difficult to prove that this hope may be extended to
nearly all the other maladies, the distant causes of which
it is probable will be discovered hereafter. Would it be
absurd, then, to suppose that this improvement of the
human race may be regarded as susceptible of indefinite
progress, that there may come a time when death shall
be no more than the result either of extraordinary
accidents or of the ever more gradual decay of the vital
forces, and that, finally, the average interval elapsing
between birth and this decay may itself have no
assignable limit? Doubtless man will never become
immortal, but may not the distance between the moment
when he first receives life and the common period when
in the course of nature, without illness and without
accident, he finds it no longer possible to exist, grow
constantly wider?
Condorcet, Historical Picture of the Progress of the
Human Mind, 10
47 [The] average duration of human life is destined to
increase continually, if physical revolutions do not
oppose themselves thereto; but we do not know what
limit it is that it can never pass; we do not even know if
the general laws of nature have fixed such a limit.
Condorcet, Historical Picture of the Progress of the
Human Mindy 10
48 It is, undoubtedly, a most disheartening reflection that
the great obstacle in the way to any extraordinary
improvement in society is of a nature that we can never
hope to overcome. The perpetual tendency in the race of
man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one
of the general laws of animated nature which we can
have no reason to expect will change. Yet, discouraging
as the contemplation of this difficulty must be to those
whose exertions are laudably directed to the
improvement of the human species, it is evident that no
possible good can arise from any endeavors to slur it over
or keep it in the background.
Malthus, Population, XVII
49 Chorus. The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam.
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning-star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main.
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again.
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death’s scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free;
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendor of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued;
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.
Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past.
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
Shelley, Hellas, 1060
50 In order to understand the true value and character of
the Positive Philosophy, we must take a brief general view
of the progressive course of the human mind, regarded as
a whole; for no conception can be understood otherwise
than through its history.
From the study of the development of human
intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the
discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is
necessarily subject, and which has a solid foundation of
proof, both in the facts of our organization and in our
historical experience. The law is this:—that each of our
leading conceptions—each branch of our knowledge—
passes successively through three different theoretical
conditions: the Theological, or ficitious; the Metaphysical,
or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive. In other words,
the human mind, by its nature, employs in its progress
three methods of philosophizing, the character of which
is essentially different, and even radically opposed: viz.,
the theological method, the metaphysical, and the
positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general
systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena,
each of which excludes the others. The first IS the
necessary point of departure of the human
understanding; and the third is its fixed and definite
state. The second is merely a state of transition.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, Introduction, 1
51 We have nothing to do here with the metaphysical
controversy about the absolute happiness of Man at
different stages of civilization. As the happiness of every
man depends on the harmony between the development
of his various faculties and the entire system of the
circumstances which govern his life; and as, on the other
hand, this equilibrium always establishes itself
spontaneously to a certain extent, it is impossible to
compare in a positive way, either by sentiment or
reasoning, the individual welfare which belongs to social
situations that can never be brought into direct
comparison; and therefore the question of the happiness
of different animal organisms, or of their two sexes, is
merely impracticable and unintelligible. The only
question, therefore, is of the effect of the social evolution,
which is so undeniable that there is no reasoning with
any one who does not admit it as the basis of the inquiry.
The only ground of discussion is whether development
and improvement,—The theoretical and the practical
aspect,— are one; whether the development is
necessarily accompanied by a corresponding
amelioration, or progress, properly so called. To me it
appears that the amelioration is as unquestionable as the
development from which it proceeds, provided we regard
it as subject, like the development itself, to limits,
general and special, which science will be found to
prescribe. The chimerical notion of unlimited
perfectibility is thus at once excluded. Taking the human
race as a whole, and not any one people, it appears that
human development brings after it, in two ways, an ever-
growing amelioration, first, in the radical condition of
Man, which no one disputes; and next, in his
corresponding faculties, which is a view much less
attended to. There is no need to dwell upon the
improvement in the conditions of human existence, both
by the increasing action of Man on his environment
through the advancement of the sciences and arts, and
by the constant amelioration of his customs and
manners; and again, by the gradual improvement in
social organization. We shall presently see that in the
Middle Ages, which are charged with political
retrogression, the progress was more political than any
other. One fact is enough to silence sophistical
declamation on this subject; the continuous increase of
population all over the globe, as a consequence of
civilization, while the wants of individuals are, as a whole,
better satisfied at the same time. The tendency to
improvement must be highly spontaneous and irresistible
to have persevered notwithstanding the enormous faults
—political faults especially— which have at all times
absorbed or neutralized the greater part of our social
forces. Even throughout the revolutionary period, in spite
of the marked discordance between the political system
and the general state of civilization, the improvement has
proceeded, not only in physical and intellectual, but also
in moral respects, though the transient disorganization
could not but disturb the natural evolution. As for the
other aspect of the question, the gradual and slow
improvement of human nature, within narrow limits, it
seems to me impossible to reject altogether the principle
proposed (with great exaggeration, however) by Lamarck,
of the necessary influence of a homogeneous and
continuous exercise in producing, in every animal
organism, and especially in Man, an organic
improvement, susceptible of being established in the
race, after a sufficient persistence. If we take the best-
marked case—that of intellectual development, it seems
to be unquestionable that there is a superior aptitude for
mental combinations, independent of all culture, among
highly-civilized people; or, what comes to the same thing,
an inferior aptitude among nations that are less
advanced,—the average intellect of the members of
those societies being taken for observation. The
intellectual faculties are, it is true, more modified than
the others by the social evolution; but then they have the
smallest relative effect in the individual human
constitution: so that we are authorized to infer from their
amelioration a proportionate improvement in aptitudes
that are more marked and equally exercised. In regard to
morals, particularly, | think it indisputable that the
gradual development of humanity favors a growing
preponderance of the noblest tendencies of our nature,—
as | hope to prove further on. The lower instincts continue
to manifest themselves in modified action, but their less
sustained and more repressed exercise must tend to
debilitate them by degrees; and their increasing
regulation certainly brings them into involuntary
concurrence in the maintenance of a good social
economy; and especially in the case of the least marked
Organisms, which constitute a vast majority. These two
aspects of social evolution, then,— the development
which brings after it the /mprovement, — We may
consider to be admitted as facts.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, VI, 3
52 The progress of the race must be considered susceptible
of modification only with regard to its soeed, and without
any reversal in the order of development, or any interval
of any importance being overleaped.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, VI, 3
53 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as
it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is
barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is
scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every
thing that is given something is taken. Society acquires
new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between
the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a
watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and
the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a
Spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed to
sleep under! But compare the health of the two men and
you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal
strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage
with a broad-axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite
and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the
same blow shall send the white to his grave.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
54 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use
of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so
much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but
he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A
Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of
the information when he wants it, the man in the street
does not know a star in the sky.
Emerson, Self-Reliance
55 There is not a piece of science but its flank may be
turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not
the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be
revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the
thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners
and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new
generalization.
Emerson, Circles
56 As long as our civilization is essentially one of property,
of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by
delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be
bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will bum our
mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all
doors open, and which serves all men.
Emerson, Napoleon; or, The Man of the World
57 Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us
range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing
grooves of change.
Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the
younger day;
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 181
58 Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River, at
Lowell, where they are said to be a month earlier than the
Merrimack shad, on account of the warmth of the water.
Still patiently, almost pathetically, with instinct not to be
discouraged, not to be reasoned with, revisiting their old
haunts, as if their stern fates would relent, and still met
by the Corporation with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy
redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee
the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy
scaly armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if
man has perchance left them free for thee to enter. By
countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely
stemming the tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite
of thy bright armor, awaiting new instructions, until the
sands, until the water itself, tell thee if it be so or not.
Thus by whole migrating nations, full of instinct, which is
thy faith, in this backward spring, turned adrift, and
perchance knowest not where men do not dwell, where
there are not factories, in these days. Armed with no
sword, no electric shock, but mere shad, armed only with
innocence and a just cause, with tender dumb mouth
only forward, and scales easy to be detached. | for one
am with thee, and who knows what may avail a crowbar
against that Billerica dam?—Not despairing when whole
myriads have gone to feed those sea monsters during thy
suspense, but still brave, indifferent, on easy fin there,
like shad reserved for higher destinies. Willing to be
decimated for man’s behoof after the spawning season.
Away with the superficial and selfish philanthropy of men
—who knows what admirable virtue of fishes may be
below low-water-mark, bearing up against a hard destiny,
not admired by that fellow-creature who alone can
appreciate it! Who hears the fishes when they cry? It will
not be forgotten by some memory that we were
contemporaries. Thou shalt ere long have thy way up the
rivers, up all the rivers of the globe, if | am not mistaken.
Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall be more than
realized. If it were not so, but thou wert to be overlooked
at first and at last, then would not | take their heaven.
Yes, | say so, who think | know better than thou canst.
Keep a stiff fin, then, and stem all the tides thou mayst
meet.
Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
(Saturday)
59 In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good
as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler
wants; but I think that | speak within bounds when | say
that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the
foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in
modern civilized society not more than one half the
families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities,
where civilization especially prevails, the number of
those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the
whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside
garment of all, become indispensable summer and
winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but
now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. | do not
mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring
compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage
owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the
civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot
afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better
afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying (his (ax
(he poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace
compared with the savage's. An annual rent of from
twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country
rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of
centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper,
Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds;
copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and
many other things. But how happens it that he who is
said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized
man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich asa
savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance
in the condition of man— and | think that it is, though
only the wise improve their advantages—it must be
shown that it has produced better dwellings without
making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the
amount of what | will call life which is required to be
exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An
average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight
hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten
to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not
encumbered with a family—estimating the pecuniary
value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some
receive more, others receive less;—so that he must have
spent more than half his life commonly before his
wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent
instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the
Savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a
palace on these terms?
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
60 Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and
moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with
the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is
that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead
Hon. Shall a man go and hang himself because he
belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest
pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business,
and endeavor to be what he was made.
Thoreau, Walden: Conclusion
61 To believe that man was aboriginally civilised and then
suffered utter degradation in so many regions, is to take a
pitiably low view of human nature. It is apparently a truer
and more cheerful view that progress has been much
more general than retrogression; that man has risen,
though by slow and interrupted steps, from a lowly
condition to the highest standard as yet attained by him
in knowledge, morals and religion.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 5
62 Thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding
influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly
stock whence Man has sprung, the best evidence of the
splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long
progress through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in
his attainment of a nobler Future.
T. H, Huxley, Relations of Man to the Lower Animals
63 Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic
process. AS among other animals, multiplication goes on
without cessation, and involves severe competition for
the means of support. The struggle for existence tends to
eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the
circumstances of their existence. The strongest, the most
self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker. But the
influence of the cosmic process on the evolution of
society is the greater the more rudimentary its
civilization. Social progress means a checking of the
cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of
another, which may be called the ethical process; the end
of which is not the survival of those who may happen to
be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions
which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.
T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics
64 In support of the position that Order is intrinsically
different from Progress, and that preservation of existing
and acquisition of additional good are sufficiently distinct
to afford the basis of a fundamental classification, we
Shall perhaps be reminded that Progress may be at the
expense of Order; that while we are acquiring, or striving
to acquire, good of one kind, we may be losing ground in
respect to others: thus there may be progress in wealth,
while there is deterioration in virtue. Granting this, what
it proves is not that Progress is generically a different
thing from Permanence, but that wealth is a different
thing from virtue. Progress is permanence and something
more; and it is no answer to this to say that Progress in
one thing does not imply Permanence in everything. No
more does Progress in one thing imply Progress in
everything. Progress of any kind includes Permanence in
that same kind; whenever Permanence is sacrificed to
some particular kind of Progress, other Progress is still
more sacrificed to it; and if it be not worth the sacrifice,
not the interest of Permanence alone has been
disregarded, but the general interest of Progress has been
mistaken.
Mill, Representative Government, I!
65 No one whose opinion deserves a moment’s
consideration can doubt that most of the great positive
evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if
human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced
within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying
suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wisdom
of society, combined with the good sense and providence
of individuals. Even that most intractable of enemies,
disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by
good physical and moral education, and proper control of
noxious influences; while the progress of science holds
out a promise for the future of still more direct conquests
over this detestable foe. And every advance in that
direction relieves us from some, not only of the chances
which cut short our own lives, but, what concerns us still
more, which deprive us of those in whom our happiness is
wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of fortune, and other
disappointments connected with worldly circumstances,
these are principally the effect either of gross
imprudence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad or
imperfect social institutions.
Mill, Utilitarianism, II
66 It is my belief indeed that the general tendency is, and
will continue to be, saving occasional and temporary
exceptions, one of improvement—a tendency towards a
better and happier state. This, however, is not a question
of the method of the social science, but a theorem of the
science itself. For our purpose it is sufficient that there is
a progressive change, both in the character of the human
race and in their outward circumstances so far as
moulded by themselves; that in each successive age the
principal phenomena of society are different from what
they were in the age preceding, and still more different
from any previous age: the periods which most distinctly
mark these successive changes being intervals of one
generation, during which a new set of human beings
have been educated, have grown up from chili hood, and
taken possession of society.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. VI, X, 3
67 A Philosophy of History is generally admitted to be at
once the verification and the initial form of the
Philosophy of the Progress of Society.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. VI, X, 8
68 Progress is
The law of life, man is not Man as yet.
Browning, Paracelsus, V
69 Man knows partly but conceives beside.
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,
And in this striving, this converting air
Into a solid he may grasp and use,
Finds progress, man’s distinctive mark alone,
Not God’s, and not the beasts’: God is, they are,
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
Browning, A Death in the Desert
70 The pursuit of perfection ... is the pursuit of sweetness
and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to
make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for
machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for
confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates
hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for
sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater!—the
passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we
all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness
and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and
unkindled masses of humanity are touched with
sweetness and light. If | have not shrunk from saying that
we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have |
shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis,
must have sweetness and light for as many as possible,
Again and again | have insisted how those are the happy
moments of humanity, how those are the marking epochs
of a people’s life, how those are the flowering times for
literature and art and all the creative power of genius,
when there is a national glow of life and thought, when
the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated
by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive.
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, |
71 Progress ... is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of
civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a
piece with the development of the embryo or the
unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have
undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law
underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the
human race continues, and the constitution of things
remains the same, those modifications must end in
completeness. As surely as the tree becomes bulky when
it stands alone, and slender if one of a group; as surely as
the same creature assumes the different forms of cart-
horse and race-horse, according as its habits demand
strength or speed; as surely as a blacksmith’s arm grows
large, and the skin of a labourer’s hand thick; as surely as
the eye tends to become long-sighted in the sailor, and
short-sighted in the student; as surely as the blind attain
a more delicate sense of touch; as surely as a clerk
acquires rapidity in writing and calculation; as surely as
the musician learns to detect an error of a semi-tone
amidst what seems to others a very babel of sounds; as
surely aS a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes
when restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience
becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as surely as
there is any efficacy in educational culture, or any
meaning in such terms as habit, custom, practice; so
surely must the human faculties be moulded into
complete fitness for the social state; so surely must the
things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely
must man become perfect.
Spencer, Social Statics, |, 2
72 The plexus of causes returneth in which | am intertwined,
—ijt will again create me! | myself pertain to the causes of
the eternal return.
| come again with this sun, with this earth, with this
eagle, with this serpent— not to a new life, or a better
life, or a similar life:
—| come again eternally to this identical and selfsame
life, in its greatest and its smallest, to teach again the
eternal return of all things,—
—To speak again the word of the great noontide of
earth and man, to announce again to man the Superman.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Ill, 57
73 This life, as thou livest it now, as thou hast lived it, thou
needst must live again, and an infinite number of times;
and there will be in it nothing new; but every grief and
every joy, every thought and every sigh, all the infinitely
great and the infinitely little in thy life must return for
thee, and all this in the same sequence and the same
order. And also this spider and the moonlight through the
trees, and also this moment and myself. The eternal hour-
glass of existence will ever be turned again, and thou
with it, dust of dust,
Nietzsche, Wisdom, 341
74 The more ignorant men are, the move convinced are they
that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to
which civilization and philosophy has painfully struggled
up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery.
Savagery, they think, became barbarism; barbarism
became ancient civilization; ancient civilization became
Pauline Christianity; Pauline Christianity became Roman
Catholicism; Roman Catholicism became the Dark Ages;
and the Dark Ages were finally enlightened by the
Protestant instincts of the English race. The whole
process is Summed up as Progress with a capital P. And
any elderly gentleman of Progressive temperament will
testify that the improvement since he was a boy is
enormouse....
The notion that there has been any such Progress
since Caesar's time (less than 20 centuries) is too absurd
for discussion. All the savagery, barbarism, dark ages and
the rest of it of which we have any record as existing in
the past exists at the present moment.
Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra, Notes
75 We must... frankly give up the notion that Man as he
exists is capable of net progress. There will always be an
illusion of progress, because wherever we are conscious
of an evil we remedy it, and therefore always seem to
ourselves to be progressing, forgetting that most of the
evils we see are the effects, finally become acute, of long-
unnoticed retrogressions; that our compromising
remedies seldom fully recover the lost ground; above all,
that on the lines along which we are degenerating, good
has become evil in our eyes, and is being undone in the
name of progress precisely as evil is undone and replaced
by good on the lines along which we are evolving. This is
indeed the Illusion of Illusions; for it gives us infallible
and appalling assurance that if our political ruin is to
come, it will be effected by ardent reformers supported
by enthusiastic patriots as a series of necessary steps in
our progress. Let the Reformer, the Progressive, the
Meliorist then reconsider himself and his eternal ifs and
ans which never become pots and pans. Whilst Man
remains what he is, there can be no progress beyond the
point already attained and fallen headlong from at every
attempt at civilization; and since even that point is but a
pinnacle to which a few people cling in giddy terror
above an abyss of squalor, mere progress should no
longer charm us.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Revolutionist’s Handbook
76 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man.
Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists
77 The differences between the nations and races of
mankind are required to preserve the conditions under
which higher development is possible. One main factor in
the upward trend of animal life has been the power of
wandering. Perhaps this is why the armour-plated
monsters fared badly. They could not wander. Animals
wander into new conditions. They have to adapt
themselves or die. Mankind has wandered from the trees
to the plains, from the plains to the seacoast, from
climate to climate, from continent to continent, and from
habit of life to habit of life. When man ceases to wander,
he will cease to ascend in the scale of being. Physical
wandering is still important, but greater still is the power
of man’s spiritual adventures—adventures of thought,
adventures of passionate feeling, adventures of aesthetic
experience. A diversification among human communities
is essential for the provision of the incentive and material
for the Odyssey of the human spirit. Other nations of
different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men
require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to
be understood, something sufficiently different to
provoke attention, and something great enough to
command admiration. We must not expect, however, all
the virtues. We should even be satisfied if there is
something odd enough to be interesting.
Modem science has imposed on humanity the
necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its
progressive technology make the transition through time,
from generation to generation, a true migration into
uncharted seas of adventure. The very benefit of
wandering is that it is dangerous and needs skill to avert
evils. We must expect, therefore, that the future will
disclose dangers. It is the business of the future to be
dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it
equips the future for its duties. The prosperous middle
classes, who ruled the nineteenth century, placed an
excessive value upon placidity of existence. They refused
to face the necessities for social reform imposed by the
new industrial system, and they are now refusing to face
the necessities for intellectual reform imposed by the new
knowledge. The middle class pessimism over the future of
the world comes from a confusion between civilisation
and security. In the immediate future there will be less
security than in the immediate past, less stability. It must
be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is
inconsistent with civilisation. But, on the whole, the great
ages have been unstable ages.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, XIII
78 The foundation of all understanding ... is that no static
maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is
rooted in the nature of things. Advance or Decadence are
the only choices offered to mankind. The pure
conservative is fighting against the essence of the
universe.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XIX, 2
79 That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision
of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his
growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are
but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that
no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling,
can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all
the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the
inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius,
are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar
system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement
must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a
universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond
dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy
which rejects them can hope to stand.
Russell, A Free Man's Worship
80 Civilization is the fruit of renunciation of instinctual
satisfaction, and from each newcomer in turn it exacts
the same renunciation. Throughout the life of the
individual, there is a constant replacement of the
external compulsion by the internal. The influences of
civilization cause an ever-increasing transmutation of
egoistic trends into altruistic and social ones, and this by
an admixture of erotic elements. In the last resort it may
be said that every internal compulsion which has been of
service in the development of human beings was
Originally, that is, in the evolution of the human race,
nothing but an external one. Those who are born today
bring with them as an inherited constitution some degree
of a tendency (disposition) towards transmutation of
egoistic into social instincts, and this disposition is easily
stimulated to achieve that effect. A further measure of
this transformation must be accomplished during the life
of the individual himself. And so the human being is
subject not only to the pressure of his immediate
environment, but also to the influence of the cultural
development attained by his forefathers.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, |
81 It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of
what man by his science and practical inventions has
achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a
weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which
each individual of his species must ever again appear as
a helpless infant— O inch of nature!—is a direct
fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his
fairy-tales. All these possessions he has acquired through
culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of
omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his
gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires—or
forbidden to him—he attributed to these gods. One may
say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his
culture. Now he has himself approached very near to
realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself.
But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually
realized in the general experience of humanity. Not
completely; in some respects not at all, in others only by
halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial
limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with
all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and
they still give him trouble at times. However, he is
entitled to console himself with the thought that this
evolution will not come to an end in A.D. 1930.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, III
82 Future ages will produce further great advances in this
realm of culture, probably inconceivable now, and will
increase man’s likeness to a god still more.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, III
83 The fateful question of the human species seems to me
to be whether and to what extent the cultural process
developed in it will succeed in mastering the
derangements of communal life caused by the human
instinct of aggression and self-destruction. In this
connection, perhaps the phase through which we are at
this moment passing deserves special interest. Men have
brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to
such a pitch that by using them they could now very
easily exterminate one another to the last man. They
know this—hence arises a great part of their current
unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. And
now it may be expected that the other of the two
heavenly forces, eternal Eros, will put forth his strength
so as to maintain himself alongside of his equally
immortal adversary.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, VIII
84 If civilization has profoundly modified man, h is by
accumulating in his social Surroundings, as in a reservoir,
the habits and knowledge which society pours into the
individual at each new generation. Scratch the surface,
abolish everything we owe to an education which is
perpetual and unceasing, and you find in the depth of
our nature primitive humanity, or something very near it.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, II
85 The longing to be primitive is a disease of culture; it is
archaism in morals. To be so preoccupied with vitality isa
symptom of anaemia. When life was really vigorous and
young, in Homeric times for instance, no one seemed to
fear that it might be squeezed out of existence either by
the incubus of matter or by the petrifying blight of
intelligence. Life was like the light of day, something to
use, or to waste, or to enjoy. It was not a thing to worship;
and often the chief luxury of living consisted in dealing
death about vigorously. Life indeed was loved, and the
beauty and pathos of it were felt exquisitely; but its
beauty and pathos lay in the divineness of its model and
in its own fragility. No one paid it the equivocal
compliment of thinking it a substance or a material force.
Nobility was not then impossible in sentiment, because
there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible
than life itself, which life might illustrate and to which it
might fitly be sacrificed. Nothing can be meaner than the
anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a
spirit with any honour is not willing to live except in its
own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager
to live at all. In those days men recognised immortal gods
and resigned themselves to being mortal. Vet those were
the truly vital and instinctive days of the human spirit.
Only when vitality is low do people find material things
oppressive and ideal things unsubstantial.
Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, |
86 Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on
retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no
being to improve and no direction is set for possible
improvement: and when experience is not retained, as
among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 12
87 The cry was for vacant freedom and indeterminate
progress... Full soeed ahead!, without asking whether
directly before you was a bottomless pit,
Santayana, My Host the World, Epilogue
88 Everything is transitory and everything is preserved in
progress, and if humanity is untiring and has always
something further to undertake, if every one of its
achievements gives rise to doubt and dissatisfaction and
the demand for new achievement, yet now and again
there is achievement; something is possessed and
enjoyed and the apparently precipitous race is in reality a
succession of reposes, of satisfactions in the midst of
dissatisfactions, of fleeting moments spent in the joy of
contemplation.
Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, |, 10
89 It must be realised by any student of civilisation that we
pay heavily for our heterogeneous, rapidly changing
civilisation; we pay in high proportions of crime and
delinquency, we pay in the conflicts of youth, we pay in
an ever-increasing number of neuroses, we pay in the
lack of a coherent tradition without which the
development of art is sadly handicapped. In such a list of
prices, we must count our gains carefully, not to be
discouraged. And chief among our gains must be
reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of
many possible ways of life, where other civilisations have
recognised only one. Where other civilisations give a
satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he
mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilisation in
which there are many standards offers a possibility of
satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different
temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying
interests.
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa, XIV
90 We are quite willing to admit now that the revolution of
the earth about the sun, or the animal ancestry of man,
has next to nothing to do with the uniqueness of our
human achievements. If we inhabit one chance planet
out of a myriad solar systems, so much the greater glory,
and if all the ill-assorted human races are linked by
evolution with the animal, the provable differences
between ourselves and them are the more extreme and
the uniqueness of our institutions the more remarkable.
But our achievements, our institutions are unique; they
are of a different order from those of lesser races and
must be protected at all costs.
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, |
91 There is no doubt about the cultural continuity of the
civilization, no matter who its carriers were at the
moment. We must accept all the implications of our
human inheritance, one of the most important of which is
the small scope of biologically transmitted behaviour,
and the enormous role of the cultural process of the
transmission of tradition.
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, |
92 Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and nota
condition, a voyage and not a harbour. No known
civilization has ever reached the goal of civilization yet.
There has never been a communion of saints on earth. In
the least uncivilized society at its least uncivilized
moment, the vast majority of its members have remained
very near indeed to the primitive human level. And no
society has ever been secure of holding such ground as it
has managed to gain in its spiritual advance. All the
civilizations that we know of, including the Greek, have
already broken down and gone to pieces with the single
possible exception of our own Western civilization—and
no child of this civilization who has been born into our
generation can easily imagine that our own society is
immune from the danger of suffering the common fate.
Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, IV
93 Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical
reality. Human society is an antiphysis—in a sense it is
against nature; it does not passively submit to the
presence of nature but rather takes over the control of
nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward,
subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in
practical action.
Simone dc Beauvoir, The Second Sex, III
15.3 Fate, Fortune, and Destiny
The common thread running through the three subjects
treated in this section lies in the conception of forces or
factors at work in history that are totally beyond the control
of man. The notion of fate—of an inexorable and blind
necessity governing everything that happens—is most
evident in the quotations drawn from antiquity, especially in
the many quotations from the ancient poets. Some of them
even go so far as to declare that the gods themselves are
subject to the decrees of Fate and cannot set them aside.
Nevertheless, there are a few ancient writers, Cicero for one,
who question the universal domination of Fate or think that
man’s freedom is not totally obliterated by it.
In the Christian era, the notion of fate tends to be
replaced by that of Divine providence and of predestination.
Christian theologians, such as Augustine and Aquinas,
attempt to reconcile human freedom withb predestination
and with the providential ordering of things by the will of
God. For others, such as Luther and Calvin, providence and
predestination have the same inexorability that the ancients
accorded fate, a view that is echoed in Spinoza’s declaration
that everything is necessitated by God. The reader will find
other quotations relevant to this subject in Chapter 5 on
Mind, Section 5.7 on Will: Free Choice.
The discussion of fortune is more closely related to the
consideration of cause and chance, which are treated in
Sections 19.3 and 19.4 of Chapter 19 on Nature and the
Cosmos. Here the treatment of fortune stresses its
implications for ethics and politics— the role that good
fortune plays in the conduct of human life and in the pursuit
of happiness; and the way in which it either facilitates or
impedes the best laid plans of princes or statesmen to gain
the objectives they have in view. Thus, we find Machiavelli
advising the prince to regard Fortune as a woman who will
yield only to bold advances.
1 Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that
build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman
waketh but in vain.
Psalm 127:1
2 Man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken
in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the
Snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when
it falleth suddenly upon them.
Ecclesiastes 9:12
3 Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shall find it after
many days.
Ecclesiastes 11:1
4 lf aman live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let
him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be
many.
Ecclesiastes 11:8
5 Zeus. For this among the immortal gods is the mightiest
witness
| can give, and nothing | do shall be vain nor revocable
nor a thing unfulfilled when | bend my head in assent
to it.
Homer, Iliad, |, 525
6 Hektor. No man is going to hurl me to Hades, unless it is
fated,
but as for fate, | think that no man yet has escaped it
once it has taken its first form, neither brave man nor
coward.
Homer, Iliad, Vl, 487
7 Achilleus. There are two urns that stand on the door-sill of
Zeus. They are unlike
for the gifts they bestow: an urn of evils, an urn of
blessings.
If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and
bestows them
on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in
good fortune.
But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows, he
makes a failure
of man, and the evil hunger drives him over the
shining
earth, and he wanders respected neither of gods nor
mortals.
Homer, Iliad, XXIV, 527
8 Chorus. Once a man fostered in his house
a lion cub, from the mother’s milk
torn, craving the breast given.
In the first steps of its young life
mild, it played with children
and delighted the old.
Caught in the arm’s cradle
they pampered it like a newborn child,
shining eyed and broken to the hand
to stay the stress of its hunger.
But it grew with time, and the lion
in the blood strain came out; it paid
grace to those who had fostered it
in blood and death for the sheep flocks,
a grim feast forbidden.
The house reeked with blood run
nor could its people beat down the bane,
the giant murderer’s onslaught.
This thing they raised in their house was blessed
by God to be priest of destruction.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 716
9 Electra. The day of destiny waits for the free man as well
as for the man enslaved beneath an alien hand.
Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 103
10 Chorus. All providence
Is effortless: throned,
Holy and motionless,
His will is accomplished.
Aeschylus, Suppliant Maidens, 97
11 Prometheus. It is an easy thing for one whose foot
is on the outside of calamity
to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.
| have known all that you have said: | knew,
| knew when | transgressed nor will deny it.
In helping man | brought my troubles on me;
but yet | did not think that with such tortures
| should be wasted on these airy cliffs,
this lonely mountain top, with no one near.
But do not sorrow for my present suffering;
alight on earth and hear what is to come
that you may know the whole complete: | beg you
alight and join your sorrow with mine: misfortune
wandering the same track lights now upon one
and now upon another.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 265
12 Prometheus. Craft is far weaker than necessity.
Chorus. Who then is the steersman of necessity?
Prom. The triple-formed Fates and the remembering
Furies.
Ch. ls Zeus weaker than these?
Prom. Yes, for he, too, cannot escape what is fated.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 513
13 The Egiptians... discovered to which of the gods each
month and day is sacred; and found out from the day of a
man’s birth what he will meet with in the course of his
life, and how he will end his days, and what sort of man
he will be.
Herodotus, History, Il, 82
14 Chorus. Fate has terrible power.
You cannot escape it by wealth or war.
No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it.
Sophocles, Antigone, 951
13 Chorus. Nothing painless has the all-accomplishing King
dispensed for mortal men. But grief and joy come circling
to all, like the turning paths of the Bear among the stars.
The shimmering night does not stay for men, nor does
calamity, nor wealth, but swiftly they are gone, and to
another man it comes to know joy and its loss.
Sophocles, Women of Trachis, 126
16 Philoctetes. Look how men live, always precariously
balanced between good and bad fortune. If you are out of
trouble, watch for danger. And when you live well, then
consider the most your life, lest ruin take it unawares.
Sophocles, Philoctetes, 502
17 Heracles. Fortune is dark; she moves, but we cannot see
the way
nor can we pin her down by science and study her.
Euripides, Alcestis, 785
18 Attendant. Don’t envy men
Because they seem to have a run of luck,
Since luck's a nine days’ wonder. Wait their end.
Euripides, Heracleidae, 864
19 Megara. The man who sticks it out against his fate shows
spirit, but the spirit of a fool.
No man alive can budge necessity.
Euripides, Heracles, 309
20 Iphigenia. Who knows on whom such strokes of fate will
fall? for all that Heaven decrees, proceeds unseen, and no
man knoweth of the ills in store; for Fate misleads us into
doubtful paths.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 475
21 Hermocrates. The incalculable element in the future
exercises the widest influence, and is the most
treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all things,
as it frightens us all equally.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, IV, 62
22 Athenian Stranger. God governs all things, and... chance
and opportunity co-operate with him in the government
of human affairs.
Plato, Laws, IV, 709A
23 Chance or fortune is called 'good’ when the result is
good, ‘evil’ when it is evil. The terms ‘good fortune’ and
‘ill fortune’ are used when either result is of considerable
magnitude. Thus one who comes within an ace of some
great evil or great good is said to be fortunate or
unfortunate. The mind affirms the presence of the
attribute, ignoring the hair’s breadth of difference.
Further, it is with reason that good fortune is regarded as
unstable; for chance is unstable, as none of the things
which result from it can be invariable or normal.
Aristotle, Physics, 197a25
24 It were better to follow the myths about the gods than to
become a slave to the Destiny of the natural
philosophers; for the former suggests a hope of placating
the gods by worship, whereas the latter involves a
necessity which knows no placation.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
25 That men, in the infirmity of human nature, should fall
into misfortunes which defy calculation, is the fault not of
the sufferers but of Fortune, and of those who do the
wrong; but that they should from mere levity, and with
their eyes open, thrust themselves upon the most serious
disasters is without dispute the fault of the victims
themselves. Therefore it is that pity and sympathy and
assistance await those whose failure is due to Fortune:
reproach and rebuke from all men of sense those who
have only their own folly to thank for it.
Polybius, Histories, 11, 7
26 Reason forces us to agree that everything happens by
fate. By fate, | mean that orderly succession of causes
whereby causes are linked together, and each cause
produces an effect. This undying truth has its source in
eternity. Therefore everything that has happened was
bound to happen. Nothing will happen that does not have
an efficient cause in nature. Consequently, fate is that
which is, not out of ignorance, but scientifically, named
the eternal cause of things past, present, and future. This
observation will inform us what effect will most likely
proceed from most causes, even if the cause is not known
at all. It would be too much to presume that it is known in
all eases.
Cicero, Divination, |, 55
27 | would think that it is not eve within God’s power to
know what events will happen by accident or by chance.
If he does know, then obviously the event must happen.
But if it must happen, chance does not exist. Yet chance
does exist. There is therefore no foreknowledge of things
that happen by chance.
Cicero, Divination, II, 7
28 If there were no such word, or thing, or force as Fate, and
if everything happened by chance, would the course of
events be different than they are? Why then keep
harping on Fate? If everything can be explained in terms
of nature or fortune, why drag Fate in?
Cicero, Fate, III
29 What is the use of a philosophy that insists that
everything happens by fate? It is a philosophy for old
women, and ignorant old women at that.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 20
30 The Fates, when they this happy web have spun,
Shall bless the sacred clue, and bid it smoothly
Virgil, Eclogues, IV
31 Here stood her [Juno’s] chariot; here, if Heav’n were kind,
The scat of awful empire she design’d.
Yet she had heard an ancient rumor fly,
(Long cited by the people of the sky,)
That times to come should see the Trojan race
Her Carthage ruin, and her tow’rs deface;
Nor thus confin’d, the yoke of sov’reign sway
Should on the necks of all the nations lay.
She ponder’d this, and fear’d it was in fate;
Nor could forget the war she wag’d of late
For conqu’ring Greece against the Trojan state.
Besides, long causes working in her mind,
And secret seeds of envy, lay behind;
Deep graven in her heart the doom remain’d
Of partial Paris, and her form disdain’d;
The grace bestow’d on ravish’d Ganymed,
Electra’s glories, and her injur’d bed.
Each was a cause alone; and all combin’d
To kindle vengeance in her haughty mind.
For this, far distant from the Latian coast
She drove the remnants of the Trojan host;
And sev’n long years th’ unhappy wand’ring train
Were toss’d by storms, and scatter’d thro' the main.
Such time, such toil, requir’'d the Roman name,
Such length of labor for so vast a frame.
Virgil, Aeneid, |
32 Jove. Each to his proper fortune stand or fall;
Equal and unconcern’d | look on all.
Rutulians, Trojans, are the same to me;
And both shall draw the lots their fates decree.
Let these assault, if Fortune be their friend;
And, if she favors those, let those defend:
The Fates will find their way.
Virgil, Aeneid, X
33 What next mom’s sun may bring, forbear to ask;
But count each day that comes by gift of chance
So much to the good.
Horace, Odes, 1,9
34 Fortune, her cruel trade quite to her mind.
Persistent still her wanton game to play,
Transfers her favours day by day,—
To me, to others, kind.
Horace, Odes, Ill, 29
35 We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn
and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of
only the usual course of events. For what is there that
fortune does not when she pleases fell at the height of its
powers? What is there that is not the more assailed and
buffeted by her the more lustrous its attraction? What is
there that is troublesome or difficult for her? Her assaults
do not always come along a single path, or even a well-
recognized path. At one time she will call in the aid of our
own hands in attacking us, at another she will be content
with her own powers in devising for us dangers for which
no one is responsible. No moment is exempt: in the midst
of pleasures there are found the springs of suffering. In
the middle of peace war rears its head, and the bulwarks
of one’s security are transformed into sources of alarm,
friend turning foe and ally turning enemy. The summer’s
calm is upset by sudden storms more severe than those
of winter. In the absence of any enemy we suffer all that
an enemy might wreak on us. Overmuch prosperity if all
else fails will hit on the instruments of its own
destruction. Sickness assails those leading the most
sensible lives, tuberculosis those with the strongest
constitutions, retribution the utterly guiltless, violence
the most secluded. Misfortune has a way of choosing
some unprecedented means or other of impressing its
power on those who might be said to have forgotten it. A
single day strews in ruins all that was raised by a train of
construction extending over a long span of time and
involving a great number of separate works and a great
deal of favour on the part of heaven. To say a ‘day’,
indeed, is to put too much of a brake on the calamities
that hasten down upon us: an hour, an instant of time,
suffices for the overthrow of empires. It would be some
relief to our condition and our frailty if all things were as
Slow in their perishing as they were in their coming into
being: but as it is, the growth of things is a tardy process
and their undoing is a rapid matter.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 91
36 Let fate find us ready and eager. Here is your noble spirit
—the one which has put itself in the hands of fate; on the
other side we have the puny degenerate spirit which
struggles, and which sees nothing right in the way the
universe is ordered, and would rather reform the gods
than reform itself.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 107
37 We know that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are the called according to
his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to
be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be
the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also
called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and
whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Romans 8:28-30
38 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
heavenly places in Christ:
According as he hath chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without blame before him in love.
Ephesians 1:3—4
39 What a poet fortune sometimes shows herself.
Plutarch, Romulus
40 Though fortune may often... defeat the efforts of virtue to
avert misfortunes, it cannot, when we incur them,
prevent our bearing them reasonably.
Plutarch, Caius Gracchus
41 It is common enough for people, when they fall into great
disasters, to discern what is right, and what they ought to
do; but there are but few who in such extremities have
the strength to obey their judgment, either in doing what
it approves or avoiding what it condemns; and a good
many are so weak as to give way to their habits all the
more, and are incapable of using their minds.
Plutarch, Antony
42 Fortune makes kings of slaves and gives the captive a
triumph,
Yet the fortunate man is very much harder to come on
Than a white crow.
Juvenal, Satire VII
43 So—should men pray for nothing at all? If you're asking
my counsel,
You will permit the gods themselves to make the
decision
What is convenient to give, and what befits our estate.
we shall not get what we want, but the things most
Suitable for us.
Man is dearer to gods than he is to himself. We are
foolish,
Led by blind desire, the spirit’s extravagant impulse.
Asking for marriage and offspring, but the gods know
what they'll be like,
Our wives and our sons. But still, just for the sake of
the asking,
For the sake of something to give to the chapels, ritual
entrails.
The consecrated meat of a little white pig, pray for one
thing.
Pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body, a spirit
Unafraid of death, but reconciled to it, and able
To bear up, to endure whatever troubles afflict it,
Free from hate and desire, preferring Hercules’ labors
To the cushions and loves and feasts of Sardanapallus.
| show you what you can give to yourself: only through
virtue
Lies the certain road to a life that is blessed and
tranquil.
If men had any sense, Fortune would not be a
goddess.
We are the ones who make her so, and give her a place
in the heavens.
Juvenal, Satire X
44 The wider the scope of my reflection on the present and
the past, the more am | impressed by their mockery of
human plans in every transaction.
Tacitus, Annals, I/l, 18
45 Just as we must understand when it is said, That
Aesculapius prescribed to this man horse-exercise, or
bathing in cold water or going without shoes; so we must
understand it when it is said, That the nature of the
universe prescribed to this man disease or mutilation or
loss or anything else of the kind. For in the first case
Prescribed means something like this: he prescribed this
for this man as a thing adapted to procure health; and in
the second case it means: That which happens to (or,
suits) every man is fixed in a manner for him suitably to
his destiny. For this is what we mean when we say that
things are suitable to us, as the workmen say of squared
stones in walls or the pyramids, that they are suitable,
when they fit them to one another in some kind of
connexion. For there is altogether one fitness, harmony.
And as the universe is made up out of all bodies to be
such a body as it is, So out of all existing causes necessity
(destiny) is made up to be such a cause as it is. And even
those who are completely ignorant understand what |
mean, for they say. It (necessity, destiny) brought this to
such a person.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 8
46 Whatever of the things which are not within thy power
thou shall suppose to be good for thee or evil, it must of
necessity be that, if such a bad thing befall thee or the
loss of such a good thing, thou wilt blame the gods, and
hate men too, those who are the cause of the misfortune
or the loss, or those who are suspected of being likely to
be the cause; and indeed we do much injustice, because
we make a difference between these things. But if we
Judge only those things which are in our power to be
good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding
fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 41
47 This universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom,
everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according
to a law which none may elude— which the base man
never conceives though it is leading him, all
unknowingly, to that place in the All where his lot must
be cast—which the just man knows, and, Knowing, sets
out to the place he must, understanding, even as he
begins the journey, where he is to be housed at the end,
and having the good hope that he will be with gods.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, IV, 45
48 God, the author and giver of felicity, because He alone is
the true God, Himself gives earthly kingdoms both to
good and bad. Neither does He do this rashly, and, as it
were, fortuitously—because He is God not fortune—but
according to the order of things and times, which is
hidden from us, but thoroughly known to Himself; which
Same order of times, however. He does not serve as
subject to it, but Himself rules as lord and appoints as
governor.
Augustine, City of God, IV, 33
49 Human kingdoms are established by divine providence.
And if any one attributes their existence to fate, because
he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of
fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language.
Augustine, City of God, V, 1
50 Those who are of opinion that, apart from the will of God,
the stars determine what we shall do, or what good things
we Shall possess, or what evils we shall suffer, must be
refused a hearing by all, not only by those who hold the
true religion, but by those who wish to be the
worshippers of any gods whatsoever, even false gods. For
what does this opinion really amount to but this, that no
god whatever is to be worshipped or prayed to? Against
these, however, our present disputation is not intended
to be directed, but against those who, in defence of those
whom they think to be gods, oppose the Christian
religion. They, however, who make the position of the
stars depend on the divine will, and in a manner decree
what character each man shall have, and what good or
evil shall happen to him, if they think that these same
stars have that power conferred upon them by the
supreme power of God, in order that they may determine
these things according to their will, do a great injury to
the celestial sphere, in whose most brilliant senate, and
most splendid senate-house, as it were, they suppose
that wicked deeds are decreed to be done—such deeds as
that, if any terrestrial state should decree them, it would
be condemned to overthrow by the decree of the whole
human race. What judgment, then, is left to God
concerning the deeds of men, who is Lord both of the
stars and of men, when to these deeds a celestial
necessity is attributed?
Augustine, City of God, V, |
51 If there is free will, all things do not happen according to
fate; if all things do not happen according to fate, there is
not a certain order of causes; and if there is not a certain
order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things
foreknown by God—for things cannot come to pass
except they are preceded by efficient causes—but, if
there is no fixed and certain order of causes foreknown by
God, all things cannot be said to happen according as He
foreknew that they would happen. And further, if it is not
true that all things happen just as they have been
foreknown by Him, there is not, says he, in God any
foreknowledge of future events.
Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of
reason, we assert both that God knows all things before
they come to pass and that we do by our free will
whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only
because we will it. But that all things come to pass by
fate, we do not say; nay we affirm that nothing comes to
pass by fate; for we demonstrate that the name of fate, as
it is wont to be used by those who speak of fate, meaning
thereby the position of the stars at the time of each one’s
conception or birth, is an unmeaning word, for astrology
itself is a delusion. But an order of causes in which the
highest efficiency is attributed to the will of God, we
neither deny nor do we designate it by the name of fate,
unless, perhaps, we may understand fate to mean that
which is spoken, deriving it from fari, to soeak; for we
cannot deny that it is written in the sacred Scriptures,
"God hath spoken once; these two things have | heard,
that power belongeth unto God. Also unto Thee, O God,
belongeth mercy: for Thou wilt render unto every man
according to his works." Now the expression, "Once hath
He spoken," is to be understood as meaning
"immovably," that is, unchangeably hath He spoken,
inasmuch as He knows unchangeably all things which
Shall be and all things which He will do. We might, then,
use the word fate in the sense it bears when derived from
fari, to speak, had it not already come to be understood
in another sense, into which | am unwilling that the
hearts of men should unconsciously slide. But it does not
follow that, though there is for God a certain order of all
causes, there must therefore be nothing depending on
the free exercise of our own wills, for our wills themselves
are included in that order of causes which is certain to
God and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human
wills are also causes of human actions; and He Who
foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among
those causes not have been ignorant of our wills.
Augustine, City of God, V, 9
52 [The human] race we have distributed into two parts, the
one consisting of those who live according to man, the
other of those who live according to God. And these we
also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities
of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally
with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with
the devil.
Augustine, City of God, XV, 1
53 Of all suffering from Fortune, the unhappiest misfortune
is to have known a happy fortune.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, II
54 Philosophy. Providence is the very divine reason which
arranges all things, and rests with the supreme disposer
of all; while Fate is that ordering which is a part of all
changeable things, and by means of which Providence
binds all things together in their own order. Providence
embraces all things equally, however different they may
be, even however infinite: when they are assigned to
their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets them in an
orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal
order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is
Providence. The working of this unified development in
time is called Fate. These are different, but the one hangs
upon the other. For this order, which is ruled by Fate,
emanates from the directness of Providence.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, IV
55 Philosophy. A wise man should never complain, whenever
he is brought into strife with fortune; just as a brave man
cannot properly be disgusted whenever the noise of
battle is heard, since for both of them their very difficulty
is their opportunity, for the brave man of increasing his
glory, for the wise man of confirming and strengthening
his wisdom. From this is virtue itself so named, because it
IS SO Supported by its strength that it is not overcome by
adversity. And you who were set in the advance of virtue
have not come to this pass of being dissipated by
delights, or enervated by pleasure; but you fight too
bitterly against all fortune. Keep the middle path of
strength and virtue, lest you be overwhelmed by
misfortune or corrupted by pleasant fortune. All that falls
short or goes too far ahead, has contempt for happiness,
and gains not the reward for labour done. It rests in your
own hands what shall be the nature of the fortune which
you choose to form for yourself. For all fortune which
seems difficult, either exercises virtue, or corrects or
punishes vice.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, IV
56 It is fitting that God should predestine men. For all things
are subject to His providence.... Now it belongs to
providence to order things towards their end.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 23, 1
57 Even if by a special privilege their predestination were
revealed to some, it is not fitting that it should be
revealed to everyone; because, if so, those who were not
predestined would despair, and security would beget
negligence in the predestined.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 23, 1
58 As predestination is a part of providence, in regard to
those divinely ordained to eternal salvation, so
reprobation is a part of providence in regard to those who
turn aside from that end. Hence reprobation implies not
only foreknowledge, but also something more, as does
providence.... Therefore, as predestination includes the
will to confer grace and glory, so also reprobation
includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin, and to
impose the punishment of damnation on account of that
sin.
God loves all men and all creatures, in so far as He
wishes them all some good, but He does not wish every
good to them all. So far, therefore, as He does not wish
this particular good—namely, eternal life—He is said to
hate or reprobate them.
Reprobation differs in its causality from
predestination. This latter is the cause both of what is
expected in the future life by the predestined— namely,
glory—and of what is received in this life—namely, grace.
Reprobation, however, is not the cause of what is in the
present—namely, sin, but it is the cause of abandonment
by God. It is the cause, however, of what is assigned in
the future—namely, eternal punishment. But guilt
proceeds from the free choice of the person who is
reprobated and deserted by grace. In this way the word of
the prophet is true—namely, Destruction is thy own, O
Israel.
Reprobation by God does not take anything away from
the power of the person reprobated. Hence, when it is
said that the reprobated cannot obtain grace, this must
not be understood as implying absolute impossibility, but
only conditional impossibility... that the predestined must
necessarily be saved, yet by a conditional necessity,
which does not do away with the liberty of choice. Hence,
although anyone reprobated by God cannot acquire
grace, nevertheless that he falls into this or that
particular sin comes from his free choice. And so it is
rightly imputed to him as guilt.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 23, 3
59 The number of the predestined is said to be certain to
God not only by reason of His Knowledge, because, that is
to say, He knows how many will be saved (for in this way
the number of drops of rain and the sands of the sea are
certain to God), but by reason of His deliberate choice
and determination.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 23, 7
60 The majority of men have a sufficient knowledge for the
guidance of life, and those who have not this knowledge
are said to be half-witted or foolish; but they who attain
to a profound knowledge of things intelligible are a very
small minority in respect to the rest. Since their eternal
happiness, consisting in the vision of God, exceeds the
common state of nature, and especially in so far as this is
deprived of grace through the corruption of original sin,
those who are saved are in the minority. In this especially,
however, appears the mercy of God, that He has chosen
some for that salvation, from which very many in
accordance with the common course and tendency of
nature fall short.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 23, 7
61 Those who are ordained to possess eternal life through
divine predestination are written down in the book of life
absolutely, because they are written therein to have
eternal life in itself; such are never blotted out from the
book of life. Those, however, who are ordained to eternal
life not through the divine predestination, but through
grace, are said to be written in the book of life not
absolutely, but relatively, for they are written therein not
to have eternal life in itself, but in its cause only. These
latter are blotted out of the book of life, though this
blotting out must not be referred to God as if God
foreknew a thing, and afterwards knew it not, but to the
thing known, namely, because God knows one is first
ordained to eternal life, and afterwards not ordained
when he falls from grace.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 24, 3
62 What happens here by accident, both in natural things
and in human affairs, is reduced to a preordaining cause,
which is Divine Providence.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 116, 1
63 The Divine power or will can be called fate as being the
cause of fate. But essentially fate is the very disposition
or series, that is, the order, of second causes.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 116, 2
64 "Master," | said to him, "now tell me also: this Fortune, of
which thou hintest to me; what is she, that has the good
things of the world thus within her clutches?"
And he (Virgil] to me: "O foolish creatures, how great
is this ignorance that falls upon ye! Now | wish thee to
receive my judgment of her.
He whose wisdom is transcendent over all, made the
heavens and gave them guides, so that every part shines
to every part,
equally distributing the light; in like manner, for
worldly splendours, he ordained a general minister and
guide,
to change betimes the vain possessions, from people
to people, and from one kindred to another beyond the
hindrance of human wisdom:
hence one people commands, another languishes;
obeying her sentence, which is hidden like the serpent in
the grass.
Your knowledge cannot understand her: she provides,
judges, and maintains her kingdom, as the other Gods do
theirs.
Her permutations have no truce; necessity makes her
be swift; thus he comes oft who doth a change obtain.
This is she, who is so much reviled, even by those who
ought to praise her, when blaming her wrongfully, and
with evil words."
Dante, Inferno, VII, 67
65 When the game of dice breaks up, he who loses stays
sorrowing, repeating the throws, and sadly learns:
with the other all the folk go away: one goes in front,
another plucks him from behind, and another at his side
recalls him to his mind.
He halts not and attends to this one and to that: those
to whom he stretches forth his hand press no more; and
so he saves him from the crowd.
Dante, Purgatorio, VI, |
66 Pandar. For every person hath his happy chance,
If good faith with his fortune he will hold.
But if he turns aside with scornful glance
When fortune comes, unwelcoming and cold,
Then for ill luck he may not fortune scold,
But his own sloth and feebleness of heart,
And he must take all blame from end to start.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, 11, 41
67 Too short a fleeting time, alas the while.
Great joy endures, and Fortune wills it so,
Who truest seems when most she will beguile,
And most allures when she will strike a blow,
And from her wheel some hapless victim throw;
For when some wretch slips down and disappears,
She laughs at him and comforts him with jeers.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, IV, 1
68 "| am," he [Troilus] said, "but done for, so to say;
For all that comes, comes by necessity,
Thus to be done for is my destiny.
"| must believe and cannot other choose,
That Providence, in its divine foresight,
Hath known that Cressida | once must lose,
Since God sees everything from heaven’s height
And plans things as he thinks both best and right,
According to their merits in rotation,
As was arranged for by predestination.
"But still | don’t quite know what to believe!
For there have been great scholars, many a one,
Who say that destined fate we must receive,
Yet others prove that this need not be done,
And that free choice hath been denied to none.
Alack, so sly they are, these scholars old,
| can’t make out what doctrine | should hold!
"For some declare, what God perceives before,
(And God of course can never be misled)
All that must be, though men may it deplore.
Because foreordination hath so said;
Wherefore the thought still lingers in my head.
If God foreknows the thought and act of each
Of us, we have no choice, as scholars preach.
"For neither thought nor deed might ever be,
Or anything, unless foreordination,
In which there may be no uncertainty,
Perceives it without shade of variation;
For if there were the slightest hesitation
Or any slip in God’s foreordering,
Foreknowledge then were not a certain thing,
"But rather one would call it expectation,
Unsteadfast, not foreknowledge absolute;
And that, indeed, were an abomination,
For God’s foreknowledge thus to substitute
Imperfect human doubts and mere repute;
In God such human error to imply
Were false and foul and cursed treason high.
"Then there is this opinion held by some,
Whose tonsured foreheads quite imposing shine;
They say whatever happens does not come
Because foreknowledge sees with fixed design
That come it must, but rather they incline
To say that come it will, and reason so,
That such foreknowledge doth but merely know.
"But there resides here a perplexity
That in some proper way must be explained,
That things that happen do not have to be
Merely because they may be foreordained;
Yet still this truth at least must be maintained,
That all the things that ever shall befall,
Must surely be ordained, both one and all.
"You see that | am trying to find out
Just what is cause and what is consequence.
Is God’s foreknowledge cause beyond a doubt
As necessary in his plan prepense
Of all the human things we call events,
Or does necessity in them reside
And thus ordaining cause for them provide?
"| must confess | can’t pretend to show
Just how the reasons stand, but this I'll say,
That every thing that happens, must do so,
And must have been foreknown in such a way
That made it necessary, though it may
Be that foreknowledge did not so declare
That it must happen, be it foul or fair.
"But if a man is sitting on a chair.
Then this necessity you can’t evade.
That true it is that he is sitting there,
And thus a truthful judgment you have made;
And furthermore against this may be laid
A supplement to this and its contrary,
As thus—pray heed, and just a moment tarry.
"| say if that opinion which you hold
That he sits there is true, then furthermore
He must be sitting there, as | have told;
There’s thus necessity on either score.
That he must sit, as we agreed before,
And you must think he does, and so say I,
Necessity on both of you doth lie.
"But you may urge, this man, he does not sit
Because your judgment on this may be true,
But rather, since he sat ere you thought it,
Your judgment from his sitting doth ensue;
But | say, though your judgment may be due
To his first sitting there, necessity
To judge and sit distributed must be.
"These arguments | think | may advance,
And make apply, for so it seems to me.
To God’s foreknowledge and foreordinance,
In all the happenings that come to be.
And by these arguments you well may see,
That all the things that on the earth befall,
By plain necessity they happen all.
“Though things to come must all be foreordained.
Their cause therein you cannot simply find,
For these two points apart must be maintained,
But yet foreordinance cannot be blind,
And God must foreordain with truthful mind,
Or else whatever foreordained should be.
Would come to pass through blind necessity,
“But no more arguments | need display
To show that free choice is an idle dream.
Yet this, however, ‘tis quite false to say.
That temporal things one should esteem
As cause of God’s foreknowledge aye supreme;
From such opinion only errors grow.
That things that happen cause him to foreknow.
"I must suppose then, had | such a thought.
That God ordains each thing that is to come
Because it is to come, and for else naught!
Why, then, | might believe things, all and some,
From ages past, whate’er they issued from,
Are cause of God’s high power that before
Hath known all things and nothing doth ignore!
"| have just one more point to add hereto,
That when | know that there exists a thing,
| Know my knowing of that thing is true,
And so, whatever time to pass shall bring,
Those things | know must come; the happening
Of things foreknown ere their appointed hour,
Can be prevented by no human power."
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, IV, 137-154
69 It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and
still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in
such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with
their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can
even help them; and because of this they would have us
believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs,
but to let chance govern them.... Sometimes pondering
over this, |am in some degree inclined to their opinion.
Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, | hold it to
be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our
actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other
half, or perhaps a little less.
| compare her to one of those raging rivers, which
when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees
and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place;
everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without
being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its
nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men,
when the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision,
both with defences and barriers, in such a manner that,
rising again, the waters may pass away by canal, and
their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous.
So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where
valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she
turns her forces where she knows that barriers and
defences have not been raised to constrain her.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXV
70 Fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their
ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are
successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my
part | consider that it is better to be adventurous than
cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to
keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and
it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the
adventurous rather than by those who go to work more
coldly. She is, therefore, always, womanlike, a lover of
young men, because they are less cautious, more violent,
and with more audacity command her.
Machiavelli, Prince, XXV
71 Concerning predestination, it is best to begin below, at
Christ, as then we both hear and find the Father; for all
those that have begun at the top have broken their
necks. | have been thoroughly plagued and tormented
with such cogitations of predestination; | would needs
know how God intended to deal with me, etc. But at last,
God be praised! | clean left them; | took hold again on
God's revealed word; higher | was not able to bring it, for
a human creature can never search out the celestial will
of God; this God hides, for the sake of the devil, to the
end the crafty spirit may be deceived and put to
confusion. The revealed will of God the devil has learned
from us, but God reserves his secret will to himself. It is
sufficient for us to learn and know Christ in his humanity,
in which the Father has revealed himself.
Luther, Table Talk, H661
72 Predestination, by which God adopts some to the hope of
life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no one,
desirous of the credit of piety, dares absolutely to deny.
But it is involved in many cavils, especially by those who
make foreknowledge the cause of it. We maintain, that
both belong to God; but it is preposterous to represent
one as dependent on the other. When we attribute
foreknowledge to God, we mean that all things have ever
been, and perpetually remain, before his eyes, so that to
his Knowledge nothing is future or past, but all things are
present; and present in such a manner, that he does not
merely conceive of them from ideas formed in his mind,
as things remembered by us appear present to our minds,
but really beholds and sees them as if actually placed
before him. And this foreknowledge extends to the whole
world, and to all the creatures. Predestination we call the
eternal decree of God, by which he has determined in
himself, what he would have to become of every
individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a
similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some,
and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore,
being created for one or the other of these ends, we Say,
he is predestinated either to life or to death. This God has
not only testified in particular persons, but has given a
specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, which
should evidently show the future condition of every
nation to depend upon his decision. "When the Most High
divided the nations, when he separated the sons of
Adam, the Lord’s portion was his people; Jacob was the
lot of his inheritance." The separation is before the eyes
of all: in the person of Abraham, as in the dry trunk of a
tree, one people is peculiarly chosen to the rejection of
others: no reason for this appears, except that Moses, to
deprive their posterity of all occasion of glorying, teaches
them that their exaltation is wholly from God’s gratuitous
love. He assigns this reason for their deliverance, that "he
loved their fathers, and chose their seed after them."
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 21
73 Though it is sufficiently clear, that God, in his secret
counsel, freely chooses whom he will, and rejects others,
his gratuitous election is but half displayed till we come
to particular individuals, to whom God not only offers
Salvation, but assigns it in such a manner, that the
certainty of the effect is liable to no suspense or doubt....
In conformity ... to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we
assert, that by zm eternal and immutable counsel, God
has once for all determined, both whom he would admit
to salvation, and whom he would condemn to
destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as
concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy,
totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those
whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is
closed by a just and irreprehensible, but
incomprehensible, judgment. In the elect, we consider
calling as an evidence of election, and justification as
another token of its manifestation, till they arrive in glory,
which constitutes its completion. As God seals his elect
by vocation and justification, so by excluding the
reprobate from the knowledge of his name and the
sanctification of his Spirit, he affords an indication of the
judgment that awaits them.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 21
74 Fortune does us neither good nor harm; she only offers us
the material and the seed of them, which our soul, more
powerful than she, turns and applies as it pleases, sole
cause and mistress of its happy or unhappy condition.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 14, That the Taste of Good
75 Not only in medicine but in many more certain arts
Fortune has a large part Poetic sallies, which transport
their author and ravish him out of himself, why shall we
not attribute them to his good luck? He himself confesses
that they surpass his ability and strength, and
acknowledges that they come from something other than
himself and that he does not have them at all in his
power, any more than orators say they have in theirs
those extraordinary impulses and agitations that push
them beyond their plan. It is the same with painting:
sometimes there escape from the painter’s hand touches
SO Surpassing his conception and his knowledge as to
arouse his wonder and astonishment, But Fortune shows
still more evidently the part she has in all these works by
the graces and beauties that are found in them, not only
without the workman's intention, but even without his
knowledge. An able reader often discovers in other men’s
writings perfections beyond those that the author put in
or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and
aspects.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 24, Various Outcomes
76 God, in the roll book of the causes of events which he has
in his foreknowledge, has also those which are called
fortuitous, and the voluntary ones, which depend on the
freedom he has given to our will; and he knows that we
Shall err, because we shall have willed to err.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 29, Of Virtue
77 King Edward. What fates impose, that men must needs
abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.
Shakespeare, Ill Henry VI, IV, iii, 58
78 John of Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Shakespeare, Richard II, |, tii, 275
79 Warwick. There is a history in all men’s lives.
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.
Shakespeare, II Henry IV, III, i, 80
80 Fluellen. Here is the man.
Pistol. Captain, | thee beseech to do me favours: The
Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.
Flu. Ay, | praise God; and | have merited some love at
his hands.
Pist. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,
And of buxom valour, hath, by cruel fate,
And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel.
That goddess blind.
That stands upon the rolling restless stone—
Flu. By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is
painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to
you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a
wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she
is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation:
and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a Spherical stone,
which rolls, and rolls, and rolls: in good truth, the poet
makes a most excellent description of it: Fortune is an
excellent moral.
Shakespeare, Henry V, Ill, vi, 21
81 Cassius. Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Shakespeare, Caesar, I, ti, 139
82 Hamlet. My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye
both?
Rosencrantz. As the indifferent children of the earth.
Guildenstern. Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe?
Ros. Neither, my lord.
Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle
of her favours?
Guill. Faith, her privates we.
Ham. |n the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
iS a strumpet.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, i, 228
83 Hamlet. Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.
Rough-hew them how we will—
Horatio. That is most certain.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, ti, 8
84 Hamlet. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in
the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be
not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will
come; the readiness is all.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, ti, 230
85 Edmund. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own
behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the
moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity,
fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars,
and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary
influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting
on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his
goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
Shakespeare, Lear, I, ii, 128
86 When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
| all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
with what | most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XXIX
87 Your Grace must know, answer’d Don Quixote, that
almost every thing that relates to Me, is manag’d quite
contrary to what the Affairs of other Knights-Errant us’d
to be. Whether it be the unfathomable Will of Destiny, or
the Implacable Malice of some envious Inchanter orders it
so, or no, | can’t well tell. For ’tis beyond all doubt, that
most of us Knights-Errant still have had something
peculiar in our Fates. One has had the Privilege to be
above the Power of Inchantments, another Invulnerable,
as the famous Orlando, one of the twelve Peers of France,
whose Flesh, they tell us, was impenetrable every where
but in the Sole of his left Foot, and even there too he
cou’d be Wounded with no other Weapon than the Point
of a great Pin; so that when Bernardo de! Carpio deprived
him of Life at Roncesvalles, finding he cou’d not Wound
him with his Sword, he lifted him from the Ground, and
squeez’d him to Death in his Arms; remembring how
Hercules kill’d Antaeus, that cruel Giant, who was said to
be the Son of the Earth. Hence | infer, that probably | may
be secur’d in the same manner, under the Protection of
some particular Advantage, tho' 'tis not that of being
Invulnerable; for | have often found by Experience, that
my Flesh is tender, and not impenetrable. Nor does any
private Prerogative free me from the Power of the
Inchantment; for | have found myself clapp’d into a Cage,
where all the World cou’d not have Lock’d me up, but the
Force of Necromantick Incantations. But since | got free
again, | believe that even the Force of Magick will never
be able to confine me thus another time. So that these
Magicians finding they cannot work their wicked Ends
directly on me, revenge themselves on what | most
esteem, and endeavour to take away my Life by
persecuting that of Dulcinea, in whom, and for whom |
live. And therefore | believe, when my Squire deliver’d my
Embassy to her, they Transform’d her into a Country-
Dowdy, poorly busied in the low’ and base Employment
of Winnowing Wheat. But | do aver, that it was neither
Rye, nor Wheat, but Oriental Pearl: and to prove this, |
must acquaint your Graces, that passing t’other Day by
Toboso, | could not so much as find Dulcinea's Palace;
whereas my Squire went the next Day, and saw her in all
her native Charms, the most beautiful Creature in the
World! yet when | met her presently after, she appear’d to
me in the Shape of an Ugly, Coarse, Country-Mawkin,
Boorish, and Ill-bred, though she really is Discretion itself.
And therefore, because | myself cannot be Inchanted, the
unfortunate Lady must be thus Inchanted, Misus’d,
Disfigur’d, Chopp’d and Chang’d. Thus my Enemies
wreaking their Malice on Her, have reveng’d themselves
on Me, which makes me abandon my self to Sorrows, till
she be restor’d to her former Perfections.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 32
88 Don Quixote, as be went out of Barcelona, cast his Eyes
on the Spot of Ground where he was overthrow'n. Here
once Troy stood, said he; here my unhappy Fate, and not
my Cowardice, depriv’d me of all the Glories | had
purchas’d. Here Fortune, by an unexpected Reverse,
made me sensible of her Unconstancy and Fickleness.
Here my Exploits suffer’d a total Eclipse; and, in short,
here fell my Happiness, never to rise again. Sancho
hearing his Master thus dolefully paraphrasing on his
Misfortune, Good Sir, quoth he, ‘tis as much the Part of
great Spirits to have Patience when the World frowns
upon ’em, as to be joyful when all goes well: And | judge
of it by my self; for if when | was a Governor | was merry,
now | am but a poor Squire afoot | am not sad. And
indeed | have heard say, that this same She Thing they
call Fortune, is a whimsical freakish drunken Quean, and
blind into the Bargain; so that she neither sees what she
does, nor knows whom she raises, nor whom she casts
down. Thou art very much a Philosopher, Sancho, said
Don Quixote, thou talk’st very sensibly. | wonder how
thou cam’st by all this; but | must tell thee there is no
such Thing as Fortune in the World; nor does any Thing
that happens here below of Good or IIl come by Chance,
but by the particular Providence of Heaven; and this
makes good the Proverb, That every Man may thank
himself for his own Fortune, For my Part, | have been the
Maker of mine, but for want of using the Discretion |
ought to have us’d, all my presumptuous Edifice sunk,
and tumbl’d down at once. | might well have consider’d,
that Rosinante was too weak and feeble to withstand the
Knight of the White Moon's huge and strong-built Horse.
However, | would needs adventure; 1 did the best | could,
and was overcome. Yet though it has cost me my Honour,
| have not lost, nor can | lose, my Integrity to perform my
Promise. When | was a Knight-Errant, valiant and bold,
the Strength of my Hands and my Actions gave a
Reputation to my Deeds; and now! am no more than a
dismounted Squire, the Performance of my Promise shall
give a Reputation to my Words. Trudge on then, Friend
Sancho, and let us get home, to pass the Year of our
Probation. In that Retirement we shall recover new Vigour
to return to that, which is never to be forgotten by me, |
mean the Profession of Arms.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 66
89 Chiefly the mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.
Bacon, Of Fortune
90 When all looks fair about, and thou seest not a cloud so
big as a Hand to threaten thee, forget not the Wheel of
things: Think of sullen vicissitudes, but beat not thy
brains to fore-know them. Be armed against such
obscurities, rather by submission than fore-knowledge.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, I/l, 16
91 Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,
Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 557
92 Raphael God made thee perfet, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power, ordaind thy will
By nature free, not over-rul’d by Fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;
Our voluntarie service he requires,
Not our necessitated, such with him
Findes no acceptance, nor can find, for how
Can hearts, not free, be tri’d whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By Destinie, and can no other choose?
Milton, Paradise Lost, V, 524
93 When God shakes a Kingdom with strong and healthful
commotions to a general reforming, ’tis not untrue that
many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in
seducing; but yet more true it is, that God then raises to
His own work men of rare abilities, and more than
common industry, not only to look back and revise what
hath been taught heretofore, but to gain further and go
on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth.
Milton, Areopagitica
94 We know that all things follow from the eternal decree of
God, according to that same necessity by which it follows
from the essence of a triangle that its three angles are
equal to two right angles.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Prop. 49
95 Since no one can do anything save by the predetermined
order of nature, that is by God’s eternal ordinance and
decree, it follows that no one can choose a plan of life for
himself, or accomplish any work save by God’s vocation
choosing him for the work or the plan of life in question,
rather than any other.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, III
96 The Power of Fortune is confest only by the Miserable; for
the Happy impute all their Success to Prudence or Merit.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
97 Nothing more aggravates ill success than the near
approach to good. The gamester, who loses his party at
piquet by a single point, laments his bad luck ten times
as much as he who never came within a prospect of the
game. So in a lottery, the proprietors of the next numbers
to that which wins the great prize, are apt to account
themselves much more unfortunate than their fellow-
suffers. In short, these kind of hairbreadth missings of
happiness look like the insults of Fortune, who may be
considered as thus playing tricks with us, and wantonly
diverting herself at our expense.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XIII, 2
98 To reconcile the indifference and contingency of human
actions with prescience; or to defend absolute decrees,
and yet free the Deity from being the author of sin, has
been found hitherto to exceed all the power of
philosophy. Happy, if she be thence sensible of her
temerity, when she pries into these sublime mysteries;
and leaving a scene so full of obscurities and perplexities,
return, with suitable modesty, to her true and proper
province, the examination of common life; where she will
find difficulties enough to employ her enquiries, without
launching into so boundless an ocean of doubt,
uncertainty, and contradiction!
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 81
99 Boswell. "It appears to me, Sir, that predestination, or
what is equivalent to it, cannot be avoided, if we hold an
universal prescience in the Deity," /ohnson. "Why, Sir,
does not GOD every day see things going on without
preventing them?" Boswell. "True, Sir; but if a thing be
certainly foreseen, it must be fixed, and cannot happen
otherwise; and if we apply this consideration to the
human mind, there is no free will, nor do | see how prayer
can be of any avail," He mentioned Dr. Clarke, and Bishop
Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, and bid me read
South’s Sermons on Prayer, but avoided the question
which has excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond
any other. | did not press it further.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct, 26, 1769)
100 | expressed a horrour at the thought of death. Mrs.
Knowles. "Nay, thou should’st not have a horrour for what
is the gate of life." Johnson. (standing upon the hearth
rolling about, with a serious, solemn, and somewhat
gloomy air,) "No rational man can die without uneasy
apprehension." Mrs. Knowles. "The Scriptures tell us, ‘The
righteous shall have hope in his death.'" Johnson. "Yes,
Madam; that is, he shall not have despair. But, consider,
his hope of salvation must be founded on the terms on
which it is promised that the mediation of our SAVIOUR
Shall be applied to us,—namely, obedience; and where
obedience has failed, then, as suppletory to it,
repentance. But what man can say that his obedience has
been such, as he would approve of in another, or even in
himself upon close examination, or that his repentance
has not been such as to require being repented of? No
man can be sure that his obedience and repentance will
obtain salvation." Mrs. Knowles. "But divine intimation of
acceptance may be made to the soul." Johnson. "Madam,
it may; but | should not think the better of a man who
should tell me on his death-bed he was sure of salvation.
A man cannot be sure himself that he has divine
intimation of acceptance; much less can he make others
sure that he has it." Boswel/. "Then, Sir, we must be
contented to acknowledge that death is a terrible thing."
Johnson. "Yes, Sir. | have made no approaches to a state
which can look on it as not terrible."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 15, 1778)
101 Men of merit, who have no success in life, may be
forgiven for /Jamenting, if they are not allowed to
complain. They may consider it as hard that their merit
should not have its suitable distinction. Though there is
no intentional injustice towards them on the part of the
world, their merit not having been perceived, they may
yet repine against fortune, or fate, or by whatever name
they choose to call the supposed mythological power of
Destiny.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 23,1783)
102 The overweening conceit which the greater part of men
have of their own abilities is an ancient evil remarked by
the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd
presumption in their own good fortune has been less
taken notice of. It is, however, if possible, still more
universal. There is no man living who, when in tolerable
health and spirits, has not some share of it The chance of
gain is by every man more or less overvalued, and the
chance of loss is by most men undervalued, and by
scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and spirits,
valued more than it is worth.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1,10
103 The doctrine of eternal decrees and absolute
predestination is strictly embraced by the
Mohammedans; and they struggle with the common
difficulties, how to reconcile the prescience of God with
the freedom and responsibility of man; how to explain the
permission of evil under the reign of infinite power and
infinite goodness.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, L
104 The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute sense, the
tenets of fate and predestination, which would extinguish
both industry and virtue, if the actions of man were
governed by his speculative belief. Yet their influence in
every age has exalted the courage of the Saracens and
Turks. The first companions of Mohammed advanced to
battle with a fearless confidence: there is no danger
where there is no chance: they were ordained to perish in
their beds; or they were safe and invulnerable amidst the
darts of the enemy.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, L
105 Mephistopheles. How closely linked are Luck and Merit,
Is something fools have never known.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 1, 5061
106 From every point of view the concept predestination
may be considered as an abortion, for having
unquestionably arisen in order to relate freedom and
God's omnipotence it solves the riddle by denying one of
the concepts and consequently explains nothing.
Kierkegaard, Journals (Aug. 19, 1834)
107 We may be partial, but Fate is not.
Emerson, The Conservative
108 So strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over
the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the
intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if
this were the Loom of Time, and | myself were a shuttle
mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates.
There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one
single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that
vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise
interblending of other threads with its own. This warp
seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own
hand, | ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny
into these unalterable threads.
Melville, Moby Dick, XLVII
109 Ahab. What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly
thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and
cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against
all natural lovings and longings, | so keep pushing, and
crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural
heart, | durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it |,
God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move
not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one
single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how
then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain
think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that
thinking, does that living, and not I.
Melville, Moby Dick, CXXXII
110 There are two sides to the life of every man, his
individual life, which is the more free the more abstract
its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he
inevitably obeys Jaws laid down for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an
unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic,
universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable,
and its result coinciding in time with the actions of
millions of other men assumes an historic significance.
The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more
people he is connected with and the more power he has
over others, the more evident is the predestination and
inevitability of his every action.
"The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord."
A king is history’s slave.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 1
111 The innumerable people who took part in the war acted
in accord with their personal characteristics, habits,
circumstances, and aims. They were moved by fear or
vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining
that they knew what they were doing and did it of their
own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of
history, carrying on a work concealed from them but
comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men
of action, and the higher they stand in the social
hierarchy the less are they free.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 1
112 For history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist
as it does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History
surveys a presentation of man’s life in which the union of
these two contradictions has already taken place.
In actual life each historic event, each human action,
is very clearly and definitely understood without any
sense of contradiction, although each event presents
itself as partly free and partly compulsory.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, IX
113 When a man has let himself go time after time, he easily
becomes impressed with the enormously preponderating
influence of circumstances, hereditary habits, and
temporary bodily dispositions over what might seem a
spontaneity born for the occasion. "All is fate," he then
says; "all is resultant of what pre-exists. Even if the
moment seems original, it is but the instable molecules
passively tumbling in their preappointed way. It is
hopeless to resist the drift, vain to look for any new force
coming in; and less, perhaps, than anywhere else under
the sun is there anything really mine in the decisions
which | make." This is really no argument for simple
determinism. There runs throughout it the sense of a
force which might make things otherwise from one
moment to another, if it were only strong enough to
breast the tide. A person who feels the /mpotence of free
effort in this way has the acutest notion of what is meant
by it, and of its possible independent power. How else
could he be so conscious of its absence and of that of its
effects? But genuine determinism occupies a totally
different ground; not the /mpotence but the
unthinkability of free-will is what it affirms. It admits
something phenomenal called free effort, which seems to
breast the tide, but it claims this as a portion of the tide.
The variations of the effort cannot be independent, it
says; they cannot originate ex nihilo, or come from a
fourth dimension; they are mathematically fixed
functions of the ideas themselves, which are the tide.
Fatalism, which conceives of effort clearly enough as an
independent variable that might come from a fourth
dimension if it wou/d come but that does not come, is a
very dubious ally for determinism. It strongly imagines
that very possibility which determinism denies.
William James, Psychology, XXVI
Chapter 16
ART and AESTHETICS
Chapter 16 is divided into seven sections: 16.1 The Realm of
Art, 16.2 Books and Reading, 16.3 Poetry and Poets, 16.4
Tragedy and Comedy, 16.5 Music, 16.6 Beautiful and the
Beautiful, and 16.7 Criticism and the Standards of Taste.
The lines that divide these sections cannot be sharply
drawn. The reader will, therefore, find passages quoted in
one section that might with good reason be placed in
another. Sections 16.2, 16.3, and 16.4 all deal with literature
in one or another aspect. The presence of a special section
on music, together with the absence of similar sections on
such other fine arts as painting, sculpture, architecture, and
the dance, has no explanation other than the fact that the
writings of the great authors here quoted are richer in their
comments on that art than on any others except the arts of
literature. Nevertheless, if the reader will consult the index
under painting, sculpture, architecture, and so on, he will
find the location of passages dealing with these arts.
One group of arts, the traditional liberal arts of
mathematics and of grammar, rhetoric, and logic is treated
in other chapters: grammar, rhetoric, and logic in Section
7.2 on The Arts of Language in Chapter 7 on Language; and
The Discipline of Mathematics in Section 17.3 of Chapter 17
on Philosophy, Science, and Mathematics.
16.1 The Realm of Art
The passages quoted in this section treat both art and the
artist in the most general sense of these terms, and the
reader must, therefore, be forewarned that the most general
sense of these terms in the tradition of Western thought is
radically different from the extremely restricted connotation
that attaches to them in current usage. As used by almost all
of the authors quoted, from the Greeks down to the end of
the eighteenth century, the word "art" refers to skill in the
making of anything—a shoe or a ship as well asa poem ora
painting or, for that matter, a demonstration in mathematics
or a political oration. The artist is a man who has a specific
Skill to some degree. Those who happen to make something
without art do so entirely by chance. Since the word "art" is
used to refer to the skill possessed by a maker, it is not used
to refer to the thing he makes, the object he produces. That
is a work of art. The terms thus used are not evaluative.
They do not signify the achievement of excellence. Artists
may have more or less skill; works of art may be more or less
good.
It is only in the last few centuries that the term "art" has
become so restricted that it refers only to literary and
musical compositions, paintings, and sculptures, and the
like; it is even narrowed further in the familiar expression
"literature, music, and the fine arts," in which the last phrase
refers exclusively to what hangs on walls, stands on
pedestals, or is enclosed in cases. When the phrase "fine art"
was first coined (it makes its first appearance in the age of
Immanuel Kant), it was used to distinguish one group of arts
from all others, i.e., those arts the products of which are an
end (Latin, finis) in themselves—to be enjoyed for what they
are rather than used for some ulterior purpose.
The basic points made in the discussion of art in general
apply equally to the fine arts, the useful arts, and the liberal
arts. Writers call our attention, for example, to the fact that a
work of art may either have an enduring existence or bea
transient process, A statue and a poem, like a house ora
chair, endure in themselves after the artist has finished his
work; not so the performance of an actor or a dancer on the
stage, the speech of an orator, and the operation of a
Surgeon.
Occasionally, authors touch on the subject of art in
passages dealing with other matters. The reader would,
therefore, do well to glance at the index under such terms as
"art," "artist," "work," and so forth.
1 Agathon. Of his [Love’s] courage and justice and
temperance | have spoken, but | have yet to speak of his
wisdom; and according to the measure of my ability |
must try to do my best. In the first place he is a poet (and
here, like Eryximachus, | magnify my art), and he is also
the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he
were not himself a poet. And at the touch of him every
one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him
before; this also is a proof that Love is a good poet and
accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to
another that which he has not himself, or teach that of
which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the
creation of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the
works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him? And as to
the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom
love inspires has the light of fame?—he whom Love
touches not walks in darkness. The arts of medicine and
archery and divination were discovered by Apollo, under
the guidance of love and desire; so that he too is a
disciple of Love. Also the melody of the Muses, the
metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the
empire of Zeus over gods and men, are all due to Love,
who was the inventor of them.
Plato, Symposium, 196B
2 She (Diotima] answered me [Socrates] as follows: "There is
poetry, which, as you know, is complex and manifold. All
creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or
making, and the processes of all art are creative; and the
masters of arts are all poets or makers." "Very true."
"Still," she said, "you know that they are not called poets,
but have other names; only that portion of the art which
is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with
music and metre, is termed poetry, and they who possess
poetry in this sense of the word are called poets.” "Very
true," | said.
Plato, Symposium, 205A
3 Socrates. The artist disposes all things in order, and
compels the one part to harmonize and accord with the
other part, until he has constructed a regular and
systematic whole.
Plato, Gorgias, 503B
4 Socrates. There is another artist. .. one who is the maker
of all the works of all other workmen.
Glaucon. What an extraordinary man!
Wait a little, and there will be more reason for your
saying so. For this is he who is able to make not only
vessels of every kind, but plants and animals, himself and
all other things—the earth and heaven, and the things
which are in heaven or under the earth; he makes the
gods also.
He must be a wizard and no mistake.
Oh! you are incredulous, are you? Do you mean that
there is no such maker or creator, or that in one sense
there might be a maker of all these things but in another
not? Do you see that there is a way in which you could
make them all yourself?
What way?
An easy way enough; or rather, there are many ways
in which the feat might be quickly and easily
accomplished, none quicker than that of turning a mirror
round and round—you would soon enough make the sun
and the heavens, and the earth and yourself, and other
animals and plants, and all the other things of which we
were just now speaking, in the mirror.
Yes, he said; but they would be appearances only.
Very good, | said, you are coming to the point now.
And the painter too is, as 1 conceive. Just such another—
a creator of appearances, is he not?...
Suppose now that. .. we enquire who this imitator is?
If you please.
Well then, here are three beds: one existing in nature,
which is made by God, as | think that we may say—for no
one else can be the maker?
No.
There is another which is the work of the carpenter?
Yes.
And the work of the painter is a third?
Yes.
Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three
artists who superintend them: God, the maker of the bed,
and the painter?
Yes, there are three of them.
God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one
bed in nature and one only; two or more such ideal beds
neither ever have been nor ever will be made by God.
Why is that?
Because even if He had made but two, a third would
still appear behind them which both of them would have
for their idea, and that would be the ideal bed and not
the two others.
Very true, he said.
God knew this, and He desired to be the real maker of
a real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and
therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by
nature one only.
So we believe.
Shall we, then, speak of Him as the natural author or
maker of the bed?
Yes, he replied; inasmuch as by the natural process of
creation He is the author of this and of all other things.
And what shall we say of the carpenter—is not he also
the maker of the bed?
Yes.
But would you call the painter a creator and maker?
Certainly not.
Yet if he is not the maker, what is he in relation to the
bed?
| think, he said, that we may fairly designate him as
the imitator of that which the others make.
Plato, Republic, X, 596A
5 The products of art... require the pre-existence of an
efficient cause homogeneous with themselves, such as
the statuary’s art, which must necessarily precede the
statue; for this cannot possibly be produced
spontaneously. Art indeed consists in the conception of
the result to be produced before its realization in the
material.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 640a30
6 All arts, that is, all productive forms of knowledge, are
potencies; they are originative sources of change in
another thing or in the artist himself considered as other.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1046b3
7 Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and
pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this
reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at
which all things aim. But a certain difference is found
among ends; some are activities, others are products
apart from the activities that produce them. Where there
are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the
products to be better than the activities. Now, as there
are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are
many; the end of the medical art is health, that of
shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of
economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a single
capacity—as bridlemaking and the other arts concerned
with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding,
and this and every military action under strategy, in the
Same way other arts fall under yet others— in all of these
the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the
subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that
the latter are pursued.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1094a1
8 Those occupations are most truly arts in which there is the
least element of chance; they are the meanest in which
the body is most deteriorated, the most servile in which
there is the greatest use of the body, and the most
illiberal in which there is the least need of excellence.
Aristotle, Politics, 1258b35
9 Since learning and wondering are pleasant, it follows that
such things as acts of imitation must be pleasant—for
instance, painting, sculpture, poetry—and every product
of skilful imitation; this latter, even if the object imitated
is not itself pleasant; for it is not the object itself which
here gives delight; the spectator draws inferences (‘That
IS a SO-and-so’) and thus learns something fresh.
Dramatic turns of fortune and hairbreadth escapes from
perils are pleasant, because we feel all such things are
wonderful.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1371H
10 Ships and tillage, walls, laws, arms, roads, dress, and all
such like things, all the prizes, all the elegancies too of
life without exception, poems, pictures, and the chiselling
of fine-wrought statues, all these things practiced
together with the acquired knowledge of the untiring
mind taught men by slow degrees as they advanced on
the way step by step. Thus time by degrees brings each
several thing forth before men’s eyes and reason raises it
up into the borders of light; for things must be brought to
light one after the other and in due order in the different
arts, until these have reached their highest point of
development.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
11 The height of art is to conceal art.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, |
12 Every art aims at this, that the thing which has been
made should be adapted to the work for which it has
been made; and both the vine-planter who looks after the
vine, and the horse-breaker, and he who trains the dog,
seek this end.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 16
13 As for the arts: such as look to house building and the
like are exhausted when that object is achieved; there are
again those—medicine, farming, and other serviceable
pursuits—which deal helpfully with natural products,
seeking to bring them to natural efficiency; and there is a
class— rhetoric, music, and every other method of
swaying mind or soul—with the power of modifying for
better or for worse.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, IV, 31
14 Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that
they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin
with, these natural objects are themselves imitations;
then, we must recognise that they give no bare
reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the ideas
from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that
much of their work is all their own; they are holders of
beauty and add where nature is lacking.
Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, VIII, 1
15 But how did You make heaven and earth? What
instrument did You use for a work so mighty? You are not
like an artist; for he forms one body from another as his
mind chooses; his mind has the power to give external
existence to the form it perceives within itself by its inner
eye—and whence should it have that power unless You
made it? It impresses that form upon a material already
existent and having the capacity to be thus formed, such
as Clay or stone or wood or gold or such like. And how
should these things have come to be unless You had
made them to be? It was You who made the workman his
body, and the mind that directs his limbs, the matter of
which he makes what he makes, the intelligence by
which he masters his art and sees inwardly what he is to
produce exteriorly, the bodily sense by which he
translates what he does from his mind to his material,
and then informs the mind of the result of his
workmanship, so that the mind may judge by that truth
which presides within it whether the work is well done.
Augustine, Confessions, XI, 5
16 As to the... arts, whether those by which something is
made which, when the effort of the workman is over,
remains as a result of his work, as, for example, a house,
a bench, a dish, and other things of that kind; or those
which, so to speak, assist God in His operations, as
medicine, and agriculture, and navigation: or those
whose sole result is an action, as dancing, and racing,
and wrestling; in all these arts experience teaches us to
infer the future from the past. For no man who is skilled in
any of these arts moves his limbs in any operation
without connecting the memory of the past with the
expectation of the future.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, II, 30
17 All natural things were produced by the Divine art, and
SO may be called God’s works of art. Now every artist
intends to give to his work the best disposition; not
absolutely the best, but the best as regards the proposed
end. And even if this entails some defect, the artist does
not care. Thus, for instance, when a man makes himself a
saw for the purpose of cutting, he makes it of iron, which
is suitable for the object in view; and he does not prefer
to make it of glass, though this be a more beautiful
material, because this very beauty would be an obstacle
to the end he has in view. Thus, therefore, God gave to
each natural being the best disposition; not absolutely
so, but in view of its proper end.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 91, 3
18 Art is nothing else but the right reason about certain
works to be made. And yet the good of these things
depends, not on man’s appetite being affected in this or
that way, but on the goodness of the work done. Fora
craftsman, as such, is commendable not for the will with
which he does a work, but for the quality of the work. Art,
therefore, properly speaking, is an operative habit. And
yet it has something in common with the speculative
habits, since the quality of the object considered by the
latter is a matter of concern to them also, but not how the
human appetite may be affected towards that object. For
as long as the geometrician demonstrates the truth, it
does not matter how his appetitive part may be affected,
whether he be joyful or angry, even as neither does this
matter in a craftsman, as we have observed. And so art
has the nature of a virtue in the same way as the
speculative habits, in so far, that is, as neither art nor
speculative habit makes a good work as regards the use
of the habit, which is proper to a virtue that perfects the
appetite, but only as regards the aptness to work well.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 57, 3
19 When anyone endowed with an art produces bad
workmanship, this is not the work of that art, but rather is
contrary to the art, even as when a man lies while
knowing the truth, his words are not in accord with his
knowledge, but contrary to it. Therefore, just as science
has always a relation to good... so it is with art, and it is
for this reason that it is called a virtue. And yet it falls
short of being a perfect virtue, because it does not make
its possessor use it well, for which purpose something
further is requisite, although there cannot be a good use
without the art.
In order that man may make good use of the art he
has, he needs a good will, which is perfected by moral
virtue; and for this reason the Philosopher says that there
is a virtue of art, namely, a moral virtue, in so far as the
good use of art requires a moral virtue. For it is evident
that a craftsman is inclined by justice, which rectifies his
will, to do his work faithfully.
Even in speculative matters there is something by way
of work; for example, the making of a syllogism or of a
fitting speech, or the work of counting or measuring.
Hence whatever habits are ordered to such works of the
speculative reason, are by a kind of comparison called
arts indeed, but liberal arts, in order to distinguish them
from those arts that are ordered to works done by the
body, which arts are, in a fashion, servile, in so far as the
body is in servile subjection to the soul, and man, as
regards his soul, is free. On the other hand, those
sciences which are not ordered to any work of this kind,
are called sciences absolutely, and not arts. Nor, if the
liberal arts be more excellent, does it follow that the
notion of art is more applicable to them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 57, 3
20 The good of an art is to be found not in the craftsman
himself, but in the product of the art. ... It is a perfection
not of the maker, but of the thing made.... Consequently
art does not require of the craftsman that his act bea
good act, but that his work be good. Rather would it be
necessary for the thing made to act well (for example,
that a knife should carve well, or that a saw should cut
well), if it were proper to such things to act rather than to
be acted on, because they do not have dominion over
their actions. Therefore the craftsman needs art not that
he may live well, but that he may produce a good work of
art, and preserve it.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |—11, 57, 5
21 It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor
over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so
overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our
inventions that we have quite smothered her. Yet
wherever her purity shines forth, she wonderfully puts to
shame our vain and frivolous attempts.... All our efforts
cannot even succeed in reproducing the nest of the
tiniest little bird, its contexture, its beauty and
convenience; or even the web of the puny spider.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 31, Of Cannibals
22 | very much doubt that Phidias or any other excellent
sculptor would be so pleased with the preservation and
long life of his natural children as with that of an
excellent statue that his long labor and study had
brought to artistic perfection. And as for those vicious
and frenzied passions which have sometimes inflamed
fathers with love for their daughters, or mothers for their
sons, the like even of these are found in this other sort of
parenthood: witness what they tell of Pygmalion, who
after building a statue of a woman of singular beauty,
became so madly and frantically smitten with love of this
work that the gods, for the sake of his passion, had to
bring it to life for him.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
23 Hamlet. 'Tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar; and’t shall go hard
But | will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon, O, ‘tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 206
24 As the understanding is elevated and raised by rare and
unusual works of nature, to investigate and discover the
forms which include them also, so is the same effect
frequently produced by the excellent and wonderful
works of art; and even to a greater degree, because the
mode of effecting and constructing the miracles of art is
generally plain, whilst that of effecting the miracles of
nature is more obscure- Great care, however, must be
taken, that they do not depress the understanding, and
fix it, as it were, to earth.
For there is some danger, lest the understanding
should be astonished and chained down, and as it were
bewitched, by such works of art, as appear to be the very
summit and pinnacle of human industry, so as not to
become familiar with them, but rather to suppose that
nothing of the kind can be accomplished, unless the
Same means be employed, with perhaps a little more
diligence, and more accurate preparation.
Now, on the contrary, it may be stated as a fact, that
the ways and means hitherto discovered and observed, of
effecting any matter or work, are for the most part of little
value, and that all really efficient power depends, and is
really to be deduced from the sources of forms, none of
which have yet been discovered.
Thus (as we have before observed), had any one
meditated on ballistic machines, and battering rams, as
they were used by the ancients, whatever application he
might have exerted, and though he might have
consumed a whole life in the pursuit, yet would he never
have hit upon the invention of flaming engines, acting by
means of gunpowder; nor would any person, who had
made woollen manufactories and cotton the subject of his
observation and reflection, have ever discovered thereby
the nature of the silkworm or of silk.
Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 31
25 All the arts are but imitations of nature in one way or
another; as our reason or understanding is a derivative
from the Divine intelligence, manifested in His works; and
when perfected by habit, like another adventitious and
acquired soul, gaining some semblance of the Supreme
and Divine agent, it produces somewhat similar effects.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 50
26 How useless is painting, which attracts admiration by the
resemblance of things, the originals of which we do not
admire!
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 134
27 First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright.
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, |, 68
28 All polite letters are nothing but pictures of human life in
various attitudes and situations; and inspire us with
different sentiments, of praise or blame, admiration or
ridicule, according to the qualities of the object, which
they set before us. An artist must be better qualified to
succeed in this undertaking, who, besides a delicate taste
and a quick apprehension, possesses an accurate
knowledge of the internal fabric, the operations of the
understanding, the workings of the passions, and the
various species of sentiment which discriminate vice and
virtue. How painful soever this inward search or enquiry
may appear, it becomes, in some measure, requisite to
those, who would describe with success the obvious and
outward appearances of life and manners.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, I, 5
29 It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to
imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those
parts of nature, which are most proper for imitation:
greater care is still required in representing life, which is
so often discoloured by passion, or deformed by
wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, |
cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or
why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately
upon mankind, as upon a mirror which shows all that
presents itself without discrimination.
It is therefore not a sufficient vindication of a
character, that it is drawn as it appears, for many
characters ought never to be drawn; nor of a narrative,
that the train of events is agreeable to observation and
experience, for that observation which is called
knowledge of the world, will be found much more
frequently to make men cunning than good. The purpose
of these writings is surely not only to show mankind, but
to provide that they may be seen hereafter with less
hazard; to teach the means of avoiding the snares which
are laid by Treachery for Innocence, without infusing any
wish for that superiority with which the betrayer flatters
his vanity; to give the power of counteracting fraud,
without the temptation to practise it; to initiate youth by
mock encounters in the art of necessary defence, and to
increase prudence without impairing virtue.
Johnson, Rambler No. 4
30 The practice of architecture is directed by a few general
and even mechanical rules. But sculpture, and, above all,
painting, propose to themselves the imitation not only of
the forms of nature, but of the characters and passions of
the human soul. In those sublime arts the dexterity of the
hand is of little avail unless it is animated by fancy and
guided by the most correct taste and observation.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XIII
31 Art is distinguished from nature as making is from acting
or operating in general, and the product or the result of
the former is distinguished from that of the latter as work
from operation.
By right it is only production through freedom, that is,
through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its
action, that should be termed art.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 43
32 Art, as human skill, is distinguished also from science (as
ability from knowledge), as a practical from a theoretical
faculty, as technic from theory (as the art of surveying
from geometry). For this reason, also, what one can do
the moment one only knows what is to be done, hence
without anything more than sufficient knowledge of the
desired result, is not called art. To art that alone belongs
for which the possession of the most complete knowledge
does not involve one's having then and there the skill to
do it.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 43
33 Art is further distinguished from handicraft. The first is
called free, the other may be called industrial art. We look
on the former as something which could only prove final
(be a success) as play, i.e., an occupation which is
agreeable on its own account; but on the second as
labour, i.e., a business, which on its own account is
disagreeable (drudgery), and is only attractive by means
of what it results in (e.g., the pay), and which is
consequently capable of being a compulsory imposition.
Whether in the list of arts and crafts we are to rank
watchmakers as artists, and smiths on the contrary as
craftsmen, requires a standpoint different from that here
adopted—one, that is to say, taking account of the
proposition of the talents which the business undertaken
in either case must necessarily involve. Whether, also,
among the so-called seven free arts some may not have
been included which should be reckoned as sciences, and
many, too, that resemble handicraft, is a matter | will not
discuss here. It is not amiss, however, to remind the
reader of this: that in all free arts something of a
compulsory character is still required, or, as it is called, a
mechanism, without which the soul, which in art must be
free, and which alone gives life to the work, would be
body-Icss and evanescent (e.g,, in the poetic art there
must be correctness and wealth of language, likewise
prosody and metre). For not a few leaders of a newer
school believe that the best way to promote a free art is
to sweep away all restraint and convert it from labour into
mere play.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 43
34 Fine art. . . is a mode of representation which is
intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end,
has the effect of advancing the culture of the mental
powers in the interests of social communication.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 44
35 Genius (1) is a talent for producing that for which no
definite rule can be given, and not an aptitude in the way
of cleverness for what can be learned according to some
rule; and... consequently originality must be its primary
property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense,
its products must at the same time be models, that is, be
exemplary; and consequently, though not themselves
derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for
others, that is, as a standard or rule of estimating....
Where an author owes a product to his genius, he does
not himself know how the ideas for it have entered into
his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at
pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to
others in such precepts as would put them in a position to
produce similar products.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 46
36 Despite the marked difference that distinguishes
mechanical art, as an art merely depending upon
industry and learning, from fine art, as that of genius,
there is still no fine art in which something mechanical,
capable of being at once comprehended and followed in
obedience to rules, and consequently something
academic, does not constitute the essential condition of
the art. For the thought of something as end must be
present, or else its product would not be ascribed to an
art at all, but would be a mere product of chance. But the
effectuation of an end necessitates determinate rules
which we cannot venture to dispense with. Now, seeing
that originality of talent is one (though not the sole)
essential factor that goes to make up the character of
genius, shallow minds fancy that the best evidence they
can give of their being full-blown geniuses is by
emancipating themselves from all academic constraint of
rules, in the belief that one cuts a finer figure on the back
of an ill-tempered than of a trained horse.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 47
37 Faust. Unless you feel, naught will you ever gain;
Unless this feeling pours forth from your soul
With native, pleasing vigour to control
The hearts of all your hearers, it will be in vain.
Pray keep on sitting! Pray collect and glue,
From others’ feasts brew some ragout;
With tiny heaps of ashes play your game
And blow the sparks into a wretched flame!
Children and apes will marvel at you ever,
If you’ve a palate that can stand the part;
But heart to heart you’ll not draw men, no, never,
Unless your message issue from your heart.
Goethe, Faust, |, 534
38 There is no surer method of evading the world than by
following art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it
than by art.
Goethe, Reflections and Maxims
39 Were any one to despise art on the ground that it
imitates nature, we should reply that Nature herself
imitates many other things, and that, furthermore, art
does not merely imitate that which we see with our eyes,
but goes back to that element of reason of which nature
consists and according to which she acts.
Goethe, Reflections and Maxims
40 The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once
her master and her slave. He is her slave, inasmuch as he
must work with earthly things, in order to be understood;
but he is her master, inasmuch as he subjects these
earthly means to his higher intentions, and renders them
subservient.
Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (Apr. 18, 1827)
41 The religious concentration of the soul appears in the
form of feeling; it nevertheless passes also into reflection;
a form of worship is a result of reflection. The second form
of the union of the objective and subjective in the human
Spirit is art. This advances farther into the realm of the
actual and sensuous than religion. In its noblest walk it is
occupied with representing, not indeed, the spirit of God,
but certainly the form of God; and in its secondary aims,
that which is divine and spiritual generally. Its office is to
render visible the divine; presenting it to the imaginative
and intuitive faculty. But the true is the object not only of
conception and feeling, as in religion—and of intuition, as
in art—but also of the thinking faculty; and this gives us
the third form of the union in question—philosophy.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
42 What is the true content of art, and with what aim is this
content to be presented? On this subject our
consciousness supplies us with the common opinion that
it is the task and aim of art to bring in contact with our
sense, our feeling, our inspiration, all that finds a place in
the mind of man. ... Its aim is therefore placed in arousing
and animating the slumbering emotions, inclinations, and
passions; in filling the heart, in forcing the human being,
whether cultured or uncultured, to feel the whole range
of what man’s soul in its inmost and secret comers has
power to experience and to create, and all that is able to
move and to stir the human breast in its depths and in its
manifold aspects and possibilities; to present as a delight
to emotion and to perception all that the mind possesses
of real and lofty in its thought and in the Idea—all the
splendour of the noble, the eternal, and the true; and no
less to make intelligible misfortune and misery,
wickedness and crime; to make men realize the inmost
nature of all that is shocking and horrible, as also of all
pleasure and delight; and, finally, to set imagination
roving in idle toyings of fancy, and Juxuriating in the
seductive spells of sense-stimulating visions.
Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, III
43 We have here to consider three relations of the Idea to its
outward shaping.
First, the Idea gives rise to the beginning of art when,
being itself still in its indistinctness and obscurity, or in
vicious untrue determinateness, it is made the import of
artistic creations. As indeterminate it does not yet
possess in itself that individuality which the Ideal
demands; its abstractness and one-sidedness leave its
Shape to be outwardly bizarre and defective. The first
form of art is therefore rather a mere search after plastic
portrayal than a capacity of genuine representation. The
Idea has not yet found the true form even within itself,
and therefore continues to be merely the struggle and
aspiration thereafter. In general terms we may call this
form the Symbolic form of art....
In the second form of art, which we propose to call
Classical, the double defect of symbolic art is cancelled.
The plastic shape of symbolic art is imperfect, because, in
the first place, the Idea in it only enters into
consciousness in abstract determinateness or
indeterminateness, and, in the second place, this must
always make the conformity of shape to import defective,
and in its turn merely abstract. The classical form of art is
the solution of this double difficulty; it is the free and
adequate embodiment of the Idea in the shape that,
according to its conception, is peculiarly appropriate to
the Idea itself. With it, therefore, the Idea is capable of
entering into free and complete accord. Hence, the
classical type of art is the first to afford the production
and intuition of the completed Ideal, and to establish it as
a realized fact...
[There] arises, in its turn, the defect which brings
about the dissolution of classical art, and demands a
transition into a third and higher form, viz. into the
Romantic form of art.
The romantic form of art destroys the completed union
of the Idea and its reality, and recuis, though in a higher
phase, to that difference and antagonism of two aspects
which was left unvanquished by symbolic art. The
classical type attained the highest excellence, of which
the sensuous embodiment of art is capable; and if it is in
any way defective, the defect is in art as a whole, i.e. in
the limitation of its sohere. This limitation consists in the
fact that art as such takes for its object Mind—the
conception of which is infinite concrete universality—in
the shape of sensuous concreteness, and in the classical
phase sets up the perfect amalgamation of spiritual and
sensuous existence as a conformity of the two. Now, as a
matter of fact, in such an amalgamation Mind cannot be
represented according to its true notion. For mind is the
infinite subjectivity of the Idea, which, as absolute
inwardness, is not capable of finding free expansion in its
true nature on condition of remaining transposed into a
bodily medium as the existence appropriate to it.
Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, V
44 Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for
painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he
makes a bad husband and ill provider, and should be
wise in season and not fetter himself with duties which
will embitter his days and spoil him for his proper work.
Emerson, Wealth
45 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover and a bee
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.
Emily Dickinson, To Make a Prairie
46 | want a definition of art wide enough to include all its
varieties of aim: | do not say therefore that the art is
greatest which gives most pleasure, because perhaps
there is some art whose end is to teach, and not to
please, | do not say that the art is greatest which teaches
us most, because perhaps there is some art whose end is
to please and not to teach. | do not say that the art is
greatest which imitates best, because perhaps there is
some art whose end is to create, and not to imitate. But |
say that the art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of
the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest
number of the greatest ideas, and | call an idea great in
proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the
mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying,
exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received.
If this then be the definition of great art, that of a
great artist naturally follows. He is the greatest artist who
has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest
number of the greatest ideas.
Ruskin, Modem Painters, Pt. I, |, 2
47 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not
absolutely necessary, in the production of which
Invention has no share.
2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but
only for some practical or noble end.
3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind,
except for the sake of preserving record of great works.
Ruskin, Stones of Venice, II, 6
48 Literary and artistic productions never grow old, in this
sense, that they are expressions of feeling, changeless as
human nature.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 2
49 Art is a human activity, whose purpose is the
transmission of the highest and best feelings to which
men have attained.
Tolstoy, What Is Art?, VIII
50 Future artists will understand that it is incomparably
more important to compose a fairy-tale, a little song, a
lullaby, an amusing riddle or joke, or to draw a sketch
that delights millions of children and adults over the
generations, than to create a novel or symphony, or paint
a canvas that diverts a few members of the wealthy class
for a moment and then is forgotten forever.
Tolstoy, What Is Art?, XIX
51 The present task of art is to make the feeling of
brotherhood and love of one’s neighbor, which is now
shared only by the best members of society, the
customary feeling, even the instinct, of all human
beings.... Art is destined to promulgate the truth that the
well-being of men consists in their being united together,
and to help to set up, in place of the reign of force that
now exists, the kingdom of God (Who is Love) that we all
recognize as the highest goal of human life.
Tolstoy, What Is Art?, XX
52 The artist notoriously selects his items, rejecting all
tones, colors, shapes, which do not harmonize with each
other and with the main purpose of his work. That unity,
harmony... which gives to works of art their superiority
over works of nature, is wholly due to e/imination. Any
natural subject will do, if the artist has wit enough to
pounce upon some one feature of it as characteristic, and
suppress all merely accidental items which do not
harmonize with this.
William James, Psychology, IX
53 The world of aesthetics ... is an ideal world, a Utopia, a
world which the outer relations persist in contradicting,
but which we as stubbornly persist in striving to make
actual. Why do we thus invincibly crave to alter the given
order of nature? Simply because other relations among
things are far more interesting to us and more charming
than the mere rates of frequency of their time-and space-
conjunctions. These other relations are all secondary and
brain-born, "Spontaneous variations" most of them, of our
sensibility, whereby certain elements of experience, and
certain arrangements in time and space, have acquired
an agreeableness which otherwise would not have been
felt. It is true that habitual arrangements may also
become agreeable. But this agreeableness of the merely
habitual is felt to be a mere ape and counterfeit of real
inward fitness; and one sign of intelligence is never to
mistake the one for the other.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
54 Tanner. The true artist will let his wife starve, his children
go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy,
sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is
half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate
relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of
convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets,
knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest
creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to
make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him,
as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this
for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it
for his. He steals the mother’s milk and blackens it to
make printer’s ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women
with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing
so that he may have for himself the tenderness and
fostering that belong of right to her children. Since
marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad
husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a blood-
sucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and
wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them
enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture,
to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder
philosophy!
Shaw, Man and Superman, |
55 Goodness is the third member of the trinity which
traditionally has been assigned as the complex aim of art
—namely, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. With the point of
view here adopted. Goodness must be denied a place
among the aims of art. For Goodness is a qualification
belonging to the constitution of reality, which in any of its
individual actualizations is better or worse. Good and evil
lie in depths and distances below and beyond
appearance. They solely concern inter-relations within
the real world. The real world is good when it is beautiful.
Art has essentially to do with perfections attainable by
purposeful adaptation of appearance. With a larger view
and a deeper analysis, some instance of the perfection of
art may diminish the good otherwise inherent in some
specific situation as it passes into its objective actuality
for the future. Unseasonable art is analogous to an
unseasonable Joke, namely, good in its place, but out of
place a positive evil. It is a curious fact that lovers of art
who are most insistent on the doctrine of ‘art for art’s
Sake’ are apt to be indignant at the banning of art for the
sake of other interests. The charge of immorality’ is not
refuted by pointing to the perfection of art. Of course it is
true that the defence of morals is the battle-cry which
best rallies stupidity against change. Perhaps countless
ages ago respectable amoebae refused to migrate from
ocean to dry land—refusing in defence of morals. One
incidental service of art to society lies in its
adventurousness.
It is a tribute to the strength of the sheer craving for
freshness, that change, whose justification lies in aim at
the distant ideal, should be promoted by Art which is the
adaptation of immediate Appearance for immediate
Beauty. Art neglects the safety of the future for the gain
of the present. In so doing it is apt to render its Beauty
thin. But after all, there must be some immediate harvest.
The Good of the Universe cannot lie in indefinite
postponement. The Day of Judgment is an important
notion: but that Day is always with us. Thus Art takes
care of the immediate fruition, here and now; and in so
doing is apt to lose some depth by reason of the
immediate fruition at which it is aiming. Its business is to
render the Day of Judgment a success, now. The effect of
the present on the future is the business of morals. And
yet the separation is not so easy. For the inevitable
anticipation adds to the present a qualitative element
which profoundly affects its whole qualitative harmony.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XVIII, 3~4
56 The merit of Art in its service to civilization lies in its
artificiality and its finiteness. It exhibits for consciousness
a finite fragment of human effort achieving its own
perfection within its own limits. Thus the mere toil for the
slavish purpose of prolonging life for more toil or for mere
bodily gratification, is transformed into the conscious
realization of a self-contained end, timeless within time.
The work of Art is a fragment of nature with the mark on
it of a finite creative effort, so that it stands alone, an
individual thing detailed from the vague infinity of its
background. Thus Art heightens the sense of humanity. It
gives an elation of feeling which is supernatural. A sunset
is glorious, but it dwarfs humanity and belongs to the
general flow of nature. A million sunsets will not spur on
men towards civilization. It requires Art to evoke into
consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for
human achievement.
Consciousness itself is the product of art in its lowliest
form. For it results from the influx of ideality into its
contrast with reality, with the purpose of reshaping the
latter into a finite, select appearance. But consciousness
having emerged from Art at once produces the new
specialized art of the conscious animals—in particular
human art. In a sense art is a morbid overgrowth of
functions which lie deep in nature. It is the essence of art
to be artificial But it is its perfection to return to nature,
remaining art. In short art is the education of nature.
Thus, in its broadest sense, art is civilization. For
civilization is nothing other than the unremitting aim at
the major perfections of harmony.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XVIII, 6
57 There is, in fact, a path from phantasy back again to
reality, and that is—art. The artist has also an introverted
disposition and has not far to go to become neurotic. He
is one who is urged on by instinctual needs which are too
clamorous; he longs to attain to honour, power, riches,
fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the means of
achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an
unsatisfied longing, he turns away from reality and
transfers all his interest, and all his libido too, on to the
creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from which
the way might readily lead to neurosis. There must be
many factors in combination to prevent this becoming
the whole outcome of his development; it is well known
how often artists in particular suffer from partial
inhibition of their capacities through neurosis. Probably
their constitution is endowed with a powerful capacity for
sublimation and with a certain flexibility in the
repressions determining the conflict. But the way back to
reality is found by the artist thus: He is not the only one
who has a life of phantasy; the intermediate world of
phantasy is sanctioned by general human consent, and
every hungry soul looks to it for comfort and consolation.
But to those who are not artists the gratification that can
be drawn from the springs of phantasy is very limited;
their inexorable repressions prevent the enjoyment of all
but the meagre daydreams which can become conscious.
A true artist has more at his disposal. First of all he
understands how to elaborate his day-dreams, so that
they lose that personal note which grates upon strange
ears and become enjoyable to others; he knows too how
to modify them sufficiently so that their origin in
prohibited sources is not easily detected. Further, he
possesses the mysterious ability to mould his particular
material until it expresses the ideas of his phantasy
faithfully; and then he knows how to attach to this
reflection of his phantasy-life so strong a stream of
pleasure that, for a time at least, the repressions are out-
balanced and dispelled by it. When he can do all this, he
opens out to others the way back to the comfort and
consolation of their own unconscious sources of pleasure,
and so reaps their gratitude and admiration; then he has
won—through his phantasy— what before he could only
win in phantasy: honour, power, and the love of women.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXIII
58 As regards intellectual work, it remains a fact, indeed,
that great decisions in the realm of thought and
momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are
only possible to an individual, working in solitude. But
even the group mind is capable of genius in intellectual
creation, as is shown above all by language itself, as well
as by folk-song, folklore and the like. It remains an open
question, moreover, how much the individual thinker or
writer owes to the stimulation of the group in which he
lives, or whether he does more than perfect a mental
work in which the others have had a simultaneous share.
Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, III
59 People say that women contributed but little to the
discoveries and inventions of civilization, but perhaps
after all they did discover one technical process, that of
plaiting and weaving. If this is so, one is tempted to
guess at the unconscious motive at the back of this
achievement. Nature herself might be regarded as having
provided a model for imitation, by causing pubic hair to
grow at the period of sexual maturity so as to veil the
genitals. The step that remained to be taken was to
attach the hairs permanently together, whereas in the
body they are fixed in the skin and only tangled with one
another. If you repudiate this idea as being fantastic, and
accuse me of having an /dee fixe on the subject of the
influence exercised by the lack of a penis upon the
development of femininity, | cannot of course defend
myself.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXII!
60 Art. .. explicitly recognizes what it has taken so long to
discover in science; the control exercised by emotion in
reshaping natural conditions, and the place of the
imagination, under the influence of desire, in re-creating
the world into a more orderly place. When so-called
nonrational factors are found to play a large part in the
production of relations of consistency and order in logical
systems, it is not surprising that they should operate in
artistic structures. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
any scientific systems extant, save perhaps those of
mathematics, equal artistic structure in integrity, subtlety
and scope, while the latter are evidently more readily and
widely understood, and are the sources of a more
widespread and direct satisfaction. These facts are
explicable only when it is realized that scientific and
artistic systems embody the same fundamental principles
of the relationship of life to its surroundings, and that
both satisfy the same fundamental needs. Probably a
time will come when it will be universally recognized that
the differences between coherent logical schemes and
artistic structures in poetry, music and the plastics are
technical and specialized, rather than deep-seated.
Dewey, Affective Thought
61 That art originated in play is a common saying. Whether
or not the saying is historically correct, it suggests that
harmony of mental playfulness and seriousness describes
the artistic ideal. When the artist is preoccupied
overmuch with means and materials, he may achieve
wonderful technique, but not the artistic spirit par
excellence. When the animating idea is in excess of the
command of method, aesthetic feeling may be indicated,
but the art of presentation is too defective to express the
feeling thoroughly. When the thought of the end becomes
so adequate that it compels translation into the means
that embody it, or when attention to means is inspired by
recognition of the end they serve, we have the attitude
typical of the artist, an attitude that may be displayed in
all activities, even though not conventionally designated
arts.
Dewey, How We Think, Pt. Ill, XVI, 2
62 O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature | shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enameling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Yeats, Sailing lo Byzantium
63 The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it
is an experience different in kind from any experience not
of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a
combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for
the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may
be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry
may be made without the direct use of any emotion
whatever: composed out of feelings solely.... It is not the
"greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the
components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the
pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place,
that counts.
T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
64 This mental vegetation, this fitful nervous groping, is...a
sign of life, out of which art emerges by discipline and by
a gradual application to real issues. An artist is a dreamer
consenting to dream of the actual world; he is a highly
suggestible mind hypnotised by reality.
Santayana, Life of Reason, IV, 3
65 The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but
the function of art is to make life better. The depth to
which an artist may find current experience to be sunk in
discord and confusion is not his special concern; his
concern is, in some measure, to lift experience out. The
more barbarous his age, the more drastic and violent
must be his operation.
Santayana, Life of Reason, IV, 4
66 Love, one of the great commonplaces of existence, is
Slowly leaving mine. The maternal instinct is another
great commonplace. Once we've left these behind, we
find that all the rest is gay and varied, and that there is
plenty of it. But one doesn’t leave all that behind when or
as one pleases. How wise one of my husbands was when
he remonstrated: "But is it impossible for you to write a
book that isn’t about love, adultery, semi-incestuous
relations and a final separation? Aren’t there other things
in life?" If he had not been in such a hurry to get to his
amorous rendezvous— for he was handsome and
charming—he might perhaps have taught me what can
take the place of love, in a novel or out of it.
Colette, La Naissance dujour
67 Art, which rules Making and not Doing, stands therefore
outside the human sphere; it has an end, rules, values,
which are not those of man, but those of the work to be
produced. This work is everything for Art; there is for Art
but one law— the exigencies and the good of the work.
Hence the tyrannical and absorbing power of Art, and
also its astonishing power of soothing; it delivers one
from the human; it establishes the artifex —artist or
artisan—in a world apart, closed, limited, absolute, in
which he puts the energy and intelligence of his
manhood at the service of a thing which he makes. This is
true of all art; the ennui of living and willing ceases at the
door of every workshop.
But if art is not human in the end that it pursues, it is
human, essentially human, in its mode of operating. It’s a
work of man that has to be made; it must have on it the
mark of man: animal rationale.
Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, III
68 Art in general tends to make a work. But certain arts tend
to make a beautiful work, and in this they differ
essentially from all the others. The work to which all the
other arts tend is itself ordered to the service of man, and
is therefore a simple means; and it is entirely enclosed in
a determined material genus. The work to which the fine
arts tend is ordered to beauty; as beautiful, it is an end,
an absolute, it suffices of itself; and if, as work-to-be-
made, it is material and enclosed in a genus, as beautiful
it belongs to the kingdom of the spirit and plunges deep
into the transcendence and the infinity of being.
The fine arts thus stand out in the genus art as man
stands out in the genus animal. And like man himself
they are like a horizon where matter and spirit meet.
They have a Spiritual soul. Hence they possess many
distinctive properties. Their contact with the beautiful
modifies in them certain characteristics of art in general,
notably, as | shall try' to show, with respect to the rules of
art; on the other hand, this contact discloses and carries
to a sort of excess other generic characteristics of the
virtue of art, above all its intellectual character and its
resemblance to the speculative virtues.
Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, V
69 Art is gratu/tous or disinterested as such—that is to say,
... In the production of the work the virtue of art aims only
at one thing; the good of the work-to-be-made, beauty to
be made to shine in matter, the creating of the thing
according to its own laws, independently of all the rest;
and accordingly it desires that there be nothing in the
work which will escape its regulation, and that it be alone
in immediately ruling the work, in moulding it and
fashioning it.
There are many ways of failing in this
"gratuitousness." One may think, for instance, that good
moral intentions make up for the quality of the craft or
the inspiration, and suffice to construct a work. Or else
one may go so far as to adulterate the work itself, such as
the rules and the determined ways of art would have it to
be, by forcibly applying to it, in order to rule it, foreign
elements—the desire to edify, or to disedify, not to shock
the public, or to create scandal, to have "arrived" in
society, or to cut a figure in the bars and cafes as an
artist free and rare.
Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, Appendix |
70 Art is just as comprehensible as science, but in its own
terms; that is, one can always ask, and usually can
determine, how the artistic semblance of life is made and
in what it consists.
Langer, Mind, I, Intro.
71 Artistic conception, for all its similarities to mythical
ideation and even dream, is not a transitional phase of
mental evolution, but a final symbolic form making
revelation of truths about actual life. Like discursive
reason, it seems to have unlimited potentialities. The
facts which it makes conceivable are precisely those
which literal statement distorts. Having once symbolized
and perceived them, we may talk about them; but only
artistic perception can find them and judge them real in
the first place.
Langer, Mind, I, 4
72 Art is the objectification of feeling, and the
subjectification of nature.
Langer, Mind, I, 4
73 Every kind of art is beautiful, as all life is beautiful, and
for much the same reason: that it embodies sentience,
from the most elementary sense of vitality, individual
being and continuity, to the full expansion of human
perception, human love and hate, triumph and misery
enlightenment, wisdom.
Langer, Mind, 1, 5
16.2 Books and Reading
The passages here assembled require little or no preamble.
They are about the writing and reading of books, the
collection and enjoyment of them, and the pleasures and
pretensions of the literary life.
The reader will find both praise and dispraise of books,
criteria for distinguishing good books from bad, enduring
from ephemeral literature, and wise counsel about the books
to be read or about the amount and character of the reading
one should do, including the cautionary observation by
Socrates that the living mind of man can never be enclosed
within the dead pages of a book.
Comments on literature will also be found in the next two
sections of this chapter; and relevant passages in other
chapters, the reader should consult the index under such for
terms as "book," "books," and "literature."
1 Of making many books there is no end; and much study is
a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12:12
2 Socrates. The worst of authors will say something which is
to the point.
Plato, Phaedrus, 235B
3 Socrates. | cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is
unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the
painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a
question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same
may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they
had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and
put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives
one unvarying answer. And when they have been once
written down they are tumbled about anywhere among
those who may or may not understand them, and know
not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they
are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect
them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
Phaedrus. That again is most true.
Soc. Is there not another kind of word or speech far
better than this, and having far greater power—a son of
the same family, but lawfully begotten?
Phaedr. Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?
Soc. | mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of
the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to
speak and when to be silent.
Phaedr. You mean the living word of knowledge which
has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no
more than an image?
Soc. Yes, of course that is what | mean. And now may |
be allowed to ask you a question: Would a husbandman,
who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he values
and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in sober
seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in
some garden of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees
them in eight days appearing in beauty? at least he
would do so, if at all, only for the sake of amusement and
pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting soil,
and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight
months the seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection?
Phaedr. Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is
in earnest; he will do the other, as you say, only in play.
Soc. And can we suppose that he who knows the just
and good and honourable has less understanding, than
the husbandman, about his own seeds?
Phaedr. Certainly not.
Soc. Then he will not seriously incline to "write" his
thoughts "in water" with pen and ink, sowing words which
can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth
adequately to others?
Phaedr. No, that is not likely.
Soc. No, that is not likely—in the garden of letters he
will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and
amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be
treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself,
or by any other old man who is treading the same path.
He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and
while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting
and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are
spent.
Phaedr. A pastime, Socrates, as noble as the other is
ignoble, the pastime of a man who can be amused by
serious talk, and can discourse merrily about justice and
the like.
Soc. True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious
pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul,
by the help of science sows and plants therein words
which are able to help themselves and him who planted
them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed
which others brought up in different soils render
immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the
utmost extent of human happiness.
Phaedr. Far nobler, certainly.
Plato, Phaedrus, 275B
4 Every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth,
will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and
misunderstanding among men by committing them to
writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this
that, if one sees written treatises composed by anyone,
either the laws of a lawgiver, or in any other form
whatever, these are not for that man the things of most
worth, if he is a man of worth, but that his treasures are
laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But if these
things were worked at by him as things of real worth, and
committed to writing, then surely, not gods, but men
“have themselves bereft him of his wits."
Plato, Seventh Letter
5 Go, little book, my little tragedy!
God grant thy maker, ere his ending day,
May write some tale of happy poetry!
But, little book, of any poet’s lay
Envy of heart here shalt thou not display,
But kiss the steps where pass through ages spacious,
Vergil and Ovid, Homer, Lucan and Statius.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, V, 256
6 And as for me, though that | konne but lyte,
On bokes for to rede | me delyte.
And to hem yive | feyth and ful credence,
And in myn herte have hem in reverence.
Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women
7 For in the composing of this lordly book, | never lost nor
bestowed any more, nor any other time, than what was
appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily refection,
that is, whilst | was eating and drinking. And, indeed, that
is the fittest and most proper hour, wherein to write these
high matters and deep sentences: as Homer knew very
well, the paragon of all philologues, and Ennius, father of
the Latin poets, as Horace calls him, although a certain
sneaking jobbernol alleged that his verses smelled more
of the wine than oil.
So saith a Turlupin or a new start-up grub of my books;
but a turd for him. The fragrant odour of the wine, oh |
how much more dainty, pleasant, laughing, celestial, and
delicious it is, than that smell of oil! and | will glory as
much when it is said of me, that | have spent more on
wine than oil, as did Demosthenes, when it was told him,
that his expense on oil was greater than on wine.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, Prologue
8 If | had written to seek the world’s favor, | should have
bedecked myself better, and should present myself ina
studied posture. | want to be seen here in my simple,
natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for
it is myself that | portray. My defects will here be read to
the life, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the
public has allowed. Had | been placed among those
nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of
nature’s first laws, | assure you | should very gladly have
portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.
Thus, reader, | am myself the matter of my book; you
would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so
frivolous and vain a subject.
Montaigne, Essays, To the Reader
9 Do you think that Epicurus, who (while dying in torment,
as he says, from the utmost pains of colic) had all his
consolation in the beauty of the doctrine he was leaving
to the world, would have received as much contentment
from a number of well-born and well-brought-up children,
if he had had any, as he did from the production of his
rich writings? And that if he had had to choose between
leaving behind a deformed and ill-born child and leaving
behind a stupid and inept book, he would not rather have
chosen, and not only he but any man of like ability, to
incur the former misfortune than the other?
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 8, Affection of Fathers
10 Reason, wisdom, and the offices of friendship are oftener
found among men; therefore they govern the affairs of
the world.
These two kinds of association are accidental and
dependent on others. One is annoying by its rarity, the
other withers with age; thus they would not have
provided well enough for the needs of my life. Association
with books, which is the third kind, is much more certain
and more our own. It yields the other advantages to the
first two, but it has for its share the constancy and ease of
its service. It is at my side throughout my course, and
accompanies me everywhere. It consoles me in old age
and in solitude. It relieves me of the weight of a tedious
idleness, and releases me at any time from disagreeable
company. It dulls the pangs of sorrow, unless they are
extreme and overpowering. To be diverted from a
troublesome idea, | need only have recourse to books:
they easily turn my thoughts to themselves and steal
away the others. And yet they do not rebel at seeing that
| seek them out only for want of those other pleasures,
that are more real, lively, and natural; they always
receive me with the same expression.
He may well go on foot, they say, who leads his horse
by the bridle. And our James, king of Naples and Sicily,
who, handsome, young, and healthy, had himself carried
around the country on a stretcher, lying on a wretched
feather pillow, dressed in a gown of gray cloth with a cap
to match, meanwhile followed by great regal pomp,
litters, hand-led horses of all sorts, gentlemen and
officers, showed an austerity still weak and wavering. The
sick man is not to be pitied who has a cure up his sleeve.
In the practice and application of this maxim, which is
very true, lies ail the fruit | reap from books. Actually | use
them scarcely any more than those who do not know
them at all. | enjoy them, as misers enjoy treasures,
because | know that | can enjoy them when | please; my
soul takes its fill of contentment from this right of
possession.
| do not travel without books, either in peace or in war.
However, many days will pass, and even some months,
without my using them. Til do it soon, | say, or tomorrow,
or when | please. Time flies and is gone, meanwhile,
without hurting me. For | cannot tell you what case and
repose | find when | reflect that they are at my side to
give me pleasure at my own time, and when | recognize
how much assistance they bring to my life. It is the best
provision | have found for this human journey, and | am
extremely sorry for men of understanding who do not
have it. | sooner accept any other kind of amusement,
however trivial, because this one cannot fail me.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 3, Three Kinds of Association
11 You must know then, that when our Gentleman had
nothing to do (which was almost all the Year round) he
pass’d his Time in reading Books of Knight-Errantry;
which he did with that Application and Delight, that at
last he in a manner wholly left off his Country-Sports, and
even the Care of his Estate: nay, he grew so strangely
besotted with those Amusements, that he sold many
Acres of Arable-Land to purchase Books of that kind; by
which means he collected as many of them as were to be
had....
In fine, he gave himself up so wholly to the reading of
Romances, that a-Nights he would pore on ’till ’twas Day,
and a-Days he would read on ’till ‘twas Night; and thus by
sleeping little, and reading much, the Moisture of his
Brain was exhausted to that Degree, that at last he lost
the Use of his Reason, A world of disorderly Notions,
pick’d out of his Books, crouded into his Imagination; and
now his Head was full of nothing but Inchantments,
Quarrels, Battles, Challenges, Wounds, Complaints,
Amours, Torments, and abundance of Stuff and
Impossibilities; insomuch, that all the Fables and
fantastical Tales which he read, seem’d to him now as
true as the most au-thentick Histories.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 1
12 Don Quixote listen’d with great Attention to the Canon’s
Discourse, and perceiving he had done, after he had fix’d
his Eyes on him for a considerable Space; Sir, said he, all
your Discourse, | find, tends to signify to me, there never
were any Knights-Errant; that all the Books of Knight-
Errantry are false, fabulous, useless, and prejudicial to
the publick; that | have done ill in reading, err’d in
believing, and been much to blame in imitating them, by
taking upon me the most painful Profession of Chivalry.
And you deny that ever there were any Amadis's of Gaul
or Greece, or any of those Knights mention’d in those
Books. Even as you have said. Sir, quoth the Canon. You
also were pleas’d to add, continu’d Don Quixote, that
those Books had been very hurtful to me, having depriv’d
me of my Reason and reduc’d me to be carry’d in a Cage;
that therefore it would be for my Advantage to take up in
Time, and apply myself to the reading of other Books,
where | might find more Truth, more Pleasure, and better
Instruction. You are in the right, said the Canon. Then |
am satisfy’d, reply’d Don Quixote, you yourself are the
Man that raves and is inchanted, since you have thus
boldly blasphem’d against a Truth so universally receiv’d,
that whosoever presumes to contradict it, as you have
done, deserves the Punishment you would inflict on those
Books, which in reading offend and tire you. For it were as
easy to persuade the World that the Sun does not
enlighten, the Frost cool, and the Earth bear us, as that
there never was an Amadis, or any of the other
adventurous Knights, whose Actions are the Subjects of
SO many Histories, What Mortal can persuade another,
that there is no Truth in what is recorded of the Infanta
Floripes, and Guy of Burgundy: as also Fierabras at the
Bridge of Mantible in the Reign of Charlemaign? which
Passages, | dare swear, are as true as that now it is Day.
But if this be false, you may as well say there was no
Hector, nor Achilles; nor a Trojan War, nor Twelve Peers of
France, nor a King Arthur of Britain, who is now converted
into a Crow, and hourly expected in his Kingdom.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 49
13 For Me alone was the Great Quixote born, and | alone for
Him. Deeds were his Task, and to record ‘em, Mine. We
two, like Tallies for each other struck, are nothing when
apart.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 74
14 For a man to write well, there are required three
necessaries—to read the best authors, observe the best
speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
Jonson, Discoveries: De Stilo
15 Let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-
applied moderation think or maintain, that a man can
search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God’s
word, or in the book of God’s works, divinity or
philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless
progress or proficience in both.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, |, 3
16 If anyone turn from the manufactories to libraries, and be
inclined to admire the immense variety of books offered
to our view, let him but examine and diligently inspect
the matter and contents of these books, and his
astonishment will certainly change its object: for when he
finds no end of repetitions, and how much men do and
speak the same thing over again, he will pass from
admiration of this variety to astonishment at the poverty
and scarcity of matter, which has hitherto possessed and
filled men’s minds.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 85
17 Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books
are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not
curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with
diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by
deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that
would be only in the less important arguments, and the
meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like
common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a
full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact
man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need
have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need
have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have
much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics
subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and
rhetoric able to contend.
Bacon, Of Studies
18 The reading of all good books is indeed like a
conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who
were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied
conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the
best of their thoughts.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, |
19 If | read as many books as other men do, | would be as
dull-witted as they.
Hobbes, gu. by Aubrey, Brief Lives
20 The best books are those whose readers think they could
have written them.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
21 Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a
potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was
whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as ina
vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living
intellect that bred them. | know they are as lively, and as
vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth;
and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up
armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness
be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book.
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image;
but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills
the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives
a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious
lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up
on purpose to a life beyond life. Tis true, no age can
restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and
revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a
rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare
the worse.
Milton, Areopagitica
22 Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek)
Uncertain and unsettl’d still remains,
Deep verst in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;
As Children gathering pibles on the shore.
Milton, Paradise Regained, IV, 322
23 Would a Writer know how to behave himself with relation
to Posterity, let him consider in old Books, what he finds,
that he is glad to know, and what Omissions he most
laments.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
24 The most accomplished way of using books at present is
two-fold; either, first, to serve them as some men do
lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their
acquaintance. Or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer,
the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough
insight into the index, by which the whole book is
governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter
the palace of learning at the great gate requires an
expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste
and little ceremony are content to get in by the back
door.
Swift, Tale of a Tub, VII
25 Now, it is not well enough considered to what accidents
and occasions the world is indebted for the greatest part
of those noble writings which hourly start up to entertain
it. If it were not for a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the
spleen, a course of physic, a sleepy Sunday, an ill run at
dice, along tailor’s bill, a beggar’s purse, a factious head,
a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just
contempt of learning: but for these events, | say, and
some others too long to recite (especially a prudent
neglect of taking brimstone inwardly), | doubt the
number of authors and of writings would dwindle away to
a degree most woful to behold.
Swift, Tale of a Tub, X
26 | am now trying an experiment very frequent among
modem authors, which is to write upon nothing.
Swift, Tale of a Tub, Conclusion
27 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 362
28 [An author is] a fool who, not content with having bored
those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the
generations to come.
Montesquieu, Persian Letters, LXVI
29 Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;— they are
the life, the soul of reading!—take them out of this book,
for instance,—you might as well take the book along with
them;—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page
of it; restore them to the writer;-—he steps forth like a
bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids
the appetite to fail.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, |, 22
30 You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged
in the vanities of ambition and in the search for pleasure
or in idleness; but think that the whole of the known
universe, with the exception of the savage races, is
governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to
Ethiopia and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after
having staggered under the book of the Gospel. China is
ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a greater part of
India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for
centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras.
If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your
life even depends on the interpretation of a book which
you never read....
Who leads the human race in civilized countries?
those who know how to read and write. You do not know
either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or Sydenham; but you put
your body in the hands of those who have read them. You
abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the
Bible, although there are not fifty among them who have
read it in its entirety with care.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Books
31 The chief glory of every people arises from its authours.
Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary
32 No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity
of human hopes than a public library.
Johnson, Rambler No. 106
33 Nothing is more common than to find men whose works
are now totally neglected mentioned with praises by their
contemporaries as the oracles of their age and the
legislators of science.
Johnson, Rambler No. 106
34 Johnson. | would not advise a rigid adherence to a
particular plan of study. | myself have never persisted in
any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just
as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will
do him little good. A young man should read five hours in
a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 14, 1763)
35 Johnson. When a man writes from his own mind, he writes
very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent
in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a
library to make one book.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 6, 1775)
36 He [Johnson] then took occasion to enlarge on the
advantages of reading, and combated the idle superficial
notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in
conversation. "The foundation (said he), must be laid by
reading. General principles must be had from books,
which, however, must be brought to the test of real life. In
conversation you never get a system. What is said upon a
subject is to be gathered from a hundred people. The
parts of a truth, which a man gets thus, are at sucha
distance from each other that he never attains to a full
view."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 76, 1775)
37 When | expressed an earnest wish for his [Johnson’s]
remarks on Italy, he said, "| do not see that | could make
a book upon Italy; yet | should be glad to get two
hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work." This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon
the Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation,
and that he uniformly adhered to that strange opinion,
which his indolent disposition made him utter: "No man
but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Numerous
instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in
the history of literature.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 5, 1776)
38 On Thursday, May 1, | visited him [Johnson] in the
evening along with young Mr. Burke. He said, "It is
strange that there should be so little reading in the world,
and so much writing. People in general do not willingly
read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
There must be an external impulse; emulation, or vanity,
or avarice. The progress which the understanding makes
through a book, has more pain than pleasure in it.
Language is scanty, and inadequate to express the nice
gradations and mixtures of our feelings. No man reads a
book of science from pure inclination. The books that we
do read with pleasure are light compositions, which
contain a quick succession of events. However, | have
this year read all Virgil through. | read a book of the
AEneid every night, so it was done in twelve nights, and |
had great delight in it."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 1, 1783)
39 | sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which have
been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when
| seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of
ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather
than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many
curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the
three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to
our hands in a mutilated state; and we are deprived of
many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and
dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully
remember that the mischances of time and accident have
spared the classic works to which the suffrage of
antiquity’ had adjudged the first place of genius and
glory: the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still
extant, had perused and compared the writings of their
predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that any
Important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has
been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LI
40 Authors should use common words to say uncommon
things. But they do just the opposite. We find them trying
to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe
their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary
phrases, the most farfetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-
way expressions. Their sentences perpetually stalk about
on stilts. They take so much pleasure in bombast, and
write in such a high-flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical
and acrobatic style that their prototype is Ancient Pistol,
whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say what
he had to say like a man of this world.
Schopenhauer, Style
41 If aman wants to read good books, he must make a point
of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and
energy limited.
Schopenhauer, Some Forms of Literature
42 The man who writes for fools is always sure of a large
audience; be careful to limit your time for reading, and
devote it exclusively to the works of those great minds of
all times and countries, who o’ertop the rest of humanity,
those whom the voice of fame points to as such. These
alone really educate and instruct. You can never read bad
literature too little, nor good literature too much. Bad
books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
Schopenhauer, Books and Reading
43 There are at all times two literatures in progress, running
side by side, but little known to each other; the one real,
the other only apparent. The former grows into
permanent literature; it is pursued by those who live for
science or poetry; its course is sober and quiet, but
extremely slow; and it produces in Europe scarcely a
dozen works in a century; these, however, are
permanent. The other kind is pursued by persons who
live on science or poetry; it goes at a gallop with much
noise and shouting of partisans; and every twelve-month
puts a thousand works on the market. But after a few
years one asks, Where are they? where is the glory which
came so soon and made so much clamor? This kind may
be called fleeting, and the other, permanent literature.
Schopenhauer, Books and Reading
44 The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
Carlyle, The Hero as Man of Letters
45 Of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Glasses at
present extant in the world, there is no class comparable
for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books.
Carlyle, The Hero as Man of Letters
46 Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their
duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke,
which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke,
and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they
wrote these books.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the
bookworm.
Emerson, The American Scholar
47 The three practical rules, then, which | have to offer, are
—1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never
read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what
you like.
Emerson, Books
48 'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every
book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides
hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear;
the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the
reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as ina
mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Emerson, Success
49 All literature is yet to be written. Poetry has scarce
chanted its first song. The perpetual admonition of nature
to us is, "The world is new, untried. Do not believe the
past. | give you the universe a virgin today."
Emerson, Literary Ethics
50 Authors—essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester,
play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues
of art.
Rip your brothers’ vices open, strip your own foul
passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence— forward
—naked—let them stare.
Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 139
51 One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their
subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How,
then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously
my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give mea
condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand!
Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my
thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me
faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of
sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences,
and all the generations of whales, and men, and
mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the
revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout
the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and
sO magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme!
We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you
must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring
volume can ever be written on the flea, though many
there be who have tried it.
Melville, Moby Dick, CIV
52 For what are the classics but the noblest recorded
thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not
decayed.
Thoreau, Walden: Reading
53 Camerado, this is no book.
Who touches this touches a man.
Whitman, So Long!
54 Who can tell how many of the most original thoughts put
forth by male writers, belong to a woman by suggestion,
to themselves only by verifying and working out? If | may
judge by my own case, a very large proportion indeed.
Miff, Subjection of Women, III
55 To read to good purpose we must read a great deal, and
be content not to use a great deal of what we read. We
Shall never be content not to use the whole, or nearly the
whole, of what we read, unless we read a great deal. Yet
things are on such a scale, and progress is so gradual,
and what one man can do is so bounded, that the
moment we press the whole of what any writer says, we
fall into error. He touches a great deal: the thing to know
is where he is all himself and his best self, where he
shows his power, where he goes to the heart of the
matter, where he gives us what no other man gives us, or
gives us SO well.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, Pref.
56 A classic is something that everybody wants to have read
and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain, The Disappearance of Literature
57 Tom’s most well now, and got his bullet around his neck
on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what
time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write about,
and | am rotten glad of it, because if I’d 'a’' Knowed what a
trouble it was to make a book | wouldn’t ‘a’ tackled it, and
ain’t a-going to no more.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, XLII!
58 Write without pay until somebody offers pay. |\f nobody
offers pay within three years, the candidate may look
upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence
as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.
Mark Twain, Life as | Find It: General Reply
59 In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and
once it does so, it is launched on a long road of
exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of
extravagance, interference to the point of frustration,
finally discipline, controlling constant change and
growth.
Langer, Mind, 1,5
16.3 Poetry and Poets
This section includes quotations of two main sorts: one
consists of statements about poetry in general—about the
writing of verses and the telling of stories; the other, of
statements about poets as men and as writers.
With regard to poetry in general, it must be observed that
this term, like the term "art," has gradually become more
restricted in its meaning. The reader will find passages from
Plato in which "poetry" has the same generality as "art,"
signifying making and things made. The Greek word for
making is po/esis. Less general than that, yet much less
restricted than its current usage, is its employment by the
ancients to refer to any form of imaginative writing, whether
in verse or in prose—the telling of stories, in either the epic
or the dramatic form of narration, as well as the singing of
songs. It is in this sense of the term that poetry is contrasted
with history and with philosophy or science, especially with
respect to its mode of truth. Only in the last few centuries
has "poetry," like the word "art," been narrowed down to
name one type of imaginative literature—lyric poems,
usually written in verse.
Many of the critical comments on the work of particular
poets gathered here come from the poets themselves. Most
of them are laudatory and appreciative, though not all, as,
for example, Dryden’s comments on Chaucer, and Blake’s on
Milton. Virgil on Homer, Ben Johnson and Samuel Johnson on
Shakespeare, Dryden on Milton and Chaucer, T. S. Eliot on
Dante, and Dante on Virgil—these are but a few of the
examples of the warm and loving tributes that later writers
pay to earlier ones.
Other quotations about poetry and literature appear in
other sections, notably Section 16.2 on Books AND Reading
and 16.4 on Tragedy and Comedy. The reader should also
consult the index under appropriate terms for passages that
appear in other chapters.
1 Odysseus. All men owe honor to the poets-—honor and
awe, for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their
lips the ways of life.
Homer, Odyssey, VIII, 479
2 Adrastus. The poet bringing songs into the world
Should labor in joy. If this is not his mood,
He cannot—being inwardly distressed—
Give pleasure outwardly,
Euripides, Suppliant Women, 180
3 Servant. Did you see any wandering in the air
Besides yourself?
Trygaeus. No; nothing much to speak of,
Two or three souls of dithyrambic poets.
S. What were they after?
Tr. Flitting round for odes.
Those floating-on-high-in-the-airy-sky affairs.
S. Then ‘tisn’t true what people say about it,
That when we die, we straightway turn to stars?
Tr. O yes it is.
S. And who's the star there now?
Tr. lon of Chios, who on earth composed "Star o’ the
Morn," and when he came there, all At once saluted him
as "Star o’ the Morn."
S. And did you learn about those falling stars
Which sparkle as they run?
Tr. Yes, those are some
Of the rich stars returning home from supper,
Lanterns in hand, and in the lanterns fire.
Aristophanes, Peace, 825
4 Socrates. The third kind is the madness of those who are
possessed by the Muses; which taking hold of a delicate
and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens
lyrical and all other numbers; with these adorning the
myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of
posterity. But he who, having no touch of the Muses’
madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he
will get into the temple by the help of art--he, | say, and
his poetry' are not admitted; the sane man disappears
and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the
madman.
Plato, Phaedrus, 245A
5 Socrates. All good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose
their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are
inspired and possessed.... For the poet is a light and
winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him
until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and
the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to
this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his
oracles.
Many are the noble words in which poets speak
concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when
speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any
rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to
which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when
inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another
hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or
lambic verses—and he who is good at one is not good at
any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing,
but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he
would have known how to speak not of one theme only,
but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of
poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses
diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear
them may know them to be speaking not of themselves
who utter these priceless words in a state of
unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker,
and that through them he is conversing with us. And
Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking instance of
what | am saying: he wrote nothing that any one would
care to remember but the famous paean which is in every
one’s mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply
an invention of the Muses, as he himself says. For in this
way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow
us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or
the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and
that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by
whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the
lesson which the God intended to teach when by the
mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of songs?
Am | not right, lon?
lon. Yes, indeed, Socrates, | feel that you are; for your
words touch my soul, and | am persuaded that good poets
by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the Gods to
uS.
Plato, lon, 533B
6 If you consider, | [Socrates] said, that when in misfortune
we feel a natural hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow
by weeping and lamentation, and that this feeling which
iS kept under control in our own calamities is satisfied
and delighted by the poets—the better nature in each of
us, not having been sufficiently trained by reason or
habit, allows the sympathetic element to break loose
because the sorrow is another’s; and the spectator
fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in
praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what
a good man he is, and making a fuss about his troubles;
he thinks that the pleasure is a gain, and why should he
be supercilious and lose this and the poem too? Few
persons ever reflect, as | should imagine, that from the
evil of other men something of evil is communicated to
themselves. And so the feeling of sorrow which has
gathered strength at the sight of the misfortunes of
others is with difficulty repressed in our own,
Glaucon. How very true!
And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous?
There are jests which you would be ashamed to make
yourself, and yet on the comic stage, or indeed in private,
when you hear them, you are greatly amused by them,
and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness—the
case of pity is repeated—there is a principle in human
nature which is disposed to raise a laugh, and this which
you once restrained by reason, because you were afraid
of being thought a buffoon, is now let out again; and
having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre, you
are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the
comic poet at home.
Quite true, he said.
And the same may be said of lust and anger and all
the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure,
which are held to be inseparable from every action—in all
of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of
drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought
to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in
happiness and virtue.
| cannot deny it.
Therefore, Glaucon, | said, whenever you meet with
any of the eulogists of Homer declaring that he has been
the educator of Hellas, and that he is profitable for
education and for the ordering of human things, and that
you should take him up again and again and get to know
him and regulate your whole life according to him, we
may love and honour those who say these things—they
are excellent people, as far as their lights extend; and we
are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of
poets and first of tragedy writers; but we must remain
firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises
of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be
admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and
allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric
verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by
common consent have ever been deemed best but
pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State.
That is most true, he said.
And now since we have reverted to the subject of
poetry, let this our defence serve to show the
reasonableness of our former judgment in sending away
out of our State an art having the tendencies which we
have described; for reason constrained us. But that she
may not impute to us any harshness or Want of
politeness, let us tell her that there is an ancient quarrel
between philosophy and poetry; of which there are many
proofs, such as the saying of "the yelping hound howling
at her lord," or of one "mighty in the vain talk of fools,"
and "the mob of sages circumventing Zeus," and the
"subtle thinkers who are beggars after all"; and there are
innumerable other signs of ancient enmity between
them. Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend
and the sister arts of imitation, that if she will only prove
her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be
delighted to receive her—we are very conscious of her
charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth,
| dare say, Glaucon, that you are as much charmed by her
as |am, especially when she appears in Homer?
Yes, indeed, | am greatly charmed.
Shall | propose, then, that she be allowed to return
from exile, but upon this condition only— that she make a
defence of herself in lyrical or some other metre?
Certainly.
And We may further grant to those of her defenders
who are lovers of poetry and yet not poets the permission
to speak in prose on her behalf: let them show not only
that she is pleasant but also useful to States and to
human life, and we will listen in a kindly spirit; for if this
can be proved we shall surely be the gainers—1 mean, if
there is a use in poetry as well as a delight?
Plato, Republic, X, 606A
7 The general origin of poetry was due to two causes, each
of them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man
from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower
animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature
in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also
natural for all to delight in works of imitation. The truth of
this Second point is shown by experience: though the
objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to
view the most realistic representations of them in art, the
forms for example of the lowest animals and dead bodies.
The explanation is to be found in a further fact; to be
learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only
to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind,
however small their capacity for it; the reason of the
delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same
time learning—gathering the meaning of things, for
example, that the man there is so-and-so; for if one has
not seen the thing before, one’s pleasure will not be in
the picture as an imitation of it, but will be due to the
execution or colouring or some similar cause. Imitation,
then, being natural to us—as also the sense of harmony
and rhythm, the metres being obviously species of
rhythms—it was through their original aptitude, and by a
series of improvements for the most part gradual on their
first efforts, that they created poetry out of their
improvisations.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1448N
8 The distinction between historian and poet is not in the
one writing prose and the other verse—you might put the
work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a
species of history; it consists really in this, that the one
describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of
thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more
philosophic and of graver import than history, since its
statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas
those of history are singulars. By a universal statement |
mean one as to what such or such a kind of man will
probably or necessarily say or do— which is the aim of
poetry... by a singular statement, one as to what, say,
Alcibiades did or had done to him.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1451a40
9 Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one
with a touch of madness in him.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1455a35
10 It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of...
poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words.
But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of
metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from
others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good
metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity
in dissimilars.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1459a3
11 Homer, admirable as he is in every other respect, is
especially so in this, that he alone among epic poets is
not unaware of the part to be played by the poet himself
in the poem. The poet should say very little /n propria
persona, as he is no imitator when doing that.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1460a5
12 For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is
preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1461b11
13 | traverse the pathless haunts of the Pierides never yet
trodden by sole of man, | love to approach the untasted
springs and to quaff, | love to cull fresh flowers and
gather for my head a distinguished crown from spots
whence the Muses have yet veiled the brows of none; first
because | teach of great things and essay to release the
mind from the fast bonds of religious scruples, and next
because on a dark subject | pen such lucid verses
o’erlaying all with the Muses’ charm. For that too would
seem to be not without good grounds: even as physicians
when they propose to give nauseous wormwood to
children, first smear the rim round the bowl with the
sweet yellow juice of honey, that the unthinking age of
children may be fooled as far as the lips, and meanwhile
drink up the bitter draught of wormwood and though
beguiled yet not be betrayed, but rather by such means
recover health and strength: so | now, since this doctrine
seems generally somewhat bitter to those by whom it has
not been handled, and the multitude shrinks back from it
in dismay, have resolved to set forth to you our doctrine
in sweet-toned Pierian verse and o’erlay it as it were with
the pleasant honey of the Muses, if haply by such means |
might engage your mind on my verses, till such time as
you apprehend all the nature of things and thoroughly
feel what use it has.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
14 Thus have | sung of fields, of flocks, and trees,
And of the waxen work of labouring bees:
While mighty Cassar, thundering from afar.
Seeks on Euphrates’ banks the spoils of war;
With conquering arts asserts his country’s cause.
With arts of peace the willing people draws;
On the glad earth the golden age renews,
And his great father’s path to heaven pursues;
While | at Naples pass my peaceful days,
Affecting studies of less noisy praise;
And, bold through youth, beneath the beechen shade,
The lays of shepherds, and their loves, have played.
Virgil, Georgies, IV
15 Oft before Agamemnon brave men warred;
But all unwept they lie in endless night.
Lacking, to deck their deeds with light,
Song of a heaven-taught bard.
Horace, Odes, IV, 9
16 Let poets match their subject to their strength,
And often try what weight they can support,
And what their shoulders are too weak to bear,
After a serious and judicious choice,
Method and eloquence will never fail.
Horace, Ars Poetica
17 Sound judgment is the ground of writing well:
And when philosophy directs your choice
To proper subjects rightly understood,
Words from your pen will naturally flow;
He only gives the proper characters,
Who knows the duty of all ranks of men,
And what we owe to country, parents, friends.
How judges, and how senators should act,
And what becomes a general to do;
Those are the likest copies, which are drawn
By the original of human life.
Horace, Ars Poetica
18 A poet should instruct, or please, or both;
Let all your precepts be succinct and clear,
That ready wits may comprehend them soon,
And faithful memories retain them long;
For superfluities are soon forgot.
Never be so conceited of your parts,
To think you may persuade us what you please.
Horace, Ars Poetica
19 Poems, like pictures, are of diff’rent sorts,
Some better at a distance, others near,
Some love the dark, some choose the clearest light,
And boldly challenge the most piercing eye,
Some please for once, some will for ever please.
Horace, Ars Poetica
20 Yet if it ever be your fate to write,
Let your productions pass the strictest hands,
Mine and your father’s, and not see the light,
‘Till time and care have ripen’d ev'ry line.
Horace, Ars Poetica
21 With such vigorous resolutions, and his mind thus
disposed, he [Alexander] passed the Hellespont, and at
Troy sacrificed to Minerva, and honoured the memory of
the heroes who were buried there, with solemn libations;
especially Achilles, whose gravestone he anointed, and
with his friends, as the ancient custom is, ran naked
about his sepulchre, and crowned it with garlands,
declaring how happy he esteemed him, in having while
he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead, so
famous a poet to proclaim his actions. While he was
viewing the rest of the antiquities and curiosities of the
place, being told he might see Paris’s harp, if he pleased,
he said he thought it not worth looking on, but he should
be glad to see that of Achilles, to which he used to sing
the glories and great actions of brave men.
Plutarch, Alexander
22 When she (Philosophy] saw that the Muses of poetry were
present by my couch giving words to my lamenting, she
was stirred a while; her eyes flashed fiercely, and said
she, "Who has suffered these seducing mummers to
approach this sick man? Never do they support those in
sorrow by any healing remedies, but rather do ever foster
the sorrow by poisonous sweets. These are they who stifle
the fruit-bearing harvest of reason with the barren briars
of the passions: they free not the minds of men from
disease, but accustom them thereto. | would think it less
grievous if your allurements drew away from me some
uninitiated man, as happens in the vulgar herd. In such
an one my labours would be naught harmed, but this
man has been nourished in the lore of Eleatics and
Academics; and to him have ye reached? Away with you,
Sirens, seductive unto destruction! leave him to my
Muses to be cared for and to be healed."
Their band thus rated cast a saddened glance upon
the ground, confessing their shame in blushes, and
passed forth dismally over the threshold.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, |
23 Just as human reason fails to grasp poetical expressions
because they are lacking in truth, so does it fail to grasp
Divine things perfectly on account of the sublimity of the
truth they contain. And therefore in both cases there is
need of signs by means of sensible figures,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 101, 2
24 "O thou, that honourest every science and art; who are
these, who have such honour, that it separates them from
the manner of the rest?"
And he to me: "The honoured name, which sounds of
them, up in that life of thine, gains favour in heaven
which thus advances them."
Meanwhile a voice was heard by me: "Honour the
great Poet! His shade returns that was departed."
After the voice had paused, and was silent, | saw four
great shadows come to us; they had an aspect neither
sad nor joyful.
The good Master began to speak: "Mark him with that
sword in hand, who comes before the three as their lord:
that is Homer, the sovereign Poet; the next who comes
is Horace the satirist; Ovid is the third, and the last /s
Lucan.
Because each agrees with me in the name, which the
one voice sounded, they do me honour: and therein they
do well."
Thus | saw assembled the goodly school of [those]
lord[s] of highest song, [which], like an eagle, soars
above the rest.
After they had talked a space together, they turned to
me with sign of salutation; and my Master smiled thereat.
And greatly more besides they honoured me; for they
made me of their number, so | was a sixth amid such
intelligences.
Dante, Inferno, IV, 73
25 And therefore, figuring Paradise, needs must the sacred
poem make a leap, as who should find his pathway
intercepted.
But whoso thinketh of the weighty theme and of the
mortal shoulder which hath charged itself therewith, will
think no blame if under it it trembleth.
It is no voyage for a little barque, that which my
daring keel cleaveth as it goeth, nor for a helmsman who
doth spare himself.
Dante, Paradiso XXIII, 61
26 We must discuss what things are greatest; and first in
respect of what is useful. Now in this matter, if we
carefully consider the object of all those who are in
search of what is useful, we shall find that it is nothing
else but safety. Secondly, in respect of what is
pleasurable; and here we say that that is most
pleasurable which gives pleasure by the most exquisite
object of appetite, and this is love. Thirdly, in respect of
what is right; and here no one doubts that virtue has the
first place. Wherefore these three things, namely, safety,
love, and virtue, appear to be those capital matters which
ought to be treated of supremely, | mean the things
which are most important in respect of them, as prowess
in arms, the fire of love, and the direction of the will. And
if we duly consider, we shall find that the illustrious
writers have written poetry in the vulgar tongue on these
subjects exclusively.
Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia, II, 2
27 Be it known that the sense of this work (the Divine
Comedy] is not simple, but on the contrary it may be
called polysemous, that is to say, ‘of more senses than
one’; for it is one sense which we get through the letter,
and another which we get through the thing the letter
signifies; and the first is called literal, but the second
allegorical or mystic. And this mode of treatment, for its
better manifestation, may be considered in this verse:
‘When Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob
from a people of strange speech, Judaea became his
sanctification, Israel his power.' For if we inspect the
letter alone the departure of the children of Israel from
Egypt in the time of Moses is presented to us; if the
allegory, our redemption wrought by Christ; if the moral
sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and
misery of sin to the state of grace is presented to us; if
the anagogical, the departure of the holy soul from the
Slavery of this corruption to the liberty of eternal glory is
presented to us. And although these mystic senses have
each their special denominations, they may all in general
be called allegorical, since they differ from the literal and
historical.... When we understand this we see clearly that
the subject round which the alternative senses play must
be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of
this work as literally understood, and then its subject as
allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work,
then, taken in the literal sense only, is ‘the state of souls
after death,’ without qualification, for the whole progress
of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work
be taken allegorically the subject is ‘man, as by good or
ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he
becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice.’
Dante, Letter to Can Grande
28 Just as sound, when pent up in the narrow channel of a
trumpet, comes out sharper and stronger, so it seems to
me that a thought, when compressed into the numbered
feet of poetry, springs forth much more violently and
strikes me a much stiffer jolt.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 26, Education of Children
29 | am not one of those who think that good rhythm makes
a good poem. Let him make a short syllable long if he
wants, that doesn’t matter; if the inventions are pleasant,
if wit and judgment have done their work well, | shall say:
There is a good poet, but a bad versifier.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 26, Education of Children
30 As, in exploits of war, the heat of combat often impels
high-souled soldiers to go through such dangers that
when they have come back to themselves they are the
first to be struck with amazement; as also poets are often
rapt in wonder at their own works and no longer
recognize the track over which they ran so fine a race.
That is what is called poetic frenzy and madness. And as
Plato says that a sedate man knocks in vain on the door
of poetry, so Aristotle says that no excellent soul is free
from an admixture of madness. And he is right to call
madness any transport, however laudable, that
transcends our own judgment and reason; inasmuch as
wisdom is an orderly management of our soul, which she
conducts with measure and proportion and is responsible
for.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 2, Of Drunkenness
31 Theseus. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling.
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, V, 1, 4
32 Hotspur. | had rather be a kitten and cry mew
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;
| had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d.
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry:
Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.
Shakespeare, | Henvy IV, Ill, i, 129
33 Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise.
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
Shakespeare, Sonnet LV
34 The Canon rid forward with him, and his Men follow’d,
while the Curate made them a Relation of Don Quixote's
Life and Quality, his Madness and Adventures, with the
Original Cause of his Distraction, and the whole Progress
of his Affairs, till his being shut up in the Cage, to get him
home, in order to have him cur’d. They all admired at this
strange Account; and then the Canon turning to the
Curate: Believe me, Mr Curate, said he, | am fully
convinc’d, that these they call Books of Knight-Errantry
are very prejudicial to the Publick. And tho’ | have been
led away with an idle and false Pleasure, to read the
Beginnings of almost as many of ’em as have been
Printed, | could never yet persuade myself to go through
with any one to the End; for to me they all seem to
contain one and the same thing; and there is as much in
one of them as in all the rest. The whole Composition and
Stile resemble that of the Mi/esian Fables, which area
sort of idle Stories, design’d only for Diversion, and not
for Instruction. It is not so with those Fables which are
call’d Apologues, that at once delight and instruct. But
tho’ the main Design of such Books is to please; yet |
cannot conceive how it is possible they should perform it,
being fill’d with such a Multitude of unaccountable
Extravagancies. For the Pleasure which strikes the Soul,
must be deriv’d from the Beauty and Congruity it sees or
conceives in those things the Sight or Imagination lay
before it; and nothing in itself deform’d or incongruous
can give us any real Satisfaction. Now what Beauty can
there be, or what Proportion of the Parts of the Whole, or
of the Whole to the several Parts, in a Book, or Fable,
where a Stripling of Sixteen Years of Age at one Cut of a
Sword cleaves a Giant, as tall as a Steeple, through the
Middle, as easily as if he were made of Paste-Board? Or
when they give us the Relation of a Battle, having said
the Enemy’s Power consisted of a Million of Combatants,
yet provided the Hero of the Book be against them, we
must of necessity, tho’ never so much against our
Inclination, conceive that the said Knight obtain’d the
Victory only by his own Valour, and the Strength of his
Powerful Arm? And what shall we say of the great Ease
and Facility with which an absolute Queen or Empress
casts herself into the Arms of an Errant and unknown
Knight? What Mortal, not altogether barbarous and
unpolish’d, can be pleased to read, that a great Tower,
full of armed Knights, cuts thro’ the Sea like a Ship before
the Wind, and setting out in the Evening from the Coast
of /taly, lands by Break of Day in Prestor John's Country,
or in some other, never known to Pto/omy or seen by
Marcus Paulus? |f it shou’d be answer’d, That the Persons
who compose these Books, write them as confess’d Lies;
and therefore are not oblig’d to observe Niceties, or to
have regard to Truth; | shall make this Reply, That
Falshood is so much the more commendable, by how
much it more resembles Truth; and is the more pleasing
the more it is doubtful and possible. Fabulous Tales ought
to be suited to the Reader’s Understanding, being so
contrived, that all Impossibilities ceasing, all great
Accidents appearing feasible and the Mind wholly
hanging in Suspence, they may at once surprize,
astonish, please and divert; so that Pleasure and
Admiration may go hand in hand. This cannot be
performed by him that flies from Probability and
Imitation, which is the Perfection of what is written. | have
not seen any Book of Knight-Errantry that composes an
entire Body of a Fable with all its Parts, so that the Middle
is answerable to the Beginning, and the End to the
Beginning and Middle; but on the contrary, they form
them of so many Limbs, that they rather seem a
Chimaera or Monster, than a well-proportion’d Figure.
Besides all this, their Stile is uncouth, their Exploits
incredible, their Love immodest, their Civility
impertinent, their Battles tedious, their Language absurd,
their Voyages preposterous; and in short, they are
altogether void of solid Ingenuity, and therefore fit to be
banish’d a Christian Commonwealth as useless and
prejudicial.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 47
35 Poetry, Sir, in my Judgment, is like a tender Virgin in her
Bloom, Beautiful and Charming to Amazement: All the
other Sciences are so many Virgins, whose Care it is to
Enrich, Polish and Adorn her, and as she is to make use of
them all, so are they all to have from her a grateful
Acknowledgment. But this Virgin must not be roughly
handl’d, nor dragg’d along the Street, nor expos’d to
every Marketplace, and Corner of great Men’s Houses. A
good Poet is a kind of an Alchymist, who can turn the
Matter he prepares into the purest Gold and an
inestimable Treasure. But he must keep his Muse within
the Rules of Decency, and not let her prostitute her
Excellency in lewd Satires and Lampoons, nor in
licentious Sonnets. She must not be Mercenary, though
she need not give away the Profits she may claim from
Heroick Poems, deep Tragedies, and Pleasant and Artful
Comedies. She is not to be attempted by Buffoons, nor by
the Ignorant Vulgar, whose Capacity can never reach toa
due Sense of the Treasures that are lock’d up in her. And
know, Sir, that when | mention the Vulgar, | don’t mean
only the common Rabble; for whoever is ignorant, be he
Lord or Prince, is to be listed in the Number of the Vulgar.
But whoever shall apply himself to the Muses with those
Qualifications, which, as | said, are essential to the
Character of a good Poet, his Name shall be Famous, and
valu’d in all the polish’d Nations of the World.
Cervantes, Den Quixote, II, 16
36 Yet must | not give Nature all; thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet’s matter Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion; and that he
Who casts to write a living line must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the muses’ anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame,
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet’s made as well as born.
Jonson, To the Memory of My Beloved Master William
Shakespeare
37 | remember the players have often mentioned it as an
honour to Shakespeare, that In his writing, whatsoever he
penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath
been, "Would he had blotted a thousand," which they
thought a malevolent speech. | had not told posterity this
but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to
justify mine own candour, for | loved the man, and do
honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.
He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature;
had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle
expressions, wherein he Bowed with that facility that
sometime it was necessary’ he should be stopped.
"Sufflaminandus erat," as Augustus said of Haterius. His
wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so
too. Many times he fell into those things, could not
escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar,
one speaking to him; "Caesar, thou dost me wrong." He
replied: "Caesar did never wrong but with just cause";
and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his
vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to Ix
praised than to be pardoned.
Jonson, Discoveries: De Shakespeare Nostrat.
38 Poetry and picture are arts of a like nature, and both are
busy about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch,
poetry was a speaking picture, and picture a mute poesy.
For they both invent, feign, and devise many things, and
accommodate all they invent to the use and service of
Nature. Yet of the two the pen is more noble than the
pencil; for that can speak to the understanding, the other
but to the sense. They both behold pleasure and profit as
their common object; but should abstain from all base
pleasures, lest they should err from their end, and, while
they seek to better men’s minds, destroy their manners.
They both are born artificers, not made. Nature is more
powerful in them than study.
Jonson, Discoveries: Poesis et Pictura
39 | esteemed eloquence most highly and | was enamoured
of poesy, but | thought that both were gifts of the mind
rather than fruits of study. Those who have the strongest
power of reasoning, and who most skillfully arrange their
thoughts in order to render them clear and intelligible,
have the best power of persuasion even if they can but
speak the language of Lower Brittany and have never
learned rhetoric. And those who have the most delightful
Original ideas and who know how to express them with
the maximum of style and suavity, would not fail to be
the best poets even if the art of poetry were unknown to
them.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, |
40 In a good poem, whether it be epic or dramatic, as also in
sonnets, epigrams, and other pieces, both judgement and
fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent;
because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not
to displease by indiscretion.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 8
41 As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of
mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not
do so; and the reason is that we know well what is the
object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and
what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in
healing. But we do not know in what grace consists,
which is the object of poetry.
Pascal, Pensees, I, 33
42 Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That own’d the vertuous Ring and Glass,
And of the wondrous Hors of Brass,
On which the Tartar King did ride;
And if ought els, great Bards beside,
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of Turneys and of Trophies hung;
Of Forests, and inchantments drear,
Where more is meant then meets the ear.
Milton, [1 Penseroso, 109
43 Alas! What boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,
Were it not better don as others use.
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Milton, Lycidas, 64
44 Of mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Si/oa's Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; | thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 1
45 If answerable style | can obtaine
Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes
Her nightly visitation unimplor’d.
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easie my unpremeditated Verse:
Since first this Subject for Heroic Song
Pleas’d me long choosing, and beginning late
Not sedulous by Nature to indite
Warrs, hitherto the onely Argument
Heroic deem’d, chief maistrie to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabl’d Knights
In Battels feign’d; the better fortitude
Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe Races and Games,
Or tilting Furniture, emblazon’d Shields,
Impreses quaint, Caparisons and Steeds;
Bases and tinsel Trappings, gorgious Knights
At Joust and Torneament; then marshal’d Feast
Serv’d up in Hall with Sewers, and Seneshals;
The skill of Artifice or Office mean,
Not that which justly gives Heroic name
To Person or to Poem. Mee of these
Nor skilld nor studious, higher Argument
Remaines, sufficient of it self to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climat, or Years damp may intended wing
Deprest, and much they may, if all be mine,
Not Hers who brings it nightly to my Ear.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 20
46 He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well
hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true
poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and
honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises
of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself
the experience and the practice of all that which is
praiseworthy.
Milton, Apology for Smectymnuus
47 Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d.
The next in majesty, in both the last:
The force of Nature could no farther go;
To make a third, she join’d the former two.
Dryden, Epigram on Milton
48 To begin, then, with Shakespeare: he was the man who of
all modem, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest
and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature
were still present to him, and he drew them, not
laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you
more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to
have wanted learning, give him the greater
commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not
the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked
inwards, and found her there, | cannot say he is
everywhere alike; were he so, | should do him injury to
compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many
times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into
clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is
always great, when some great occasion is presented to
him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit,
and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of
poets.
[As do cypresses among the bending shrubs— Virgil]
Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy
49 It remains that | say somewhat of Chaucer in particular.
In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry,
so | hold him in the same degree of veneration as the
Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil. He is a
perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences;
and, therefore, speaks properly on all subjects. As he
knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; a
continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely
by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.... The
verse of Chaucer, | confess, is not harmonious to us... .
They who lived with him, and some time after him,
thought it musical; and it continues so, even in our
judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and
Gower, his contemporaries:—there is the rude sweetness
of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing,
though not perfect. ... We can only say, that he lived in
the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to
perfection at the first. We must be children before we
grow men....
He must have been a man of a most wonderful
comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly
observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his
Canterbury Tales the various manners and humours (as
we now Call them) of the whole English nation, in his age.
Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims
are severally distinguished from each other; and not only
in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and
persons.... The matter and manner of their tales, and of
their telling, are so suited to their different educations,
humours, and callings, that each of them would be
improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious
characters are distinguished by their several sorts of
gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age,
their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of
them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious,
and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer
calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry
of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller,
and the Cook, are several men, and distinguished from
each other as much as the mincing Lady-Prioress and the
broad-speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of
this; there is such a variety of game springing up before
me, that | am distracted in my choice, and know not
which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the
proverb, that here is God’s plenty. We have our
forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us, as they
were in Chaucer’s days: their general characters are still
remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they
are called by other names than those of monks, and
friars, and canons, and lady-abbesses, and nuns; for
mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature,
though everything is altered.
Dryden, Preface to the Fables
50 Yet lest you think | rally more than teach,
Or praise malignly arts | cannot reach,
Let me for once presume t’ instruct the times,
To know the poet from the man of rhymes:
'T is he, who gives my breast a thousand pains,
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art,
With pity, and with terror, tear my heart;
And snatch me, o’er the earth, or thro' the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.
Pope, Epistle to Augustus
51 As truth distinguishes our writings from those idle
romances which are filled with monsters, the productions,
not of nature, but of distempered brains; and which have
been therefore recommended by an eminent critic to the
sole use of the pastry-cook; so, on the other hand, we
would avoid any resemblance to that kind of history
which a celebrated poet seems to think is no less
calculated for the emolument of the brewer, as the
reading it should be always attended with a tankard of
good ale—
While—history with her comrade ale.
Soothes the sad series of her serious tale.
For as this is the liquor of modern historians, nay,
perhaps their muse, if we may believe the opinion of
Butler, who attributes inspiration to ale, it ought likewise
to be the potation of their readers, since every book
ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same
manner as it is writ. Thus the famous author of
Hurlothrumbo told a learned bishop, that the reason his
lordship could not taste the excellence of his piece was,
that he did not read it with a fiddle in his hand; which
instrument he himself had always had in his own, when
he composed it.
That our work, therefore, might be in no danger of
being likened to the labours of these historians, we have
taken every occasion of interspersing through the whole
sundry similes, descriptions, and other kind of poetical
embellishments. These are, indeed, designed to supply
the place of the said ale, and to refresh the mind,
whenever those slumbers, which in a long work are apt to
invade the reader as well as the writer, shall begin to
creep upon him. Without interruptions of this kind, the
best narrative of plain matter of fact must overpower
every reader; for nothing but the everlasting
watchfulness, which Homer has ascribed only to Jove
himself, can be proof against a newspaper of many
volumes.
Fielding, Tom Jones, IV, 1
52 To invent good stories, and to tell them well, are possibly
very rare talents, and yet | have observed few persons
who have scrupled to aim at both: and if we examine the
romances and novels with which the world abounds, |
think we may fairly conclude, that most of the authors
would not have attempted to show their teeth (if the
expression may be allowed me) in any other way of
writing; nor could indeed have strung together a dozen
sentences on any other subject whatever. [Each
desperate blockhead dares to write: Verse is the trade of
every living wight.] may be more truly said of the
historian and biographer, than of any other species of
writing; for all the arts and sciences (even criticism itself)
require some little degree of learning and knowledge.
Poetry indeed, may perhaps be thought an exception; but
then it demands numbers, or something like numbers:
whereas, to the composition of novels and romances,
nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the
manual capacity of using them. This, | conceive, their
productions show to be the opinion of the authors
themselves: and this must be the opinion of their readers,
if indeed there be any such.
Fielding, Tom Jones, IX, 1
53 | have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued
by Master Samuel Johnson. | saw there that foreigners
who are astonished that in the plays of the great
Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and that
a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-
minded. | do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of
being a sorry jester, and of being too fond of wine; but |
find it somewhat extraordinary that he counts buffoonery
and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic stage:
and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet
disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and
country, like a painter who, content with having painted
the figure, neglects the drapery. The comparison would
be more just if he were speaking of a painter who ina
noble subject should introduce ridiculous grotesques,
should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass in
the battle of Arbela, and Darius’ wife drinking at an inn
with rapscallions.
But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that
is that Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French,
the men of letters of all other countries, who have not
spent some time in England, take him only for a clown,
for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most
contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the
populace. Nevertheless, it is in this same man that one
finds pieces which exalt the imagination and which stir
the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature herself who
speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It
is of the sublime, and the author has in no wise sought it.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: On the English Theatre
54 Nothing can please many, and please long, but just
representations of general nature. Particular manners can
be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how
nearly they are copied. The irregular combinations of
fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that novelty of
which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest;
but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted,
and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.
Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all
modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up
to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His
characters are not modified by the customs of particular
places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the
peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate
but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient
fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine
progeny of common humanity, such as the world will
always supply, and observation will always find. His
persons act and speak by the influence of those general
passions and principles by which all minds are agitated,
and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In
the writings of other poets a character is too often an
individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a
species.
Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
55 A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are
to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to
lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the
mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its
fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or
profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging
knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing
attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let
but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his
work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which
he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his
elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him
such delight that he was content to purchase it, by the
sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to
him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and
was content to lose it.
Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
56 The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the
individual, but the species; to remark general properties
and large appearances: he does not number the streaks
of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the
verdure of the forest.
Johnson, Rasselas, X
57 Johnson. You may translate books of science exactly. You
may also translate history, in so far as it is not
embellished with oratory, which is poetical. Poetry,
indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the
poets that preserve languages; for we would not be at the
trouble to learn a language, if we could have all that is
written in it just as well in a translation. But as the
beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language
except that in which it was originally written, we learn
the language.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 11, 1776)
58 Johnson. \t has been said, there is pleasure in writing,
particularly in writing verses. | allow you may have
pleasure from writing, after it is over, if you have written
well; but you don’t go willingly to it again. | Know when |
have been writing verses, | have run my finger down the
margin, to see how many | had made, and how few | had
to make.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 1, 17S3)
59 Among a polished people, a taste for poetry is rather an
amusement of the fancy than a passion of the soul. And
yet, when in calm retirement we peruse the combats
described by Homer or Tasso, we are insensibly seduced
by the fiction, and feel a momentary glow of martial
ardour. But how faint, how cold is the sensation which a
peaceful mind can receive from solitary study! It was in
the hour of battle, or in the feast of victory, that the bards
celebrated the glory of heroes of ancient days, the
ancestors of those warlike chieftains who listened with
transport to their artless but animated strains.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1X
60 In the apprehension of modern times Petrarch is the
Italian songster of Laura and love. In the harmony of his
Tuscan rhymes Italy applauds, or rather adores, the father
of her lyric poetry; and his verse, or at least his name, is
repeated by the enthusiasm or affectation of amorous
sensibility. Whatever may be the private taste of a
stranger, his slight and superficial knowledge should
humbly acquiesce in the judgment of a learned nation;
yet | may hope or presume that the Italians do not
compare the tedious uniformity of sonnets and elegies
with the sublime compositions of their epic muse, the
Original wildness of Dante, the regular beauties of Tasso,
and the boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LXX
61 Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius
and is least willing to be led by precepts or example)
holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the
mind by giving freedom to the imagination and by
offering, from among the boundless multiplicity of
possible forms accordant with a given concept, to whose
bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the
presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which
no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus
rises aesthetically to ideas.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 53
62 It is in the fundamental idea of poetry that the poet is
everywhere the guardian of nature. When he can no
longer entirely fill this part, and has already in himself
suffered the deleterious influence of arbitary and
factitious forms, or has had to struggle against this
influence, he presents himself as the witness of nature
and as its avenger. The poet will, therefore, be the
expression of nature itself, or his part will be to seek it, if
men have lost sight of it.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
63 The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is
because he was a true Poet, and of the Devil’s party
without knowing it.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 5
64 Shall the poet take that highest right,
The Right of Man, that Right which Nature gave,
And wantonly for your sake trifle it away?
How doth he over every heart hold sway?
How doth he every element enslave?
Is it not the harmony that from his breast doth start,
Then winds the world in turn back in his heart?
When Nature forces lengths of thread unending
In careless whirling on the spindle round,
When all Life’s inharmonic throngs unblending
In sullen, harsh confusion sound,
Who parts the changeless series of creation,
That each, enlivened, moves in rhythmic time?
Who summons each to join the general ordination,
In consecrated, noble harmonies to chime?
Who bids the storm with raging passion lower? The
sunset with a solemn meaning glow?
Who scatters Springtime’s every lovely flower
Along the pathway where his love may go?
Who twines the verdant leaves, unmeaning, slighted,
Into a wreath of honour, meed of every field?
Who makes Olympus sure, the gods united?
That power of Man the Poet has revealed!
Goethe, Faust, Prelude on the Stage, 135
65 Chorus. Hallowed Poesy,
Soar aloft heavenly,
Shine on, thou fairest star,
Farther and still more far,
Yet dost thou reach us still,
Yet do we hear and thrill,
Joyous we are.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 3, 9863
66 The first page which | read in Shakespeare already served
to win him my lifelong adherence. And when | had
reached the end of the first play, | stood like one who,
blind from birth, finds himself suddenly blest with sight
by a beneficent Providence. In the clearest and most
vivid manner | realised that my existence had been
infinitely expanded. Everything now appeared new and
strange to me, and the unwonted light dazzled and hurt
my eyes. Little by little | came to see, and | can still feel
distinctly, thanks to my spirit of gratitude, how much |
had gained.
Goethe, Thoughts on Shakespeare
67 As for me, | am often put to blush by Shakespeare; for
from time to time it happens that at a first glance | say to
myself: | should have done this or that differently; and
then afterwards | discover that | am but a poor sinner,
that through Shakespeare Nature herself gives utterance
to her prophecies, and that my characters are, so to
speak, mere soap-bubbles blown in a caprice of
romanticism.
Goethe, Thoughts on Shakespeare
68 If everything written in this vein that has been handed
down to us were destroyed, poetry and rhetoric could yet
be entirely restored out of that one play.
Goethe, Thoughts on Shakespeare [Henry IV]
69 It will perhaps be urged that, although poetry is held to
be an art, it is not mechanical. But | deny that it is an art;
nor is it a science. Arts and sciences are attained through
reflection; but not so poetry, for this is an inspiration; it
was infused into the soul when first it manifested itself. It
should, consequently, be called neither art nor science,
but genius.
Goethe, Reflections and Maxims
70 What is a Poet? To whom does he address himself? And
what language is to be expected from him? He is a man
speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more
lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who
has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more
comprehensive soul than are supposed to be common
among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions
and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in
the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate
similar volitions and passions as manifested in the
goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to
create them where he does not find them.
Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
71 Aristotle, | have been told, hath said that Poetry is the
most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth,
not individual and local, but general, and operative; not
standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into
the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony,
which gives strength and divinity to the tribunal to which
it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal.
Poetry is the image of man and nature.
Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
72 Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:
it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity:
the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of re-action,
the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion,
kindred to that which v/as before the subject of
contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself
actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful
composition generally begins.
Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
73 Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile’s grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faeryland
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; when he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!
Wordsworth, Scorn Not the Sonnet
74 Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Wordsworth, London, 1802
75 A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once | saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played.
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could | revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
| would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there.
And all should cry. Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Coleridge, Kubla Khan
76 In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in
which it was agreed that my endeavors should be
directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at
least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward
nature a human interest and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination
that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which
constitutes poetic faith.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, XIV
77 A poem is that species of composition which is opposed
to works of science by proposing for its immediate object
pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having
this object in common with it) it is discriminated by
proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is
compatible with a distinct gratification from each
component part.
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, XIV
78 Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended
inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which
futurity casts upon the present; the words which express
what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to
battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which
is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world.
Shelley, Defence of Poetry
79 Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.
Away! away! for | will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light.
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy' ways.
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
80 Much have | traveil’d in the realms of gold,
And many' goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have | been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had | been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did | never breathe its pure serene
Till | heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt | like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Keats, On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
81 Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Keats, Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
82 Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by
singularity; It should strike the reader as a wording of his
own highest thoughts, and appear almost a
remembrance.
Its touches of beauty should never be half-way,
thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content.
The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like
the sun, come natural to him.
Keats, Letter to John Taylor (Feb. 27; 1818)
83 | salute thee, Mantovano,
| that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
Ever moulded by the lips of man.
Tennyson, To Virgil
84 Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of
the antelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that
never alights; less celestial, | celebrate a tail.
Melville, Moby Dick, LXXXVI
85 The poet is a man who lives ... by watching his moods. An
old poet comes at last to watching his moods as narrowly
as a cat does a mouse.
Thoreau, Journal (Aug. 28, 1851)
86 The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth,
have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United
States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Pref.
87 | have said that in one respect my mind has changed
during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of
thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the
works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy
| took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the
historical plays. | have also said that formerly pictures
gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But
now for many years | cannot endure to read a line of
poetry: | have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found
it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. | have also
almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music
generally sets me thinking too energetically on what |
have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. |
retain some taste for fine scenery’, but it does not cause
me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the
other hand, novels which are works of the imagination,
though not of a very high order, have been for years a
wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and | often bless all
novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to
me, and | like all if moderately good, and if they do not
end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed.
A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the
first class unless it contains some person whom one can
thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.
This curious and lamentable loss of the higher
aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history,
biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific
facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of
subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind
seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this
should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain
alone on which the higher tastes depend | cannot
conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or
better constituted than mine would not, | suppose, have
thus suffered; and if | had to live my life again, | would
have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some
music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of
my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept
active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of
happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect,
and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling
the emotional part of our nature.
Danvin, Autobiography
88 What made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state
of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward
beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by
feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to
be the very culture of the feelings, which | was in quest
of. In them | seemed to draw from a source of inward joy,
of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be
Shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion
with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer
by every improvement in the physical or social condition
of mankind. From them | seemed to learn what would be
the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater
evils of life shall have been removed.
Mill, Autobiography, V
89 The poet makes Truth the daughter of Time.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pt. |, |, 2
90 The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry,
where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time
goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is
not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma
which is not shown to be questionable, not a received
tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion
has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it
has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is
failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is
a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its
emotion to the idea; the idea /s the fact. The strongest
part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.... More
and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to
poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.
Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and
most of what now passes with us for religion and
philosophy will he replaced by poetry.
Arnold, Study of Poetry
91 Only one thing we may add as to the substance and
matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle’s
profound observation that the superiority of poetry over
history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a
higher seriousness. Let us add, therefore, to what we
have said, this: that the substance and matter of the best
poetry acquire their special character from possessing, in
an eminent degree, truth and seriousness. We may add
yet further, what is in itself evident, that to the style and
manner of the best poetry their special character, their
accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet more, by
their movement. And though we distinguish between the
two characters, the two accents, of superiority, yet they
are nevertheless vitally connected one with the other.
The superior character of truth and seriousness, in the
matter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable
from the superiority of diction and movement marking its
style and manner. The two superiorities are closely
related, and are in steadfast proportion one to the other.
So far as high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to
a poet’s matter and substance, so far also, we may be
sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and movement
be wanting to his style and manner. In proportion as this
high stamp of diction and movement, again, is absent
from a poet’s style and manner, we Shall find, also, that
high poetic truth and seriousness are absent from his
substance and matter.
Arnold, Study of Poetry
92 But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor Passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
Arnold, To a Friend [Sophocles]
93 The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of
Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their
poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine
poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
Arnold, Thomas Gray
94 The translator of Homer should above all be penetrated
by a sense of four qualities of his author;—that he is
eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct,
both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression
of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is
eminently plain and direct in the substance of his
thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that
he is eminently noble.
Arnold, On Translating Homer, |
95 The sphere of poetry does not lie outside the world as a
fantastic impossibility soawned by a poet’s brain: it
desires to be just the opposite, the unvarnished
expression of the truth, and must precisely for that
reason discard the mendacious finery of that alleged
reality of the man of culture.
The contrast between this real truth of nature and the
lie of culture that poses as if it were the only reality is
similar to that between the eternal core of things, the
thing-in-itself, and the whole world of appearances.
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, VIII
96 With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent
writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom | can despise so
entirely as | despise Shakespeare when | measure my
mind against his. The intensity of my impatience with
him occasionally reaches such a pitch, that it would
positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw
stones at him, knowing as | do how incapable he and his
worshippers are of understanding any less obvious form
of indignity...
But |am bound to add that | pity the man who cannot
enjoy Shakespeare. He has outlasted thousands of abler
thinkers, and will outlast a thousand more. His gift of
telling a story (provided some one else told it to him
first); his enormous power over language, as conspicuous
in his senseless and silly abuse of it as in his miracles of
expression; his humor; his sense of idiosyncratic
character; and his prodigious fund of that vital energy
which is, it seems, the true differentiating property’
behind the faculties, good, bad, or indifferent, of the man
of genius, enable him to entertain us so effectively that
the imaginary scenes and people he has created become
more real to us than our actual life.
Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, I
97 The relation of our typical dreams to fairytales and other
fiction and poetry is neither sporadic nor accidental.
Sometimes the penetrating insight of the poet has
analytically recognized the process of transformation of
which the poet is otherwise the instrument, and has
followed it up in the reverse direction; that is to say, has
traced a poem to a dream.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, V, D
98 Shakespeare gives the greatest width of human passion;
Dante the greatest altitude and greatest depth.
T, S. Eliot, Dante
99 The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but
to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into
poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual
emotions at all. And emotions which he has never
experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to
him. Consequently, we must believe that "emotion
recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is
neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion
of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new
thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great
number of experiences which to the practical and active
person would not seem to be experiences at all.
T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
100 When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it
is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the
ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular,
fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and
these two experiences have nothing to do with each
other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of
cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are
always forming new wholes.
T, S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets
101 Art necessarily divides itself into three forms
progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the
lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his
image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form,
the form wherein he presents his image in mediate
relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the
form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation
to others....
In literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the
forms are often confused. The lyrical form is in fact the
simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, a
rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who
pulled at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who
utters it is more conscious of the instant of emotion than
of himself as feeling emotion. The simplest epical form is
seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist
prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an
epical event and this form progresses till the centre of
emotional gravity is equidistant from the artist himself
and from others. The narrative is no longer purely
personal. The personality of the artist passes into the
narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and
the action like a vital sea. This progress you will see
easily in that old English ballad Turpin Hero which begins
in the first person and ends in the third person. The
dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has
flowed and eddied round each person fills every person
with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and
intangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at
first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and
lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence,
impersonalises itself, so to soeak. The esthetic image in
the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from
the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that
ol material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the
God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond
or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of
existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, V
102 For mark you, Phaedrus, beauty alone is both divine and
visible; and so it is the sense way, the artist’s way, little
Phaedrus, to the spirit. But, now tell me, my dear boy, do
you believe that such a man can ever attain wisdom and
true manly worth, for whom the path to the spirit must
lead through the senses? Or do you rather think—for |
leave the point to you—that it is a path of perilous
sweetness, a way of transgression, and must surely lead
him who walks in it astray? For you know that we poets
cannot walk the way of beauty without Eros as our
companion and guide. We may be heroic after our
fashion, disciplined warriors of our craft, yet are we all
like women, for we exult in passion, and love is still our
desire—our craving and our shame. And from this you will
perceive that we poets can be neither wise nor worthy
citizens. We must needs be wanton, must needs rove at
large in the realm of feeling. Our magisterial style is all
folly and pretense, our honorable repute a farce, the
crowd’s belief in us is merely laughable. And to teach
youth, or the populace, by means of art is a dangerous
practice and ought to be forbidden. For what good can an
artist be as a teacher, when from his birth up he is
headed direct for the pit? We may want to shun it and
attain to honor in the world; but however we turn, it
draws us still. So, then, since knowledge might destroy
us, we will have none of it. For knowledge, Phaedrus,
does not make him who possesses it dignified or austere.
Knowledge is all-knowing, understanding, forgiving; it
takes up no position, sets no store by form. It has
compassion with the abyss—it is the abyss. So we reject
it, firmly, and henceforward our concern shall be with
beauty only. And by beauty we mean simplicity,
largeness, and renewed severity of discipline; we mean a
return to detachment and to form. But detachment,
Phaedrus, and preoccupation with form lead to
intoxication and desire; they may lead the noblest among
us to frightful emotional excesses, which his own stern
cult of the beautiful would make him the first to condemn
So they too. they too, lead to the bottomless pit. Yes, they
lead us thither, | say, us who are poets— who by our
natures are prone not to excellence but to excess. And
now, Phaedrus, | will go. Remain here; and only when you
can no longer see me, then do you depart also.
Mann, Death in Venice
103 Poetry (like metaphysics) is spiritual nourishment; but
of a savor which has been created and which is
insufficient. There is but one eternal nourishment.
Unhappy you who think yourselves ambitious, and who
whet your appetites for anything less than the three
Divine Persons and the humanity of Christ.
It is a mortal error to expect from poetry the
supersubstantial nourishment of man.
Maritain, Frontiers of Poetry
104 "At Pisa," he said, "| was, many years ago, present when
our glorious Monti, the poet, drew out his pistol and shot
down Monsignor Talbot, It happened at a supper party,
just like ours here.
..,And it all arose from an argument on eternal
damnation.
"Monti, who had just then finished his Don Giovanni,
had for some time been sunk in a deep melancholy, and
would neither drink nor talk, and Monsignor Talbot asked
him w hat was the matter with him, and wondered that he
was not happy after having achieved so great a success.
So Monti asked him whether he did not think that it
might weigh upon the mind of a man to have created a
human being who was to burn through eternity in hell.
Talbot smiled at him and declared that this could only
happen to real people. Whereupon the poet cried out and
asked him if his Don Giovanni was not real... . Monsignor
Talbot asked him if he did really believe himself a creator
in the same sense as God.
" ‘God!’ Monti cried, ‘God! Do you not know that what
God really wants to create is my Don Giovanni, and the
Odysseus of Homer, and Cervantes’ knight? Very likely
those are the only people for whom heaven and hell have
ever been made, for you cannot imagine that an
Almighty God would go on forever and ever, world
without end, with my mother-in-law and the Emperor of
Austria? Humanity, the men and women of this earth, are
only the plaster of God, and we, the artists, are his tools,
and when the statue is finished in marble or bronze, he
breaks us all up. When you die you will probably go out
like a candle, with nothing left, but in the mansions of
eternity will walk Orlando, the Misanthrope and my
Donna Elvira. Such is God’s plan of work, and if we find it
somehow’ slow, who are we that we should criticize him,
seeing that we know nothing whatever of time or
eternity?’
“Monsignor Talbot, although himself a great admirer of
the arts, began to feel uncomfortable about such
heretical views, and took the poet to task over them. ‘Oh,
go and find out for yourself then!’ Monti cried, and
resting the barrel of the pistol... upon the edge of the
table, he fired straight at the monsignore."
Isak Dinesen, The Roads Around Risa, V
16.4 Tragedy and Comedy
This section might have been headed "Drama," or even
"Theatre," as a more appropriate cover for certain of the
quotations included here that deal with drama in general,
with the effect of stage plays on the spectator, and with
their value for society or their deleterious influence on it.
But the majority of the passages deal quite specifically with
the two forms of dramatic literature known as "tragedy" and
"comedy," both as written in books and as performed in
theatres. In addition, there are statements about the tragic
and the comic in life itself, as well as in literature or on the
stage.
So far as we can tell, the distinction between tragedy and
comedy originated with the Greeks, as well as the famous
cryptic statement that challenges the distinction— the
observation by Socrates, overheard by an admittedly sleepy
reporter, that the genius of tragedy and of comedy are the
same. Few writers, with the possible exception of
Shakespeare, have manifested the genius to be able to write
both great tragedies and sparkling comedies. Whether or
not the statement by Socrates is true, the great tragic and
comic works of ancient and modern times have, for the most
part, come to us from the pens of different men.
The passages dealing with tragedy reflect sharp contrasts
between the ancient and modern conceptions of it, and raise
such questions as whether nondramatic forms of narration,
such as the ancient epic or the modern novel, can be tragic
or comic as well as stage plays, and whether tragedy is
inherent in every human life or is attendant only on the lives
of those who attain a sufficient eminence to suffer a
grievous reversal of fortune. The passages dealing with
comedy verge on such related subjects as wit, humor, and
laughter. The passages that express concern about the
questionable and even definitely baneful influence of the
stage on the conduct of the individual and the morals of
society will be more sympathetically appreciated by
contemporary readers if they apply the questions raised to
the effects of television on both young and old today.
A few quotations relevant to certain aspects of drama
appear in other sections of this chapter, principally Section
16.3.
1 Xanthias. Tell me by Zeus, our rascaldom’s own god,
What’s all that noise within? What means this hubbub
And row?
Aeacus. That’s Aeschylus and Euripides.
Xa. Eh?
Ae. Wonderful, wonderful things are going on. The
dead are rioting, taking different sides.
Xa. Why, what’s the matter?
Ae. There’s a custom here
With all the crafts, the good and noble crafts,
That the chief master of his art in each
Shall have his dinner in the assembly hall.
And sit by Pluto’s side.
Xa. | understand.
Ae. Until another comes, more wise than he In the
same art: then must the first give way.
Xa. And how has this disturbed our Aeschylus?
Ae. "Iwas he that occupied the tragic chair,
As, in his craft, the noblest.
Xa. Who does now?
Ae. But when Euripides came down, he kept
Flourishing off before the highwaymen,
Thieves, burglars, parricides—these form our mob
In Hades—till with listening to his twists
And turns, and pleas and counterpleas, they went
Mad on the man, and hailed him first and wisest:
Elate with this, he claimed the tragic chair
Where Aeschylus was seated.
Xa. Wasn't he pelted?
Ae. Not he: the populace clamoured out to try Which
of the twain was wiser in his art.
Xa. You mean the rascals?
Ae. Aye, as high as heaven!
Xa. But were there none to side with Aeschylus?
Ae. Scanty and sparse the good, the same as here.
Xa. And what does Pluto now propose to do?
Ae. He means to hold a tournament, and bring Their
tragedies to the proof.
Xa. But Sophocles,
How came not he to claim the tragic chair?
Ae. Claim it? Not he! When he came down, he kissed
With reverence Aeschylus, and clasped his hand,
And yielded willingly the chair to him.
But now he’s going, says Cleidemides,
To sit third-man: and then if Aeschylus win,
He'll stay content: if not, for his art’s sake,
He’ll fight to the death against Euripides.
Xa. Will it come off?
Ae. O yes, by Zeus, directly.
And then, | hear, will wonderful things be done,
The art poetic will be weighed in scales.
Xa. What! weigh out tragedy, like butcher’s meat?
Ae. Levels they'll bring, and measuring-tapes for
words,
And moulded oblongs,
Xa. Is it bricks they are making?
Ae. Wedges and compasses: for Euripides
Vows that he’ll test the dramas, word by word.
Xa. Aeschylus chafes at this, | fancy.
Ae. Well,
He lowered his brows, upglaring like a bull.
Xa. And who’s to be the judge?
Ae. There came the rub.
Skilled men were hard to find: for with the Athenians
Aeschylus, somehow, did not hit it oil,
Xa. Too many burglars, | expect, he thought.
Ae. And ail the rest, he said, were trash and nonsense
To judge poetic wits. So then at last
They chose your lord [Dionysus], an expert in the art.
Aristophanes, Frogs, 735
2 Aeschylus. Come, tell me what are the points for which
a noble poet our praise obtains.
Euripides. For his ready wit, and his counsels sage,
and because the citizen folk he trains
To be better townsmen and worthier men.
Aes. If then you have done the very reverse,
Found noble-hearted and virtuous men,
and altered them, each and all, for the worse,
Pray what is the meed you deserve to get?
Dionysus. Nay, ask not him. He deserves to die.
Aes. For Just consider what style of men
he received from me, great six-foot-high
Heroical souls, who never would blench
from a townsman’s duties in peace or war;
Not idle loafers, or low buffoons,
or rascally scamps such as now they are.
But men who were breathing spears and helms,
and the snow-white plume in its crested pride,
The greave, and the dart, and the warrior’s heart
in its sevenfold casing of tough bull-hide.
Di. He'll stun me, | Know, with his armoury-work;
this business is going from bad to worse.
Eu. And how did you manage to make them so grand,
exalted, and brave with your wonderful verse?
Di. Come, Aeschylus, answer, and don’t stand mute
in your self-willed pride and arrogant spleen.
Aes. A drama | wrote with the War-god filled.
Di. Its name?
Aes. 'Tis the Seven against Thebes that | mean.
Which whoso beheld, with eagerness swelled
to rush to the battlefield there and then.
Di. O that was a scandalous thing you did!
You have made the Thebans mightier men,
More eager by far for the business of war.
Now, therefore, receive this punch on The head.
Aes. Ah, ye might have practised the same yourselves,
but ye turned to other pursuits instead.
Then next the Persians | wrote, in praise
of the noblest deed that the world can show,
And each man longed for the victor’s wreath,
to fight and to vanquish his country’s foe.
Di. | was pleased, | own, when | heard their moan
for Old Darius, their great king, dead;
When they smote together their hands, like this,
and "Evir alake" the Chorus said.
Aes. Aye, such are the poet’s appropriate works:
and just consider how all along
From the very first they have wrought you good,
the noble bards, the masters of song.
First, Orpheus taught you religious rites,
and from bloody murder to stay your hands:
Musaeus healing and oracle lore;
and Hesiod all the culture of lands,
The time to gather, the time to plough.
And gat not Homer his glory divine
By singing of valour, and honour, and right,
and the sheen of the battle-extended line,
The ranging of troops and the arming of men?
Di. O ay, but he didn’t teach that, | opine,
To Pantacles; when he was leading the show
| couldn’t imagine what he was at,
He had fastened his helm on the top of his head,
he was trying to fasten his plume upon that.
Aes. But others, many and brave, he taught,
of whom was Lamachus, hero true;
And thence my spirit the impress took,
and many a lion-heart chief | drew,
Patrocluses, Teucers, illustrious names;
for | fain the citizen-folk would spur
To stretch themselves to their measure and height,
whenever the trumpet of war they hear.
But Phaedras and Stheneboeas? No!
no harlotry business deformed my plays.
And none can say that ever | drew
a love-sick woman in all my days.
Eu. For you no lot or portion had got
in Queen Aphrodite.
Aes. Thank Heaven for that.
But ever on you and yours, my friend,
the mighty goddess mightily sat;
Yourself she cast to the ground at last.
Di. O ay, that uncommonly pat.
You showed how cuckolds are made, and lo,
you were struck yourself by the very same fate.
Eu. But say, you cross-grained censor of mine,
how my Stheneboeas could harm the state.
Aes. Full many a noble dame, the wife
of a noble citizen, hemlock took.
And died, unable the shame and sin
of your Bellerophon-scenes to brook.
Eu. Was then, | wonder, the tale | told
of Phaedra’s passionate love untrue?
Aes. Not so: but tales of incestuous vice
the sacred poet should hide from view,
Nor ever exhibit and blazon forth
on the public stage to the public ken.
For boys a teacher at school is found,
but we, the poets, are teachers of men.
We are bound things honest and pure to speak.
Eu. And to speak great Lycabettuses, pray, And
massive blocks of Parnassian rocks,
is that things honest and pure to say?
In human fashion we ought to speak.
Aes. Alas, poor witling, and can’t you see
That for mighty thoughts and heroic aims,
the words themselves must appropriate be?
And grander belike on the ear should strike
the speech of heroes and godlike powers,
Since even the robes that invest their limbs
are statelier, grander robes than ours.
Such was my plan: but when you began,
you spoilt and degraded it all.
Eu. How so?
Aes. Your kings in tatters and rags you dressed,
and brought them on, a beggarly show,
To move, forsooth, our pity and ruth.
Eu. And what was the harm, | should like to know.
Aes. No more will a wealthy citizen now
equip for the state a galley of war.
He wraps his limbs in tatters and rags,
and whines he is "poor, too poor by far."
Di. But under his rags he is wearing a vest,
as woolly and soft as a man could wish.
Let him gull the state, and he’s off to the mart;
an eager, extravagant buyer of fish.
Aes. Moreover to prate, to harangue, to debate,
is now the ambition of all in the state.
Each exercise-ground is in consequence found
deserted and empty: to evil repute
Your lessons have brought our youngsters, and taught
our sailors to challenge, discuss, and refute
The orders they get from their captains and yet,
when | was alive, | protest that the knaves
Knew nothing at all, save for rations to call,
and to sing "Rhyppapae" as they pulled
through the waves.
Di. And bedad to let fly from their sterns in the eye
of the fellow who tugged at the undermost oar,
And a jolly young messmate with filth to besmirch,
and to land for a filching adventure ashore;
But now they harangue, and dispute, and won’t row
And idly and aimlessly float to and fro.
Aes. Of what ills is he not the creator and cause?
Consider the scandalous scenes that he draws,
His bawds, and his panders, his women who give
Give birth in the sacredest shrine.
Whilst others with brothers are wedded and bedded.
And others opine
That "not to be living" is truly "to live."
And therefore our city is swarming to-day
With clerks and with demagogue-monkeys, who play
Their jackanape tricks at all times, in all places,
Deluding the people of Athens; but none
Has training enough in athletics to run
With the torch in his hand at the races.
Aristophanes, Frogs, 1012
3 Agathon arose in order that he might take his place on the
couch by Socrates, when suddenly a band of revellers
entered, and spoiled the order of the banquet. Some one
who was going out having left the door open, they had
found their way in, and made themselves at home; great
confusion ensued, and every one was compelled to drink
large quantities of wine. Aristodemus said that
Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went away—he
himself fell asleep, and as the nights were long took a
good rest: he was awakened towards daybreak by a
crowing of cocks, and when he awoke, the others were
either asleep, or had gone away; there remained only
Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking
out of a large goblet which they passed round, and
Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus was only
half awake, and he did not hear the beginning of the
discourse; the chief thing which he remembered was
Socrates compelling the other two to acknowledge that
the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy,
and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in
comedy also. To this they were constrained to assent,
being drowsy, and not quite following the argument.
Plato, Symposium, 223A
4 Socrates. There are combinations of pleasure and pain in
lamentations, and in tragedy and comedy, not only on
the stage, but on the greater stage of human life.
Plato, Philebus, 50A
5 Athenian Stranger. It is necessary ... to consider and know
uncomely persons and thoughts, and those which are
intended to produce laughter in comedy, and have a
comic character in respect of style, song, and dance, and
of the imitations which these afford. For serious things
cannot be understood without laughable things, nor
opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to
have intelligence of either; but he can not carry out both
in action, if he is to have any degree of virtue. And for
this very reason he should learn them both, in order that
he may not in ignorance do or say anything which is
ridiculous and out of place—he should command slaves
and hired strangers to imitate such things, but he should
never take any serious interest in them himself, nor
should any freeman or freewoman be discovered taking
pains to learn them; and there should always be some
element of novelty in the imitation. Let these then be laid
down, both in law and in our discourse, as the regulations
of laughable amusements which are generally called
comedy. And, if any of the serious poets, as they are
termed, who write tragedy, come to us and say— "O
strangers, may we go to your city and country or may we
not, and shall we bring with us our poetry—what is your
will about these matters?"— how shall we answer the
divine men? | think that our answer should be as follows:
—Best of strangers, we will say to them, we also
according to our ability are tragic poets, and our tragedy
is the best and noblest; for our whole state is an imitation
of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed
the very truth of tragedy. You are poets and we are poets,
both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in
the noblest of dramas, which true law can alone perfect,
as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all ina
moment allow you to erect your stage in the agora, or
introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above
our own, and permit you to harangue our women and
children, and the common people, about our institutions,
in language other than our own, and very often the
opposite of our own. For a state would be mad which
gave you this licence, until the magistrates had
determined whether your poetry might be recited, and
was fit for publication or not. Wherefore, O ye sons and
scions of the softer Muses, first of all show your songs to
the magistrates, and let them compare them with our
own, and if they are the same or better we will give you a
chorus; but if not, then, my friends, we cannot. Let these,
then, be the customs ordained by law about all dances
and the teaching of them, and let matters relating to
slaves be separated from those relating to masters, if you
do not object.
Plato, Laws, VII, 816B
6 The buffoon ... is the slave of his sense of humour, and
Spares neither himself nor others if he can raise a laugh,
and says things none of which a man of refinement would
say, and to some of which he would not even listen. The
boor ... is useless for such social intercourse; for he
contributes nothing and finds fault with everything. But
relaxation and amusement are thought to be a necessary
element in life.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1128a34
7 Comedy ... is an imitation of men worse than the average;
worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of
fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the
ridiculous, which is a species of the ugly. The ridiculous
may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive
of pain or harm to others; the mask, for instance, that
excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted without
Causing pain.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1449a32
8 A tragedy ... is the imitation of an action that is serious
and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in
language with pleasurable accessories, each kind
brought in separately in the parts of the work; ina
dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing
pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of
such emotions.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1449b23
9 Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of
action and life, of happiness and misery. All human
happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for
which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality.
Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions—what
we do--that we are happy or the reverse. In a play
accordingly they do not act in order to portray the
characters; they include the characters for the sake of the
action. So that it is the action in it, that is, its fable or
plot, that is the end and purpose of the tragedy; and the
end is everywhere the chief thing. Besides this, a tragedy
is impossible without action, but there may be one
without character. ... And again: one may string together
a series of characteristic soeeches of the utmost finish as
regards diction and thought, and yet fail to produce the
true tragic effect; but one will have much better success
with a tragedy which, however inferior in these respects,
has a plot, a combination of incidents, in it. And again:
the most powerful elements of attraction in tragedy, the
peripeties and discoveries, are parts of the plot. A further
proof is in the fact that beginners succeed earlier with the
diction and characters than with the construction of a
story; and the same may be said of nearly all the early
dramatists. We maintain, therefore, that the first
essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of tragedy is the
plot; and that the characters come second.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1450a17
10 Just in the same way, then, as a beautiful whole made up
of parts, or a beautiful living creature, must be of some
size, but a size to be taken in by the eye, so a story or
plot must be of some length, but of a length to be taken
in by the memory. As for the limit of its length, so far as
that is relative to public performances and spectators, it
does not fall within the theory of poetry. If they had to
perform a hundred tragedies, they would be timed by
water-clocks, as they are said to have been at one period.
The limit, however, set by the actual nature of the thing
is this: the longer the story, consistently with its being
comprehensible as a whole, the finer it is by reason of its
magnitude. As a rough general formula, ‘a length which
allows of the hero passing by a series of probable or
necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or tom
happiness to misfortune’, may suffice as a limit for the
magnitude of the story.
The unity of a plot does not consist, as some suppose,
in its having one man as its subject. An infinity of things
befall that one man, some of which is impossible to
reduce to unity; and in like manner there are many
actions of one man which cannot be made to form one
action. ... The truth is that, just as in the other imitative
arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the
story, aS an imitation of action, must represent one
action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so
closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of
any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For
that which makes no perceptible difference by its
presence or absence is no real part of the whole.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1451la3
11 The next points after what we have said above will be
these: (1) What is the poet to aim at, and what is he to
avoid, in constructing his plots? and (2) What are the
conditions on which the tragic effect depends?
We assume that, for the finest form of tragedy, the plot
must be not simple but complex; and further, that it must
imitate actions arousing fear and pity, since that is the
distinctive function of this kind of imitation. It follows,
therefore, that there are three forms of plot to be avoided.
(1) A good man must not be seen passing from happiness
to misery, or (2) a bad man from misery to happiness. The
first situation is not fear-inspiring or piteous, but simply
odious to us. The second is the most untragic that can be;
it has no one of the requisites of tragedy; it does not
appeal either to the human feeling in us, or to our pity, or
to our fears. Nor, on the other hand, should (3) an
extremely bad man be seen falling from happiness into
misery. Such a story may arouse the human feeling in us,
but it will not move us to either pity or fear; pity is
occasioned by undeserved misfortune, and fear by that of
one like ourselves; so that there will be nothing either
piteous or fear-inspiring in the situation. There remains,
then, the intermediate kind of personage, a man not
preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune,
however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity
but by some error of judgment, of the number of those in
the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity; for
example, Oedipus, Thyestes, and the men of note of
similar families. The perfect plot, accordingly, must have
a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue; the
change in the hero’s fortunes must be not from misery to
happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery;
and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in
some great error on his part; the man himself being
either such as we have described, or better, not worse,
than that. Fact also confirms our theory. Though the poets
began by accepting any tragic story that came to hand,
in these days the finest tragedies are always on the story
of some few houses, on that of Alcmeon, Oedipus,
Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, or any others that
may have been involved, as either agents or sufferers, in
some deed of horror. The theoretically best tragedy, then,
has a plot of this description. The critics, therefore, are
wrong who blame Euripides for taking this line in his
tragedies, and giving many of them an unhappy ending.
It is, as we have said, the right line to take. The best proof
is this: on the stage, and in the public performances, such
plays, properly worked out, are seen to be the most truly
tragic; and Euripides, even if his execution be faulty in
every other point, is seen to be nevertheless the most
tragic certainly of the dramatists. After this comes the
construction of plot which some rank first, one with a
double story (like the Odyssey) and an opposite issue for
the good and the bad personages. It is ranked as first
only through the weakness of the audiences; the poets
merely follow their public, writing as its wishes dictate.
But the pleasure here is not that of tragedy. It belongs
rather to comedy, where the bitterest enemies in the
piece (for example, Orestes and Aegis-thus) walk off good
friends at the end, with no slaying of anyone by anyone.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1452b27
12 At first tragedies were brought on the stage as means of
reminding men of the things which happen to them, and
that it is according to nature for things to happen so, and
that, if you are delighted with what is shown on the
stage, you should not be troubled with that which takes
place on the larger stage. For you see that these things
must be accomplished thus, and that even they bear
them who cry out "O Cithaeron." And, indeed, some
things are said well by the dramatic writers...
After tragedy the old comedy was introduced, which
had a magisterial freedom of speech, and by its very
plainness of speaking was useful in reminding men to
beware of insolence; and for this purpose too Diogenes
used to take from these writers.
But as to the middle comedy which came next,
observe what it was, and again, for what object the new
comedy was introduced, which gradually sunk down into
a mere mimic artifice. That some good things are said
even by these writers, everybody knows: but the whole
plan of such poetry and dramaturgy, to what end does it
look!
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XI, 6
13 | developed a passion for stage plays, with the mirror
they held up to my own miseries and the fuel they poured
on my flame. How is it that a man wants to be made sad
by the sight of tragic sufferings that he could not bear in
his own person? Yet the spectator does want to feel
sorrow, and it is actually his feeling of sorrow that he
enjoys. Surely this is the most wretched lunacy? For the
more a man feels such sufferings in himself, the more he
is moved by the sight of them on the stage. Now when a
man suffers himself, it is called misery; when he suffers in
the suffering of another, it is called pity. But how can the
unreal sufferings of the stage possibly move pity? The
spectator is not moved to aid the sufferer but merely to
be sorry for him; and the more the author of these fictions
makes the audience grieve, the better they like him. If
the tragic sorrows of the characters— whether historical
or entirely fictitious—be so poorly represented that the
spectator is not moved to tears, he leaves the theatre
unsatisfied and full of complaints; if he is moved to tears,
he stays to the end, fascinated and revelling in it. So that
tears and sorrow, it would seem, are things to be sought.
Yet surely every man prefers to be joyful. May it be that
whereas no one wants to be miserable, there is real
pleasure in pitying others—and we love their sorrows
because without them we should have nothing to pity?
Augustine, Confessions, Ill, 2
14 We appear ... to make use of the tragic style when the
stateliness of the lines as well as the loftiness of the
construction and the excellence of the words agree with
the weight of the subject. And because, if we remember
rightly, it has already been proved that the highest
things are worthy of the highest, and because the style
which we call tragic appears to be the highest style,
those things which we have distinguished as being
worthy of the highest song are to be sung in that style
alone, namely, safety, love, and virtue, and those other
things, our conceptions of which arise from these;
provided that they be not degraded by any accident....
And therefore let those who, innocent of art and science,
and trusting to genius alone, rush forward to sing of the
highest subjects in the highest style, confess their folly
and cease from such presumption; and if in their natural
sluggishness they are but geese, let them abstain from
imitating the eagle soaring to the stars.
Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia, Il, 4
15 Comedy is a certain kind of poetic narration differing
from all others. It differs... from tragedy in its content, in
that tragedy begins admirably and tranquilly, whereas its
end or exit is foul and terrible;... whereas comedy
introduces some harsh complication, but brings its matter
to a prosperous end... , The title of the present work is
‘the Comedy.' For if we have respect to its content, at the
beginning it is horrible and fetid, for it is hell; and in the
end it is prosperous, desirable, and gracious, for it is
Paradise. |f we have respect to the method of speech the
method is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech
in which very women communicate.
Dante, Letter to Can Grande
16 Tragedy is to say a certain story
From ancient books which have preserved the glory
Of one that stood in great prosperity
And is now fallen out of high degree
In misery, where he ends wretchedly.
Such tales are versified most commonly
In six feet, which men call hexameter.
In prose are many written; some prefer
A quantitative metre, sundry wise.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Monk’s Prologue
17 "Hold!” cried the knight. “Good sir, no more of this,
What you have said is right enough, and is
Very much more; a little heaviness
Is plenty for the most of us, | guess.
For me, | say it’s saddening, if you please,
As to men who've enjoyed great wealth and ease,
To hear about their sudden fall, alas!
But the contrary’s joy and great solace,
As when a man has been in poor estate
And he climbs up and waxes fortunate,
And there abides in all prosperity.
Such things are gladsome, as it seems to me,
And of such things it would be good to tell.”
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Nun’s Priest’s Prologue
18 Hamlet. | have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim’d their malefactions....
The play’s the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 617
19 Hamlet. Speak the speech, | pray you, as | pronounced it
to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as
many of your players do, | had as lief the town-crier spoke
my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand,
thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest,
and, as | may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must
acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a
robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,
to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for
the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable
dumbshows and noise. | would have such a fellow
whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod.
Pray you, avoid it.
Ist Player. | warrant your honour.
Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own
discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special observance, that you
o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so
overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn
her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off,
though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the
judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in
your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O,
there be players that | have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that,
neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of
Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed
that | have thought some of nature’s journeymen had
made men and not made them well, they imitated
humanity so abominably.
Ist Play. | hope we have reformed that indifferently
with us, sir.
Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for
there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on
some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though,
in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be
then to be considered: that’s villainous, and shows a most
pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, ti, 1
20 The parts of a comedy are the same with a tragedy, and
the end is partly the same, for they both delight, and
teach; the comics are called teachers of the Greeks no
less than the tragics. Nor is the moving of laughter
always the end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the
people’s delight, or their fooling. For, as Aristotle says
rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a
kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man’s
nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain
moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown
dressed in a lady’s habit and using her actions; we dislike
and scorn such representations which made the ancient
philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man.
And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a
sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods
sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of
Aristotle, that to seem ridiculous is a part of dishonesty,
and foolish. So that what either in the words or sense of
an author, or in the language or actions of men, iS awry or
depraved doth strangely stir mean affections, and
provoke for the most part to laughter. And therefore it
was Clear that all insolent and obscene speeches, jests
upon the best men, injuries to particular persons,
perverse and sinister sayings and the rather unexpected
in the old comedy did move laughter, especially where it
did imitate any dishonesty; and scurrility came forth in
the place of wit, which, who understands the nature and
genius of laughter cannot but perfectly know.
Of which Aristophanes affords an ample harvest,
having not only outgone Plautus or any other in that
kind, but expressed all the moods and figures of what is
ridiculous oddly. In short, as vinegar is not accounted
good until the wine be corrupted, so jests that are true
and natural seldom raise laughter with the beast, the
multitude. They love nothing that is right and proper. The
farther it runs from reason or possibility with them the
better it is. What could have made them laugh, like to see
Socrates presented, that example of all good life,
honesty, and virtue, to have him hoisted up with a pulley,
and there play the philosopher in a basket; measure how
many foot a flea could skip geometrically, by a just scale,
and edify the people from the engine? This was theatrical
wit, right stage jesting, and relishing a playhouse,
invented for scorn and laughter; whereas, if it had
savoured of equity, truth, perspicuity, and candour, to
have tasten a wise or a learned palate,—spit it out
presently! this is bitter and profitable: this instructs and
would inform us! what need we know anything, that are
nobly born, more than a horse-race, or a hunting-match,
our day to break with citizens, and such innate
mysteries?
Jonson, Discoveries: Comedy and Tragedy
21 Whole we call that, and perfect, which hath a beginning,
a midst, and an end. So the place of any building may be
whole and entire for that work, though too little for a
palace. As to a tragedy or a comedy, the action may be
convenient and perfect that would not fit an epic poem in
magnitude. So a lion is a perfect creature in himself,
though it be less than that of a buffalo or a rhinocerote.
They differ but in specie: either in the kind is absolute;
both have their parts, and either the whole. Therefore, as
in every body so in every action, which is the subject of a
just work, there is required a certain proportionable
greatness, neither too vast nor too minute. For that which
happens to the eyes when we behold a body, the same
happens to the memory when we contemplate an action.
| look upon a monstrous giant, as Titans, whose body
covered nine acres of land, and mine eye sticks upon
every part; the whole That consists of those parts will
never be taken in at one entire view. So in a fable, if the
action be too great, we can never comprehend the whole
together in our imagination. Again, if it be too little, there
ariseth no pleasure out of the object; it affords the view
no stay; it is beheld, and vanisheth at once. As if we
should look upon an ant or pismire, the parts fly the
sight, and the whole considered is almost notliing,
Jonson, Discoveries: The Fable
22 All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life;
but among all those which the world has invented there
is none more to be feared than the theatre. It isa
representation of the passions so natural and so delicate
that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts,
and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is
represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more
innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are
likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-
love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the
same effects which are seen so well-represented; and, at
the same time, ux: make ourselves a conscience founded
on the propriety of the feelings which we see there, by
which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they
imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love
which seems to them so reasonable.
So we depart from the theatre with our heart so filled
with all the beauty and tenderness of love, the soul and
the mind so persuaded of its innocence, that we are quite
ready to receive its first impressions, or rather to seek an
opportunity of awakening them in the heart of another, in
order that we may receive the same pleasures and the
same sacrifices which we have seen so well-represented
in the theatre.
Pascal, Pensées, |, 11
23 Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonsons learned Sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe.
Warble his native Wood-notes walde.
Milton, L’Allegro, 131
24 Som time let Gorgeous Tragedy
In Scepter’d Pall com sweeping by,
Presenting Thebs, or Pelops line,
Or the talc of Troy divine.
Or what (though rare) of later age,
Ennobled hath the Buskind stage.
Milton, [| Penseroso, 97
25 Tragedy, as it was antiently compos’d, hath been ever
held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all
other Poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by
raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those
and such like passions, that is to temper and reduce them
to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr’d up by
reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his
assertion: for so in Physic things of melancholic hue and
quality are us’d against melancholy, sowt against sowr,
salt to remove salt humours. Hence Philosophers and
other gravest Writes, as Cicero, Plutarch and others,
frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Pau/ himself thought
it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text
of Holy Scripture, | Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting
on the Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy,
into Acts distinguisht each by a Chorus of Heavenly
Harpings and Song between... . This is mention’d to
vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather
infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this
day with other common Interludes; hap’ning through the
Poets error of intermixing Comic stuff with Tragic sadness
and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons,
which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and
brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the
people.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, Pref.
26 A scene of mirth, mixed with tragedy, has the same effect
upon us which our music has betwixt the acts; which we
find a relief to us from the best plots and language of the
stage, if the discourses have been long. | must therefore
have stronger arguments, ere | am convinced that
compassion and mirth in the same subject destroy each
other; and in the mean time cannot but conclude, to the
honour of our nation, that we have invented, increased,
and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the
stage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of
any nation, which is tragicomedy.
Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy
27 Who ever demanded the reasons of that nice unity of
time or place which is now established to be so essential
to dramatic poetry? What critic hath been ever asked,
why a play may not contain two days as well as one? Or
why the audience (provided they travel, like electors,
without any expense) may not be wafted fifty miles as
well as five? Hath any commentator well accounted for
the limitation which an antient critic hath set to the
drama, which he will have contain neither more nor less
than five acts? Or hath anyone living attempted to
explain what the modern judges of our theatres mean by
that word low; by which they have happily succeeded in
banishing all humour from the stage, and have made the
theatre as dull as a drawing-room!
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 1
28 The theatrical stage is nothing more than a
representation, or, as Aristotle calls it, an imitation of
what really exists; and hence, perhaps, we might fairly
pay avery high compliment to those who by their
writings or actions have been so capable of imitating life,
as to have their pictures in a manner confounded with, or
mistaken for, the originals.
But, in reality, we are not so fond of paying
compliments to these people, whom we use as children
frequently do the instruments of their amusement; and
have much more pleasure in hissing and buffeting them,
than in admiring their excellence. There are many other
reasons which have induced us to see this analogy
between the world and the stage.
Some have considered the larger part of mankind in
the light of actors, as personating characters no more
their own, and to which in fact they have no better title,
than the player hath to be in earnest thought the king or
emperor whom he represents. Thus the hypocrite may be
said to be a player; and indeed the Greeks called them
both by one and the same name....
In all these, however, and in every other similitude of
life to the theatre, the resemblance hath been always
taken from the stage only. None, as | remember, have at
all considered the audience at this great drama.
But as Nature often exhibits some of her best
performances to a very full house, so will the behaviour of
her spectators no less admit the above-mentioned
comparison than that of her actors. In this vast theatre of
time are seated the friend and the critic; here are claps
and shouts, hisses and groans; in short, everything which
was ever seen or heard at the Theatre-Royal.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 1
29 Now, a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose;
differing from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy:
its action being more extended and comprehensive;
containing a much larger circle of incidents, and
introducing a greater variety of characters. It differs from
the serious romance in its fable and action, in this; that
as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other
they are light and ridiculous; it differs in its characters by
introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently, of
inferior manners, whereas the grave romance sets the
highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and diction; by
preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the
diction, | think, burlesque itself may be sometimes
admitted; of which many instances will occur in this work,
dS in the description of the battles, and some other
places, not necessary to be pointed out to the classical
reader, for whose entertainment those parodies or
burlesque imitations are chiefly calculated.
But, though we have sometimes admitted this in our
diction, we have carefully excluded it from our
sentiments and characters; for there it is never properly
introduced, unless in writings of the burlesque kind,
which this is not intended to be. Indeed, no two species
of writing can differ more widely than the comic and the
burlesque; for as the latter is ever the exhibition of what
iS monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we
examine it, arises from the surprising absurdity, as in
appropriating the mannere of the highest to the lowest,
or e€ converso; so in the former we should ever confine
ourselves strictly to nature, from the just imitation of
which will flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to
a sensible reader. And perhaps there is one reason why a
comic writer should of all others be the least excused for
deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy
for a serious poet to meet with the great and the
admirable; but life everywhere furnishes an accurate
observer with the ridiculous.
Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Pref.
30 The only source of the true ridiculous (as it appears to
me) is affectation. But though ft arises from one spring
only, when we consider the infinite streams into which
this one branches, we shall presently cease to admire at
the copious field it affords to an observer. Now,
affectation proceeds from one of these two causes, vanity
or hypocrisy: for as vanity puts us on affecting false
characters in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy
sets us On an endeavour to avoid censure, by concealing
our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.
And though these two causes are often confounded (for
there is some difficulty in distinguishing them), yet, as
they proceed from very different motives, so they are as
clearly distinct in their operations; for indeed, the
affectation which arises from vanity is nearer to truth
than the other, as it hath not that violent repugnancy of
nature to struggle with, which that of the hypocrite hath.
It may be likewise noted, that affectation doth not imply
an absolute negation of those qualities which are
affected; and, therefore, though, when it proceeds from
hypocrity, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet when it comes
from vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation:
for instance, the affectation of liberality in a vain man
differs visibly from the same affectation in the avaricious;
for though the vain man is not what he would appear, or
hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree he would be
thought to have it; yet it sits less awkwardly on him than
on the avaricious man, who is the very reverse of what he
would seem to be.
From the discovery of this affectation arises the
ridiculous, which always strikes the reader with surprize
and pleasure; and that in a higher and stronger degree
when the affectation arises from hypocrisy, than when
from vanity; for to discover any one to be the exact
reverse of what he affects, is more surprizing, and
consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a little
deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of.
Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Pref.
31 Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical
sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a
distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary
nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow,
mingled with endless variety of proportion and
innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the
course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of
another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is
hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend;
in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by
the frolic of another; and many mischiefs and many
benefits are done and hindered without design.
Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
32 The necessity of observing the unities of time and place
arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama
credible. The critics hold it impossible that an action of
months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three
hours; or that The spectator can suppose himself to sit in
the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between
distant kings, while armies are levied and towns
besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he
whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the
untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident
falsehood, and fiction loses its force when it departs from
the resemblance of reality.
From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises
the contraction of place. The spectator, who knows that
he saw the first act at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he
sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the
dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have
transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not
changed his place, and he knows that place cannot
change itself; that what was a house cannot become a
plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis.
Such is the triumphant language with which a critic
exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults
commonly without resistance or reply. It is time therefore
to tell him by the authority of Shakespeare that he
assumes, aS an unquestionable principle, a position
which, while his breath is forming it into words, his
understanding pronounces to be false. It is false that any
representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic
fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, fora single
moment, was ever credited.
The objection arising from the impossibility of passing
the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome,
supposes that when the play opens, the spectator really
imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his
walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that
he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra, Surely he
that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take
the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies may
take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium.
Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain
limitation; if the spectator can be once persuaded that
his old acquaintances are Alexander and Caesar, that a
room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or
the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above
the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of
empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of
terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus
wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an
hour should not be a century in that calenture of the
brains that can make the stage a field.
The truth is that the spectators are always in their
senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the
stage is only a stage, and that the players are only
players. They came to hear a certain number of lines
recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The
lines relate to some action, and an action must be in
some place; but the different actions that complete a
story may be in places very remote from each other; and
where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent
first Athens, and then Sicily which was always known to
be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre.
By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be
extended; the time required by the fable elapses for the
most part between the acts; for, of much of the action as
is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same.
If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates
are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war
may, without absurdity, be represented, in the
catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there
is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know that we
are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates
nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive
imitations of successive actions; and why may not the
second imitation represent an action that happened
years after the first, if it be so connected with it that
nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is,
of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the
imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a
passage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the
time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be
contracted when we only see their imitation.
It will be asked how the drama moves if it is not
credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama.
It is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a
real original; as representing to the auditor what he
would himself feel if he were to do or suffer what is there
feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that
strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real
evils but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be
exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy
the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a
moment; but we rather lament the possibility than
suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over
her babe when she remembers that death may take it
from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our
consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and
treasons real, they would please no more.
Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
33 | introduced Aristotle's doctrine in his Art of Poetry, of
",..the purging of the passions,” as the purpose of
tragedy. “But how are the passions to be purged by
terrour and pity?” (said I, with an assumed air of
ignorance, to incite him to talk, for which it was often
necessary to employ some address). Johnson. “Why, Sir,
you are to consider what is the meaning of purging in the
Original sense. It is to expel impurities from the human
body. The mind is subject to the same imperfection. The
passions are the great movers of human actions; but they
are mixed with such impurities, that it is necessary they
should be purged or refined by means of terrour and pity.
For instance, the ambition is a noble passion; but by
seeing upon e that a man who is so excessively ambitious
as to raise himself by injustice, is punished, we are
terrified at the fatal consequences of such a passion. In
the same manner a certain degree of resentment is
necessary; but if we see that a man carries it too far, we
pity the object of it, and are taught to moderate that
passion." My record upon this occasion does great
injustice to Johnson’s expression, which was so forcible
and brilliant, that Mr. Cradock whispered me, "O that his
words were written in a book!"
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 12, 1776)
34 The state, by encouraging, that is by giving entire liberty
to all those who for their own interest would attempt,
without scandal or indecency, to amuse and divert the
people by painting, poetry, music, dancing; by all sorts of
dramatic representations and exhibitions; would easily
dissipate, in the greater part of them, that melancholy
and gloomy humour which is almost always the nurse of
popular superstition and enthusiasm. Public diversions
have always been the objects of dread and hatred to all
the fanatical promoters of those popular [religious]
frenzies. The gaiety and good humour which those
diversions inspire were altogether inconsistent with that
temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose, or
which they could best work upon. Dramatic
representations, besides, frequently exposing their
artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even to public
execration, were upon that account, more than all other
diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
35 Voltaire said that heaven has given us two things to
compensate us for the many miseries of life, hope and
sleep. He might have added laughter to the list—if only
the means of exciting it in men of intelligence were as
ready to hand, and the wit or originality of humour which
it requires were not just as rare as the talent is common
for inventing stuff that splits the head, as mystic
speculators do, or that breaks your neck, as the genius
does, or that harrows the heart as sentimental novelists
do (aye, and moralists of the same type).
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 54
36 The humorous manner may also be ranked as a thing
which in its enlivening influence is clearly allied to the
gratification provoked by laughter. It belongs to
originality of mind, though not to the talent for fine art.
Humour, in a good sense, means the talent for being able
to put oneself at will into a certain frame of mind in which
everything is estimated on lines that go quite off the
beaten track (a topsy-turvy view of things), and yet on
lines that follow certain principles, rational in the case of
such a mental temperament. A person with whom such
variations are not a matter of choice is said to have
humours; but if a person can assume them voluntarily
and of set purpose (on behalf of a lively presentation
drawn from a ludicrous contrast), he and his way of
speaking are termed humorous. This manner belongs,
however, to agreeable rather than to fine art, because the
object of the latter must always have an evident intrinsic
worth about it, and thus demands a certain seriousness in
its presentation, as taste does in estimating it.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 54
37 The aim that comedy has in view is the same as that of
the highest destiny of man, and this consists in liberating
himself from the influence of violent passions, and taking
a calm and lucid survey of all that surrounds him, and
also of his own being, and of seeing everywhere
occurrence rather than fate or hazard, and ultimately
rather smiling at the absurdities than shedding tears and
feeling anger at sight of the wickedness of man.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
38 Nothing serves better to illustrate a man's character than
the things which he finds ridiculous.
The ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is
innocently placed before the senses.
The sensual man will often laugh when there is
nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him,
he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with
himself.
Goethe, Reflections and Maxims
39 All tragedies are finish’d by a death.
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states of both are left to faith.
Byron, Don Juan, III, 9
40 Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear.
Emily Dickinson, Success Is Counted Sweetest
41 The drama in our time is a great man fallen, who has
reached the last degree of his degradation, and at the
same time continues to pride himself on his past of which
nothing now remains.
Tolstoy, Critical Essay on Shakespeare, VI11
42 The metaphysical comfort—with which, | am suggesting
even now, every true tragedy leaves us—that life is at the
bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances,
indestructibly power ful and pleasurable—this comfort
appears in incarnate clarity in the chorus of satyrs, a
chorus of natural beings who live ineradicably, as it were
behind all civilization and remain eternally the same,
despite the changes of generations and of the history of
nations.
With this chorus the profound Hellene, uniquely
susceptible to the tenderest and deepest suffering,
comforts himself, having looked boldly right into the
terrible destructiveness of so-called world history as well
as the cruelty of nature, and being in danger of longing
for a Buddhistic negation of the will. Art saves him, and
through art—life.
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, VII
43 We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are
usually bad poets. At bottom, the aesthetic phenomenon
is Simple: let anyone have the ability to behold
continually a vivid play and to live constantly surrounded
by hosts of spirits, and he will be a poet; let anyone feel
the urge to transform himself and to speak out of other
bodies and souls, and he will be a dramatist.
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, VIII
44 The tradition is undisputed that Greek tragedy in its
earliest form had for its sole theme the sufferings of
Dionysus and that for a long time the only stage hero was
Dionysus himself. But it may be claimed with equal
confidence that until Euripides, Dionysus never ceased to
be the tragic hero; that all the celebrated figures of the
Greek stage— Prometheus, Oedipus, etc,—are mere
masks of this original hero, Dionysus. That behind all
these masks there is a deity, that is one essential reason
for the typical "ideality" of these famous figures which
has caused so much astonishment. Somebody, | cfo not
know who, has claimed that all individuals, taken as
individuals, are comic and hence untragic—from which it
would follow that the Greeks simply could not suffer
individuals on the tragic stage. In fact, this is what they
seem to have felt; and the Platonic distinction and
evaluation of the "idea" and the "idol," the mere image, is
very deeply rooted in the Hellenic character.
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, X
45 The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It
resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of
things. This inevitableness of destiny can only be
illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in
fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the
futility of escape can be made evident in the drama.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, |
46 Another of the great poetic tragedies, Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, is rooted in the same soil as Oedipus Rex. But the
whole difference in the psychic life of the two widely
separated periods of civilization, and the progress, during
the course of time, of repression in the emotional life of
humanity, is manifested in the differing treatment of the
Same material. In Oedipus the basic wish-phantasy of the
child is brought to light and realized as it is in dreams; in
Hamlet, it remains repressed, and we learn of its
existence--as we discover the relevant facts in a neurosis-
—only through the inhibitory effects which proceed from
it. In the more modern drama, the curious fact that it is
possible to remain in complete uncertainty as to the
character of the hero has proved to be quite consistent
with the overpowering effect of the tragedy. The play is
based upon Hamlet’s hesitation in accomplishing the task
of revenge assigned to him; the text does not give the
cause or the motive of this hesitation, nor have the
manifold attempts at interpretation succeeded in doing
so. According to the still prevailing conception, a
conception for which Goethe was first responsible,
Hamlet represents the type of man whose active energy
is paralysed by excessive intellectual activity: "Sicklied
o’er with the pale cast of thought." According to another
conception, the poet has endeavoured to portray a
morbid, irresolute character, on the verge of
neurasthenia. The plot of the drama, however, shows us
that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a
character wholly incapable of action. On two separate
occasions we see him assert himself: once in a sudden
outburst of rage, when he stabs the eavesdropper behind
die arras, and on the other occasion when he
deliberately, and even craftily, with the complete
unscrupulousness of a prince of the Renaissance, sends
the two courtiers to the death which was intended for
himself. What is it, then, that inhibits him in
accomplishing the task which his father’s ghost has laid
upon him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the
peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet is able to do anything
but take vengeance upon the man who did away with his
father and has taken his father’s place with his mother—
the man who shows him in realization the repressed
desires of his own childhood. the loathing which should
have driven him to revenge is thus replaced by self-
reproach, by conscientious scruples, which tell him that
he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is
required to punish. 1 have here translated into
consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the
mind of the hero; if anyone wishes to call Hamlet an
hysterical subject | cannot but admit that this is the
deduction to be drawn from my Interpretation. The sexual
aversion which Hamlet expresses in conversation with
Ophelia is perfectly consistent with this deduction—the
Same sexual aversion which during the next few years
was increasingly to take possession of the poet’s soul,
until it found its supreme utterance in Timon of Athens, It
can, of course, be only the poet’s own psychology with
which we are confronted in Hamlet; and in a work on
Shakespeare by Georg Brandes (1896) | find the
statement that the drama was composed immediately
after the death of Shakespeare’s father (1601)—that is to
say, when he was still mourning his loss, and during a
revival, aS we may fairly assume, of his ow-n childish
feelings in respect of his father. It is known, too, that
Shakespeare’s son, who died in childhood, bore the name
of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as Ham/et treats
of tire relation of the son to his parents, so Macbeth,
which was written about the same period, is based upon
the theme of childlessness. Just as all neurotic symptoms,
like dreams themselves, are capable of hyper-
interpretation, and even require such hyper-
interpretation before they become perfectly intelligible,
so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded
from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the
mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one
interpretation. | have here attempted to interpret only the
deepest stratum of impulses in the mind of the creative
poet.
Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, V, |)
47 The pleasure of wit originates from an economy of
expenditure in inhibition, of the comic from an economy
of expenditure in thought, and of humor from an
economy of expenditure in feeling. All three modes of
activity of our psychic apparatus derive pleasure from
economy. All three present methods strive to bring back
from the psychic activity a pleasure which has really been
lost in the development of this activity. For the euphoria
which we are thus Striving to obtain is nothing but the
state of a bygone time, in which we were wont to defray
our psychic work with slight expenditure. It is the state of
our childhood in which we did not know the comic, were
incapable of wit, and did not need humor to make us
happy.
Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, VII
48 The comic does not exist outside the pale of what is
strictly human. A landscape may be beautiful, charming
and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will never be
laughable. You may laugh at an animal, but only because
you have detected in it some human altitude or
expression. You may laugh at a hat, but what you are
making fun of, In this ease, is not the piece of fell or
straw, but the shape that men have given it—the human
caprice whose mould it has assumed. It is strange that so
important a fact, and such a simple one too, has not
attracted to a greater degree the attention of
philosophers. Several have defined man as "an animal
which laughs." They might equally well have defined him
as an animal which is laughed at; for if any other animal,
or some lifeless object, produces the same effect, it is
always because of some resemblance to man. of the
stamp he gives it or the use he puts it to.
Bergson, Laughter, I, 1
49 You would hardly appreciate the comic if you fell yourself
isolated from others. Laughter appears to stand in need
of an echo. Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate,
clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would
fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another,
something beginning with a crash, to continue in
successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still,
this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel
within as wide a circle as you please; the circle remains,
none the less, a closed one.
Bergson, Laughter, I, 1
50 Look closely: you will find that the art of the comic poet
consists in making us so well acquainted with the
particular vice, in introducing us, the spectators, to such
a degree of intimacy with it, that in the end we get hold
of some of the strings of the marionette with which he is
playing, and actually work them ourselves; this it is that
explains part of the pleasure we feel. Here, too, it is really
a kind of automatism that makes us laugh—an
automatism, as we have already remarked, closely akin to
mere absentmindedness. To realise this more fully, it
need only be noted that a comic character is generally
comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. The comic
person is unconscious.
Bergson, Laughter, I, 2
51 A comedy is far more like real life than a drama is. The
more sublime the drama, the more profound the analysis
to which the poet has had to subject the raw materials of
daily life in order to obtain the tragic element in its
unadulterated form. On the contrary, it is only in its lower
aspects, in light comedy and farce, that comedy is in
striking contrast to reality: the higher it rises, the more it
approximates to life; in fact, there are scenes in real life
so closely bordering on high-class comedy that the stage
might adopt them without changing a single word.
Bergson, Laughter, Ill, 1
52 In this sense, laughter cannot be absolutely just. Nor
should it be kind-hearted either. Its function is to
intimidate by humiliating. Now, it would not succeed in
doing this, had not nature implanted for that very
purpose, even in the best of men, a spark of spitefulness
or, at all events, of mischief. Perhaps we had better not
investigate this point too closely, for we should not find
anything very flattering to ourselves.
Bergson, Laughter, Ill, 5
53 What fabulous creatures these artists are! Are they really
human at all? Take the clowns, for example, those
basically alien beings, funmakers, with little red hands,
little thin-shod feet, red wigs under conical felt hats, their
impossible lingo, their handstands, their stumbling and
falling over everything, their mindless running to and fro
and unserviceable attempts to help, their hideously
unsuccessful efforts to imitate their serious colleagues—
in tightrope-walking, for instance— which bring the
crowd to a pitch of mad merriment. Are these ageless,
half-grown sons of absurdity, at whom Stanko and |
laughed so heartily (Il, however, with a thoughtful fellow-
feeling), are they human at all? With their chalk-white
faces and utterly preposterous painted expressions—
triangular eyebrows and deep perpendicular grooves in
their cheeks under the reddened eyes, impossible noses,
mouths twisted up at the corners into insane smiles—
masks, that is, which stand in inconceivable contrast to
the splendour of their costumes—black satin, for
example, embroidered with silver butterflies, a child’s
dream—are they, | repeat, human beings, men that could
conceivably find a place in everyday daily life? In my
Opinion it is pure sentimentality to say that they are
“human too," with the sensibilities of human beings and
perhaps even with wives and children. | honour them and
defend them against ordinary bad taste when | say no,
they are not, they are exceptions, side-splitting monsters
of preposterousness, glittering, world-renouncing monks
of unreason, cavorting hybrids, part human and part
insane art.
Mann, Confessions of Felix Krull
16.5 Music
We have already noted that, of ail the fine arts other than
imaginative literature, music alone receives special
treatment in this chapter. One reason for this is that both the
poets and the moralists regard music as exerting an
extraordinary influence over the emotions and conduct of
human beings. Closely related to that is the concern,
especially in antiquity, with the part that music plays in the
rearing and training of the young. Plato, for example,
assigns to gymnastic and to music the basic roles in the
early education of children—one for the training of the body,
the other for the discipline of the emotions and the
cultivation of the sensibilities. Aristotle broadens the
discussion by considering the enjoyment of music as one of
the occupations of leisure and as a result of liberal
education.
These texts and others raise questions about the
censorship of music, or at least about control of the kind of
music young people should be allowed to hear—a question
that should strike a responsive chord in those who today are
troubled by the effects on the young of the earsplitting
blasts and the emotional violence of the music to which they
are addicted.
There are one or two passages that reflect the conception
of music as a liberal rather than a fine art—a mathematical
art that belongs to the quadrivium along with arithmetic,
geometry, and astronomy. But the mathematical treatment
of music, or harmonics, is not represented here; nor is the
discussion of music in the tradition of musicology. Both are
too technical for a collection of this kind.
1 Chorus. There’s nothing like the flute’s sound when
We dance and sing and cat our fill
And love in all its sweetness.
Euripides, Heracleidae, 892
2 Socrates. Musical training is a more potent instrument
than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their
way into the inward places of the soul, on which they
mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of
him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-
educated ungraceful; and also because he who has
received this true education of the inner being will most
shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature,
and width a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over
and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble
and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in
the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the
reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise
and salute the friend with whom his education has made
him long familiar.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 401B
3 Socrates. When a man allows music to play upon him and
to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those
sweet and soft and melancholy airs... and his whole life is
passed in warbling and the delights of song, in the first
stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him
is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle
and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and
soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and
waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the
sinews of his soul.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 411A
4 Socrates. The State, if once started well, moves with
accumulating force like a wheel. For good nurture and
education implant good constitutions, and these good
constitutions taking root in a good education improve
more and more, and this improvement affects the breed
in man as in other animals....
This is the point to which, above all, the attention of
our rulers should be directed—that music and gymnastic
be presented in their original form, and no innovation
made. They must do their utmost to maintain them
intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard
The newest song which the singers have,
they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new
songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not to be
praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for
any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole
State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me,
and | can quite believe him—he says that when modes of
music change, the fundamental laws of the State always
change with them.
Plato, Republic, IV, 424A
5 Athenian Stranger. We must assert that imitation is not to
be judged of by pleasure and false opinion; and this is
true of all equality, for the equal is not equal or the
symmetrical symmetrical, because somebody thinks or
likes something, but they are to be judged of by the
standard of truth, and by no other whatever.
Cleinias. Quite true.
Ath. Do we not regard all music as representative and
imitative?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Then, when any one says that music is to be
judged of by pleasure, his doctrine cannot be admitted;
and if there be any music of which pleasure is the
criterion, such music is not to be sought out or deemed to
have any real excellence, but only that other kind of
music which is an imitation of the good,
Cle. Very true.
Ath. And those who seek for the best kind of song and
music ought not to seek for that which is pleasant, but for
that which is true; and the truth of imitation consists, as
we were saying, in rendering the thing imitated
according to quantity and quality.
Plato, Laws, Il, 667B
6 Our fathers admitted music into education, not on the
ground either of its necessity or utility, for it is not
necessary, nor indeed useful in the same manner as
reading and writing, which are useful in money-making,
in the management of a household, in the acquisition of
knowledge and in political life, nor like drawing, useful for
a more correct judgement of the works of artists, nor
again like gymnastic, which gives health and strength;
for neither of these is to be gained from music. There
remains, then, the use of music for intellectual enjoyment
in leisure; which is in fact evidently the reason of its
introduction, this being one of the ways in which it is
thought that a freeman should pass his leisure.
Aristotle, Politics, 1338a13
7 All men agree that music is one of the pleasantest things,
whether with or without song.... Hence and with good
reason it is introduced into social gatherings and
entertainments, because it makes the hearts of men glad:
so that on this ground alone we may assume that the
young ought to be trained in it. For innocent pleasures
are not only in harmony with the perfect end of life, but
they also provide relaxation. And whereas men rarely
attain the end, but often rest by the way and amuse
themselves, not only with a view to a further end, but
also for the pleasure’s sake, it may be well at times to let
them find a refreshment in music. It sometimes happens
that men make amusement the end, for the end probably
contains some element of pleasure, though not any
ordinary or lower pleasure; but they mistake the lower for
the higher, and in seeking for the one find the other,
since every pleasure has a likeness to the end of action.
For the end is not eligible for the sake of any future good,
nor do the pleasures which we have described exist for
the sake of any future good but of the past; that is to say,
they are the alleviation of past toils and pains. And we
may infer this to be the reason why men seek happiness
from these pleasures. But music is pursued, not only as
an alleviation of past toil, but also as providing
recreation. And who can say whether, having this use, it
may not also have a nobler one? In addition to this
common pleasure, felt and shared in by all (for the
pleasure given by music is natural, and therefore adapted
to all ages and characters), may it not have also some
influence over the character and the soul? It must have
such an influence if characters are affected by it. And
that they are so affected is proved in many ways, and not
least by the power which the songs of Olympus exercise;
for beyond question they inspire enthusiasm, and
enthusiasm is an emotion of the ethical part of the soul.
Besides, when men hear imitations, even apart from the
rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in
sympathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue
consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is
clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to
acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right
judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and
noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of
anger and gentleness, and also of courage and
temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these,
and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall
short of the actual affections, as we know from our own
experience, for in listening to such strains our souls
undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain
at mere representations is not far removed from the same
feeling about realities.... The objects of no other sense,
such as taste or touch, have any resemblance to moral
qualities; in visible objects there is only a little, for there
are figures which are of a moral character, but only toa
slight extent, and all do not participate in the feeling
about them.... On the other hand, even in mere melodies
there is an imitation of character.... Some of them make
men sad and grave... others enfeeble the mind... another,
again, produces a moderate and settled temper...
Enough has been said to show that music has a power of
forming the character, and should therefore be
introduced into the education of the young. The study is
suited to the stage of youth, for young persons will not, if
they can help, endure anything which is not sweetened
by pleasure, and music has a natural sweetness. There
seems to be in us a sort of affinity to musical modes and
rhythms, which makes some philosophers say that the
soul is a tuning, others, that it possesses tuning.
Aristotle, Politics, 1339b20
8 And now we have to determine the question which has
been already raised, whether children should be
themselves taught to sing and play or not. Clearly there
is a considerable difference made in the character by the
actual practice of the art. It is difficult, if not impossible,
for those who do not perform to be good judges of the
performances of others. Besides, children should have
something to do, and the rattle of Archytas, which people
give to their children in order to amuse them and prevent
them from breaking anything in the house, was a capital
invention, for a young thing cannot be quiet. The rattle is
a toy suited to the infant mind, and education is a rattle
or a toy for children of a larger growth. We conclude then
that they should be taught music in such a way as to
become not only critics but performers.
Aristotle, Politics, 13401b20
9 There is a Meaning ... in the myth of the ancients, which
tells how Athene invented the flute and then threw it
away. It was not a bad idea of theirs, that the Goddess
disliked the instrument because it made the face ugly;
but with still more reason may we Say that she rejected it
because the acquirement of flute-playing contributes
nothing to the mind, since to Athene we ascribe both
knowledge and art.
Thus then we reject the professional instruments and
also the professional mode of education in music (and by
professional we mean that which is adopted in contests),
for in this the performer practises the art, not for the sake
of his own improvement, but in order to give pleasure,
and that of a vulgar sort, to his hearers. For this reason
the execution of such music is not the part of a freeman
but of a paid performer, and the result is that the
performers are vulgarized, for the end at which they aim
is bad. The vulgarity of the spectator tends to lower the
character of the music and therefore of the performers;
they look to him—-he makes them what they are, and
fashions even their bodies by the movements which he
expects them to exhibit.
Aristotle, Politics, 1341b2
10 Imitating with the mouth the clear notes of birds was in
use long before men were able to sing in tune smooth-
running verses and give pleasure to the ear. And the
whistlings of the zephyr through the hollow’s of reeds
first taught peasants to blow into hollow stalks. Then step
by step they learned sweet plaintive ditties, which the
pipe pours forth pressed by the fingers of the players,
heard through pathless woods and forests and lawns,
through the unfrequented haunts of shepherds and
abodes of unearthly calm. These things would soothe and
gratify their minds when sated with food; for then all
things of this kind are welcome. Often therefore stretched
in groups on the soft grass beside a stream of water
under the boughs of a high tree at no great cost they
would pleasantly refresh their bodies, above all when the
weather smiled and the seasons of the year painted the
green grass with flowers. Then went round the jest, the
tale, the peals of merry laughter; for the peasant muse
was then in its glory; then frolick mirth would prompt to
entwine head and shoulders with garlands plaited with
flowers and leaves, and to advance in the dance out of
step and move the limbs clumsily and with clumsy foot
beat mother earth; which would occasion smiles and
peals of merry laughter, because all these things then
from their greater novelty and strangeness were in high
repute. And the wakeful found a solace for want of sleep
in this, in drawing out a variety of notes and going
through tunes and running over the reeds with curving
lip; whence even at the present day watchmen observe
these traditions and have lately learned to keep the
proper tune; and yet for all this receive not a jot more of
enjoyment, than erst the rugged race of sons of earth
received.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
11 Pale Phoebe, drawn by verse, from heaven descends;
And Circe changed with charms Ulysses’ friends.
Verse breaks the ground, and penetrates the brake,
And in the winding cavern splits the snake.
Verse fires the frozen veins.
Virgil, Eclogues, VIII
12 The musician we may think of as being exceedingly quick
to beauty, drawn in a very rapture to it: somewhat slow to
stir of his own impulse, he answers at once to the outer
stimulus: as the timid are sensitive to noise so he to tones
and the beauty they convey; all that offends against
unison or harmony in melodies and rhythms repels him;
he longs for measure and shapely pattern.
Plotinus, First Ennead, III, |
13 It is the reasonless soul, not the will or wisdom, that is
beguiled by music, a form of sorcery which raises no
question, whose enchantment, indeed, is welcomed,
exacted, from the performers.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, IV, 40
14 Any skill which, beginning with the observation of the
symmetry of living things, grows to the symmetry of all
life, will be a portion of the Power There which observes
and meditates the symmetry reigning among all beings
in the Intellectual Kosmos. Thus all music—since its
thought is upon melody and rhythm—must be the earthly
representation of the music there is in the rhythm of the
Ideal Realm.
Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, IX, 11
15 On the whole | am inclined—though | am not
propounding any irrevocable opinion—to approve the
custom of singing in church, that by the pleasure of the
ear the weaker minds may be roused to a feeling of
devotion. Yet whenever it happens that | am more moved
by the singing than by the thing that is sung, | admit that
| have grievously sinned, and then | should wish rather
not to have heard the singing.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 33
16 | always loved music; whoso has skill in this art, is of a
good temperament, fitted for all things. We must teach
music in schools; a schoolmaster ought to have skill in
music, or | would not regard him; neither should we
ordain young men as preachers, unless they have been
well exercised in music.
Luther, Table Talk, H838
17 King Richard. Music do | hear?
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men’s lives.
Shakespeare, Richard Il, V, v, 41
18 Oberon. My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb'rest
Since once | sat upon a promontory.
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
Puck. | remember.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, i, 148
19 Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester;
For now our observation is perform’d;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go:
Dispatch, | say, and find the forester.
[ Exit an Attendant.]
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
Hippolyta. | was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did | hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem’d all one mutual cry; | never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee’d, and dew-lapp’d like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly;
Judge when you hear.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, IV, |, 107
20 Lorenzo. The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, V, i, 83
21 Benedick. |s it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale
souls out of men’s bodies?
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 11, iti, 61
22 Duke. \f music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I, i, 1
23 Cleopatra. Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 11, v, 1
24 Caliban. Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
That, if | then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when | waked,
| cried to dream again.
Shakespeare, Tempest, Ill, ti, 144
25 Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Shakespeare, Sonnet VIII
26 Generally, music feedeth the disposition of spirit which it
findeth.
Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, I!
27 Sure there is musick even in the beauty, and the silent
note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of
an instrument. For there is a musick where ever there is a
harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may
maintain the musick of the Sphears: for those well-
ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no
sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike
a note most full of harmony.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Il, 9
28 Ring out ye Crystall sphears,
Once bless our human ears,
(If ye have power to touch our senses so)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the Base of Heav’ns deep Organ blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to th’Angelike symphony.
For if such holy Song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
And speckl’d vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell it self will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Milton, On the Morning of Chrisis Nativity, 125
29 Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav’ns joy,
Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ
Dead things with inbreath’d sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais’d phantasie present,
That undisturbed Song of pure content,
Ay sung before the saphire-colour’d throne
To him that sits theron
With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow,
And the Chcrubick host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms,
Hymns devout and holy Psalms
Singing everlastingly;
That we on Earth with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportion’d sin
Jarr'd against natures chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair musick that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d
In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that Song,
And keep in tune with Heav’n, till God ere long
To his celestial consort us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endles morn of light.
Milton, At a Solemn Musick
30 And ever against eating Cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out.
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that ty
The hidden soul of harmony.
That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear
Such streins as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regain’d Eurydice.
Milton, L'Allegro, 135
31 Bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as warbled to the string,
Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek.
And made Hell grant what Love did seek.
Milton, I! Penseroso, 105
32 Such sweet compulsion doth in musick ly,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteddy Nature to her law,
And the low world in measur’d motion draw
After the heavenly tune.
Milton, Arcades, 68
33 From harmony, from heavenly harmony
This universal frame began:
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head.
The tuneful voice was heard from high:
"Arise, ye more than dead."
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music’s power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.
Dryden, A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
34 Almeria. Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And, as with living souls, have been informed
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
Congreve, The Mourning Bride, I, |
35 Johnson. There is nothing, | think, in which the power of
art is shown so much as in playing on the fiddle. In all
other things we can do something at first. Any man will
forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well
as a smith, but tolerably, A man will saw a piece of wood,
and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give hima
fiddle and a fiddlestick, and he can do nothing.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 15, 1773)
36 In the evening our gentleman-farmer, and two others,
entertained themselves and the company with a great
number of tunes on the fiddle. Johnson desired to have
"Let ambition fire thy mind," played over again, and
appeared to give a patient attention to it; though he
owned to me that he was very insensible to the power of
musick. | told him, that it affected me to such a degree,
as often to agitate my nerves painfully, producing in my
mind alternate sensations of pathetick dejection, so that |
was ready to shed tears; and of daring resolution, so that
| was inclined to rush into the thickest part of the battle.
"Sir, (Said he,) | should never hear it, if it made me sucha
fool."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Sept. 23, 1777)
37 Every expression in language has an associated tone
Suited to its sense. This tone indicates, more or less, a
mode in which the speaker is affected, and in turn evokes
it in the hearer also, in whom conversely it then also
excites the idea which in language is expressed with such
a tone. Further, just as modulation is, as it were, a
universal language of sensations intelligible to every
man, so the art of tone wields the full force of this
language wholly on its own account, namely, as a
language of the affections, and in this way, according to
the law of association, universally communicates the
aesthetic ideas that are naturally combined therewith.
But, further, inasmuch as those aesthetic ideas are not
concepts or determinate thoughts, the form of the
arrangement of these sensations (harmony and melody),
taking the place of the form of a language, only serves
the purpose of giving an expression to the aesthetic idea
of an integral whole of an unutterable wealth of thought
that fills the measure of a certain theme forming the
dominant affection in the piece....
If... we estimate the worth of the fine arts by the
culture they supply to the mind, and adopt for our
standard the expansion of the faculties whose
confluence, in judgement, is necessary for cognition,
music, then, since it plays merely with sensations, has
the lowest place among the fine arts— just as it has
perhaps the highest among those valued at the same
time for their agreeableness. Looked at in this light, it is
far excelled by the formative arts. For, in putting the
imagination into a play which is at once free and adapted
to the understanding, they all the while carry on a serious
business, since they execute a product which serves the
concepts of understanding as a vehicle, permanent and
appealing to us on its own account, for effectuating their
union with sensibility, and thus for promoting, as it were,
the urbanity of the higher powers of cognition. The two
kinds of art pursue completely different courses. Music
advances from sensations to indefinite ideas: formative
art from definite ideas to sensations. The latter gives a
lasting impression, the former one that is only fleeting.
The former sensations imagination can recall and
agreeably entertain itself with, while the latter either
vanish entirely, or else, if involuntarily repeated by the
imagination, are more annoying to us than agreeable.
Over and above all this, music has a certain lack of
urbanity about it. For owing chiefly to the character of its
instruments, it scatters its influence abroad to an
uncalled-for extent (through the neighbourhood), and
thus, as it were, becomes obtrusive and deprives others,
outside the musical circle, of their freedom. This is a thing
that the arts that address themselves to the eye do not
do, for if one is not disposed to give admittance to their
impressions, one has only to look the other way.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 53
38 Music... stands quite alone. It is cut off from all the other
arts.... It does not express a particular and definite joy,
sorrow, anguish, horror, delight, or mood of peace, but
joy, sorrow, anguish, horror, delight, peace of mind
themselves, in the abstract, in their essential nature,
without accessories, and therefore without their
customary motives. Yet it enables us to grasp and share
them fully in this quintessence.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Vol. |, 52
39 If it be... asked why musical tones in a certain order and
rhythm give man and other animals pleasure, we can no
more give the reason than for the pleasantness of certain
tastes and smells. That they do give pleasure of some
kind to animals, we may infer from their being produced
during the season of courtship by many insects, spiders,
fishes, amphibians, and birds; for unless the females were
able to appreciate such sounds and were excited or
charmed by them, the persevering efforts of the males,
and the complex structures often possessed by them
alone, would be useless; and this it is impossible to
believe.
Human song is generally admitted to be the basis or
Origin of instrumental music. As neither the enjoyment
nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties
of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of
life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious
with which he is endowed.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 19
40 The only one of the imaginative arts in which | had from
childhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best
effect of which (and in this it Surpasses perhaps every
other art) consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up
to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which
are already in the character, but to which this excitement
gives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its
utmost height, is precious for sustaining them at other
times.
Mill, Autobiography, V
41 A terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does
it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul.
Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully (I speak for
myself). but not in an ennobling way. It acts neither in an
ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating way.
How shall | say it? Music makes me forget my real
situation. It transports me into a state which is not my
own. Under the influence of music | really seem to feel
what | do not feel, to understand what | do not
understand, to have powers which | cannot have.
Tolstoy, The Kreulzer Sonata, XXIII
42 There is perhaps no emotion incident to human life that
music cannot render in its abstract medium by
suggesting the pang of it; though of course music cannot
describe the complex situation which lends earthly
passions their specific colour. The passions, aS music
renders them, are always general. But music has its own
substitute for distinct representation. It makes feeling
specific, nay, more delicate and precise than association
with things could make it, by uniting it with musical form.
Santayana, Music
43 Music is... like mathematics, very nearly a world by itself;
it contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous
elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies. Yet this
second existence, this life in music, is no mere ghost of
the other; it has its own excitements, its quivering
alternatives, its surprising turns; the abstract energy of it
takes on so much body, that in progression or declension
it seems quite as impassioned as any animal triumph or
any moral drama.
That a pattering of sounds on the ear should have
such moment is a fact calculated to give pause to those
philosophers who attempt to e.x-plain consciousness by
its utility, or who wish to make physical and moral
processes march side by side from all eternity. Music is
essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal
extension which lends utility to its conditions.
Santayana, Life of Reason, IV, 4
16.6 Beauty and the Beautiful
The word "aesthetics" that appears in the title of this
chapter appears in very few of the passages assembled in
this section. It is a very recent invention as a name for the
branch of philosophy that deals with the appreciation of
works of fine art and develops theories of sensible beauty
and the criteria of the beautiful in both art and nature.
Aesthetics, as a recognized branch of philosophy, does not
come into existence until the nineteenth century but
speculation concerning beauty begins with the Greeks and
runs through the whole tradition of Western thought, in
which it is accorded the status of membership in that
familiar triad of fundamental values—the good, the true, and
the beautiful.
The pivotal texts are those that attempt to define beauty
and to distinguish it from, as well as relate it to, truth and
goodness. The pivotal notions that enter into the definitions
are such terms as desire and love, pleasure and interest, and
knowledge or vision. And the pivotal questions raised are
those that concern the objectivity and subjectivity of beauty
—the sense in which it can be said to inhere in the object
itself as an intrinsic excellence and the sense in which it can
be said to exist in the eye of the beholder and to depend on
his sensibility or taste. In this last connection, some of the
passages here included might have been placed in the
following section on Criticism and the Standards of Taste,
and passages placed there might have been included here.
The issue concerning the objectivity and subjectivity of
beauty, if not resolved, is certainly surrounded by the divers
point of view expressed; and a very close reading of the
difficult passages taken from Aquinas and Kant may discover
a resolution of the problem through an understanding of the
relation between the degree of intrinsic excellence
possessed by a work of art and the degree of good taste
possessed by the person who appreciates its beauty. This
does not preclude the relativity of the appreciation of beauty
to the sensibility of the person, nor the truth of the
proposition de gustibus non disputandum, but it does
challenge those who too simply identify the beautiful with
what they happen to like.
Beauty or excellence in works of art, and especially in
poetry, is touched on in other sections of this chapter, to
which the reader should refer for a fuller treatment of the
subject. The reader should also refer to the index under
appropriate terms.
11am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as
the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Song of Solomon 1:5
2 Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou
hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of
goats, that appear from mount Gil-e-ad.
Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn,
which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear
twins, and none is barren among them.
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is
comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate
within thy locks.
Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an
armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all
Shields of mighty men.
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,
which feed among the lilies.
Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, | will
get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of
frankincense.
Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
Song of Solomon 4:1—7
3 Now those who sat with Priam: Panthoos and Thymoites,
Lampos and Klytios, Hiketaon, scion of Ares, with Antenor
and Oukalegon, both men of good counsel: these were
seated by the Skaian gates, ciders of the people.
Now through old age these fought no longer, yet were
they excellent speakers still, and clear, as cicadas who
through the forest settle on trees, to issue their delicate
voice of singing.
Such were they who sat on the tower, chief men of the
Trojans. And these, as they saw Helen along the tower
approaching, murmuring softly to each other uttered
their winged words:
"Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-
greaved Achaians if for long time they suffer hardship for
a woman like this one.
Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal
goddesses. Still, though she be such, let her go away in
the ships, lest she be left behind, a grief to us and our
children."
Homer, Iliad, Ill, 146
4 He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will
soon be fair also.
Sappho, Fragment
5 Socrates. Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing,
and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and
permeates our souls. For | affirm that the good is the
beautiful.
Plato, Lysis, 216B
6 Socrates. | have been speaking of the fourth and last kind
of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees
the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of
the true beauty; he would like to fly away, but he cannot;
he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and
careless of the world below; and he is therefore thought
to be mad. And | have shown this of all inspirations to be
the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest
of him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the
beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it. For,
as has been already said, every soul of man has in the
way of nature beheld true being; this was the condition of
her passing into the form of man. But all souls do not
easily recall the things of the other world; they may have
seen them for a short time only, or they may have been
unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their
hearts turned to unrighteousness through some
corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of
the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an
adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they
behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in
amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture
means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is
no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher
ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of
them: they are seen through a glass dimly, and there are
few who, going to the images, behold in them the
realities, and these only with difficulty. There was a time
when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty
shining in brightness,—we philosophers following in the
train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and
then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into
a mystery which may be truly called most blessed,
celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had
any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted
to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm
and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure
ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which
we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body,
like an oyster in his shell. Let me linger over the memory’
of scenes which have passed away.
But of beauty, | repeat again that we saw her there
shining in company with the celestial forms; and coming
to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness
through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the
most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is
wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been
transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and
the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be
equally lovely. But this is the privilege of beauty, that
being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight.
Now he who is not newly initiated or who has become
corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to the
sight of true beauty in the other; he looks only at her
earthly namesake, and instead of being awed at the sight
of her, he is given over to pleasure, and like a brutish
beast he rushes on to enjoy and beget; he consorts with
wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing
pleasure in violation of nature. But he whose initiation is
recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories
in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one
having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of
divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him,
and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon
the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him,
and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright
madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the
image of a god.
Plato, Phaedrus, 249B
7 Diotima. He who would proceed aright. .. should begin in
youth to visit beautiful forms... and soon he will of himself
perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty
of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his
pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the
beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he
perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one,
which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will
become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he
will consider that the beauty of the mind is more
honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that
if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be
content to love and tend him, and will search out and
bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the
young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the
beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that
the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal
beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will
go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty,
being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one
youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and
narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating
the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble
thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until
on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the
vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the
science of beauty everywhere.
Plato, Symposium, 210A
8 Socrates. Let me ask a question of you: When you speak of
beautiful things, such as bodies, colours, figures, sounds,
institutions, do you not call them beautiful in reference to
some standard: bodies, for example, are beautiful in
proportion as they are useful, or as the sight of them
gives pleasure to the spectators; can you give any other
account of personal beauty?
Polus. | cannot.
Soc. And you would say of figures or colours generally
that they were beautiful, either by reason of the pleasure
tvhich they give, or of their use, or both?
Pol. Yes, | should.
Soc. And you would call sounds and music beautiful
for the same reason?
Pol. \ should.
Soc. Laws and institutions also have no beauty in
them except in so far as they are useful or pleasant or
both?
Pol. | think not.
Soc. And may not the same be said of the beauty of
knowledge?
Pol. To be sure, Socrates; and | very much approve of
your measuring beauty by the standard of pleasure and
utility.
Soc. And deformity or disgrace may be equally
measured by the opposite standard of pain and evil?
Pol. Certainly.
Soc. Then when of two beautiful things one exceeds in
beauty, the measure of the excess is to be taken in one or
both of these; that is to say, in pleasure or utility or both?
Pol. Very true.
Plato, Gorgias, 474B
9 Since the good and the beautiful are different (for the
former always implies conduct as its subject, while the
beautiful is found also in motionless things), those who
assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the
beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say
and prove a great deal about them; if they do not
expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are
their results or their definitions, it is not true to say that
they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of
beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which
the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special
degree. And since these (e.g. order and definiteness) are
obviously causes of many things, evidently these
sciences must treat this sort of causative principle also
(i.e. the beautiful) as in some sense a cause.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1078a32
10 A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a
hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to
the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is
lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on
account of some excess in one direction or defect in the
other; and this is true of every part of the human body.
Aristotle, Politics, 1309b23
11 To be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole made
up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its
arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain definite
magnitude. Beauty is a matter of size and order, and
therefore impossible either (1) in a very minute creature,
since our perception becomes indistinct as it approaches
instantaneity; or (2) in a creature of vast size—one, say,
1,000 miles long—as in that case, instead of the object
being seen all at once; the unity and wholeness of it is
lost to the beholder.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1450b34
12 There are two kinds of beauty. Loveliness is dominant in
the one and dignity in the other. Of these two, we ought
to consider loveliness the attribute of woman and dignity
the attribute of man.
Cicero, De Officiis, |, 36
13 [Cleopatra] received several letters, both from Antony
and from his friends, to summon her, but she took no
account of these orders; and at last, as if in mockery of
them, she came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge
with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars
of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and
harps. She herself lay all along under a canopy of cloth of
gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young
boys, like painted Cupids, stood on each side to fan her.
Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces,
some steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes.
The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the
Shore, which was covered with multitudes, part following
the galley up the river on either bank, part running out of
the city to see the sight. The market-place was quite
emptied, and Antony at last was left alone sitting upon
the tribunal; while the word went through all the
multitude, that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus, for
the common good of Asia.
On her arrival, Antony sent to invite her to supper. She
thought it fitter he should come to her; so, willing to show
his good-humour and courtesy, he complied, and went.
He found the preparations to receive him magnificent
beyond expression, but nothing so admirable as the great
number of lights; for on a sudden there was let down
altogether so great a number of branches with lights in
them so ingeniously disposed, some in squares, and some
in circles, that the whole thing was a spectacle that has
seldom been equalled for beauty. The next day, Antony
invited her to supper, and was very desirous to outdo her
as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he
was altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced
of it that he was himself the first to jest and mock at his
poverty of wit and his rustic awkwardness. She,
perceiving that his raillery was broad and gross, and
Savoured more of the soldier than the courtier, rejoined in
the same taste, and fell into it at once, without any sort of
reluctance or reserve.
For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so
remarkable that none could be compared with her, or
that no one could see her without being struck by it, but
the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was
irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the
charm of her conversation, and the character that
attended all she said or did, was something bewitching.
Plutarch, Antony
14 A certain young man a rhetorician came to see Epictetus,
with his hair dressed more carefully than was usual and
his attire in an ornamental style; whereupon Epictetus
said: Tell me if you do not think that some dogs are
beautiful and some horses, and so of all other animals, "I
do think so," the youth replied. are not then some men
also beautiful and others ugly? "Certainly," Do we, then,
for the same reason call each of them in the same kind
beautiful, or each beautiful for something peculiar? And
you will judge of this matter thus. Since we see a dog
naturally formed for one thing, and a horse for another,
and for another still, as an example, a nightingale, we
may generally and not improperly declare each of them
to be beautiful then when it is most excellent according
to its nature; but since the nature of each is different,
each of them seems to me to be beautiful in a different
way. Is it not so? He admitted that it was. That then which
makes a dog beautiful, makes a horse ugly; and that
which makes a horse beautiful, makes a dog ugly, if it is
true that their natures are different. "It seems to be so."
For | think that what makes a pancratiast beautiful,
makes a wrestler to be not good, and a runner to be most
ridiculous; and he who is beautiful for the Pentathlon, is
very ugly for wrestling. "It is so," said he. What, then,
makes a man beautiful? Is it that which in its kind makes
both a dog and a horse beautiful? "It is," he said. What,
then makes a dog beautiful? The possession of the
excellence of a dog. And what makes a horse beautiful?
The possession of the excellence of a horse. What then
makes a man beautiful? Is it not the possession of the
excellence of a man? And do you, then, if you wish to be
beautiful, young man, labour at this, the acquisition of
human excellence. But what is this? Observe whom you
yourself praise, when you praise many persons without
partiality: do you praise the just or the unjust? "The just."
Whether do you praise the moderate or the immoderate?
"The moderate." And the temperate or the intemperate?
"The temperate." If, then, you make yourself such a
person, you will know that you will make yourself
beautiful: but so long as you neglect these things, you
must be ugly, even though you contrive all you can to
appear beautiful.
Epictetus, Discourses, III, 1
15 We ought to observe also that even the things which
follow after the things which are produced according to
nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For
instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the
surface, and these parts which thus open, and havea
certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker’s art,
are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a
desire for eating. And again, figs, when they are quite
ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very
circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a
peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending
down, and the lion’s eyebrows, and the foam which flows
from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things—
though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should
examine them severally—still, because they are
consequent upon the things winch are formed by nature,
help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a
man should have a feeling and deeper insight with
respect to the things which are produced in the universe,
there is hardly one of those which follow by way of
consequence which will not seem to him to be ina
manner disposed so as to give pleasure. And so he will
see even the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less
pleasure than those which painters and sculptors show by
imitation; and in an old woman and an old man he will be
able to see a certain maturity and comeliness; and the
attractive loveliness of young persons he will be able to
look on with chaste eyes; and many such things will
present themselves, not pleasing to every man, but to
him only who has become truly familiar with nature and
her works.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Ill, 2
16 Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in
itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of
itself. Neither worse then nor better is a thing made by
being praised. | affirm this also of the things which are
called beautiful by the vulgar, for example, material
things and works of art. That which is really beautiful has
no need of anything; not more than law, not more than
truth, not more than benevolence or modesty. Which of
these things is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled
by being blamed? Is such a thing as an emerald made
worse than it was, if it is not praised? Or gold, ivory,
purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 20
17 We ourselves possess beauty when we are true to our
own being; our ugliness is in going over to another order;
our self-knowledge, that is to say. is our beauty; in self-
ignorance we are ugly.
Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, VIII, 13
18 Beauty is that which irradiates symmetry rather than
symmetry itself and is that which truly calls out our love.
Why else is there more of the glory of beauty upon the
living and only some faint trace of it upon (he dead,
though the face yet retains all its fulness and symmetry?
Why are the most living portraits the most beautiful, even
though the others happen to be more symmetric? Why is
the living ugly more attractive than the sculptured
handsome? It is that the one is more nearly what we are
looking for, and this because there is soul there, because
there is more of the idea of the good, because there is
some glow of the light of the good and this illumination
awakens and lifts the soul and all that goes with it so that
the whole man is won over to goodness, and in the fullest
measure stirred to life.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennead, VII, 22
19 In writing to you, good friend, who are well skilled in
culture, | need hardly premise in many words that
sublimity is a certain consummateness and preeminence
of phrase, and that the greatest poets and prose writers
gained the first rank, and grasped an eternity of fame, by
no other means than this. For what is out of the common
leads an audience, not to persuasion, but to ecstasy...
The startling effect of the wonderful always and
everywhere has the better of the merely persuasive and
the merely pleasing; for to be persuaded depends, as a
rule, on ourselves, but this other quality applies
irresistible authority and force, and gets the better of all
hearers. Inventive skill, orderly disposition of matter, we
see struggling to appear as the effect, not of this or that
thing, but of the whole tissue of the work in letters. But
the sublime, shooting forth at the nick of time, scatters
everything like a levin bolt and shows the whole power of
the author at once.
Longinus, On the Sublime, |, 4
20 There is an appeal to the eye in beautiful things, in gold
and silver and all such; the sense of touch has its own
powerful pleasures; and the other senses find qualities in
things suited to them. Worldly success has its glory, and
the power to command and to overcome... . But in our
quest of all these things, we must not depart from You,
Lord, or deviate from Your Law. This life we live here
below has its own attractiveness, grounded in the
measure of beauty it has and its harmony with the beauty
of all lesser things. The bond of human friendship is
admirable, holding many souls as one. Yet in the
enjoyment of all such things we commit sin if through
immoderate inclination to them—for though they are
good, they are of the lowest order of good—things higher
and better are forgotten, even You, O Lord our God, and
Your Truth and Your Law. These lower things have their
delights but not such as my God has, for He made them
all.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 5
21 But... | did not at that time know, and | was in love with
those lower beauties. | was sinking into the very depths
and | said to my friends: "Do we love anything save what
is beautiful? What then is beautiful? and what is beauty?
What is it that allures us and delights us in the things we
love? Unless there were grace and beauty in them they
could not possibly draw us to them." Looking deeper |
saw that in things themselves we must distinguish
between the beauty which belongs to the whole in itself,
and the becomingness which results from right relation to
some other thing, as a part of the body to the whole
body, or a shoe to the foot, and such like. This thought
surged up into my mind from the very depths of my heart
and | composed certain books De Pulchro et Apto-- on the
beautiful and the fitting —two books or three, | fancy; You
know, O God, for | do not remember. | no longer have
them. Somehow or other they have been lost.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 13
22 My eyes love the diverse forms of beauty, brilliant and
pleasing colors. Let these things not take possession of
my soul; let God possess it, who made these things and
made them exceedingly good: yet He is my good, not
they. For they affect me in all the waking hours of every
day, nor dol find any respite from them such as | do
sometimes find in silence from all the voices of song. For
light, the queen of colors, suffusing all the things | see
whenever | am abroad in daylight, entices me as it flows
before my sight in all its variousness, even though | am
busy upon something else and not observing it. For it
works its way into me with such power that if it is
suddenly withdrawn, | desire it with great longing; and if
it is absent too long, it saddens my mind....
How innumerable are the things made by every kind
of art and workmanship in clothes, shoes, vessels and
such like, in pictures also and every kind of statue—far
beyond necessary and moderate use and any meaning of
devotion—that men have added for the delight of their
eyes, going abroad from themselves after the things they
have themselves made, interiorly abandoning Him by
whom they were made and destroying what He made in
them. But |, O my God and my Glory, | too utter a hymn
to Thee and offer my praise as sacrifice to Him who
sanctifies me; for all that loveliness which passes through
men’s minds into their skillful hands comes from that
supreme loveliness which is above our souls, which my
soul sighs for day and night. From the supreme beauty
those who make and seek after exterior beauty derive the
measure by which they judge of it, but not the measure
by which it should be used. Yet this measure too is there,
and they do not see it: for if they did they would not
wander far from it, but would preserve their strength only
for Thee and would not dissipate it upon delights that
grow wearisome. But |, who speak thus and see thus, yet
entangle my feet in these lower things of beauty; but
Thou wilt pluck me forth. Lord, Thou wilt pluck me forth,
because Thy mercy is before my eyes.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 34
23 Beauty and good in a subject are the same, for they are
based upon the same thing, namely; the form; and
consequently good is praised as beauty. But they differ
logically, for good properly relates to the appetite (good
being what all things desire), and therefore it has the
aspect of an end (for the appetite is a kind of movement
towards a thing). On the other hand, beauty relates to the
knowing power, for beautiful things are those which
please when seen. Hence beauty consists in due
proportion, for the senses delight in things duly
proportioned, as in what is after their own kind—because
even sense is a sort of reason, just as is every knowing
power.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, 5, 4
24 Beauty includes three conditions: integrity or perfection,
since those things which are impaired are by the very fact
ugly; due proportion or harmony; and lastly, brightness,
or clarity, whence things are called beautiful which have
an elegant colour.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 39, 8
25 Beauty... consists in a certain clarity and due proportion.
Now each of these has its roots in the reason, because
both the light that makes beauty seen, and the
establishing of due proportion among things belong to
reason. Hence since the contemplative life consists in an
act of the reason, there is beauty in it per se and
essentially; therefore it is written (Wis. 8.2) of the
contemplation of wisdom: / became a lover of her beauty.
On the other hand, beauty is in the moral virtues by
participation, in so far that is as they share the order of
reason; and above all is it in temperance, which restrains
the concupiscences which especially darken the light of
reason. Hence it is that the virtue of chastity most of all
makes man apt for contemplation, since sexual pleasures
most of all weigh the mind down to sensible objects.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 180, 2
26 Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, one day amongst (he many
spoils and booties, which by his victories he had
acquired, presenting to the Egyptians, in the open view
of the people, a Bactrian camel all black, and a party-
coloured slave, in such sort, as that the one half of his
body was black, and the other white, not in partition of
breadth by the diaphragm, as was that woman
consecrated to the Indian Venus, whom the Tyanean
philosopher did see between the River Hydaspes and
Mount Caucasus, but in a perpendicular dimension of
altitude; which were things never before that seen in
Egypt. He expected by the show of these novelties to win
the love of the people. But what happened thereupon? At
the production of the camel they were all affrighted, and
offended at the sight of the party-coloured man—some
scoffed at him as a detestable monster brought forth by
the error of nature—in a word, of the hope which he had
to please these Egyptians, and by such means to increase
the affection which they naturally bore him, he was
altogether frustrated and disappointed; understanding
fully by their deportments, that they took more pleasure
and delight in things that were proper, handsome, and
perfect, than in misshapen, monstrous, and ridiculous
creatures.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, III, Prologue
27 As for bodily beauty,. .. it is likely that we know little
about what beauty is in nature and in general, since to
our own human beauty we give so many different forms.
If there was any natural prescription for it, we should
recognize it in common, like the heat of fire. We imagine
its forms to suit our fancy.... The Indies paint it black and
dusky, with large swollen lips and a wide flat nose. And
they load the cartilage between the nostrils with big gold
rings, to make it hang down to the mouth; as also the
lower lip with large hoops enriched with precious stones,
so that it falls down over their chin; and their charm is to
show their teeth down to the base of the roots. In Peru,
the biggest ears are the fairest, and they stretch them
artificially as much as they can; and a man of this day
says he saw in one oriental nation this care for enlarging
them and loading them with heavy jewels in such favor,
that time and again he could pass his arm, fully clothed,
through the hole in an car. Elsewhere there are nations
that blacken their teeth with great care, and scorn to see
white ones; elsewhere they stain them red.
Not only in the Basque country do women consider
themselves more beautiful with heads shaven, but in
plenty of other places, and what is more, in certain glacial
countries, so Pliny says. Mexican women count among
their beauties a small forehead; and whereas they trim
their hair on all other parts of the body, on their forehead
they cultivate it and increase it by art; and they have
such great esteem for large breasts, that they aspire to be
able to suckle their children over their shoulder. We
would represent ugliness that way.
The Italians make beauty plump and massive, the
Spaniards hollow and gaunt; and among us, one man
makes it fair, the other dark; one soft and delicate, the
other strong and vigorous; one demands daintiness and
sweetness, another pride and majesty. Even as the
preference in beauty, which Plato attributes to the
spherical figure, the Epicureans give rather to the
pyramidal or the square, and cannot swallow a god in the
Shape of a ball.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
28 Beauty is a great recommendation in dealings with men;
it is the prime means of conciliation between them, and
there is no man so barbarous and surly as not to be
somewhat struck by its charm. The body has a great part
in our being, it holds a high rank in it; so its structure and
composition are well worth consideration. Those who
want to split up our two principal parts and sequester
them from each other are wrong. On the contrary, we
must couple and join them together again. We must order
the soul not to draw aside and entertain itself apart, not
to scorn and abandon the body (nor can it do so except
by some counterfeit monkey trick), but to rally to the
body, embrace it, cherish it, assist it, control it, advise it,
set it right and bring it back when it goes astray; in short,
to marry it and be a husband to it, so that their actions
may appear not different and contrary, but harmonious
and uniform.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 17, Of Presumption
29 The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men. Where
smallness dwells, neither breadth and roundness of
forehead, nor clarity and softness of eyes, nor the
moderate form of the nose, nor small size of ears and
mouth, nor regularity and whiteness of teeth, nor the
smooth thickness of a beard brown as the husk of a
chestnut, nor curly hair, nor proper roundness of head,
nor freshness of color, nor a pleasant facial expression,
nor an odorless body, nor just proportion of limbs, can
make a handsome man.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 17, Of Presumption
30 | cannot say often enough how much | consider beauty a
powerful and advantageous quality. Socrates called it "a
short tyranny," and Plato, "the privilege of nature." We
have no quality that surpasses it in credit. It holds the
first place in human relations; it presents itself before the
rest, seduces and prepossesses our judgment with great
authority and a wondrous impression. Phryne would have
lost her case even in the hands of an excellent attorney,
if, opening her robe, she had not corrupted her judges by
her dazzling beauty. And | find that Cyrus, Alexander,
Caesar, those three masters of the world, did not forget
beauty in carrying out their great affairs; nor did Scipio
the Elder.
One and the same word in Greek embraces the
beautiful and the good. And the Holy Ghost often calls
good those whom it means to call beautiful. | would
readily uphold the ranking of good things found ina
song, taken from some ancient poet, which Plato says was
widely known: health, beauty, riches.
Aristotle says that to the beautiful belongs the right to
command, and that when there are any whose beauty
approaches that of the images of the gods, veneration is
likewise their due. To one who asked him why people
frequented beautiful persons longer and more often, he
said: "That question is proper only for a blind man." Most
philosophers, and the greatest, paid for their schooling,
and acquired wisdom, by the mediation and favor of their
beauty.
Not only in the men w’ho serve me, but also in
animals, | consider it as within two fingers’ breath o!
goodness.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 12, Of Physiognomy
31 Biron. Where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, IV, iti, 312
32 Rosalind. Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, I, tii, 112
33 Jaques. If ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vil, 37
34 Ophelia. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce
than with honesty?
Hamlet. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Ill, 1, 109
35 Perdita. Now, my fair’st friend,
| would | had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let’st fall
From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength—a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds.
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these | lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er!
Florizel. What, like a corse?
Per. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried.
But quick and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers.
Methinks | play as | have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals. Sure this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
Flo. What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever. When you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too. When you do dance, | wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.
Shakespeare, Winters Tale, IV, iv, 112
36 From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory.
Shakespeare, Sonnet |
37 Shall | compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.
And often is his gold completion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession
of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII
38 When in the chronicle of wasted time
| see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
| see their antique pen would have express’d
Even such a beauty as you master now.
Shakespeare, Sonnet CVI
39 That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot
express; no nor the first sight of life. There is no excellent
beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durcr were
the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage
by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best
parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such
personages, | think, would please nobody but the painter
that made them. Not but I think a painter may make a
better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of
felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in
music) and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you
examine them part by part, you shall find never a good;
and yet altogether do well.
If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in
decent motion, certainly it is no mars'cl though persons
in years seem many times more amiable... [autumn is the
beauty of beauties} —for no youth can be comely but by
pardon, and considering the youth as to make up the
comeliness. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to
corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a
dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance;
but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue
shine, and vices blush.
Bacon, Of Beauty
40 Comus. List Lady be not coy, and be not cosen'd
With that same vaunted name Virginity,
Beauty is natures coyn, must not be hoorded,
But must be currant, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partak’n bliss,
Unsavoury in tb’injoymcnt of it self
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose
It withers on the stalk wiih languish't head.
Beauty is natures brag, and must be shown
In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities
Where most may wonder at the workmanship;
It is for homely features to keep home,
They had their name thence; course complexions
And checks of sorry grain will serve to ply
The sampler, and to teize the huswifes wooll.
What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the Morn?
There was another meaning in these gifts,
Think what, and be adviz'd, you are but young yet.
Milton, Comus, 737
41 Mirabell. Nay, 'tis true: you are no longer handsome when
you've lost your lover, your beauty dies upon the instant:
for beauty is the lover's gift; 'tis he bestows your charms
—your glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old, whom
the looking glass mortifies, yet after commendation can
be flattered by it, and discover beauties in it: for that
reflects our praises, rather than your fare.
Millamant O, the vanity of these men’ Fainall, d’ye
hear him? If they did not commend us, we were not
handsome! Now you must know they could not commend
one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover’s gift?—
Lord, what is a lover, that it can give? Why, one makes
lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one
pleases, and they die as son as one pleases: and then if
one pleases one makes more.
Congreve. Way of the World, II, v
42 Now the agonies which affected the mind of Sophia,
rather augmented than impaired her beauty; for her tears
added brightness to her eyes, and her breasts rose higher
with her sighs. Indeed, no one hath seen beauty in its
highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.
Fielding, Tom Jones, VII, 6
43 To say the truth, perfect beauty in both sexes is a more
irresistible object than it is generally thought; for,
notwithstanding some of us are contented with more
homely lots, and learn by rote (as children to repeat what
gives them no Idea) to despise outside, and to value more
solid charms; yet | have always observed, at the approach
of consummate beauty, that these more solid charms
only shine with that kind of lustre which the stars have
after the rising of the sun.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XVI, 9
44 No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirr’d:
Nor cruel Jom, nor Susan heard.
A Fav’rite has no friend!
From hence, ye Beauties, undeceiv’d,
Know, one false step is ne’er retriev’d,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all, that glisters, gold.
Gray, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat
45 Ask a toad what beauty is, the to kalon? He will answer
you that it is his toad wife with two great round eyes
issuing from her little head, a wide, flat mouth, a yellow
belly, a brown back. Interrogate a Guinea negro, for him
beauty is a black oily skin, deep-set eyes, a flat nose.
Interrogate the devil; he will tell you that beauty is a pair
of horns, four claws and a tail. Consult, lastly, the
philosophers, they will answer you with gibberish: they
have to have something conforming to the arch-type of
beauty in essence, to the to kalon.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Beauty
46 We then fell into a disquisition whether there is any
beauty independent of utility. The General maintained
there was not. Dr. Johnson maintained that there was; and
he instanced a coffee-cup which he held in his hand, the
painting of which was of no real use, as the cup would
hold the coffee equally well if plain; yet the painting was
beautiful.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 31, 1772)
47 The beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is
represented as the object of a universal delight.... For
where any one is conscious that his delight in an object is
with him independent of interest, it is inevitable that he
should look on the object as one containing a ground of
delight for all men. For, since the delight is not based on
any inclination of the subject (or on any other deliberate
interest), but the subject feels himself completely free in
respect of the liking which he accords to the object, he
can find as reason for his delight no personal conditions
to which his own subjective self might alone be party.
Hence he must regard it as resting on what he may also
presuppose in every other person; and therefore he must
believe that he has reason for demanding a similar
delight from every one. Accordingly he will speak of the
beautiful as if beauty were a quality of the object and the
judgement logical (forming a cognition of the object by
concepts of it); although it is only aesthetic, and contains
merely a reference of the representation of the object to
the subject; because it still bears this resemblance to the
logical judgement, that it may be presupposed to be valid
for all men. But this universality cannot spring from
concepts. For from concepts there is no transition to the
feeling of pleasure or, displeasure (save in the case of
pure practical laws, which, however, carry an interest
with them; and such an interest does not attach to the
pure judgement of taste). The result is that the
judgement of taste, with its attendant consciousness of
detachment from all interest, must involve a claim to
validity for all men, and must do so apart from
universality attached to objects, i.e., there must be
coupled with it a claim to subjective universality.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 6
48 The most important and vital distinction between the
sublime and the beautiful is certainly this: that if, as is
allowable, we here confine our attention in the first
instance to the sublime in objects of nature (that of art
being always restricted by the conditions of an
agreement with nature), we observe that whereas natural
beauty (such as is self-subsisting) conveys a finality in its
form making the object appear, as it were, preadapted to
our power of judgement, so that it thus forms of itself an
object of our delight, that which, without our indulging in
any refinements of thought, but, simply in our
apprehension of it, excites the feeling of the sublime,
may appear, indeed, in point of form to contravene the
ends of our power of judgement, to be ill-adapted to our
faculty of presentation, and to be, as it were, an outrage
on the imagination, and yet it is judged all the more
sublime on that account.
From this it may be seen at once that we express
ourselves on the whole inaccurately if we term any object
of nature sublime, although we may with perfect
propriety call many such objects beautiful. For how can
that which is apprehended as inherently contra-final be
noted with an expression of approval? All that we can say
is that the object lends itself to the presentation of a
sublimity discoverable in the mind. For the sublime, in
the strict sense of the word, cannot be contained in any
sensuous form, but rather concerns ideas of reason,
which, although no adequate presentation of them is
possible, may be excited and called into the mind by that
very inadequacy itself which does admit of sensuous
presentation. Thus the broad ocean agitated by storms
cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible, and one
must have stored one’s mind in advance with a rich stock
of ideas, if such an intuition is to raise it to the pitch of a
feeling which is itself sublime— sublime because the
mind has been incited to abandon sensibility and employ
itself upon ideas involving higher finality.
Self-subsisting natural beauty reveals to us a technic
of nature which shows it in the light of a system ordered
in accordance with laws the principle of which is not to be
found within the range of our entire faculty of
understanding. This principle is that of a finality relative
to the employment of judgement in respect of
phenomena which have thus to be assigned, not merely
to nature regarded as aimless mechanism, but also to
nature regarded after the analogy of art. Hence it gives a
veritable extension, not, of course, to our knowledge of
objects of nature, but to our conception of nature itself—
nature aS mere mechanism being enlarged to the
conception of nature as art—an extension inviting
profound inquiries as to the possibility of such a form. But
in what we are wont to call sublime in nature there is
such an absence of anything leading to particular
objective principles and corresponding forms of nature
that it is rather in its chaos, or in its wildest and most
irregular disorder and desolation, provided it gives signs
of magnitude and power, that nature chiefly excites the
ideas of the sublime. Hence we see that the concept of
the sublime in nature is far less important and rich in
consequences than that of its beauty. It gives on the
whole no indication of anything final in nature itself, but
only in the possible employment of our intuitions of it in
inducing a feeling in our own selves of a finality quite
independent of nature. For the beautiful in nature we
must seek a ground external to ourselves, but for the
sublime one merely in ourselves and the attitude of mind
that introduces sublimity into the representation of
nature. This is a very needful preliminary remark. It
entirely separates the ideas of the sublime from that of a
finality of nature, and makes the theory of the sublime a
mere appendage to the aesthetic estimate of the finality
of nature, because it does not give a representation of
any particular form in nature, but involves no more than
the development of a final employment by the
imagination of its own representation.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 23
49 There is no science of the beautiful, but only a critique.
Nor, again, is there an elegant science, but only a fine art.
For a science of the beautiful would have to determine
scientifically, that is, by means of proofs, whether a thing
was to be considered beautiful or not; and the judgement
upon beauty, consequently, would, if belonging to
science, fail to be a judgement of taste. As for a beautiful
science—a science which, as such, is to be beautiful, is a
nonentity.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 44
50 Once the teleological estimate of nature, supported by
the physical ends, actually presented to us in organic
beings, has entitled us to form the idea of a vast system
of natural ends, we may regard even natural beauty from
this point of view, such beauty being an accordance of
nature with the free play of our cognitive faculties as
engaged in grasping and estimating its appearance. For
then we may look upon it as an objective finality of
nature in its entirety as a system of which man is a
member. We may regard it as a favour that nature has
extended to us, that besides giving us what is useful it
has dispensed beauty and charms in such abundance,
and for this we may love it, just as we view it with respect
because of its immensity, and feel ourselves ennobled by
such contemplation—just as if nature had erected and
decorated its splendid stage with this precise purpose in
its mind.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 67
51 Faust. Have | still eyes? Is Beauty’s spring, outpouring,
Revealed most richly to my inmost soul?
My dread path brought me to this loftiest goal!
Void was the world and barred to my exploring!
What is it now since this my priesthood’s hour?
Worth wishing for, firm-based, a lasting dower!
Vanish from me my every vital power
If | forsake thee, treacherous to my duty!
The lovely form that once my fancy captured,
That in the magic glass enraptured,
Was but a foam-born phantom of such beauty!—
To thee alone | render up with gladness
The very essence of my passion,
Fancy, desire, love, worship, madness!
Goethe, Faust, Il, |, 6487
52 Chiron. Woman's beauty? That is not worth telling.
Too oft a rigid image do we see;
| praise alone a being welling
With love of life and gaiety.
Self-blest is beauty, cold and listless,
‘Tis winsomeness that makes resistless.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 2, 7399
53 Chorus. O lady glorious, do not disdain
Honoured possession of highest estate!
For to thee alone is the greatest boon given:
The fame of beauty transcending all else.
The hero’s name resounds ere he comes,
Hence proudly he strides,
Yet bows at once the stubbornest man
At the throne of Beauty, the all-conquering.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 3, 8516
54 Phorkyas. Old is the word, yet high and late remains the
sense,
That Modesty and Beauty never, hand in hand.
Pursue their way along the verdant paths of earth.
Deep-rooted dwells in both of them an ancient hate,
That wheresoever on the way they chance to meet,
Each on the other turns her back in enmity.
Then each one hastens on with greater vehemence,
Modesty sad but Beauty insolent of mood,
Till Orcus’ hollow night at last envelops them,
Unless old age has fettered them before that time.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 3, 8754
55 Lynceus. Easy are the lord’s commands,
Child’s-play to the servant’s hands:
Beauty in such fair excess
Rules all wealth, rules blood no less.
All the army now is tame,
All the swords are blunt and lame.
By this glorious form, behold!
Even the sun seems faint and cold.
By this wealth of loveliness
All is empty nothingness.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 3, 9346
56 A marriageable girl, whose natural destiny is to bear and
suckle children, will not be beautiful without the proper
breadth of the pelvis and the necessary fullness of the
breasts.
Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (Apr. 18, 1827)
57 She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
Byron, She Walks in Beauty
58 O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shah remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
59 The voice | hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
60 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Keats, Endymion, I, 1
61 There is a beauty of a peculiar kind in women, in which
their countenance presents a transparency of skin, a light
and lovely roseate hue, which is unlike the complexion of
mere health and vital vigor—a more refined bloom,
breathed, as it were, by the soul within—and in which the
features, the light of the eye, the position of the mouth,
appear soft, yielding, and relaxed. This almost unearthly
beauty is perceived in women in those days which
immediately succeed childbirth; when freedom from the
burden of pregnancy and the pains of travail is added to
the joy of soul that welcomes the gift of a beloved infant.
A similar tone of beauty is seen also in women during the
magical somnambulic sleep, connecting them with a
world of superterrestrial beauty. A great artist (Schoreel)
has moreover given this tone to the dying Mary, whose
Spirit is already rising to the regions of the blessed, but
once more, as it were, lights up her dying countenance
for a farewell kiss. Such a beauty we find also in its
loveliest form in the Indian world; a beauty of enervation
in which all that is rough, rigid, and contradictory is
dissolved, and we have only the soul in a state of
emotion; a soul, however, in which the death of free self-
reliant spirit is perceptible. For should we approach the
charm of this flower-life, a charm rich in imagination and
genius, in which its whole environment and all its
relations are permeated by the rose-breath of the soul,
and the world is transformed into a garden of love—
should we look at it more closely, and examine it in the
light of human dignity and freedom—the more attractive
the first sight of it had been, so much the more unworthy
Shall we ultimately find it in every respect.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, |, 2
62 It is true that in common life we are in the habit of
speaking of beautiful colour, a beautiful sky, a beautiful
river, and, moreover, of beautiful flowers, beautiful
animals, and, above all, of beautiful human beings. We
will not just now enter into the controversy how far such
objects can justly have the attribute of beauty ascribed
to them... . We may, however, begin at once by asserting
that artistic beauty stands higher than nature. For the
beauty of art is the beauty that is born—born again, that
is—of the mind; and by as much as the mind and its
products are higher than nature and its appearances, by
so much the beauty of art is higher than the beauty of
nature.
Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, |
63 The beauty’ of a work of art consists in the fact that it
holds up a clear mirror to certain ideas inherent in the
world in general; the beauty of a work of poetic art in
particular is that it renders the ideas inherent in
mankind, and thereby leads it to a knowledge of these
ideas. The means which poetry uses for this end are the
exhibition of significant characters and the invention of
circumstances which will bring about significant
situations, giving occasion to the characters to unfold
their peculiarities and show what is in them; so that by
some such representation a clearer and fuller knowledge
of the many-sided idea of humanity may be attained.
Beauty, however, in its general aspect, is the inseparable
characteristic of the idea when it has become known. In
other words, everything is beautiful in which an idea is
revealed, for to be beautiful means no more than clearly
to express an idea.
Schopenhauer, Interest and Beauty in Works of Art
64 We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no
superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which
stands related to all things; which is the mean of many
extremes.
Emerson, Considerations by the Way
65 Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
| never thought to ask, | never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
Emerson, The Rhodora
66 The perfection of a process—that is, its utility—is the
better point of beauty about it.
Faraday, Chemical History of a Candle, |
67 The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect
elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant
hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam,
and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity
of feature and richness of complexion, had the
impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep
black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the
feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a
certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate,
evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now
recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne
appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of
the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who
had before known her, and had expected to behold her
dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were
astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her
beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and
ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true,
that, to a sensitive observer, there was something
exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had
wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled
much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude
of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by
its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which
drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer—so
that both men and women, who had been familiarly
acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if
they beheld her for the first time—was that Scarlet Letter,
so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her
bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the
ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her ina
sphere by herself.
Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter, I/
68 Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it
often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful,
strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the
tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble
in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As
devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked
corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive
chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal
arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human
form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they
may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled
hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has
been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so
destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of
any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of
submission and endurance, which on all hands it is
conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his
teachings.
Melville, Moby Dick, LXXXVI
69 With respect to the belief that organic beings have been
created beautiful for the delight of man—a belief which it
has been pronounced is subversive of my whole theory—I
may first remark that the sense of beauty obviously
depends on the nature of the mind, irrespective of any
real quality in the admired object; and that the idea of
what is beautiful is not innate or unalterable. We see this,
for instance, in the men of different races admiring an
entirely different standard of beauty in their women. If
beautiful objects had been created solely for man’s
gratification, it ought to be shown that before man
appeared, there was less beauty on the face of the earth
than since he came on the stage....
On the other hand, | willingly admit that a great
number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds,
some fishes, reptiles, and mammals, and a host of
magnificently coloured butterflies, have been rendered
beautiful for beauty’s sake; but this has been effected
through sexual selection, that is, by the more beautiful
males having been continually preferred by the females,
and not for the delight of man. So it is with the music of
birds. We may infer from all this that a nearly similar
taste for beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs
through a large part of the animal kingdom. When the
female is as beautifully coloured as the male, which is not
rarely the case with birds and butterflies, the cause
apparently lies in the colours acquired through sexual
selection having been transmitted to both sexes, instead
of to the males alone. How the sense of beauty in its
simplest form—that is, the reception of a peculiar kind of
pleasure from certain colours, forms, and sounds—was
first developed in the mind of man and of the lower
animals, is a very obscure subject. The same sort of
difficulty is presented, if we enquire how it is that certain
flavours and odours give pleasure, and others
displeasure. Habit in all these cases appears to have
come to a certain extent into play; but there must be
some fundamental cause in the constitution of the
nervous system in each species.
Darwin, Origin of Species, VI
70 Everyone who admits the principle of evolution, and yet
feels great difficulty in admitting that female mammals,
birds, reptiles, and fish, could have acquired the high
taste implied by the beauty of the males, and which
generally coincides with our own standard, should reflect
that the nerve-cells of the brain in the highest as well as
in the lowest members of the vertebrate series, are
derived from those of the common progenitor of this
great kingdom. For we can thus see how it has come to
pass that certain mental faculties, in various and widely
distinct groups of animals, have been developed in nearly
the same manner and to nearly the same degree.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
71 1 died for Beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb
When one who died for Truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly "Why | failed"?
“For Beauty," | replied.
"And | for Truth. The two are one,
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms.
Until the moss had reached our lips
And covered up our names.
Emily Dickinson, | Died for Beauty
72 Mitya. Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible
because it has not been fathomed and never can be
fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the
boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.
| am not a cultivated man, brother, but I’ve thought a lot
about this. It’s terrible what mysteries there are! Too
many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve
them as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.
Beauty! | can’t endure the thought that a man of lofty
mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and
ends with the ideal of Sodom. What’s still more awful is
that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not
renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be
on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his
days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too
broad, indeed. I’d have him narrower. The devil only
knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is
beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in
Sodom? Believe me that for the immense mass of
mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that
secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as
well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and
the battlefield is the heart of man. But a man always talks
of his own ache. Listen, now to come to facts.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. |, Ill, 3
73 He [Pierre] half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt
handed him the snuffbox, passing it across Helene’s
back. Helene stooped forward to make room, and looked
round with a smile. She was, as always at evening parties,
wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very
low at front and back. Her bust, which had always
seemed like marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his
shortsighted eyes could not but perceive the living charm
of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that he need
only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He
was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of
perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He
did not see her marble beauty forming a complete whole
with her dress, but all the charm of her body only covered
by her garments. And having once seen this he could not
help being aware of it, just aS we cannot renew an illusion
we have once seen through.
"So you have never noticed before how beautiful |
am?" Helene seemed to say, "You had not noticed that |
am a woman? Yes, |am a woman who may belong to
anyone—to you too," said her glance. And at that
moment Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must,
be his wife, and that it could not be otherwise.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, Ill, 1
74 The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha’s face
caught his [Prince Andrew’s] eye. He recognized her,
guessed her feelings, saw that it was her debut,
remembered her conversation at the window, and with an
expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess
Rostova.
"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the
countess, with heightened color.
"| have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if
the countess remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a
low and courteous bow quite belying Peronskaya’s
remarks about his rudeness, and approaching Natasha he
held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had
completed his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That
tremulous expression on Natasha's face, prepared either
for despair or rapture, suddenly brightened into a happy,
grateful, childlike smile.
"| have long been waiting for you," that frightened
happy little girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced
the threatened tears, as she raised her hand to Prince
Andrew’s shoulder. They were the second couple to enter
the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of
his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in
their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly,
lightly, and independently of herself, while her face
beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender bare arms
and neck were not beautiful—compared to Helene’s her
shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But
Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by
the thousands of looks that had scanned her person,
while Natasha was like a girl exposed for the first time,
who would have felt very much ashamed had she not
been assured that this was absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as
quickly as possible from the political and clever talk
which everyone addressed to him, wishing also to break
up the circle of restraint he disliked, caused by the
Emperor’s presence, he danced, and had chosen Natasha
because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she
was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely
had he embraced that slender supple figure and felt her
stirring so close to him and smiling so near him than the
wine of her charm rose to his head, and he felt himself
revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, VI, 16
75 What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is
goodness.
Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, V
76 The 'beautiful in itself’ is not even a concept, merely a
phrase. In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the
standard of perfection; in select cases he worships
himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise than affirm
itself alone in this manner.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: Expeditions of an
Untimely Man
77 The aesthetic principles are at bottom such axioms as
that a note sounds good with its third and fifth, or that
potatoes need salt. We are once for all so made that when
certain impressions come before our mind, one of them
will seem to call for or repel the others as its companions.
To a certain extent the principle of habit will explain
these aesthetic connections. When a conjunction is
repeatedly experienced, the cohesion of its terms grows
grateful, or at least their disruption grows unpleasant.
But to explain a// aesthetic judgments in this way would
be absurd; for it is notorious how seldom natural
experiences come up to our aesthetic demands. Many of
the so-called metaphysical principles are at bottom only
expressions of aesthetic feeling. Nature is simple and
invariable; makes no leaps, or makes nothing but leaps;
is rationally intelligible; neither increases nor diminishes
in quantity; flows from one principle, etc., etc.,—what do
all such principles express save our sense of how
pleasantly our intellect would feel if it had a Nature of
that sort to deal with? The subjectivity of which feeling is
of course quite compatible with Nature also turning out
objectively to be of that sort, later on.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
78 Louis. | Know that in an accidental sort of way, struggling
through the unreal part of life, | havn’t always been able
to live up to my ideal. But in my own real world | have
never done anything wrong, never denied my faith, never
been untrue to myself. I’ve been threatened and
blackmailed and insulted and starved. But I’ve played the
game. I’ve fought the good fight. And now it’s all over,
theres an indescribable peace. [He feebly folds his hands
and utters his creed] | believe in Michael Angelo,
Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the
mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty
everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these
hands blessed. Amen.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, IV
79 Truth derives [its] self-justifying power from its services in
the promotion of Beauty. Apart from Beauty, Truth is
neither good, nor bad.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XVIII, 2
80 The enjoyment of beauty produces a particular, mildly
intoxicating kind of sensation. There is no very evident
use in beauty; the necessity of it for cultural purposes is
not apparent, and yet civilization could not do without it.
The science of aesthetics investigates the conditions in
which things are regarded as beautiful; it can give no
explanation of the nature or origin of beauty; as usual, its
lack of results is concealed under a flood of resounding
and meaningless words.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, I!
81 There is an old formula for beauty in nature and art:
Unity in variety. Everything depends upon how the
preposition "in" is understood. There may be many
articles in a box, many figures in a single painting, many
coins in one pocket, and many documents in a safe. The
unity is extraneous and the many are unrelated. The
significant point is that unity and manyness are always of
this sort or approximate it when the unity of the object or
scene is morphological and static. The formula has
meaning only when its terms are understood to concern a
relation of energies. There is no fullness, no many parts,
without distinctive differentiations. But they have
esthetic quality, as in the richness of a musical phrase,
only when distinctions depend upon reciprocal
resistances. There is unity only when the resistances
create a suspense that is resolved through cooperative
interaction of the opposed energies. The "one" of the
formula is the realization through interacting parts of
their respective energies. The "many" is the
manifestation of the defined individualizations due to
opposed forces that finally sustain a balance. Thus the
next theme is the organization of energies in a work of
art. For the unity in variety that characterizes a work of
art is dynamic.
Dewey, Art As Experience, VII
82 Why should | blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Yeats, No Second Troy
83 This satisfaction of our reason, due to the harmony
between our nature and our experience, is partially
realised already. The sense of beauty is its realisation.
When our senses and imagination find what they crave,
when the world so shapes itself or so moulds the mind
that the correspondence between them is perfect, then
perception is pleasure, and existence needs no apology.
The duality which is the condition of conflict disappears.
There is no inward standard different from the outward
fact with which that outward fact may be compared. A
unification of this kind is the goal of our intelligence and
of our affection, quite as much as of our aesthetic sense;
but we have in those departments fewer examples of
success. In the heat of speculation or of love there may
come moments of equal perfection, but they are very
unstable. The reason and the heart remain deeply
unsatisfied. But the eye finds in nature, and in some
supreme achievements of art, constant and fuller
satisfaction. For the eye is quick, and seems to have been
more docile to the education of life than the heart or the
reason of man, and able sooner to adapt itself to the
reality. Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest
manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its
possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate
justification of being, we may understand the ground of
the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the
possible conformity between the soul and nature, and
consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the
good.
Santayana, Sense of Beauty, IV
84 Such affinity as there is between truth and beauty has
various sources. When the word truth is coloured
idealistically, to mean the types or potential perfections
of things, as when we speak of a true friend, evidently if
this latent "truth" could only be brought out and raised to
actual fact, it would also realize the beautiful. Love and
charity are quick to perceive the latent perfections of the
imperfect; and if we call this (perhaps imaginary)
potentiality the truth, we indeed divine the principle of
beauty also; of that beauty which the organic impulses of
nature would bring to light if they had their way and did
not interfere with one another... . Nature is necessarily
full of beauties, since our faculties of perception and
sympathy would not subsist if they were not adapted to
the facts of nature; and the truth is necessarily satisfying,
for the same reason. Yet nature is also full of ugly, cruel
and horrible things, and the truth in many ways is
desolating: because our nature, though sufficiently
harmonious with the universe to exist within it, is
nevertheless finite and specific, with essential interests
which nature and truth at large cannot but disregard. The
truth, then, is often, in many ways, interesting, beautiful
and sublime: but it is not identical with beauty either in
quality or extension or status.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, XII
16.7 Criticism and the Standards of
Taste
The passages assembled in this section are rather a mixed
bag. Some are about critics as such, and express the dislike
they evoke from the authors who are subject to their barbs.
Some are about criticism as such; and some are examples of
criticism. The one art that predominates in all these texts is
literature; yet, perhaps, the points made can be generalized
by the reader so that he sees their applicability to other arts,
at least to the extent of understanding that a critical as
contrasted with an uncritical appreciation of any work of art
involves an appeal to principles or criteria that have
something to do with the excellence of the work being
considered.
This obviously leads to questions already mentioned in
connection with beauty— questions about taste as
responsive to the characteristics of the work being
appreciated, about the distinction between good and bad
taste, and about the process by which good taste is
cultivated. The quotations that bear on these questions
should be related by the reader to the passages in the
preceding section that are concerned with the objectivity
and subjectivity of beauty.
There are a few passages that deal with style—both in
literature and in life. They are placed here because of the
relation of differences in style to differences in taste.
For passages that might have appeared here instead of in
other sections of this chapter, or in other chapters, the
reader should consult the index under appropriate terms of
interest.
1 Socrates. Then beauty of style and harmony and grace
and good rhythm depend on simplicity—I mean the true
simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and
character, not that other simplicity which is only an
euphemism for folly?
Very true, he [Glaucon] replied.
And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they
not make these graces and harmonies their perpetual
aim?
They must.
And surely the art of the painter and every other
creative and constructive art are full of the m—weaving,
embroidery, architecture, and every kind of manufacture;
also nature, animal and vegetable—in all of them there is
grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and discord
and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill words
and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters
of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness.
That is quite true, he said.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 400B
2 Socrates. This is the distinction which | draw between the
sight-loving, art-loving, practical class and those of whom
| am speaking, and who are alone worthy of the name of
philosophers.
How do you distinguish them? he [Glaucon] said.
The lovers of sounds and sights, | replied, are, as |
conceive, fond of fine tones and colours and forms and all
the artificial products that are made out of them, but
their mind is incapable of seeing or loving absolute
beauty.
True, he replied.
Few are they who are able to attain to the sight of this.
Very true.
And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no
sense of absolute beauty, or who, if another lead him toa
knowledge of that beauty is unable to follow—of such an
one | ask, Is he awake or in a dream only? Reflect: is not
the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens
dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the
real object?
| should certainly say that such an one was dreaming.
But take the case of the other, who recognises the
existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish
the idea from the objects which participate in the idea,
neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor
the idea in the place of the objects—is he a dreamer, or is
he awake?
He is wide awake.
Plato, Republic, V, 476A
3 Athenian Stranger. Are beautiful things not the same to us
all, or are they the same in themselves, but not in our
opinion of them? For no one will admit that forms of vice
in the dance are more beautiful than forms of virtue, or
that he himself delights in the forms of vice, and others in
a muse of another character. And yet most persons Say,
that the excellence of music is to give pleasure to our
souls. But this is intolerable and blasphemous; there is,
however, a much more plausible account of the delusion.
Cleinias. What?
Ath. The adaptation of art to the characters of men.
Choric movements are imitations of manners occurring in
various actions, fortunes, dispositions—each particular is
imitated, and those to whom the words, or songs, or
dances are suited, either by nature or habit or both,
cannot help feeling pleasure in them and applauding
them, and calling them beautiful. But those whose
natures, or ways, or habits are unsuited to them, cannot
delight in them or applaud them, and they call them
base. There are others, again, whose natures are right
and their habits wrong, or whose habits are right and
their natures wrong, and they praise one thing, but are
pleased at another. For they say that all these imitations
are pleasant, but not good. And in the presence of those
whom they think wise, they are ashamed of dancing and
singing in the baser manner, or of deliberately lending
any countenance to such proceedings; and yet, they
have a secret pleasure in them.
Plato, Laws, Il, 655A
4 Athenian Stranger. The excellence of music is to be
measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be that
of chance persons; the fairest music is that which
delights the best and best educated, and especially that
which delights the one man who is pre-eminent in virtue
and education. And therefore the judges must be men of
character, for they will require both wisdom and courage;
the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the
theatre, nor ought he to be unnerved by the clamour of
the many and his own incapacity; nor again, knowing the
truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness
carelessly to deliver a lying Judgment, with the very same
lips which have just appealed to the Gods before he
judged. He is sitting not as the disciple of the theatre,
but, in his proper place, as their instructor, and he ought
to be the enemy of all pandering to the pleasure of the
spectators. The ancient and common custom of Hellas,
which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave
the judgment to the body of spectators, who determined
the victor by show of hands. But this custom has been
the destruction of the poets; for they are now in the habit
of composing with a view to please the bad taste of their
judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct
themselves;—and also it has been the ruin of the theatre;
they ought to be having characters put before them
better than their own, and so receiving a higher pleasure,
but now by their own act the opposite result follows.
Plato, Laws, Il, 658B
5 A master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks
the intermediate and chooses this—the intermediate not
in the object but relatively to us.
If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well—by
looking to the intermediate and judging its works by this
standard—so that we often say of good works of art that it
is not possible either to take away or to add anything,
implying that excess and defect destroy the goodness of
works of art, while the mean preserves it; and good artists
as we Say, look to this in their work.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1106b5
6 The many are better judges than a single man of music
and poetry; for some understand one part, and some
another, and among them they understand the whole.
Aristotle, Politics, 1281b7
7 What to one man is food, to another is rank poison.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
8 Be not too rigidly censorious,
A string may jar in the best master’s hand,
And the most skilful archer miss his aim;
But in a poem elegantly writ,
| will not quarrel with a slight mistake,
Such as our nature’s frailty may excuse;
But he that hath been often told his fault,
And still persists, is as impertinent,
As a musician that will always play,
And yet is always out at the same note;
When such a positive abandon’d fop
(Among his numerous absurdities)
Stumbles upon some tolerable line,
| fret to see them in such company,
And wonder by what magic they came there.
But in long works sleep will sometimes surprise,
Homer himself hath been observ’d to nod.
Horace, Ars Poetica
9 All language demonstrates three kinds of excellence;
correctness, precision, and elegance (for to speak with
propriety, its highest quality, is usually included by
writers under elegance). Language also has the same
number of faults, and these are the opposites of the
qualities just mentioned.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, I, 5
10 | Know that there are some writers who would gladly
ignore the importance of composition altogether, because
they contend that unpolished language, presenting itself
spontaneously, is more natural and manly. But if such
writers actually contend that the natural is only that
which has sprung from nature which preceded culture,
then all oratory is at an end. ...
As the current of a river is more forcible in a
descending channel which offers no obstruction to its
course, than amidst rocks that oppose the broken and
struggling waters; so also language that is properly
corrected and flows smoothly is preferable to that which
is rugged and fragmentary. Why then should anyone
think that vigor is diminished when attention is paid to
beauty? Nothing attains its natural strength without art,
and beauty always accompanies art.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1X, 4
11 Many people admire what is bad, but no one condemns
what is good.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XII, 10
12 Beauty, unlike greatness, we regard as absolute and asa
quality; "more beautiful" is the relative. Yet even the term
"beautiful" may be attached to something which in a
given relation may appear ugly: the beauty of man, for
example, is ugliness when compared with that of the
gods; "the most beautiful of monkeys," we may quote, "is
ugly in comparison with any other type." Nonetheless, a
thing is beautiful in itself; as related to something else it
is either more or less beautiful.
Similarly, an object is great in itself, and its greatness
is due, not to any external, but to its own participation in
the Absolute Great.
Are we actually to eliminate the beautiful on the
pretext that there is a more beautiful? No more then must
we eliminate the great because of the greater; the
greater can obviously have no existence whatever apart
from the great, just as the more beautiful can have no
existence without the beautiful.
Plotinus, Sixth Ennrad, Ill, 11
13 Reason stands in different relations to the productions of
art and to moral actions. In matters of art, reason is
directed to a particular end, which is something devised
by reason, while in moral matters, it is directed to the
general end of ail human life. Now a particular end is
ordered to the general end. Since therefore sin is a
departure from the order to the end ... Sin may occur in
two ways in a production of art. First, by a departure from
the particular end intended by the artist, and this sin will
be proper to the art; for instance, if an artist produce a
bad thing while intending to produce something good, or
produce something good while intending to produce
something bad. Secondly, by a departure from the
general end of human life, and then he will be said to sin
if he intend to produce a bad work, and does so in effect,
so that another is thus deceived. But this sin is not proper
to the artist as such, but as a man. Consequently for the
former sin the artist is blamed as an artist, while for the
latter he is blamed as a man. On the other hand, in moral
matters, where we take into consideration the order of
reason to the general end of human life, sin and evil are
always due to a departure from the order of reason to the
general end of human life. Therefore man is blamed for
.such a sin both as man and as a moral being. Hence the
Philosopher [Aristotle] says that "in art, he who sins
voluntarily is preferable"; but in prudence, as in the
moral virtues, which prudence directs, he is less
preferable.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 21, 2
14 Here is a wonder: we have many more poets than judges
and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to create it than to
understand it. On a certain low level it can be judged by
precepts and by art. But the good, supreme, divine
poetry is above the rules and reason.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 37, Of Cato the Younger
13 When | want to judge someone, | ask him how satisfied
he is with himself, to what extent he is pleased with his
words or his work. | want to get away from those fine
excuses: "I did it in play ... | was not an hour at it; | have
not looked at it since." Well, then, | say, let us put these
pieces aside, give me something that represents you
fully, by which you would like to be measured. And then,
what do you think is finest in your work? Is it this part or
that? Is it the charm, or the matter, or the originality, or
the judgment, or the knowledge? For 1 notice generally
that people are as mistaken in judging their own work as
that of others, not only because of the affection that is
involved, but also because they have not the capacity to
know and distinguish it for what it is. The work, by its
own power and fortune, may second the workman
beyond his inventiveness and knowledge and outstrip
him. For my part, | do not judge the value of any other
work less clearly than my own; and | place the Essays
now low, now high, very inconsistently and uncertainly.
There are many books that are useful by reason of
their subjects, from which the author derives no
commendation; and there are good books, like good
works, which shame the workman.
Montaigne, Essays, III, 8, Of the Art of Discussion
16 Though men in learned tongues do tic themselves to the
ancient measures, yet in modern languages it seemeth to
me as free to make new measures of verses as of dances:
for a dance is a measured pace, aS a verse iS a Measured
speech. In these things the sense is better judge than the
art.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. 11, XVI, 5
17 There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which
consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as
it is, weak er strong, and the thing which pleases us.
Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases
us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman,
birds, rivers, trees, rooms, dress, etc. Whatever is not
made according to this standard displeases those who
have good taste.
And as there is a perfect relation between a song and
a house which are made after a good model, because
they are like this good model, though each after its kind;
even so there is a perfect relation between things made
after a bad model. Not that the bad model is unique, for
there are many; but each bad sonnet, for example, on
whatever false model it is formed, is just like a woman
dressed after that model.
Nothing makes us understand better the
ridiculousness of a false sonnet than to consider nature
and the standard and, then, to imagine a woman or a
house made according to that standard.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 32
18 Men consider all things as made for themselves, and call
the nature of a thing, good, evil, sound, putrid, or corrupt,
just as they are affected by it. For example, if the motion
by which the nerves are affected by means of objects
represented to the eye conduces to well-being, the
objects by which it is caused are called beautiful; while
those exciting a contrary motion are called deformed.
Those things, too, which stimulate the senses through the
nostrils are called sweet-smelling or thinking; those
which act through the taste are called sweet or bitter,
full-flavoured or insipid; those which act through the
touch, hard or soft, heavy or light; those, lastly, which act
through the ears are said to make a noise, sound, or
harmony, the last having caused men to lose their senses
to such a degree that they have believed that God even
is delighted with it. Indeed, philosopher may be found
who have persuaded themselves that the celestial
motions beget a harmony. All these things sufficiently
show that every one judges things by the constitution of
his brain, or rather accepts the affections of his
imagination in the place of things. It is not, therefore, to
be wondered at, as we may observe in passing, that all
those controversies which we see have arisen amongst
men, so that at last scepticism has been the result. For
although human bodies agree in many things, they differ
in more, and therefore that which to one person is good
will appear to another evil, that which to one is well
arranged to another is confused, that which pleases one
will displease another, and so on in other cases which |
pass by both because we cannot notice them at length
here, and because they are within the experience of
every one. For every one has heard the expressions: So
many heads, so many ways of thinking; Every one is
satisfied with his own way of thinking; Differences of
brains are not less common than differences of taste;—all
which maxims show that men decide upon matters
according to the constitution of their brains, and imagine
rather than understand things,
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Appendix
19 Each Poet of inferior size
On you shall rail and criticize. ,..
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller Fleas to bite ’em,
And so proceed ad infinitum:
Thus ev’ry Poet in his Kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.
Swift, On Poetry: A Rhapsody
20 Some have conceived it would be very expedient for the
public good of learning that every true critic, as soon as
he had finished his task assigned, should immediately
deliver himself up to ratsbane, or hemp, or leap from
some convenient altitude; and that no man’s pretensions
to so illustrious a character should by any means be
received before that operation were performed.
Swift, Tale of a Tub, III
21 These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate
definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and
collector of writers faults. Which may be farther put
beyond dispute by the following demonstration:—That
whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith
this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall
immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of
them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether
conversant and taken up with the faults, and blemishes,
and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and, let the
subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations
are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of
other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad
does of necessity distil into their own; by which means
the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of
the criticisms themselves have made.
Swift, Tale of a Tub, III
22 ‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But of the two less dangerous is the offense
To tire our patience than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, |, 1
23 Be Homer’s works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, |, 124
24 But most by numbers judge a poet’s song,
And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong.
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where’er you find “the cooling western breeze,”
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees”;
If crystal streams “with pleasing murmurs creep,”
The reader’s threatened (not in vain) with “sleep”;
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What’s roundly smooth or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigor of a line
Where Denham’s strength and Waller’s sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er the unbending com, and skims along the main.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 337
25 Ah, ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
in the critic let the man be lost!
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive divine.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 522
26 The world have paid too great a compliment to critics,
and have imagined them men of much greater profundity
than they really are. From this complacence, the critics
have been emboldened to assume a dictatorial power,
and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the
masters, and have the assurance to give laws to those
authors from whose predecessors they originally received
them.
The critic, rightly considered, is no more than the
clerk, whose office it is to transcribe the rules and laws
laid down by those great judges whose vast strength of
genius hath placed them in the light of legislators, in the
several sciences over which they presided. This office was
all which the critics of old aspired to; nor did they ever
dare to advance a sentence, without supporting it by the
authority of the judge from whence it was borrowed.
But in process of time, and in ages of ignorance, the
clerk began to invade the power and assume the dignity
of his master. The laws of writing were no longer founded
on the practice of the author, but on the dictates of the
critic. The clerk became the legislator, and those very
peremptorily gave laws whose business it was, at first,
only to transcribe them.
Hence arose an obvious, and perhaps an unavoidable
error; for these critics being men of shallow capacities,
very easily mistook mere form for substance. They acted
as a judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless letter
of law, and reject the spirit. Little circumstances, which
were perhaps accidental in a great author, were by these
critics considered to constitute his chief merit, and
transmitted as essentials to be observed by all his
successors. To these encroachments, time and ignorance,
the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority;
and thus many rules for good writing have been
established, which have not the least foundation in truth
or nature; and which commonly serve for no other
purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same
manner as it would have restrained the dancing-master,
had the many excellent treatises on that art laid it down
as an essential rule that every man must dance in chains.
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 1
27 This word critic is of Greek derivation, and signifies
judgment. Hence | presume some persons who have not
understood the original, and have seen the English
translation of the primitive, have concluded that it meant
judgment in the legal sense, in which it is frequently used
as equivalent to condemnation.
| am rather inclined to be of that opinion, as the
greatest number of critics hath of late years been found
amongst the lawyers. Many of these gentlemen, from
despair, perhaps, of ever rising to the bench in
Westminster-hall, have placed themselves on the
benches at the playhouse, where they have exerted their
judicial capacity, and have given judgment, i.e.,
condemned without mercy.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XI, |
28 The great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which
prevails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen
under every one's observation. Men of the most confined
knowledge are able to remark a difference of taste in the
narrow circle of their acquaintance, even where the
persons have been educated under the same
government, and have early imbibed the same
prejudices. But those who can enlarge their view to
contemplate distant nations and remote ages, are still
more surprised at the great inconsistence and contrariety.
We are apt to call barbarous whatever departs widely
from our own taste and apprehension; but soon find the
epithet of reproach retorted on us. And the highest
arrogance and self-conceit is at last startled, on observing
an equal assurance on all sides, and scruples, amidst
such a contest of sentiment, to pronounce positively in its
own favour.
Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
29 Though it be certain that beauty and deformity, more
than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but
belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external, it
must be allowed that there are certain qualities in objects
which are fitted by nature to produce those particular
feelings. Now, as these qualities may be found in a small
degree, or may be mixed and confounded with each
other, it often happens that the taste is not affected with
such minute qualities, or is not able to distinguish all the
particular flavours, amidst the disorder in which they are
presented. Where the organs are so fine as to allow
nothing to escape them, and at the same time so exact as
to perceive every ingredient in the composition, this we
call delicacy of taste, whether we employ these terms in
the literal or metaphorical sense. Here then the general
rules of beauty are of use, being drawn from established
models, and from the observation of what pleases or
displeases, when presented singly and in a high degree;
and if the same qualities, in a continued composition,
and in a smaller degree, affect not the organs with a
sensible delight or uneasiness, we exclude the person
from all pretensions to this delicacy.
Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
30 Though the principles of taste be universal, and nearly, if
not entirely, the same in all men, yet few are qualified to
give judgment on any work of art, or establish their own
sentiment as the standard of beauty. The organs of
internal sensation are seldom so perfect as to allow the
general principles their full play, and produce a feeling
correspondent to those principles. They either labour
under some defect, or are vitiated by some disorder; and
by that means excite a sentiment, which may be
pronounced erroneous. When the critic has no delicacy,
he judges without any distinction, and is only affected by
the grosser and more palpable qualities of the object: the
finer touches pass unnoticed and disregarded. Where he
is not aided by practice, his verdict is attended with
confusion and hesitation. Where no comparison has been
employed, the most frivolous beauties, such as rather
merit the name of defects, are the object of his
admiration. Where he lies under the influence of
prejudice, all his natural sentiments are perverted. Where
good sense is wanting, he is not qualified to discern the
beauties of design and reasoning, which are the highest
and most excellent. Under some or other of these
imperfections, the generality of men labour; and hence a
true judge in the finer arts is observed, even during the
most polished ages, to be so rare a character: strong
sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by-
practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all
prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable
character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they
are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.
Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
31 Grant me patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which
are canted in the canting world— though the cant of
hypocrites may be the worst— the cant of criticism is the
most tormenting!
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Ill, 12
32 | mentioned Mallet’s tragedy of Elvira, which had been
acted the preceding winter at Drurylane, and that the
Honourable Andrew Erskine, Mr. Dempster, and myself,
had joined in writing a pamphlet, entitled, Critical
Strictures, against it. That the mildness of Dempster’s
disposition had, however, relented; and he had candidly
said, "We have hardly a right to abuse this tragedy: for
bad as it is, how vain should either of us be to write one
not near so good." Johnson. "Why no. Sir; this is not just
reasoning. You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot
write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a
bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your
trade to make tables."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 25, 1763)
33 Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a
blockhead"; and upon my expressing my astonishment at
so strange an assertion, he said, "What | mean by his
being a blockhead is that he was a barren rascal."
Boswell. "Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very
natural pictures of human life?" johnson. "Why, Sir, it is of
very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not
known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was
an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one
letter of Richardson’s, than in all 7om Jones. |, indeed,
never read joseph Andrews." Erskine. "Surely, Sir,
Richardson is very tedious." Johnson. "Why, Sir, if you
were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience
would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself.
But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider
the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 6, 1772)
34 Talking on the subject of taste in the arts, he said, that
difference of taste was, in truth, difference of skill.
Boswell. "But, Sir, is there not a quality called taste,
which consists merely in perception or in liking? For
instance, we find people differ much as to what is the
best style of English composition. Some think Swift’s the
best; others prefer a fuller and grander way of writing."
Johnson. "Sir, you must first define what you mean by
style, before you can judge who has a good taste in style,
and who has a bad. The two classes of persons whom you
have mentioned don’t differ as to good and bad. They
both agree that Swift has a good neat style; but one loves
a neat style, another loves a style of more splendour. In
like manner, one loves a plain coat, another loves a laced
coat; but neither will deny that each is good in its kind."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 19, 1772)
35 We talked of the styles of different painters, and how
certainly a connoisseur could distinguish them; | asked, if
there was as Clear a difference of styles in language as in
painting, or even as in hand-writing, so that the
composition of every individual may be distinguished?
Johnson. "Yes. Those who have a style of eminent
excellence, such as Dryden and Milton, can always be
distinguished." | had no doubt of this, but what | wanted
to know was, whether there was really a peculiar style to
every man whatever, as there is certainly a peculiar
hand-writing, a peculiar countenance, not widely
different in many, yet always enough to be distinctive....
The Bishop thought not; and said, he supposed that
many pieces in Dodsley’s collection of poems, though all
very pretty, had nothing appropriated in their style, and
in that particular could not be at all distinguished.
Johnson. "Why, Sir, | think every man whatever has a
peculiar style, which may be discovered by nice
examination and comparison with others: but a man must
write a great deal to make his style obviously
discernible."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 13, 1778)
36 Everyone must allow that a judgement on the beautiful
which is tinged with the slightest interest, is very partial
and not a pure judgement of taste. One must not be in
the least prepossessed in favour of the real existence of
the thing, but must preserve complete indifference in this
respect, in order to play the part of judge in matters of
taste.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 2
37 So far as the interest of inclination in the case of the
agreeable goes, every one says "Hunger is the best
sauce; and people with a healthy appetite relish
everything, so long as it is something they can eat." Such
delight, consequently, gives no indication of taste having
anything to say to the choice. Only when men have got
all they want can we tell who among the crowd has taste
or not.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 5
38 A principle of taste would mean a fundamental premiss
under the condition of which one might subsume the
concept of an object, and then, by a syllogism, draw the
inference that it is beautiful. That, however, is absolutely
impossible. For | must feel the pleasure immediately in
the representation of the object, and | cannot be talked
into it by any grounds of proof. Thus although critics, as
Hume says, are able to reason more plausibly than cooks,
they must still share the same fate. For the determining
ground of their judgement they are not able to look to the
force of demonstrations, but only to the reflection of the
subject upon his own state (of pleasure or displeasure), to
the exclusion of precepts and rules.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 34
39 Taste is, in the ultimate analysis, a critical faculty that
judges of the rendering of moral ideas in terms of sense
(through the intervention of a certain analogy in our
reflection on both); and it is this rendering also, and the
increased sensibility, founded upon it, for the feeling
which these ideas evoke (termed moral sense), that are
the origin of that pleasure which taste declares valid for
mankind in general and not merely for the private feeling
of each individual. This makes it clear that the true
propaedeutic for laying the foundations of taste is the
development of moral ideas and the culture of the moral
feeling. For only when sensibility is brought into harmony
with moral feeling can genuine taste assume a definite
unchangeable form.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 60
40 Nothing is more common than for scholars to make a
ridiculous figure, in regard to a question of beauty,
beside cultured men of the world; and technical critics
are especially the laughing-stock of connoisseurs. Their
opinion, from exaggeration, crudeness, or carelessness
guides them generally quite awry, and they can only
devise a technical judgment, and not an aesthetical one,
embracing the whole work, in which feeling should
decide. If they would kindly keep to technicalities, they
might still be useful, for the poet in moments of
inspiration and readers under his spell are little inclined
to consider details. But the spectacle which they afford us
Is only the more ridiculous inasmuch as we see these
crude natures—with whom all labour and trouble only
develop at the most a particular aptitude—when we see
them set up their paltry individualities as the
representation of universal and complete feeling, and in
the sweat of their brow pronounce judgment on beauty.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
41 Manager. Men come to look, to see they most prefer.
If, as they gaze, much is reeled off and spun,
So that the startled crowd gapes all it can,
A multitude you will at once have won;
You then will be a much-loved man.
You can compel the mass by mass alone;
Each in the end will seek out something as his own.
Bring much and you'll bring this or that to everyone
And each will leave contented when the play is done.
If you will give a piece, give it at once in pieces!
Ragout like this your fame increases.
Easy it is to stage, as easy to invent.
What use is it, a whole to fashion and present?
The Public still will pick it all to pieces.
Goethe, Faust, Prelude on the Stage, 90
42 We find... it is true, among all world-historical peoples,
poetry, plastic art, science, even philosophy; but not only
is there a diversity in style and bearing generally, but still
more remarkably in subject-matter; and this is a diversity
of the most important kind, affecting the rationality of
that subject-matter. It is useless for a pretentious
aesthetic criticism to demand that our good pleasure
should not be made the rule for the matter—the
substantial part of their contents—and to maintain that it
is the beautiful form as such, the grandeur of the fancy,
and so forth, which fine art aims at, and which must be
considered and enjoyed by a liberal taste and cultivated
mind. A healthy intellect does not tolerate such
abstractions, and cannot assimilate productions of the
kind above referred to. Granted that the Indian epopees
might be placed on a level with the Homeric, on account
of a number of those qualities of form—grandeur of
invention and imaginative power, liveliness of images
and emotions, and beauty of diction; yet the infinite
difference of matter remains; consequently one of
substantial importance and involving the interest of
reason, which is immediately concerned with the
consciousness of the idea of freedom, and its expression
in individuals. There is not only a classical form, but a
classical order of subject-matter; and in a work of art form
and subject-matter are so closely united that the former
can only be classical to the extent to which the latter is
so. With a fantastical, indeterminate material—and rule is
the essence of reason—the form becomes measureless
and formless, or mean and contracted.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
43 Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index
to character than the face. To imitate another man’s style
is like wearing a mask, which, be it never so fine, is not
long in arousing disgust and abhorrence, because it is
lifeless; so that even the ugliest living face is better.
Hence those who write in Latin and copy the manner of
ancient authors may be said to speak through a mask;
the reader, it is true, hears what they say, but he cannot
observe their physiognomy too; he cannot see their style.
Schopenhauer, Style
44 The taste for the beautiful, at least as far as female
beauty is concerned, is not of a special nature in the
human mind; for it differs widely in the different races of
man, and is not quite the same even in the different
nations of the same race. Judging from the hideous
ornaments, and the equally hideous music admired by
most savages, it might be urged that their esthetic
faculty was not so highly developed as in certain animals,
for instance, as in birds. Obviously no animal would be
capable of admiring such scenes as the heavens at night,
a beautiful landscape, or refined music; but such high
tastes are acquired through culture, and depend on
complex associations; they are not enjoyed by barbarians
or by uneducated persons.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 3
45 The senses of man and of the lower animals seem to be
so constituted that brilliant colours and certain forms, as
well as harmonious and rhythmical sounds, give pleasure
and are called beautiful; but why this should be so we
know not. It is certainly not true that there is in the mind
of man any universal standard of beauty with respect to
the human body. It is, however, possible that certain
tastes may in the course of time become inherited,
though there is no evidence in favour of this belief; and if
so, each race would possess its own innate ideal standard
of beauty. It has been argued that ugliness consists in an
approach to the structure of the lower animals, and no
doubt this is partly true with the more civilised nations, in
which intellect is highly appreciated; but this explanation
will hardly apply to all forms of ugliness. The men of each
race prefer what they are accustomed to; they cannot
endure any great change; but they like variety, and
admire each characteristic carried to a moderate
extreme. Men accustomed to a nearly oval face, to
straight and regular features, and to bright colours,
admire, as we Europeans know, these points when
strongly developed. On the other hand, men accustomed
to a broad face, with high cheek-bones, a depressed nose,
and a black skin, admire these peculiarities when
strongly marked. No doubt characters of all kinds may be
too much developed for beauty. Hence a perfect beauty,
which implies many characters modified in a particular
manner, will be in every race a prodigy. As the great
anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in
the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty.
If all our women were to become as beautiful as the
Venus de' Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but
we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had
obtained variety, we should wish to see certain
characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing
common standard.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 19
46 Taste is not only a part and an index of morality—it is the
only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question
to any living creature is, "What do you like?" Tell me what
you like, and I'll tell what you are.
Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive, I!
47 It is noticeable that the word curiosity, which in other
languages is used in a good sense, to mean, as a high
and fine quality of man's nature, just this disinterested
love of a free play of the mind on all subjects, for its own
sake,—it is noticeable, | say, that this word has in our
language no sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad
and disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is
essentially the exercise of this very quality. It obeys an
instinct prompting it to try to know the best that is known
and thought in the world, irrespectively of practice,
politics, and everything of the kind; and to value
knowledge and thought as they approach this best,
without the intrusion of any other considerations
whatever.
Arnold, Function of Criticism at the Present Time
48 Constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the
really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn
from it should be present in our minds and should govern
our estimate of what we read. But this real estimate, the
only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not
watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic
estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are
fallacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historically,
they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves,
and they may count to us really. They may count to us
historically. The course of development of a nation’s
language, thought, and poetry is profoundly interesting;
and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course
of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it
of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we
may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise
in criticizing it; in short, to overrate it. So arises in our
poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate
which we may call historic. Then, again, a poet or a poem
may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves. Our
personal affinities, likings, and circumstances have great
power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's work,
and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry
than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has
been, of high importance. Here also we overrate the
object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise
which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source
of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments—the fallacy
caused by an estimate which we may call personal.
Arnold. Study of Poetry
49 Over immense departments of our thought we are still, all
of us, in the savage state. Similarity operates in us, but
abstraction has not taken place. We know what the
present case is like, we know what it reminds us of, we
have an intuition of the right course to take, if it bea
practical matter. But analytic thought has made no
tracks, and we cannot justify ourselves to others. In
ethical, psychological, and aesthetic matters, to give a
clear reason for one’s judgment is universally recognized
as a mark of rare genius. The helplessness of uneducated
people to account for their likes and dislikes is often
ludicrous. Ask the first Irish girl why she likes this country
better or worse than her home, and see how much she
can tell you. But if you ask your most educated friend
why he prefers Titian to Paul Veronese, you will hardly get
more of a reply; and you will probably get absolutely
none if you inquire why Beethoven reminds him of
Michelangelo, or how it comes that a bare figure with
unduly flexed joints, by the latter, can so suggest the
moral tragedy of life. His thought obeys a nexus, but
cannot name it. And so it is with all those judgments of
experts, which even though unmotived are so valuable.
William James, Psychology, XXII
50 | remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an
hour on a piercing February day in the Academy at
Venice before the celebrated Assumption by Titian; and
when I, after being chased from room to room by the cold,
concluded to get into the sunshine as fast as possible and
let the pictures go, but before leaving drew reverently
near to them to learn with what superior forms of
susceptibility they might be endowed, all | overheard was
the woman’s voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory
expression her face wears! What se/fabnegation! How
unworthy she feels of the honor she is receiving!" Their
honest hearts had been kept warm all the time by a glow
of spurious sentiment that would have fairly made old
Titian sick. Mr. Ruskin somewhere makes the (for him
terrible) admission that religious people as a rule care
little for pictures, and that when they do care for them
they generally prefer the worst ones to the best. Yes! in
every art, in every science, there is the keen perception
of certain relations being right or not, and there is the
emotional flush and thrill consequent thereupon. And
these are two things, not one. In the former of them it is
that experts and masters are at home. The latter
accompaniments are bodily commotions that they may
hardly feel, but that may be experienced in their fulness
by cretins and philistines in whom the critical judgment is
at its lowest ebb.
William James, Psychology, XXV
51 In my own experience of the appreciation of poetry | have
always found that the less | knew about the poet and his
work, before | began to read it, the better.
T. S. Eliot, Dante
52 Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative,
but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more
oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical
habits than of those of its creative genius.
T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
53 No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning
alone. His significance, his appreciation is the
appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.
You cannot value him alone-you must set him, for
contrast and comparison, among the dead. | mean this as
a principle of aesthetic, nor merely historical, criticism.
T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent
54 A musical education is necessary for musical judgment.
What most people relish is hardly music; it is rather a
drowsy revery relieved by nervous thrills.
Santayana, Life of Reason, IV, 4
Chapter 17
PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, and
MATHEMATICS
Chapter 17 is divided into three sections: 17.1 Philosophy
and Philosophers, 17.2 Science and Scientific Method, and
17.3 The Discipline of Mathematics.
Of the three terms that constitute the title of this chapter,
only one has sufficient clarity of meaning to need no
comment. That is mathematics. The other two have been so
variously used in the literature from which our quotations
are taken that the reader needs some notification about the
policy we have adopted in allocating passages to Section
17.1 or Section 17.2.
Until the end of the seventeenth century, and perhaps
even well into the eighteenth, the same disciplines were
often referred to as branches of philosophy or as particular
sciences. On the one hand, physics, mathematics, and
metaphysics or theology were called sciences, and so, too,
were ethics, politics, and logic; yet these same disciplines
were regarded as branches or divisions of philosophy. On the
other hand, at the beginning of the modern era, men who
engaged in experimental inquiry or the empirical
investigation of natural phenomena usually referred to
themselves as "natural philosophers" rather than as "natural
scientists," and used the word "philosophy" rather than the
word "science" in the titles of their books.
It is only toward the end of the eighteenth century and
since then that the word "science" has come to be used
more and more restrictedly for disciplines the method of
which involves special observational procedures and
techniques of investigation, in addition to theorizing,
mathematical formulations, and the construction of
hypotheses. When used with this meaning, the word
"science" cannot be applied to such disciplines as
mathematics or logic, metaphysics, theology, or ethics. They
can be called sciences only in the much broader sense of the
word which connotes an organized body of Knowledge or of
theories involving systematic reasoning from principles to
conclusions.
The restriction of the word "science" to experimental or
empirical inquiries was accompanied by a restriction of the
word "philosophy" to disciplines that, whether or not they
appealed to experience in any way, did not engage in
special efforts to investigate the phenomena by
observational techniques of one sort or another. Students of
nature employing the experimental method no longer call
themselves "natural philosophers"; while those who
speculate about the structure of nature and the order of the
cosmos call themselves "philosophers of nature"; and those
who develop theories about science itself call themselves
"philosophers of science."
In view of these shifts in the meaning of the words, we
have adopted the following policy. We have placed in
Section 17.1 quotations that discuss philosophy in that
restricted sense of the term which applies only to disciplines
that do not employ special observational techniques; and
we have done so whether or not the authors themselves
used the word "science" in referring to these disciplines,
Accordingly, Section 17.2 contains quotations that are
relevant to science as an investigative enterprise involving
methodical efforts to observe the phenomena, again
whether or not the authors call themselves "philosophers" or
refer to their work as "philosophy."
17.1 Philosophy and Philosophers
As the title of this section indicates, the quotations included
here deal either with the nature, scope, and value of
philosophy as a discipline or with the character and the
virtues or vices of the philosopher as a man. Only some of
the passages that consider philosophy itself regard it asa
body of knowledge, a mode of inquiry, an intellectual
discipline or way of thinking; many of them speak of
philosophy as a way of life, as a vocation that sets certain
men apart from others, just as a religious vocation does.
When philosophy is thus considered, the character of the
philosopher as a man is inextricably connected with the
manner of life he leads. To be philosophical in this sense is to
take a certain attitude toward life or to adopt certain rules of
conduct rather than to profess certain beliefs or to
promulgate theories about the nature of things.
It is only in the latter sense that philosophy is the object
of both praise and censure—accorded by some an honorable
place in the sphere of human inquiry and ridiculed by others
as nothing but sham or pretension. Philosophy is not alone
in this respect; other human undertakings or professions—
law and medicine, for example—have been the objects of
Satirical attack or derisive comment. But philosophy is
uniquely distinguished by the fact that many of its
detractors, and often the most abusive, are persons who
have called themselves or would be regarded as
philosophers.
The reader will also find that the philosophers quoted
seldom agree with one another about the definition of their
subject, the scope of their discipline, the method to be
employed by them, or the claims that can be made for their
conclusions. Nor do they agree about whether it is necessary
for a man to have certain moral virtues in order to bea
philosopher; whether he is a man of wisdom or only a lover
of or seeker after wisdom; and whether the history of
philosophy shows evidence of any progress in the
development of philosophical thought.
However, on three points, the reader will find a certain
measure of agreement. One is that, whatever its positive
values or contributions may be, philosophy does not build
bridges, cure diseases, or result in new inventions: it has no
technological applications whatsoever. A second point is the
concern common among philosophers about the relation of
their discipline to religion or theology, on the one hand, and
to mathematics and science, on the other. Closely connected
with that is the third point; namely, that philosophy, like
religion and unlike the natural sciences and mathematics,
extends beyond the consideration of what is to what ought
to be—to considerations of good and evil, right and wrong,
and the ultimate values that constitute the ends or
objectives of human life.
1 Protagoras was the first to maintain that there are two
sides to every question, opposed to each other, and he
even argued in this fashion, being the first to do so.
Furthermore he began a work thus; "Man is the measure
of all things, of things that are that they are, and of
things that are not that they are not." He used to say that
soul was nothing apart from the senses... and that
everything is true.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent
Philosophers, IX, 8
2 Strepsiades. Hallo! who’s that? that fellow in the basket?
Student of Socrates. That’s he.
St. Who's he.
Stu. Socrates.
St. Socrates!
You sir, call out to him as loud as you can.
Stu. Call him yourself: | have not leisure now.
The machine swings Socrates in.
St. Socrates! Socrates!
Sweet Socrates!
Socrates. Mortal! why call’st thou me?
St. O, first of all, please tell me what you are doing.
So. | walk on air, and contem-plate the Sun.
St. O then from a basket you contemn the Gods,
And not from the earth, at any rate?
So. Most true.
| could not have searched out celestial matters
Without suspending judgement, and infusing
My subtle spirit with the kindred air.
If from the ground | were to seek these things,
| could not find; so surely doth the earth
Draw to herself the essence of our thought.
Aristophanes, Clouds, 218
3 Socrates. The mind of the philosopher alone has wings;
and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure
of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in
which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He
is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever
being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes
truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is
rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke
him; they do not see that he is inspired.
Plato, Phaedrus, 249B
4 Alcibiades. | have been bitten by a more than viper’s
tooth; | have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in some
other part, that worst of pangs— more violent in
ingenuous youth than any serpent’s tooth—the pang of
philosophy, which will make a man say or do anything.
Plato, Symposium, 218A
5 Socrates. The lovers of knowledge are conscious that the
soul was simply fastened and glued to the body—until
philosophy received her, she could only view real
existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through
herself; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of
ignorance, and by reason of lust had become the
principal accomplice in her own captivity. This was her
Original state; and then, as | was saying, and as the lovers
of knowledge are well aware, philosophy, seeing how
terrible was her confinement, of which she was to herself
the cause, received and gently comforted her and sought
to release her, pointing out that the eye and the ear and
the other senses are full of deception, and persuading her
to retire from them, and abstain from all but the
necessary use of them, and be gathered up and collected
into herself, bidding her trust in herself and her own pure
apprehension of pure existence, and to mistrust whatever
comes to her through other channels and is subject to
variation; for such things are visible and tangible, but
what she sees in her own nature is intelligible and
invisible.
Plato, Phaedo, 82B
6 Let me [Socrates] next endeavour to show what is that
fault in States which is the cause of their present
maladministration, and what is the least change which
will enable a State to pass into the truer form; and let the
change, if possible, be of one thing only, or, if not, of two;
at any rate, let the changes be as few and slight as
possible.
Certainly, he [Glaucon] replied.
| think, | said, that there might be a reform of the State
if only one change were made, which is not a slight or
easy though still a possible one.
What is it? he said.
Now then, | said, | go to meet that which | liken to the
greatest of the waves; yet shall the word be spoken, even
though the wave break and drown me in laughter and
dishonour; and do you mark my words.
Proceed.
| said: Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and
princes of this world have the spirit and power of
philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in
one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to
the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside,
cities will never have rest from their evils—no, nor the
human race, as | believe—and then only will this our
State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.
Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which | would
fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant;
for to be convinced that in no other State can there be
happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing.
Plato, Republic, V, 473A
7 Adeimantus, | [Socrates] said, the worthy disciples of
philosophy will be but a small remnant: perchance some
noble and well-educated person, detained by exile in her
service, who in the absence of corrupting influences
remains devoted to her; or some lofty' soul born ina
mean city, the politics of which he contemns and
neglects; and there may be a gifted few who leave the
arts, which they justly despise, and come to her—or
peradventure there are some who are restrained by our
friend Theages’ bridle; for everything in the life of The-
ages conspired to divert him from philosophy; but ill-
health kept him away from politics. My own case of the
internal sign is hardly worth mentioning, for rarely, if
ever, has such a monitor been given to any other man.
Those who belong to this small class have tasted how
sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and have
also seen enough of the madness of the multitude; and
they know that no politician is honest, nor is there any
champion of justice at whose side they may fight and be
saved. Such an one may be compared to a man who has
fallen among wild beasts—he will not join in the
wickedness of his fellows, but neither is he able singly to
resist all their fierce natures, and therefore seeing that he
would be of no use to the State or to his friends, and
reflecting that he would have to throw away his life
without doing any good either to himself or others, he
holds his peace, and goes his own way. He is like one
who, in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving
wind hurries along, retires under the shelter of a wall; and
seeing the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is
content, if only he can live his own life and be pure from
evil or unrighteousness and depart in peace and good-
will, with bright hopes.
Yes, he said, and he will have done a great work before
he departs.
A great work—-yes; but not the greatest, unless he
find a Slate suitable to him; for in a State which is
suitable to him, he will have a larger growth and be the
saviour of his country, as well as of himself.
Plato, Republic, 496A
8 Socrates. Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and
philosophy begins in wonder.
Plato, Theaetetus, 155B
9 Socrates. | will illustrate my meaning, Theodoras, by the
jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to
have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he
was looking up at the stars. She said, that he was so
eager to Know what was going on in heaven, that he
could not see what was before his feet. This is a jest
which is equally applicable to all philosophers. For the
philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his next-door
neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing,
but he hardly knows whether he is a man or an animal;
he is searching into the essence of man, and busy in
enquiring what belongs to such a nature to do or suffer
different from any other;—I think that you understand
me, Theodorus?
Theodoras. | do, and what you Say is true.
Soc. And thus, my friend, on every occasion, private as
well as public, as | said at first, when he appears in a law-
court, or in any place in which he has to speak of things
which are at his feet and before his eyes, he is the jest,
not only of Thracian handmaids but of the general herd,
tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through his
inexperience. His awkwardness Is fearful, and gives the
impression of imbecility. When he is reviled, he has
nothing personal to say in answer to the civilities of his
adversaries, for he knows no scandals of any one, and
they do not interest him; and therefore he is laughed at
for his sheepishness; and when others are being praised
and glorified, in the simplicity of his heart he cannot help
going into fits of laughter, so that he seems to be a
downright idiot.... But, O my friend, when he draws the
other into upper air, and gets him out of his pleas and
rejoinders into the contemplation of justice and injustice
in their own nature and in their difference from one
another and from all other things; or from the
commonplaces about the happiness of a king or of a rich
man to the consideration of government, and of human
happiness and misery in general—what they are, and how
aman is to attain the one and avoid the other— when
that narrow, keen, little legal mind is called to account
about all this, he gives the philosopher his revenge; for
dizzied by the height at which he is hanging, whence he
looks down into space, which is a strange experience to
him, he being dismayed, and lost, and stammering
broken words, is laughed at, not by Thracian
handmaidens or any other uneducated persons, for they
have no eye for the situation, but by every man who has
not been brought up a slave.
Plato, Theaetetus, 174A
10 On my arrival [at Syracuse], | thought that first | must put
to the test the question whether Dionysios had really
been kindled with the fire of philosophy, or whether all
the reports which had come to Athens were empty
rumours. Now there is a way of putting such things to the
test which is not to be despised and is well suited to
monarchs, especially to those who have got their heads
full of erroneous teaching, which immediately on my
arrival | found to be very much the case with Dionysios.
One should show such men what philosophy is in all its
extent, what the range of studies is by which it is
approached, and how much labour it involves. For the
man who has heard this, if he has the true philosophic
Spirit and that godlike temperament which makes him
akin to philosophy and worthy of it, thinks that he has
been told of a marvellous road lying before him, that he
must forthwith press on with all his strength, and that life
is not worth living if he does anything else. After this he
uses to the full his own powers and those of his guide in
the path, and relaxes not his efforts, till he has either
reached the end of the whole course of study or gained
such power that he is not incapable of directing his steps
without the aid of a guide. This is the spirit and these are
the thoughts by which such a man guides his life,
carrying out his work, whatever his occupation may be,
but throughout it all ever cleaving to philosophy, and to
such rules of diet in his daily life as will give him inward
sobriety and therewith quickness in learning, a good
memory, and reasoning power; the kind of life which is
opposed to this he consistently hates. Those who have
not the true philosophic temper, but a mere surface
colouring of opinions penetrating, like sunburn, only skin
deep, when they see how great the range of studies is,
how much labour is involved in it, and how necessary to
the pursuit it is to have an orderly regulation of the daily
life, come to the conclusion that the thing is difficult and
impossible for them, and are actually incapable of
carrying out the course of study; while some of them
persuade themselves that they have sufficiently studied
the whole matter and have no need of any further effort.
This is the sure test and is the safest one to apply to
those who live in luxury and are incapable of continuous
effort; it ensures that such a man Shall not throw the
blame upon his teacher but on himself, because he
cannot bring to the pursuit all the qualities necessary to
it.
Plato, Seventh Letter
11 That it [philosophy] is not a science of production is clear
even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is
owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at
first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at
the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and
stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about
the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of
the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a
man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant
(whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of
wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore
since they philosophized in order to escape from
ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order
to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is
confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the
necessities of life and the things that make for comfort
and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge
began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for
the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free,
we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another’s,
sO we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone
exists for its own sake. ... All the sciences, indeed, are
more necessary than this, but none is better.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982b11
12 It is plain, then, that philosophic wisdom is scientific
knowledge, combined with intuitive reason, of the things
that are highest by nature. This is why we say
Anaxagoras, Thales, and men like them have philosophic
but not practical wisdom, when we see them ignorant of
what is to their own advantage, and why we say that they
know things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and
divine, but useless; viz. because it is not human goods
that they seek.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1141b2
13 Where there is no contract of service, those who give up
something for the sake of the other party cannot... be
complained of (for that is the nature of the friendship of
virtue), and the return to them must be made on the
basis of their purpose (for it is purpose that is the
characteristic thing in a friend and in virtue). And so too,
it seems, should one make a return to those with whom
one has studied philosophy; for their worth cannot be
measured against money, and they can get no honour
which will balance their services, but still it is perhaps
enough, as it is with the gods and with one’s parents, to
give them what one can.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1164b33
14 The activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the
pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit
of it is thought to offer pleasures marvellous for their
purity and their enduringness, and it is to be expected
that those who know will pass their time more pleasantly
than those who inquire. And the self-sufficiency that is
spoken of must belong most to the contemplative
activity. For while a philosopher, as well as a just man or
one possessing any other virtue, needs the necessaries of
life, when they are sufficiently equipped with things of
that sort the just man needs people towards whom and
with whom he shall act justly, and the temperate man,
the brave man, and each of the others is in the same
case, but the philosopher, even when by himself, can
contemplate truth, and the better the wiser he is; he can
perhaps do so better if he has fellow-workers, but still he
is the most self-sufficient. And this activity alone would
seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from
it apart from the contemplating, while from practical
activities we gain more or less apart from the action.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1177a24
15 It is evident that the form of government is best in which
every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.
But even those who agree in thinking that the life of
virtue is the most eligible raise a question, whether the
life of business and politics is or is not more eligible than
one which is wholly independent of external goods, |
mean than a contemplative life, which by some is
maintained to be the only one worthy of a philosopher.
For these two lives—the life of the philosopher and the
life of the statesman—appear to have been preferred by
those who have been most keen in the pursuit of virtue,
both in our own and in other ages. Which is the better is
a question of no small moment; for the wise man, like the
wise state, will necessarily regulate his life according to
the best end.
Aristotle, Politics, 1324a23
16 Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor
when he is old grow weary of his study. For no one can
come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul.
And the man who says that the age for philosophy has
either not yet come or has gone by is like the man who
says that the age for happiness is not yet come to him, or
has passed away. Wherefore both when young and old a
man must study philosophy, that as he grows old he may
be young in blessings through the grateful recollection of
what has been, and that in youth he may be old as well,
since he will Know no fear of what is to come. We must
then meditate on the things that make our happiness,
seeing that when that is with us we have all, but when it
is absent we do all to win it.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
17 When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth
crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed
her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect
lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece [Epicurus]
ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and
first to withstand her to her face.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
18 Who is able with powerful genius to frame a poem worthy
of the grandeur of the things and these discoveries? Or
who is so great a master of words as to be able to devise
praises equal to the deserts of him [Epicurus] who left to
us such prizes won and earned by his own genius? None
methinks who is formed of mortal body. For if we must
speak as the acknowledged grandeur of the things itself
demands, a god he was, a god, most noble Memmius,
who first found out that plan of life which is now termed
wisdom, and who by trained skill rescued life from such
great billows and such thick darkness and moored it in so
perfect a calm and in so brilliant a light. Compare the
godlike discoveries of others in old times: Ceres is famed
to have pointed out to mortals corn, and Liber the vine-
born juice of the grape; though life might well have
subsisted without these things, as we are told some
nations even now live without them. But a happy life was
not possible without a clean breast; wherefore with more
reason this man is deemed by us a god, from whom come
those sweet solaces of existence which even now are
distributed over great nations and gently soothe men’s
minds.... He therefore who shall have subdued all these
and banished them from the mind by words, not arms,
Shall he not have a just title to be ranked among the
gods? And all the more so that he was wont to deliver
many precepts in beautiful and godlike phrase about the
immortal gods themselves and to open up by his
teachings all the nature of things.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
19 Philosophy is the physician of the soul. It takes away a
load of empty troubles, frees us from desires, and
banishes fear.
Cicero, Disputations, Il, 4
20 Anyone who considers the aspects of nature, the variety
of life, and the weakness of humanity cannot but be
saddened by his reflections. Nevertheless he fulfills the
task of wisdom, and in so doing he gains doubly. In his
awareness of the vicissitudes of human life, he has
discharged a peculiar obligation of philosophy. And in
adversity he discovers a threefold remedy to aid his
restoration. Because he has all along been aware of the
possibility of mishap, he is less dismayed when it occurs.
Second, he understands that the lot of man must be
endured in a manly spirit. Third, he knows that guilt is
the only evil; but no guilt accrues when the issue is one
against which there are no guarantees.
Cicero, Disputations, Ill, 16
21 O philosophy, thou guide of life, explorer of the universe,
and expeller of vice! Without thee, what would become of
me and of the whole life of mankind? Thou hast begotten
cities. Thou hast gathered together the scattered human
race into the bonds of social life. Thou hast united them
first in common dwelling places, then in marriage, and
lastly in the bonds of a common literature and language.
Thou hast revealed law. Thou hast been the teacher of
morality and order. To thee | flee for refuge. | seek thine
aid. | entrust myself to thee, as formerly by degrees, now
wholly and entirely. One day well spent in accordance
with thy lessons is preferable to an eternity committed to
error. Whose aid are we to seek, if not thine? Thou hast
freely granted us a peaceable life and destroyed the
dread of death.
Cicero, Disputations, V, 2
22 Somehow or other no assertion is too ridiculous for some
philosophers to make.
Cicero, Divination, II, 58
23 Philosophy is not an occupation of a popular nature, nor
is it pursued for the sake of self-advertisement. Its
concern is not with words, but with facts. It is not carried
on with the object of passing the day in an entertaining
sort of way and taking the boredom out of leisure. It
moulds and builds the personality, orders one’s life,
regulates one’s conduct, shows one what one should do
and what one should leave undone, sits at the helm and
keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in
perilous seas. Without it no one can lead a life free of fear
or worry. Every hour of the day countless situations arise
that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to
philosophy.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 16
24 What has the philosopher investigated? What has j
philosopher brought to light? In the first place, truth and
nature (having, unlike the rest of the animal world,
followed nature with more than just a pair of eyes, things
slow to grasp divinity); and secondly, a rule of life, in
which he has brought life into line with things universal.
And he has taught us not just to recognize but to obey
the gods, and to accept all that happens exactly as if it
were an order from above. He has told us not to listen to
false opinions, and has weighed and valued everything
against standards which are true. He has condemned
pleasures an inseparable element of which is subsequent
regret, has commended the good things which will always
satisfy, and for all to see has made the man who has no
need of luck the luckiest man of all, and the man who is
master of himself the master of all.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 90
25 The life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an
active statesman are, | presume, not the same thing; for
the one merely employs, upon great and good objects of
thought, an intelligence that requires no aid of
instruments nor supply of any external materials;
whereas the other, who tempers and applies his virtue to
human uses, may have occasion for affluence, not as a
matter of necessity, but as a noble thing.
Plutarch, Pericles
26 Many public ministers and philosophers came from all
parts to visit him and congratulated him on his election,
but contrary to his expectation, Diogenes of Sinope, who
then was living at Corinth, thought so little of him, that
instead of coming to compliment him, he never so much
as stirred out of the suburb called the Cranium, where
Alexander found him lying alone in the sun. When he saw
sO much company near him, he raised himself a little, and
vouchsafed to look upon Alexander, and when he kindly
asked him whether he wanted anything, “Yes,” said he, “1
would have you stand from between me and the sun.”
Alexander was so struck at this answer, and surprised at
the greatness of the man, who had taken so little notice
of him, that as he went away he told his followers, who
were laughing at the moroseness of the philosopher, that
if he were not Alexander, he would choose to be
Diogenes.
Plutarch, Alexander
27 Of all the advantages that accrue from philosophy these |
reckon the chiefest. To bear prosperity like a gentleman is
the mark of a man, to deprecate envy the mark of a
disciplined character, to rise superior to pleasure by
reason the mark of a sage, to govern anger the mark of
an extraordinary man. But as perfect men | regard those
who are able to mingle and fuse political capacity with
philosophy.
Plutarch, Education of Children
28 Observe, this is the beginning of philosophy, a
perception of the disagreement of men with one another,
and an inquiry into the cause of the disagreement, and a
condemnation and distrust of that which only “seems,”
and a certain investigation of that which "seems"
whether it "seems" rightly, and a discovery- of some rule,
as we have discovered a balance in the determination of
weights, and a carpenter’s rule in the case of straight and
crooked things. This is the beginning of philosophy. "Must
we say that all things are right which seem so to all?" And
how is it possible that contradictions can be right? "Not
all then, but all which seem to us to be right." How more
to you than those which seem right to the Syrians? why
more than what seem right to the Egyptians? why more
than what seems right to me or to any other man? "Not at
all more." What then "seems" to every man is not
sufficient for determining what "is"; for neither in the
case of weights or measures are we Satisfied with the
bare appearance, but in each case we have discovered a
certain rule. In this matter then is there no rule superior
to what "seems?" And how is it possible that the most
necessary things among men should have no sign, and
be incapable of being discovered? There is then some
rule. And why then do we not seek the rule and discover
it, and afterward use it without varying from it, not even
stretching out the finger without it? For this, | think, is
that which when it is discovered cures of their madness
those who use mere "seeming" as a measure, and misuse
it; so That for the future proceeding from certain things
known and made clear we may use in the case of
particular things the preconceptions which are distinctly
fixed.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 11
29 What is the first business of him who philosophizes? To
throw away self-conceit. For it is impossible for a man to
begin to learn that which he thinks that he knows.
Epictetus, Discourses, Il, 17
30 When a man sees another handling an ax badly, he does
not say, "What is the use of the carpenter’s art? See how
badly carpenters do their work"; but he says just the
contrary, "This man is not a carpenter, for he uses an ax
badly." In the same way if a man hears another singing
badly, he does not say, "See how musicians sing"; but
rather, "This man is not a musician." But it is in the
matter of philosophy only that people do this. When they
see a man acting contrary to the profession of a
philosopher, they do not take away his title, but they
assume him to be a philosopher, and from his acts
deriving the fact that he is behaving indecently they
conclude that there is no use in philosophy.
Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 8
31 Do you think that you can act as you do and bea
philosopher, that you can eat, drink, be angry, be
discontented, as you are now? You must watch, you must
labor, you must get the better of certain appetites, must
quit your acquaintances, be despised by your servant, be
laughed at by those you meet; come off worse than
others in every thing— in offices, in honors, before
tribunals. When you have fully considered all these
things, approach, if you please—that is, if, by parting with
them, you have a mind to purchase serenity, freedom,
and tranquillity. If not, do not come hither; do not, like
children, be now a philosopher, then a publican, then an
orator, and then one of Caesar s officers. These things are
not consistent. You must be one man, either good or bad.
You must cultivate either your own reason or else
externals; apply yourself either to things within or
without you— that is, be either a philosopher or one of
the mob.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, XXIX
32 Philosophy... consists in keeping the daemon within a
man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains
and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet
falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of
another man’s doing or not doing anything; and besides,
accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as
coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he
himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a
cheerful mind.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Il, 17
33 Zeus. Now get those benches straight there, and make
the place fit to be seen. Bring up the lots, one of you, and
put them in line. Give them a rub up first, though; we
must have them looking their best, to attract bidders.
Hermes, you can declare the sale-room open, and a
welcome to all comers.—For Sale! A varied assortment of
Live Creeds. Tenets of every description.—Cash on
delivery; or credit allowed on suitable security.
Hermes. Here they come, swarming in. No time to lose;
we must not keep them waiting.
Zeus. Well, let us begin.
Her. What are we to put up first?
Zeus. The lonic fellow, with the long hair. He seems a
showy piece of goods.
Her. Step up, Pythagorean ism, and show yourself.
Zeus. Go ahead.
Her. Now here is a creed of the first water. Who bids for
this handsome article? What gentleman says
Superhumanity? Harmony of the Universe!
Transmigration of souls! Who bids?
First Dealer. He looks all right. And what can he do?
Her. Magic, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,
jugglery. Prophecy in all its branches. .. .
First D. Admirable! A very feast of reason. Now just
strip, and let me see what y'ou are like. Bless me, here is
a creed with a golden thigh! He is no mortal, he is a God.
| must have him at any price. What do you start him at?
Her. Forty pounds.
First D. He is mine for forty pounds.
Lucian, Sale of Creeds
34 Zeus. Next lot.
Hermes. The Athenian there? Old Chatterbox?
Zeus. By all means.
Her. Come forward!—A good sensible creed this. Who
buys Holiness?
Fifth Dealer. Let me see. What are you good for?
Socrates. | teach the art of love.
Fifth D. A likely bargain for me! | want a tutor for my
young Adonis.
Soc. And could he have a better? The Jove | teach is of
the spirit, not of the flesh. Under my roof, be sure, a boy
will come to no harm.
Fifth D. Very unconvincing that. A teacher of the art of
love, and never meddle with anything but the spirit?
Never use the opportunities your office gives you?
Soc. Now by Dog and Plane-tree, it is as | say!
Fifth D. Heracles! What strange Gods are these?
Soc. Why, the Dog is a God, | Suppose? Is not Anubis
made much of in Egypt? Is there not a Dog-star in
Heaven, and a Cerberus in the lower world?
Fifth D. Quite so. My mistake. Now what is your manner
of life?
Soc. | live in a city of my own building; | make my own
laws, and have a novel constitution of my own.
Fifth D. | should like to hear some of your statutes.
Soc. You shall hear the greatest of them all. No woman
Shall be restricted to one husband. Every man who likes
is her husband.
Fifth D. What! Then the laws of adultery are clean
swept away?
Soc. | should think they were! and a world of hair-
splitting with them.
Fifth D. And what do you do with the handsome boys?
Soc. Their kisses are the reward of merit, of noble and
Spirited actions.
Fifth D. Unparalleled generosity!—And now, what are
the main features of your philosophy?
Soc. |deas and types of things. All things that you see,
the earth and all that is upon it, the sea, the sky,—each
has its counterpart in the invisible world.
Fifth D. And where are they?
Soc. Nowhere. Were they anywhere, they were not
what they are.
Fifth D. | see no signs of these ‘types' of yours.
Soc. Of course not; because you are spiritually blind. |
see the counterparts of all things; an invisible you, an
invisible me; everything is in duplicate.
Fifth D. Come, such a shrewd and lynx-eyed creed is
worth a bid. Let me see. What do you want for him?
Her. Five hundred.
Fifth D. Done with you. Only | must settle the bill
another day.
Lucian, Sale of Creeds
35 Zeus. Don’t waste time. Next lot,—the Peripatetic!
Hermes. Now, my beauty, now, Affluence! Gentlemen,
if you want Wisdom for your money, here is a creed that
comprises all knowledge.
Eighth Dealer. What is he like?
Her. He is temperate, good-natured, easy to get on
with; and his strong point is, that he is twins.
Eighth D. How can that be?
Her. Why, he is one creed outside, and another inside.
So remember, if you buy him, one of him is called
Esoteric, and the other Exoteric.
Eighth D. And what has he to say for himself?
Her. He has to say that there are three kinds of good:
Spiritual, corporeal, circumstantial.
Eighth D. There's something a man can understand.
How much is he?
Her. Eighty pounds.
Eighth D. Eighty pounds is a long price.
Her. Not at all, my dear sir, not at all. You see, there is
some money with him, to all appearance. Snap him up
before it is too late. Why, from him you will find out in no
time how long a gnat lives, to how many fathoms’ depth
the sunlight penetrates the sea, and what an oyster’s
soul is like.
Eighth D. Heracles! Nothing escapes him.
Her. Ah, these are trifles. You should hear some of his
more abstruse speculations, concerning generation and
birth and the development of the embryo; and his
distinction between man, the laughing creature, and the
ass, which is neither a laughing nor a carpentering nora
shipping creature.
Eighth D. Such knowledge is as useful as it is
ornamental. Eighty pounds be it, then.
Her. He is yours.
Lucian, Sale of Creeds
36 Lucian. Where is Philosophy to be found? | do not know
where she lives, myself. | once spent a long time
wandering about in search of her house, wishing to make
her acquaintance. Several times | met some long-bearded
people in threadbare cloaks who professed to be fresh
from her presence; | took their word for it, and asked
them the way; but they knew considerably less about it
than I, and either declined to answer, by way of
concealing their ignorance, or else pointed to one door
after another. | have never been able to find the right one
to this day.
Lucian, The Fisher
37 Following the normal order of study | had come to a book
of one Cicero, whose tongue practically everyone
admires, though not his heart. That particular book is
called Hortensius and contains an exhortation to
philosophy. Quite definitely it changed the direction of
my mind, altered my prayers to You, O Lord, and gave me
a new purpose and ambition. Suddenly all the vanity |
had hoped in | saw as worthless, and with an incredible
intensity of desire | longed after immortal wisdom. | had
begun that journey upwards by which | was to return to
You. My father was now dead two years; | was eighteen
and was receiving money from my mother for the
continuance of my study of eloquence. But | used that
book not for the sharpening of my tongue; what won me
in it was what it said, not the excellence of its phrasing.
How did | then burn, my God, how did | burn to wing
upwards from earthly delights to You. But | had no notion
what You were to do with me. For with You is wisdom. Now
love of wisdom is what is meant by the Greek word
philosophy, and it was to philosophy that that book set
me so ardently. There are those who seduce men’s minds
by philosophy, colouring and covering their errors with its
great and fine and honourable name; almost all who in
Cicero’s own time and earlier had been of that sort are
listed in his book and shown for what they are. Indeed it
illustrates the wholesome advice given by the Spirit
through Your good and loving servant: Beware lest any
man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceits;
according to the tradition of men, according to the
elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in
Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally.
At that time. You know, O Light of my heart, those
writings of the Apostle were not yet known to me. But the
one thing that delighted me in Cicero’s exhortation was
that | should love, and seek, and win, and hold, and
embrace, not this or that philosophical school but
Wisdom itself, whatever it might be. The book excited
and inflamed me; in my ardour the only thing | found
lacking was that the name of Christ was not there. For
with my mother’s milk my infant heart had drunk in, and
still held deep down in it, that name according to Your
mercy, O Lord, the name of Your Son, my Saviour; and
Whatever lacked that name, no matter how learned and
excellently written and true, could not win me wholly.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 4
38 Among the disciples of Socrates, Plato was the one who
shone with a glory which far excelled that of the others
and who not unjustly eclipsed them all. By birth an
Athenian of honourable parentage, he far surpassed his
fellow-disciples in natural endowments, of which he was
possessed in a wonderful degree. Yet, deeming himself
and the Socratic discipline far from sufficient for bringing
philosophy to perfection, he travelled as extensively as
he was able, going to every place famed for the
cultivation of any science of which he could make himself
master. Thus he learned from the Egyptians whatever
they held and taught as important; and from Egypt,
passing into those parts of Italy which were filled with the
fame of the Pythagoreans, he mastered, with the greatest
facility, and under the most eminent teachers, all the
Italic philosophy which was then in vogue. And, as he had
a peculiar love for his master Socrates, he made him the
Speaker in all his dialogues, putting into his mouth
whatever he had learned, either from others, or from the
efforts of his own powerful intellect, tempering even his
moral disputations with the grace and politeness of the
Socratic style. And, as the study of wisdom consists in
action and contemplation, so that one part of it may be
called active, and the other contemplative-- the active
part having reference to the conduct of life, that is, to the
regulation of morals, and the contemplative part to the
investigation into the causes of nature and into pure
truth—Socrates is said to have excelled in the active part
of that study, while Pythagoras gave more attention to its
contemplative part, on which he brought to bear all the
force of his great intellect. To Plato is given the praise of
having perfected philosophy by combining both parts
into one. He then divides it into three parts—the first
moral, which is chiefly occupied with action; the second
natural, of which the object is contemplation; and the
third rational, which discriminates between the true and
the false. And though this last is necessary both to action
and contemplation, it is contemplation, nevertheless,
which lays peculiar claim to the office of investigating the
nature of truth. Thus this tripartite division is not contrary
to that which made the study of wisdom to consist in
action and contemplation. Now, as to what Plato thought
with respect to each of these parts—-that is, what he
believed to be the end of all actions, the cause of all
natures, and the light of all intelligences—it would be a
question too long to discuss and about which we ought
not to make any rash affirmation. For, as Plato liked and
constantly affected the well-known method of his master
Socrates, namely, that of dissimulating his knowledge or
his opinions, it is not easy to discover clearly what he
himself thought on various matters, any more than it is to
discover what were the real opinions of Socrates. We
must, nevertheless, insert into our work certain of those
opinions which he expresses in his writings, whether he
himself uttered them, or narrates them as expressed by
others, and seems himself to approve of—opinions
sometimes favourable to the true religion, which our faith
takes up and defends, and sometimes contrary to it, as,
for example, in the questions concerning the existence of
one God or of many, as it relates to the truly blessed life
which is to be after death. For those who are praised as
having most closely followed Plato, who is justly preferred
to all the other philosophers of the Gentiles, and who are
said to have manifested the greatest acuteness in
understanding him, do perhaps entertain such an idea of
God as to admit that in Him are to be found the cause of
existence, the ultimate reason for the understanding, and
the end in reference to which the whole life is to be
regulated. Of which three things, the first is understood
to pertain to the natural, the second to the rational, and
the third to the moral part of philosophy. For if man has
been so created as to attain, through that which is most
excellent in him, to that which excels all things— that is,
to the one true and absolutely good God, without Whom
no nature exists, no doctrine instructs, no exercise profits
—let Him be sought in Whom all things are secure to us,
let Him be discovered in Whom all truth becomes certain
to us, let Him be loved in Whom all becomes right to us.
Augustine, City of God, VIII, 4
39 Plato determined the final good to be to live according to
virtue, and affirmed that he only can attain to virtue who
knows and imitates God— which knowledge and
imitation are the only cause of blessedness. Therefore he
did not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose
nature is incorporeal. Whence it certainly follows that the
student of wisdom, that is, the philosopher, will then
become blessed when he shall have begun to enjoy God.
For though he is not necessarily blessed who enjoys that
which he loves (for many are miserable by loving that
which ought not to be loved and still more miserable
when they enjoy it), nevertheless no one is blessed who
does not enjoy that which he loves. For even they who
love things which ought not to be loved do not count
themselves blessed by loving merely, but by enjoying
them. Who, then, but the most miserable will deny that
he is blessed, who enjoys that which he loves and loves
the true and highest good? But the true and highest
good, according to Plato, is God, and therefore he would
call him a philosopher who loves God; for philosophy is
directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who
loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.
Augustine, City of God, VIII, 8
40 While | was pondering thus in silence, and using my pen
to set down so tearful a complaint, there appeared
standing over my head a woman’s form, whose
countenance was full of majesty, whose eyes shown as
with fire and in power of insight surpassed the eyes of
men, whose colour was full of life, whose strength was yet
intact though she was so full of years that none would
ever think that she was subject to such age as ours. One
could but doubt her varying stature, for at one moment
she repressed it to the common measure of a man, at
another she seemed to touch with her crown the very
heavens: and when she had raised higher her head, it
pierced even the sky and baffled the sight of those who
would look upon it. Her clothing was wrought of the finest
thread by subtle workmanship brought to an indivisible
piece. This had she woven with her own hands, as |
afterwards did learn by her own shewing. Their beauty
was somewhat dimmed by the dulness of long neglect, as
is seen in the smoke-grimed masks of our ancestors. On
the border below was inwoven the symbol I, on that
above was to be read a O. And between the two letters
there could be marked degrees, by which, as by the rungs
of a ladder, ascent might be made from the lower
principle to the higher. Yet the hands of rough men had
torn this garment and snatched such morsels as they
could therefrom. In her right hand she carried books, in
her left was a sceptre brandished.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, |
41 This [sacred] science [i.e., theology] can in a sense take
from the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in
need of them, but only in order to make its teaching
clearer. For it takes its principles not from other sciences,
but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it
does not take from the other sciences as from the higher,
but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as
handmaidens; just as the master sciences make use of
the sciences that supply their materials, as political of
military science. That it thus uses them is not due to its
own defect or insufficiency, but to the defect of our
intellect, which is more easily led by what is known
through natural reason (from which proceed the other
sciences), to that which is above reason, such as are the
teachings of this science.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 1, 5
42 It is necessary for man to accept by faith not only things
which are above reason, but also those which can be
known by reason, and this for three reasons. First, in
order that man may arrive more quickly at the knowledge
of Divine truth. Because the science to which it pertains
to prove the existence of God is the last of all to offer
itself to human inquiry, since it presupposes many other
sciences so that it would not be until late in life that man
would arrive at the knowledge of God. The second reason
is, in order that the knowledge of God may be more
general. For many are unable to make progress in the
study of science, either through dulness of mind, or
through having a number of occupations and temporal
needs, or even through laziness in learning, all of whom
would be altogether deprived of the knowledge of God,
unless Divine things were brought to their knowledge
after the manner of faith. The third reason is for the sake
of certitude. For human reason is very deficient in things
concerning God. A sign of this is that philosophers in
their researches, by natural investigation, into human
affairs, have fallen into many errors, and have disagreed
among themselves. And consequently, in order that men
might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and
uncertainty, it was necessary for Divine matters to be
delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them, as
it were, by God Himself Who cannot lie.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-Il, 2, 4
43 When | raised my eyelids a little higher, | saw the Master
of those that know [Aristotle], sitting amid a philosophic
family.
All regard him; all do him honour; here | saw Socrates
and Plato, who before the rest stand nearest to him.
Dante, Inferno, IV, 130
44 We do not escape philosophy by stressing immoderately
the sharpness of pain and the weakness of man. For we
force her to fall back on these unanswerable replies:
If it is bad to live in need, at least there is no need to
live in need.
No one suffers long except by his own fault.
He who has not the courage to suffer either death or
life, who will neither resist nor flee, what can we do with
him?
Montaigne, Essays, |, 14, That the Taste of Good
45 It is a strange fact that things should be in such a pass in
our century that philosophy, even with people of
understanding, should be an empty and fantastic name,
a thing of no use and no value, both in common opinion
and in fact. | think those quibblings which have taken
possession of all the approaches to her are the cause of
this. It is very wrong to portray her as inaccessible to
children, with a surly, frowning, and terrifying face. Who
has masked her with this false face, pale and hideous?
There is nothing more gay, more lusty, more sprightly,
and | might almost say more frolicsome. She preaches
nothing but merrymaking and a good time. A sad and
dejected look shows that she does not dwell there.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 26, Education of Children
46 Whoever seeks anything comes to this point: he says
either that he has found it, or that it cannot be found, or
that he is still in quest of it. All philosophy is divided into
these three types. Its purpose is to seek out truth,
knowledge, and certainty.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
47 Romeo. No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean.
But "banished" to kill me?—"banished"?
O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d,
To mangle me with that word "banished"?
Friar Laurence. Thou fond mad man, hear me but
speak a word.
Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
Fri. L. ll give thee armour to keep off that word;
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
Rom. Yet "banished"? Hang up philosophy!
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,
It helps not, it prevails not; talk no more.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, III, tii, 45
48 Hamlet. There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, |, v, 166
49 Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge,
nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he
noted the vices of all knowledges in all creatures, and out
of many men’s perfections in a science he formed still
one art.
Jonson, Discoveries: Poeta, Etc.
50 It is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify
and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome,
and (as | may term them) vermiculate questions, which
have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no
soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of
degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the
schoolmen: who having sharp and strong wits, and
abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but
their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors
(chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut
up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing
little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great
quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out
unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant
in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work
upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures
of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited
thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh
his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed
cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread
and work, but of no substance or profit.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, IV, 5
51 The wisdom of the Greeks was professional and
disputatious, and thus most adverse to the investigation
of truth. The name, therefore, of sophists, which the
contemptuous spirit of those who deemed themselves
philosophers, rejected and transferred to the rhetoricians
—Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Polus—might well suit the
whole tribe, such as Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus,
Theophrastus, and their successors—Chrysippus,
Carneades, and the rest. There was only this difference
between them: the former were mercenary vagabonds,
travelling about to different states, making a show of
their wisdom, and requiring pay; the latter more dignified
and noble, in possession of fixed habitations, opening
schools, and teaching philosophy gratuitously. Both,
however (though differing in other respects), were
professorial, and reduced every subject to controversy
establishing and defending certain sects and dogmas of
philosophy, so that their doctrines were nearly (what
Dionysius not unaptly objected to Plato) the talk of idle
old men to ignorant youths. But the more ancient Greeks,
as Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus,
Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Philolaus, and the
rest (for | omit Pythagoras as being superstitious), did not
(that we are aware) open schools, but betook themselves
to the investigation of truth with greater silence and with
more severity and simplicity, that is, with less affectation
and ostentation. Hence in our opinion they acted more
advisedly, however their works may have been eclipsed
in course of time by those lighter productions which
better correspond with and please the apprehensions and
passions of the vulgar; for time, like a river, bears down
to us that which is light and inflated, and sinks that
which is hca \7 and solid.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 71
52 | am sure that those who most passionately follow
Aristotle now-a-days would think themselves happy if
they had as much knowledge of nature as he had, even if
this were on the condition that they should never attain
to any more, they are like the by that never tries to
mount above the trees which give it support, and which
often even descends again after it has reached their
summit; for it appears to me that such men also sink
again— that is to say, somehow render themselves more
ignorant than they would have been had they abstained
from study altogether. For, not content with knowing all
that is intelligibly explained in their author, they wish in
addition to find in him the solution of many difficulties of
which he says nothing, and in regard to which he possibly
had no thought at all.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, VI
53 The faculty of reasoning being consequent to the use of
speech, it was not possible but that there should have
been some general truths found out by reasoning, as
ancient almost as language itself. The savages of America
are not without some good moral sentences; also they
have a little arithmetic, to add and divide in numbers not
too great; but they are not therefore philosophers. For as
there were plants of corn and wine in small quantity
dispersed in the fields and woods, before men knew their
virtue ... .so also there have been diverse true, general,
and profitable speculations from the beginning, as being
the natural plants of human reason. But they were at first
but few in number; men lived upon gross experience;
there was no method; that is to say, no sowing nor planting
of knowledge by itself, apart from the weeds and common
plants of error an conjecture. And the cause of it being
the want of leisure from procuring the necessities of life,
an defending themselves against their neighbours, it was
impossible, till the erecting of great commonwealths it
should be otherwise. Leisure is the mother of philosophy;
and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.
Where first were great an flourishing cities, there was first
the study of philosophy.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, 46
54 To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Pascal, Pensées, I, 4
55 What good there is in Montaigne can only have been
acquired with difficulty. The evil that is in him, | mean
apart from his morality, could have been corrected in a
moment, if he had been informed that he made too much
of trifles and spoke too much of himself.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 65
56 | cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would
have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had
to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion;
beyond this, he has no further need of God.
Pascal, Pensées, 11. 77
57 We can only think of Plato and Aristotle in grand
academic robes. They were honest men, like others,
laughing with their friends, and, when they diverted
themselves with writing their Laws and the Politics, they
did it as an amusement. That part of their life was the
least philosophic and the least serious; the most
philosophic was to live simply and quietly. If they wrote
on politics, it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic
asylum; and if they presented the appearance of
speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew
that the madmen, to whom they spoke, thought they
were kings and emperors. They entered into their
principles in order to make their madness as little harmful
as possible.
Pascal, Pensées, V, 331
58 Brother. How charming is divine Philosophy!
Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apo//o’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,
Where no crude surfet raigns.
Milton, Comus, 476
59 Plato, a man of high authority, indeed, but least of all for
his commonwealth, in the book of his Laws, which no city
ever yet received, fed his fancy by making many edicts to
his airy burgomasters, which they who otherwise admire
him wish had been rather buried and excused in the
genial cups of an Academic night sitting.
Milton, Areopagitica
60 Another great abuse of words, is the taking them for
things. This, though it in some degree concerns all names
in general, yet more particularly affects those of
substances. To this abuse those men are most subject
who most confine their thoughts to any one system, and
give themselves up into a firm belief of the perfection of
any received hypothesis: whereby they come to be
persuaded that the terms of that sect are so suited to the
nature of things, that they perfectly correspond with their
real existence,... There is scarce any sect in philosophy
has not a distinct set of terms that others understand not.
But yet this gibberish, which, in the weakness of human
understanding, serves so well to palliate men’s
ignorance, and cover their errors, comes, by familiar use
amongst those of the same tribe, to seem the most
important part of language, and of all other the terms the
most significant.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IIl, X, 14
61 Philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom
and truth, it may with reason be expected that those who
have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a
greater calm and serenity of mind, a greater clearness
and evidence of knowledge, and be less disturbed with
doubts and difficulties than other men. Yet so it is, we see
the illiterate bulk of mankind that walk the high-road of
plain common sense, and are governed by the dictates of
nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. To them
nothing that is familiar appears unaccountable or difficult
to comprehend. They complain not of any want of
evidence in their senses, and are out of all danger of
becoming Sceptics. But no sooner do we depart from
sense and instinct to follow the light of a superior
principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on the nature of
things, but a thousand scruples spring up in our minds
concerning those things which before we seemed fully to
comprehend.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction,
1
62 There is nothing so extravagant and irrational which
some philosophers have not maintained for truth.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Ill, 6
63 Philosophers are composed of flesh and blood as well as
other human creatures; and however sublimated and
refined the theory of these may be, a little practical frailty
IS as incident to them as to other mortals. It is, indeed, in
theory only, and not in practice, as we have before
hinted, that consists the difference: for though such great
beings think much better and more wisely, they always
act exactly like other men. They know very well how- to
subdue all appetites and passions, and to despise both
pain and pleasure; and this knowledge affords much
delightful contemplation, and is easily acquired; but the
practice would be vexatious and troublesome; and,
therefore, the same wisdom which teaches them to know
this, teaches them to avoid carrying it into execution.
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 5
64 It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will
always, with the generality of mankind, have the
preference above the accurate and abstruse; and by
many will be recommended, not only as more agreeable,
but more useful than the other. It enters more into
common life; moulds the heart and affections; and, by
touching those principles which actuate men, reforms
their conduct, and brings them nearer to that model of
perfection which it describes. On the contrary the
abstruse philosophy being founded on a turn of mind,
which cannot enter into business and action, vanishes
when the philosopher leaves the shade, and comes into
open day; nor can its principles easily retain any
influence over our conduct and behaviour. The feelings of
our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence
of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce
the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, I, 3
65 It is easy for a profound philosopher to commit a mistake
in his subtile reasonings; and one mistake is the
necessary parent of another, while he pushes on his
consequences, and is not deterred from embracing any
conclusion, by its unusual appearance, or its
contradiction to popular opinion. But a philosopher, who
purposes only to represent the common sense of mankind
in more beautiful and more engaging colours, if by
accident he falls into error, goes no farther; but renewing
his appeal to common sense, and the natural sentiments
of the mind, returns into the right path, and secures
himself from any dangerous illusions.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, |, 4
66 Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still
aman.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, |, 4
67 All the philosophy ... in the world, and all the religion,
which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never
be able to carry us beyond the usual course of
experience, or give us measures of conduct and
behaviour different from those which are furnished by
reflections on common life.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XI, 113
68 There cannot be two passions more nearly resembling
each other, than those of hunting and philosophy,
whatever disproportion may at first sight appear betwixt
them. ’Tis evident, that the pleasure of hunting consists
in the action of the mind and body; the motion, the
attention, the difficulty, and the uncertainty. 'Tis evident
likewise, that these actions must be attended with an
idea of utility, in order to their having any effect upon us.
A man of the greatest fortune, and the farthest remov’d
from avarice, tho’ he takes a pleasure in hunting after
partridges and pheasants, feels no satisfaction in
shooting crows and magpies; and that because he
considers the first as fit for the table, and the other as
entirely useless. Here ’tis certain, that the utility or
importance of itself causes no real passion, but is only
requisite to support the imagination; and the same
person, who over-looks a ten times greater profit in any
other subject, is pleas’d to bring home half a dozen
woodcocks or plovers, after having employ’d several
hours in hunting after them. To make the parallel betwixt
hunting and philosophy more compleat, we may observe,
that tho’ in both cases the end of our action may in itself
be despis’d, yet in the heat of the action we acquire such
an attention to this end, that we are very uneasy under
any disappointments, and are sorry when we either miss
our game, or fall into any error in our reasoning.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. II, Ill, 10
69 Philosopher, lover of wisdom, that is to say, of truth. All
philosophers have had this dual character; there is not
one in antiquity who has not given mankind examples of
virtue and lessons in moral truths. They have all
contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; but
natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of
life, that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken
centuries to learn a part of nature’s laws. One day was
sufficient for a wise man to learn the duties of man.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Philosopher
701 do not think that there has ever been a philosopher with
a system who did not at the end of his life avow that he
had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the
inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more
useful to mankind than the inventors of syllogisms: the
man who invented the shuttle surpasses with a
vengeance the man who imagined innate ideas.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Precis of Ancient
Philosophy
71 (Micromegas] promised to compose for them a choice
book of philosophy which would demonstrate the very
essence of things. Accordingly, before his departure, he
made them a present of the book, which was brought to
the Academy of Sciences at Paris, but when the old
secretary came to open it he saw nothing but blank
paper.
"Ay, ay," Said he, "this is just what | suspected."
Voltaire, Micromegas, VII
72 In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation
becomes, like every other employment, the principal or
sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens.
Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a
great number of different branches, each of which affords
occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers;
and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well
as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves
time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own
peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and
the quantity of science is considerably increased by it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 1
73 So equal, yet so opposite, are the merits of Plato and
Aristotle, that they may be balanced in endless
controversy.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LXVI
74 Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called
upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as
they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot
answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.
It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It
begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in
the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of
which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With
these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its
own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions.
But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must
remain ever incomplete, because new questions never
cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself
compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend
the region of experience, while they are regarded by
common sense without distrust. It thus falls into
confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures
the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable
to discover, because the principles it employs,
transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested
by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is
called Metaphysic.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Pref. to 1st Ed.
75 Both Epicurus and Plato assert more in their systems
than they know. The former encourages and advances
science—although to the prejudice of the practical; the
latter presents us with excellent principles for the
investigation of the practical, but, in relation to
everything regarding which we can attain to speculative
cognition, permits reason to append idealistic
explanations of natural phenomena, to the great injury of
physical investigation.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
76 The mathematician, the natural philosopher, and the
logician—how far soever the first may have advanced in
rational, and the two latter in philosophical knowledge—
are merely artists, engaged in the arrangement and
formation of conceptions; they cannot be termed
philosophers. Above them all, there is the ideal teacher,
who employs them as instruments for the advancement
of the essential aims of human reason. Him alone can we
call philosopher; but he nowhere exists. But the idea of
his legislative power resides in the mind of every man,
and it alone teaches us what kind of systematic unity
philosophy demands in view of the ultimate aims of
reason. This idea is, therefore, a cosmical conception [one
in which all men necessarily take an interest].
In view of the complete systematic unity of reason,
there can only be one ultimate end of all the operations
of the mind. To this all other aims are subordinate, and
nothing more than means for its attainment. This
ultimate end is the destination of man, and the
philosophy which relates to it is termed moral philosophy.
The superior position occupied by moral philosophy,
above all other spheres for the operations of reason,
sufficiently indicates the reason why the ancients always
included the idea—and in an especial manner—of
moralist in that of philosopher. Even at the present day,
we call a man who appears to have the powder of self-
government, even although his knowledge may be very
limited, by the name of philosopher.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
77 It would be no harm to deter the self-conceit of one who
ventures to claim the title of philosopher by holding
before him in the very definition a standard of self-
estimation which would very much lower his pretensions.
For a teacher of wisdom would mean something more
than a scholar who has not come so far as to guide
himself, much less to guide others, with certain
expectation of attaining so high an end: it would mean a
master in the knowledge of wisdom, which implies more
than a modest man would claim for himself. Thus
philosophy as well as wisdom would always remain an
ideal, which objectively is presented complete in reason
alone, while subjectively for the person it is only the goal
of his unceasing endeavours; and no one would be
justified in professing to be in possession of it so as to
assume the name of philosopher who could not also show
its infallible effects in his own person as an example (in
his self-mastery and the unquestioned interest that he
takes preeminently in the general good), and this the
ancients also required as a condition of deserving that
honourable title.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt, |, Il, 1
78 That kings should become philosophers, or philosophers
kings, can scarce be expected; nor ts it to be wished,
since the enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the
judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. But that
kings, or people-kings, that is to say, the people who
govern themselves by laws of equality, should not suffer
that the class of philosophers be reduced to disappear, or
to maintain silence, but, on the contrary, should permit
them to be freely heard. This is what the well
administration of a government exacts; which can never
be sufficiently enlightened.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, Supplement I!
79 Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Keats, Lamia, Il, 229
80 Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are
proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never
feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as
the author.
Keats, Letter to John H. Reynolds (May 3, ISIS)
81 To comprehend what is, this is the task of philosophy,
because what is, is reason. Whatever happens, every
individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its
own time apprehended in thoughts.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Pref.
82 There are two kinds of history; the history of politics and
the history of literature and art. The one is the history of
the will; the other, that of the intellect. The first is a tale
of woe, even of terror: it is a record of agony, struggle,
fraud, and horrible murder en masse. The second is
everywhere pleasing and serene, like the intellect when
left to itself, even though its path be one of error. Its chief
branch is the history of philosophy. This is, in fact, its
fundamental bass, and the notes of it are heard even in
the other kind of history. These deep tones guide the
formation of opinion, and opinion rules the world. Hence
philosophy, rightly understood, is a material force of the
most powerful kind, though very slow in its working. The
philosophy of a period is thus the fundamental bass of its
history.
Schopenhauer, Some Forms of Literature
83 Two Chinamen travelling in Europe went to the theatre
for the first time. One of them did nothing but study the
machinery, and he succeeded in finding out how it was
worked. The other tried to get at the meaning of the
piece in spite of his ignorance of the language. Here you
have the astronomer and the philosopher.
Schopenhauer, A Few Parables
84 Among secular books, Plato only is entitled to Omar's
fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, "Burn
the libraries; for their value is in this book." These
sentences contain the culture of nations; these are the
corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of
literatures. A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste,
symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals or
practical wisdom. There was never such range of
speculation. Out of Plato come ail things that are still
written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc
makes he among our originalities. We have reached the
mountain from which all these drift boulders were
detached.
Emerson, Plato; or, The Philosopher
85 Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had beena
very precious perishing; smothered in the very whitest
and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed,
and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum
sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can
readily be recalled— the delicious death of an Ohio
honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a
hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning
too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed.
How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s
honey head, and sweetly perished there?
Melville, Moby Dick, LXXVIII
86 To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle
thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love
wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to
solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically,
but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers
Is Commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not
manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity,
practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the
progenitors of a noble race of men. But why do men
degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is
the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys
nations? are we Sure that there is none of it in our own
lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in
the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered,
clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man
be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better
methods than other men?
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
87 Of the three varieties of mental excellence, intellectual,
practical, and moral, there never could be any doubt in
regard to the first two which side had the advantage. All
intellectual superiority is the fruit of active effort.
Enterprise, the desire to keep moving, to be trying and
accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of
others, is the parent even of speculative, and much more
of practical, talent. The intellectual culture compatible
with the other type is of that feeble and vague
description which belongs to a mind that slops at
amusement, or at simple contemplation. The test of real
and vigourous thinking, the thinking which ascertains
truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful
application to practice. Where that purpose does not
exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible
meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the
mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Vedas.
Mill, Representative Government, III
88 Schools of philosophy arise and fall; their bands of
adherents inevitably dwindle; no master can long
persuade a large body of disciples that they give to
themselves just the same account of the world as he
does; it is only the very young and the very enthusiastic
who can think themselves sure that they possess the
whole mind of Plato, or Spinoza, or Hegel, at all. The very
mature and the very sober can even hardly believe that
these philosophers possessed it themselves enough to
put it all into their works, and to let us know entirely how
the world seemed to them. What a remarkable
philosopher really does for human thought, is to throw
into circulation a certain number of new and striking
ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with them the
thought and imagination of his century or of after-times.
So Spinoza has made his distinction between adequate
and inadequate ideas a current notion for educated
Europe. So Hegel seized a single pregnant sentence of
Heracleitus, and cast it, with a thousand striking
applications, into the world of modern thought. But to do
this is only enough to make a philosopher noteworthy; it
is not enough to make him great. To be great, he must
have something in him which can influence character,
which is edifying; he must, in short, have a noble and
lofty character himself, a character,—to recur to that
much-criticised expression of mine ,—/n the grand style.
Arnold, Spinoza and the Bible
89 While in ail productive men it is instinct that is the
creative-affirmative force, and consciousness acts
critically and dissuasively, in Socrates it is instinct that
becomes the critic, and consciousness that becomes the
creator—truly a monstrosity per defectum! Specifically,
we observe here a monstrous defectus of any mystical
disposition, so Socrates might be called the typical non-
mystic, in whom, through a hypertrophy, the logical
nature is developed as excessively as instinctive wisdom
is in the mystic. But the logical urge that became
manifest in Socrates was absolutely prevented from
turning against itself; in its unbridled flood it displays a
natural power such as we encounter to our awed
amazement only in the very greatest instinctive forces.
Anyone who, through the Platonic writings, has
experienced even a breath of the divine naivete and
sureness of the Socratic way of life, will also feel how the
enormous driving-wheel of logical Socratism is in motion,
as it were, behind Socrates, and that it must be viewed
through Socrates as through a shadow.
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, XIII
90 There are questions whose truth or untruth cannot be
decided by man; all the supreme questions, all the
supreme problems of value are beyond human reason....
To grasp the limits of reason— only this is truly
philosophy.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LV
91 Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate
effort to think clearly.
William James, Psychology, VI
92 Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers
should have vied with each other in scorn of the
knowledge of the particular, and in adoration of that of
the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more
adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more
adorable things, and that the things of worth are all
concretes and singulars. The only value of universal
characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know
new truths about individual things. The restriction of
one’s meaning, moreover, to an individual thing,
probably requires even more complicated brain-processes
than its extension to all the instances of a kind; and the
mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge, is equally
great, whether generals or singulars be the things known.
In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can
only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a
philosophic "idol of the cave."
William James, Psychology, XII
93 Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most
trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest
crannies and it opens out the widest vistas. It "bakes no
bread," as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with
courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and
challenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to
common people, no one of us can get along without the
far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world’s
perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the
contrast effects of darkness and mystery that accompany
them, give to what it says an interest that is much more
than professional.
William James, Pragmatism, |
94 It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes
collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them
to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence.
There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t makea
difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that
doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and
in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on
somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen. The
whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what
definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite
instants of our life, if this world formula or that world
formula be the true one.
William James, Pragmatism, II
95 It is almost incredible that men who are themselves
working philosophers should pretend that any philosophy
can be, or ever has been, constructed without the help of
personal preference, belief, or divination. How have they
succeeded in so stultifying their sense for the living facts
of human nature as not to perceive that every
philosopher, or man of science either, whose initiative
counts for anything in the evolution of thought, has taken
his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth
must lie in one direction rather than another, and a sort
of preliminary assurance that his notion can be made to
work; and has borne his best fruit in trying to make it
work? These mental instincts in different men are the
spontaneous variations upon which the intellectual
struggle for existence is based. The fittest conceptions
survive, and with them the names of their champions
shining to all futurity.
William James, Sentiment of Rationality
96 Aristotle found it necessary to complete his metaphysics
by the introduction of a Prime Mover— God. This, for two
reasons, iS an important fact in the history of
metaphysics. In the first place if we are to accord to
anyone the position of the greatest metaphysician,
having regard to genius of insight, to general equipment
in knowledge, and to the stimulus of his metaphysical
ancestry, we must choose Aristotle. Secondly, in his
consideration of this metaphysical question he was
entirely dispassionate; and he is the last European
metaphysician of first-rate importance for whom this
claim can be made.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, XI
97 Philosophy is a difficult subject, from the days of Plato to
the present time haunted by subtle perplexities. The
existence of such perplexities arising from the common
obviousness of speech is the reason why the topic exists.
Thus the very purpose of philosophy is to delve below the
apparent clarity of common speech.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XV, 2
98 Plato in the earlier period of his thought, deceived by the
beauty of mathematics intelligible in unchanging
perfection, conceived of a super-world of ideas, forever
perfect and forever interwoven. In his latest phase he
sometimes repudiates the notion, though he never
consistently banishes it from his thought. His later
Dialogues circle round seven notions, namely—The Ideas,
The Physical Elements, The Psyche, The Eros, The
Harmony, The Mathematical Relations, The Receptacle. |
mention them because | hold that all philosophy is in fact
an endeavour to obtain a coherent system out of some
modification of these notions.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, XIX, 2
99 Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world asa
whole by means of thought, has been developed, from
the first, by the union and conflict of two very different
human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism,
the other urging them towards science. Some men have
achieved greatness through one of these impulses alone,
others through the other alone: in Hume, for example, the
scientific impulse reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake
a strong hostility to science co-exists with profound
mystic insight. But the greatest men who have been
philosophers have felt the need both of science and of
mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what
made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous
uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater
thing than either science or religion.
Russell, Mysticism and Logic
100 It seems to me that philosophical investigation, as far as
| have experience of it, starts from that curious and
unsatisfactory state of mind in which one feels complete
certainty without being able to say what one is certain of.
The process that results from prolonged attention is just
like That of watching an object approaching through a
thick fog: at first it is only a vague darkness, but as it
approaches articulations appear and one discovers that it
IS aman or a woman, or a horse or a cow or what not. It
seems to me that those who object to analysis would wish
us to be content with the initial dark blur. Belief in the
above process is my strongest and most unshakable
prejudice as regards the methods of philosophical
investigation.
Russell, My Philosophical Development, X1
101 Philosophy has been defined as "an unusually obstinate
attempt to think clearly"; | should define it rather as "an
unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously." The
philosopher’s temperament is rare, because it has to
combine two somewhat conflicting characteristics: on the
one hand a strong desire to believe some general
proposition about the universe or human life; on the
other hand, inability to believe contentedly except on
what appear to be intellectual grounds. The more
profound the philosopher, the more intricate and subtle
must his fallacies be in order to produce in him the
desired state of intellectual acquiescence. That is why
philosophy is obscure.
Russell, Unpopular Essays, IV
102 | must confess that | am not at all partial to the
fabrication of Weltanschauungen. Such activities may be
left to philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to
make their journey through life without a Baedeker of
that kind to tell them all about everything. Let us humbly
accept the contempt with which they look down on us
from the vantage-ground of their superior needs. But
since we too cannot forego our narcissistic pride, we will
draw comfort from the reflection that such "Guides to
Life" soon grow out of date, and that it is precisely short-
sighted, narrow, and finicky work like ours which obliges
them to appear in new editions, and that even the most
up-to-date of them are nothing but attempts to find a
substitute for the ancient, useful, and all-embracing
catechism. We know well enough how little light science
has so far been able to throw on the problems that
surround us. But however much ado the philosophers
may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient,
persevering research, in which everything is
subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can
gradually bring about a change. The benighted traveller
may sing aloud in the dark to deny his own fears; but, for
all that, he will not see an inch further beyond his nose.
Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, II
103 Philosophy is not opposed to science; it behaves itself
as if it were a science, and to a certain extent it makes
use of the same methods; but it parts company with
science, in that it clings to the illusion that it can produce
a complete and coherent picture of the universe, though
in fact that picture must needs fall to pieces with every
new advance in our knowledge. Its methodological error
lies in the fact that it over-estimates the epistemological
value of our logical operations, and to a certain extent
admits the validity of other sources of knowledge, such as
intuition..,.
But philosophy has no immediate influence on the
great majority of mankind; it interests only a small
number even of the thin upper stratum of intellectuals,
while all the rest find it beyond them.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
104 The distinctive office, problems and subjectmatter of
philosophy grow out of stresses and strains in the
community life in which a given form of philosophy
arises, and... accordingly, its specific problems vary with
the changes in human life that are always going on and
that at times constitute a crisis and a turning point in
human history.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Introduction, |
105 We are weak today in ideal matters because intelligence
is divorced from aspiration. The bare force of
circumstance compels us onwards in the daily detail of
our beliefs and acts, but our deeper thoughts and desires
turn backwards. When philosophy shall have co-operated
with the course of events and made clear and coherent
the meaning of the daily detail, science and emotion will
interpenetrate, practice and imagination will embrace.
Poetry and religious feeling will be the unforced flowers of
life. To further this articulation and revelation of the
meanings of the current course of events is the task and
problem of philosophy in days of transition.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, VIII
106 Plato thought nature but a soume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
Yeats, Among School Children, VI
107 Whenever the philosopher, closeted with his wisdom,
stands apart from the common rule of mankind—be it to
teach them, to serve as a model, or simply to go about his
work of perfecting his inner self—Socrates is there,
Socrates alive, working through the incomparable
prestige of his person. Let us go further. It has been said
that he brought philosophy down from heaven to earth.
But could we understand his life, and above all his death,
if the conception of the soul which Plato attributes to him
in the Phaedo had not been his? More generally speaking,
do the myths we find in the dialogues of Plato, touching
the soul, its origin, its entrance into the body, do
anything more than set down in Platonic terms a creative
emotion, the emotion present in the moral teaching of
Socrates? The myths, and the Socratic conception of the
soul to which they stand in the same relationship as the
explanatory programme to a symphony, have been
preserved along with the Platonic dialectics. They pursue
their subterranean way through Greek metaphysics, and
rise to the open air again with the Alexandrine
philosophers, with Ammonius perhaps, in any case with
Plotinus, who claims to be the successor of Socrates. They
have provided the Socratic soul with a body of doctrine
similar to that into which was to be breathed the spirit of
the Gospels. The two metaphysics, in spite, perhaps
because, of their resemblance, gave battle to each other,
before the one absorbed the best that was in the other;
for a while the world may well have wondered whether it
was to become Christian or Neo-Platonic. It was Socrates
against Jesus. To confine ourselves to Socrates, the
question is: what would this very practical genius have
done in another society and in other circumstances; if he
had not been struck above all, by the danger of the moral
empiricism of his time, and the mental anarchy of
Athenian democracy; if he had not had to deal with the
most crying need first, by establishing the rights of
reason; if he had not therefore thrust intuition and
inspiration into the background, and if the Greek he was
had not mastered in him the Oriental who sought to come
into being? We have made the distinction between the
closed and the open: would anyone place Socrates
among the closed souls? There was irony running through
Socratic teaching, and outbursts of lyricism were
probably rare; but in the measure in which these
outbursts cleared the road for a new spirit, they have
been decisive for the future of humanity.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, |
108 Most propositions and questions, that have been written
about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless.
We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all,
but only state their senselessness. Most questions and
propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that
we do not understand the logic of our language.
(They are of the same kind as the question whether
the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)
And so it is not to be wondered at that the deepest
problems are really no problems.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.003
109 The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of
thoughts.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of
elucidations.
The result of philosophy is not a number of
"philosophical propositions", but to make propositions
clear.
Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the
thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and
blurred....
Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural
science.
It should limit the thinkable and thereby the
unthinkable.
It should limit the unthinkable from within through the
thinkable.
It will mean the unspeakable by dearly displaying the
speakable.
Everything that can be thought at all can be thought
clearly. Every thing that can be said can be said clearly.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.112-
4.116
110 The right method of philosophy would be this. To say
nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of
natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do
with philosophy: and then always, when someone else
wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to
him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his
propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the
other— he would not have the feeling that we were
teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only
strictly correct method.
My propositions are cluddatory in this way: he who
understands me finally recognizes them as senseless,
when he has climbed out through them, on them, over
them. (He must so to speak throw' away the ladder, after
he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees
the world rightly.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.53-7
111 The doctrines of philosophers disagree where they are
literal and arbitrary,—mere guesses about the unknown;
but they agree or complete one another where they are
expressive or symbolic, thoughts wrung by experience
from the hearts of poets. Then all philosophies alike are
ways of meeting and recording the same flux of images,
the same vicissitudes of good and evil, which will visit all
generations, while man is man.
Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets, II
112 At beat, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very
imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few
voluntary companions who may find themselves in the
same boat. It is not easy for him to shout, or address a
crowd; he must be silent for long seasons; for his is
watching stars that move slowly and in courses that it is
possible though difficult to foresee; and he is crushing all
things in his heart as in a winepress, until his life and
their secret flow out together.
Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States,
II
113 This divination of the spiritual in the things of sense,
and which expresses itself in the things of sense, is
precisely what we call Poetry. Metaphysics too pursues a
Spiritual prey, but in a very different manner, and with a
very different formal object. Whereas metaphysics stands
in the line of knowledge and of the contemplation of
truth, poetry stands in the line of making and of the
delight procured by beauty. The difference is an all-
important one, and one that it would be harmful to
disregard. Metaphysics snatches at the spiritual in an
idea, by the most abstract intellection; poetry reaches it
in the flesh, by the very point of the sense sharpened
through intelligence. Metaphysics enjoys its possession
only in the retreats of the eternal regions, while poetry
finds its own at ever)-crossroad in the wanderings of the
contingent and the singular. The more real than reality
which both seek, metaphysics must attain in the nature
of things, while it suffices to poetry to touch it in any sign
whatsoever. Metaphysics gives chase to essences and
definitions, poetry to any flash of existence glittering by
the way, and any reflection of an invisible order.
Metaphysics isolates mystery in order to know it; poetry,
thanks to the balances it constructs, handles and utilizes
mystery as an unknown force.
Maritain, Frontiers of Poetry
114 Philosophy is not a "wisdom" of conduct or practical life
that consists in acting well. It is a wisdom whose nature
consists essentially in knowing.
How? Knowing in the fullest and strictest sense of the
term, that is to say, with certainty, and in being able to
stale why a thing is what it is and cannot be otherwise,
knowing by causes. The search for causes is indeed the
chief business of philosophers, and the knowledge with
which they are concerned is not a merely probable
knowledge, such as orators impart by their speeches, but
a knowledge which compels the assent of the intellect,
like the knowledge which the geometrician conveys by
his demonstrations. But certain knowledge of causes is
termed science. Philosophy therefore is a science.
Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, I, 5
115 Knowledge becomes coherent only as more versatile
and negotiable concepts replace the generalities with
which all systematizing thought begins, such as matter
and motion, or body and mind, then cognition, reason
and emotion, good and evil, truth and falsity, or whatever
basic concepts govern the first analyses that organize a
universe of discourse. Philosophy has traditionally dealt
in such general terms; and the reason for its proverbial
uselessness as a guide to the sciences, once they are
born from its mysterious womb, is that it has made
general propositions not only its immediate aim, but also
its sole material. They are, in fact, the true scientist’s
ultimate aim, too; but his inevitable preoccupation with
research that can be carried out in ad hoc, provisional
terms is usually so complete that be cannot survey other
fields and give his best hours of thought to reinterpreting
his statements in more widely variable but specifiable
ways.
Langer, Mind, I, Intro.
17.2 Science and Scientific Method
Though most of the passages assembled here are drawn
from books written in modern times—the age of science as
we have now come to understand it—this section begins
with a few quotations from the ancients that stress the role
of experience, the data obtained by investigation, or the
importance of checking theories or hypotheses against the
observed facts. Of special interest in this connection are the
passages drawn from the writings of Ptolemy, the Greek
astronomer, in which he defines the scientific effort as the
task of formulating a theory that will "save the
appearances," i.e., one that will account for or explain all the
observed phenomena. While the language in which this
insight is stated varies somewhat from author to author, the
reader will find the same basic point being made by many
later writers, such as Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others.
In the modern period, the quotations are drawn mainly
from two sources: on the one hand, from the treatises of
eminent scientists; on the other hand, from the writings of
philosophers who have undertaken the task of formulating
the canons of scientific method and evaluating the
achievements of science. In general there seems to be
agreement among them concerning the critical role played
by observation in relation to hypotheses or theories. They
concur in thinking that scientific theories or hypotheses can
and should be tested and either verified or falsified by the
data or facts of observation, whether obtained by means of
experimentation or by other techniques of research. In
consequence, they agree that advances in scientific
knowledge can be and have been made not only by the
making of more precise and more extensive observations
but also by the development of improved theories, theories
better able to account for the improved observations. So
predominant is this view of science in the quotations here
assembled that the reader may think it has never been
challenged. It has been, but only very recently, in the last
fifteen years, not by leading scientists but by small groups
of philosophers of science not quoted here.
The reader will find passages relevant to scientific
method in Chapter 6 on Knowledge, especially Section 6.2
on Experience; and also in Section 18.1 of the chapter on
Medicine and Health. Because of the special role that
mathematics plays in the natural sciences, especially
astronomy and physics, quotations dealing with applied
mathematics or the use of mathematics in science will be
found in Section 17.3 of this chapter as well as here.
1 Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a
comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those
who dwell in intimate association with nature and its
phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as
the foundations of their theories, principles such as to
admit of a wide and coherent development: while those
whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered
unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on
the basis of a few observations.
Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, 316a5
2 With a true view all the data harmonize, but with a false
one the facts soon clash.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1098b12
3 Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding
profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science
falsely so called.
| Timothy 6:20
4 Let no one, seeing the difficulty of our devices, find
troublesome such hypotheses. For it is not proper to
apply human things to divine things nor to get beliefs
concerning such great things from such dissimilar
examples. For what is more unlike than those which are
always alike with respect to those which never are, and
than those which are impeded by anything with those
which are not even impeded by themselves? But it is
proper to try and fit as far as possible the simpler
hypotheses to the movements in the heavens; and if this
does not succeed, then any hypotheses possible. Once all
the appearances are saved by the consequences of the
hypotheses, why should it seem strange that such
complications can come about in the movements of
heavenly things? For there is no impeding nature in
them, but one proper to the yielding and giving way to
movements according to the nature of each planet, even
if they are contrary, so that they can all penetrate and
shine through absolutely all the fluid media; and this free
action takes place not only about the particular circles,
but also about the spheres themselves and the axes of
revolution. We see the complication and sequence in
their different movements difficult and hard to come by
for the freedom of the movements in the likely stories
constructed by us, but in the heavenly thing never
anywhere impeded by this mixture. Or rather it is not
proper to judge the simplicity of heavenly things by those
which seem so with us, when here not even to all of us
does the same thing seem likewise simple. For in this way
not one of the heavenly occurrences would seem simple
to those studying them, not even the unchangeableness
of the first motion, since always to be the same is not
difficult here with us but impossible.
Ptolemy, Almagest, XIII, 2
5 The astronomer and the physicist both may prove the
Same conclusion—that the earth, for instance, is round;
the astronomer by means of mathematics (that is, by
abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of
matter itself.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 1, |
6 Seven years I’ve served this canon, but no more
| Know about his science than before.
All that | had | have quite lost thereby;
And, God knows, so have many more than lI.
Where | was wont to be right fresh and gay
Of clothing and of other good array.
Now may | wear my old hose on my head;
And where my colour was both fresh and red,
Now it is wan and of a leaden hue;
Whoso this science follows, he shall rue.
And from my toil yet bleary is my eye,
Behold the gain it is to multiply!
That slippery science has made me so bare
That I've no goods, wherever | may fare;
And | am still indebted so thereby
For gold that | have borrowed, truthfully,
That while | live | shall repay it never.
Let every man be warned by me for ever!
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
7 | will tell you, as | was taught before.
The bodies seven and the spirits four.
In order, as my master named of yore.
The first of spirits, then, quicksilver is,
The second arsenic, the third, ywis,
Is sal ammoniac, the fourth brimstone.
The seven bodies I'll describe anon:
Sol, gold is, Luna’s silver, as we see,
Mars iron, and quicksilver’s Mercury,
Saturn is lead, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus copper, by my father’s kin!
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
8 For out of olde feldes, as men seyth,
Cometh al this newe corn from yer to yere.
And out of olde bokes, in good feyth,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls, 22
9 It is the job of the astronomer to use painstaking and
Skilled observation in gathering together the history of
the celestial movements, and then— since he cannot by
any line of reasoning reach the true causes of these
movements—to think up or construct whatever causes or
hypotheses he pleases such that, by the assumption of
these causes, those same movements can be calculated
from the principles of geometry for the past and for the
future too. This artist is markedly outstanding in both of
these respects: for it is not necessary that these
hypotheses should be true, or even probable; but it is
enough if they provide a calculus which fits the
observations. ... For it is sufficiently clear that this art is
absolutely and profoundly ignorant of the causes of the
apparent irregular movements. And if it constructs and
thinks up causes—and it has certainly thought up a good
many—nevertheless it does not think them up in order to
persuade anyone of their truth but only in order that they
may provide a correct basis for calculation. But since for
one and the same movement varying hypotheses are
proposed from time to time, as eccentricity or epicycle for
the movement of the sun, the astronomer much prefers to
take the one which is easiest to grasp. Maybe the
philosopher demands probability instead; but neither of
them will grasp anything certain or hand it on, unless it
has been divinely revealed to him. Therefore let us permit
these new hypotheses to make a public appearance
among old ones which are themselves no more probable,
especially since they are wonderful and easy and bring
with them a vast storehouse of learned observations. And
as far as hypotheses go, let no one expect anything in the
way of certainty from astronomy, since astronomy can
offer us nothing certain, lest, if anyone take as true that
which has been constructed for another use, he go away
from this discipline a bigger fool than when he came to it.
Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Introduction to the
Reader
10 This more divine human science, which inquires into the
highest things, is not lacking in difficulties. And in
particular we see that as regards its principles and
assumptions, which the Greeks call "hypotheses," many
of those who undertook to deal with them were not in
accord and hence did not employ the same methods of
calculation. In addition, the courses of the planets and
the revolution of the stars cannot be determined by exact
calculations and reduced to perfect knowledge unless,
through the passage of time and with the help of many
prior observations, they can, so to speak, be handed
down to posterity. For even if Claud Ptolemy of
Alexandria, who stands far in front of all the others on
account of his wonderful care and industry, with the help
of more than forty years of observations brought this art
to such a high point that there seemed to be nothing left
which he had not touched upon; nevertheless we see that
very many things are not in accord with the movements
which should follow from his doctrine but rather with
movements which were discovered later and were
unknown to him.
Copernicus De Revolutionibus, |, Introduction
11 To you alone, true philosophers, ingenuous minds, who
not only in books but in things themselves look for
knowledge, have | dedicated these foundations of
magnetic science—a new style of philosophizing. But if
any see fit not to agree with the opinions here expressed
and not to accept certain of my paradoxes, still let them
note the great multitude of experiments and discoveries
—these it is chiefly that cause all philosophy to flourish;
and we have dug them up and demonstrated them with
much pains and sleepless nights and great money
expense. Enjoy them you, and, if ye can employ them for
better purposes. | know how hard it is to impart the air of
newness to what is old, trimness to what is gone out of
fashion; to lighten what is dark; to make that grateful
which excites disgust; to win belief for things doubtful-
but far more difficult is it to win any standing for or to
establish doctrines that are novel, unheard of, and
opposed to everybody’s opinions. We care naught, for
that, as we have held that philosophy is for the few.
William Gilbert, On the Loadstone, Pref.
12 All... our predecessors, discoursing of attraction on the
basis of a few vague and indecisive experiments and of
reasonings from the recondite causes of things; and
reckoning among the causes of the direction of the
magnet, a region of the sky, celestial poles, stars,
asterisms; or mountains, cliffs, vacant space, atoms,
attractional or collimational regions beyond the heavens,
and other like Unproved paradoxes, are world-wide astray
from the truth and are blindly wandering. But we do not
propose just now to overturn with arguments either these
their errors and impotent reasonings, or the other many
fables about the loadstone, or the fairy-tales of
mountebanks and story-tellers. ... In such-like follies and
fables do philosophers of the vulgar sort take delight;
with such-like do they cram readers a-hungered for things
abstruse, and every ignorant gaper for nonsense. But
when the nature of the loadstone shall have been in the
discourse following disclosed, and shall have been by our
labours and experiments tested, then will the hidden and
recondite but real causes of this great effect be brought
forward, proven, shown, demonstrated; then, too, will all
darkness vanish; every smallest root of error, being
plucked up, will be cast away and will be neglected; and
the foundations of a grand magnetic science being laid
will appear anew, so that high intellects may no more be
deluded by vain opinions.
William Gilbert, On the Loadstone, I, 1
13 Men are deplorably ignorant with respect to natural
things, and modern philosophers, as though dreaming in
the darkness, must be aroused and taught the uses of
things, the dealing with things; they must be made to
quit the sort of learning that comes only from books, and
that rests only on vain arguments from probability and
upon conjectures.
William Gilbert, On the Loadstone, I, 10
14 It has been ten years since | published my Commentaries
on the Movements of the Planet Mars. As only a few
copies of the book were printed, and as it had so to speak
hidden the teaching about celestial causes in thickets of
calculations and the rest of the astronomical apparatus,
and since the more delicate readers were frightened away
by the price of the book too; it seemed to my friends that
| should be doing right and fulfilling my responsibilities, if
| should write an epitome, wherein a summary of both the
physical and astronomical teaching concerning the
heavens would be set forth in plain and simple speech
and with the boredom of the demonstrations alleviated.
Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, IV, To the
Reader
15 And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th’earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it.
And freely men confesse that this world’s spent,
When in the Planets, and the Firmament
They seeke so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies.
Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation:
Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinkes he hath got
To be a Phoenix, and that then can bee
None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee.
Donne, First Anniversary
16 The sciences themselves, which have had better
intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of man
than with his reason, are three in number; astrology,
natural magic, and alchemy: of which sciences,
nevertheless, the ends or pretences are noble. For
astrology pretendeth to discover that correspondence or
concatenation which is between the superior globe and
the inferior: natural magic pretendeth to call and reduce
natural philosophy from variety of speculations to the
magnitude of works: and alchemy pretendeth to make
separation of all the unlike parts of bodies which in
mixtures of nature are incorporate. But the derivations
and prosecutions to these ends, both in the theories and
in the practices, are full of error and vanity; which the
great professors themselves have sought to veil over and
conceal by enigmatical writings, and referring themselves
to auricular traditions and such other devices, to save the
credit of impostures. And yet surely to alchemy this right
is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman
whereof Aesop makes the fable; that, when he died, told
his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under
ground in his vineyard; and they digged over all the
ground, and gold they found none; but by reason of their
stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their
vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so
assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought
to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions
and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as
for the use of man’s life.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. I, IV, 11
17 It were good to divide natural philosophy into the mine
and the furnace, and to make two professions or
occupations of natural philosophers, some to be pioneers
and some smiths: some to dig, and some to refine and
hammer. And surely | do best allow of a division of that
kind, though in more familiar and scholastical terms;
namely, that these be the two parts of natural
philosophy, the inquisition of causes, and the production
of effects; speculative, and operative; natural science,
and natural prudence. For as in civil matters there is a
wisdom of discourse, and a wisdom of direction; so is it in
natural.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, VII, 1
18 The unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself
possess but little power. Effects are produced by the
means of instruments and helps, which the
understanding requires no less than the hand; and as
instruments either promote or regulate the motion of the
hand, so those that are applied to the mind prompt or
protect the understanding.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 2
19 There are and can exist but two ways of investigating
and discovering truth. The one hurries on rapidly from
the senses and particulars to the most general axioms,
and from them, as principles and their supposed
indisputable truth, derives and discovers the
intermediate axioms. This is the way now in use. The
other constructs its axioms from the senses and
particulars, by ascending continually and gradually, till it
finally arrives at the most general axioms, which is the
true but unattempted way.... Each of these two ways
begins from the senses and particulars, and ends in the
greatest generalities. But they are immeasurably
different; for the one merely touches cursorily the limits
of experiment and particulars, whilst the other runs duly
and regularly through them; the one from the very outset
lays down some abstract and useless generalities, the
other gradually rises to those principles which are really
the most common in nature.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 19-22
20 Even when men build any science and theory upon
experiment, yet they almost always turn with premature
and hasty zeal to practise, not merely on account of the
advantage and benefit to be derived from it, but in order
to seize upon some security in a new undertaking of their
not employing the remainder of their labor unprofitably,
and by making themselves conspicuous, to acquire a
greater name for their pursuit. Hence, like Atalanta, they
leave the course to pick up the golden apple, interrupting
their soeed, and giving up the victory. But in the true
course of experiment, and in extending it to new effects,
we should imitate the Divine foresight and order; for God
on the first day only created light, and assigned a whole
day to that work without creating any material substance
thereon. In like manner we must first, by every kind of
experiment, elicit the discovery of causes and true
axioms, and seek for experiments which may afford light
rather than profit. Axioms, when rightly investigated and
established, prepare us not for a limited but abundant
practice, and bring in their train whole troops of effects.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 70
21 Let no one expect any great progress in the sciences
(especially their operative part), unless natural
philosophy be applied to particular sciences, and
particular sciences again referred back to natural
philosophy. For want of this, astronomy, optics, music,
many mechanical arts, medicine itself, and (what perhaps
iS more wonderful) moral and political philosophy, and
the logical sciences have no depth, but only glide over
the surface and variety of things; because these sciences,
when they have been once partitioned out and
established, are no longer nourished by natural
philosophy, which would have imparted fresh vigor and
growth to them from the sources and genuine
contemplation of motion, rays, sounds, texture, and
conformation of bodies, and the affections and capacity
of the understanding. But we can little wonder that the
sciences grow not when separated from their roots.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 80
22 There is another powerful and great cause of the little
advancement of the sciences, which is this: it is
impossible to advance properly in the course when the
goal is not properly fixed. But the real and legitimate goal
of the sciences, is the endowment of human life with new
inventions and riches.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 81
23 Those who have treated of the sciences have been either
empirics or dogmatical. The former like ants only heap up
and use their store, the latter like spiders spin out their
own webs. The bee, a mean between both, extracts
matter from the flowers of the garden and the field, but
works and fashions it by its own efforts. The true labor of
philosophy resembles hers, for it neither relies entirely
nor principally on the powers of the mind, nor yet lays up
in the memory the matter afforded by the experiments of
natural history and mechanics in its raw state, but
changes and works it in the understanding.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 95
24 We can then only augur well for the sciences, when the
ascent shall proceed by a true scale and successive steps,
without interruption or breach from particulars to the
lesser axioms, thence to the intermediate (rising one
above the other), and lastly, to the most general. For the
lowest axioms differ but little from bare experiments; the
highest and most general (as they are esteemed at
present), are notional, abstract, and of no real weight.
The intermediate are true, solid, full of life, and upon
them depend the business and fortune of mankind;
beyond these are the really general, but not abstract,
axioms, which are truly limited by the intermediate.
We must not then add wngs, but rather lead and
ballast to the understanding, to prevent its jumping or
flying, which has not yet been done; but whenever this
takes place, we may entertain greater hopes of the
sciences.
Bacon, Novum Organum, |, 104
25 Let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and
sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or luxurious
purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every
worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches,
light itself, and the rest. Only let mankind regain their
rights over nature, assigned to them fay the gift of God,
and obtain that power, whose exercise will be governed
by right reason and true religion.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 129
26 Of the Sphinx’s riddles there are in all two kinds: one
concerning the nature of things, another concerning the
nature of man; and in like manner there are two kinds of
kingdom offered as the reward of solving them: one over
nature, and the other over man. For the command over
things natural—over bodies, medicines, mechanical
powers, and infinite other of the kind—is the one proper
and ultimate end of true natural philosophy; however the
philosophy of the school, content with what it finds, and
swelling with talk, may neglect or spurn the search after
realities and works. But the riddle proposed to Oedipus,
by the solution of which he became king of Thebes,
related to the nature of man; for whoever has a thorough
insight into the nature of man may shape his fortune
almost as he will, and is born for empire.
Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients: Sphinx
27 First of all it seems desirable to find and explain a
definition best fitting natural phenomena. For anyone
may invent an arbitrary type of motion and discuss its
properties; thus, for instance, some have imagined
helices and conchoids as described by certain motions
which are not met with in nature, and have very
commendably established the properties which these
curves possess in virtue of their definitions; but we have
decided to consider the phenomena of bodies falling with
an acceleration such as actually occurs in nature and to
make this definition of accelerated motion exhibit the
essential features of observed accelerated motions. And
this, at last, after repeated efforts we trust we have
succeeded in doing. In this belief we are confirmed
mainly by the consideration that experimental results are
seen to agree with and exactly correspond with those
properties which have been, one after another,
demonstrated by us.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, II/
28 Simplicio. | understand in a general way how the two
kinds of natural motions give rise to the circles and
spheres; and yet as to the production of circles by
accelerated motion and its proof, | am not entirely clear;
but the fact that one can take the origin of motion either
at the inmost centre or at the very top of the sphere leads
one to think that there may be some great mystery
hidden in these true and wonderful results, a mystery
related to the creation of the universe (which is said to be
spherical in shape), and related also to the seat of the
first cause.
Salviati. | have no hesitation in agreeing with you. But
profound considerations of this kind belong to a higher
science than ours. We must be satisfied to belong to that
class of less worthy workmen who procure from the
quarry the marble out of which, later, the gifted sculptor
produces those masterpieces which lay hidden in this
rough and shapeless exterior.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, II/
29 Thus far | have spoken of the passage of the blood from
the veins into the arteries, and of the manner in which it
is transmitted and distributed by the action of the heart;
points to which some, moved either by the authority of
Galen or Columbus, or the reasonings of others, will give
in their adhesion. But what remains to be said upon the
quantity and source of the blood which thus passes is of
so novel and unheard of character, that | not only fear
injury to myself from the envy of a few, but | tremble lest
| have mankind at large for my enemies, so much doth
wont and custom, that become as another nature, and
doctrine once sown and that hath struck deep root, and
respect for antiquity influence all men: still the die is
cast, and my trust is in my love of truth, and the candour
that inheres in cultivated minds. And sooth to say, when |
surveyed my mass of evidence, whether derived from
vivisections, and my various reflections on them, or from
the ventricles of the heart and the vessels that enter into
and issue from them, the symmetry and size of these
conduits—for nature doing nothing in vain, would never
have given them so large a relative size without a
purpose—or from the arrangement and intimate structure
of the valves in particular, and of the other parts of the
heart in general, with many things besides, | frequently
and seriously bethought me, and long revolved in my
mind, what might be the quantity of blood which was
transmitted, in how short a time its passage might be
effected, and the like; and not finding it possible that this
could be supplied by the juices of the ingested aliment
without the veins on the one hand becoming drained,
and the arteries on the other getting ruptured through
the excessive charge of blood, unless the blood should
somehow find its way from the arteries into the veins, and
so return to the right side of the heart; | began to think
whether there might not be a MOTION, AS IT WERE, INA
CIRCLE. Now this | afterwards found to be true.
William Harvey, Motion of the Heart, VIII
30 The heart, consequently, is the beginning of life; the sun
of the microcosm, even as the sun in his turn might well
be designated the heart of the world; for it is the heart by
whose virtue and pulse the blood is moved, perfected,
made apt to nourish, and is preserved from corruption
and coagulation; it is the household divinity which,
discharging its function, nourishes, cherishes, quickens
the whole body, and is indeed the foundation of life, the
source of all action. But of these things we shall speak
more opportunely when we come to speculate upon the
final cause of this motion of the heart.
William Harvey, Motion of the Heart, VIII
31 To those who repudiate the circulation because they
neither see the efficient nor final cause of it, and who
exclaim, cu/ bono? | have yet to reply, having hitherto
taken no note of the ground of objection which they take
up. And first | own | am of opinion that our first duty is to
inquire whether the thing be or not, before asking
wherefore it is? for from the facts and circumstances
which meet us in the circulation admitted, established,
the ends and objects of its institution are especially to be
sought. Meantime | would only ask, how many things we
admit in physiology, pathology, and therapeutics, the
causes of which are unknown to us? That there are many,
no one doubts—the causes of putrid fevers, of revulsions,
of the purgation of excrementitious matters, among the
number.
Whoever, therefore, sets himself in opposition to the
circulation, because, if it be acknowledged, he cannot
account for a variety of medical problems, nor in the
treatment of diseases and the administration of
medicines, give satisfactory reasons for the phenomena
that appear; or who will not see that the precepts he has
received from his teachers are false; or who thinks it
unseemly to give up accredited opinions; or who regards
it as in some sort criminal to call in question doctrines
that have descended through a long succession of ages,
and carry the authority of the ancients—to all of these |
reply: that the facts cognizable by the senses wait upon
no opinions, and that the works of nature bow to no
antiquity; for indeed there is nothing either more ancient
or of higher authority than nature.
William Harvey, Circulation of the Blood, II
32 On the same terms... as art is attained to, is all
knowledge and science acquired; for as art is a habit with
reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in
respect of things to be known: as that proceeds from the
imitation of types or forms, so this proceeds from the
knowledge of natural things.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, Intro.
33 Thus, our learned anatomist, blinded by a popular error,
seeking in the egg for some particular matter fitted to
engender the chick distinct from the rest of the contents
of the egg, has gone astray. And so it happens to all, who,
forsaking the light, which the frequent dissection of
bodies, and familiar converse with nature supplies,
expect that they are to understand from conjecture, and
arguments founded on probabilities, or the authority of
writers, the things or the facts which they ought
themselves to behold with their own eyes, to perceive
with their proper senses- It is not wonderful, therefore,
when we see that we have so many errors accredited by
general consent, handed down to us from remote
antiquity’, that men otherwise of great ingenuity, should
be egregiously deceived, which they may very well be,
when they are satisfied with taking their knowledge from
books, and keeping their memory stored with the notions
of learned men. They who philosophize in this way, by
tradition, if | may so say, Know no better than the books
they keep by them.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 43
34 Whenever men notice some similarity between two
things, they are wont to ascribe to each, even in those
respects in which the two differ, what they have found to
be true of the other. Thus they erroneously compare the
sciences, which entirely consist in the cognitive exercise
of the mind, wth the arts, which depend upon an exercise
and disposition of the body. They see that not all the arts
can be acquired by the same man, but that he who
restricts himself to one, most readily becomes the best
executant, since it is not so easy for the same hand to
adapt itself both to agricultural operations and to harp-
playing, or to the performance of several such tasks as to
one alone. Hence they have held the same to be true of
the sciences also, and distinguishing them from one
another according to their subject matter, they have
imagined that they ought to be studied separately, each
in isolation from all the rest. Bui this is certainly wrong.
For since the sciences taken all together are identical
with human wisdom, which always remains one and the
same, however applied to different subjects, and suffers
no more differentiation proceeding from them than the
light of the sun experiences from the variety of the things
which it illumines, there ts no need for minds to be
confined at all within limits; for neither does the knowing
of one truth have an effect like that of the acquisition of
one art and prevent us from finding out another, it rather
aids us to do so.... Hence we must believe that all the
sciences are so inter-connected, that it is much easier to
study them all together than to isolate one from all the
others. If, therefore, anyone wishes to search out the
truth of things in serious earnest, he ought not to select
one special science; for all the sciences are conjoined
with each other and interdependent: he ought rather to
think how to increase the natural light of reason, not for
the purpose of resolving this or that difficulty of
scholastic type, but in order that his understanding may
light his will to its proper choice in all the contingencies
of life. In a short time he will see with amazement that he
has made much more progress than those who are eager
about particular ends, and that he has not only obtained
all that they desire, but even higher results than fall
within his expectation.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, |
35 Fearing that | could not put in my Treatise all that | had in
my mind, | undertook only to show very fully my
conceptions of light. Later on, when occasion occurred, |
resolved to add something about the sun and fixed stars,
because light proceeds almost entirely from them; the
heavens would be dealt with because they transmit light,
the planets, the comets and the earth because they
reflect it, and more particularly would all bodies which
are on the earth, because they are either coloured or
transparent, or else luminous; and finally | should deal
with man because he is the spectator of all. For the very
purpose of putting all these topics somewhat in shadow,
and being able to express myself freely about them,
without being obliged to adopt or to refute the opinions
which are accepted by the learned, | resolved to leave all
this world to their disputes, and to speak only of what
would happen in a new world if God now created,
somewhere in an imaginary space, matter sufficient
wherewith to form it, and if He agitated in diverse ways,
and without any order, the diverse portions of this matter,
so that there resulted a chaos as confused as the poets
ever feigned, and concluded His work by merely lending
His concurrence to Nature in the usual way, leaving her
to act in accordance with the laws which He had
established.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, V
36 So soon as | had acquired some general notions
concerning Physics, and as, beginning to make use of
them in various special difficulties, | observed to what
point they might lead us, and how much they differ from
the principles of which we have made use up to the
present time, | believed that | could not keep them
concealed without greatly sinning against the law which
obliges us to procure, as much as in us lies, the general
good of all mankind. For they caused me to see that it is
possible to attain knowledge which is very useful in life,
and that, instead of that speculative philosophy which is
taught in the Schools, we may find a practical philosophy
by means of which, knowing the force and the action of
fire, water, air, the stars, heavens and all other bodies
that environ us, as distinctly as we know the different
crafts of our artisans, we can in the same way employ
them in all those uses to which they are adapted, and
thus render ourselves the masters and possessors of
nature.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, VI
37 The light of humane minds is perspicuous words, but by
exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from
ambiguity; reason is the pace; increase of science, the
way; and the benefit of mankind, the end.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 5
38 All the sciences are infinite in the extent of their
researches. For who doubts that geometry, for instance,
has an infinite infinity of problems to solve? They are also
infinite in the multitude and fineness of their premises;
for it is clear that those which are put forward as ultimate
are not self-supporting, but are based on others which,
again having others for their support, do not permit of
finality. But we represent some as ultimate for reason, in
the same way as in regard to material objects we call that
an indivisible point beyond which our senses can no
longer perceive anything, although by its nature it is
infinitely divisible.
Of these two Infinites of science, that of greatness is
the most palpable, and hence a few persons have
pretended to know all things. “I will soeak of the whole,”
said Democritus.
But the infinitely little is the least obvious.
Philosophers have much oftener claimed to have reached
it, and it is here they have all stumbled.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 72
39 Geometry, arithmetic, music, physics, medicine,
architecture, and all the sciences subject to experiment
and reason must be added to if they are to become
perfect. The ancients found them merely sketched by
their predecessors, and we shall leave them to our
successors in a more perfected state than we received
them. Since their perfection depends upon time and
effort, it is evident that even if our effort and time had
gained us less than the labors of the ancients, separated
from ours, the two together nevertheless must have more
effect than either alone.
The clearing up of this difference should make us pity
the blindness of those who advance authority alone as
proof in physics instead of reason or experiment, and
should fill us with horror at the wickedness of others who
use reason alone in theology instead of the authority of
Scripture and the Fathers. We must strengthen the
courage of those timid souls who dare discover nothing in
physics, and confound the insolence of that temerity
which introduces novelty into theology. Meanwhile the
misfortune of the age is such that we see many new
opinions in theology altogether unknown to antiquity
maintained with obstinacy and received with applause;
whereas those put forward in physics, though few in
number, must be convicted of error, it seems, aS soon as
they shock, however little, received opinions. As if
respect for the philosophers of antiquity were a duty but
for the most ancient of the Fathers only decorum! | leave
it to the judicious to observe the importance of this abuse
which perverts the order of the sciences so unjustly, and |
think there will be few who do not wish this ... to be
applied to other subjects, since new discoveries are
inevitably errors in those matters we profane with
impunity, whereas they are absolutely necessary for the
perfection of so many other subjects incomparably lower,
which however we would be afraid to touch.
Pascal, Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum
40 Concerning the vacuum the ancients were right to say
that nature did not permit it, because all their
experiments had always led to the observation that she
abhorred it and could not endure it. But if the new
experiments had been known to them, perhaps they
would have found reason to affirm what they had reason
to deny because the vacuum had not yet appeared.
Therefore in making the judgment that nature did not
permit a vacuum, they meant to speak of nature only as
they knew her; since to make the judgment in general it
would not be enough to have seen it true in a hundred
instances or in a thousand or in any other number
however great, for if there remained a single case to
examine, it alone would suffice to prevent the general
definition, and if a single case were opposed, it alone. ...
For in all matters whose proof is by experiment and not
by demonstration no universal assertion can be made
except by the general enumeration of all the parts and all
the different cases. Thus when we say the diamond is the
hardest of all bodies, we mean of all bodies we know, and
we neither can nor should include those we do not know.
And when we Say that gold is the heaviest of all bodies, it
would be rash of us to include in this general proposition
bodies not yet in our knowledge, although it is not
impossible they are in nature. Similarly when the
ancients asserted that nature did not permit a vacuum,
they meant she did not permit a vacuum in all the
experiments they had seen, and they could not without
rashness include experiments they did not know. But if
they had known them, undoubtedly they would have
drawn the same consequences as we do and would by
their avowal have given them the authority of that
antiquity which men today want to make the sole
principle of the sciences.
Pascal, Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum
41 Let all the disciples of Aristotle bring together all the
strongest arguments there are in the writings of their
master and of his commentators to account for these
things by the horror of the vacuum, if they can; if not, let
them recognize that experiments are the true masters to
follow in physics, that the experiment made on the
mountains overturned the universal belief everywhere
held that nature abhors a vacuum and opened up this
knowledge which can nevermore be forgotten, that
nature has no horror of the vacuum, that she does
nothing to avoid it, and that the weight of the mass of the
air is the true cause of all the effects hitherto attributed
to that imaginary cause.
Pascal, Treatise on the Weight of the Mass of the Air
42 And Raphael now to Adam’s doubt propos’d
Benevolent and facil thus repli’d.
To ask or search | blame thee not, for Heav’n
Is as the Book of God before thee set,
Wherein to read his wondrous Works, and learne
His Seasons, Hours, or Days, or Months, or Yeares;
This to attain, whether Heav’n move or Earth,
Imports not, if thou reck’n right, the rest
From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scann’d by them who ought
Rather admire; or if they list to try
Conjecture, he his Fabric of the Heav’ns
Hath left to thir disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at thir quaint Opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model Heav’n
And calculate the Starrs, how they will weild
The mightie frame, how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appeerances, how gird the Sphear
With Centric and Eccentric scribl’d o’re,
Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 64
43 | have finally judged that it was better worth while to
publish this writing, such as it is, than to let it run the
risk, by waiting longer, of remaining lost. There will be
seen in it demonstrations of those kinds which do not
produce as great a certitude as those of geometry, and
which even differ much therefrom, since, whereas the
geometers prove their propositions by fixed and
incontestable principles, here the principles are verified
by the conclusions to be drawn from them; the nature of
these things not allowing of this being done otherwise. It
is always possible to attain thereby to a degree of
probability which very often is scarcely less than
complete proof. To wit, when things which have been
demonstrated by the principles that have been assumed
correspond perfectly to the phenomena which
experiment has brought under observation; especially
when there are a great number of them, and further,
principally, when one can imagine and foresee new
phenomena which ought to follow from the hypotheses
which one employs, and when one finds that therein the
fact corresponds to our prevision. But if all these proofs of
probability are met with in that which | propose to
discuss, as it seems to me they are, this ought to bea
very strong confirmation of the success of my inquiry.
Huygens, Treatise on Light, Pref.
44 | derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of
gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several
planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions
which are also mathematical, | deduce the motions of the
planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. | wish we
could derive the rest of the phenomena of Nature by the
same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles, for |
am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all
depend upon certain forces by which the particles of
bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either
mutually impelled towards one another, and where in
regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one
another. These forces being unknown, philosophers have
hitherto attempted the search of Nature in vain; but |
hope the principles here laid down will afford some light
either to this or some truer method of philosophy.
Newton, Principia, Pref. to 1st Ed.
45 The qualities of bodies, which admit neither
intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are
found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our
experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities
of all bodies whatsoever. For since the qualities of bodies
are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for
universal all such as universally agree with experiments;
and such as are not liable to diminution can never be
quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the
evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain
fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from
the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple, and
always consonant to itself.
Newton, Principia, III, Rule III
46 In experimental philosophy we are to look upon
propositions inferred by general induction from
phenomena as accurately or very nearly true,
notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be
imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by
which they may either be made more accurate, or liable
to exceptions.
This rule we must follow, that the argument of
induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.
Newton, Principia, Ill, Rule 1V
47 These principles [e.g., gravity] | consider, not as occult
qualities, supposed to result from the specific forms of
things, but as general laws of nature, by which the things
themselves are formed; their truth appearing to us by
phenomena, though their causes be not yet discovered.
For these are manifest qualities, and their causes only are
occult. And the Aristotelians gave the name of occult
qualities, not to manifest qualities, but to such qualities
only as they supposed to lie hid in bodies, and to be the
unknown causes of manifest effects. Such as would be
the causes of gravity, and of magnetic and electric
attractions, and of fermentations, if we should suppose
that these forces or actions arose from qualities unknown
to us, and incapable of being discovered and made
manifest. Such occult qualities put a stop to the
improvement of natural philosophy, and therefore of late
years have been rejected. To tell us that every species of
things is endowed with an occult specific quality by
which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us
nothing; but to derive two or three general principles of
motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow
from those manifest principles, would be a very great
step in philosophy, though the causes of those principles
were not yet discovered. And, therefore, | scruple not to
propose the principles of motion above mentioned, they
being of very general extent, and leave their causes to be
found out.
Newton, Optics, III, 1
48 | do not Know what | may appear to the world, but to
myself | seem to have been only like a boy playing on the
seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a
smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Newton, Remark (1727)
49 Mr. Newton, in his never enough to be admired book, has
demonstrated several propositions, so many new truths,
before unknown to and are further advances in
mathematical knowledge: but, for the discovery of these,
it was not the general maxims, “what is, is;” or, “the
whole is bigger than a part,” or the like, that helped him.
These were not the clues that led him into the discovery
of the truth and certainty of those propositions. Nor was it
by them that he got the knowledge of those
demonstrations, but by finding out intermediate ideas
that showed the agreement or disagreement of the ideas,
as expressed in the propositions he demonstrated. This is
the greatest exercise and improvement of human
understanding in the enlarging of knowledge, and
advancing the sciences; wherein they are far enough
from receiving any help from the contemplation of these
or the like magnified maxims.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Vil, 11
50 1 deny not but a man, accustomed to rational and regular
experiments, shall be able to see further into the nature
of bodies and guess righter at their yet unknown
properties than one that is a stranger to them: but yet, as
| have said, this is but judgment and opinion, not
knowledge and certainty. This way of getting and
improving our Knowledge in substances only by
experience and history, which is all that the weakness of
our faculties in this state of mediocrity which we are in in
this world can attain to, makes me suspect that natural
philosophy ts not capable of being made a science. We
are able, | imagine, to reach very little general knowledge
concerning the species of bodies and their several
properties. Experiments and historical observations we
may have, from which we may draw advantages of ease
and health, and thereby increase our stock of
conveniences for this life; but beyond this | fear our
talents reach not, nor are our faculties, as | guess, able to
advance.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XII, 10
51 Natural philosophy, as a speculative science, | imagine
we have none, and perhaps | may think | have reason to
Say we never shall be able to make a science of it. The
works of nature are contrived by a wisdom, and operate
by ways too far surpassing our faculties to discover or
Capacities to conceive, for us ever to be able to reduce
them into a science.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 190
52 If ... we consider the difference there is betwixt natural
philosophers and other men, with regard to their
knowledge of the phenomena, we shall find it consists
not in an exacter knowledge of the efficient cause that
produces them—for that can be no other than the wi// of
a spirit—but only in a greater largeness of
comprehension, whereby analogies, harmonies, and
agreements are discovered in the works of nature, and
the particular effects explained, that is, reduced to
general rules, which rules, grounded on the analogy and
uniformness observed in the production of natural
effects, are most agreeable and sought after by the mind;
for that they extend our prospect beyond what is present
and near to us, and enable us to make very probable
conjectures touching things that may have happened at
very great distances of time and place, as well as to
predict things to come; which sort of endeavour towards
omniscience is much affected by the mind.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 105
53 | think we may lay down the following conclusions. First,
it is plain philosophers amuse themselves in vain, when
they inquire for any natural efficient cause, distinct from
a mind or spirit. Secondly, considering the whole creation
is the workmanship of a wise and good Agent, it should
seem to become philosophers to employ their thoughts
(contrary to what some hold) about the final causes of
things; and | confess | see no reason why pointing out the
various ends to which natural things are adapted, and for
which they were originally with unspeakable wisdom
contrived, should not be thought one good way of
accounting for them, and altogether worthy a
philosopher. Thirdly, from what has been premised no
reason can be drawn why the history of nature should not
still be studied, and observations and experiments made,
which, that they are of use to mankind, and enable us to
draw any general conclusions, is not the result of any
immutable habitudes or relations between things
themselves, but only of God’s goodness and kindness to
men in the administration of the world. Fourthly, by a
diligent observation of the phenomena within our view,
we may discover the general laws of nature, and from
them deduce the other phenomena; | do not say
demonstrate, for all deductions of that kind depend ona
supposition that the Author of nature always operates
uniformly, and in a constant observance of those rules we
take for principles: which we cannot evidently know.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 107
54 Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in Night;
God said. Let NEWTON be! and all was Light.
Pope, Intended for Sir lsaac Newton
55 The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only
staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the
most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical
kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the
observation of human blindness and weakness is the
result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in
spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.
Nor is geometry, when taken into the assistance of
natural philosophy, ever able to remedy this defect, or
lead us into the knowledge of ultimate causes, by all that
accuracy of reasoning for which it is so justly
celebrated.... Thus, it is a law of motion, discovered by
experience, that the moment or force of any body in
motion is in the compound ratio or proportion of its solid
contents and its velocity; and consequently, that a small
force may remove the greatest obstacle or raise the
greatest weight, if, by any contrivance or machinery, we
can increase the velocity of that force, so as to make it an
overmatch for its antagonist. Geometry assists us in the
application of this law, by giving us the just dimensions
of all the parts and figures which can enter into any
species of machine; but still the discovery of the law itself
is owing merely to experience, and all the abstract
reasonings in the world could never lead us one step
towards the knowledge of it. When we reason a priori,
and consider merely any object or cause as it appears to
the mind, independent of all observation, it never could
suggest to us the notion of any distinct object, such as its
effect; much less show us the inseparable and inviolable
connexion between them. A man must be very sagacious
who could discover by reasoning that crystal is the effect
of heat, and ice of cold, without being previously
acquainted with the operation of these qualities.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 26-27
56 When we run over libraries, persuaded of these
principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our
hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity or number? No, Does it
contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of
fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for
it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 132
57 The philosophers of the last age found out a new
universe; and a circumstance which made its discovery
more difficult was that no one had so much as suspected
its existence. The most sage and judicious were of
opinion that it was a frantic rashness to dare so much as
to imagine that it was possible to guess the laws by
which the celestial bodies move and the manner how
light acts. Galileo, by his astronomical discoveries, Kepler,
by his calculation, Descartes (at least, in his dioptrics),
and Sir Isaac Newton, in all his works, severally saw the
mechanism of the springs of the world. The geometricians
have subjected infinity to the laws of calculation. The
circulation of the blood in animals, and of the sap in
vegetables, have changed the face of Nature with regard
to us. A new kind of existence has been given to bodies in
the air-pump. By the assistance of telescopes bodies have
been brought nearer to one another. Finally, the several
discoveries which Sir lsaac Newton has made on light are
equal to the boldest things which the curiosity of man
could expect after so many philosophical novelties.
Voltaire, Letters on the English, XVI
58 It must indeed be confessed that the Royal Society boast
their Newton, but then he did not owe his knowledge and
discoveries to that body; so far from it that the latter were
intelligible to very few of his fellow members. A genius
like that of Sir Isaac belonged to all the academies in the
world, because all had a thousand things to learn of him.
Voltaire, Letters on the English, XVI
59 There prevails among men of letters an opinion that all
appearance of science is particularly hateful to women.
Johnson, Rambler No. 173
60 Johnson. Human experience, which is constantly
contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system,
built upon the discoveries of a great many minds, is
always of more strength, than what is produced by the
mere workings of any one mind, which, of itself, can do
little. There is not so poor a book in the world that would
not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by
a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 28, 1763)
61 We very often hear complaints of the shallowness of the
present age, and of the decay of profound science. But |
do not think that those which rest upon a secure
foundation, such as mathematics, physical science, etc.,
in the least deserve this reproach, but that they rather
maintain their ancient fame, and in the latter case,
indeed, far surpass it. The same would be the case with
the other kinds of cognition, if their principles were but
firmly established. In the absence of this security,
indifference, doubt, and finally, severe criticism are
rather signs of a profound habit of thought. Our age is the
age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.
The sacredness of religion, and the authority of
legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of
exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if
they are exempted, they become the subjects of just
suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which
reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a
free and public examination.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Pref. to 1st Ed., fn. 2
62 It is only about a century and a half since the wise Bacon
gave a new direction to physical studies, or rather—as
others were already on the right track—imparted fresh
vigour to the pursuit of this new direction. Here, too, as in
the case of mathematics, we find evidence of a rapid
intellectual revolution. In the remarks which follow | shall
confine myself to the empirical side of natural science.
When Galilei experimented with balls of a definite
weight on the inclined plane, when Torricelli caused the
air to sustain a weight which he had calculated
beforehand to be equal to that of a definite column of
water, or when Stahl, at a later period, converted metals
into lime, and reconverted lime into metal, by the
addition and subtraction of certain elements; a light
broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that
reason only perceives that which it produces after its own
design; that it must not be content to follow, as it were, in
the leading-strings of nature, but must proceed in
advance with principles of judgement according to
unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply to its
questions. For accidental observations, made according
to no preconceived plan, cannot be united under a
necessary law. But it is this that reason seeks for and
requires. It is only the principles of reason which can give
to concordant phenomena the validity of laws, and it is
only when experiment is directed by these rational
principles that it can have any real utility. Reason must
approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving
information from it, not, however, in the character of a
pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell
him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to
reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to
propose. To this single idea must the revolution be
ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many
centuries, natural science was at length conducted into
the path of certain progress.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Pref. to 2nd Ed.
63 In matters of science. , . the greatest inventor differs
only in degree from the most laborious imitator and
apprentice, whereas he differs specifically from one
endowed by nature for fine art. No disparagement,
however, of those great men, to whom the human race Is
so deeply indebted, is involved in this comparison of
them with those who on the score of their talent for fine
art are the elect of nature. The talent for science is
formed for the continued advances of greater perfection
in knowledge, with all its dependent practical
advantages, as also for imparting the same to others.
Hence scientists can boast a ground of considerable
superiority over those who merit the honour of being
called geniuses, since genius reaches a point at which art
must make a halt, as there is a limit imposed upon it
which it cannot transcend.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 47
64 Fine art and the sciences, if they do not make man
morally better, yet, by conveying a pleasure that admits
of universal communication and by introducing polish
and refinement into society, make him civilized. Thus
they do much to overcome the tyrannical propensities of
sense, and so prepare man for a sovereignty in which
reason alone shall have sway.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 83
65 The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a
science from the science itself is owing to this, that every
branch of physical science must consist of three things;
the series of facts which are the objects of the science,
the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by
which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions
of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and
the idea to be a picture of the fact. And, as ideas are
preserved and communicated by means of words, it
necessarily follows that we cannot improve the language
of any science without at the same time improving the
science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve
a science without improving the language or
nomenclature which belongs to it. However certain the
facts of any science may be and however just the ideas
we may have formed of these facts, we can only
communicate false impressions to others while we want
words by which these may be properly expressed.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Pref.
66 When we begin the study of any science, we are ina
situation, respecting that science, similar to that of
children; and the course by which we have to advance is
precisely the same which nature follows in the formation
of their ideas. In a child, the idea is merely an effect
produced by a sensation; and, in the same manner, in
commencing the study of a physical science, we ought to
form no idea but what is a necessary consequence, and
immediate effect, of an experiment or observation.
Besides, he that enters upon the career of science isina
less advantageous situation than a child who is acquiring
his first ideas. To the child, nature gives various means of
rectifying any mistakes he may commit respecting the
salutary or hurtful qualities of the objects which surround
him. On every occasion his judgments are corrected by
experience; want and pain are the necessary
consequences arising from false judgment; gratification
and pleasure are produced by judging aright. Under such
masters, we cannot fail to become well informed; and we
soon learn to reason justly, when want and pain are the
necessary consequences of a contrary conduct.
In the study and practice of the sciences it is quite
different; the false judgments we form neither affect our
existence nor our welfare; and we are not forced by any
physical necessity to correct them. Imagination, on the
contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of
truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are
so apt to indulge, prompts us to draw conclusions which
are not immediately derived from facts; so that we
become in some measure interested in deceiving
ourselves. Hence, it is by no means to be wondered that,
in the science of physics in general, men have often
made suppositions instead of forming conclusions. These
suppositions, handed down from one age to another,
acquire additional weight from the authorities by which
they are supported, till at last they are received, even by
men of genius, as fundamental truths.
The only method of preventing such errors from taking
place, and of correcting them when formed, is to restrain
and simplify our reasoning as much as possible. This
depends entirely upon ourselves, and the neglect of it is
the only source of our mistakes. We must trust to nothing
but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot
deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our
reasoning to the test of experiment and never to search
for truth but by the natural road of experiment and
observation.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Pref.
67 | am far from pretending ... to set aside the necessity of
attendance upon lectures and laboratories for such as
wish to acquire accurate knowledge of the science of
chemistry. These should familiarise themselves to the
employment of apparatus, and to the performance of
experiments by actual experience. Nihil est in intellectu
guod non prius fuerit in sensu [Nothing is in the intellect
that was not first in the senses], the motto which the
celebrated Rouelle caused to be painted in large
characters in a conspicuous part of his laboratory, is an
important truth never to be lost sight of either by
teachers or students of chemistry.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Ill, Introduction
68 The best method known for determining the quantities of
substances submitted to chemical experiment or
resulting from them, is by means of an accurately
constructed beam and scales, with properly regulated
weights, which well known operation is called we/ghing.
The denomination and quantity of the weights used as an
unit or standard for this purpose are extremely arbitrary,
and vary not only in different kingdoms, but even in
different provinces of the same kingdom, and in different
cities of the same province. This variation is of infinite
consequence to be well understood in commerce and in
the arts; but, in chemistry, it is of no moment what
particular denomination of weight be employed, provided
the results of experiments be expressed in convenient
fractions of the same denomination. For this purpose,
until all the weights used in society be reduced to the
same standard, it will be sufficient for chemists in
different parts to use the common pound of their own
country as the unit or standard, and to express all its
fractional parts in decimals instead of the arbitrary
divisions now in use. By this means the chemists of all
countries will be thoroughly understood by each other,
as, although the absolute weights of the ingredients and
products cannot be known, they will readily, and without
calculation, be able to determine the relative proportions
of these to each other with the utmost accuracy; so that
in this way we Shall be possessed of an universal
language for this part of chemistry.
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, Ill, 1
69 The present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation
seems to be a kind of mental intoxication, arising,
perhaps, from the great and unexpected discoveries
which have been made of late years in various branches
of science. To men elate and giddy with such successes,
everything appeared to be within the grasp of human
powers; and, under this illusion, they confounded
subjects where no real progress could be proved with
those where the progress had been marked, certain, and
acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to sober
themselves with a little severe and chastised thinking,
they would see that the cause of truth and of sound
philosophy cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights
and unsupported assertions for patient investigation and
well authenticated proofs.
Malthus, Population, |X
70 Without my attempts in natural science, | should never
have learned to know mankind such as it is. In nothing
else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and
thought, so closely observe the errors of the senses and
of the understanding.
Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (Feb. 13, 1829)
71 Science appears but what in truth she is,
Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
But as a Succedaneum, and a prop
To our infirmity. No officious slave
Art thou of that false secondary power
By which we multiply distinctions, then
Deem that our puny boundaries are things
That we perceive, and not that we have made.
Wordsworth, The Prelude, II, 212
72 The Evangelist St. John my patron was:
Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first
Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure;
Right underneath, the College kitchens made
A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,
But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes
Of sharp command and scolding intermixed.
Near me hung Trinity’s loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, | could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
Wordsworth, The Prelude, Ill, 46
73 The state is universal in form, a form whose essential
principle is thought. This explains why it was in the state
that freedom of thought and science had their origin. It
was a church, on the other hand, which burnt Giordano
Bruno, forced Galileo to recant on his knees his
exposition of the Copernican view of the solar system,
and so forth. Science too, therefore, has its place on the
side of the state since it has one clement, its form, in
common with the state, and its aim is knowledge,
knowledge of objective truth and rationality in terms of
thought. Such knowledge may, of course, fall from the
heights of science into opinion and deductive
argumentation, and, turning its attention to ethical
matters and the organization of the state, set itself
against their basic principles. And it may perhaps do this
while making for this opining—as if it were reason and
the right of subjective self-consciousness—the same
pretentious claim as the church makes for its own sphere,
the claim, namely, to be free from restraint in its opinions
and convictions.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 270
74 The knowledge of rational mechanics, which the most
ancient nations had been able to acquire, has not come
down to us, and the history of this science, if we except
the first theorems in harmony, is not traced up beyond
the discoveries of Archimedes. This great geometer
explained the mathematical principles of the equilibrium
of solids and fluids. About eighteen centuries elapsed
before Galileo, the originator of dynamical theories,
discovered the laws of motion of heavy bodies. Within
this new science Newton comprised the whole system of
the universe. The successors of these philosophers have
extended these theories, and given them an admirable
perfection: they have taught us that the most diverse
phenomena are subject to a small number of
fundamental laws which are reproduced in all the acts of
nature. It is recognised that the same principles regulate
all the movements of the stars, their form, the
inequalities of their courses, the equilibrium and the
oscillations of the seas, the harmonic vibrations of air and
sonorous bodies, the transmission of light, capillary
actions, the undulations of fluids, in fine the most
complex effects of all the natural forces.
Fourier, Analytical Theory of Heat, Preliminary Discourse
75 The new theories explained in our work are united for
ever to the mathematical sciences, and rest like them on
invariable foundations; all the elements which they at
present possess they will preserve, and will continually
acquire greater extent. Instruments will be perfected and
experiments multiplied. The analysis which we have
formed will be deduced from more general, that is to say,
more simple and more fertile methods common to many
classes of phenomena... . The theory itself will direct all
these measures, and assign their precision. No
considerable progress can hereafter be made which is not
founded on experiments such as these; for mathematical
analysis can deduce from general and simple phenomena
the expression oi the laws of nature; but the special
application of these laws to very complex effects
demands a long series of exact observations.
Fourier, Analytical Theory of Heat, Preliminary Discourse
76 There is no science which, having attained the positive
stage, does not bear marks of having passed through the
others. Some time since it was (whatever it might be)
composed, as we can now perceive, of metaphysical
abstractions; and, further back in the course of time, it
took its form from theological conceptions. We shall have
only too much occasion to see, as we proceed, that our
most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of
the two earlier periods through which they have passed.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, Introduction, |
77 All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time,
that there can be no real knowledge but that which is
based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our
present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the
primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it
must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every
theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally
true that facts can not be observed without the guidance
of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would
be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for
the most part we could not even perceive them.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, Introduction, 1
78 Because it is proposed to consolidate the whole of our
acquired knowledge into one body of homogeneous
doctrine, it must not be supposed that we are going to
study this vast variety as proceeding from a single
principle, and as subjected to a single law.... Our
intellectual resources are too narrow, and the universe is
too complex, to leave any hope that it will ever be within
our power to carry scientific perfection to its last degree
of simplicity.... While pursuing the philosophical aim of all
science, the lessening of the number of general laws
requisite for the explanation of natural phenomena, we
Shall regard as presumptuous every attempt, in all future
time, to reduce them rigorously to one.
Comte, Positive Philosophy, Introduction, 1
79 The Lycee, No. 36 for January 1st, has a long and rather
premature article, in which it endeavours to show
anticipations by French philosophers of my researches. It
however mistakes the erroneous results of MM. Fresnel
and Ampere for true ones, and then imagines my true
results are like those erroneous ones. | notice it here,
however, for the purpose of doing honour to Fresnel in a
much higher degree than would have been merited by a
feeble anticipation of the present investigations. That
great philosopher, at the same time with myself and fifty
other persons, made experiments which the present
paper proves could give no expected result. He was
deceived for the moment and published his imaginary
success; but on more carefully repeating his trials, he
could find no proof of their accuracy; and, in the high and
pure philosophic desire to remove error as well as
discover truth, he recanted his first statement. The
example of Berzelius regarding the first Thorina is
another instance of this fine feeling; and as occasions are
not rare, it would be to the dignity of science if such
examples were more frequently fob lowed.
Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, |, 79,
fn.
80 It is the great beauty of our science. Chemistry that
advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small,
instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the
doors to further and more abundant knowledge,
overflowing with beauty and utility, to those who will be
at the easy personal pains of undertaking its
experimental investigation.
Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, VII, 871
81 The views | have taken of the definite action of electricity
in decomposing bodies, and the identity of the power so
used with the power to be overcome, founded not on a
mere opinion or general notion, but on facts which, being
altogether new, were to my mind precise and conclusive,
gave me, as | conceived, the power of examining the
question with advantages not before {assessed by any,
and which might compensate, on my part, for the
superior clearness and extent of intellect on theirs. Such
are the considerations which have induced me to
suppose | might help in deciding the question, and be
able to render assistance in that great service of
removing doubtful knowledge. Such knowledge is the
early morning light of every advancing science, and is
essential to its development; but the man who is
engaged in dispelling that which is deceptive in it, and
revealing more clearly that which is true, is as useful in
his place, and as necessary to the general progress of the
science, as he who first broke through the intellectual
darkness, and opened a path into knowledge before
unknown to man.
Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, VIII,
876
82 The science of electricity is in that state in which every
part of it requires experimental investigation; not merely
for the discovery of new effects, but what is just now of
far more importance, the development of the means by
which the old effects are produced, and the consequent
more accurate determination of the first principles of
action of the most extraordinary and universal power in
nature: and to those philosophers who pursue the inquiry
zealously yet cautiously, combining experiment with
analogy, suspicious of their preconceived notions, paying
more respect to a fact than a theory, not too hasty to
generalize, and above all things, willing at every step to
cross-examine their own opinions, both by reasoning and
experiment, no branch of knowledge can afford so fine
and ready a field for discovery as this. Such is most
abundantly shown to be the case by the progress which
electricity has made in the last thirty years: chemistry
and magnetism have successively acknowledged its over-
ruling influence: and it is probable that every effect
depending upon the powers of inorganic matter, and
perhaps most of those related to vegetable and animal
life, will ultimately be found subordinate to it.
Faraday, Experimmtal Researches in Electricity, XI, 1161
83 | have no clear idea of the physical condition constituting
the charged magnetic state; i.e. the state of the source of
magnetic power: or of the coercitivity by which that state
is either resisted in its attainment, or sustained in its
permanent condition; for the hypotheses as yet put forth
give no satisfaction to my mind. | profess rather to point
out the difficulties in the way of the views, which are at
present somewhat too easily accepted, and to shake
men’s minds from their habitual trust in them; for, next to
developing and expounding, that appears to me the most
useful and effectual way of really advancing the subject:
—it is better to be aware, or even to suspect, we are
wrong, than to be unconsciously or easily led to accept
an error as right.
Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, The
Moving Conductor, 3362
84 The laws of nature, as we understand them, are the
foundation of our Knowledge in natural things. So much
as we know of them has been developed by the
successive energies of the highest intellects, exerted
through many ages. After a most rigid and scrutinizing
examination upon principle and trial, a definite
expression has been given to them; they have become,
as it were, our belief or trust. From day to day we still
examine and test our expressions of them. We have no
interest in their retention if erroneous; on the contrary,
the greatest discovery a man could make would be to
prove that one of these accepted laws was erroneous, and
his greatest honour would be the discovery.
Faraday, Observations on Mental Education
85 Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point
to point,
Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 134
86 Wisdom does not inspect, but behold. We must look a
long time before we can see. Slow are the beginnings of
philosophy. He has something demoniacal in him, who
can discern a law or couple two facts. we can imagine a
time when ‘Water runs down hill’ may have been taught
in the schools. The true man of science will know nature
better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, sec,
hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and
finer experience. we do not learn by inference and
deduction and the application of mathematics to
philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is
with science as with ethics—we cannot know truth by
contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any
other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts,
the most scientific will still be the healthiest and
friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian
wisdom.
Thoreau, Natural History of Massachusetts
87 When it was first said that the sun stood still and the
world turned round, the common sense of mankind
declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox
populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be
trusted in science.
Darwin, Origin of Species, VI
88 It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would
explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of
natural selection, the several large classes of facts above
specified. It has recently been objected that this is an
unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method used in
judging of the common events of life, and has often been
used by the greatest natural philosophers. The
undulatory theory of light has thus been arrived at; and
the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis
was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence.
It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light
on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life.
Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of
gravity? No one now objects to following out the results
consequent on this unknown clement of attraction; not
withstanding that Leibnitz formerly accused Newton of
introducing "occult qualities and miracles into
philosophy."
Darwin, Origin of Species, XV
89 False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science,
for they often endure long; but false views, if supported
by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a
salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when
this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road
to truth is often at the same time opened.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
90 Science is, | believe, nothing but trained and organised
common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran
may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from
those of common sense only so far as the guardsman’s
cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage
wields his club. The primary power is the same in each
case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more
brawny arm of the two. The rea/ advantage Hes in the
point and polish of the swordsman’s weapon; in the
trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the
adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the
instant. But, after all, the sword exercise is only the
hewing and poking of the clubman developed and
perfected.
So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no
mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than
those which are practised by every one of us, in the
humblest and meanest affairs of life.
T. H. Huxley, Educationat Value of the Natural History
Sciences
91 Faith is a fine invention
When gentlemen can see.
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.
Emily Dickinson, Faith Is
92 We know how easily the uselessness of almost every
branch of knowledge may be proved, to the complete
satisfaction of those who do not possess it. How many,
not altogether stupid men, think the scientific study of
languages useless, think ancient literature useless, all
erudition useless, logic and metaphysics useless, poetry
and the fine arts idle and frivolous, political economy
purely mischievous? Even history has been pronounced
useless and mischievous by able men. Nothing but that
acquaintance with external nature, empirically acquired,
which serves directly for the production of objects
necessary to existence or agreeable to the senses, would
get its utility recognised if people had the least
encouragement to disbelieve it.
Mill, Representative Government, VI
93 Whatever be the most proper mode of expressing it, the
proposition that the course of nature is uniform is the
fundamental principle, or general axiom, of Induction. It
would yet be a great error to offer this large
generalisation as any explanation of the inductive
process. On the contrary, | hold it to be itself an instance
of induction, and induction by no means of the most
obvious kind. Far from being the first induction we make,
it is one of the last, or at all events one of those which are
latest in attaining strict philosophical accuracy. As a
general maxim, indeed, it has scarcely entered into the
minds of any but philosophers; nor even by them, as we
Shall have many opportunities of remarking, have its
extent and limits been always very justly conceived. The
truth is, that this great generalisation is itself founded on
prior generalisations. The obscurer laws of nature were
discovered by means of it, but the more obvious ones
must have been understood and assented to as general
truths before it was ever heard of. We should never have
thought of affirming that all phenomena take place
according to general laws, if we had not first arrived, in
the case of a great multitude of phenomena, at some
knowledge of the laws themselves; which could be done
no otherwise than by induction.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, Ill, 1
94 It must be kept constantly in view... that in science, those
who speak of explaining any phenomenon mean (or
should mean) pointing out not some more familiar, but
merely some more general phenomenon, of which it is a
partial exemplification; or some laws of causation which
produce it by their joint or successive action, and from
which, therefore, its conditions may be determined
deductively. Every such operation brings us a step nearer
towards answering the question which was stated ... as
comprehending the whole problem of the investigation of
nature, viz. What are the fewest assumptions, which
being granted, the order of nature as it exists would be
the result? What are the fewest general propositions from
which all the uniformities existing in nature could be
deduced?
The laws, thus explained or resolved, are sometimes
said to be accounted for, but the expression is incorrect,
if taken to mean any-thing more than what has been
already stated. In minds not habituated to accurate
thinking, there is often a confused notion that the
general laws are the causes of the partial ones; that the
law of general gravitation, for example, causes the
phenomenon of the fall of bodies to the earth. But to
assert this would be a misuse of the word cause:
terrestrial gravity is not an effect of general gravitation,
but a case of it; that is, one kind of the particular
instances in which that general law obtains. To account
for a law of nature means, and can mean, nothing more
than to assign other laws more general, together with
collocations, which laws and collocations being supposed,
the partial law follows without any additional supposition.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, XII, 6
95 Fundamentally, all sciences reason in the same way and
aim at the same object. They all try to reach knowledge
of the law of phenomena, so as to foresee, vary or master
phenomena.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, I, 1
96 Men of science who mean to embrace the principles of
the experimental method as a whole, must fulfill two
classes of conditions and must possess two qualities of
mind which are indispensable if they are to reach their
goal and succeed in The discovery of truth. First, they
must have ideas which they submit to the control of
facts; but at the same time they must make sure that the
facts which serve as starting point or as control for the
idea are correct and well established; they must be at
once observers and experimenters.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, I, 1
97 The first condition to be fulfilled by men of science,
applying themselves to the investigation of natural
phenomena, is to maintain absolute freedom of mind,
based on philosophic doubt. Yet we must not be in the
least sceptical; we must believe in science, i.e., in
determinism; we must believe in a complete and
necessary relation between things, among the
phenomena proper to living beings as well as in all
others; but at the same time we must be thoroughly
convinced that we know this relation only in a more or
less approximate way, and that the theories we hold are
far from embodying changeless truths. When we
propound a general theory in our sciences, we are sure
only that, literally speaking, all such theories are false.
They are only partial and provisional truths which are
necessary’ to us, as steps on which we rest, so as to go on
with investigation; they embody only the present state of
our knowledge, and consequently they must change with
the growth of science, and all the more often when
sciences are less advanced in their evolution.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, I, 2
98 The object of science is everywhere the same: to learn
the material conditions of phenomena. But though this
goal is the same in the physcio-chemical and in biological
sciences, it is much harder to reach in the latter because
of the mobility and complexity of the phenomena which
we meet.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 1
99 An experimenter who has made an experiment, in
conditions which he believes were determined, may
happen not to get the same results in a new series of
investigations as in his first observation; in repeating the
experiment, with fresh precautions, it may happen again
that, instead of his first result, he may encounter a wholly
different one. In such a situation, what is to be done?
Should we acknowledge that the facts are
indeterminable? Certainly not, since that cannot be. we
must simply acknowledge that experimental conditions,
which we believed to be known, are not known. We must
more closely study, search out and define the
experimental conditions, for the facts cannot be
contradictory one to another; they can only be
indeterminate. Facts never exclude one another, they are
simply explained by differences in the conditions in
which they are born. So an experimenter can never deny
a fact that he has seen and observed, merely because he
cannot rediscover it.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 1
100 Science and men of science are cosmopolitans, and it
seems hardly important whether a scientific truth
develops at any particular spot on the globe, as long as
the general diffusion of science allows all men to share in
it.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 2
101 All human sciences have traveled along [the same]
path. Arriving at infinitesimals, mathematics, the most
exact of sciences, abandons the process of analysis and
enters on the new process of the integration of unknown,
infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the conception of
cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property
common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements. In
another form but along the same path of reflection the
other sciences have proceeded. When Newton
enunciated the law of gravity he did not say that the sun
or the earth had a property of attraction; he said that all
bodies from the largest to the smallest have the property
of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the
question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he
expressed the property common to ail bodies from the
infinitely large to the infinitely small. The same is done
by the natural sciences: leaving aside the question of
cause, they seek for laws.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, XI!
102 What we call science today is merely a haphazard
collection of disconnected scraps of knowledge, most of
them useless, and many of which, instead of giving us
absolute truth provide the most bizarre delusions,
presented as truth one day and refuted the next.
Tolstoy, What Is Religion?, |
103 It must be said that in some of these fields [of
psychology] the results have as yet borne little theoretic
fruit commensurate with the great labor expended in
their acquisition. But facts are facts, and if we only get
enough of them they are sure to combine. New ground
will from year to year be broken, and theoretic results will
grow. Meanwhile the experimental method has quite
changed the face of the science so far as the latter isa
record of mere work done.
William James, Psychology, VII
104 In a scientific research... the inquirer starts with a fact of
which he seeks the reason, or with an hypothesis of which
he seeks the proof. In either case he keeps turning the
matter incessantly in his mind until, by the arousal of
associate upon associate, some habitual, some similar,
one arises which he recognizes to suit his need. This,
however, may take years. No rules can be given by which
the investigator may proceed straight to his result; but
both here and in the case of reminiscence the
accumulation of helps in the way of associations may
advance more rapidly by the use of certain routine
methods. In striving to recall a thought, for example, we
may of set purpose run through the successive classes of
circumstance with which it may possibly have been
connected, trusting that when the right member of the
class has turned up it will help the thought’s revival. Thus
we may run through all the places in which we may have
had it. We may run through the persons whom we
remember to have conversed with, or we may call up
successively all the books we have lately been reading. If
we are trying to remember a person we may run through
a list of streets or of professions. Some item out of the
lists thus methodically gone over will very likely be
associated with the fact we are in need of, and may
suggest it or help to do so. And yet the item might never
have arisen without such systematic procedure. In
scientific research this accumulation of associates has
been methodized by Mill under the title of "The Four
Methods of Experimental Inquiry." By the "method of
agreement," by that of "difference," by those of
"residues" and "concomitant variations" (which cannot
here be more nearly defined), we make certain lists of
cases; and by ruminating these lists in our minds the
cause we seek will be more likely to emerge. But the final
stroke of discovery is only prepared, not effected, by
them. The brain-tracts must, of their own accord, shoot
the right way at last, or we shall still grope in darkness.
That in some brains the tracts do shoot the right way
much oftener than in others, and that we cannot tell why,
—these are ultimate facts to which we must never close
our eyes. Even in forming our lists of instances according
to Mill’s methods, we are at the mercy of the spontaneous
workings of Similarity in our brain.
William James, Psychology, XIV
105 The history of science is strewn with wrecks and ruins of
theory—essences and principles, fluids and forces—once
fondly clung to, but found to hang together with no facts
of sense. And exceptional phenomena solicit our belief in
vain until such time as we chance to conceive them as of
kinds already admitted to exist. What science means by
"verification" is no more than this, that no object of
conception shall be believed which sooner or later has
not some permanent and vivid object of sensation for its
term.
William James, Psychology, XXI
106 Every scientific conception is in the first instance a
"spontaneous variation" in someone’s brain. For one that
proves useful and applicable there are a thousand that
perish through their worthlessness. Their genesis is
strictly akin to that of the flashes of poetry and sallies of
wit to which the instable brain-paths equally give rise.
But whereas the poetry and wit (like the science of the
ancients) are their "own excuse for being," and have to
run the gauntlet of no farther test, the "scientific"
conceptions must prove their worth by being "verified."
This test, however, is the cause of their preservation not
that of their production.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
107 The aspiration to be "scientific" is such an idol of the
tribe to the present generation, is so sucked in with his
mother’s milk by every one of us, that we find it hard to
conceive of a creature who should not feel it, and harder
still to treat it freely as the altogether peculiar and one-
sided objective interest which it is. But as a matter of
fact, few even of the cultivated members of the race have
Shared it; it was invented but a generation or two ago.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII, fn.
108 Thousands of years ago men started to cast the chaos of
nature’s sequences and juxtapositions into a form that
might seem intelligible. Many were their ideal prototypes
of rational order: teleological and aesthetic ties between
things, causal and substantial bonds, as well as logical
and mathematical relations. The most promising of these
ideal systems at first were of course the richer ones, the
sentimental ones. The baldest and least promising were
the mathematical ones; but the history of the latter’s
application is a history of steadily advancing successes,
whilst that of the sentimentally richer systems is one of
relative sterility and failure...
When you give things mathematical and mechanical
names and call them just so many solids in just such
positions, describing just such paths with just such
velocities, all is changed. Your sagacity finds its reward in
the verification by nature of all the deductions which you
may next proceed to make. Your "things" realize all the
consequences of the names by which you classed them. ,
.. The ideal which this philosophy strives after is a
mathematical world-formula, by which, if all the
collocations and motions at a given moment were known,
it would be possible to reckon those of any wished-for
future moment, by simply considering the necessary
geometrical, arithmetical, and logical implications. Once
we have the world in this bare shape, we can fling our net
of a priori relations over all its terms, and pass from one
of its phases to another by inward thought-necessity. Of
course it is a world with a very minimum of rational stuff.
The sentimental facts and relations are butchered ata
blow. But the rationality yielded is so superbly complete
in form that to many minds this atones for the loss, and
reconciles the thinker to the notion of a purposeless
universe, in which all the things and qualities men love,
dulcissima mundi nomina, are but illusions of our fancy
attached to accidental clouds of dust which will be
dissipated by the eternal cosmic weather as carelessly as
they were formed.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
109 The most useful investigator, because the most
sensitive observer, is always he whose eager interest in
one side of the question is balanced by an equally keen
nervousness lest he become deceived. Science has
organized this nervousness into a regular technique, her
so-called method of verification; and she has fallen so
deeply in love with the method that one may even say
she has ceased to care for truth by itself at all. It is only
truth as technically verified that interests her. The truth
of truths might come in merely affirmative form, and she
would decline to touch it.
William James, Will to Believe
110 The laity are struck to see how ephemeral scientific
theories are. After some years of prosperity, they see
them successively abandoned; they see ruins accumulate
upon ruins; they foresee that the theories fashionable to-
day will shortly succumb in their turn and hence they
conclude that these are absolutely idle. This is what they
call the bankruptcy of science.
Their scepticism is superficial; they give no account to
themselves of the aim and the role of scientific theories;
otherwise they would comprehend that the ruins may still
be good for something.
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, IV, 10
111 If we ought not to fear moral truth, still less should we
dread scientific truth. In the first place it can not conflict
with ethics. Ethics and science have their own domains,
which touch but do not interpenetrate. The one show's us
to what goal we should aspire, the other, given the goal,
teaches us how to attain it. So they can never conflict
since they can never meet. There can no more be
immoral science than there can be scientific morals.
But if science is feared, it is above all because it can
not give us happiness. Of course it can not. We may even
ask whether the beast does not suffer less than man. But
can we regret that earthly paradise where man brute-like
was really immortal in knowing not that he must die?
When we have tasted the apple, no suffering can make us
forget its savor. We always come back to it. Could it be
otherwise? As well ask if one who has seen and is blind
will not long for the light. Man, then, can not be happy
through science, but to-day he can much less be happy
without it.
Poincare, Value of Science, Intro.
112 How do we discover the individual laws of Physics, and
what is their nature? It should be remarked, to begin
with, that we have no right to assume that any physical
laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they
will continue to exist in a similar manner in future. It is
perfectly conceivable that one fine day Nature should
cause an unexpected event to occur which would baffle
us all; and if this were to happen we would be powerless
to make any objection, even if the result would be that, in
spite of our endeavours, we should fail to introduce order
into the resulting confusion. In such an event, the only
course open to science would be to declare itself
bankrupt. For this reason, science is compelled to begin
by the general assumption that a general rule of law
dominates throughout Nature.
Planck, Universe in the Light of Modem Physics, 5
113 There have been times when science and philosophy
were alien, if not actually antagonistic to each other.
These times have passed. Philosophers have realized that
they have no right to dictate to scientists their aims and
the methods for attaining them; and scientists have
learned that the starting-point of their investigations
does not lie solely in the perceptions of the senses, and
that science cannot exist without some small portion of
metaphysics. Modern Physics impresses us particularly
with the truth of the old doctrine which teaches that
there are realities existing apart from our sense-
perceptions, and that there are problems and conflicts
where these realities are of greater value for us than the
richest treasures of the world of experience.
Planck, Universe in the Light of Modem Physics, 8
114 Our credulity, though enormous, is not boundless; and
our stock of it is quite used up by our mediums,
clairvoyants, hand readers, slate writers, Christian
Scientists, psychoanalysts, electronic vibration diviners,
therapeutists of all schools registered and unregistered,
astrologers, astronomers who tell us that the sun is nearly
a hundred million miles away and that Betelgeuse is ten
times as big as the whole universe, physicists who
balance Betelgeuse by describing the incredible
smallness of the atom, and a host of other marvel
mongers whose credulity would have dissolved the
Middle Ages in a roar of sceptical merriment. In the
Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for
which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we
believe it to be round, not because as many as one per
cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a
belief, but because modern science has convinced us that
nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that
iS magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic,
microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.
Shaw, Saint Joan, Pref.
115 Induction presupposes metaphysics. In other words, it
rests upon an antecedent rationalism. You cannot have a
rational justification for your appeal to history till your
metaphysics has assured you that there is a history to
appeal to; and like-wise your conjectures as to the future
presuppose some basis of knowledge that there is a
future already subjected to some determinations. The
difficulty is to make sense of either of these ideas. But
unless you have done so, you have made nonsense of
induction.
You will observe that | do not hold induction to be in
its essence the derivation of general laws. It is the
divination of some characteristics of a particular future
from the known characteristics of a particular past. The
wider assumption of general laws holding for all
cognisable occasions appears a very unsafe addendum to
attach to this limited knowledge.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem Worlds III
116 The progress of science consists in observing these
interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity
that the events of this evershifting world are but
examples of a few general connections or relations called
laws. To see what is general in what is particular and what
IS permanent in what is transitory is the aim of scientific
thought. In the eye of science, the fall of an apple, the
motion of a planet round a sun, and the clinging of the
atmosphere to the earth are all seen as examples of the
law of gravity. This possibility of disentangling the most
complex evanescent circumstances into various
examples of permanent laws is the controlling idea of
modem thought.
Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics, |
117 All mathematical calculations about the course of
nature must start from some assumed law’ of nature....
Accordingly, however accurately we have calculated that
some event must occur, the doubt always remains—lIs the
law true? If the law states a precise result, almost
certainly it is not precisely accurate; and thus even at the
best the result, precisely as calculated, is not likely to
occur. But then we have no faculty capable of
observation with ideal precision, so, after all, our
inaccurate laws may be good enough.
Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics, II
118 In science the man of real genius is the man who
invents a new method. The notable discoveries are often
made by his successors, who can apply the method with
fresh vigour, unimpaired by the previous labour of
perfecting it; but the mental calibre of the thought
required for their work, however brilliant, is not so great
as that required by the first inventor of the method.
Russell, Place of Science in a Liberal Education
119 The kernel of the scientific outlook is a thing so simple,
SO Obvious, so seemingly trivial, that the mention of it
may almost excite derision. The kernel of the scientific
outlook is the refusal to regard our own desires, tastes,
and interests as affording a key to the understanding of
the world. Staled thus baldly, this may seem no more
than a trite truism. But to remember it consistently in
matters arousing our passionate partisanship is by no
means easy, especially where the available evidence is
uncertain and inconclusive.
Russell, Place of Science in a Liberal Education
120 Man has existed for about a million years. He has
possessed writing for about 6,000 years, agriculture
somewhat longer, but perhaps not much longer. Science,
as a dominant factor in determining the beliefs of
educated men, has existed for about 300 years; as a
source of economic technique, for about 150 years. In
this brief period it has proved itself an incredibly powerful
revolutionary force. When we consider how recently it has
risen to power, we find ourselves forced to believe that
we are at the very beginning of its work in transforming
human life.
Russell, Science and Tradition
121 The effect of science upon our view of man’s place in
the universe has been of two opposite kinds; it has at
once degraded and exalted him. It has degraded him
from the standpoint of contemplation, and exalted him
from that of action. The latter effect has gradually come
to outweigh the former, but both have been important.
Russell, Science and Tradition
122 The way in which science arrives at its beliefs is quite
different from that of mediaeval theology. Experience has
shown that it is dangerous to start from general principles
and proceed deductively, both because the principles
may be untrue and because the reasoning based upon
them may be fallacious. Science starts, not from large
assumptions, but from particular facts discovered by
observation or experiment. From a number of such facts a
general rule is arrived at, of which, if it is true, the facts in
question are instances. This rule is not positively
asserted, but is accepted, to begin with, as a working
hypothesis. If it is correct, certain hitherto unobserved
phenomena will take place in certain circumstances. If it
is found that they do take place, that so far confirms the
hypothesis; if they do not, the hypothesis must be
discarded and a new one must be invented. However
many facts are found to fit the hypothesis, that does not
make it certain, although in the end it may come to be
thought in a high degree probable; in that case, it is
called a theory rather than a hypothesis. A number of
different theories, each built directly upon facts, may
become the basis for a new and more general hypothesis
from which, if true, they all follow; and to this process of
generalization no limit can be set. But whereas, in
mediaeval thinking, the most general principles were the
starting point, in science they are the final conclusion—
final, that is to say, at a given moment, though liable to
become instances of some still wider law at a later stage.
Russell, Religion and Science, |
123 The view is often defended that sciences should be built
up on clear and sharply defined basal concepts. In actual
fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with
such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity
consists rather in describing phenomena and then in
proceeding to group, classify, and correlate them. Even at
the stage of description, it is not possible to avoid
applying certain abstract ideas to the material in hand,
ideas derived from various sources and certainly not the
fruit of the new experience only. Still more indispensable
are such ideas—which will later become the basal
concepts of the science—as the material is further
elaborated. They must at first necessarily possess some
measure of uncertainty; there can be no question of any
clear delimitation of their content. So long as they remain
in this condition, we come to an understanding about
their meaning by repeated references to the material of
observation, from which we seem to have deduced our
abstract ideas, but which is, in point of fact, subject to
them. Thus, strictly speaking, they are in the nature of
conventions; although everything depends on their being
chosen in no arbitrary manner, but determined by the
important relations they have to the empirical material—
relations that we seem to divine before we can clearly
recognize and demonstrate them. It is only after more
searching investigation of the field in question that we
are able to formulate with increased clarity the scientific
concepts underlying it, and progressively so to modify
these concepts that they become widely applicable and
at the same time consistent logically. Then, indeed, it
may be time to immure them in definitions. The progress
of science, however, demands a certain elasticity even in
these definitions.
Freud, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
124 It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in
nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is
unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only
made by those who feel a craving for authority in some
form and a need to replace the religious catechism by
something else, even if it be a scientific one. Science in
its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists
mainly of statements which it has developed to varying
degrees of probability. The capacity to be content with
these approximations to certainty and the ability to carry
on constructive work despite the lack of final
confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of
mind.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, III
125 Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from
the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive
self-love. The first was when it realized that our earth was
not the centre of the universe, but only a tiny speck ina
world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable; this is
associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus,
although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very
similar. The second was when biological research robbed
man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially
created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal
world, implying an ineradicable animal nature in him: this
transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time
upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their
predecessors, and not without the most violent
opposition from their contemporaries. But man’s craving
for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter
blow from present-day psychological research which is
endeavouring to prove to the ego of each one of us that
he is not even master in his own house, but that he must
remain content with the veriest scraps of information
about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind.
We psycho-analysts were neither the first nor the only
ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward;
but it appears to be our lot to advocate it most insistently
and to support it by empirical evidence which touches
every man closely. This is the kernel of the universal
revolt against our science, of the total disregard of
academic courtesy in dispute, and the liberation of
opposition from all the constraints of impartial logic.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XVIII
126 It is inadmissible to declare that science is one field of
human intellectual activity, and that religion and
philosophy are others, at least as valuable, and that
science has no business to interfere with the other two,
that they all have an equal claim to truth, and that every
one is free to choose whence he shall draw his
convictions and in what he shall place his belief. Such an
attitude is considered particularly respectable, tolerant,
broadminded, and free from narrow prejudices.
Unfortunately it is not tenable; it shares all the pernicious
qualities of an entirely unscientific We/tanschauung
[world view] and in practice comes to much the same
thing. The bare fact is that truth cannot be tolerant and
cannot admit compromise or limitations, that scientific
research looks on the whole field of human activity as its
own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical
attitude towards any other power that seeks to usurp any
part of its province.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXXV
127 Scientific thought is, in its essence, no different from
the normal process of thinking, which we all, believers
and unbelievers, alike, make use of when we are going
about our business in everyday life. ... Its aim is to arrive
at correspondence with reality, that is to say with what
exists outside us and independently of us, and, as
experience has taught us, is decisive for the fulfilment or
frustration of our desires. This correspondence with the
real external world we call truth. It is the aim of scientific
work, even when the practical value of that work does not
interest us. When, therefore, religion claims that it can
take the place of science and that, because it is
beneficent and ennobling, it must therefore be true, that
claim is, in fact, an encroachment which, in the interests
of every one, should be resisted. It is asking a great deal
of a man, who has learned to regulate his everyday affairs
in accordance with the rules of experience and with due
regard to reality, that he should entrust precisely what
affects him most nearly to the care of an authority which
claims as its prerogative freedom from all the rules of
rational thought. And, as for the protection that religion
promises its believers, | hardly think that any of us would
be willing even to enter a motor-car, if the driver
informed us that he drove without allowing himself to be
distracted by traffic regulations, but in accordance with
the impulses of an exalted imagination.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
128 Ladies and Gentlemen—Let me in conclusion sum up
what | had to say about the relation of psycho-analysis to
the question of a We/tanschauung [world view]. Psycho-
analysis is not, in my opinion, in a position to create a
Weltanschauung of its own. It has no need to do so, for it
iS a branch of science and can subscribe to the scientific
Weltanschauung. The latter, however, hardly merits such
a high-sounding name, for it does not take everything
into its scope, it is incomplete, and it makes no claim to
being comprehensive or to constituting a system.
Scientific thought is still in its infancy; there are very
many of the great problems with which it has as yet been
unable to cope. A We/tanschauung based upon science
has, apart from the emphasis it lays upon the real world,
essentially negative characteristics, such as that it limits
itself to truth and rejects illusions. Those of our fellow-
men who are dissatisfied with this state of things and who
desire something more for their momentary peace of
mind may look for it where they can find it. We shall not
blame them for doing so; but we cannot help them and
cannot change our own way of thinking on their account.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
129 From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may
imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science
to be a continuous process of induction. Theories are
evolved, and are expressed in short compass as
statements of a large number of individual observations
in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws
can be ascertained by comparison. Regarded in this way,
the development of a science bears some resemblance to
the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is as it were, a
purely empirical enterprise.
But this point of view by no means embraces the
whole of the actual process; for it slurs over the important
part played by intuition and deductive thought in the
development of an exact science. As soon as a science
has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances
are no longer achieved merely by a process of
arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator
rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is
built up logically from a small number of fundamental
assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system
of thought a theory The theory finds the Justification for
its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number
of single observations and it is just here that the "truth"
of the theory lies.
Einstein, Relativity, Appendix III
130 A theory is the more impressive the greater the
simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of
things it relates, and the more extended is its area of
applicability. Therefore the deep impression which
classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only
physical theory of universal content concerning which |
am convinced that, within the framework of the
applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be
overthrown (for the special attention of those who are
Skeptics on principle),
Einstein, Autobiographical Notes
131 The significant outward forms of the civilization of the
western world are the product of the machine and its
technology. Indirectly, they are the product of the
scientific revolution which took place in the seventeenth
century. In its effect upon men's external habits,
dominant interests, the conditions under which they work
and associate, whether in the family, the factory, the
state, or internationally, science is by far the most potent
social factor in the modern world. It operates, however,
through its undesigned effects rather than asa
transforming influence of men’s thoughts and purposes.
This contrast between outer and inner operation is the
great contradiction in our lives. Habits of thought and
desire remain in substance what they were before the rise
of science, while the conditions under which they take
effect have been radically altered by science.
Dewey, Science and Society
132 Great as have been the social changes of the last
century, they are not to be compared with those which
%vill emerge when our faith in scientific method is
made manifest in social works. We are living in a period
of depression. The intellectual function of trouble is to
lead men to think. The depression is a small price to pay
if it induces us to think about the cause of the disorder,
confusion, and insecurity which are the outstanding traits
of our social life. If we do not go back to their cause,
namely our half-way and accidental use of science,
mankind will pass through depressions, for they are the
graphic record of our unplanned social life. The story of
the achievement of science in physical control is
evidence of the possibility of control in social affairs. It is
our human intelligence and human courage which are on
trial; it is incredible that men who have brought the
technique of physical discovery, invention, and use to
such a pitch of perfection will abdicate in the face of the
infinitely more important human problem.
Dewey, Science and Society
133 Science is nothing but developed perception,
interpreted intent, commonsense rounded out and
minutely articulated.
Santayana, Life of Reason, V, 11
134 When | was younger what was pompously called
Science wore an imposing aspect. There was a well-
dressed Royal Family in the intellectual world, expected
to rule indefinitely: sovereign axioms, immutable laws,
and regent hypotheses. We had Newtonian space and
time, the conservation of energy', and Darwinian
evolution. Now there is a democracy of theories elected
for short terms of office, speaking shop-dialects, and
hardly presented or presentable to the public eye. The
investigators technique takes the lead, not the exigences
of popularizing eloquence. The frontiers of this science
seem less secure, with vast claims to undiscovered or
undiscoverable regions; and first principles at home are
wobbly and vague. Yet this looseness in thought goes
with ingenuity in methods and multiplicity of contacts;
and it serves to dispel an illusion that better-digested
science might create: the illusion that scientific ideas
reveal the literal and intimate essence of reality, as the
images of sense certainly do not. But the fact is that both
sense and science are relatively and virtually true, being
appropriate to the organ employed and to the depth to
which this organ may penetrate into the structure of
things or may trace their movement. The senses do this
well enough, in their own terms, for the uses of animal
and social life; but modern science approaches the
dynamism of nature by means of artificial instruments
and experiments: hence its astonishing mechanical
applications, and its moral and pictorial blindness. It
studies methods rather than objects; it works indirectly if
not directly in the service of industrialism, which needs to
manipulate and not to understand; and if it succeeds in
its manipulations it has done its duty. But this is a very
special development, perhaps temporary, and certainly
not fundamental in human knowledge. The images of
sense will be with us while the human race endures. They
will always yield our classical and personal view of
nature. The stars will remain the visible stars, no matter
what science may tell us about them; earth, water, air,
and fire will still confront the spirit, and survive the
disintegration that chemistry may subject them to.
Ultimately the authority of science will always depend on
the evidence of sense and on the analogy of familiar
objects and events.
Santayana, Realms of Being, General Review
135 Let us suppose that a scientist, who is sealed in a room
of ground glass and receives by radio the experimental
information on which he works, learns one day about a
certain machine capable of hurling its own weight to a
height three hundred times its own. He will not have
much difficulty in roughly imagining this machine,
unknown in itself, as a sort of catapult constructed
according to the furnished data. He will correct and make
the image more precise as new information reaches him.
Suppose he learns that this machine manifests the
properties of what men call memory. That is to say it
modifies, in proportion as it functions, its very manner of
functioning and of reacting to stimuli, a thing which his
reconstructed apparatus does not do. Perhaps he will
solve the difficulty by endowing the space occupied by
this apparatus with some new dimension according to
which the past of the machine would be preserved and
would modify in an invisible manner its very structure.
We who walk the streets and put up at inns can know that
the machine in question is called a flea. The scientist will
not know this but the construction that he ceaselessly
alters (turns upside down, if necessary, to meet a "crisis")
will present at each instant the sum of all the measurable
properties found in the flea and actually known by him.
Obviously, in creating such a construction which is
fictitious but founded on the real and always exactly and
rigorously determined, in that way he will acquire ever
more and more profound knowledge about the nature of
the flea, but always by way of myth and of symbol. It
would be inaccurate to say that he does not know this
nature. He does not know it ontologically or /n itself.
Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, Pt. I, IV, 1
136 We see the same history of progress—even, may be,
more strikingly—since the time of Galileo in the physico-
mathematical sciences—that is to say in the art of
translating sensible phenomena into quantitative
symbols: and this is precisely because those studies are
in truth the poorest of all in intelligibility, the least
exacting in intellectuality, hence the easiest.
Maritain, Theonas X
17.3 The Discipline of Mathematics
Of all the disciplines, mathematics has perhaps the
distinction of being the only one in the history of which
there is no rift between its modern and its ancient devotees.
It was honored in antiquity as it is honored in modern times
as the exemplar of intellectual clarity, rigor, precision, and
order. The achievements of the great mathematicians of
antiquity—of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, Nichomachus,
Hiero—are never denigrated or minimized, even though
later developments in mathematics have thrown new light
on their accomplishments.
Though the philosophers of mathematics may disagree
about the status of the objects of mathematical study, or
about the relation of mathematical truth to the world of real
existences, there is, generally speaking, less disagreement
among mathematicians than among the practitioners of any
other discipline concerning the aims, methods, and results
of their work. It is seldom if ever the case that competent
mathematicians do not see eye to eye about the definition
of a problem to be solved, or about the validity of a
proposed solution of it. The solution either can or cannot be
demonstrated to the satisfaction of all concerned.
These distinctive characteristics of mathematics as a
discipline the reader will find reflected in the general tone
and tendency of the passages quoted in this section. The
reader will, in addition, find quotations from ancient writers
that attribute the origin of mathematics, especially of
geometry, to the exigencies of land-surveying; that discuss
the division of mathematics into arithmetic and geometry;
and that consider the application of mathematics to the
study of physical phenomena. The passages drawn from
modern sources the reader will find more illuminating on the
characteristics of mathematical thought, on the power as
well as the limitations of mathematics, on the logic of
mathematics, and on the relation of mathematics to logic.
1 Sesostris [the king of Egypt and Ethiopia]... made a
division of the soil of Egypt among the inhabitants,
assigning square plots of ground of equal size to all, and
obtaining his chief revenue from the rent which the
holders were required to pay him year by year. If the river
carried away any portion of a man's lot, he appeared
before the king, and related what had happened; upon
which the king sent persons to examine, and determine
by measurement the exact extent of the loss; and
thenceforth only such a rent was demanded of him as
was proportionate to the reduced size of his land. From
this practice, | think, geometry first came to be known in
Egypt, whence it passed into Greece.
Herodotus, History, Il, 109
2 Socrates. And all arithmetic and calculation have to do
with number?
Glaucon. Yes.
And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?
Yes, in a very remarkable manner.
Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are
seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical;
for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will
not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher
also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and
lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an
arithmetician....
Then this is a kind of knowledge which legislation may
fitly prescribe; and we must endeavour to persuade those
who are to be the principal men of our State to go and
learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on
the study until they see the nature of numbers with the
mind only; nor again, like merchants or retail-traders,
with a view to buying or selling, but for the sake of their
military use, and of the soul herself; and because this will
be the easiest way for her to pass from becoming to truth
and being.
That is excellent, he said.
Yes, | said, and now having spoken of it, | must add
how charming the science is! and in how-many ways it
conduces to our desired end, if pursued in the spirit of a
philosopher, and not of a shopkeeper!
How do you mean?
| mean, as | was saying, that arithmetic has a very
great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason
about abstract number, and rebelling against the
introduction of visible or tangible objects into the
argument.
Plato, Republic, Vil, 525A
3 Let no one enter here who is ignorant of geometry.
Inscription over the door of Plato's Academy
4 For instance, he [Socrates] said that the study of
geometry- should be pursued until the student was
competent to measure a parcel of land accurately in case
he wanted to take over, convey or divide it, or to compute
the yield; and this knowledge was so easy to acquire, that
anyone who gave his mind to mensuration knew the size
of the piece and carried away a knowledge of the
principles of land measurement. He was against carrying
the study of geometry so far as to include the more
complicated figures, on the ground that he could not see
the use of them. Not that he was himself unfamiliar with
them, but he said that they were enough to occupy a
lifetime, to the complete exclusion of many other useful
studies.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, 7
5 It is the physician’s business to know that circular wounds
heal more slowly, the geometer’s to know the reason why.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 79a14
6 The science which is knowledge at once of the fact and of
the reasoned fact, not of the fact by itself without the
reasoned fact, is the more exact and the prior science.
A science such as arithmetic, which is not a science of
properties gua inhering in a substratum, is more exact
than and prior to a science like harmonics, which is a
science of properties inhering in a substratum; and
similarly a science like arithmetic, which is constituted of
fewer basic elements, is more exact than and prior to
geometry, which requires additional elements.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 87a30
7 Mathematics has come to be identical with philosophy for
modern thinkers, though they say that it should be
studied for the sake of other things.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 992a33
8 Since even the mathematician uses the common axioms
only in a special application, it must be the business of
first philosophy to examine the principles of mathematics
also.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1061b18
9 The Pythagoreans, because they saw many attributes of
numbers belonging to sensible bodies, supposed real
things to be numbers—not separable numbers, however,
but numbers of which real things consist. But why?
Because the attributes of numbers are present in a
musical scale and in the heavens and in many other
things. Those, however, who say that mathematical
number alone exists cannot according to their
hypotheses say anything of this sort, but it used to be
urged that these sensible things could not be the subject
of the sciences. But we maintain that they are.... And it is
evident that the objects of mathematics do not exist
apart; for if they existed apart their attributes would not
have been present in bodies.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1090a20
10 A point is that which has no part.
Euclid, Elements, |, Def. |
11 Let the following be postulated:
1. To draw a Straight line from any point to any point.
2. To produce a finite straight line continuously ina
Straight line.
3. To describe a circle with any centre and distance.
4. That all right angles are equal to one another.
5. That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines
make the interior angles on the same side less than two
right angles, the two straight lines, if produced
indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles
less than the two right angles.
Euclid, Elements, |, Postulates
12 1. Things which are equal to the same thing are also
equal to one another.
2. If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal.
3. If equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders
are equal.
4. Things which coincide with one another are equal to
one another.
5. The whole is greater than the part.
Euclid, Elements, | Common Notions
13 They relate that Euclid was asked by Ptolemy, whether
there was any shorter way to the attainment of geometry
than by his elementary institutions, and he answered,
there was no other royal path which led to geometry.
Prod us, Commentaries on Euclid, Il, 4
14 The proofs then of these theorems | have written in this
book and now send to you. Seeing moreover in you, as |
Say, an earnest student, a man of considerable eminence
in philosophy, and an admirer [of mathematical inquiry], |
thought fit to write out for you and explain in detail in the
Same book the peculiarity of a certain method, by which
it will be possible for you to get a start to enable you to
investigate some of the problems in mathematics by
means of mechanics. This procedure is, | am persuaded,
no less useful even for the proof of the theorems
themselves; for certain things first became clear to me by
a mechanical method, although they had to be
demonstrated by geometry afterwards because their
investigation by the said method did not furnish an
actual demonstration. But it is of course easier, when we
have previously acquired, by the method, some
knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is
to find it without any previous knowledge. This is a
reason why, in the case of the theorems the proof of
which Eudoxus was the first to discover, namely that the
cone is a third part of the cylinder, and the pyramid of
the prism, having the same base and equal height, we
should give no small share of the credit to Democritus
who was the first to make the assertion with regard to the
said figure though he did not prove it.
Archimedes, Method Treating of Mechanical Problems,
Greeting
15 Eudoxus and Archytas had been the first originators of
this far-famed and highly-prized art of mechanics, which
they employed as an elegant illustration of geometrical
truths, and as means of sustaining experimentally, to the
satisfaction of the senses, conclusions too intricate for
proof by words and diagrams. As, for example, to solve
the problem, so often required in constructing
geometrical figures, given the two extremes, to find the
two mean lines of a proportion, both these
mathematicians had recourse to the aid of instruments,
adapting to their purpose certain curves and sections of
lines.
But because of Plato’s indignation at it, and his
invectives against it as the mere corruption and
annihilation of the one good of geometry, which was thus
shamefully turning its back upon the unembodied objects
of pure intelligence to recur to sensation, and to ask help
(not to be obtained without base supervisions and
depravation) from matter; so it was that mechanics came
to be separated from geometry, and, repudiated and
neglected by philosophers, took its place as a military art.
Plutarch, Marcelltus
16 If geometry exists, arithmetic must also needs be
implied, for it is with the help of this latter that we can
speak of triangle, quadrilateral, octahedron, icosahedron,
double, eightfold, or one and one-half times, or anything
else of the sort which is used as a term by geometry, and
such things cannot be conceived of without the numbers
that are implied with each one,... Hence arithmetic
abolishes geometry along with itself, but is not abolished
by it, and while it is implied by geometry, it does not
itself imply geometry.
Nicomachus, Arithmetic, |, 4
17 Aristotle quite properly divides... the theoretical into
three immediate genera: the physical, the mathematical,
and the theological- For given that all beings have their
existence from matter and form and motion, and that
none of these can be seen, but only thought, in its
subject separately from the others, if one should seek out
in its simplicity the first cause of the first movement of
the universe, he would find God invisible and
unchanging. And the kind of science which seeks after
Him is the theological; for such an act can only be
thought as high above somewhere near the loftiest things
of the universe and is absolutely apart from sensible
things. But the kind of science which traces through the
material and ever moving quality, and has to do with the
white, the hot, the sweet, the soft, and such tilings, would
be called physical; and such an essence, since it is only
generally what it is, is to be found in corruptible things
and below the lunar sphere. And the kind of science
which shows up quality with respect to forms and local
motions, seeking figure, number, and magnitude and also
place, time, and similar things, would be defined as
mathematical. For such an essence falls, as it were,
between the other two, not only because it can be
conceived both through The senses and without the
senses, but alSo because it is an accident in absolutely all
beings both mortal and immortal, changing with those
things that ever change, according to their inseparable
form, and preserving unchangeable the changelessness
of form in things eternal and of an ethereal nature.
And therefore meditating that the other two genera of
the theoretical would be expounded in terms of
conjecture rather than in terms of scientific
understanding; the theological because it is in no way
phenomenal and attainable, but the physical because its
matter is unstable and obscure, so that for this reason
philosophers could never hope to agree on them; and
meditating that only the mathematical, if approached
enquiringly, would give its practitioners certain and
trustworthy knowledge with demonstration both
arithmetic and geometric resulting from indisputable
procedures, we were led to cultivate most particularly as
far as lay in our power this theoretical discipline. And
especially were we led to cultivate That discipline
developed in respect to divine and heavenly things as
being the only one concerned with the study of things
which are always what they are, and therefore able itself
to be always what it is—which is indeed the proper mark
of a science—because of its own clear and ordered
understanding, and yet to cooperate with the other
disciplines no less than they themselves. For that special
mathematical theory would most readily prepare the way
to the theological, since it alone could take good aim at
that unchangeable and separate act, so close to that act
are the properties having to do with translations and
arrangements of movements, belonging to those
heavenly beings which are sensible and both moving and
moved, but eternal and impassible. Again as concerns the
physical there would not be just chance correspondances.
For the general property of the material essence is pretty
well evident from the peculiar fashion of its local motion
—for example, the corruptible and incorruptible from
straight and circular movements, and the heavy and light
or passive and active from movement to the center and
movement from the center. And indeed this same
discipline would more than any other prepare
understanding persons with respect to nobleness of
actions and character by means of the sameness, good
order, due proportion, and simple directness
contemplated in divine things, making its followers lovers
of that divine beauty, and making habitual in them, and
as it were natural, a like condition of the soul.
Ptolemy, Almagest, I, 1
18 Coming now to the science of numbers it is clear to the
dullest apprehension that this was not created by man,
but was discovered by investigation. For, though Virgil
could at his own pleasure make the first syllable of /talia
long, while the ancients pronounced it short, it is not in
any man’s power to determine at his pleasure that three
times three are not nine, or do not make a square, or are
not the triple of three, nor one and a half times the
number six, or that it is not true that they are not the
double of any number because odd numbers have no
half. Whether, then, numbers are considered in
themselves, or as applied to the laws of figures, or of
sounds, or of other motions, they have fixed law's which
were not made by man, but which the acuteness of
ingenious men brought to light.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 38
19 Mathematical species... can be abstracted by the intellect
from sensible matter, not only from individual, but also
from common matter, though not from common
intelligible matter, but only from individual matter. For
sensible matter is corporeal matter as subject to sensible
qualities, such as being cold or hot, hard or soft, and the
like, while intelligible matter is substance as subject to
quantity. Now it is manifest that quantity is in substance
before sensible qualities are. Hence quantities, such as
number, dimension, and figures, which are the
terminations of quantity, can be considered apart from
sensible qualities, and this is to abstract them from
sensible matter; but they cannot be considered without
understanding the substance which is subject to the
quantity, for that would be to abstract them from
common intelligible matter. Yet they can be considered
apart from this or that substance, for that is to abstract
them from individual intelligible matter.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 85, 1
20 Many philosophers have called the world a visible god on
account of its extraordinary excellence. So if the worth of
the arts were measured by the matter with which they
deal, this art—which some call astronomy, others
astrology, and many of the ancients the consummation of
mathematics— would be by far the most outstanding.
This art which is as it were the head of all the liberal arts
and the one most worthy of a free man leans upon nearly
all the other branches of mathematics. Arithmetic,
geometry, optics, geodesy, mechanics, and Whatever
others, all offer themselves in its service. And since a
property of all good arts is to draw the mind of man away
from the vices and direct it to better things, these arts
can do that more plentifully, over and above the
unbelievable pleasure of mind [which they furnish].
Copernicus, De Revoluntionibus, |, Introduction
21 / implore you, you do not hope to be able to give the
reasons for the number of the planets, do you?
This worry has been resolved, with the help of God,
not badly. Geometrical reasons are co-eternal with God.
Kepler, Epitome of Copemican Astronomy, Bk. IV, I, 3
22 There remaineth yet another part of natural philosophy,
which is commonly made a principal part, and holdeth
rank with physic special and metaphysic, which is
mathematic; but | think it more agreeable to the nature of
things, and to the light of order, to place it as a branch of
metaphysic. For the subject of it being quantity, not
quantity indefinite, which is but a relative, and belongeth
to philosophia prima (as hath been said), but quantity
determined or proportionable, it appeareth to be one of
the essential forms of things as that that is causative in
nature of a number of effects; insomuch as we see in the
schools both of Democritus and of Pythagoras, that the
one did ascribe figure to the first seeds of things, and the
other did suppose numbers to be the principles and
Originals of things....
The mathematics are either pure or mixed. To the pure
mathematics are those sciences belonging which handle
quantity determinate, merely severed from any axioms of
natural philosophy; and these are two, geometry and
arithmetic; the one handling quantity continued, and the
other dissevered. Mixed hath for subject some axioms or
parts of natural philosophy, and considereth quantity
determined, as it is auxiliary and incident unto them. For
many parts of nature can neither be invented with
sufficient subtilty, nor demonstrated with sufficient
perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient
dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the
mathematics; of which sort are perspective, music,
astronomy, cosmography, architecture, enginery, and
divers others. In the mathematics | can report no
deficience, except it be that men do not sufficiently
understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in
that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit
and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they
Sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in
the sense, they abstract it. So that £is tennis is a game of
no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a
quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postures;
so in the mathematics, that use which is collateral and
intervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal
and intended. And as for the mixed mathematics, | may
only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be
more kinds of them, 2 is nature grows further disclosed.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk, II, Vill, 1-2
23 Must we not confess that geometry is the most powerful
of all instruments for sharpening the wit and training the
mind to think correctly? Was not Plato perfectly right
when he wished that his pupils should be first of all well
grounded in mathematics?
Galileo, Two New Sciences, I!
24 Sagredo. The force of rigid demonstrations such as occur
only in mathematics fills me with wonder and delight.
From accounts given by gunners, | was already aware of
the fact that in the use of cannon and mortars, the
maximum range, that is the one in which the shot goes
farthest, is obtained when the elevation is 45° or, as they
say, at the sixth point of the quadrant; but to understand
why this happens far outweighs the mere information
obtained by the testimony of others or even by repeated
experiment.
Salviati. What you Say is very true. The knowledge of a
single fact acquired through a discovery of its causes
prepares the mind to understand and ascertain other
facts without need of recourse to experiment, precisely as
in the present case, where by argumentation alone the
Author proves with certainty that the maximum range
occurs when the elevation is 45°. He thus demonstrates
what has perhaps never been observed in experience
namely, that of other shots those which exceed or fall
Short of 45° by equal amounts have equal ranges.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, IV
25 But now let us proceed to explain more carefully our
reasons for saying... that of all the sciences known as yet,
Arithmetic and Geometry alone are free from any taint of
falsity or uncertainty. we must note then that there are
two ways by which we arrive at the knowledge of facts,
viz. by experience and by deduction. We must further
observe that while our inferences from experience are
frequently fallacious, deduction, or the pure illation of
one thing from another, though it may be passed over, if
it is not seen through, cannot be erroneous when
performed by an understanding that is in the least
degree rational. And it seems to me that the operation is
profited but little by those constraining bonds by means
of which the Dialecticians claim to control human reason,
though | do not deny that that discipline may be
serviceable for other purposes. My reason for saying so is
that none of the mistakes which men can make (men, |
say, not beasts) are due to faulty inference; they are
caused merely by the fact that we found upon a basis of
poorly comprehended experiences, or that propositions
are posited which are hasty and groundless.
This furnishes us with an evident explanation of the
great superiority in certitude of Arithmetic and Geometry
to other sciences. The former alone deal with an object so
pure and uncomplicated, that they need make no
assumptions at all which experience renders uncertain,
but wholly consist in the rational deduction of
consequences. They are on that account much the
easiest and clearest of all, and possess an object such as
we require, for in them it is scarce humanly possible for
anyone to err except by inadvertence. And yet we should
not be surprised to find that plenty of people of their own
accord prefer to apply their intelligence to other studies,
or to Philosophy. The reason for this is that every person
permits himself the liberty of making guesses in the
matter of an obscure subject with more confidence than
in one which is clear, and that it is much easier to have
some vague notion about any subject, no matter what,
than to arrive at the real truth about a single question
however simple that may be.
But one conclusion now emerges out of these
considerations, viz. not, indeed, that Arithmetic and
Geometry are the sole sciences to be studied, but only
that in our search for the direct road towards truth we
should busy ourselves with no object about which we
cannot attain a certitude equal to that of the
demonstrations of Arithmetic and Geometry.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, II
26 When first | applied my mind to Mathematics | read
straight away most of what is usually given by the
mathematical writers, and | paid special attention to
Arithmetic and Geometry, because they were said to be
the simplest and so to speak the way to all the rest. But
in neither case did | then meet with authors who fully
satisfied me. | did indeed learn in their works many
propositions about numbers which | found on calculation
to be true. As to figures, they in a sense exhibited to my
eyes a great number of truths and drew conclusions from
certain consequences. But they did not seem to make it
sufficiently plain to the mind itself why those things are
so, and how they discovered them... .
It was these reflections that recalled me from the
particular studies of Arithmetic and Geometry to a
general investigation of Mathematics, and thereupon |
sought to determine what precisely was universally
meant by that term, and why not only the above
mentioned sciences, but also Astronomy, Music, Optics,
Mechanics and several others are styled parts of
Mathematics. Here indeed it is not enough to look at the
origin of the word; for since the name "Mathematics"
means exactly the same thing as "scientific study," these
other branches could, %vitb as much right as Geometry
itself, be called Mathematics. Yet we see that almost
anyone who has had the slightest schooling, can easily
distinguish what relates to Mathematics in any question
from that which belongs to the other sciences. But as |
considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light
that all those matters only were referred to Mathematics
in which order and measurement are investigated, and
that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers,
figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the
question of measurement arises. | saw consequently that
there must be some general science to explain that
clement as a whole which gives rise to problems about
order and measurement, restricted as these are to no
special subject matter. This, | perceived, was called
"Universal Mathematics," not a far fetched designation,
but one of long standing which has passed into current
use, because in this science is contained everything on
account of which the others are called pars of
Mathematics. We can see how much it excels in utility
and simplicity the sciences subordinate to it, by the fact
that it can deal with all the objects of which they have
cognizance and many more besides, and that any
difficulties it contains are found in them as well, added to
the fact that in them fresh difficulties arise due to their
special subject matter which in it do not exist. But now
how comes it that though everyone knows the name of
this science and understands what is its province even
without studying it attentively, so many people
laboriously pursue the other dependent sciences, and no
one cares to master this one? | should marvel indeed
were | not aware that everyone thinks it to be so very
easy, and had | not long since observed that the human
mind passes over what it thinks it can easily accomplish,
and hastens straight away to new and more imposing
occupations.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, IV
27 There can be nothing so absurd but may be found in the
books of philosophers. And the reason is manifest. For
there is not one of them that begins his ratiocination from
the definitions or explications of the names they are to
use; which is a method that hath been used only in
geometry, whose conclusions have thereby been made
indisputable.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 5
28 The difference between the mathematical and the
intuitive mind.—|n the one, the principles are palpable,
but removed from ordinary use; so that for want of habit
it is difficult to turn one’s mind in that direction: but if
one turns it thither ever so little, one secs the principles
fully, and one must have a quite inaccurate mind who
reasons wrongly from principles so plain that it is almost
impossible they should escape notice.
But in the intuitive mind the principles are found in
common use and are before the eyes of everybody. One
has only to look, and no effort is necessary; it is only a
question of good eyesight, but it must be good, for the
principles are so subtle and so numerous that it is almost
impossible but that some escape notice. Now the
omission of one principle leads to error; thus one must
have very clear sight to see all the principles and, in the
next place, an accurate mind not to draw false
deductions from known principles.
All mathematicians would then be intuitive if they had
clear sight, for they do not reason incorrectly from
principles known to them; and intuitive minds would be
mathematical if they could turn their eyes to the
principles of mathematics to which they are unused.
The reason, therefore, that some intuitive minds are
not mathematical is that they cannot at all turn their
attention to the principles of mathematics. But the reason
that mathematicians are not intuitive is that they do not
see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the
exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not
reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their
principles, they are lost in matters of intuition where the
principles do not allow of such arrangement. They are
scarcely seen; they are felt rather than seen; there is the
greatest difficulty in making them felt by those who do
not of themselves perceive them. These principles are so
fine and so numerous that a very delicate and very clear
sense is needed to perceive them, and to judge rightly
and Justly when they are perceived, without for the most
part being able to demonstrate them in order as in
mathematics, because the principles are not known to us
in the same way, and because it would be an endless
matter to undertake it. We must see the matter at once,
at one glance, and not by a process of reasoning, at least
to a certain degree. And thus it is rare that
mathematicians are intuitive and that men of intuition
are mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to
treat matters of intuition mathematically and make
themselves ridiculous, wishing to begin with definitions
and then with axioms, which is not the way to proceed in
this kind of reasoning. Not that the mind does not do so,
but it does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical
rules; for the expression of it is beyond all men, and only
a few can feel it.
Intuitive minds, on the contrary, being thus
accustomed to judge at a single glance, are so astonished
when they are presented with propositions of which they
understand nothing, and the way to which is through
definitions and axioms so sterile, and which they are not
accustomed to see thus in detail, that they are repelled
and disheartened.
But dull minds are never either intuitive or
mathematical.
Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have
exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by
means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are
inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when
the principles are quite clear.
And men of intuition who are only intuitive cannot
have the patience to reach to first principles of things
speculative and conceptual, which they have never seen
in the world and which are altogether out of the common.
Pascal, Pansees, I, 1
29 We shall never get into such trouble if we follow the order
of geometry. That wise science is very far from defining
such primitive words as space, time, motion, equality,
majority, decrease, all, and those others which the
generality of men understand without explanation. But
with the exception of these the remaining terms used by
geometry are so clarified and defined that we have no
need of a dictionary to understand any one of them, so
that in a word all these terms are perfectly intelligible
either by the natural light or by the definitions given.
This is the way geometry avoids all those vices which
may be encountered in connection with the first point,
which is to define only those things that need to be
defined. It observes the same conduct with respect to the
second point, which is to prove those propositions that
are not evident. For when geometry has reached the first
truths that can be known, it stops there and requires that
they be granted since it has nothing clearer to prove
them with; so that all the propositions of geometry are
perfectly demonstrated either by the natural light or by
proofs.
Whence it is that if this science does not define and
demonstrate everything, it is only because it is
impossible for us to do so. But since nature supplies
everything not given by the science, the order of that
science, though it does not give a superhuman
perfection, has all the perfection men are capable of...
Perhaps it will be thought strange that geometry
cannot define any of the things that are its principal
objects; for it can define neither motion nor numbers nor
space, and yet these are the three things it particularly
considers and in accordance with whose investigation it
takes the three different names of mechanics, arithmetic,
geometry, this last word belonging both to the genus and
to the species.
But we shall feel no surprise if we observe that, this
admirable science concerning itself only with the
simplest things, the very quality which makes them
worthy of being its objects makes them incapable of
definition; so that the lack of definition is rather a
perfection than a defect because it does not come from
their obscurity but on the contrary from their extreme
evidence, which is such that although it is not so
convincing as a demonstration, it is fully as certain.
Geometry supposes then that we know what thing is
meant by the words: motion, number, space; and without
stopping uselessly to define them it penetrates their
nature and lays bare their marvelous properties.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
30 It was much easier for a man to place these things aside
with others of the use of which he was ignorant, and thus
retain his present and inborn state of ignorance, than to
destroy the whole superstructure and think out a new
one. Hence it was looked upon as indisputable that the
judgments of the gods far surpass our comprehension;
and this opinion alone would have been sufficient to keep
the human race in darkness to all eternity, if
mathematics, which does not deal with ends, but with the
essences and properties of forms, had not placed before
us another rule of truth.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Appendix
31 Since the ancients (as we are told by Pappus) esteemed
the science of mechanics of greatest importance in the
investigation of natural things, and the moderns,
rejecting substantial forms and occult qualities, have
endeavored to subject the phenomena of nature to the
laws of mathematics, | have in this treatise cultivated
mathematics as far as it relates to philosophy. The
ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect; as
rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration,
and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts
belong, from which mechanics took its name. But as
artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to
pass that mechanics is so distinguished from geometry
that what is perfectly accurate is called geometrical;
what is less so, is called mechanical. However, the errors
are not in the art, but in the artificers. He that works with
less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic; and if any could
work with perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect
mechanic of all, for the description of right lines and
circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to
mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these
lines, but requires them to be drawn, for it requires that
the learner should first be taught to describe these
accurately before he enters upon geometry, then it shows
how by these operations problems may be solved. To
describe right lines and circles are problems, but not
geometrical problems. The solution of these problems is
required from mechanics, and by geometry the use of
them, when so solved, is shown; and it is the glory of
geometry that from those few principles, brought from
without, it is able to produce so many things. Therefore
geometry is founded in mechanical practice, and is
nothing but that part of universal mechanics which
accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of
measuring. But since the manual arts are chiefly
employed in the moving of bodies, it happens that
geometry is commonly referred to their magnitude, and
mechanics to their motion. In this sense rational
mechanics will be the science of motions resulting from
any forces whatsoever, and of the forces required to
produce any motions, accurately proposed and
demonstrated. This part of mechanics, as far as it
extended to the five powers which relate to manual arts,
was cultivated by the ancients, who considered gravity (it
not being a manual power) no otherwise than in moving
weights by those powers. But | consider philosophy rather
than arts and write not concerning manual but natural
powers, and consider chiefly those things which relate to
gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and
the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and
therefore | offer this work as the mathematical principles
of philosophy, for the whole burden of philosophy seems
to consist in this—from the phenomena of motions to
investigate the forces of nature, and then from these
forces to demonstrate the other phenomena.
Newton, Principia, Pref. to 1st Ed.
32 In mathematics we are to investigate the quantities of
forces with their proportions consequent upon any
conditions supposed; then, when we enter upon physics,
we compare those proportions with the phenomena of
Nature, that we may know what conditions of those forces
answer to the several kinds of attractive bodies. And this
preparation being made, we argue more safely
concerning the physical species, causes, and proportions
of the forces.
Newton, Principia, |, 11, Schol.
33 In this proposition, that "the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right ones," one who has seen and clearly
perceived the demonstration of this truth knows it to be
true, when that demonstration is gone out of his mind; so
that at present it is not actually in view, and possibly
cannot be recollected: but he knows it in a different way
from what he did before. The agreement of the two ideas
joined in that proposition is perceived; but it is by the
intervention of other ideas than those which at first
produced that perception. He remembers, i.e. he knows
(for remembrance is but the reviving of some past
knowledge) that he was once certain of the truth of this
proposition, that the three angles of a triangle are equal
to two right ones. The immutability of the same relations
between the same immutable things is now the idea that
shows him, that if the three angles of a triangle were
once equal to two right ones, they will always be equal to
two right ones. And hence he comes to be certain, that
what was once true in the case, is always true; what ideas
once agreed will always agree; and consequently what he
once knew to be true, he will always know to be true; as
long as he can remember that he once knew it. Upon this
ground it is, that particular demonstrations in
mathematics afford general knowledge. If then the
perception, that the same ideas will eternal/y have the
same habitudes and relations, be not a sufficient ground
of knowledge, there could be no knowledge of general
propositions in mathematics; for no mathematical
demonstration would be any other than particular: and
when a man had demonstrated any proposition
concerning one triangle or circle, his knowledge would
not reach beyond that particular diagram. If he would
extend it further, he must renew his demonstration in
another instance, before he could know it to be true in
another like triangle, and so on: by which means one
could never come to the knowledge of any general
propositions.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk, IV, |, 9
34 Mathematicians abstracting their thoughts from names,
and accustoming themselves to set before their minds
the ideas themselves that they would consider, and not
sounds instead of them, have avoided thereby a great
part of that perplexity, puddering, and confusion, which
has so much hindered men’s progress in other parts of
knowledge. For whilst they stick in words of
undetermined and uncertain signification, they are
unable to distinguish true from false, certain from
probable, consistent from inconsistent, in their own
opinions.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, III, 30
35 All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally
be divided into two kinds, to wit, Re/ations of Ideas, and
Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of
Geometry’, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every
affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively
certain. That the square of the hypothenuse is equal to
the square of the two sides, is a proposition which
expresses a relation between these figures. That three
times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a
relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind
are discoverable by the mere operation of thought,
without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the
universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in
nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever
retain their certainty and evidence.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 20
36 The great advantage of the mathematical sciences above
the moral consists in this, that the ideas of the former,
being sensible, are always clear and determinate, the
smallest distinction between them is immediately
perceptible, and the same terms are still expressive of the
same ideas, without ambiguity or variation. An oval is
never mistaken for a circle, nor an hyperbola for an
ellipsis. The isosceles and scalenum are distinguished by
boundaries more exact than vice and virtue, right and
wrong. If any term be defined in geometry, the mind
readily, of itself, substitutes, on all occasions, the
definition for the term defined: Or even when no
definition is employed, the object itself may be presented
to the senses, and by that means be steadily and clearly
apprehended.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VII, 48
37 The mathematics are distinguished by a peculiar
privilege, that, in the course of ages, they may always
advance and can never recede.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LI!
38 The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant
example of the extension of the sphere of pure reason
without the aid of experience. Examples are always
contagious; and they exert an especial influence on the
same faculty, which naturally flatters itself that it will
have the same good fortune in other case as fell to its lot
in one fortunate instance. Hence pure reason hopes to be
able to extend its empire in the transcendental sphere
with equal success and security, especially when it
applies the same method which was attended with such
brilliant results in the science of mathematics. It is,
therefore, of the highest importance for us to know
whether the method of arriving at demonstrative
certainty, which is termed mathematical, be identical
with that by which we endeavour to attain the same
degree of certainty in philosophy, and which is termed in
that science dogmatical.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
39 The success which attends the efforts of reason in the
sphere of mathematics naturally fosters the expectation
that the same good fortune will be its lot, if it applies the
mathematical method in other regions of mental
endeavour besides that of quantities. Its success is thus
great, because it can support all its conceptions by a
priori intuitions and, in this way, make itself a master, as
it were, over nature; while pure philosophy, with its a
priori discursive conceptions, bungles about in the world
of nature, and cannot accredit or show any a priori
evidence of the reality of these conceptions. Masters in
the science of mathematics are confident of the success
of this method; indeed, it is a common persuasion that it
is capable of being applied to any subject of human
thought. They have hardly ever reflected or
philosophized on their favourite science—a task of great
difficulty; and the specific difference between the two
modes of employing the faculty of reason has never
entered their thoughts.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
40 Pure mathematics can never deal with the real existence
of things, but only with their possibility, that is to say,
with the possibility of an intuition answering to the
conceptions of the things. Hence it cannot touch the
question of cause and effect, and consequently, all the
finality there observed must always be regarded simply
as formal, and never as a physical end.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 63, fn.
41 In disquisitions of every kind, there are certain primary
truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent
reasonings must depend. These contain an internal
evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or
combination, commands the assent of the mind. Where it
produces not this effect, it must proceed either from some
defect or disorder in the organs of perception, or from the
influence of some strong interest, or passion, or prejudice.
Of this nature are the maxims in geometry, that "the
whole is greater than its part; things equal to the same
are equal to one another; two straight lines cannot
enclose a space; and all right angles are equal to each
other."...
The objects of geometrical inquiry are so entirely
abstracted from those pursuits which stir up and put in
motion the unruly passions of the human heart, that
mankind, without difficulty, adopt not only the more
simple theorems of the science, but even those abstruse
paradoxes which, however they may appear susceptible
of demonstration, are at variance with the natural
conceptions which the mind, without the aid of
philosophy, would be led to entertain upon the subject.
The INFINITE DIVISIBILITY of matter, or, in other words,
the INFINITE divisibility of a FINITE thing, extending even
to the minutest atom, is a point agreed among
geometricians, though not less incomprehensible to
common sense than any of those mysteries in religion
against which the batteries of infidelity have been so
industriously levelled.
Hamilton, Federalist 31
42 Profound study of nature is the most fertile source of
mathematical discoveries. Not only has this study, in
offering a determinate object to investigation, the
advantage of excluding vague questions and calculations
without issue; it is besides a sure method of forming
analysis itself, and of discovering the elements which it
concerns us to know, and which natural science ought
always to preserve; these are the fundamental elements
which are reproduced in all natural effects.
We see, for example, that the same expression whose
abstract properties geometers had considered, and which
in this respect belongs to general analysis. represents as
well the motion of light in the atmosphere, as it
determines the laws of diffusion of heat in solid matter,
and enters into all the chief problems of the theory of
probability.
The analytical equations, unknown to the ancient
geometers, which Descartes was the first to introduce
into the study of curves and surfaces, are not restricted to
the properties of figures, and to those properties which
are the object of rational mechanics; they extend to all
general phenomena. There cannot be a language more
universal and more simple, more free from errors and
from obscurities, that is to say more worthy to express the
invariable relations of natural things.
Considered from this point of view, mathematical
analysis is as extensive as nature itself; it defines all
perceptible relations, measures times, spaces, forces,
temperatures; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it
preserves every principle which it has once acquired; it
grows and strengthens itself incessantly in the midst of
the many variations and errors of the human mind.
Its chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to
express confused notions. It brings together phenomena
the most diverse, and discovers the hidden analogies
which unite them. If matter escapes us, as that of air and
light, by its extreme tenuity, if bodies are placed far from
us in the immensity of space, if man wishes to know the
aspect of the heavens at successive epochs separated by
a great number of centuries, if the actions of gravity and
of heat are exerted in the interior of the earth at depths
which will be always inaccessible, mathematical analysis
can yet lay hold of the law's of these phenomena. It
makes them present and measurable, and seems to be a
faculty of the human mind destined to supplement the
shortness of life and the imperfection of the senses; and
what is still more remarkable, it follows the same course
in the study of all phenomena; it interprets them by the
same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of
the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident
that unchangeable order which presides over all natural
causes.
Fourier, Analytical Theory of Heat, Preliminary Discourse
43 The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is
that all the argument is on one side. There are no
objections, and no answers to objections.
Mill, On Liberty, II
44 It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in
some cases similar discordance, exist respecting the first
principles of all the sciences, not excepting that which is
deemed the most certain of them, mathematics; without
much impairing, generally indeed without impairing at
all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those
sciences. An apparent anomaly, the explanation of which
is, that the detailed doctrines of a science are not usually
deduced from, nor depend for their evidence upon, what
are called its first principles. Were it not so, there would
be no science more precarious, or whose conclusions
were more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which
derives none of its certainty from what are commonly
taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid
down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as full of
fictions as English law, and of mysteries as theology. The
truths which are ultimately accepted as the first
principles of a science, are really the last results of
metaphysical analysis, practised on the elementary
notions with which the science is conversant; and their
relation to the science is not that of foundations to an
edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may perform their
office equally well though they be never dug down to and
exposed to light.
Mill, Utilitarianism, |
45 A modem branch of mathematics having achieved the art
of dealing with the infinitely small can now yield
solutions in other more complex problems of motion
which used to appear insoluble.
This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the
ancients, when dealing with problems of motion admits
the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to
the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and
thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human
mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements
of motion instead of examining continuous motion.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XI, 1
46 The whole science of geometry may be said to owe its
being to the exorbitant interest which the human mind
takes in /ines. We cut space up in every direction in order
to manufacture them.
William James, Psychology, XX, fn, 1
47 As regards... mathematical judgments,... they express
results of comparison and nothing more. The
mathematical sciences deal with similarities and
equalities exclusively, and not with coexistences and
sequences. Hence they have, in the first instance, no
connection with the order of experience. The comparisons
of mathematics are between numbers and extensive
magnitudes, giving rise to arithmetic and geometry
respectively.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
48 The very possibility of the science of mathematics seems
an insoluble contradiction. If this science is deductive
only in appearance, whence does it derive that perfect
rigor no one dreams of doubting? If, on the contrary, all
the propositions it enunciates can be deduced one from
another by the rules of formal logic, why is not
mathematics reduced to an immense tautology? The
syllogism can teach us nothing essentially new, and, if
everything is to spring from the principle of identity,
everything should be capable of being reduced to it.
Shall we then admit that the enunciations of all those
theorems which fill so many volumes are nothing but
devious ways of saying A is A?
Without doubt, we can go back to the axioms, which
are at the source of all these reasonings. If we decide that
these can not be reduced to the principle of
contradiction, if still less we see in them experimental
facts which could not partake of mathematical necessity,
we have yet the resource of classing them among
synthetic a priori judgments. This is not to solve the
difficulty, but only to baptize it; and even if the nature of
synthetic judgments were for us no mystery, the
contradiction would not have disappeared, it would only
have moved back; syllogistic reasoning remains
incapable of adding anything to the data given it; these
data reduce themselves to a few axioms, and we should
find nothing else in the conclusions.
No theorem could be new if no new axiom intervened
in its demonstration; reasoning could give us only the
immediately evident verities borrowed from direct
intuition; it would be only an intermediary parasite, and
therefore should we not have good reason to ask whether
the whole syllogistic apparatus did not serve solely to
disguise our borrowing?
The contradiction will strike us the more if we open
any book on mathematics; on every page the author will
announce his intention of generalizing some proposition
already known. Does the mathematical method proceed
from the particular to the general, and, if so, how then
can it be called deductive?
If finally the science of number were purely analytic,
or could be analytically derived from a small number of
synthetic judgments, it seems that a mind sufficiently
powerful could at a glance perceive all its truths; nay
more, we might even hope that some day one would
invent to express them a language sufficiently simple to
have them appear self-evident to an ordinary
intelligence.
If we refuse to admit these consequences, it must be
conceded that mathematical reasoning has of itself a sort
of creative virtue and consequently differs from the
syllogism.
The difference must even be profound. We shall not,
for example, find the key to the mystery in the frequent
use of that rule according to which one and the same
uniform operation applied to two equal numbers will give
identical results.
All these modes of reasoning, whether or not they be
reducible to the syllogism properly so called, retain the
analytic character, and just because of that are
powerless.
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, |, 1
49 The axioms of geometry therefore are neither synthetic a
priori judgments nor experimental facts.
They are conventions; our choice among all possible
conventions is guided by experimental facts; but it
remains free and is limited only by the necessity of
avoiding all contradiction. Thus it is that the postulates
can remain rigorously true even though the experimental
laws which have determined their adoption are only
approximative.
In other words, the axioms of geometry (| do not speak
of those of arithmetic) are merely disguised definitions.
Then what are we to think of that question: Is the
Euclidean geometry true?
It has no meaning.
As well ask whether the metric system is true and the
old measures false; whether Cartesian coordinates are
true and polar coordinates false. One geometry can not
be more true than another; it can only be more
convenient.
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, Il, 3
50 It has often been said that if individual experience could
not create geometry the same is not true of ancestral
experience. But what does that mean? Is it meant that we
could not experimentally demonstrate Euclid’s postulate,
but that our ancestors have been able to do it? Not in the
least. It is meant that by natural selection our mind has
adapted itself to the conditions of the external world, that
it has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the
Species: or in other words the most convenient. This is
entirely in conformity with our conclusions; geometry is
not true, it is advantageous.
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, II, 5
51 The genesis of mathematical creation is a problem which
should intensely interest the psychologist. It is the
activity in which the human mind seems to take least
from the outside world, in which it acts or seems to act
only of itself and on itself, so that in studying the
procedure of geometric thought we may hope to reach
what is most essential in man’s mind.
Poincare, Science and Method, |, 3
52 In fact, what is mathematical creation? It does not consist
in making new combinations with mathematical entities
already known. Any one could do that, but the
combinations so made would be infinite in number and
most of them absolutely without interest. To create
consists precisely in not making useless combinations
and in making those which are useful and which are only
a small minority. Invention is discernment, choice.
Poincare, Science and Method, |, 3
53 You have doubtless often been asked of what good is
mathematics and whether these delicate constructions
entirely mind-made are not artificial and born of our
caprice.
Among those who put this question | should make a
distinction; practical people ask of us only the means of
money-making. These merit no reply; rather would it be
proper to ask of them what is the good of accumulating
so much wealth and whether, to get time to acquire it, we
are to neglect art and science, which alone give us souls
capable of enjoying it, ‘and for life’s sake to sacrifice all
reasons for living.’
Besides, a science made solely in view of applications
is impossible; truths are fecund only if bound together. If
we devote ourselves solely to those truths whence we
expect an immediate result, the intermediary links are
wanting and there will no longer be a chain.
The men most disdainful of theory get from it, without
suspecting it, their daily bread; deprived of this food,
progress would quickly cease, and we should soon
congeal into the immobility of old China.
But enough of uncompromising practicians! Besides
these, there are those who are only interested in nature
and who ask us if we can enable them to know it better.
To answer these, we have only to show them the two
monuments already rough-hewn, Celestial Mechanics and
Mathematical Physics.
They would doubtless concede that these structures
are well worth the trouble they have cost us. But this is
not enough. Mathematics has a triple aim. It must furnish
an instrument for the study of nature. But that is not all:
it has a philosophic aim and, | dare maintain, an esthetic
aim. It must aid the philosopher to fathom the notions of
number, of space, of time. And above all, its adepts find
therein delights analogous to those given by painting
and music. They admire the delicate harmony of numbers
and forms; they marvel when a new discovery opens to
them an unexpected perspective; and has not the Joy
they thus feel the esthetic character, even though the
senses take no part therein? Only a privileged few are
called to enjoy it fully, it is true, but is not this the case
for all the noblest arts?
This is why | do not hesitate to say that mathematics
deserves to be cultivated for its own sake, and the
theories inapplicable to physics as well as the others.
Even if the physical aim and the esthetic aim were not
united, we ought not to sacrifice either.
But more: these two aims are inseparable and the best
means of attaining one is to aim at the other, or at least
never to lose sight of it.
Poincare, Value of Science, II, 5
54 The first man who noticed the analogy between a group
of seven fishes and a group of seven days made a notable
advance in the history of thought.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, 11
55 | will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of
thought without profound study of the mathematical
ideas of successive epochs Is like omitting Hamlet from
the play which is named after him. That would be
claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to
cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly
exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is
very charming—and a little mad. Let us grant that the
pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human
Spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent
happenings.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, I!
56 Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete
abstraction from any particular instance of what it is
talking about. So far is this view of mathematics from
being obvious, that we can easily assure ourselves that it
is not, even now, generally understood.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, I!
57 Our last reflection must be, that we have in the end come
back to a version of the doctrine of old Pythagoras, from
whom mathematics, and mathematical physics, took their
rise. He discovered the importance of dealing with
abstractions; and in particular directed attention to
number as characterising the periodicities of notes of
music. The importance of the abstract idea of periodicity
was thus present at the very beginning both of
mathematics and of European philosophy.
In the seventeenth century, the birth of modern
science required a new mathematics, more fully equipped
for the purpose of analysing the characteristics of
vibratory existence. And now in the twentieth century we
find physicists largely engaged in analysing the
periodicities of atoms. Truly, Pythagoras in founding
European philosophy and European mathematics,
endowed them with the luckiest of lucky guesses—or,
was it a flash of divine genius, penetrating to the inmost
nature of things?
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, I!
58 The study of mathematics is apt to commence in
disappointment. The important applications of the
science, the theoretical interest of its ideas, and the
logical rigour of its methods, all generate the expectation
of a speedy introduction to processes of interest. We are
told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions
of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the
ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the
efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it—" 'Tis here, 'tis
there, 'tis gone"—and what we do see does not suggest
the same excuse for illusiveness as sufficed for the ghost,
that it is too noble for our gross methods. "A show of
violence," if ever excusable, may surely be "offered" to
the trivial results which occupy the pages of some
elementary mathematical treatises.
Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics, |
59 Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth,
but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that
of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker
nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or
music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern
perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The
true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being
more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest
excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in
poetry.
Russell, Study of Mathematics
60 Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the
effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of
anything, then such and such another proposition is true
of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the
first proposition is really true, and not to mention what
the anything is, of which it is supposed to be true. Both
these points would belong to applied mathematics. We
start, in pure mathematics, from certain rules of
inference, by which we can infer that if one proposition is
true then so is some other proposition. These rules of
inference constitute the major part of the principles of
formal logic. We then take any hypothesis that seems
amusing, and deduce its consequences. If our hypothesis
is about anything, and not about some one or more
particular things, then our deductions constitute
mathematics. Thus mathematics may be defined as the
subject in which we never know what we are talking
about, nor whether what we are saying is true. People
who have been puzzled by the beginnings of
mathematics will, | hope, find comfort in this definition,
and will probably agree that it is accurate.
Russell, Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
61 Mathematics is said to have. ., disciplinary value in
habituating the pupil to accuracy of statement and
closeness of reasoning; it has utilitarian value in giving
command of the arts of calculation involved in trade and
the arts; culture value in its enlargement of the
imagination in dealing with the most general relations of
things; even religious value in its concept of the infinite
and allied ideas. But clearly mathematics does not
accomplish such results, because it is endowed with
miraculous potencies called values; it has these values if
and when it accomplishes these results, and not
otherwise, The statements may help a teacher to a larger
vision of the possible results to be effected by instruction
in mathematical topics. But unfortunately, the tendency
is to treat the statement as indicating powers inherently
residing in the subject, whether they operate or not, and
thus to give it a rigid justification. If they do not operate,
the blame is put not on the subject as taught, but on the
indifference and recalcitrancy of pupils,
Dewey, Democracy and Education, XVIII
62 Mathematics is like music, freely exploring the
possibilities of form. And yet, notoriously, mathematics
holds true of things; hugs and permeates them far more
closely than does confused and inconstant human
perception; so that the dream of many exasperated
critics of human error has been to assimilate all science
to mathematics, so as to make knowledge safe by making
it, as Locke wished, direct perception of the relations
between ideas. Unfortunately, knowledge would then
never touch those matters of fact on which Locke was
intent. The only serious value of those logical
explorations would lie in their possible relevance to the
accidents of existence. It is only in that relation and in
that measure that mathematical science would cease to
be mere play with ideas and would become true: that is,
in a serious sense, would become knowledge. Now the
seriousness of mathematics comes precisely of its
remarkable and exact relevance to material facts, both
familiar and remote: so that mathematical equations,
besides being essentially necessary in themselves, are
often also true of the world we live in. And this ina
Surprising measure....
In this way mathematical calculations far outrunning
experiment often turns out to be true of the physical
world, as if, per impossibile, they could be true a priori.
But in fact nature, that had to have some form or other, is
organized and deployed on principles which, in human
language, are called number, shape, and measurable
time; categories which for that reason have taken root in
human language science.
Santayana, Realm of Truth, |
Chapter 18
MEDICINE and HEALTH
Chapter 18 is divided into three sections: 18.1 The Art and
Science of Medicine, 18.2 The Practice of Medicine:
Physicians and Patients, and 18.3 Health and Disease.
Medicine is one of the traditionally recognized learned
professions. In the constitution of the first universities, it was
one of the three faculties granting a doctorate, the other two
being law and theology. Both as a profession and as a field of
learning, it is, perhaps, older than the other two, originating
in the West with the formation of the Hippocratic school of
medicine on the island of Cos in the fifth century B.C. The
professional aspect of medicine is covered in the second
section of this chapter; the first section focuses on medicine
as a field of learning, a body of knowledge acquired by
experience and investigation, and applied in practice by a
set of techniques or skills; and the third section is concerned
with the two states of the living body that define the
interests of medicine—as an art, a science, and a profession.
The consideration of medicine as an art may be
illuminated by the discussion of the nature and kinds of art
in Section 16.1. The consideration of medicine as a science
may similarly be illuminated by the discussion of science
and scientific method in Section 17.2. The discussion of the
nature of life in Section 19.2 and of life and death in Section
1.8 may provide background for the consideration of health
and disease.
18.1 The Art and Science of Medicine
The quotations collected here are more or less general
statements about medicine conceived either as an art or as
a science. In antiquity, the emphasis was on medicine as an
art, but the ancient conception of art did not preclude
science; on the contrary, it presupposed science, or at least
an organized body of knowledge, gained by careful
observation and investigation, which provided a basis for
the rules to be followed in the practice of the art. The man
who tried to heal the sick by guesswork or by trial and error
was called an "empiric," and this term was used not only ina
derogatory sense but also in sharp contrast to the skilled
physician whose procedures were governed by his
knowledge of the causes or conditions of health and disease.
The introduction of medical experimentation in modern
times, foreshadowed by Bacon and Harvey and definitely
instituted by Claude Bernard, provides the basis for the
claim that ancient medicine was more of an art than a
science and that scientific medicine is of recent origin. The
reader should be aware of changes in the meanings of the
terms "art" and "science" while examining the criticisms that
later generations level against earlier stages of medicine.
A few quotations present the notion of medicine as a
cooperative art, an art that merely helps nature do what
nature tends to do by itself, unaided by human skill. Thus
conceived, the art of healing, productive or conservative of
health, is like the arts of farming and of teaching. In each
case, the ultimate product—the fruits of the earth, the
health of the body, and knowledge in the mind—results from
natural processes that the human artist must be cognizant
of in order to aid nature.
There are some passages here that attack or satirize the
presumptions and pretensions of medicine, but most of the
quotations that express such attitudes have been placed in
Section 15.2, since they are mainly directed against the
practitioner of the art rather than against the art itself.
1 Honor a physician with the honor due unto him for the
uses which ye may have of him: for the Lord hath created
him. For of the most High cometh healing, and he shall
receive honor of the king. The skill of the physician shall
lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he shall be
in admiration. The Lord hath created medicines out of the
earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them. Was not
the water made sweet with wood, that the virtue thereof
might be known? And he hath given men skill, that he
might be honored in his marvelous works. With such doth
he heal [men,] and taketh away their pains. Of such doth
the apothecary make a confection; and of his works there
iS no end; and from him is peace over all the earth. My
son, in thy sickness be not negligent: but pray unto the
Lord, and he will make thee whole. Leave off from sin, and
order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all
wickedness. Give a sweet savor, and a memorial of fine
flour; and make a fat offering, as not being. Then give
place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him: let
him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. There is
a time when in their hands there is good success. For
they shall also pray unto the Lord, that he would prosper
that, which they give for ease and remedy to prolong life.
He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the
hand of the physician.
Ecclesiasticus 38:1—15
2 The art of Medicine would not have been invented at first,
nor would it have been made a subject of investigation
(for there would have been no need of it), if when men
are indisposed, the same food and other articles of
regimen which they eat and drink when in good health
were proper for them, and if no others were preferable to
these.
But now necessity itself made medicine to be sought
out and discovered by men, since the same things when
administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in
good health, neither did nor do agree with them.
Hippocrates, On Ancient Medicine, 3
3 Certain sophists and physicians say that it is not possible
for any one to Know medicine who does not Know what
man is ..., and that whoever would cure men properly,
must learn this in the first place. But this saying rather
appertains to philosophy, as Empedocles and certain
others have described what man in his origin is, and how
he first was made and constructed. But | think whatever
such has been said or written by sophist or physician
concerning nature has less connection with the art of
medicine than with the art of painting. And | think that
one cannot know anything certain respecting nature from
any other quarter than from medicine; and that this
knowledge is to be attained when one comprehends the
whole subject of medicine properly, but not until then;
and | say that this history shows what man is, by what
causes he was made, and other things accurately.
Wherefore it appears to me necessary to every physician
to be skilled in nature, and strive to know, if he would
wish to perform his duties, what man is in relation to the
articles of food and drink, and to his other occupations,
and what are the effects of each of them to every one.
Hippocrates, On Ancient Medicine, 20
4 Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should
proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of
the year, and what effects each of them produces for they
are not at all alike, but differ much from themselves in
regard to their changes. Then the winds, the hot and the
cold, especially such as are common to ail countries, and
then such as are peculiar to each locality. We must also
consider the qualities of the waters, for as they differ from
one another in taste and weight, so also do they differ
much in their qualities. In the same manner, when one
comes into a city to which he is a stranger, he ought to
consider its situation, how it lies as to the winds and the
rising of the sun; for its influence is not the same whether
it lies to the north or the south, to the rising or to the
setting sun. These things one ought to consider most
attentively, and concerning the waters which the
inhabitants use, whether they be marshy and soft, or
hard, and running from elevated and rocky situations,
and then if saltish and unfit for cooking; and the ground,
whether it be naked and deficient in water, or wooded
and well watered, and whether it lies in a hollow,
confined situation, or is elevated and cold; and the mode
in which the inhabitants live, and what are their pursuits,
whether they are fond of drinking and eating to excess,
and given to indolence, or are fond of exercise and labor,
and not given to excess in eating and drinking.
From these things he must proceed to invest!, gate
everything else. For if one knows all these things well, or
at least the greater part of them, he cannot miss
knowing, when he comes into a strange city, either the
diseases peculiar to the place, or the particular nature of
common diseases, so that he will not be in doubt as to
the treatment of the diseases, or commit mistakes, as is
likely to be the case provided one had not previously
considered these matters. And in particular as the season
and the year advances, he can tell what epidemic
diseases will attack the city, either in summer or in
winter, and what each individual will be in danger of
experiencing from the change of regimen. For knowing
the changes of the sea-sons, the risings and settings of
the stars, how each of them takes place, he will be able to
know beforehand what sort of a year is going to ensue.
Having made these investigations, and knowing
beforehand the seasons, such a one must be acquainted
with each particular, and must succeed in the
preservation of health, and be by no means unsuccessful
in the practice of his art. And if it shall be thought that
these things belong rather to meteorology, it will be
admitted, on second thougNts, that astronomy
contributes not a little, but a very great deal, indeed, to
medicine. For with the seasons the digestive organs of
men undergo a change.
Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, and Places, 1-2
5 It is disgraceful in every art, and more especially in
medicine, after much trouble, much display, and much
talk, to do no good after all.
Hippocrates, Articulations, 44
6 To such as are curable, means are to be used to prevent
them from becoming incurable, studying how they may
best be prevented from getting into an incurable state.
And incurable cases should be known, that they may not
be aggravated by useless applications, and splendid and
creditable prognostics are made by knowing where, how,
and when every case will terminate, and whether it will
be converted into a curable or an incurable disease.
Hippocrates, Articulations, 58
7 Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience
perilous, and decision difficult.
Hippocrates, Aphorisms, I, 1
8 Eryximachus. Medicine may be regarded generally as the
knowledge of the loves and desires of the body, and how
to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is
able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into
the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to
implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the
most hostile elements in the constitution and make them
loving friends, is a skilful practitioner. Now the most
hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter
and sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor,
Asclepius, knowing how to implant friendship and accord
in these elements, was the creator of our art.
Plato, Symposium, 186B
9 Art arises when from many notions gained by experience
one universal judgement about a class of objects is
produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was
ill of this disease this did him good, and similarly in the
case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a matter
of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all
persons of a certain constitution, marked off in one class,
when they were ill of this disease, e.g. to phlegmatic or
bilious people when burning with fever,—this is a matter
of art.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981a6
10 The art of medicine is valuable to us because it is
conducive to health, not because of its scientific interest.
Cicero, De Finibus, |, 13
11 Nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of
treatment.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 2
12 The learned Erasistratus, however, overlooks— nay,
despises—what neither Hippocrates, Diodes, Praxagoras,
nor Philistion despised, nor indeed any of the best
philosophers, whether Plato, Aristotle, or Theophrastus;
he passes by whole functions as though it were but a
trifling and casual department of medicine which he was
neglecting, without deigning to argue whether or not
these authorities are right in saying that the bodily parts
of all animals are governed by the Warm, the Cold, the
Dry and the Moist, the one pair being active and the
other passive, and that among these the Warm has most
power in connection with all functions, but especially
with the genesis of the humours. Now, one cannot be
blamed for not agreeing with all these great men, nor for
imagining that one knows more than they; but not to
consider such distinguished teaching worthy either of
contradiction or even mention shows an extraordinary
arrogance.
Galen, Natural Faculties, II, 8
As for the scientific proofs of all this, they are to be drawn
from these principles of which | have already sooken—
namely, that bodies act upon and are acted upon by each
other in virtue of the Warm, Cold, Moist and Dry. And if
one is speaking of any activity, whether it be exercised
by vein, liver, arteries, heart, alimentary canal, or any
part, one will be inevitably compelled to acknowledge
that this activity depends upon the way in which the four
qualities are blended.
Galen, Natural Faculties, II, 9
14 Although, with a cruel zeal for science, some medical
men, who are called anatomists, have dissected the
bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of sick persons
who died under their knives, and have inhumanly pried
into the secrets of the human body to learn the nature of
the disease and its exact seat, and how it might be cured,
yet those relations of which | speak, and which form the
concord, or, as the Greeks call it, harmony, of the whole
body outside and in, as of some instrument, no one has
been able to discover, because no one has been
audacious enough to seek for them.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 24
15 He [Pantagruel] went then to Montpellier, where he met
with the good wives of Mirevaux, and good jovial
company withal, and thought to have set himself to the
study of physic; but he considered that that calling was
too troublesome and melancholic, and that physicians did
smell of glisters like old devils.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, II, 5
16... the moral comedy of him who had espoused and
married a dumb wife. | was there, quoth Epistemon. The
good honest man, her husband, was very earnestly
urgent to have the fillet of her tongue untied, and would
needs have her speak by any means. At his desire, some
pains were taken on her, and partly by the industry of the
physician, other part by the expertness of the surgeon,
the encyliglotte which she had under her tongue being
cut, she spoke, and spoke again; yea, within a few hours
she spoke so loud, so much, so fiercely, and so long, that
her poor husband returned to the same physician for a
receipt to make her hold her peace. There are, quoth the
physician, many proper remedies in our art to make
dumb women speak, but there are none that ever | could
learn therein to make them silent. The only cure which |
have found out is their husband’s deafness. The wretch
became within few weeks thereafter, by virtue of some
drugs, charms, or enchantments, which the physician had
prescribed unto him, so deaf, that he could not have
heard the thundering of nineteen hundred cannons at a
Salvo. His wife perceiving that indeed he was as deaf as a
doornail, and that her scolding was but in vain, sith that
he heard her not, she grew stark mad.
Some time after, the doctor asked for his fee of the
husband; who answered, That truly he was deaf, and so
was not able to understand what the tenour of his
demand might be.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 34
17 'Tis wonderful how God has put such excellent physic in
mere muck; we know by experience that swine’s dung
stints the blood; horse’s serves for the pleurisy; man’s
heals wounds and black blotches; asses’ is used for the
bloody flux, and cow’s with preserved roses serves for
epilepsy, or for convulsions of children.
Luther, Table Talk, H92
18 Experience is really on its own dunghill in the subject of
medicine, where reason yields it the whole field. Tiberius
used to say that whoever had lived twenty years should
be responsible to himself for the things that were harmful
or beneficial to him» and know how to take care of
himself without medical aid. And he might have learned
this from Socrates, who, advising his disciples, carefully
and as a principal study, the study of their health, used
to add that it was difficult for an intelligent man who was
careful about his exercise, his drinking, and his eating not
to know better than any doctor what was good or bad for
him.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
19 Friar Laurence. Mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II, tii, 15
20 Falstaff. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in
it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the
foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it;
makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble,
fiery, and delectable shapes; which, delivered o’er to the
voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent
wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the
warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left
the liver white and pale, which is the badge of
pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and
makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme: it
iIlumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to
all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then
the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me
all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up
with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this
valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is
nothing without sack for that sets it a-work; and learning
a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences
it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince
Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit
of his father he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land,
manured, husbanded, and tilled with excellent endeavour
of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he
is become very hot and valiant. If | had a thousand sons,
the first humane principle | would teach them should be
to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to
sack.
Shakespeare, Il Henry IV, IV, Hi, 103
21 Macbeth. Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, iii, 46
22 Sancho was conducted from the Court of Justice to a
sumptuous Palace; where, in a spacious Room he found
the Cloth laid, and a most neat and magnificent
Entertainment prepar’d. As soon as he enter’d, the Wind-
Musick play’d, and four Pages waited on him, in order to
the washing his Hands; which he did with a great deal of
Gravity. And now the Instruments ceasing, Sancho down
at the upper End of the Table; for there was no Seat but
there, and the Cloth was only laid for one, A certain
Personage, who afterwards appear’d to be a Physician,
came and stood at his Elbow, with a Whalebone Wand in
his Hand. Then they took off a curious white Cloth that
lay over the Dishes on the Table, and discover’d great
Variety of Fruit, and other Eatables. One that look’d like a
Student, said Grace; a Page put a lac’d Bib under
Sancho's Chin; and another, who did the Office of Sewer,
set a Dish of Fruit before him. But he had hardly put one
Bit into his Mouth, before the Physician touch’d the Dish
with his Wand, and then it was taken away by a Page in
an Instant. Immediately another with Meat was clapp’d in
the Place; but Sancho no sooner offer’d to taste it, but
the Doctor with the Wand conjur’d it away as fast as the
Fruit. Sancho was amaz’d at this sudden Removal, and
looking about him on the Company, ask’d them whether
they us’d to tantalize People at that rate, feeding their
Eyes, and starving their Bellies? My Lord Governor,
answer’d the Physician, you are to eat here no otherwise
than according to the Use and Custom of other Islands
where there are Governors. | am a Doctor of Physick, my
Lord, and have a Salary allow’d me in this Island, for
taking Charge of the Governor’s Health, and |am more
careful of it than of my own; studying Night and Day his
Constitution, that | may the better know what to
prescribe when he falls sick. Now the chief Thing | do, is
to attend him always at his Meals, to let him cat what |
think convenient for him, and to prevent his eating what |
imagine to be prejudicial to his Health, and offensive to
his Stomach. Therefore | now order’d the Fruit to be taken
away» because 'tis too cold and moist; and the other
Dish, because ‘tis as much too hot, and overseason’d with
Spices, which are apt to increase Thirst; and he that
drinks much, destroys and consumes the radical
Moisture, which is the Fuel of Life. So then, quoth Sancho,
this Dish of roasted Partridges here can do me no manner
of Harm. Hold, said the Physician, the Lord Governor shall
not cat of ’em, while | live to prevent it. Why so? cry’d
Sancho: Because, answer’d the Doctor, our great Master
Hippocrates, the North-Star, and Luminary of Physick,
says in one of his Aphorisms, Omnis Saturatio mala,
perdicis autem pessima: That is, all Repletion is bad, but
that of Partridges is worst of all. If it be so, said Sancho,
let Mr Doctor see which of all these Dishes on the Table
will do me most Good and least Harm, and let me eat my
Belly-full of that, without having it whisk’d away with his
Wand. For, by my Hopes, and the Pleasures of
Government, as | live, | am ready to die with Hunger; and
not to allow me to cat any Victuals (let Mr Doctor say
what he will) is the Way to shorten my Life, and not to
lengthen it. Very true, my Lord, reply’d the Physician,
however, | am of Opinion, you ought not to eat of these
Rabbets, as being a hairy, furry Sort of Food; nor would |
have you taste of that Veal: Indeed if it were neither
roasted nor pickled, something might be said; but as it is,
it must not be. Well then, said Sancho, what think you of
that huge Dish yonder that smokes so? | take it to be an
Olla Podrida; and that being a Hodgepodge of so many
Sorts of Victuals, sure | can’t but light upon something
there that will nick me, and be both wholesom and
toothsom. Absit, cry’d the Doctor, far be such an ill
Thought from us; no Diet in the World yields worse
Nutriment than those Mishmashes do. No, leave that
luxurious Compound to your rich Monks and
Prebendaries, your Masters of Colleges, and lusty Feeders
at Country-Weddings: But let them not incumber the
Tables of Governors, where nothing but delicate unmix’d
Viands in their Prime ought to make their Appearance.
The Reason is, that simple Medicines are generally
allow’d to be better than Compounds; for ina
Composition there may happen a Mistake by the unequal
Proportion of the Ingredients; but Simples are not subject
to that Accident. Therefore what | would advise at
present, as a fit Diet for the Governor, for the Preservation
and Support of his Health, is a hundred of small Wafers,
and a few thin Slices of Marmalade, to strengthen his
Stomach and help Digestion. Sancho hearing this, lean’d
back upon his Chair, and looking earnestly in the Doctor’s
Face, very seriously ask’d him what his Name was, and
where he had studied? My Lord, answer’d he, | am call’d
Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero, The Name of the Place
where | was born, is Tirteafuera, and lies between
Caraquel and Almodabar del Campo, on the Right-hand;
and | took my Degree of Doctor in the University of
Osuna. Hark you, said Sancho, in a mighty Chafe, Mr Dr
Pedro Rezio de Aguero, born at Tirteafuera, that lies
between Caraquel and Almodabar del Campo, on the
Right-hand, and who took your Degrees of Doctor at the
University of Osuna, and so forth. Take your self awayl
avoid the Room this Moment, or by the Sun’s Light, I'll
get me a good Cudgel, and beginning with your Carcase,
will so be-labour and rib-roast all the Physick-mongers in
the Island, that | will not leave therein one of the Tribe of
those, | mean that are ignorant Quacks; for as for learned
and wise Physicians, I’ll make much of ’em, and honour
“em like so many Angels. Once more Pedro ReZio, | say,
get out of my Presence. Avaunt! or I'll take the Chair | sit
upon, and comb your Head with it to some Purpose; and
let me be call’d to an Account about it when | give up my
Office; | don’t care. I’ll clear my self by saying, | did the
World good Service, in ridding it of a bad Physician, the
Plague of a Commonwealth. Body of me! let me eat, or let
"em take their Government again; for an Office that won’t
afford a Man his Victuals, is not worth two Horse-Beans.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 47
23 The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine in
Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune this
curious harp of man’s body and to reduce ft to harmony.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk, Il, X, 2
24 As for the footsteps of diseases, and their devastations of
the inward parts, impostumations, exulcerations,
discontinuations, putrefactions, consumptions,
contractions, extensions, convulsions, dislocations,
obstructions, repletions, together with all preternatural
substances, as stones, carnosities, excrescences, worms
and the like; they ought to have been exactly observed
by multitude of anatomies, and the contribution of men’s
several experiences, and carefully set down both
historically according to the appearances, and artificially
with a reference to the diseases and symptoms which
resulted from them, in case where the anatomy is of a
defunct patient; whereas now upon opening of bodies
they are passed over slightly and in silence.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, X, 5
25 | profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from
books but from dissections; not from the positions of
philosophers but from the fabric of nature.
William Harvey, Motion of the Heart, Dedication
26 Even as the dissection of healthy and well-constituted
bodies contributes essentially to the advancement of
philosophy and sound physiology, so does the inspection
of diseased and cachectic subjects powerfully assist
philosophical pathology. And, indeed, the physiological
consideration of the things which are according to nature
is to be first undertaken by medical men; since that
which is in conformity with nature is right, and serves as
a rule both to itself and to that which is amiss; by the
light it sheds, too, aberrations and affections against
nature are defined; pathology then stands out more
clearly; and from pathology’ the use and art of healing, as
well as occasions for the discovery of many new
remedies, are perceived. Nor could anyone readily
imagine how extensively internal organs are altered in
diseases, especially chronic diseases, and what
monstrosities among internal parts these diseases
engender. So that | venture to say, that the examination
of a single body of one who has died of tabes or some
other disease of long standing, or poisonous nature, is of
more service to medicine than the dissection of the
bodies of ten men who have been hanged.
William Harvey, Circulation of the Blood, |
27 The mind depends so much on the temperament and
disposition of the bodily organs that, if it is possible to
find a means of rendering men wiser and cleverer than
they have hitherto been, | believe that it is in medicine
that it must be sought.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, VI
28 The medicine which is now in vogue contains little of
which the utility is remarkable; but, without having any
intention of decrying it, | am sure that there is no one,
even among those who make its study a profession, who
does not confess that all that men know is almost nothing
in comparison with what remains to be known; and that
we could be free of an infinitude of maladies both of body
and mind, and even also possibly of the infirmities of age,
if we had sufficient knowledge of their causes, and of all
the remedies with which nature has provided us.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, \T
29 Geronte. There is just one thing that bothers me: the
position of the liver and the heart. It seems to me that
you place them wrongly; and the heart is on the left side
and the liver on the right.
Sganarelle. Yes, that is the way it used to be. But we
have changed all that; now we use an entirely new
method in medicine.
Moliere, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Il, vi
30 1 was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who
get their livelihood by attending the sick, having upon
some occasions informed his honour that many of my
crew had died of diseases: but here it was with the
utmost difficulty that | brought him to apprehend what |
meant. He could easily conceive, that a Houyhnhnm grew
weak and heavy a few days before his death; or by some
accident might hurt a limb. But that nature who worketh
all things to perfection, should suffer any pains to breed
in our bodies, he thought impossible; and desired to
know the reason of so unaccountable an evil. | told him,
we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to
each other: that, we eat when we were not hungry; and
drank without the provocation of thirst: that, we sat
whole nights drinking strong liquors without eating a bit,
which disposed us to sloth, enflamed our bodies, and
precipitated or prevented digestion. That, prostitute
female Yahoos acquired a certain malady, which bred
rottenness in the bones of those, who fell into their
embraces: that this and many other diseases, were
propagated from father to son; so that great numbers
come into the world with complicated maladies upon
them: that, it would be endless to give him a catalogue of
all diseases incident to human bodies; for they could not
be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb,
and joint: in short, every part, external and intestine,
having diseases appropriated to each. To remedy which,
there was a sort of people bred up among us, in the
profession or pretence of curing the sick. And, because |
had some skill in the faculty, | would in gratitude to his
honour, let him know the whole mystery and method by
which they proceed.
Their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from
repletion; from whence they conclude, that a great
evacuation of the body is necessary, either through the
natural passage, or upwards at the mouth. Their next
business is, from herbs, minerals, gums, oyls, shells, salts,
juices, sea-weed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents,
toads, frogs, spiders, dead mens flesh and bones, beasts
and fishes, to form a composition for smell and taste the
most abominable, nauseous and detestable, that they
can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately
rejects with loathing: and this they call a vomit. Or else
from the same store-house, with some other poysonous
additions, they command us to take in at the orifice
above or below (just as the physician then happens to be
disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to
the bowels; which relaxing the belly, drives down all
before it: and this they call a purge), or a glyster. For
nature (as the physicians alledge) having intended the
superior anterior orifice only for the intromission of solids
and liquids, and the inferior posterior for ejection, these
artists ingeniously considering that in all diseases nature
is forced out of her seat; therefore to replace her in it, the
body must be treated in a manner directly contrary, by
interchanging the use of each orifice; forcing solids and
liquids in at the anus, and making evacuations at the
mouth.
But, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that
are only imaginary, for which the physicians have
invented imaginary cures; these have their several
names, and so have the drugs that are proper for them;
and with these our female Yahoos are always infested.
One great excellency in this tribe is their skill at
prognosticks, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions
in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of
malignity, generally portending death, which is always in
their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon
any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have
pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as
false prophets, they know how to approve their sagacity
to the world by a seasonable dose.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, IV, 6
31 However useful medicine, properly administered, may be
among us, it is certain that, if the savage, when he is sick
and left to himself, has nothing to hope but from nature,
he has, on the other hand, nothing to fear but from his
disease; which renders his situation often preferable to
our own.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
32 With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon
eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a
vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other
hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination;
we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the
sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert
their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has
preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution
would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the
weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind.
No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic
animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to
the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care,
or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a
domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself,
hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst
animals to breed.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 5
33 Every science has its own kind of investigation and its
equipment of special instruments and methods. This,
after all, is plain enough, since every science is
characterized by the nature of its problems and by the
variety of the phenomena that it studies. Medical
investigation is the most complicated of all: it includes all
the methods proper to anatomical, physiological and
therapeutic research, and, as it develops, it also borrows
from chemistry and physics many means of research
which become powerful allies. In the experimental
sciences all progress is measured by improvement in the
means of investigation. The whole future of experimental
medicine depends on creating a method of research
which may be applied fruitfully to the study of vital
phenomena, whether in a normal or abnormal state.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, I, 1
34 Most physicians seem to believe that, in medicine, laws
are elastic and indefinite. These are false ideas which
must disappear if we mean to found a scientific medicine.
As a science, medicine necessarily has definite and
precise laws which, like those of all the sciences, are
derived from the criterion of experiment.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 2
35 | consider hospitals only as the entrance to scientific
medicine; they are the first field of observation which a
physician enters; but the true sanctuary of medical
science is a laboratory; only there can he seek
explanations of life in the normal and pathological states
by means of experimental analysis.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 2
36 Napoleon. What can doctors cure? One can’t cure
anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized
for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and
let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it
by encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a
perfect watch that should go for a certain time; the
watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by
fumbling, and that blindfold.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 29
37 The Middle Ages took a fancy to some familiar number
like seven; and because it was an odd number, and the
world was made in seven days, and there are seven stars
in Charles’s Wain, and for a dozen other reasons, they
were ready to believe anything that had a seven ora
seven times seven in it. Seven deadly sins, seven swords
of sorrow in the heart of the Virgin, seven champions of
Christendom, seemed obvious and reasonable things to
believe in simply because they were seven. To us, on the
contrary, the number seven is the stamp of superstition.
We will believe in nothing less than millions, A medieval
doctor gained his patient’s confidence by telling him that
his vitals were being devoured by seven worms. Such a
diagnosis would ruin a modern physician. The modem
physician tells his patient that he is ill because every
drop of his blood is swarming with a million microbes;
and the patient believes him abjectly and instantly.
Shaw, Androcles and the Lion, Pref.
38 Doctoring is not even the art of keeping people in health
(no doctor seems able to advise you what to eat any
better than his grandmother or the nearest quack): it is
the art of curing illnesses. It does happen exceptionally
that a practising doctor makes a contribution to science
(my play describes a very notable one); but it happens
much oftener that he draws disastrous conclusions from
his clinical experience because he has no conception of
scientific method, and believes, like any rustic, that the
handling of evidence and statistics needs no expertness.
The distinction between a quack doctor and a qualified
one is mainly that only the qualified one is authorized to
sign death certificates, for which both sorts seem to have
about equal occasion,
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
39 The notion that therapeutics or hygiene or surgery is any
more or less scientific than making or cleaning boots is
entertained only by people to whom a man of science Is
still a magician who can cure diseases, transmute metals,
and enable us to live for ever.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
40 You must not think that the outlook of a patient with
regard to medical aid is essentially bettered when the
diagnosis points to hysteria rather than to organic
disease of the brain. Against the serious brain diseases
medical skill is in most cases powerless, but also in the
case of hysterical affections the doctor can do nothing.
He must leave it to benign nature, when and how his
hopeful prognosis will be realized. Accordingly, with the
recognition of the disease as hysteria, little is changed in
the situation of the patient, but there is a great change in
the attitude of the doctor. We can observe that he acts
quite differently toward hystericals than toward patients
suffering from organic diseases. He will not bring the
same interest to the former as to the latter, since their
suffering is much less serious and yet seems to set up the
claim to be valued just as seriously.
Freud, Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, |
41 Psycho-analysis stands to psychiatry more or less as
histology does to anatomy; in one, the outer forms of
organs are studied, in the other, the construction of these
out of the tissues and constituent elements. It is not easy
to conceive of any contradiction between these two fields
of study, in which the work of the one is continued in the
other. You know that nowadays anatomy is the basis of
the scientific study of medicine; but time was when
dissecting human corpses in order to discover the
internal structure of the body was as much a matter for
severe prohibition as practising psychoanalysis in order
to discover the internal workings of the human mind
seems today to be a matter for condemnation. And,
presumably at a not too distant date, we shall have
perceived that there can be no psychiatry which is
scientifically radical without a thorough knowledge of the
deep-seated unconscious processes in mental life.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XVI
42 When, in the course of an analysis, we have given the
ego assistance and have put it in a position to abolish its
repressions, it recovers its power over the repressed id
and can allow the instinctual impulses to run their course
as though the old situations of danger no longer existed.
What we can do in this way is in general accord with the
therapeutic achievements of medicine; for as a rule we
must be satisfied with bringing about more quickly, more
certainly and with less expenditure of energy than would
otherwise be the case a desired result which in
favourable circumstances would have occurred of itself.
Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, X
18.2 The Practice of Medicine
PHYSICIANS AND PATIENTS
Included here are statements about the obligations of the
physician to his patient; statements about the things the
physician should refrain from doing and which, if done,
become malpractice; statements about the relation between
physicians and patients; and statements about the qualities
of the good physician. They contribute to the formulation of
professional standards—the code of what has come to be
called "professional ethics," the cornerstone of which is laid
by the famous Hippocratic oath.
For whatever they are worth, justified or not, this section
also includes a wide variety of satirical attacks on the
incompetence of bumbling and fumbling practitioners. No
other profession has been subject to more scathing
denunciations, unless it be that of the law. This may be
understandable in view of the fact that health and disease,
like justice and injustice, are of such monumental concern to
mankind, who must look to physicians and to lawyers for
special competence in securing what is beneficial, and
avoiding what is harmful.
One curious strain in the passages quoted deserves
comment. It begins with the admonition, cited by St. Luke:
"Physician, heal thyself!" Others discuss the physician’s
experience of disease in his own body, and disagree—as, for
example, Plato and Augustine—on the question whether it is
necessary for a physician to suffer disease in order to be
able to understand and cure it.
1 | swear by Apollo the physician, and AEsculapius, and
Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses,
that, according to my ability and judgment, | will keep
this Oath and this stipulation— to reckon him who taught
me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my
substance with him, and relieve his necessities if
required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as
my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall
wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by
precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, |
will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and
those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a
stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but
to none others. | will follow that system of regimen which,
according to my ability and judgment, | consider for the
benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is
deleterious and mischievous. | will give no deadly
medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such
counsel; and in like manner | will not give to a woman a
pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with
holiness | will pass my life and practice my Art. | will not
cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this
to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into
whatever houses | enter, | will go into them for the
benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary
act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the
seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves.
Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or
not, in connection with it, | see or hear, in the life of men,
which ought not to be spoken of abroad, | will not
divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
While | continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be
granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art,
respected by all men, in all times! But should | trespass
and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!
Hippocrates, The Oath
2 It appears to me a most excellent thing for the physician
to cultivate Prognosis; for by foreseeing and foretelling, in
the presence of the sick, the present, the past, and the
future, and explaining the omissions which patients have
been guilty of, he will be the more readily believed to be
acquainted with the circumstances of the sick; so that
men will have confidence to intrust themselves to such a
physician. And he will manage the cure best who has
foreseen what is to happen from the present state of
matters. For it is impossible to make all the sick well; this,
indeed, would have been better than to be able to foretell
what is going to happen; but since men die, some even
before calling the physician, from the violence of the
disease, and some die immediately after calling him,
having lived, perhaps, only one day or alittle longer, and
before the physician could bring his art to counteract the
disease; it therefore becomes necessary to know the
nature of such affections, how far they are above the
powers of the constitution; and, moreover, if there be
anything divine in the diseases, and to learn a
foreknowledge of this also. Thus a man will be the more
esteemed to be a good physician, for he will be the better
able to treat those aright who can be saved, from having
long anticipated everything; and by seeing and
announcing beforehand those who will live and those
who will die, he will thus escape censure.
Hippocrates, Book of Prognostics, 1
3 The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know
the present, and foretell the future— must meditate these
things, and have two special objects in view with regard
to diseases, namely, to do good or to do no harm. The art
consists in three things—the disease, the patient, and the
physician. The physician is the servant of the art, and the
patient must combat the disease along with the
physician.
Hippocrates, Epidemics, Bk. I, 11, 5
4 | look upon it as being a great part of the art to be able to
Judge properly of that which has been written. For he that
knows and makes a proper use of these things, would
appear to me not likely to commit any great mistake in
the art. He ought to learn accurately the constitution of
every one of the seasons, and of the diseases; whatever
that is common in each constitution and disease is good,
and whatever is bad; whatever disease will be protracted
and end in death, and whatever will be protracted and
end in recovery; which disease of an acute nature will
end in death, and which in recovery. From these it is easy
to know the order of the critical days, and prognosticate
from them accordingly. And to a person who is skilled in
these things, it is easy to Know to whom, when, and how
aliment ought to be administered.
Hippocrates, Epidemics, Bk. Ill, Il, 16
5 The prime object of the physician in the whole art of
medicine should be to cure that which is diseased; and if
this can be accomplished in various ways, the least
troublesome should be selected; for this is more
becoming a good man, and one well skilled in the art,
who does not covet popular coin of base alloy.
Hippocrates, Articulations, 78
6 Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to
the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who,
inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present
far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me
to arise principally from this, that in the cities there is no
punishment connected with the practice of medicine
(and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not
hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are like
the figures which are introduced in tragedies, for as they
have the shape, and dress, and personal appearance of
an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many
in title but very few in reality.
Hippocrates, The Law, |
7 Socrates. Asclepius may be supposed to have exhibited
the power of his art only to persons who, being generally
of healthy constitution and habits of life, had a definite
ailment; such as these he cured by purges and
operations, and bade them live as usual, herein
consulting the interests of the State; but bodies which
disease had penetrated through and through he would
not have attempted to cure by gradual processes of
evacuation and infusion: he did not want to lengthen out
good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers begetting
weaker sons—if a man was not able to live in the ordinary
way he had no business to cure him; for such a cure
would have been of no use either to himself, or to the
State.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 407B
8 The most skilful physicians are those who, from their youth
upwards, have combined with the knowledge of their art
the greatest experience of disease; they had better not
be robust in health, and should have had all manner of
diseases in their own persons. For the body, as | conceive,
is not the instrument with which they cure the body; in
that case we could not allow them ever to be or to have
been sickly; but they cure the body with the mind, and
the mind which has become and is sick can cure nothing.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 408B
9 Athenian Stranger. The physician, whether he cures us
against our will or with our will, and whatever be his
mode of treatment—incision, burning, or the infliction of
some other pain—whether he practises out of a book or
not out of a book, and whether he be rich or poor,
whether he purges or reduces in some other way, or even
fattens his patients, is a physician all the same, so long
as he exercises authority over them according to rules of
art, if he only does them good and heals and saves them.
And this we lay down to be the only proper test of the art
of medicine, or of any other art of command.
Plato, Statesman, 293A
10 Athenian Stranger. The physician saves any whom he
wishes to save, and any whom he wishes to maltreat he
maltreats—cutting or burning them, and at the same time
requiring them to bring him payments, which are a sort of
tribute, of which little or nothing is spent upon the sick
man, and the greater part is consumed by him and his
domestics.
Plato, Statesman, 298A
11 Athenian Stranger. Did you ever observe that there are
two classes of patients in states, slaves and freemen; and
the slave doctors run about and cure the slaves, or wait
for them in the dispensaries—practitioners of this sort
never talk to their patients individually, or let them talk
about their own individual complaints? The slave doctor
prescribes what mere experience suggests, as if he had
exact knowledge; and when he has given his orders, like
a tyrant, he rushes off with equal assurance to some
other servant who is ill; and so he relieves the master of
the house of the care of his invalid slaves. But the other
doctor, who is a freeman, attends and practises upon
freemen; and he carries his enquiries far back, and goes
into the nature of the disorder; he enters into discourse
with the patient and with his friends, and is at once
getting information from the sick man, and also
instructing him as far as he is able, and he will not
prescribe for him until he has first convinced him; at last,
when he has brought the patient more and more under
his persuasive influences and set him on the road to
health, he attempts to effect a cure. Now which is the
better way of proceeding in a physician and in a trainer?
Is he the better who accomplishes his ends in a double
way, or he who works in one way, and that the ruder and
inferior?
Cleinias. | should say. Stranger, that the double way is
far better.
Plato, Laws, IV, 720A
12 Athenian Stranger. Do you remember the image in which
| likened the men for whom laws are now made to slaves
who are doctored by slaves? For of this you may be very
sure, that if one of those empirical physicians, who
practise medicine without science, were to come upon
the gentleman physician talking to his gentleman
patient, and using the language almost of philosophy,
beginning at the beginning of the disease and
discoursing about the whole nature of the body, he would
burst into a hearty laugh—he would say what most of
those who are called doctors always have at their
tongue’s end:—Foolish fellow, he would say, you are not
healing the sick man, but you are educating him; and he
does not want to be made a doctor, but to get well.
Cleinias. And would he not be right?
Ath. Perhaps he would.
Plato, Laws, IX, 857B
13 He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is
prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to change
his patient’s manner of life, and if the patient is willing to
obey him, he may go on to give him other advice. But if
he is not willing, | shall consider one who declines to
advise such a patient to be a man and a physician, and
one who gives in to him to be unmanly and
unprofessional.
Plato, Seventh Letter
14 A man who is a doctor might cure himself. Nevertheless it
is not in so far as he is a patient that he possesses the art
of medicine: it merely has happened that the same man
is doctor and patient— and that is why these attributes
are not always found together.
Aristotle, Physics, 192b24
15 A patient should call in a physician; he will not get better
if he is doctored out of a book.
Aristotle, Politics, 1287a33
16 Although physicians frequently know their patients will
die of a given disease, they never tell them so. To warn of
an evil is justified only if, along with the warning, there is
a way of escape.
Cicero, Divination, Il, 25
17 Physician, heal thyself.
Luke 4:23
18 A skilful physician, ... in a complicated and chronic
disease, as he sees occtision, at one while allows his
patient the moderate use of such things as please him, at
another while gives him keen pains and drugs to work the
cure.
Plutarch, Pericles
19 The physician is only nature’s assistant.
Galen, On the Humor
20 The man who has tried a bad doctor is afraid to trust
even a good one.
Augustine, Confessions, VI, 4
21 A skillful physician knows, indeed, professionally almost
all diseases; but experimentally he is ignorant of a great
number which he himself has never suffered from.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 30
22 The physician strengthens nature, and employs food and
medicine, of which nature makes use for the intended
end.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 117, 1
23 Aman needs the services of a physician in every item of
health and at every time, but his need of a physician
during sickness is especially great and avoiding him is
dangerous. Fools think that a man needs a physician
during his sickness only and at no other time, but it very
often happens that a man gets sick while traveling or
while in a small town where there is no physician or only
a physician on whose wisdom people do not rely.
Maimonides, Preservation of Youth, II
24 What kind of physician would that be who stayed in
school all the time? When he finally puts his medicine to
use and deals more and more with nature, he will come to
see that he hasn’t as yet mastered the art.
Luther, Table Talk, 352
25 Wretched is the man who relies on the help of physicians.
| don’t deny that medicine is a gift of God and | don’t
reject this knowledge, but where are the physicians who
are perfect? A good regimen is worth a great deal. So if |
feel tired and nevertheless adhere to my regimen, go to
bed by the ninth hour, and have a restful night, | will be
refreshed.
Luther, Table Talk, 3733
26 When | feel indisposed, by observing a strict diet and
going to bed early, | generally manage to get round
again, that is, if | can keep my mind tolerably at rest. |
have no objection to the doctors acting upon certain
theories, but, at the same time, they must not expect us
to be the slaves of their fancies. We find Avicenna and
Galen, living in other times and in other countries,
prescribing wholly different remedies for the same
disorders. | won’t pin my faith to any of them, ancient or
modern. On the other hand, nothing can well be more
deplorable than the proceeding of those fellow's, ignorant
as they are complaisant, who let their patients follow
exactly their own fancies; ‘tis these wretches who more
especially people the graveyards. Able, cautious, and
experienced physicians, are gifts of God. They are the
ministers of nature, to whom human life is confided; but a
moment’s negligence may ruin everything. No physician
should take a single step, but in humility and the fear of
God; they who are without the fear of God are mere
homicides.
Luther, Table Talk, H783
27 Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his
colleague without cutting out or adding something?
Thereby they clearly enough betray their art and reveal
to us that they consider their reputation, and
consequently their profit, more than the interest of their
patients.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 37, Children and Fathers
28 | observe the Phisician, with the same diligence, as hee
the disease; | see hee feares, and | feare with him: |
overtake him, | overrun him in his feare, and | go the
faster, because he makes his pace slow; | feare the more,
because he disguises his fear, and | see it with the more
sharpnesse, because hee would not have me see it.
Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, VI
29 The weakness of patients, and sweetness of life, and
nature of hope, maketh men depend upon physicians
with all their defects.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, X, 2
30 | esteem it the office of a physician not only to restore
health, but to mitigate pain and dolors; and not only
when such mitigation may conduce to recovery, but when
it may serve to make a fair and easy passage.... The
physicians contrariwise do make a kind of scruple and
religion to stay with the patient after the disease is
deplored; whereas in my judgement they ought both to
inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the
facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of
death.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, X, 7
31 Physicians are some of them so pleasing and conformable
to the humour of the patient, as they press not the true
cure of the disease; and some other are so regular in
proceeding according to art for the disease, as they
respect not sufficiently the condition of the patient. Take
one of a middle temper; or if it may not be found in one
man combine two of either sort; and forget not to call as
well the best acquainted with your body, as the best
reputed of for his faculty.
Bacon, Of Regiment of Health
32 | can cure Vices by Physick, when they remain incurable
by Divinity; and shall obey my Pills when they contemn
their precepts. | boast nothing, but plainly say, we all
labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all
diseases.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Il, 9
33 Apollo was held the God of Physick, and Sender of
Diseases: Both were originally the same Trade, and still
continue.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
34 These two doctors, whom, to avoid any malicious
applications, we shall distinguish by the names of Dr. Y.
and Dr. Z,, having felt his pulse; to wit, Dr. ¥. his right arm,
and Dr. Z. his left; both agreed that he was absolutely
dead; but as to the distemper, or cause of his death, they
differed; Dr. Y¥. holding that he died of an apoplexy, and
Dr, Z. of an epilepsy.
Hence arose a dispute between the learned men, in
which each delivered the reasons of their several
opinions. These were of such equal force, that they
served both to confirm either doctor in his own
sentiments, and made not the least impression on his
adversary.
To say the truth, every physician almost hath his
favourite disease, to which he ascribes all the victories
obtained over human nature. The gout, the rheumatism,
the stone, the gravel, and the consumption, have all their
several patrons in the faculty; and none more than the
nervous fever, or the fever on the spirits. And here we
may account for those disagreements in opinion,
concerning the cause of a patient’s death, which
sometimes occur, between the most learned of the
college; and which have greatly surprized that part of the
world who have been ignorant of the fact we have above
asserted.
The reader may perhaps be surprized, that, instead of
endeavouring to revive the patient, the learned
gentlemen should fall immediately into a dispute on the
occasion of his death; but in reality all such experiments
had been made before their arrival: for the captain was
put into a warm bed, had his veins scarified, his forehead
chafed, and all sorts of strong drops applied to his lips
and nostrils.
The physicians, therefore, finding themselves
anticipated in everything they ordered, were at a loss
how to apply that portion of time which it is usual and
decent to remain for their fee, and were therefore
necessitated to find some subject or other for discourse;
and what could more naturally present itself than that
before mentioned?
Fielding, Tom Jones, II, 9
35 As a wise general never despises his enemy, however
inferior that enemy’s force may be, so neither doth a wise
physician ever despise a distemper, however
inconsiderable. As the former preserves the same strict
discipline, places the same guards, and employs the
same scouts, though the enemy be never so weak; so the
latter maintains the same gravity of countenance, and
Shakes his head with the same significant air, let the
distemper be never so trifling. And both, among many
other good ones, may assign this solid reason for their
conduct, that by these means the greater glory redounds
to them if they gain the victory, and the less disgrace if
by any unlucky accident they should happen to be
conquered.
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 8
36 Jones had no great faith in this new professor; however,
he suffered him to open the bandage and to look at his
wound; which as soon as he had done, Benjamin began
to groan and shake his head violently. Upon which Jones,
in a peevish manner, bid him not play the fool, but tell
him in what condition he found him. "Shall | answer you
as a Surgeon, or a friend?" said Benjamin. "As a friend,
and seriously," said Jones. "Why then, upon my soul,"
cries Benjamin, "it would require a great deal of art to
keep you from being well after a very few dressings; and
if you will suffer me to apply some salve of mine, | will
answer for the success." Jones gave his consent, and the
plaister was applied accordingly.
"There, sir," cries Benjamin: "now | will, if you please,
resume my former self; but a man is obliged to keep up
some dignity in his countenance whilst he is performing
these operations, or the world will not submit to be
handled by him. You can’t imagine, sir, of how much
consequence a grave aspect is to a grave character. A
barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather
to make you cry."
Fielding, Tom Jones, VIII, 6
37 Being subject ... to so few causes of sickness, man, in the
state of nature, can have no need of remedies, and still
less of physicians.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
38 | do not know what the doctors cure us of, but | know
this: they infect us with very deadly diseased, cowardice,
timidity, credulity, the fear of death.
Rousseau, Emile, |
39 Live according to nature; be patient, get rid of the
doctors; you will not escape death, but you will only die
once, while the doctors make you die daily through your
diseased imagination;’their lying art, instead of
prolonging your days, robs you of all delight in them.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
4O We trust our health to the physician: our fortune and
sometimes our life and reputation to the lawyer and
attorney. Such confidence could not safely be reposed in
people of a very mean or low condition. Their reward
must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in
the society which so important a trust requires. The long
time and the great expense which must be laid out in
their education, when combined with this circumstance,
necessarily enhance still further the price of their labour.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, |, 10
41 But the merit of the physician was received with
universal favour and respect [by the Huns]: the
barbarians, who despised death, might be apprehensive
of disease; and the haughty conqueror trembled in the
presence of a captive to whom he ascribed perhaps an
imaginary power of prolonging or preserving his life.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXIV
42 Mephistopheles. Medicine's spirit one can grasp with
ease.
The great and little world you study through,
To let things finally their course pursue
As God may please.
It’s vain that you in search of knowledge roam and drift,
Each only learns what learn he can;
Yet he who grasps the moment’s gift,
He is your proper man.
You are moreover quite well-built, beside,
Will never lack for boldness too;
And if you only in yourself confide,
All other souls confide in you.
Learn chiefly how to lead the women; be assured
That all their "Ohs" and "Ahs," eternal, old,
So thousandfold,
Can at a single point be cured;
And if you half-way decorously come,
You have them all beneath your thumb.
A title first must make them comprehend
That your art many arts doth far transcend.
By way of welcome then you touch all matters
For sake of which, long years, another flatters.
Learn how the little pulse to squeeze
And then with sly and fiery glances seize
Her freely round the slender hips to see
How firmly laced up she may be.
Goethe, Faust, |, 2011
43 A physician... is by no means physician to living beings in
general, not even physician to the human race, but
rather, physician to a human individual, and still more
physician to an individual in certain morbid conditions
peculiar to himself and forming what is called his
idiosyncrasy.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, 2
44 Since there is no such thing as a medical work of art,
there is no such thing as a medical artist; physicians
calling themselves such injure medical science, because
they exalt a physician’s personality by lowering the
importance of science; thus they prevent men from
seeking, in the experimental study of phenomena, the
support and criterion which they believe they, through
inspiration or mere feeling, have within themselves,
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, Ill, 4
45 Doctors , . . satisf[y] that eternal human need for hope of
relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done,
which is felt by those who are suffering. They satisf[y] the
need seen in its most elementary form in a child, when it
wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 16
46 He (Napoleon] showed an interest in trifles, joked about
de Beausset’s love of travel, and chatted carelessly, asa
famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does
when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron
while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.
"The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my
head. When the times comes to set to work | shall do it as
no one else could, but now | can jest, and the more | jest
and the calmer | am the more tranquil and confident you
ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 29
47 The fact that doctors themselves die of the very diseases
they profess to cure passes unnoticed.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
48 Everything is on the side of the doctor. When men die of
disease they are said to die from natural causes. When
they recover (and they mostly do) the doctor gets the
credit of curing them.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
49 There are men and women whom the operating table
seems to fascinate: half-alive people who through vanity,
or hypochondria, or a craving to be the constant objects
of anxious attention or what not, lose such feeble sense
as they ever had of the value of their own organs and
limbs. They seem to care as little for mutilation as
lobsters or lizards, which at least have the excuse that
they grow new claws and new tails if they lose the old
ones.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
50 Just as the object of a trade union under existing
conditions must finally be, not to improve the technical
quality of the work done by its members, but to secure a
living wage for them, so the object of the medical
profession today is to secure an income for the private
doctor; and to this consideration all concern for science
and public health must give way when the two come into
conflict. Fortunately they are not always in conflict. Up to
a certain point doctors, like carpenters and masons, must
earn their living by doing the work that the public wants
from them.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
51 By making doctors tradesmen, we compel them to learn
the tricks of trade; consequently we find that the fashions
of the year include treatments, operations, and particular
drugs, as well as hats, sleeves, ballads, and games.
Tonsils, vermiform appendices, uvulas, even ovaries are
sacrificed because it is the fashion to get them cut out,
and because the operations are highly profitable. The
psychology of fashion becomes a pathology-; for the
cases have every air of being genuine: fashions, after all,
are only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can
be induced by tradesmen, and therefore by doctors.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
52 When | promised my patients help and relief through the
cathartic method, | was often obliged to hear the
following objections: "You say, yourself, that my suffering
has probably much to do with my own relation and
destinies. You cannot change any of that. In what
manner, then, can you help me?" To this | could always
answer; "I do not doubt at all that it would be easier for
fate than for me to remove your sufferings, but you will
be convinced that much will be gained if we succeed in
transforming your hysterical misery into everyday
unhappiness, against which you will be better able to
defend yourself with a restored nervous system."
Freud, Papers on Hysteria, IV
53 | wish to call your attention to a w-ell-known fact,
namely, that certain maladies and particularly the
psycho-neuroses, are more accessible to psychic
influences than to any other remedies. It is no modern
talk, but a dictum of old physicians, that these diseases
are not cured by the drug, but by the doctor—to wit, by
the personality of the physician in so far as he exerts a
psychic influence,
Freud, Papers on Hysteria, VIII
18.3 Health and Disease
Definitions of health are offered here, and also analogies
between health and other states of well-being, for example,
health in the living body with justice in the body politic.
Within the limits of the passages quoted, the understanding
of disease does not go much beyond the conception of it as
a privation of health. The classification of diseases, the
definition of different diseases, and the description of
specific disease processes and pathological conditions
belong to the technical literature of modern medicine and
are beyond the scope of this book.
However, there are some passages from Hippocrates and
Galen that indicate an early understanding of the etiology of
disease; modern writers approach the subject of the causes
of disease from a quite different point of view. The basic
issue here—intimated rather than explicitly broached—is
whether disease results from an interior imbalance of the
factors that constitute the health of the body (first
expressed in the humoral hypothesis), or from an attack on
the body from without by foreign bodies (first expressed in
the germ theory).
The psychologists represented in this collection, such as
James and Freud, discuss mental health and disease; but
this vast and relatively contemporary subject cannot be
adequately treated within the limits that we have set for
ourselves.
1 The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until
he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou
goest to possess it.
The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and
with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an
extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting,
and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou
perish....
The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Eg>’pt, and
with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch,
whereof thou canst not be healed.
The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and
blindness, and astonishment of heart:
And thou shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth
in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and
thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and
no man shall save thee....
The Lord shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs,
with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of
thy foot unto the top of thy head.
Deuteronomy 28:21-35
2 So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and
smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his
crown.
Job 2:7
3 Diseases almost always attack men when they are exposed
to a change, and never more than during changes of the
weather.
Herodotus, History, Il, 77
4 Whenever the Scythian king falls sick, he sends for the
three soothsayers of most renown at the time, who come
and make trial of their art in the mode above described.
Generally they say that the king is ill because such or
such a person, mentioning his name, has sworn falsely by
the royal hearth. This is the usual oath among the
Scythians, when they wish to swear with very great
solemnity. Then the man accused of having foresworn
himself is arrested and brought before the king. The
soothsayers tell him that by their art it is clear he has
sworn a false oath by the royal hearth, and so caused the
illness of the king—he denies The charge, protests that
he has sworn no false oath, and loudly complains of the
wrong done to him. Upon this the king sends for six new
soothsayers, who try the matter by soothsaying. If they
too find the man guilty of the offence, straightway he is
beheaded by those who first accused him, and his goods
are parted among them: if, on the contrary, they acquit
him, other soothsayers, and again others, are sent for, to
try the case. Should the greater number decide in favour
of the man’s innocence, then they who first accused him
forfeit their lives.
Herodotus, History, IV, 68
5 In the first days of summer the Lacedaemonians and their
allies, with two-thirds of their forces as before, invaded
Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son of
Zeuxidamus, King of Lacedaemon, and sat down and laid
waste the country. Not many days after their arrival in
Attica the plague first began to show itself among the
Athenians. It was said that it had broken out in many
places previously in the neighbourhood of Lemnos and
elsewhere; but a pestilence of such extent and mortality
was nowhere remembered. Neither were the physicians at
first of any service, ignorant as they were of the proper
way to treat it, but they died themselves the most thickly,
as they visited the sick most often; nor did any human art
succeed any better. Supplications in the temples,
divinations, and so forth were found equally futile, till the
overwhelming nature of the disaster at last put a stop to
them altogether.
If first began, it is said, in the parts of Ethiopia above
Egypt, and thence descended into Egypt and Libya and
into most of the King’s country. Suddenly falling upon
Athens, it first attacked the population in Piraeus—which
was the occasion of their saying that the Peloponnesians
had poisoned the reservoirs, there being as yet no wells
there— and afterwards appeared in the upper city, when
the deaths became much more frequent. All speculation
as to its origin and its causes, if causes can be found
adequate to produce so great a disturbance, | leave to
other writers, whether lay or professional; for myself, |
Shall simply set down its nature, and explain the
symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the
student, if it should ever break out again. This | can the
better do, as | had the disease myself, and watched its
operation in the case of others.
That year then is admitted to have been otherwise
unprecedentedly free from sickness; and such few cases
as occurred all determined in this. As a rule, however,
there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health
were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the
head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the
inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming
bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. These
symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness,
after which the pain soon reached the chest, and
produced a hard cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it
upset it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by
physicians ensued, accompanied by very great distress.
In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed,
producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased
soon after, in others much later. Externally the body was
not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but
reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and
ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could
not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very
lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark
naked. What they would have liked best would have been
to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done
by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-
tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it
made no difference whether they drank little or much.
Besides this, the miserable feeling of not being able to
rest or sleep never ceased to torment them. The body
meanwhile did not waste away so long as the distemper
was at its height, but held out to a marvel against its
ravages; so that when they succumbed, as in most cases,
on the se\cnth or eighth day to the internal inflammation,
they had still some strength in them. But if they passed
this stage, and the disease descended further into the
bowels, inducing a violent ulceration there accompanied
by severe diarrhoea, this brought on a weakness which
was generally fatal. For the disorder first settled in the
head, ran its course from thence through the whole of the
body, and, even where it did not prove mortal, it still left
its mark on the extremities; for it settled in the privy
parts, the fingers and the toes, and many escaped with
the loss of these, some too with that of their eyes. Others
again were seized with an entire loss of memory on their
first recovery, and did not know either themselves or
their friends.
But while the nature of the distemper was such as to
baffle all description, and its attacks almost too grievous
for human nature to endure, it was still in the following
circumstance that its difference from all ordinary
disorders was most clearly shown. All the birds and
beasts that prey upon human bodies, either abstained
from touching them (though there were many lying
unburied), or died after tasting them. In proof of this, it
was noticed that birds of this kind actually disappeared;
they were not about the bodies, or indeed to be seen at
all. But of course the effects which | have mentioned
could best be studied in a domestic animal like the dog.
Such then, if we pass over the varieties of particular
cases which were many and peculiar, were the general
features of the distemper. Meanwhile the town enjoyed
an immunity from all the ordinary disorders; or if any
case occurred, it ended in this. Some died in neglect,
others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was
found that could be used as a specific; for what did good
in one case, did harm in another. Strong and weak
constitutions proved equally incapable of resistance, all
alike being swept away, although dieted with the utmost
precaution. By far the most terrible feature in the malady
was the dejection which ensued when any one felt
himself sickening, for the despair into which they
instantly fell took aw-ay their power of resistance, and
left them a much easier prey to the disorder; besides
which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like
sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing
each other. This caused the greatest mortality. On the one
hand, if they were afraid to visit each other, they
perished from neglect; indeed many houses were
emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the
other, if they ventured to do so, death was the
consequence. This was especially the case with such as
made any pretensions to goodness: honour made them
unsparing of themselves in their attendance in their
friends’ houses, where even the members of the family
were at last worn out by the moans of the dying, and
succumbed to the force of the disaster. Yet it was with
those who had recovered from the disease that the sick
and the dying found most compassion.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Il, 47-51
6 There is in man the bitter and the salt, the sweet and the
acid, the sour and the insipid, and a multitude of other
things having all sorts of powers both as regards quantity
and strength. These, when all mixed and mingled up with
one another, are not apparent, neither do they hurta
man; but when any of them is separate, and stands by
itself, then it becomes perceptible, and hurts a man.
Hippocrates, On Ancient Medicine, 14
7 Respecting the seasons, one may judge whether the year
will prove sickly or healthy from the following
observations:—lf the appearances connected with the
rising and setting stars be as they should be; if there be
rains in autumn; if the winter be mild, neither very tepid
nor unseasonably cold, and if in spring the rains be
seasonable, and so also in summer, the year is likely to
prove healthy. But if the winter be dry and northerly, and
the spring showery and southerly, the summer will
necessarily be of a febrile character, and give rise to
ophthalmies and dysenteries. For when suffocating heat
sets in all of a sudden, while the earth is moistened by
the vernal showers, and by the south wind, the heat is
necessarily doubled from the earth, which is thus soaked
by rain and heated by a burning sun, while, at the same
time, men’s bellies are not in an orderly state, nor the
brain properly dried; for it is impossible, after such a
spring, but that the body and its flesh must be loaded
with humors, so that very acute fevers will attack all, but
especially those of a phlegmatic constitution.
Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, and Places, 10
8 One may derive information from the regimen of Persons
in good health what things are proper; for if it appear
there is a great difference whether the diet be so and so,
in other respects, but more especially in the changes,
how can it be otherwise in diseases, and more especially
in the acute? But it is well ascertained that even a faulty
diet of food and drink steadily preserved in, is safer in the
main as regards health than if one suddenly change it to
another.
Hippocrates, Regimen in Acute Diseases, 9
9 The disease called the Sacred [that is, epilepsy] arises
from causes as the others, namely, those things which
enter and quit the body, such as cold, the sun, and the
winds, which are ever changing and are never at rest.
And these things are divine, so that there is no necessity
for making a distinction, and holding this disease to be
more divine than the others, but all are divine, and all
human. And each has its own peculiar nature and power,
and none is of an ambiguous nature, or irremediable.
Hippocrates, The Sacred Disease
10 Socrates. Where temperance is, there health is speedily
imparted.
Plato, Charmides, 157A
11 Socrates. In a man’s bodily frame, you would say that the
evil is weakness and disease and deformity?
Polus. | should.
Soc. And do you not imagine that the soul likewise has
some evil of her own?
Pol. Of course.
Soc. And this you would call injustice and ignorance
and cowardice, and the like?
Pol. Certainly.
Plato, Gorgias, 477A.
12 Socrates. When a carpenter is ill he asks a physician fora
rough and ready cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery
or the knife—these are his remedies. And if some one
prescribes for him a course of dietetics, and tells him that
he must swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort of
thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and
that he sees no good in a life which is spent in nursing his
disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and
therefore bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he
resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well and
lives and does his business, or, if his constitution fails, he
dies and has no more trouble.
Plato, Republic, Ill, 406B
13 Timaeus. Every one can see whence diseases arise. There
are four natures out of which the body is compacted,
earth and fire and water and air, and the unnatural
excess or defect of these, or the change of any of them
from its own natural place into another, or—since there
are more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements
—the assumption by any of these of a wrong kind, or any
similar irregularity, produces disorders and diseases; for
when any of them is produced or changed in a manner
contrary to nature, the parts which were previously cool
grow warm, and those which were dry become moist, and
the light become heavy, and the heavy light; all sorts of
changes occur.
Plato, Timaeus, 81B
14 Timaeus. Diseases unless they are very dangerous should
not be irritated by medicines, since every form of disease
is in a manner akin to the living being, whose complex
frame has an appointed term of life. For not the whole
race only, but each individual—barring inevitable
accidents—comes into the world having a fixed span, and
the triangles in us are originally framed with power to last
for a certain time, beyond which no man can prolong his
life. And this holds also of the constitution of diseases; if
any one regardless of the appointed time tries to subdue
them by medicine, he only aggravates and multiplies
them. Wherefore we ought always to manage them by
regimen, as far aS a man can Spare the time, and not
provoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines.
Plato, Timaeus, 89A
15 Athenian Stranger. As the physician considers that the
body will receive no benefit from taking food until the
internal obstacles have been removed, so the purifier of
the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no
benefit from the application of knowledge until he is
refuted, and from refutation learns modesty; he must be
purged of his prejudices first and made to think that he
knows only what he knows, and no more.
Plato, Sophist, 230B
16 Men are called healthy in virtue of the inborn capacity of
easy resistance to those unhealthy influences that may
ordinarily arise; unhealthy, in virtue of the lack of this
Capacity.
Aristotle, Categories, 9a21
17 Health is better than strength and beauty.
Aristotle, Topics, 116618
18 Bodily excellences such as health and a good state of
body we regard as consisting in a blending of hot and
cold elements within the body in due proportion, in
relation either to one another or to the surrounding
atmosphere.
Aristotle, Physics, 246b4
19 There is no one who does not obviously avoid some
things and not others. Therefore, as it seems, all men
make unqualified judgements, if not about all things, still
about what is better and worse. And if this is not
knowledge but opinion, they should be all the more
anxious about the truth, as a sick man should be more
anxious about his health than one who is healthy; for he
who has opinions is, in comparison with the man who
knows, not in a healthy state as far as the truth is
concerned.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1008b24
20 Both excessive and defective exercise destroys the
strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or
below a certain amount destroys the health, while that
which is proportionate both produces and increases and
preserves it.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1104a16
21 Wickedness is like a disease such as dropsy or
consumption, while incontinence is like epilepsy; the
former is a permanent, the latter an intermittent badness.
And generally incontinence and vice are different in kind;
vice is unconscious of itself, incontinence is not (of
incontinent men themselves those who become
temporarily beside themselves are better than those who
have the rational principle but do not abide by it, since
the latter are defeated by a weaker passion, and do not
act without previous deliberation like the others); for the
incontinent man is like the people who get drunk quickly
and on little wine, i.e. on less than most people.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1150b33
22 The excellence of the body is health; that is, a condition
which allows us, while keeping free from disease, to have
the use of our bodies.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1361b3
23 Rising first and starting from the inmost cornets of Egypt,
after traversing much air and many floating fields, the
plague brooded at last over the whole people of Pandion;
and then they were handed over in troops to disease and
death. First of all they would have the head seized with
burning heat and both eyes blood-shot with a glare
diffused over; the livid throat within would exude blood
and the passage of the voice be clogged and choked with
ulcers, and the mind’s interpreter the tongue drip with
gore, quite enfeebled with sufferings, heavy in
movement, rough to touch. Next when the force of
disease passing down the throat had filled the breast and
had streamed together even into the sad heart of the
sufferers, then would all the barriers of life give away. The
breath would pour out at the mouth a noisome stench,
even as the stench of rotting carcases thrown out
unburied. And then the powers of the entire mind, the
whole body would sink utterly, now on the very threshold
of death. And a bitter bitter despondency was the
constant attendant on insufferable ills and complaining
mingled with moaning. An ever-recurring hiccup often the
night and day through, forcing on continual spasms in
sinews and limbs, would break men quite, forwearying
those forspent before. And yet in none could you perceive
the skin on the surface of the body burn with any great
heat, but the body would rather offer to the hand a
lukewarm sensation and at the same time be red all over
with ulcers burnt into it so to speak, like unto the holy fire
as it spreads over the frame. The inward parts of the men
however would bum to the very bones, a flame would
bum within the stomach as within furnaces. Nothing was
light and thin enough to apply to the relief of the body of
any one; ever wind and cold alone. Many would plunge
their limbs burning with disease into the cool rivers,
throwing their body naked into the water. Many tumbled
head-foremost deep down into the wells, meeting the
water straight with mouth wide-agape. Parching thirst
with a craving not to be appeased, drenching their
bodies, would make an abundant draught no better than
the smallest drop. No respite was there of ill: their bodies
would lie quite spent. The healing art would mutter low in
voiceless fear, aS again and again they rolled about their
eyeballs wide open, burning with disease, never visited
by sleep.
And many symptoms of death besides would then be
given, the mind disordered in sorrow and fear, the
clouded brow, the fierce delirious expression, the cars too
troubled and filled with ringings, the breathing quick or
else strangely loud and slow-recurring, and the sweat
glistening wet over the neck, the spittle in thin small
flakes, tinged with a saffron-colour, salt, scarce forced up
the rough throat by coughing. The tendons of the hands
ceased not to contract, the limbs to shiver, a coldness to
mount with slow sure pace from the feet upwards. Then
at their very last moments they had nostrils pinched, the
tip of the nose sharp, eyes deep-sunk, temples hollow,
the skin cold and hard, on the grim mouth a grin, the
brow tense and swollen; and not long after their limbs
would be stretched stiff in death: about the eighth day of
bright sunlight or else on the ninth return of his lamp
the)- would yield up life. And if any of them at that lime
had shunned the doom of death, yet in after lime
consumption and death would await him from noisome
ulcers and the black discharge of the bowels, or else a
quantity of purulent blood accompanied by headache
would often pass out by the gorged nostrils: into these
the whole strength and substance of the man would
stream. Then too if any one had escaped the acrid
discharge of noisome blood, the disease would yet pass
into his sinews and joints and onward even into the
sexual organs of the body; and some from excessive
dread of the gates of death would live bereaved of these
parts by the knife; and some though without hands and
feet would continue in life, and some would lose their
eyes; with such force had the fear of death come upon
them. And some were seized with such utter loss of
memory that they did not know themselves.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, VI
24 Personal health is preserved by learning about one’s own
constitution, by finding out what is good or bad for
oneself, by continual self-control in eating habits and
comforts (but just to the extent needed for self-
preservation), by forgoing sensual pleasures, and lastly,
by the professional skill of those to whose science these
matters belong.
Cicero, De Officiis, Il, 24
25 An illness that’s swift and short will have one of two
results: either oneself or it will be snuffed out. And what
difference does it make whatever | or it disappears?
Either way there’s an end to the pain.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 78
26 That body is, without doubt, the most strong and
healthful which can the easiest support extreme cold and
excessive heat in the change of seasons, and that the
most firm and collected mind which is not puffed up with
prosperity nor dejected with adversity.
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus and Timoleon, Compared
27 In his sufferings he [Tiberius] would simulate health, and
was wont to jest at the arts of the physician and at all
who, after the age of thirty, require another man's advice
to distinguish between what is beneficial or hurtful to
their constitutions.
Tacitus, Annals, VI, 46
28 In reference to the genesis of the humours, | do not know
that any one could add anything wiser than what has
been said by Hippocrates, Aristotle, Praxagoras,
Philotimus and many other among the Ancients. These
men demonstrated that when the nutriment becomes
altered in the veins by the innate heat, blood is produced
when it is in moderation, and the other humours when it
iS not in proper proportion. And all the observed facts
agree with this argument. Thus, those articles of food,
which are by nature warmer are more productive of bile,
while those which are colder produce more phlegm.
Similarly of the periods of life, those which are naturally
warmer tend more to bile, and the colder more to phlegm.
Of occupations also, localities and seasons, and, above
all, of natures themselves, the colder are more
phlegmatic, and the warmer more bilious. Also cold
diseases result from phlegm, and warmer ones from
yellow bile. There is not a single thing to be found which
does not bear witness to the truth of this account. How
could it be otherwise? For, seeing that every part
functions in its own special way because of the manner in
which the four qualities are compounded, it is absolutely
necessary that the function [activity] should be either
completely destroyed, or, at least hampered, by any
damage to the qualities, and that thus the animal should
fall ill, either as a whole, or in certain of its parts.
Galen, Natural Faculties, II, 8
29 the peace of the body... consists in the duly proportioned
arrangement of its parts. The peace of the irrational soul
is the harmonious repose of the appetites, and that of the
rational soul the harmony of Knowledge and action. The
peace of body and soul is the well-ordered and
harmonious life and health of the living creature.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 13
30 How many natural appliances are there for preserving
and restoring health! How grateful is the alternation of
day and night! how pleasant the breezes that cool the
air! how abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by
trees and animals! Who can enumerate all the blessings
we enjoy?
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 24
31 Just as surgeons, when they bind up wounds, do it not in
a slovenly way, but carefully, that there may be a certain
degree of neatness in the binding, in addition to its mere
usefulness, so our medicine, Wisdom, was by His
assumption of humanity adapted to our wounds, curing
some of them by their opposites, some of them by their
likes. And just as he who ministers to a bodily hurt in
some cases applied contraries, as cold to hot, moist to
dry, etc., and in other cases applies likes, as a round cloth
to a round wound, or an oblong cloth to an oblong wound,
and does not fit the same bandage to all limbs, but puts
like to like; in the same way the Wisdom of God in
healing man has applied Himself to his cure, being
Himself healer and medicine both in one.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, I, 14
32 Health is said to be a habit, or a habitual disposition, in
relation to nature.... But in so far as nature is a principle
of act, it consequently implies a relation to act. Therefore
the Philosopher says that man, or one of his members, is
called healthy, when he can perform the operation of a
healthy man.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 49, 3
33 As bodily sickness is partly a privation, in so far as it
denotes the destruction of the equilibrium of health, and
partly something positive, namely the very humours that
are disposed in a disordered way, so too original sin
denotes the privation of original justice, and besides this,
the disordered disposition of the parts of the soul.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 82, 1
34 If aman would take care of his body as he takes care of
the animal he rides on, he would be spared many serious
ailments.
Maimonides, Preservation of Youth, |
35 Ponocrates showed him, that he ought not eat so soon
after rising out of his bed, unless he had performed some
exercise beforehand. Gargantua answered, what! have
not | sufficiently well exercised myself? 1 have wallowed
and rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed, before |
rose. Is not that enough! Pope Alexander did so, by the
ad-vice of a Jew his physician, and lived till his dying day
in despite of his enemies.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, |, 21
36 What, said Gargantua, to drink so soon after sleep? This
is not to live according to the diet and prescript rule of
the physicians, for you ought first to scour and cleanse
your stomach of all its superfluities and excrements. O
well physicked, said the monk; a hundred devils leap into
my body, if there be not more old drunkards than old
physicians!
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, 41
37 | welcome health with open arms, free, full, and entire,
and whet my appetite to enjoy it, the more so as it is at
present rarer and less ordinary with me; so far am | from
troubling its repose and sweetness with the bitterness of
a new and constrained way of life.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
38 Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth,
which deserves that we employ in its pursuit not only
time, sweat, trouble, and worldly goods, but even life;
inasmuch as without it life comes to be painful and
oppressive to us. Pleasure, wisdom, knowledge, and
virtue, without it, grow tarnished and vanish away; and to
the strongest and most rigorous arguments that
philosophy would impress on us to the contrary, we have
only to oppose the picture of Plato being struck with a fit
of epilepsy or apoplexy, and on this supposition defy him
to call to his aid these noble and rich faculties of his soul.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 37, Children and Fathers
39 Of three sorts of movements that are natural to us the
last and worst is that of purgations, which no sane man
should undertake except in the most extreme necessity.
We disturb and arouse a disease by attacking it head on.
It is by our mode of life that we should weaken it, by
gentle degrees, and bring it to its end. The violent
struggles between the drug and the disease are always at
our expense, since the combat is fought out within us and
the drug is an untrustworthy assistant, by its nature an
enemy to our health, and having access to our
constitution only through disturbance.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 37, Children and Fathers
40 Both in health and in sickness | have readily let myself
follow my urgent appetites. | give great authority to my
desires and inclinations. | do not like to cure trouble by
trouble; | hate remedies that are more nuisance than the
disease. To be subjected to the stone and subjected to
abstaining from the pleasure of eating oysters, those are
two troubles for one. The disease pinches us on one side,
the rule on the other. Since there is a risk of making a
mistake, let us risk it rather in pursuit of pleasure. The
world does the opposite, and thinks nothing beneficial
that is not painful; it is suspicious of case.
Montaigne, Essays, Ill, 13, Of Experience
41 The constitution of diseases is patterned after the
constitution of animals. They have their destiny, limited
from their birth, and their days. He who tries to cut them
short imperiously by force, in the midst of their course,
prolongs and multiplies them, and stimulates them
instead of appeasing them.... We should give free
passage to diseases; and | find that they do not stay so
long with me, who let them go ahead; and some of those
that are considered most stubborn and tenacious, | have
Shaken off by their own decadence, without help and
without art, and against the rules of medicine. Let us give
Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we
do.
Montaigne, Essays, 111, 13, Of Experience
42 King. Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV, Iii, 9
43 Lear. Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves
When nature, being oppress’d, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.
Shakespeare, Lear, II, iv, 107
44 That health of body is best, which is ablest to endure all
alterations and extremities; so likewise that health of
mind is most proper, which can go through the greatest
temptations and perturbations.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XX, 11
45 Every affection of the mind that is attended with either
pain or pleasure, hope or fear, is the cause of an agitation
whose influence extends to the heart, and there induces
change from the natural constitution, in the temperature,
the pulse and the rest, which impairing all nutrition in its
source and abating the powers at large, it is no wonder
that various forms of incurable disease in the extremities
and in the trunk are the consequence, inasmuch as in
such circumstances the whole body labours under the
effects of vitiated nutrition and a want of native heat.
William Harvey, Motion of the Heart, XV
46 Let physicians, therefore, cease to wonder at what always
excites their astonishment, namely, the manner in which
epidemic, contagious, and pestilential diseases scatter
their seeds, and are propagated to a distance through the
air, or by some fomes producing diseases like
themselves, in bodies of a different nature, and ina
hidden fashion silently multiplying themselves by a kind
of generation, until they become so fatal, and with the
permission of the Deity spread destruction far and wide
among man and beast; since they will find far greater
wonders than these taking place daily in the generation
of animals. For agents in greater number and of more
efficiency are required in the construction and
preservation of an animal, than for its destruction; since
the things that are difficult and slow of growth, decay
with case and rapidity.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 41
47 So much Is certain, and disputed by no one, that animals,
all those at least that proceed from the intercourse of
male and female, are the offspring of this intercourse,
and that they are procreated as it seems by a kind of
contagion, much in the same way as medical men
observe contagious diseases, such as leprosy, lues
venera, plague, phthisis, to creep through the ranks of
mortal men, and by mere extrinsic contact to excite
diseases similar to themselves in other bodies; nay,
contact is not necessary; a mere halitus or miasm
suffices, and that at a distance and by an inanimate
medium, and with nothing sensibly altered: that is to say,
where the contagion first touches, there it generates an
"univocal" like itself, neither touching nor existing in fact,
neither being present nor conjunct, but solely because it
formerly touched. Such virtue and efficacy is found in
contagions.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 49
48 Michael. Before his eyes appeard, sad, noysom, dark,
A Lazar-house it seemd, wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseas’d, all maladies
Of gastly Spasm, or racking torture, qualmes
Of heart-sick Agonie, all feavorous kinds,
Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs,
Intestin Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs.
Dropsies, and Asthma’s, and Joint-racking Rheums.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans, despair
Tended the sick busiest from Couch to Couch;
And over them triumphant Death his Dart
Shook, but delaid to strike, though oft invok’t
With vows, as thir chief good, and final hope.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XI, 478
49 How necessary health is to our business and happiness,
and how requisite a strong constitution, able to endure
hardships and fatigue, is to one that will make any figure
in the world, is too obvious to need any proof.
The consideration | shall here have of health, shall be,
not what a physician ought to do with a sick and crazy
child, but what the parents, with> out the help of physic,
should do for the preservation and improvement of a
healthy, or at least not sickly constitution in their
children. And this perhaps might be all dispatched in this
one short rule, viz., that gentlemen should use their
children as the honest farmers and substantial yeomen
do theirs. But because the mothers possibly may think
this a little too hard, and the fathers too short, | shall
explain myself more particularly; only laying down this as
a general and certain observation for the women to
consider, viz., that most children’s constitutions are
either spoiled, or at least harmed, by cockering and
tenderness.
The first thing to be taken care of, is, that children be
not too warmly clad or covered, winter or summer. The
face when we are born is no less tender than any other
part of the body. 'Tis use alone hardens it, and makes it
more able to endure the cold. And therefore the Scythian
philosopher gave a very significant answer to the
Athenian, who wondered how he could go naked in frost
and snow. "How," said the Scythian, "can you endure your
face exposed to the sharp winter air?" "My face is used to
it," said the Athenian. "Think me all face," replied the
Scythian. Our bodies will endure anything, that from the
beginning they are accustomed to....
Give me leave therefore to advise you not to fence too
carefully against the cold of this our climate. There are
those in England, who wear the same clothes winter and
summer, and that without any inconvenience, or more
sense of cold than others find. But if the mother will
needs have an allowance for frost and snow, for fear of
harm, and the father, for fear of censure, be sure let not
his winter clothing be too warm: And amongst other
things, remember, that when nature has so well covered
his head with hair, and strengthened it with a year or
two’s age, that he can run about by day without a cap, it
is best that by night a child should also lie without one;
there being nothing that more exposes to headaches,
colds, catarrhs, coughs, and several other diseases, than
keeping the head warm....
| will also advise his feet to be washed every day in
cold water, and to have his shoes so thin that they might
leak and let in water, whenever he comes near it. Here, |
fear | shall have the mistress and maids too against me.
One will think it too filthy, and the other perhaps too
much pains, to make clean his stockings. But yet truth
will have it that his health is much more worth than all
such considerations, and ten times as much more. And he
that considers how mischievous and mortal a thing
taking wet in the feet is, to those who have been bred
nicely, will wish he had, with the poor people’s children,
gone barefoot, who, by that means, come to be so
reconciled by custom to wet in their feet that they take
no more cold or harm by it than if they were wet in their
hands. And what is it, | pray, that makes this great
difference between the hands and the feet in others, but
only custom? | doubt not, but if a man from his cradle had
been always used to go barefoot whilst his hands were
constantly wrapped up in warm mittens, and covered
with hand-shoes, as the Dutch call gloves; | doubt not, |
say, hut such a custom would make taking wet in his
hands as dangerous to him as now taking wet in their feet
is to a great many others. The way to prevent this is to
have his shoes made so as to leak water, and his feet
washed constantly every day in cold water. It is
recommendable for its cleanliness, but that which | aim at
in it, is health; and therefore | limit it not precisely to any
time of day. 1 have known it used every night with very
good success, and that all the winter, without the
omitting it so much as one night in extreme cold weather;
when thick ice covered the water, the child bathed his
legs and feet in it, though he was of an age not big
enough to rub and wipe them himself, and when he
began this custom was puling and very tender. But the
great end being to harden those parts by a frequent and
familiar use of cold water, and thereby to prevent the
mischiefs that usually attend accidental taking wet in the
feet in those who are bred otherwise, | think it may be left
to the prudence and convenience of the parents, to
choose either night or morning. The time | deem
indifferent, so the thing be effectually done. The health
and hardiness procured by it would be a good purchase
at a much dearer rate. To which if | add the preventing of
corns, that to some men would be a very valuable
consideration. But begin first in the spring with luke-
warm, and so colder and colder every time, till in a few
days you come to perfectly cold water, and then continue
it so winter and summer. For it is to be observed in this,
as in all other alterations from our ordinary way of living,
the changes must be made by gentle and insensible
degrees; and so we may bring our bodies to anything,
without pain, and without danger.
Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 3-7
50 A fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo, to retire into a
corner, to lie down and howl, and groan, and spurn away
all that came near him, although he were young and fat,
and wanted neither food nor water; nor did the servants
imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only remedy
they found, was to set him to hard work, after which he
would infallibly come to himself. To this | was silent out of
partiality to my own kind; yet here | could plainly
discover the true seeds of sp/een, which only seizeth on
the /azy, the luxurious, and the rich; who, if they were
forced to undergo the same regimen, | would undertake
for the cure.
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, lV, 7
51 Mr. Allworthy had been for some days indisposed with a
cold, which had been attended with a little fever. This he
had, however, neglected; as it was usual with him to do
all manner of disorders which did not confine him to his
bed, or prevent his several faculties from performing their
ordinary functions;—a conduct which we would by no
means be thought to approve or recommend to imitation;
for surely the gentlemen of the AEsculapian art are in the
right in advising, that the moment the disease has
entered at one door, the physician should be introduced
at the other: what else is meant by that old adage,
Venienti occurrite morbo? "Oppose a distemper at its first
approach." Thus the doctor and the disease meet in fair
and equal conflict; whereas, by giving time to the latter,
we often suffer him to fortify and entrench himself, like a
French army; so that the learned gentleman finds it very
difficult, and sometimes impossible, to come at the
enemy. Nay, sometimes by gaining time the disease
applies to the French military politics, and corrupts
nature over to his side, and then all the powers of physic
must arrive too late. Agreeable to these observations was,
| remember, the complaint of the great Doctor Misaubin,
who used very pathetically to lament the late
applications which were made to his skill, saying, "Bygar,
me believe my pation take me for de undertaker, for dey
never send for me till de physicion have kill dem."
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 7
52 O blessed health! cried my father, making an
exclamation, as he turned over the leaves to the next
chapter, thou art above all gold and treasure; ’tis thou
who enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers to
receive instruction and to relish virtue. He that has thee,
has little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as
to want thee,—wants every thing with thee.
| have concentrated all that can be said upon this
important head, said my father, into a very little room,
therefore we'll read the chapter quite through.
My father read as follows:
"The whole secret of health depending upon the due
contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the
radical moisture"—You have proved that matter of fact, |
Suppose, above, said Yorick. Sufficiently, replied my
father.
In saying this, my father shut the book,—not as if he
resolved to read no more of it, for he kept his forefinger in
the chapter:—nor pettishly,—for he shut the book slowly;
his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper-
side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower
side of it, without the least compressive violence.--
| have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my
father, nodding to Yorick, most sufficiently in the
preceding chapter.
Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in
the earth had wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating,
That the secret of all health depended upon the due
contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the
radical moisture,— and that he had managed the point so
well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon
radical heat or radical moisture, throughout the whole
chapter,—or a single syllabic in it, pro or con, directly or
indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers
in any part of the animal economy.--
"O thou eternal Maker of all beings!"—he would cry,
striking his breast with his right hand (in case he had
one)—"Thou whose power and goodness can enlarge the
faculties of Thy creatures to this infinite degree of
excellence and perfection,—What have we Mooniles
done!"
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, V, 33
53 | shall ask if any solid observations have been made from
which it may be justly concluded that, in the countries
where the art of medicine is most neglected, the mean
duration of man’s life is less than in those where it is most
cultivated. How indeed can this be the ease, if we bring
on ourselves more diseases than medicine can furnish
remedies? The great inequality in manner of living, the
extreme idleness of some, and the excessive labour of
others, the easiness of exciting and gratifying our sensual
appetites, the too exquisite foods of the wealthy which
overheat and fill them with indigestion, and, on the other
hand, the unwholesome food of the poor, often, bad as it
is, insufficient for their needs, which induces them, when
opportunity offers, to cat voraciously and overcharge
their stomachs; all these, together with silting up late,
and excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of
every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the
innumerable pains and anxieties inseparable from every
condition of life, by which the mind of man is incessantly
tormented; these are too fatal proofs that the greater part
of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have
avoided them nearly all by adhering to that simple,
uniform and solitary manner of life which nature
prescribed.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
54 Some speculative physicians seem to have imagined that
the health of the human body could be preserved only by
a certain precise regimen of diet and exercise, of which
every, the smallest, violation necessarily occasioned
some degree of disease or disorder proportioned to the
degree of the violation. Experience, however, would seem
to show that the human body frequently preserves, to all
appearances at least, the most perfect state of health
under a vast variety of different regimens; even under
some which are generally believed to be very far from
being perfectly wholesome. But the healthful state of the
human body, it would seem, contains in itself some
unknown principle of preservation, capable either of
preventing or of correcting, in many respects, the bad
effects even of a very faulty regimen.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV, 9
55 The sufferers parade their miseries, tear the lint from
their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you may
pity them. They like sickness, because physical pain will
extort some show of interest from the bystanders, as we
have seen children who finding themselves of no account
when grown people come in, will cough till they choke, to
draw attention.
Emerson, Culture
56 Give me health and a day, and | will make the pomp of
emperors ridiculous.
Emerson, Nature, III
57 There is this noteworthy difference between savage and
civilised; that while a sick, civilised man may be six
months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage
is almost half well again in a day.
Melville, Moby Dick, CX
58 Vital phenomena are the result of contact between the
organic units of the body with the inner physiological
environment, this is the pivot of all experimental
medicine. Physiologists and physicians gain mastery over
the phenomena of life by learning which conditions, in
this inner environment, are normal and which abnormal,
for the appearance of vital activity in the organic units;
for apart from complexity of conditions, phenomena
exhibiting life, like physico-chemical phenomena, result
from contact between an active body and the
environment in which it acts.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, 11, |
59 We shall never have a science of medicine as long as we
separate the explanation of pathological from the
explanation of normal, vital phenomena.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, 11, 2
60 Unhealthiness of will may thus come about in many
ways. The action may follow the stimulus or idea too
rapidly, leaving no time for the arousal of restraining
associates— we then have a precipitate will. Or, although
the associates may come, the ratio which the impulsive
and inhibitive forces normally bear to each other may be
distorted, and we then have a will which is perverse. The
perversity, in turn, may be due to either of many causes
—too much intensity, or too little, here; too much or too
little inertia there; or elsewhere too much or too little
inhibitory power. If we compare the outward symptoms of
perversity together, they fall into two groups, in one of
which normal actions are impossible, and in the other
abnormal ones are irrepressible. Briefly, we may call
them respectively the obstructed and the explosive will.
It must be kept in mind, however, that since the
resultant action is always due to the ratio between the
obstructive and the explosive forces which are present,
we never can tell by the mere outward symptoms to what
elementary cause the perversion of a man’s will may be
due, whether to an increase of one component or a
diminution of the other. One may grow explosive as
readily by losing the usual brakes as by getting up more
of the impulsive steam; and one may find things
impossible as well through the enfeeblement of the
Original desire as through the advent of new lions in the
path.
William James, Pychology, XXVI
61 The popular theory of disease is the common medical
theory: namely, that every disease had its microbe duly
created in the garden of Eden, and has been steadily
propagating itself and producing widening circles of
malignant disease ever since. It was plain from the first
that if this had been even approximately true, the whole
human race would have been wiped out by the plague
long ago, and that every epidemic, instead of fading out
as mysteriously as it rushed in, would spread over the
whole world. It was also evident that the characteristic
microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a
cause.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
62 Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That
is what it is for. Soend all you have before you die; and do
not outlive yourself.
Shaw, Doctor's Dilemma, Pref.
63 A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but, in
the last resort, we must begin to love in order that we
may not fall ill, and must fall ill if, in consequence of
frustration, we cannot love.
Freud, On Narcissism, II
64 Do not be astonished to hear... that the physician himself
occasionally takes sides with the illness which he is
attacking. It is not for him to confine himself in all
situations in life to the part of fanatic about health; he os
that there is other misery in the world besides neurotic
misery—real unavoidable suffering—that necessity may
even demand of a man that he sacrifice his health to it,
and he learns that such suffering in one individual may
often avert incalculable hardship for many others.
Therefore, although it may be said of every neurotic that
he has taken flight into i//ness, it must be admitted that
in many cases this flight is fully justified, and the
physician who has perceived this state of things will
silently and considerately retire.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, XXIV
Chapter 19
NATURE and the COSMOS
Chapter 19 is divided into eight sections: 19.1 Nature and
the Natural, 19.2 The Nature of Life, 19,3 Cause, 19.4
Chance, 19.5 Motion and Change, 19.6 Space, 19.7 Time,
and 19.8 The Universe or Cosmos.
The subjects indicated by the section titles have
occupied the forefront of speculation throughout the whole
tradition of Western thought. They represent basic ideas or
are involved in basic questions treated by the philosophers;
the consideration of such subjects defines the task of the
metaphysician or cosmologist. Most of them also are of
interest to natural scientists; such terms as cause, motion,
Space, and time represent basic scientific concepts. A few of
them, especially nature, life, and time, evoke the fancy of
the poets and receive imaginative treatment at their hands.
The opening and the closing sections of the chapter are
the most comprehensive, dealing with the whole of what
there is. The second section concentrates on that part of
nature which is the domain of living organisms. The
remaining sections treat the operation of causality and of
chance in the universe as a whole and in the order of nature,
the movement and rest that are characteristic of all physical
things, and the dimensions of space and time that constitute
the all-embracing framework of the physical world.
For passages that relate to the same subjects treated in
other contexts, the reader is referred to Chapter 17 on
Philosophy, Science, and Mathematics; to Section 15.3 of
Chapter 15 on History; and to Section 16.1 of Chapter 16 on
Art and Aesthetics.
19.1 Nature and the Natural
Of all the terms in the vocabulary of speculative thought,
the words "nature" and "natural" have, perhaps, the greatest
ambiguity. The passages collected here reflect the range and
variety of the meanings that have been attached to them.
Nature is sometimes identified with the cosmos itself and,
as so regarded, it embraces everything, even being
identified with God in the view of pantheists who think of
God as immanent in nature, not as transcending it. But it is
also conceived as quite distinct from God—as the creation of
God, who, as uncreated, is therefore referred to as
supernatural. In other contexts, a basic distinction is drawn
between nature and art—the natural and the artificial, that
which is independent of man and that which is in some way
dependent on man’s efforts or intervention. But nature is
also conceived by certain writers as being an artist or as
being the product of the divine art. In still other contexts,
nature is personified as if it were a brooding omnipresence,
the embodiment of an indwelling reason, purposeful and
even benevolent; and against such views, the reader will
find the opinion expressed that nature represents blind
necessity or chance, indifferent to human well-being and
human aspirations.
The quotations included in this section set forth most of
the maxims that have been formulated concerning nature’s
operations, usually expressed in personified form: that
nature does nothing in vain; that nature abhors a vacuum;
that nature can make no mistakes; that nature knows best;
that nature does nothing by jumps; that nature is frugal or
economical, employing the fewest means to achieve its ends
and wasting nothing; that nature manifests the wisdom of
God; and so on. Most of these sayings have been challenged
or contradicted.
When nature is regarded as the standard of what is right
or reasonable, to say that something is unnatural or contrary
to nature condemns it morally; but it has also been
maintained that there is nothing unnatural or contrary to
nature, though it may violate custom or received opinion.
The poets celebrate the beauties of nature as well as its
awesome powers. Together with the philosophers and others,
they speak of the things that men can learn from nature,
and the benefits to be derived from intimacy with it.
1 Achilleus. The enormous strength of Ocean with his deep-
running waters,
Ocean, from whom all rivers are and the entire sea and
all sorings and all deep wells have their waters of him,
yet even Ocean is afraid of the lightning of great Zeus
and the dangerous thunderbolt when it breaks from the
Sky crashing.
Homer, Iliad, XXI, 195
2 Eleatic Stranger. Looking, now, at the world and all the
animals and plants, at things which grow upon the earth
from seeds and roots, as well as at inanimate substances
which are formed within the earth, fusile or non-fusile,
Shall we say that they come into existence—not having
existed previously—by the creation of God, or shall we
agree with vulgar opinion about them?
Theaetetus. What is it?
Str. The opinion that nature brings them into being
from some spontaneous and unintelligent cause. Or shall
we Say that they are created by a divine reason and a
knowledge which comes from God?
Theaet. | dare say that, owning to my youth, | may
often waver in my view, but now when | look at you and
see that you incline to refer them to God, | defer to your
authority.
Str. Nobly said, Theaetetus, and if | thought that you
were one of those who would hereafter change your
mind, | would have gently argued with you, and forced
you to assent; but as | {perceive that you will come of
yourself and without any argument of mind, to that belief
which, as you Say, attracts you, | will not forestall the
work of time. Let me suppose, then, that things which are
said to be made by nature are the work of divine art, and
that things which are made by man out of these are work
of human art. And so there are two kinds of making and
production, the one human and the other divine.
Plato, Sophist, 265A
3 Athenian Stranger. | am afraid that we have unconsciously
lighted on a strange doctrine.
Cleinias. What doctrine do you mean?
Ath. The wisest of all doctrines, in the opinion of many.
Cle. | wish that you would speak plainer.
Ath. The doctrine that all things do become, have
become, and will become, some by nature, some by art,
and some by chance.
Cle. Is not that true?
Ath. Well, philosophers are probably right; at any rate
we may as well follow in their track, and examine what is
the meaning of them and their disciples.
Cle. By all means.
Ath. They say that the greatest and fairest things are
the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which,
receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations,
moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are
generally termed artificial,
Cle. How is that?
Ath. | will explain my meaning still more clearly. They
say that fire and water, and earth and air, all exist by
nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as
to the bodies which come next in order—earth, and sun,
and moon, and stars—they have been created by means
of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements
are severally moved by chance and some inherent force
according to certain affinities among them—of hot with
cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and
according to all the other accidental admixtures of
opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this
fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been
created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals
and all plants, and all the seasons come from these
elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of
any God, or from art, but as | was saying, by nature and
chance only. Art sprang up afterwards and out of these,
mortal and of mortal birth, and produced in play certain
images and very partial imitations of the truth, having an
affinity to one another, such as music and painting create
and their companion arts. And there are other arts which
have a serious purpose, and these co-operate with
nature, such, for example, as medicine, and husbandry,
and gymnastic. And they say that politics cooperate with
nature, but in a less degree, and have more of art; also
that legislation is entirely a work of art, and is based on
assumptions which are not true.
Plato, Laws, X, 888B
4 Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other
causes.
‘By nature’ the animals and their parts exist, and the
plants and the simple bodies (earth, fire, air, water)—for
we say that these and the like exist ‘by nature’.
All the things mentioned present a feature in which
they differ from things which are not constituted by
nature. Each of them has within itse/fa principle of
motion and of stationariness (in respect of place, or of
growth and decrease, or by way of alteration). On the
other hand, a bed and a coat and anything else of that
sort, qua receiving these designations—li.e. insofar as
they are products of art—have no innate impulse to
change. But insofar as they happen to be composed of
stone or of earth or of a mixture of the two, they do have
such an impulse, and just to that extent— which seems to
indicate that nature is a source or cause of being moved
and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarlly,
in virtue of itself and not in virtue of a concomitant
attribute.
Aristotle, Physics, 192b9
5 Of things constituted by nature some are ungenerated,
imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to
generation and decay. The former are excellent beyond
compare and divine, but less accessible to knowledge.
The evidence that might throw light on them, and on the
problems which we long to solve respecting them, is
furnished but scantily by sensation; whereas respecting
perishable plants and animals we have abundant
information, living as we do in their midst, and ample
data may be collected concerning all their various kinds,
if only we are willing to take sufficient pains. Both
departments, however, have their special charm. The
scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial
things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than
all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a
half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful
than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their
number and dimensions. On the other hand, in certitude
and in completeness our knowledge of terrestrial things
has the advantage. Moreover, their greater nearness and
affinity to us balances somewhat the loftier interest of the
heavenly things that are the objects of the higher
philosophy. Having already treated of the celestial world,
as far as our conjectures could reach, we proceed to treat
of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability,
any member of the kingdom, however ignoble. For if
some have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these,
by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit
that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who
can trace links of causation, and are inclined to
philosophy. Indeed, it would be strange if mimic
representations of them were attractive, because they
disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and
the original realities themselves were not more
interesting, to all at any rate who have eyes to discern
the reasons that determined their formation. We therefore
must not recoil with childish aversion from the
examination of the humbler animals. Every realm of
nature is marvellous: and as Heraclitus, when the
strangers who came to visit him found him warming
himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go
in, is reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to
enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so
we should venture on the study of every kind of animal
without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us
something natural and something beautiful. Absence of
haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end
are to be found in Nature’s works in the highest degree,
and the resultant end of her generations and
combinations is a form of the beautiful.
If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the
animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like
disesteem the study of man. For no one can look at the
primordia of the human frame—blood, flesh, bones,
vessels, and the like— without much repugnance.
Moreover, when any one of the parts or structures, be it
which it may, is under discussion, it must not be
supposed that it is its material composition to which
attention is being directed or which is the object of the
discussion, but the relation of such part to the total form.
Similarly, the true object of architecture is not bricks,
mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal
object of natural philosophy is not the material elements,
but their composition, and the totality of the form,
independently of which they have no existence.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 644b21
6 A general principle must here be noted, which will be
found applicable not only in this instance but in many
others that will occur later on. Nature allots each weapon,
offensive and defensive alike, to those animals alone that
can use it; or, if not to them alone, to them in a more
marked degree; and she allots it in its most perfect state
to those that can use it best; and this whether it bea
sting, or a Spur, or horns, or tusks, or what it may of a like
kind.
Aristotle, Parts of Animab, 661b28
7 Nature creates nothing without a purpose, but always the
best possible in each kind of living creature by reference
to its essential constitution. Accordingly if one way is
better than another that is the way of Nature.
Aristotle, On the Gait of Animals, 704b16
8 Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or
imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 715b15
9 The monstrosity belongs to the class of things contrary to
Nature, not any and every kind of Nature, but Nature in
her usual operations; nothing can happen contrary to
Nature considered as eternal and necessary, but we
speak of things being contrary to her in those cases
where things generally happen in a certain way but may
also happen in another way. In fact, even in the case of
monstrosities, whenever things occur contrary indeed to
the established order but still always in a certain way and
not at random, the result seems to be less of a
monstrosity because even that which is contrary to
Nature is in a certain sense according to Nature,
whenever, that is, the formal nature has not mastered the
material nature.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 770b10
10 The observed facts show that nature is not a series of
episodes, like a bad tragedy,
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1090b19
11 Darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of
the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect
and the law of nature; the warp of whose design we shall
begin with this first principle, nothing is ever gotten out
of nothing by divine power. Fear in sooth holds so in
check all mortals, because they see many operations go
on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in
no way understand, believing them therefore to be done
by power divine. For these reasons when we shall have
seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall
then more correctly ascertain that which we are seeking,
both the elements out of which every thing can be
produced and the manner in which all things are done
without the hand of the gods.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
12 All nature ,..as it exists by itself, is founded on two
things: there are bodies and there is void in which these
bodies are placed and through which they move about.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
13 You should desire with all your might to shun the
weakness, with a lively apprehension to avoid the
mistake of supposing that the bright lights of the eyes
were made in order that we might see; and that the
tapering ends of the shanks and hams are attached to the
feet as a base in order to enable us to step out with long
strides; or again that the forearms were slung to the stout
upper arms and ministering hands given us on each side,
that we might be able to discharge the needful duties of
life. Other explanations of like sort which men give, one
and all put effect for cause through wrongheaded
reasoning; since nothing was born in the body that we
might use it, but that which is born begets for itself a use:
thus seeing did not exist before the eyes were born, nor
the employment of speech ere the tongue was made; but
rather the birth of the tongue was long anterior to
language and the ears were made long before sound was
heard, and all the limbs, | trow, existed before there was
any employment for them: they could not therefore have
grown for the purpose of being used. But on the other
hand engaging in the strife of battle and mangling the
body and staining the limbs with gore were in vogue long
before glittering darts ever flew; and nature prompted to
shun a wound or ever the left arm by the help of art held
up before the person the defence of a shield. Yes and
consigning the tired body to rest is much older than a
soft-cushioned bed, and the slaking of thirst had birth
before cups. These things therefore which have been
invented in accordance with the uses and wants of life,
may well be believed to have been discovered for the
purpose of being used. Far otherwise is it with all those
things which first were born, then afterwards made
known the purposes to which they might be put; at the
head of which class we see the senses and the limbs.
Wherefore again and again | repeat, it is quite impossible
to believe that they could have been made for the duties
which they discharge.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, IV
14 But, ere we stir the yet unbroken ground.
The various course of seasons must be found;
The weather, and the setting of the winds,
The culture suiting to the several kinds
Of seeds and plants, and what will thrive and rise,
And what the genius of the soil denies.
This ground with Bacchus, that with Ceres, suits;
That other loads the trees with happy fruits:
A fourth, with grass unbidden, decks the ground.
Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crowned:
India black ebon and white ivory bears;
And soft Idume weeps her od’rous tears.
Thus Pontus sends her beaver-stones from far;
And naked Spaniards temper steel for war:
Epims, for the Elean chariot, breeds
(In hop« of palms) a race of running steeds.
This is the original contract; these the laws
Imposed by Nature, and by Nature’s cause,
On sundry places, when Deucalion hurled
His mother s entrails on the desert world;
Whence men, a hard laborious kind, were born.
Virgil, Georgies, |
15 Some steep their seed, and some in cauldrons boil,
With vigorous nitre and with lees of oil,
O’er gentle fires, the exuberant juice to drain,
And swell the flattering husks with fruitful grain.
Yet is not the success for years assured,
Though chosen is the seed, and fully cured,
Unless the peasant, with his annual pain,
Renews his choice, and culls the largest grain.
Thus all below, whether by Nature’s curse,
Or Fate’s decree, degenerate still to worse.
So the boat’s brawny crew the current stem.
And, slow advancing, struggle with the stream:
But if they slack their hands, or cease to Strive,
Then down the flood with headlong haste they drive.
Virgil, Georgies, |
16 You may drive out nature with a fork, yet still she will
return.
Horace, Epistles, |, 10
17 Nature which governs the whole will soon change all
things which thou seest, and out of their substance will
make other things, and again other things from the
substance of them, in order that the world may be ever
new.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 25
18 Nature alone has the power to expand a body in all
directions so that it remains unruptured and preserves
completely its previous form. Such then is growth, and it
cannot occur without the nutriment which flows to the
part and is worked up into it.
Galen, Natural Faculties, |, 7
19 It has been made clear in the preceding discussion that
nutrition occurs by an alteration or assimilation of that
which nourishes to that which receives nourishment, and
that there exists in every part of the animal a faculty
which in view of its activity we call, in general terms,
alterative, or, more specifically, assimilative and
nutritive....
Our argument has clearly shown the necessity for the
genesis of such a faculty, and whoever has an
appreciation of logical sequence must be firmly
persuaded from what we have said that, if it be laid down
and proved by previous demonstration that Nature is
artistic and solicitous for the animal’s welfare, it
necessarily follows that she must also possess a faculty of
this kind.
Galen, Natural Faculties, Il, 1
20 To You, then, evil utterly is not—and not only to You, but
to Your whole creation likewise, evil is not: because there
is nothing over and above Your creation that could break
in or derange the order that You imposed upon it. But in
certain of its parts there are some things which we call
evil because they do not harmonize with other things; yet
these same things do harmonize with still others and thus
are good; and in themselves they are good. All these
things which do not harmonize with one another, do suit
well with that lower part of creation which we call the
earth, which has its cloudy and windy sky in some way
apt to it. God forbid that 1 should say: "I wish that these
things were not"; because even if | saw only them,
though | should want better things, yet even for them
alone | should praise You: for that You are to be praised,
things of earth show— dragons, and all deeps, fire, hail,
snow, ice, and stormy winds, which fulfill Thy word;
mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars;
beasts and all cattle, serpents and feathered fowl; kings
of the earth and all people, princes and all judges of the
earth; young men and maidens, old men and young,
praise Thy name. And since from the heavens, O our
God, all Thy angels praise Thee in the high places, and all
Thy hosts, sun and moon, all the stars and lights, the
heavens of heavens, and the waters that are above the
heavens, praise Thy name —| no longer desired better,
because | had thought upon them all and with clearer
judgement | realized that while certain higher things are
better than lower things, yet all things together are
better than the higher alone.
Augustine, Confessions, VIl, 13
21 This cause ... of a good creation, namely, the goodness of
God—this cause, | say, so just and fit, which, when
piously and carefully weighed, terminates all the
controversies of those who inquire into the origin of the
world, has not been recognized by some heretics,
because there are, forsooth, many things, such as fire,
frost, wild beasts, and so forth, which do not suit but
injure this thin-blooded and frail mortality of our flesh,
which is at present under just punishment. They do not
consider how admirable these things are in their own
places, how excellent in their own natures, how
beautifully adjusted to the rest of creation, and how
much grace they contribute to the universe by their own
contributions as to a commonwealth; and how
serviceable they are even to ourselves, if we use them
with a knowledge of their fit adaptations—so that even
poisons, which are destructive when used injudiciously,
become wholesome and medicinal when used in
conformity with their qualities and design; just as, on the
other hand, those things which give us pleasure, such as
food, drink, and the light of the sun, are found to be
hurtful when immoderately or unseasonably used. And
thus divine providence admonishes us not foolishly to
vituperate things, but to investigate their utility with
care; and, where our mental capacity or infirmity is at
fault, to believe that there is a utility, though hidden, as
we have experienced that there were other things which
we all but failed to discover.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 22
22 In natural things species seem, to be arranged in
degrees; as the mixed things are more perfect than the
elements, and plants than minerals, and animals than
plants, and men than other animals-and in each of these
one species is more perfect than others. Therefore, as the
divine wisdom is the cause of the distinction of things for
the sake of the perfection of the universe, so is it the
cause of inequality. For the universe would not be perfect
if only one grade of goodness were found in things.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 47, 2
23 God and nature and any other agent make what is best in
the whole, but not what is best in every single part,
except in order to the whole... . And the whole itself,
which is the universe of creatures is better and more
perfect if some things in it can fail in goodness, and do
sometimes fail, God not preventing this.
Aquinas, Sumim Theologica, |, 48, 2
24 But God knows well that nothing man may do
Will ever keep restrained a thing that nature
Has made innate in any human creature.
Take any bird and put it in a cage
And do your best affection to engage
And rear it tenderly with meat and drink
Of all the dainties that you can bethink,
And always keep it cleanly as you may;
Although its cage of gold be never so gay,
Yet would this bird, by twenty thousand-fold,
Rather, within a forest dark and cold,
Go to eat worms and all such wretchedness.
For ever this bird will do his business
To find some way to get outside the wires.
Above all things his freedom he desires.
Or take a cat, and feed him well with milk
And tender flesh, and make his bed of silk,
And let him see a mouse go by the wall;
Anon leaves the milk and flesh and all
And every dainty that is in that house,
Such appetite has he to eat a mouse.
Desire has here its mighty power shown
And inborn appetite reclaims its own.
A she-wolf also has a vulgar mind;
The wretchedest he-wolf that she may find,
Or least of reputation, she’ll not hate
Whenever she’s desirous of a mate.
All these examples speak | of these men
Who are untrue, and not of sweet women.
For men have aye a lickerish appetite
On lower things to do their base delight
Than on their wives, though they be ne’er so fair
And ne’er so true and ne’er so debonair.
Flesh is so fickle, lusting beyond measure,
That we in no one thing can long have pleasure
Or virtuous keep more than a little while.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Manciple’s Talc
25 We should... follow the wisdom of nature, which, as it
takes very great care not to have produced anything
superfluous or useless, often prefers to endow one thing
with many effects.
Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, |, 10
26 Pantagruel. The writings of abstinent, abstemious, and
long-fasting hermits were every whit as saltless, dry,
jejune, and insipid, as were their bodies when they did
compose them. It is a most difficult thing for the spirits to
be in a good plight, serene and lively, when there is
nothing in the body but a kind of voidness and inanity;
seeing the philosophers with the physicians jointly affirm,
that the spirits, which are styled animal, spring from, and
have their constant practice in and through the arterial
blood, refined, and purified to the life within the
admirable net, which, wonderfully framed, lieth under the
ventricles and tunnels of the brain. He gave us also the
example of the philosopher, who, when he thought most
seriously to have withdrawn himself unto a solitary
privacy, far from the rustling clutterments of the
tumultuous and confused world, the better to improve his
theory, to contrive, comment and ratiocinate, was,
notwithstanding his uttermost endeavours to free himself
from all untoward noises, surrounded and environed
about so with the barking of curs, bawling of mastiffs,
bleating of sheep, prating of parrots, tattling of jack-
daws, grunting of swine, girning of boars, yelping of
foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of mice, squeaking of
weasels, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, cackling of
hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering
of jays, peeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of
geese, chirping of swallows, clucking of moor-fowls,
cucking of cuckoos, bumbling of bees, rammage of
hawks, chinning of linnets, croaking of ravens, screeching
of owls, whicking of pigs, gushing of hogs, curring of
pigeons, grumbling of cushet-doves, howling of panthers,
curkling of quails, chirping of sparrows, crackling of
crows, nuzzing of camels, whining of whelps, buzzing of
dromedaries, mumbling of rabbits, cricking of ferrets,
humming of wasps, mioling of tigers, bruzzing of bears,
sussing of kitlings, clamoring of scarfes, whimpering of
fulmarts, booing of buffalos, warbling of nightingales,
quavering of meavises, drintling of turkies, coniating of
storks, trantling of peacocks, clattering of magpies,
murmuring of stock-doves, crouting of cormorants,
cigling of locusts, charming of beagles, guarring of
puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats, guerieting
of apes, snuttering of monkies, pioling of pelicans,
quacking of ducks, yelling of wolves, roaring of lions,
neighing of horses, barring of elephants, hissing of
serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much more
troubled, than if he had been in the middle of the crowd
at the fair of Fontenay or Niort. Just so is it with those who
are tormented with the grievous pangs of hunger. The
stomach begins to gnaw, and bark as it were, the eyes to
look dim, and the veins, by greedily sucking some
refection to themselves from the proper substance of all
the members of a fleshy consistence, violently pull down
and draw back that vagrant, roaming spirit, careless and
neglecting of his nurse and natural host, which is the
body; as when a hawk upon the fist, willing to take her
flight by a soaring aloft in the open spacious air, is ona
sudden drawn back by a leash tied to her feet.
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Ill, 13
27 When | play with my cat, who knows if | am not a pastime
to her more than she is to me? Plato, in his picture of the
golden age under Saturn, counts among the principal
advantages of the man of that time the communication
he had with the beasts; inquiring of them and learning
from them, he knew the true qualities and differences of
each one of them; whereby he acquired a very perfect
intelligence and prudence, and conducted his life far
more happily than we could possibly do. Do we need a
better proof to judge man’s impudence with regard to the
beasts? ...
This defect that hinders communication between them
and us, why is it not just as much ours as theirs? It is a
matter of guesswork whose fault it is that we do not
understand one another; for we do not understand them
any more than they do us. By this same reasoning they
may consider us beasts, as we consider them.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
28 There is no apparent reason to judge that the beasts do
by natural and obligatory instinct the same things that
we do by our choice and cleverness. We must infer from
like results like faculties, and consequently confess that
this same reason, this same method that we have for
working, is also that of the animals. Why do we imagine
in them this compulsion of nature, we who feel no similar
effect? Besides, it is more honorable, and closer to
divinity, to be guided and obliged to act lawfully by a
natural and inevitable condition, than to act lawfully by
accidental and fortuitous liberty; and safer to leave the
reins of our conduct to nature than to ourselves. The
vanity of our presumption makes us prefer to owe our
ability to our powers than to nature’s liberality; and we
enrich the other animals with natural goods and
renounce them in their favor, in order to honor and
ennoble ourselves with goods acquired: a very simple
notion, it seems to me, for | should prize just as highly
graces that were all mine and inborn as those | had gone
begging and seeking from education. It is not in our
power to acquire a fairer recommendation than to be
favored by God and nature.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
29 It is one and the same nature that rolls its course. Anyone
who had formed a competent judgment of its present
state could infer from this with certainty both all the
future and all the past.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
30 We call contrary to nature what happens contrary to
custom; nothing is anything but according to nature,
whatever it may be. Let this universal and natural reason
drive out of us the error and astonishment that novelty
brings us.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 30, Of a Monstrous Child
31 We have abandoned Nature and we want to teach her her
lesson, she who used to guide us so happily and so Surely.
And yet the traces of her teaching and the little that
remains of her image—imprinted, by the benefit of
ignorance, on the life of that rustic, unpolished mob—
learning is constrained every day to go and borrow, to
give its disciples models of constancy, innocence, and
tranquillity. It is fine to see these disciples, full of so much
beautiful knowledge, obliged to imitate that stupid
simplicity, and imitate it in the primary actions of virtue;
and a fine thing that our sapience learns from the very
animals the most useful teachings for the greatest and
most necessary parts of our life: how we should live and
die, husband our possessions, love and bring up our
children, maintain justice—a singular testimony of human
infirmity; and that this reason of ours that we handle as
we will, always finding some diversity and novelty, leaves
In US NO apparent trace of Nature. And men have done
with Nature as perfumers do with oil; they have
sophisticated her with so many arguments and farfetched
reasonings that she has become variable and particular
for each man, and has lost her own constant and
universal countenance; and we must seek in the animals
evidence of her that is not subject to favor, corruption, or
diversity of opinion.
Montaigne, Essays, III, 12, Of Physiognomy
32 Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business
better than we do.
Montaigne, Essays, I/l, 13, Of Experience
33 When | dance, | dance; when | sleep, | sleep; yes, and
when | walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts
have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some
part of the time, for some other part | bring them back to
the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude,
and to me. Nature has observed this principle like a
mother, that the actions she has enjoined on us for our
need should also give us pleasure; and she invites us to
them not only through reason, but also through appetite.
It is unjust to infringe her laws.
Montaigne, Essays, I/l, 13, Of Experience
34 Duke Senior. Hath not old custom made this life more
sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till | shrink with cold, | smile and say
"This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what | am."
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Il, i, 2
35 Amiens. [sings] Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me.
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Il, v, 1
36 Corin. And how like you this shepherd’s life. Master
Touchstone?
Touchstone. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a
good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is
naught. In respect that it is solitary, | like it very well; but
in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in
respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in
respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare
life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no
more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Ill, ti, 11
37 Edmund. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should |
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that | am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ‘tween asleep and wake?
Shakespeare, Lear, 1, ii, 1
38 Kent. Where's the King?
Gentleman. Contending with the fretful element;
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters ‘bove the main,
That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to out-scorn
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.
This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry% unbonneted he runs,
And bids what will take all.
Shakespeare, Lear, Il, i, 3
39 Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your checks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder.
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
Fool. O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry' house is
better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in,
and ask thy daughters’ blessing. Here’s a night pities
neither wise man nor fool.
Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
| tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
| never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here | stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet | call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join’d
Your high engender’d battles ’gainst a head
So old and white as this, O! O! ’tis foul!
Shakespeare, Lear, Ill, ii, 1
40 Perdita. Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season
are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call Nature’s bastards. Of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren; and | care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
Per. For | have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating Nature.
Pol. Say there be;
Yet Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean; so, over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock.
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art
Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is Nature.
Per. So it is.
Pol. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, IV, iv, 80
41 Clerimont. [sings] Still to be neat, still to be dressed
As you were going to a feast.
Still to be powdered, still perfumed;
Lady, is it to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free—
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Than all th’ adulteries of art.
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
Jonson, Epicene, Il, i
42 The subtilty of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the
understanding; so that the specious meditations,
speculations, and theories of mankind are but a kind of
insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 10
43 As in ordinary life every person’s disposition, and the
concealed feelings of the mind and passions are most
drawn out when they are disturbed—so the secrets of
nature betray themselves more readily when tormented
by art than when left to their own course.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 98
44 The empire of man over things is founded on the arts and
sciences alone, for nature is only to be commanded by
obeying her.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 129
45 Easy is everything to nature’s majesty, who uses her
strength sparingly, and dispenses it with caution and
foresight for the commencement of her works by
imperceptible additions, but hastens to decay with
suddenness and in full career. In the generation of things
is seen the most excellent, the eternal and almighty God,
the divinity of nature, worthy to be looked up to with
reverence; but all mortal things run to destruction of their
own accord in a thousand ways.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 41
46 If in the domain and rule of nature... many excellent
operations are daily effected surpassing the powers of the
things themselves, what shall we not think possible
within the pale and regimen of nature, of which all art is
but imitation? And if, as ministers of man, they effect
such admirable ends, what, | ask, may we not expect of
them, when they are instruments in the hand of God?
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 71
47 There is no doubt that in all things which nature teaches
me there is some truth contained; for by nature,
considered in general, | now understand no other thing
than either God Himself or else the order and disposition
which God has established in created things; and by my
nature in particular | understand no other thing than the
complexus of all the things which God has given me.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, VI
48 Nature itself cannot err.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 4
49 What reason may not go to School to the wisdom of Bees,
Ants, and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to do
what reason cannot teach us? ruder heads stand amazed
at those prodigious pieces of Nature, Whales, Elephants,
Dromidaries and Camels; these, | confess, are the
Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand: but in these
narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks; and
the civility of these Little Citizens, more neatly sets forth
the Wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not Regio-
Montanus his Fly beyond his Eagle, or wonders not more
at the operation of two Souls in those little Bodies, than
but one in the Trunk of a Cedar?
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 15
50 | hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and
therefore no deformity in any kind or species of creature
whatsoever: | cannot tell by what Logick we call a Joad, a
Bear, or an Elephant ugly, they being created in those
outward shapes and figures which best express the
actions of their inward forms. And having past that
general Visitation of God, who saw that all that he had
made was good, that is, conformable to his Will, which
abhors deformity, that is the rule of order and beauty;
there is no deformity but in Monstrosity; wherein,
notwithstanding, there is a kind of Beauty. Nature so
ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they
become sometimes more remarkable than the principal
Fabrick. To speak yet more narrowly, there was never any
thing ugly or misshapen, but the Chaos; wherein,
notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no
deformity, because no form; nor was it yet impregnant by
the voice of God; now Nature was not at variance with
Art, nor Art with Nature, they being both servants of his
providence: Art is the perfection of Nature: were the
World now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a
Chaos: Nature hath made one World and Art another. In
brief, all things are artificial for Nature is the Art of God.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 16
51 Nature has some perfections to show that she is the
image of God, and some defects to show that she is only
His image.
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 580
52 Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son,
Now that the Fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help wast a sullen day; what may be won
From the hard Season gaining: time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth; and cloth in fresh attire
The Lillie and Rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attick last, with Wine, whence we may rise
To hear the Lute well toucht, or artfull voice
Warble immortal Notes and Tuskan Ayre?
He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
Milton, Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son
53 Raphael. Accuse not Nature, she hath don her part;
Do thou but thine.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 561
54 The attempt ... to show that nature does nothing in vain
(that is to say, nothing which is not profitable to man),
seems to end in showing that nature, the gods, and man
are alike mad.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Appendix
55 It will doubtless seem a marvellous thing for me to
endeavour to treat by a geometrical method the vices
and follies of men, and to desire by a sure method to
demonstrate those things which these people cry out
against as being opposed to reason, or as being vanities,
absurdities, and monstrosities. The following is my reason
for so doing. Nothing happens in nature which can be
attributed to any vice of nature, for she is always the
same and everywhere one. Her virtue is the same, and
her power of acting; that is to say, her laws and rules,
according to which all things are and are changed from
form to form, are everywhere and always the same; so
that there must also be one and the same method of
understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, that is
to say, by the universal laws and rules of nature.
Spinoza, Ethics, Ill, Introduction
56 The custom of applying the words perfect and imperfect
to natural objects has arisen rather from prejudice than
from true knowledge of them. For... nature does nothing
for the sake of an end, for that eternal and infinite Being
whom we call God or Nature acts by the same necessity
by which He exists; for... He acts by the same necessity of
nature as that by which He exists. The reason or cause,
therefore, why God or nature acts and the reason why He
exists are one and the same. Since, therefore, He exists
for no end, He acts for no end; and since He has no
principle or end of existence, He has no principle or end
of action. A final cause, as it is called, is nothing,
therefore, but human desire, insofar as this is considered
as the principle or primary cause of anything.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Preface
57 We are to admit no more causes of natural things than
such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that
Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when
less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and
affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far
as possible, assign the same causes. As to respiration in a
man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and
in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun;
the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.
Newton, Principia, Ill, Rules 1-2
58 There are never in nature two beings which are exactly
alike.
Leibniz, Monadology, 9
59 Nature makes many particular things, which do agree one
with another in many sensible qualities, and probably too
in their internal frame and constitution: but it is not this
real essence that distinguishes them into species; it is
men who, taking occasion from the qualities they find
united in them, and wherein they observe often several
individuals to agree, range them into sorts, in order to
their naming, for the convenience of comprehensive
signs; under which individuals, according to their
conformity to this or that abstract idea, come to be
ranked as under ensigns: so that this is of the blue, that
the red regiment; this is a man, that a drill: and in this, |
think, consists the whole business of genus and species.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, VI, 36
60 You will say, Hath Nature no share in the production, of
natural things, and must they be all ascribed to the
immediate and sole operation of God? | answer, if by
Nature is meant only the visible series of effects or
sensations imprinted on our minds, according to certain
fixed and general laws, then it is plain that Nature, taken
in this sense, cannot produce anything at all. But, if by
Nature is meant some being distinct from God, as well as
from the laws of nature, and things perceived by sense, |
must confess that word is to me an empty sound without
any intelligible meaning annexed to it. Nature, in this
acceptation, is a vain chimera, introduced by those
heathens who had not just notions of the omnipresence
and infinite perfection of God.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 150
61 Such is the artificial contrivance of this mighty machine
of nature that, whilst its motions and various phenomena
strike on our senses, the hand which actuates the whole
is itself unperceivable to men of flesh and blood.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 151
62 All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, chang’d thro’ all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th’ aethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives thro’ all life, extends thro’ all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent,
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 267
63 It seems evident that, if all the scenes of nature were
continually shifted in such a manner that no two events
bore any resemblance to each other, but every object was
entirely new, without any similitude to whatever had
been seen before, we should never, in that case, have
attained the least idea of necessity, or of a connexion
among these objects. We might say, upon such a
supposition, that one object or event has followed
another; not that one was produced by the other. The
relation of cause and effect must be utterly unknown to
mankind. Inference and reasoning concerning the
operations of nature would, from that moment, be at an
end; and the memory and senses remain the only canals,
by which the knowledge of any real existence could
possibly have access to the mind. Our idea, therefore, of
necessity and causation arises entirely from the
uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where
similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the
mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the
appearance of the other.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 64
64 The Philosopher. We are curious. | want to Know how
being so crude in your mountains, in your deserts, in your
seas, you appear nevertheless so industrious in your
animals, in your vegetables?
Nature. My poor child do you want me to tell you the
truth? It is that | have been given a name which does not
suit me; my name is "Nature", and | am all art.
Phil. That word upsets all my ideas. What! nature is
only art?
Na. Yes, without any doubt. Do you not know that
there is an infinite art in those seas and those mountains
that you find so crude? do you not know that all those
waters gravitate towards the centre of the earth, and
mount only by immutable laws; that those mountains
which crown the earth are the immense reservoirs of the
eternal snows which produce unceasingly those
fountains, lakes and rivers without which my animal
species and my vegetable species would perish? And as
for what are called my animal kingdom, my vegetable
kingdom and my mineral kingdom, you see here only
three; learn that | have millions of kingdoms. But if you
consider only the formation of an insect, of an car of corn,
of gold, of copper, everything will appear as marvels of
art.
Phil. lt is true. The more | think about it, the more I see
that you are only the art of | Know not what most potent
and industrious great being, who hides himself and who
makes you appear. All reasoners since Thales, and
probably long before him, have played at blind man’s
bluff with you; they have said; "I have you!" and they had
nothing. We all resemble Ixion; he thought he was kissing
Juno, and all that he possessed was a cloud.
Na. Since | am all that is, how can a being such as you,
SO small a part of myself, seize me? Be content, atoms my
children, with seeing a few atoms that surround you, with
drinking a few drops of my milk, with vegetating for a few
moments on my breast, and with dying without having
known your mother and your nurse.
Phil. My dear mother, tell me something of why you
exist, of why there is anything.
Na. 1 will answer you as | have answered for so many
centuries all those who have interrogated me about first
principles: |KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM.
Phil. Would not non-existence be better than this
multitude of existences made in order to be continually
dissolved, this crowd of animals born and reproduced in
order to devour others and to be devoured, this crowd of
sentient beings formed for so many painful sensations,
that other crowd of intelligences which so rarely hear
reason. What is the good of all that. Nature?
Na. Oh! go and ask Him who made me.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Nature
65 While the earth was left to its natural fertility and
covered with immense forests, whose trees were never
mutilated by the axe, it would present on every side both
sustenance and shelter for every species of animal. Men,
dispersed up and down among the rest, would observe
and imitate their industry, and thus attain even to the
instinct of the beasts, with the advantage that, whereas
every species of brutes was confined to one particular
instinct, man, who perhaps has not any one peculiar to
himself, would appropriate them all, and live upon most
of those different foods which other animals shared
among themselves; and thus would find his subsistence
much more easily than any of the rest.
Accustomed from their infancy to the inclemencies of
the weather and the rigour of the seasons, inured to
fatigue, and forced, naked and unarmed, to defend
themselves and their prey from other ferocious animals,
or to escape them by flight, men would acquire a robust
and almost unalterable constitution. The children,
bringing with them into the world the excellent
constitution of their parents, and fortifying it by the very
exercises which first produced it, would thus acquire all
the vigour of which the human frame is capable. Nature
in this case treats them exactly as Sparta treated the
children of her citizens: those who come well formed into
the world she renders strong and robust, and all the rest
she destro)’s; differing in this respect from our modern
communities, in which the State, by making children a
burden to their parents, kills them indiscriminately before
they are born.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, 1
66 Give civilised man time to gather all his machines about
him, and he will no doubt easily beat the savage; but if
you would see a still more unequal contest, set them
together naked and unarmed, and you will soon see the
advantage of having all our forces constantly at our
disposal, of being always prepared for every event, and of
carrying one’s self, as it were, perpetually whole and
entire about one.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
67 We should beware ... of confounding the savage man with
the men we have daily before our eyes. Nature treats all
the animals left to her care with a predilection that seems
to show how jealous she is of that right. The horse, the
cat, the bull, and even the ass are generally of greater
stature, and always more robust, and have more vigour,
strength and courage, when they run wild in the forests
than when bred in the stall. By becoming domesticated,
they lose half these advantages; and it seems as if all our
care to feed and treat them well serves only to deprave
them. It is thus with man also: as he becomes sociable
and a slave, he gro\vs weak, timid and servile; his
effeminate way of life totally enervates his strength and
courage. To this it may be added that there is still a
greater difference between savage and civilised man,
than between wild and tame beasts: for men and brutes
having been treated alike by nature, the several
conveniences in which men indulge themselves still more
than they do their beasts, are so many additional causes
of their deeper degeneracy.
Rousseau, Origin of Inequality, |
68 The General [Paoli] said, that in a state of nature a man
and woman uniting together, would form a strong and
constant affection, by the mutual pleasure each would
receive; and that the same causes of dissention would
not arise between them, as occur between husband and
wife in a civilized state. Johnson. "Sir, they would have
dissentions enough, though of another kind. One would
choose to go a hunting in this wood, the other in that;
one would choose to go a fishing in this lake, the other in
that; or, perhaps, one would choose to go a hunting,
when the other would choose to go a fishing; and so they
would part. Besides, Sir, a Savage man and a savage
woman meet by chance; and when the man sees another
woman that pleases him better, he will leave the first."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 31, 1772)
69 Artis distinguished from nature as making is from acting
or operating in general, and the product or the result of
the former is distinguished from that of the latter as work
from operation.
By right it is only production through freedom, i.e.,
through an act of will that places reason at the basis of its
action, that should be termed art. For, although we are
pleased to call what bees produce (their regularly
constituted cells) a work of art, we only do so on the
strength of an analogy with art; that is to say, as soon as
we Call to mind that no rational deliberation forms the
basis of their labour, we say at once that it is a product of
their nature (of instinct), and it is only to their Creator
that we ascribe it as art.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 43
70 Nature proved beautiful when it wore the appearance of
art; and art can only be termed beautifu/, where we are
conscious of its being art, while yet it has the appearance
of nature.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 45
71 For the purpose of keeping strictly within its own bounds
physics entirely ignores the question whether physical
ends are ends designedly or undesignedly. To deal with
that question would be to meddle in the affairs of others
—namely, in what is the business of metaphysics. Suffice
it that there are objects whose one and only explanation
is on natural laws that we are unable to conceive
otherwise than by adopting the idea of ends as principle,
objects which, in their intrinsic form, and with nothing
more in view than their internal relations, are cognizable
in this way alone. It is true that in teleology we speak of
nature as if its finality were a thing of design. But to
avoid all suspicion of presuming in the slightest to mix up
with our sources of knowledge something that has no
place in physics at all, namely a supernatural cause, we
refer to design in such a way that, in the same breath, we
attribute this design to nature, that is, to matter. Here no
room is left for misinterpretation, since, obviously, no one
would ascribe design, in the proper sense of the term, to
a lifeless material. Hence our real intention is to indicate
that the word design, as here used, only signifies a
principle of the reflective, and not of the determinant,
judgement, and consequently is not meant to introduce
any special ground of causality, but only to assist the
employment of reason by supplementing investigation on
mechanical laws by the addition of another method of
investigation, so as to make up for the inadequacy of the
former even as a method of empirical research that has
for its object all particular laws of nature. Therefore, when
teleology is applied to physics, we speak with perfect
justice of the wisdom, the economy, the forethought, the
beneficence of nature. But in so doing we do not convert
nature into an intelligent being, for that would be absurd;
but neither do we dare to think of placing another being,
one that is intelligent, above nature as its architect, for
that would be extravagant. On the contrary, our only
intention is to designate in this way a kind of natural
cauSality on an analogy with our own causality in the
technical employment of reason, for the purpose of
keeping in view the rule upon which certain natural
products are to be investigated.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 68
72 Nature is for us nothing but existence in all its freedom; it
is the constitution of things taken in themselves; it is
existence itself according to its proper and immutable
laws.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
73 We see ... in nature, destitute of reason, only a sister who,
more fortunate than ourselves, has remained under the
maternal roof, while in the intoxication of our freedom we
have fled from it to throw ourselves into a stranger world.
We regret this place of safety, we earnestly long to come
back to it aS soon as we have begun to feel the bitter side
of civilization, and in the totally artificial life in which we
are exiled we hear in deep emotion the voice of our
mother. While we were still only children of nature we
were happy, we were perfect: we have become free, and
we have lost both advantages. Hence a twofold and very
unequal longing for nature; the longing for happiness
and the longing for the perfection that prevails there.
Man, as a sensuous being, deplores sensibly the loss of
the former of these goods; it is only the moral man who
can be afflicted at the loss of the other.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
74 As long as man dwells in a state of pure nature (I mean
pure and not coarse nature), all his being acts at once
like a simple sensuous unity, like a harmonious whole.
The senses and reason, the receptive faculty and the
spontaneously active faculty, have not been as yet
separated in their respective functions; a fortiori they are
not yet in contradiction with each other. Then the
feelings of man are not the formless play of chance; nor
are his thoughts an empty play of the imagination,
without any value. His feelings proceed from the law of
necessity, his thoughts from reality. But when man enters
the state of civilization, and art has fashioned him, this
sensuous harmony which was in him disappears, and
henceforth he can only manifest himself as a moral unity,
that is, as aspiring to unity. The harmony that existed as a
fact in the former state, the harmony of feeling and
thought, only exists now in an ideal state. It is no longer
in him, but out of him; it is a conception of thought which
he must begin by realizing in himself; it is no longer a
fact, a reality of his life.
Schiller, Simple and Sentimental Poetry
75 And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
| will not cease from mental fight.
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
Blake, Milton
76 The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 8
77 And so | dare to hope.
Though changed, no doubt, from what | was when first
| came among these hills; when like a roe
| bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—l cannot paint
What then | was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 65
78 | have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And | have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
And the round ocean and the living air.
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am | still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 88
79 Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 122
80 A slumber did my spirit seal;
| had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor secs;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
81 Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Wordsworth, Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, 161
82 Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng.
Ye that pipe and ye that play.
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, X
83 And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things.
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth.
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good.
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
Wordsworth, The Tables Turned
84 Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare.
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept.
3, 1802
85 The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—-Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Wordsworth, The World Ils Too Much With Us; Late and
Soon
86 Nature is the term in which we comprehend all things
that are representable in the forms of time and space,
and subjected to the relations of cause and effect: and
the cause of the existence of which, therefore, is to be
sought for perpetually in something antecedent.
Coleridge, Aids to Reflection
87 Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert.
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art....
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found.
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then—as | am listening now.
Shelley, To a Shylark
88 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
| love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which | steal
From all | may be or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What | can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin, his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.
Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, 178-179
89 | cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child.
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
90 O Maker of sweet poets, dear delight
Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers;
Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers,
Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams,
Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must | praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories.
For what has made the sage or poet write
But the fair paradise of Nature’s light?
Keats, | Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill, 116
91 In the history of the world, the idea of spirit appears in its
actual embodiment as a series of external forms, each
one of which declares itself as an actually existing
people. This existence falls under the category of time as
well as space, in the way of natural existence; and the
special principle, which every world-historical people
embodies, has this principle at the same time as a natural
characteristic. Spirit, clothing itself in this form of nature,
suffers its particular phases to assume separate
existence; for mutual exclusion is the mode of existence
proper to mere nature. These natural distinctions must be
first of all regarded as special possibilities, from which the
Spirit of the people in question germinates, and among
them is the geographical basis. It is not our concern to
become acquainted with the land occupied by nations as
an external locale, but with the natural type of the
locality, as intimately connected with the type and
character of the people which is the offspring of such a
soil. This character is nothing more nor less than the
mode and form in which nations make their appearance
in history, and take place and position in it. Nature
should not be rated too high nor too low: the mild lonic
sky certainly contributed much to the charm of the
Homeric poems, yet this alone can produce no Homers.
Nor in fact does it continue to produce them; under
Turkish government no bards have arisen. We must first
take notice of those natural conditions which have to be
excluded once for all from the drama of the world’s
history.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Intro.
92 Man with his necessities sustains a practical relation to
external nature, and in making it satisfy’ his desires, and
thus using it up, has recourse to a system of means. For
natural objects are powerful and offer resistance in
various ways. In order to subdue them, man introduces
other natural agents; thus turns nature against itself, and
invents instruments for this purpose. These human
inventions belong to spirit, and such an instrument is to
be respected more than a mere natural object.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Ft. //, 11, 1
93 If we look at the inner nature of... sports, we shall first
observe how sport itself is opposed to serious business, to
dependence and need. This wrestling, running,
contending was no serious affair; bespoke no obligation
of defence, no necessity of combat. Serious occupation is
labour that has reference to some want. | or nature must
succumb; if the one is to continue, the other must fall. In
contrast with this kind of seriousness, however, sport
presents the higher seriousness; for in it nature is
wrought into spirit, and although in these contests the
subject has not advanced to the highest grade of serious
thought, yet in this exercise of his physical powers, man
shows his freedom, viz., that he has transformed his body
to an organ of spirit.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Ft. Il, Il, 1
94 The chief objection | have to Pantheism is that it says
nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; it is
only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym
for the word "world."
Schopenhauer, A Few Words on Pantheism
95 Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals
Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.
Carlyle, Sartor Rrsartus, Ill, 8
96 Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does not like
our benevolence or our learning much better than she
likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the
caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the
Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into the
fields and woods, she says to us, ‘So hot? my little Sir.’
Emerson, Spiritual Laws
97 There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all:
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.
Emerson, The Informing Spirit
98 The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though
always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural
objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is
open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean
appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her
secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her
perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit.
The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the
wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted
the simplicity of his childhood.
Emerson, Nature, |
99 One can scarcely think upon the subject of atmospheric
magnetism without having another great question
suggested to the mind: What is the final purpose in
nature of this magnetic condition of the atmosphere, and
its liability to annual and diurnal variations, and its entire
loss by entering into combination either in combustion or
respiration? No doubt there is one or more, for nothing is
superfluous there. We find no remainders or surplusage of
action in physical forces. The smallest provision is as
essential as the greatest. None is deficient, none can be
spared.
Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, XXVI,
2968
100 The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
That I. considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
1 falter where | firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
| stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what | feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone;
| care for nothing, all shall go.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me.
| bring to life, | bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath:
| Know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair.
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies.
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer.
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed-—
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
Tennyson, In Memoriam, LV-LVI
101 Flower in the crannied wall,
| pluck you out of the crannies,
| hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if | could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
| should know what God and man is.
Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall
102 Ahab. O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all
utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest
atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning
duplicate in mind.
Melville, Moby Dick, LXX
103 The West of which | speak is but another name for the
Wild; and what | have been preparing to say is, that in
Wildness is the preservation of the World.
Thoreau, Walking
104 A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands,
How could | answer the child? | do not Know what it is any
more than he.
| guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of
hopeful green stuff woven.
Or | guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that
we may see and remark, and say Whose? ...
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves.
Whitman, Song of Myself, VI
105 | believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey- work
of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand,
and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of
heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all
machinery.
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses
any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextil-lions
of infidels.
Whitman, Song of Myself, XXX!
106 In due time the evolution theory will have to abate its
vehemence, cannot be allow’d to dominate everything
else, and will have to take its place as a segment of the
circle, the cluster—as but one of many theories, many
thoughts, of profoundest value—and readjusting and
differentiating much, yet leaving the divine secrets just
as inexplicable and unreachable as before—maybe more
SO.
Whitman, Notes Left Over
107 In looking at Nature, it is most necessary... never to
forget that every single organic being may be said to be
striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each
lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy
destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old,
during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten
any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the
number of the species will almost instantaneously
increase to any amount.
Darwin, Origin of Species, III
108 It has been said that | soeak of natural selection as an
active power or Deity; but who objects to an author
speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the
movements of the planets? Every one knows what is
meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions;
and they are almost necessary for brevity. So again it is
difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but |
mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product
of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events
as ascertained by us.
Darwin, Origin of Species, IV
109 As man can produce, and certainly has produced a great
result by his methodical and unconscious means of
selection, what may not natural selection effect? Man can
act only on external and visible characters: Nature, if |
may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or
survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances,
except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can
act on every internal organ, on every shade of
constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life.
Man selects only for his own good. Nature only for that of
the being which she tends. Every selected character is
fully exercised by her, as is implied by the fact of their
selection. Man keeps the natives of many climates in the
Same country; he seldom exercises each selected
character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a
long and a short beaked pigeon on the same food; he
does not exercise a long-backed or long-legged
quadruped in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep
with long and short wool to the same climate. He does
not allow the most vigorous males to struggle for the
females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals,
but protects during each varying season, as far as lies in
his power, all his productions. He often begins his
selection by some half-monstrous form; or at least by
some modification prominent enough to catch the eye or
to be plainly useful to him. Under nature, the slightest
differences of structure or constitution may well turn the
nicely balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be
preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of
man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will
be his results, compared with those accumulated by
Nature during whole geological periods! Can we wonder,
then, that Nature’s productions should be far "truer" in
character than man’s productions; that they should be
infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions
of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher
workmanship?
Darwin, Origin of Species, IV
110 It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a
telescope. We know that this instrument has been
perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest
human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has
been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may
not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right
to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers
like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an
optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a
thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with
fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and
then suppose every part of this layer to be continually
changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers
of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different
distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each
layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose
that there is a power, represented by natural selection or
the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each
Slight alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully
preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in
any way orin any degree, tends to produce a distincter
image. We must suppose each new state of the
instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be
preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old
ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variation will
cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them
almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with
unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on
for millions of years; and during each year on millions of
individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a
living optical instrument might thus be formed as
superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to
those of man?
Darwin, Origin of Species, VI
111 As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight,
successive, favourable variations, it can produce no great
or sudden modifications; it can act only by short and slow
steps. Hence, the canon of “Natura non facit saltum"
which every fresh addition to our knowledge tends to
confirm, is on this theory intelligible. We can see why
throughout nature the same general end is gained by an
almost infinite diversity of means, for every peculiarity
when once acquired is long inherited, and structures
already modified in many different ways have to be
adapted for the same general purpose. We can, in short,
see why nature Is prodigal in variety, though niggard in
innovation. But why this should be a law of nature if each
species has been independently created no man can
explain.
Darwin, Origin of Species, XV
112 It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a
constant tendency to increased perfection. That process
undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the
organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends
on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of
the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
T. H. Huxley, Struggle for Existence in Human Society
113 Thus we may say that surplus value rests on a natural
basis; but this is permissible only in the very general
sense that there is no natural obstacle absolutely
preventing one man from disburdening himself of the
labour requisite for his own existence, and burdening
another with it, any more, for instance, than
unconquerable natural obstacles prevent one man from
eating the flesh of another. No mystical ideas must in any
way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this
historically developed productiveness of labour. It is only
after men have raised themselves above the rank of
animals, when, therefore, their labour has been to some
extent socialized, that a state of things arises in which
the surplus labour of the one becomes a condition of
existence for the other.
Marx, Capital, Vol, I, V, 16
114 If there are any marks at all of special design in
creation, one of the things most evidently designed is
that a large proportion of all animals should pass their
existence in tormenting and devouring other animals.
They have been lavishly fitted out with the instruments
necessary for that purpose; their strongest instincts impel
them to it, and many of them seem to have been
constructed incapable of supporting themselves by any
other food. If a tenth part of the pains which have been
expended in finding benevolent adaptations in all nature
had been employed in collecting evidence to blacken the
character of the Creator, what scope for comment would
not have been found in the entire existence of the lower
animals, divided with scarcely an exception into
devourers and devoured, and a prey to a thousand ills
from which they are denied the faculties necessary for
protecting themselves! If we are not obliged to believe
the animal creation to be the work of a demon it is
because we need not suppose it to have been made by a
Being of infinite power. But if imitation of the Creator’s
will as revealed in nature were applied as a rule of action
in this case, the most atrocious enormities of the worst
men would be more than justified by the apparent
intention of Providence that throughout all animated
nature the strong should prey upon the weak.
Mill, Nature
115 The word nature has two principal meanings: it either
denotes the entire system of things, with the aggregate
of all their properties, or it denotes things as they would
be, apart from human intervention.
In the first of these senses, the doctrine that man
ought to follow nature is unmeaning, since man has no
power to do anything else than follow nature; all his
actions are done through and in obedience to some one
or many of nature’s physical or mental laws.
In the other sense of the term, the doctrine that men
ought to follow nature or, in other words, ought to make
the spontaneous course of things the model of his
voluntary actions is equally irrational and immoral;
irrational, because all human action whatever consists in
altering, and all useful action in improving, the
Spontaneous course of nature; immoral, because the
course of natural phenomena being replete with
everything which when committed by human beings is
most worthy of abhorrence, any one who endeavoured in
his actions to imitate the natural course of things would
be universally seen and acknowledged to be the
wickedest of men.
The scheme of nature regarded in its whole extent
cannot have had, for its sole or even principal object, the
good of human or other sentient beings. What good it
brings to them is mostly the result of their own exertions.
Whatsoever in nature gives indication of beneficent
design proves this beneficence to be armed only with
limited power; and the duty of man is to co-operate with
the beneficent powers, not by imitating but by
perpetually striving to amend the course of nature—and
bringing that part of it over which we can exercise control
more nearly into conformity with a high standard of
justice and goodness.
Mill, Nature
116 Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play;
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away;
Allows the proudly-riding and the
foundering bark.
Arnold, Empedocles on Etna, I, ti, 257
117 "Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to
himself: "The soldier did not let me pass. They took me
and shut me up. They hold me captive. What, me? Me?
My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! ..." and he
laughed till tears started to his eyes.
A man got up and came to see what this queer big
fellow was laughing at all by himself. Pierre stopped
laughing, got up, went farther away from the inquisitive
man, and looked around him.
The huge, endless bivouac that had previously
resounded with the crackling of campfires and the voices
of many men had grown quiet, the red campfires were
growing paler and dying down. High up in the light sky
hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp,
unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And
farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright,
oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre
glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its
faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all that
and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He
smiled, and went and lay down to sleep beside his
companions.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIII, 14
118 To call the taming of an animal its ‘improvement’ is in
our ears almost a joke. Whoever knows what goes on in
menageries is doubtful whether the beasts in them are
‘improved’. They are weakened, they are made less
harmful, they become sickly beasts through the
depressive emotion of fear, through pain, through
injuries, through hunger.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: The "Improvers" of
Mankind
119 Nature ... is frugal in her operations, and will not be at
the expense of a particular instinct to give us that
knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce.
William James, Psychology, XIX
120 Who does not feel the charm of thinking that the moon
and the apple are, as far as their relation to the earth
goes, identical; of Knowing respiration and combustion to
be one; of understanding that the balloon rises by the
same law whereby the stone sinks; of feeling that the
warmth in one’s palm when one rubs one’s sleeve is
identical with the motion which the friction checks; of
recognizing the difference between beast and fish to be
only a higher degree of that between human father and
son; of believing our strength when we climb the
mountain or fell the tree to be no other than the strength
of the sun’s rays which made the com grow out of which
we got our morning meal?
William James, of Rationality
121 The claims of our civilization make life too hard for the
greater part of humanity, and so further the aversion to
reality and the origin of neuroses, without producing an
excess of cultural gain by this excess of sexual
repression. We ought not to go so far as to fully neglect
the original animal part of our nature; we ought not to
forget that the happiness of individuals cannot be
dispensed with as one of the aims of our culture...
| do not know whether you will regard the exhortation
with which | close as a presumptuous one. | only venture
the indirect presentation of my conviction, if | relate an
old tale, whose application you may make yourselves.
German literature knows a town called Schilda, to whose
inhabitants were attributed all sorts of clever pranks. The
wiseacres, so the story goes, had a horse, with whose
powers of work they were well satisfied, and against
whom they had only one grudge, that he consumed so
much expensive oats. They concluded that by good
management they would break him of his bad habit, by
cutting down his rations by several stalks each day, until
he had learned to do without them altogether. Things
went finely for a while, the horse was weaned to one stalk
a day, and on the next day he would at last work without
fodder. On the morning of this day the malicious horse
was found dead; the citizens of Schilda could not
understand why he had died.
We should be inclined to believe that the horse had
starved, and that without a certain ration of oats no work
could be expected from an animal.
Freud, Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, V
122 | hope to enlist your interest in considering the
apparently trivial errors made by normal people. |
propose now that we question someone who has no
knowledge of psycho-analysis as to how he explains
these occurrences.
His first answer is sure to be: “Oh, they are not worth
any explanation; they are little accidents.” What does the
man mean by this? Does he mean to maintain that there
are any occurrences so small that they fail to come within
the causal sequence of things, that they might as well be
other than they are? Anyone thus breaking away from the
determination of natural phenomena, at any single point,
has thrown over the whole scientific outlook on the world
(Weltanschauung). One may point out to him how much
more consistent is the religious outlook on the world,
which emphatically assures us that “not one sparrow shall
fall to the ground” except God wills it. | think our friend
would not be willing to follow his first answer to its logical
conclusion; he would give way and say that if he were to
study these things he would soon find some explanation
of them.
Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, II
123 In Aristotle the conception of human nature is perfectly
sound; everything ideal has a natural basis and
everything natural an ideal development.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, Introduction
124 That the unification of nature is eventual and
theoretical is a point useful to remember: else the
relation of the natural world to poetry, metaphysics, and
religion will never become intelligible. Lalande, or
whoever it was, who searched the heavens with his
telescope and could find no God, would not have found
the human mind if he had searched the brain with a
microscope.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, 5
19.2 The Nature of Life
Many of the passages collected here attempt to define the
line that divides the living from the nonliving, and to
enumerate the distinctive properties of living organisms,
such as nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Within the
domain of the living, further distinctions are made between
plant and animal life, by reference to sensitivity and local
motion as characteristics of animals not found in plants.
Some quotations speak of the scale of life, the gradations of
vitality, rising little by little from the vegetative level to
more complex and more richly endowed forms of life; to
which certain philosophers and theologians add levels of life
above the highest terrestrial forms—the purely spiritual life
of the angels and of God.
The reader will find some indications of the age-old
controversy between the vitalists and the mechanists, the
one maintaining that life involves principles or factors that
have no counterparts in the realm of inanimate things or
machines, the other countering with the view that the same
mechanical principles or factors that enable us to
understand the operation of inanimate things also explain
the processes of life. Crucial to this issue is Claude Bernard’s
introduction of the concept of homeostasis—the internal
equilibrium of a living organism. Only living things appear to
have an internal as well as an external environment, and are
actively involved in the adjustment of the one to the other.
In this connection it should also be pointed out that when
soul is spoken of as the principle of life, it is not necessarily
conceived as something divorced from matter: early
atomists, such as Lucretius, think of soul or mind as
constituted by material particles, and Aristotle thinks of soul
as inherent in living matter. For him, to be alive is to be
besouled.
The origin of life or of living organisms is another basic
subject treated in this section, and the discussions of it
range from the account of its creation in Genesis or the one
given by Plato in the 7imaeus, to later theological
commentaries on Genesis and then to modern writers such
as Darwin, And at least one author offers startling comments
on the origin of life: this is Freud who, in his discussion of
the life and death instincts, suggests that living things are
driven by a profound impulse to rid themselves of the
tensions of life and return to the sleep of inanimate
existence. For other comments on life and death, viewed
more narrowly from the human point of view, the reader is
referred to Chapter 1 on Man, especially Section 1.2 and
Section 1.8.
1 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb
yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was
SO.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding
seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose
seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was
good.
And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Genesis 1:11-13
2 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the
moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly
above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living
creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth
abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying. Be fruitful, and
multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl
multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Genesis 1:20-23
3 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7
4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: fora
living dog is better than a dead lion.
Ecclesiastes 9:4
5 Timaeus. Now of the divine, he himself [God] was the
creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to
his offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him
the immortal principle of the soul; and around this they
proceeded to fashion a mortal body, and made it to be
the vehicle of the soul, and constructed within the body a
soul of another nature which was mortal.
Plato, Timaeus, 69B
6 This power of self-nutrition can be isolated from the other
powers mentioned, but not they from it—in mortal beings
at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only
psychic power they possess.
This is the originative power the possession of which
leads us to speak of things as living at all, but it is the
possession of sensation that leads us for the first time to
speak of living things as animals; for even those beings
which possess no power of local movement but do
possess the power of sensation we call animals and not
merely living things,
Aristotle, On the Soul, 413a31
7 The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The
terms cause and source have many senses. But the soul
is the cause of its body alike in all three senses which we
explicitly recognize. It is (a) the source or origin of
movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the essence of the
whole living body.
That it is the last, is clear; for in everything the
essence is identical with the ground of its being, and
here, in the case of living things, their being is to live,
and of their being and their living the soul in them is the
cause or source. Further, the actuality of whatever is
potential is identical with its formulable essence.
It is manifest that the soul is also the final cause of its
body. For Nature, like mind, always does whatever it does
for the sake of something, which something is its end. To
that something corresponds in the case of animals the
soul and in this it follows the order of nature; all natural
bodies are organs of the soul. This is true of those that
enter into the constitution of plants as well as of those
which enter into that of animals. This shows that that for
the sake of which they are is soul. We must here recall
the two senses of ‘that for the sake of which’, viz. (a) the
end to achieve which, and (b) the being in whose
interest, anything is or is done.
We must maintain, further, that the soul is also the
cause of the living body as the original source of local
movement. The power of locomotion is not found,
however, in all living things. But change of quality and
change of quantity are also due to the soul. Sensation is
held to be a qualitative alteration, and nothing except
what has soul in it is capable of sensation. The same
holds of the quantitative changes which constitute
growth and decay; nothing grows or decays naturally
except what feeds itself, and nothing feeds itself except
what has a share of soul in it.
Aristotle, On the Soul, 415b8
8 As to being what is called an animal and a living thing, we
find that in all beings endowed with both characteristics
(viz. being an animal and being alive) there must bea
single identical part in virtue of which they live and are
called animals; for an animal qua animal cannot avoid
being alive. But a thing need not, though alive, be
animal, for plants live without having sensation, and it is
by sensation that we distinguish animal from what is not
animal.
Aristotle, On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On
Breathing, 467b18
9 Of necessity, life must be coincident with the maintenance
of heat, and what we call death is its destruction.
Aristotle, On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On
Breathing, 469b18
10 Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to
animal life in such a way that it is impossible to
determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which
side thereof an intermediate form should lie. Thus, next
after lifeless things in the upward scale comes the plant,
and of plants one will differ from another as to its amount
of apparent vitality; and, in a word, the whole genus of
plants, whilst it is devoid of life as compared with an
animal, is endowed with life as compared with other
corporeal entities. Indeed, as we just remarked, there is
observed in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards
the animal. So, in the sea, there are certain objects
concerning which one would be at a loss to determine
whether they be animal or vegetable. For instance,
certain of these objects are fairly rooted, and in several
cases perish if detached; thus the pinna is rooted toa
particular spot, and the solen (or razor-shell) cannot
survive withdrawal from its burrow. Indeed, broadly
speaking, the entire genus of testaceans have a
resemblance to vegetables, if they be contrasted with
such animals as are capable of progression.
In regard to sensibility, some animals give no
indication whatsoever of it, whilst others indicate it but
indistinctly. Further, the substance of some of these
intermediate creatures is fleshlike, as is the case with the
so-called tethya (or ascidians) and the acalephae (or sea-
anemones); but the sponge is in every respect like a
vegetable. And so throughout the entire animal scale
there is a graduated differentiation in amount of vitality
and in capacity for motion.
A similar statement holds good with regard to habits of
life. Thus of plants that spring from seed the one function
seems to be the reproduction of their own particular
species, and the sphere of action with certain animals is
similarly limited. The faculty of reproduction, then, is
common to all alike. If sensibility be superadded, then
their lives will differ from one another in respect to sexual
intercourse through the varying amount of pleasure
derived therefrom, and also in regard to modes of
parturition and ways of rearing their young. Some
animals, like plants, simply procreate their own species at
definite seasons; other animals busy themselves also in
procuring food for their young, and after they are reared
quit them and have no further dealings with them; other
animals are more intelligent and endowed with memory,
and they live with their offspring for a longer period and
on amore social footing.
The life of animals, then, may be divided into two acts
—procreation and feeding; for on these two acts all their
interests and life concentrate. Their food depends chiefly
on the substance of which they are severally constituted;
for the source of their growth in all cases will be this
substance. And whatsoever is in conformity with nature is
pleasant, and all animals pursue pleasure in keeping with
their nature.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 588b4
11 If we except the movement of the universe, things with
life are the causes of the movement of all else, that is of
all that are not moved by one another by mutual impact.
And so all their motions have a term or limit, inasmuch as
the movements of things with life have such. For all living
things both move and are moved with some object, so
that this is the term of all their movement, the end, that
is, in view. Now we see that the living creature is moved
by intellect, imagination, purpose, wish, and appetite.
And all these are reducible to mind and desire.
Aristotle, On the Motion of Animals, 700b11
12 Now (1) some existing things are eternal and divine
whilst others admit of both existence and non-existence.
But (2) that which is noble and divine is always, in virtue
of its own nature, the cause of the better in such things
as admit of being better or worse, and what is not eternal
does admit of existence and non-existence, and can
partake in the better and the worse. And (3) soul is better
than body, and the living, having soul, is thereby better
than the lifeless which has none, and being is better than
not being, living than not living. These, then, are the
reasons of the generation of animals. For since it is
impossible that such a class of things as animals should
be of an eternal nature, therefore that which comes into
being is eternal in the only way possible. Now it is
impossible for it to be eternal as an individual (though of
course the real essence of things is in the individual)—
were it such it would be eternal—but it is possible for it as
a species.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 731b24
13 One might suppose, in connexion with the origin of men
and quadrupeds, that, if ever they were really ‘earth-
born’ as some say, they came into being in one of two
ways; that either it was by the formation of a scolex at
first or else it was out of eggs. For either they must have
had in themselves the nutriment for growth (and such a
conception is a scolex) or they must have got it from
elsewhere, and that either from the mother or from part of
the conception. If then the former is impossible (I mean
that nourishment should flow to them from the earth as it
does in animals from the mother), then they must have
got it from some part of the conception, and such
generation we say is from an egg.
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 762b28
14 Whatever things we perceive to have sense, you must yet
admit to be all composed of senseless first-beginnings:
manifest tokens which are open to all to apprehend, so
far from refuting or contradicting this, do rather
themselves take us by the hand and constrain us to
believe that, as | say, living things are begotten from
senseless things. We may see in fact living worms spring
out of stinking dung, when the soaked earth has gotten
putridity after excessive rains; and all things besides
change in the same way: rivers, leaves, and glad pastures
change into cattle, cattle change their substance into our
bodies, and often out of these the powers of wild beasts
and the bodies of the strong of wing are increased.
Therefore nature changes all foods into living bodies and
engenders out of them all the senses of living creatures,
much in the same way as she dissolves dry woods into
flames and converts all things into fires. Now do you see
that it is of great moment in what sort of arrangement the
first-beginnings of things are severally placed and with
what others they are mixed up, when they impart and
receive motions?
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
15 The mind has more to do with holding the fastnesses of
life and has more sovereign sway over it than the power
of the soul. For without the understanding and the mind
no part of the soul can maintain itself in the frame the
smallest fraction of time, but follows at once in the
other’s train and passes away into the air and leaves the
cold limbs in the chill of death. But he abides in life
whose mind and understanding continue to stay with
him: though the trunk is mangled with its limbs shorn all
round about it, after the soul has been taken away on all
sides and been severed from the limbs, the trunk yet
lives and inhales the ethereal airs of life.... When ... | shall
choose to speak of the soul, showing it to be mortal
believe that | speak of the mind as well, inasmuch as
both make up one thing and are one united substance.
First of all then since | have shown the soul to be fine and
to be formed of minute bodies and made up of much
smaller first-beginnings than is the liquid of water or mist
or smoke:—for it far surpasses these in nimbleness and is
moved, when struck by a far slenderer cause.... Well then
since you see on the vessels being shattered the water
flow away on all sides, and since mist and smoke pass
away into air, believe that the soul too is shed abroad and
perishes much more quickly and dissolves sooner into its
first bodies, when once it has been taken out of the limbs
of a man and has withdrawn. For, when the body that
serves for its vessel cannot hold it, if shattered from any
cause and rarefied by the withdrawal of blood from the
veins, how can you believe that this soul can be held by
any air? How can that air which is rarer than our body
hold it in?
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
16 When the earth, all muddied by the recent flood, grew
warm again, under the kindly radiance of the sun in
heaven, she brought forth countless forms of life. In some
cases she reproduced shapes which had been previously
known, others were new and strange. It was at that time
that she gave birth to the huge Python, among the rest,
though indeed she had no wish to do so; and this snake,
whose body covered so great a stretch of the hillside,
struck terror into the new-born race of men, for they had
never known its like. The archer god, Apollo, who had
never before used such weapons against anything but
fleeing deer or timid wild goats, almost emptied his
quiver to destroy the serpent, overwhelming it with a
thousand arrows, till the venom flowed out from all its
dark wounds. Then, in case the passage of time should
blot out the memory of his glorious deed, the god
established sacred games, which he called Pythian, after
the serpent he had vanquished.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, |
17 If there were not an inborn faculty given by Nature to
each one of the organs at the very beginning, then
animals could not continue to live even for a few days, far
less for the number of years which they actually do. For
let us Suppose they were under no guardianship, lacking
in creative ingenuity and forethought; let us suppose
they were steered only by material forces, and not by any
special faculties (the one attracting what is proper to it,
another rejecting what is foreign, and yet another
causing alteration and adhesion of the matter destined to
nourish it); if we suppose this, | am sure it would be
ridiculous for us to discuss natural, or, still more,
psychical, activities—or, in fact, life as a whole.
Galen, Natural Faculties, II, 3
18 Imagine the heart to be, at the beginning, so small as to
differ in no respect from a millet-seed, or, if you will, a
bean; and consider how otherwise it is to become large
than by being extended in all directions and acquiring
nourishment throughout its whole substance, in the way
that, as | showed a short while ago, the semen is
nourished. But even this was unknown to Erasistratus—
the man who sings the artistic skill of Nature! He
imagines that animals grow like webs, ropes, sacks, or
baskets, each of which has, woven on to its end or
margin, other material similar to that of which it was
originally composed.
But this, most sapient sir, is not growth, but genesis!
For a bag, sack, garment, house, ship, or the like is said to
be still coming into existence [undergoing genesis) so
long as the appropriate form for the sake of which it is
being constructed by the artificer is still incomplete.
Then, when does it grow? Only when the basket, being
complete, with a bottom, a mouth, and a belly, as it were,
as well as the intermediate parts, now becomes larger in
all these respects. “And how can this happen?” someone
will ask. Only by our basket suddenly becoming an
animal or a plant; for growth belongs to living things
alone. Possibly you imagine that a house grows when it is
being built, or a basket when being plaited, or a garment
when being woven? It is not so, however. Growth belongs
to that which has already been completed in respect to
its form, whereas the process by which that which is still
becoming attains its form is termed not growth but
genesis. That which is, grows, while that which is not,
becomes.
Galen, Natural Faculties, II, 3
19 Now all life, even the least valuable, is an activity, and
not a blind activity like that of flame; even where there is
not sensation the activity of life is no mere haphazard
play of Movement: any object in which life is present, and
object which participates in Life, is at once enreasoned in
the sense that the activity peculiar to life is formative,
Shaping as it moves.
Life, then, aims at pattern as does the pantomimic
dancer with his set movements; the mime, in himself,
represents life, and, besides, his movements proceed in
obedience to a pattern designed to symbolize life.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, II, 16
20 Fire, air, water, earth, are in themselves soulless... and
there are no other forms of body than these four. ... None
of these, then, having life, it would be extraordinary if life
came about by bringing them together; it is impossible,
in fact, that the collocation of material entities should
produce life, or mindless entities mind.
No one, moreover, would pretend that a mere chance
mixing could give such results: some regulating principle
would be necessary, some Cause directing the admixture:
that guiding principle would be—soul.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead; VII, 2
21 Since all who think about God think of Him as living, they
only can form any conception of Him that is not absurd
and unworthy who think of Him as life itself; and,
whatever may be the bodily form that has suggested
itself to them, recognize that it is by life it lives or does
not live, and prefer what is living to what is dead; who
understand that the living bodily form itself, however it
may outshine all others in splendour, overtop them in
size, and excel them in beauty, is quite a distinct thing
from the life by which it is quickened; and who look upon
the life as incomparably superior in dignity and worth to
the mass which is quickened and animated by it. Then,
when they go on to look into the nature of the life itself, if
they find it mere nutritive life, without sensibility, such as
that of plants, they consider it inferior to sentient life,
such as that of cattle; and above this, again, they place
intelligent life, such as that of men. And, perceiving that
even this is subject to change, they are compelled to
place above it, again, that unchangeable life, which is not
at one time foolish, at another time wise, but on the
contrary is wisdom itself.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, I, 8
22 We can gather to what things life belongs and to what it
does not from such things as manifestly possess life. Now
life manifestly belongs to animals, for it is said in the
book on Plants [Aristotle’s) that “in animals life is
manifest.” We must, therefore, distinguish living from
non-living things by comparing them to that by reason of
which animals are said to live, and this it is in which life is
manifested first and remains last. We say then that an
animal begins to live when it begins to move of itself, and
as long as such movement appears in it, so long is it
considered to be alive. When it no longer has any
movement of itself, but is only moved by another power,
then its life is said to fail, and the animal to be dead.
From this it is clear that those things arc properly called
living that move themselves by some kind of movement,
whether it be movement properly so called, as the act of
an imperfect thing, that is, of a thing in potency, is called
movement; or movement in a more general sense, as
when said of the act of a perfect thing, as understanding
and feeling are called movement according to the book
on the Sou/ [Aristotle’s]. Accordingly all things are said to
be alive that determine themselves to movement or
operation of any kind; but those things that cannot by
their nature do so, cannot be called living, unless by
some likeness.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 18, 1
23 Life is in the highest degree properly in God. In proof of
this it must be considered that since a thing is said to live
insofar as it operates of itself and not as moved by
another, the more perfectly this is found in anything, the
more perfect is the life of that thing.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 18, 3
24 Bodies not endowed with life, which are the lowest in the
order of nature, generate their like, not through some
medium, but by themselves; thus fire by itself generates
fire. But living bodies, as being more powerful, act so as
to generate their like, both without and with a medium.
Without a medium—in the work of nutrition, in which
flesh generates flesh; with a medium—in the act of
generation, because the seed of the animal or plant
derives a certain active force from the soul of the
generator, just as the instrument derives a certain
moving power from the principal agent. And as it matters
not whether we say that something is moved by the
instrument or by the principal agent, so neither does it
matter whether we say that the soul of the generated is
caused by the soul of the generator, or by some seminal
power derived from it.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 118, 1
25 God is effectively the life both of the soul by charity, and
of the body by the soul; but formally charity is the life of
the soul, even as the soul is the life of the body.
Consequently we may conclude from this that just as the
soul is immediately united to the body, so is charity to
the soul.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 23, 2
26 | see the water, | see the fire, the air, the earth, and all
their combinations meet their dissolution and endure but
little;
and yet these things were creatures, so that if that
which | have said to thee be true, they ought to be secure
against corruption.
The Angels, brother, and the unsullied country in
which thou art, may be declared to be created, even as
they are, in their entire being;
but the elements which thou hast named and all the
things compounded of them, have by created virtue been
informed.
Created was the matter which they hold, created was
the informing virtue in these stars which sweep around
them.
The life of every brute and of the plants is drawn from
compounds having potency, by the ray and movement of
the sacred lights.
But your life is breathed without mean by the supreme
beneficence who maketh it enamoured of itself, so that
thereafter it doth ever long for it.
Dante, Paradiso, VII, 124
27 Panurge. Now let our microcosm be fancied conform to
this model in all its members; lending, borrowing, and
owing, that is to say, according to its own nature. For
nature hath not to any other end created man, but to
owe, borrow, and lend; no greater is the harmony
amongst the heavenly spheres, than that which shall be
found in its well ordered policy. The intention of the
founder of this microcosm is, to have a soul therein to be
entertained, which is lodged there, as a guest with its
host, that it may live there for awhile. Life consisteth in
blood; blood is the seat of the soul; therefore the chiefest
work of the microcosm is, to be making blood continually.
At this forge are exercised all the members of the
body; none is exempted from labour, each operates apart,
and doth its proper office. And such is their hierarchy,
that perpetually the one borrows from the other, the one
lends the other, and the one is the other’s debtor. The
stuff and matter convenient, which nature giveth to be
turned into blood, is bread and wine. All kind of
nourishing victuals is understood to be comprehended in
those two, and from hence in the Gothish tongue is called
companage. To find out this meat and drink, to prepare
and boil it, the hands are put to work, the feet do walk
and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass; the
eyes guide and conduct all; the appetite in the orifice of
the stomach, by means of a little sourish black humour,
called melancholy, which is transmitted thereto from the
milt, giveth warning to shut in the food. The tongue doth
make the first essay, and tastes it; the teeth to chaw it,
and the stomach doth receive, digest, and chilify it. The
mesaraic veins suck out of it what is good and fit, leaving
behind the excrements, which are, through special
conduits, for that purpose, voided by an expulsive
faculty. Thereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being
changed again, it by the virtue of that new transmutation
becomes blood. What joy, conjecture you, will then be
found amonst those officers, when they see this rivulet of
gold, which is their sole restorative?
Rabelais, Gargantua and Panlagruel, Ill, 4
28 The eternity of things is connected with the reciprocal
interchange of generation and decay; and as the sun,
now in the east and then in the west, completes the
measure of time by his ceaseless revolutions, so are the
fleeting things of mortal existence made eternal through
incessant change, and kinds and species are perpetuated
though individuals die.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 14
29 Nature does nothing in vain, nor works in any round-
about way when a shorter path lies open to her, that an
egg can be produced in no other manner than that in
which we now see it engendered, viz., by the concurring
act of the cock and hen. Neither, in like manner, in the
present constitution of things, can a cock or hen ever be
produced otherwise than from an egg. Thus (he cock and
the hen exist for the sake of the egg, and the egg, in the
same way, is their antecedent cause; it were therefore
reasonable to ask, with Plutarch, which of these was the
prior, the egg or the fowl? Now the fowl is prior by nature,
but the egg is prior in time; for that which is the more
excellent is naturally first; but that from which a certain
thing is produced must be reputed first in respect of time.
Or we may say; this egg is older than that fowl (the fowl
having been produced from it); and, on the contrary this
fowl existed before that egg (which she has laid). And
this is the round that makes the race of the common fowl
eternal; now pullet, now egg, the series is continued in
perpetuity; from frail and perishing individuals an
immortal species is engendered.
William Harvey, Animal Generation, 28
30 If there were machines which bore a resemblance to our
body and imitated our actions as far as it was morally
possible to do so, we should always have two very certain
tests by which to recognise that, for all that, they were
not real men. The first is, that they could never use
speech or other signs as we do when placing our
thoughts on record for the benefit of others. For we can
easily understand a machine’s being constituted so that
it can utter words, and even emit some responses to
action on it of a corporeal kind, which brings about a
change in its organs; for instance, if it is touched ina
particular part it may ask what we wish to say to it; if in
another part it may exclaim that it is being hurt, and so
on. But it never happens that it arranges its speech in
various ways, in order to reply appropriately to
everything that may be said in its presence, as even the
lowest type of man can do. And the second difference is,
that although machines can perform certain things as
well as or perhaps better than any of us can do, they
infallibly fall short in others, by the which means we may
discover that they did not act from knowledge, but only
from the disposition of their organs. For while reason is a
universal instrument which can serve for all
contingencies, these organs have need of some special
adaptation for every particular action. From this it follows
that it is morally impossible that there should be
sufficient diversity in any machine to allow it to act in all
the events of life in the same way as our reason causes us
to act.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, V
31 Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within
US.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial, V
32 The arithmetical machine produces effects which
approach nearer to thought than all the actions of
animals. But it does nothing which would enable us to
attribute will to it, as to the animals.
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 340
33 If an animal did by mind what it does by instinct, and if it
spoke by mind what it speaks by instinct, in hunting and
in warning its mates that the prey is found or lost, it
would indeed also speak in regard to those things which
affect it closer, as example, "Gnaw me this cord which is
wounding me, and which | cannot reach."
Pascal, Pensées, VI, 342
34 The effects of reason increase continually whereas
instinct always remains in the same state. Beehives were
as well laid out a thousand years ago as today, and each
bee forms that hexagon as exactly the first time as the
last. It is the same with everything animals make by that
hidden motion. Nature teaches them in response to the
pressure of necessity; but this frail knowledge dies with
its need: as they receive it without study, they do not
have the happiness of preserving it; and every time they
are given it, they find it new, because nature, whose
object is merely to maintain animals in an order of limited
perfection, infuses in them this necessary knowledge,
always the same, lest they perish, and does not allow
them to add to it lest they go beyond the boundaries
prescribed to them.
Pascal, Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum
33 Raphael. the Sixt, and of Creation last arose
With Eevning Harps and Mattin, when God said,
Let th' Earth bring forth Fowle living in her kinde,
Cattel and Creeping things, and Beast of the Earth,
Each in thir kinde. The Earth obey’d, and strait
Op’ning her fertil Woomb teem’d at a Birth
Innumerous living Creatures, perfet formes,
Limb’d and full grown: out of the ground up rose
As from his Laire the wilde Beast where he wonns
In Forrest wilde, in Thicket, Brake, or Den;
Among the Trees in Pairs they rose, they walk’d:
The Cattel in the Fields and Meddowes green:
Those rare and solitarie, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad Herds upsprung.
The grassie Clods now Calv’d, now half appeer’d
The Tawnie Lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from Bonds,
And Rampant shakes his Brinded main; the Ounce,
The Libbard, and the Tyger, as the Moale
Rising, the crumbl’d Earth above them threw
In Hillocks; the swift Stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head: scarse from his mould
Behemoth biggest born of Earth upheav’d
His vastness: Fleec’t the Flocks and bleating rose,
As Plants: ambiguous between Sea and Land
The River Horse and scalie Crocodile.
At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
Insect or Worme; those wav’d thir limber fans
For wings, and smallest Lineaments exact
In all the Liveries dect of Summers pride
With spots of Gold and Purple, azure and green:
These as a line thir long dimension drew,
Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all
Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kinde
Wondrous in length and corpulence involv’d
Thir Snakie foulds, and added wings. First crept
The Parsimonious Emmet, provident
Of future, in small room large heart enclos’d,
Pattern of just equalitie perhaps
Hereafter, join’d in her popular Tribes
Of Commonaltie: swarming next appeer’d
The Femal Bee that feeds her Husband Drone
Deliciously, and builds her waxen Cells
With Honey stor’d: the rest are numberless,
And thou thir Natures know’st, and gav’st them Names,
Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown
The Serpent suttl’st Beast of all the field,
Of huge extent somtimes, with brazen Eyes
And hairie Main terrific, though to thee
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.
Now Heav’n in all her Glorie shon, and rowld
Her motions, as the great first-Movers hand
First wheeld thir course; Earth in her rich attire
Consummate lovly smil’d; Aire, Water, Earth,
By Fowl, Fish, Beast, was flown, was swum, was walkt
Frequent; and of the Sixt day yet remain’d;
There wanted yet the Master work, the end
Of all yet don; a Creature who not prone
And Brute as other Creatures, but endu’d
With Sanctitic of Reason, might erect
His Stature, and upright with Front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with Heav’n,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends, thither with heart and voice and eyes
Directed in Devotion, to adore
And worship God Supream, who made him chief
Of all his works.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VII, 449
36 We must, .. consider wherein an oak differs from a mass
of matter, and that seems to me to be in this, that the
one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how
united, the other such a disposition of them as
constitutes the parts of an oak; and such an organization
of those parts as is fit to receive and distribute
nourishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark,
and leaves etc., of an oak, in which consists the
vegetable life. That being then one plant which has such
an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking
of one common life, it continues to be the same plant as
long as it partakes of the same life though that life be
communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to
the living plant, in a like continued organization
conformable to that sort of plants. For this organization,
being at any one instant in any one collection of matter,
is in that particular concrete distinguished from all other,
and is that individual life, which existing constantly from
that moment both forwards and backwards, in the same
continuity of insensibly succeeding parts united to the
living body of the plant, it has that identity which makes
the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts of the same
plant, during all the time that they exist united in that
continued organization, which is fit to convey that
common life to all the parts so united.
The case is not so much different in brutes but that
any one may hence see what makes an animal and
continues it the same. Something we have like this in
machines, and may serve to illustrate it. For example,
what is a watch? It is plain it is nothing but a fit
organization or construction of parts to a certain end,
which, when a sufficient force is added to it, it is capable
to attain. If we would suppose this machine one
continued body, all whose organized parts were repaired,
increased, or diminished by a constant addition or
separation of insensible parts, with one common life, we
should have something very much like the body of an
animal; with this difference, That, in an animal the fitness
of the organization, and the motion wherein life consists,
begin together, the motion coming from within; but in
machines the force coming sensibly from without, is often
away when the organ is in order, and well fitted to
receive it.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XXVII,
4-5
37 That there should be more species of intelligent creatures
above us, than there are of sensible and material below
us, is probable to me from hence: that in all the visible
corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps. All quite
down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a
continued series of things, that in each remove differ very
little one from the other. There are fishes that have wings,
and are not strangers to the airy region: and there are
some birds that are inhabitants of the water, whose blood
is cold as fishes, and their flesh so like in taste that the
scrupulous are allowed them on fish-days. There are
animals so near of kin both to birds and beasts that they
are in the middle between both: amphibious animals link
the terrestrial and aquatic together; seals live at land and
sea, and porpoises have the warm blood and entrails of a
hog; not to mention what is confidently reported of
mermaids, or sea-men. There are some brutes that seem
to have as much knowledge and reason as some that are
called men: and the animal and vegetable kingdoms are
SO nearly joined, that, if you will take the lowest of one
and the highest of the other, there will scarce be
perceived any great difference between them: and so on,
till we come to the lowest and the most inorganical parts
of matter, we shall find everywhere that the several
species are linked together, and differ but in almost
insensible degrees.
Locke, Concerning Human Underslanding, Bk. I/l, Vl, 12
38 Any one almost would take it for an affront to be asked
what he meant by it [life]. And yet if it comes in question,
whether a plant that lies ready formed in the seed have
life; whether the embryo in an egg before incubation, ora
man in a swoon without sense or motion, be alive or no; it
is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct, settled idea does
not always accompany the use of so known a word as that
of life is.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings, Bk. Ill, X, 22
39 In a watch, one part is the instrument by which the
movement of the others is effected, but one wheel is not
the efficient cause of the production of the other. One
part is certainly present for the sake of another, but it
does not owe its presence to the agency of that other. For
this reason, also, the producing cause of the watch and
its form is not contained in the nature of this material,
but lies outside the watch in a being that can act
according to ideas of a whole which its causality makes
possible. Hence one wheel in the watch does not produce
the other, and, still less, does one watch produce other
watches, by utilizing, or organizing, foreign material;
hence it does not of itself replace parts of which it has
been deprived, nor, if these are absent in the original
construction, does it make good the deficiency by the
subvention of the rest; nor does it, so to speak, repair its
own casual disorders. But these are all things which we
are justified in expecting from organized nature. An
organized being is, therefore, not a mere machine. Fora
machine has solely motive power, whereas an organized
being possesses inherent formative power, and such,
moreover, as it can impart to material devoid of it—
material which it organizes. This, therefore, is a self-
propagating formative power, which cannot be explained
by the capacity of movement alone, that is to say, by
mechanism.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 65
40 The resurrection of a spiritual body from a natural body
does not appear in itself a more wonderful instance of
power than the germination of a blade of wheat from the
grain, or of an oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an
intelligent being so placed as to be conversant only with
inanimate or full-grown objects, and never to have
witnessed the process of vegetation or growth; and were
another being to show him two little pieces of matter, a
grain of wheat and an acorn, to desire him to examine
them, to analyze them if he pleased, and endeavor to
find out their properties and essences; and then to tell
him, that however trifling these little bits of matter might
appear to him, that they possessed such curious powers
of selection, combination, arrangement, and almost of
creation that upon being put into the ground they would
choose, among all the dirt and moisture that surrounded
them, those parts which best suited their purpose, that
they would collect and arrange these parts with
wonderful taste, judgment, and execution, and would rise
up into beautiful forms, scarcely in any respect analogous
to the little bits of matter which were first placed in the
earth. | feel very little doubt that the imaginary being
which | have supposed would hesitate more, would
require better authority and stronger proofs, before he
believed these strange assertions than if he had been
told that a being of mighty power, who had been the
cause of all that he saw around him and of that existence
of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act
of power upon the death and corruption of human
creatures, raise up the essence of thought in an
incorporeal, or at least invisible, form to give it a happier
existence in another state.
Malthus, Population, XII
41 Wagner. \It flashes, see! Now truly we may hold
That if from substances a hundredfold,
Through mixture'—for on mixture all depends—
Man’s substance gently be consolidated,
In an alembic sealed and segregated,
And properly be cohobated,
In quiet and success the labour ends.
Turning toward the furnace again.
"Twill be! The mass is working clearer,
Conviction gathers, truer, nearer.
What men as Nature’s mysteries would hold,
All that to test by reason we make bold,
And what she once was wont to organize,
That we bid now to crystallize.
Mephistopheles. Whoever lives long learns full many
things;
By naught in this world can he ever be surprised.
I’ve seen already in my wanderings
Many a mortal who was crystallized.
Wag. [hitherto constantly attentive to the phial]
It rises, flashes, gathers on;
A moment, and the deed is done.
A great design at first seems mad; but we
Henceforth will laugh at chance in procreation,
And such a brain that is to think transcendently
Will be a thinker’s own creation.
Looking at the phial rapturously.
The glass resounds with lovely might;
It dims, it clears; life must begin to be,
A dainty figure greets my sight;
A pretty manikin | see.
What more do we or does the world want now?
The mystery’s within our reach.
Come, hearken to this sound, and listen how
It turns to voice, it turns to speech.
Homunculus [in the phial, to Wagner]
Well, Daddy! how are you? It was no jest.
Come, press me tenderly upon your breast,
But not too hard, for fear the glass might shatter.
That is the property of matter:
For what is natural the All has place;
What'’s artificial needs restricted space.
Goethe, Faust, 11, 2, 6848
42 Life is the one universal soul, which, by virtue of the
enlivening BREATH, and the informing word, all organized
bodies have in common, each after its kind.
Coleridge, Aids to Reflection
43 The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Shelley, Adonais, LI
44 Was it that this old carpenter had been a lifelong
wanderer, whose much rolling to and fro not only had
gathered no moss, but what is more, had rubbed off
whatever small outward clingings might have originally
pertained to him? He was a stripped abstract; an
unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born
babe; living without premeditated reference to this world
or the next-You might almost say, that this strange
uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelli-
gence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to
work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because
he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all
these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and
dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure
manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have
early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was
like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful
multum in parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the
exterior—though a little swelled—of a common pocket-
knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes,
but also screw-drivers, corkscrews, tweezers, awls, pens,
rulers, nail-filers, counter-sinkers. So, if his superiors
wanted to use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they
had to do was to open that part of him, and the screw was
fast: or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there
they were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omni-tooled, open-and-
shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an
automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he
had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did
its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver,
or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there
it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years
or more. And this it was, this same unaccountable,
cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept hima
great part of the time soliloquising; but only like an
unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquises;
or rather, his body was a sentiy-box and this soliloquiser
on guard there, and talking all the time to keep himself
awake.
Melville, Moby Dick, CVII
45 There is no exception to the rule that every organic being
naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not
destroyed, the earth would soon be cervered by the
progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has
doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than
a thousand years, there would literally not be standing-
room for his progeny.
Darwin, Origin of Species, III
46 It is good... to try in imagination to give to any one
species an advantage over another. Probably in no single
instance should we know what to do. This ought to
convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of
all organic beings; a conviction as necessary as it is
difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep steadily
in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in
a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life,
during some season of the year, during each generation
or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great
destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may
console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of
nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is
generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and
the happy survive and multiply.
Darwin, Origin of Species, III
47 The affinities of all the beings of the same class have
sometimes been represented by a great tree. | believe
this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and
budding t\rigs may represent existing species; and those
produced during former years may represent the long
succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all
the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides,
and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and
branches, in the same manner as species and groups of
species have at all times overmastered other species in
the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great
branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were
themselves once, when the tree was young, budding
twigs, and this connection of the former and present buds
by ramifying branches may well represent the
classification of all extinct and living species in groups
subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which
flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or
three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and
bear the other branches; so with the species which lived
during long-past geological periods very few have left
living and modified descendants. From the first growth of
the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and
dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes
may represent those whole orders, families, and genera
which have now no living representatives, and which are
known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there
see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low
down in a tree, and which by some chance has been
favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we
occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or
Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its
affinities two large branches of life, and which has
apparently been saved from fatal competition by having
inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth
to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and
overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by
generation | believe it has been with the great Tree of
Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the
crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its
everbranching and beautiful ramifications.
Darwin, Origin of Species, IV
48 Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully
satisfied with the view that each species has been
independently created. To my mind it accords better with
what we know of the lau-s impressed on matter by the
Creator, that the production and extinction of the past
and present inhabitants of the world should have been
due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth
and death of the individual. When | view all beings not as
special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some
few beings which lived long before the first bed of the
Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to
become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely
infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered
likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now
living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far
distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic
beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of
species in each genus, and all the species in many
genera, have left no descendants, but have become
utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into
futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and
widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and
dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately
prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all
the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those
which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel
certain that the ordinary succession by generation has
never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has
desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some
confidence to a secure future of great length. And as
natural selection works solely by and for the good of each
being, ail corporeal and mental endowments will tend to
progress towards perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank,
clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds
singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about,
and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to
reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so
different from each other, and dependent upon each
other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by
lau-s acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest
sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance
which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from
the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and
from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead
to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural
Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the
Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of
nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object
which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is
grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so
simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and
most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Darwin, Origin of Species, XV
49 We have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length,
but not, it may be said, of noble quality. The world, it has
often been remarked, appears as if it had long been
preparing for the advent of man: and this, in one sense is
strictly true, for he owes his birth to a long line of
progenitors. If any single link in this chain had never
existed, man would not have been exactly what he now
is. Unless we wilfully close our eyes, we may, with our
present knowledge, approximately recognise our
parentage; nor need We feel ashamed of it. The most
humble organism is something much higher than the
inorganic dust under our feet; and no one with an
unbiased mind can study any living creature, however
humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its
marvellous structure and properties.
Darwin, Descent of Man, I, 6
50 | propose ... to prove that the science of vital phenomena
must have the same foundations as the science of the
phenomena of inorganic bodies, and that there is no
difference in this respect between the principles of
biological science and those of physico-chemical science.
Indeed, as we have already said, the goal which the
experimental method sets itself is everywhere the same;
it consists in connecting natural phenomena with their
necessary conditions or with their immediate causes. In
biology, since these conditions are known, physiologists
can guide the manifestation of vital phenomena as
physicists guide the natural phenomena, the laws of
which they have discovered; but in doing so,
experimenters do not act on life.
Yet there is absolute determinism in all the sciences,
because every phenomenon being necessarily linked with
physico-chemical conditions, men of science can alter
them to master the phenomenon, i.e., to prevent or to
promote its appearing. As to this, there is absolutely no
question in the case of inorganic bodies. | mean to prove
that it is the same with living bodies, and That for them
also determinism exists.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, 11,1
51 A living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine
endowed with the most marvellous properties and set
going by means of the most complex and delicate
mechanism. There are no forces opposed and struggling
one with another; in nature there can be only order and
disorder, harmony or discord.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, II, |
52 The organism is merely a living machine so constructed
that, on the one hand, the outer environment is in free
communication with the inner organic environment, and,
on the other hand, the organic units have protective
functions, to place in reserve the materials of life and
uninterruptedly to maintain the humidity, warmth and
other conditions essential to vital activity. Sickness and
death are merely a dislocation or disturbance of the
mechanism which regulates the contact of vital
stimulants with organic units.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, Il, 1
53 Life Is creation. In fact, a created organism is a machine
which necessarily works by virtue of the physico-
chemical properties of its constituent elements. To-day
we differentiate three kinds of properties exhibited in the
phenomena of living beings: physical properties,
chemical properties and vital properties. But the term
“vital properties" is itself only provisional; because we
call properties vital which we have not yet been able to
reduce to physico-chemical terms; but in that we shall
doubtless succeed some day.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, 11, 2
54 If some iron filings be sprinkled on a table and a magnet
brought near them, they will fly through the air fora
certain distance and stick to its surface. A savage seeing
the phenomenon explains it as the result of an attraction
or love between the magnet and the filings. But let a card
cover the poles of the magnet, and the filings will press
forever against its surface without its ever occurring to
them to pass around its sides and thus come into more
direct contact with the object of their love. Blow bubbles
through a tube into the bottom of a pail of water, they
will rise to the surface and mingle with the air. Their
action may again be poetically interpreted as due toa
longing to recombine with the mother-atmosphere above
the surface. But if you invert a jar full of water over the
pail, they will rise and remain lodged beneath its bottom,
shut in from the outer air, although a slight deflection
from their course at the outset, or a re-descent towards
the rim of the jar when they found their upward course
impeded, would easily have set them free.
If now we pass from such actions as these to those of
living things, We notice a striking difference. Romeo
wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no
obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight
a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built
between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their
faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the
filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way,
by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips
directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it
reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it
is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified
indefinitely.
William James, Psychology, |
55 In a general theory of evolution the inorganic comes first,
then the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, then
forms of life that possess mentality, and finally those like
ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as we
keep to the consideration of purely outward facts, even
the most complicated facts of biology, our task as
evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the
time with matter and its aggregations and separations;
and although our treatment must perforce be
hypothetical, this does not prevent it from being
continuous. The point which as evolutionists we are
bound to hold fast to is that all the new forms of being
that make their appearance are really nothing more than
results of the redistribution of the original and
unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which,
chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed
and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our
brains; and the "evolution" of the brains, if understood,
would be simply the account of how the atoms came to
be so caught and jammed. In this story no new natures,
no factors not present at the beginning, are introduced at
any later stage.
But with the dawn of consciousness an entirely new
nature seems to slip in, something whereof the potency
was not given in the mere outward atoms of the original
chaos.
William James. Psychology, VI
56 Is each thing born fitted to particular other things, and to
them exclusively, as locks are fitted to their keys?
Undoubtedly this must be believed to be so. Each nook
and cranny of creation, down to our very skin and
entrails, has its living inhabitants, with organs suited to
the place, to devour and digest the food it harbors and to
meet the dangers it conceals; and the minuteness of
adaptation thus shown in the way of structure knows no
bounds. Even so are there no bounds to the minuteness
of adaptation in the way of conduct which the several
inhabitants display.
William James, Psychology, XXIV
57 If... all organic instincts are conservative, historically
acquired, and are directed towards regression, towards
reinstatement of something earlier, we are obliged to
place all the results of organic development to the credit
of external, disturbing, and distracting influences. The
rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not
have wanted to change, would, if circumstances had
remained the same, have always merely repeated the
Same course of existence. But in the last resort it must
have been the evolution of our earth, and its relation to
the son, that has left its imprint on the development of
organisms. The conservative organic instincts have
absorbed every one of these enforced alterations in the
course of life and have stored them for repetition; they
thus present the delusive appearance of forces striving
after change and progress, while they are merely
endeavouring to reach an old goal by ways both old and
new. This final goal of all organic striving can be stated
too. It would be counter to the conservative nature of
instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto
reached. It must rather be an ancient starting point,
which the living being left long ago, and to which it harks
back again by all the circuitous paths of development. If
we may assume as an experience admitting of no
exception that everything living dies from causes within
itself, and returns to the inorganic, we can only say "The
goal of all life is death" and, casting back, "The inanimate
was there before the animate."
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, V
58 At one time or another, by some operation of force which
still completely baffles conjecture, the properties of life
were awakened in lifeless matter. Perhaps the process
was a prototype resembling that other one which later in
a certain stratum of living matter gave rise to
consciousness. The tension then aroused in the
previously inanimate matter strove to attain an
equilibrium; the first instinct was present, that to return
to lifelessness. The living substance at that time had
death within easy reach; there was probably only a short
course of life to run, the direction of which was
determined by the chemical structure of the young
organism. So through a long period of time the living
substance may have been constantly created anew, and
easily extinguished, until decisive external influences
altered in such a way as to compel the still surviving
substance to ever greater deviations from the original
path of life, and to ever more complicated and circuitous
routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These
circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the
conservative instincts, would be neither more nor less
than the phenomena of life as we now know it. If the
exclusively conservative nature of the instincts is
accepted as true, it is impossible to arrive at any other
suppositions with regard to the origin and goal of life.
If these conclusions sound strangely in our ears,
equally so will those we are led to make concerning the
great groups of instincts which we regard as lying behind
the vital phenomena of organisms. The postulate of the
self-preservative instincts we ascribe to every living
being stands in remarkable contrast to the supposition
that the whole life of instinct serves the one end of
bringing about death. The theoretic significance of the
instincts of self-preservation, power, and self-assertion,
shrinks to nothing, seen in this light, they are part-
instincts designed to secure the path to death peculiar to
the organism and to ward off possibilities of return to the
inorganic other than the immanent ones, but the
enigmatic struggle of the organism to maintain itself in
spite of all the world, a struggle that cannot be brought
into connection with anything else, disappears. It remains
to be added that the organism is resolved to die only in
its own way; even these watchmen of life were originally
the myrmidons of death. Hence, the paradox comes
about that the living organism resists with all its energy
influences (dangers) which could help it to reach its life-
goal by a short way (a short circuit, so to speak); but this
is just the behaviour that characterizes a pure instinct as
contrasted with an intelligent striving.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, V
59 Are we to follow the clue of the poet-philosopher [Plato]
and make the daring assumption that living substance
was at the time of its animation rent into small particles,
which since that time strive for reunion by means of the
sexual instincts? That these instincts—in which the
chemical affinity of inanimate matter is continued—
passing through the realm of the protozoa gradually
overcome all hindrances set to their striving by an
environment charged with stimuli dangerous to life, and
are impelled by it to form a protecting covering layer?
And that these dispersed fragments of living
substance thus achieve a multicellular organization, and
finally transfer to the germ-cells in a highly concentrated
form the instinct for reunion? | think this is the point at
which to break off.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, VI
60 All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like
an effort to accumulate energy and then to let it flow into
flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of
which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work.
That is what the vital impetus, passing through matter,
would fain do all at once. It would succeed, no doubt, if
its power were unlimited, or if some reinforcement could
come to it from without. But the impetus is finite, and it
has been given once for all. It cannot overcome all
obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes turned
aside, sometimes divided, always opposed; and the
evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this
conflict.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, III
61 If our analysis is correct, it is consciousness, or rather
Supra-consciousness, that is at the origin of life.
Consciousness, or Supra-consciousness, is the name for
the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as
matter; consciousness, again, is the name for that which
subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the
fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this
consciousness, which is a need of creation, is made
manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies
dormant when life is condemned to automatism; it
wakens as soon as the possibility of a choice is restored.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, III
62 From our [man's] point of view, life appears in its entirety
as an immense wave which, starting from a center,
spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its
circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation:
at one single point the obstacle has been forced, the
impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that the
human form registers. Everywhere but in man,
consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone
it has kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital
movement indefinitely, although he does not draw along
with him all that life carries in itself. On other lines of
evolution there have traveled other tendencies which life
implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates,
man has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has
kept only very little. /t is as if a vague and formless
being, when we may call, as we will, man or superman,
had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by
abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are
represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by
the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is
positive and above the accidents of evolution.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, III
63 As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire
solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided
movement of descent which is materiality itself, so all
organized beings, from the humblest to the highest, from
the first origins of life to the time in which we are, and in
all places as in all times, do but evidence a angle
impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in
itself indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield
to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand
on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of
humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army
galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an
overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance
and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even
death.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, III
64 And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a
sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the
original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth
produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The
first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken
precisely then, when there took place that first increase
in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically
luxuriant morbid growth, produced by the irritant of some
unknown infiltration; this, in part pleasurable, in parta
motion of self-defence, was the primeval stage of matter,
the transition from the insubstantial to the substance.
This was the Fall. The second creation, the birth of the
organic out of the inorganic, was only another fatal stage
in the progress of the corporeal toward consciousness,
just as disease in the organism was an intoxication, a
heightening and unlicensed accentuation of its physical
state; and life, life was nothing but the next step on the
reckless path of the spirit dishonoured; nothing but the
automatic blush of matter roused to sensation and
become receptive for that which awaked it.
Mann, Magic Mountain, V
19.3 Cause
Other sections of this book treat cause in other contexts:
Section 5.7 in the context of discussions of free will; Section
6.7 in the context of discussions of demonstration; Section
15.3 in the context of discussions of fate and destiny; and
Section 17.2 in the context of discussions of scientific
method. Here the discussion concentrates on the principle of
causality and on the analysis of causation.
The passages quoted raise and explore such basic
questions as whether everything that happens has a cause
of its occurrence or a sufficient reason for happening;
whether the chain of causation leads back to some first
uncaused cause; whether everything that comes into
existence and passes away needs a cause of being as well as
of becoming, a cause that preserves it in being as long as its
existence endures; and whether the operation of causes
necessitates the production of their effects or allows some
room for chance and contingency.
The reader will find Aristotle’s famous classification of the
four causes—the formal, the material, the efficient, and the
final cause—together with the modern rejection of final
causes by such writers as Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza.
The reader will find passages in which God is conceived as
the first efficient cause and creator of nature, as the prime
mover or ultimate final cause of motion or change, and as
the only uncaused or self-caused being, The reader will also
find a denial by Hume, not of causation itself, but of our
ability to know causes and how they operate.
1 They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the
whirlwind.
Hosea 8:7
2 Timaeus. Everything that becomes or is created must of
necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause
nothing can be created.
Plato, Timaeus, 20A
3 We think we have scientific knowledge when we know the
cause, and there are four causes; (1) the definable form,
(2) an antecedent which necessitates a consequent, (3)
the efficient cause, (4) the final cause. Hence each of
these can be the middle term of a proof.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 94a20
4 Knowledge is the object of our inquiry, and men do not
think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’
of it (which is to grasp its primary cause). So clearly we
too must do this as regards both coming to be and
passing away and every kind of physical change, in order
that, knowing their principles, we may try to refer to
these principles each of our problems.
In one sense, then, (1) that out of which a thing comes
to be and which persists, is called ‘cause’, e.g. the bronze
of the statue, the silver of the bowl, and the genera of
which the bronze and the silver are species.
In another sense (2) the form or the archetype, i.e. the
statement of the essence, and its genera, are called
‘causes’ (e.g. of the octave the relation of 2:1, and
generally number). and the parts in the definition.
Again (3) the primary source of the change or coming
to rest; e.g. the man who gave advice is a cause, the
father is cause of the child, and generally what makes of
what is made and what causes change of what is
changed.
Again (4) in the sense of end or ‘that for the sake of
which' a thing is done, e.g. health is the cause of walking
about. (‘Why is he walking about?’ we say. ‘To be
healthy’, and, having said that, we think we have
assigned the cause.) The same is true also of all the
intermediate steps which are brought about through the
action of something else as means towards the end, e.g.
reduction of flesh, purging, drugs, or surgical instruments
are means towards health. All these things are 'for the
sake of' the end, though they differ from one another in
that some are activities, others instruments.
Aristotle, Physics, 194b17
5 The causes concerned in the generation of the works of
nature are, aS we see, more than one. There is the final
cause and there is the motor cause. Now we must decide
which of these two causes comes first, which second.
Plainly, however, that cause is the first which we call the
final one. For this is the Reason, and the Reason forms the
starting-point, alike in the works of art and in works of
nature.
Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 639b12
6 The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the
moving cause of a house is the art of the builder, the final
cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and
stones, and the form is the definition.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 996b5
7 Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes:
chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or
appetite.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1369a5
8 There are things... for which it is not sufficient to assign
one cause; you must give several, one of which at the
same time is the real cause. For instance should you see
the lifeless body of a man lying at some distance, it
would be natural to mention all the different causes of
death, in order that the one real cause of that man's
death be mentioned among them. Thus you may be able
to prove that he has not died by steel or cold or from
disease or haply from poison; yet we know that it is
something of this kind which has befallen him.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, VI
9 In what will all this ostentation end?
The lab’ring mountain scarce brings forth a mouse.
Horace, Ars Poetica
10 By their fruits ye shall know them.
Matthew 7:20
11 Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Galatians 6:7
12 How great a matter a little fire kindleth!
James 3:5
13 It is His occult power which pervades all things, and is
present in all without being contaminated, which gives
being to all that is, and modifies and limits its existence;
so that without Him it would not be thus, or thus, nor
would have any being at all. If, then, in regard to that
outward form which the workman’s hand imposes on his
work, we do not say that Rome and Alexandria were built
by masons and architects, but by the kings by whose will,
plan, and resources they were built, so that the one has
Romulus, the other Alexander, for its founder; with how
much greater reason ought we to say that God alone is
the Author of all natures since He neither uses for His
work any material which was not made by Him, nor any
workmen w ho were not also made by Him, and since, if
He were, so to speak, to withdraw from created things His
creative power, they would straightway relapse into the
nothingness in which they were before they were
created?
Augustine, City of God, XII, 25
14 In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient
causes. There is no case known (nor indeed, is it possible)
in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself,
because in that case it would be prior to itself, which is
impossible.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 2,3
15 In efficient causes it is impossible to proceed to infinity
per se —thus, there cannot be an infinite number of
causes that are per se required for a certain effect; for
instance, that a stone be moved by a stick, the stick by
the hand, and so on to infinity. But it is not impossible to
proceed to infinity accidentally as regards efficient
causes; for instance, if all the causes thus infinitely
multiplied should have the order of only one cause, their
multiplication being accidental; as an artificer acts by
means of many hammers accidentally, because one after
the other is broken. It is accidental, therefore, that one
particular hammer acts after the action of another, and
likewise it is accidental to this particular man as
generator to be generated by another man; for he
generates as a man, and not as the son of another man.
For all men generating hold one grade in efficient causes
—-namely, the grade of a particular generator. Hence it is
not impossible for a man to be generated by man to
infinity; but such a thing would be impossible if the
generation of this man depended upon this man, and on
an elementary body, and on the sun, and so on to infinity.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 46, 2
16 It must be borne in mind that the higher the cause, the
more numerous the objects to which its causation
extends. Now the underlying principle in things is always
more universal than that which informs and restricts it;
thus, being is more universal than living, living than
understanding, matter than form. The more widely, then,
one thing underlies others, the more directly does that
thing proceed from a higher cause. Thus the thing that
underlies primarily all things belongs properly to the
causality of the supreme cause. Therefore no secondary
cause can produce anything, unless there is presupposed
in the thing produced something that is caused by a
higher cause. But creation is the production of a thing in
its entire substance, nothing being presupposed, either
uncreated or created. Hence it remains that nothing can
create except God alone, Who is the first cause.
Aquinas, Summa Theologies, |, 65, 3
j7 Every effect depends on its cause, so far as it is its cause.
But we must observe that an agent is the cause of the
becoming of its effect, but not directly of its being. This
may be seen both in artificial and in natural things. For
the builder causes the house in its becoming, but he is
not the direct cause of its being. For it is clear that the
being of the house is a result of its form, which consists in
the putting together and arrangement of the materials,
and results from the natural qualities of certain things. . .
. The same principle applies to natural things. For if an
agent is not the cause of a form as such, neither will it be
directly the cause of being which results from that form,
but it will be the cause of the effect in its becoming only.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, 104, 1
18 Thence it [the living Light] descendeth to the remotest
potencies, down, from act to act, becoming such as
maketh now mere brief contingencies;
by which contingencies | understand the generated
things which arc produced from seed, or seedless, by the
moving heaven.
The wax of these, and that which mouldeth it,
standeth not in one mode, and therefore, ‘neath the ideal
stamp, is more and less transparent;
whence cometh, that one same tree in kind better and
worse doth fruit; and ye are born with diverse genius.
Were the wax exactly moulded, and were the heaven
in its supremest virtue, the light of the signet would be all
apparent;
but nature ever furnisheth it faulty, doing as doth the
artist who hath the knack of the art and a trembling
hand.
Dante, Paradiso, X!I11, 61
19 The Devil begat darkness; darkness begat ignorance;
ignorance begat error and his brethren; error begat free-
will and presumption; free-will begat merit; merit begat
forgetfulness of God; forgetfulness begat transgression;
transgression begat superstition; superstition begat
satisfaction; satisfaction begat the mass-offering; the
mass-offering begat the priest; the priest begat unbelief;
unbelief begat king hypocrisy; hypocrisy begat traffic in
offerings for gain; traffic in offerings for grain begat
Purgatory; Purgatory begat the annual solemn vigils; the
annual vigils begat church-livings; church-livings begat
avarice; avarice begat swelling superfluity; swelling
superfluity begat fulness; fulness begat rage; rage begat
licence; licence begat empire and domination;
domination begat pomp; pomp begat ambition; ambition
begat simony; simony begat the pope and his brethren,
about the time of the Babylonish captivity.
Luther, Table Talk, H500
20 As we divided natural philosophy in general into the
inquiry of causes, and productions of effects: so that part
which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide
according to the received and sound division of causes.
The one part, which is physic, inguireth and handleth the
material and efficient causes; and the other, which is
metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, VII, 3
21 The handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in
physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and
diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given
men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and
specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of
further discovery.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, VII, 7
22 It is rightly laid down that true knowledge is that which is
deduced from causes. The division of four causes also is
not amiss: matter, form, the efficient, and end or final
cause. Of these, however, the latter is so far from being
beneficial, that it even corrupts the sciences, except in
the intercourse of man with man. The discovery of form is
considered desperate. As for the efficient cause and
matter (according to the present system of inquiry and
the received opinions concerning them, by which they
are placed remote from, and without any latent process
towards form), they are but desultory and superficial, and
of scarcely any avail to real and active knowledge.
Bacon, Novum Organu”m, II, 2
23 The knowledge of a single fact acquired through a
discovery of its causes prepares the mind to understand
and ascertain other facts without need of recourse to
experiment.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, IV
24 To one who pays attention to God’s immensity, it is clear
that nothing at all can exist which does not depend on
Him. This is true not only of everything that subsists, but
of all order, of every law, and of every reason of truth and
goodness. ... It is useless to inquire how God could from
all eternity bring it about that it should be untrue that
twice four is eight, etc.; for | admit that that cannot be
understood by us. Yet, since on the other hand | correctly
understand that nothing in any category of causation can
exist which does not depend upon God, and that it would
have been easy for Him so to appoint that we human
beings should not understand how these very things
could be otherwise than they are, it would be irrational to
doubt concerning that which we correctly understand,
because of that which we do not understand and perceive
no need to understand.
Hence neither should we think that eternal truths
depend upon the human understanding or on other
existing things; they must depend on God alone, who, as
the supreme legislator, ordained them from all eternity.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, VI
25 Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all
events to the causes immediate and instrumental; for
these are all the causes they perceive.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 11
26 Since everything ... is cause and effect, dependent and
supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held
together by a natural though imperceptible chain which
binds together things most distant and most different, 1
hold it equally impossible to know the parts without
knowing the whole and to know the whole without
knowing the parts in detail.
Pascal, Pensées, 11, 72
27 The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea
changes because of a rock.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 505
28 By cause of itself, | understand that whose essence
involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be
conceived unless existing.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Def. |
29 From a given determinate cause an effect necessarily
follows; and, on the other hand, if no determinate cause
be given, it is impossible that an effect can follow.
The knowledge of an effect depends upon and
involves the knowledge of the cause.
Those things which have nothing mutually in common
with one another cannot through one another be
mutually understood, that is to say, the conception of the
one does not involve the conception of the other.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Axioms 3—5
30 Man is born ignorant of the causes of things and ... he has
a desire, of which he is conscious, to seek that which is
profitable to him. From this it follows, firstly, that he
thinks himself free because he is conscious of his wishes
and appetites, whilst at the same time he is ignorant of
the causes by which he is led to wish and desire, not
dreaming what they are; and, secondly, it follows that
man does everything for an end, namely, for that which is
profitable to him, which is what he seeks. Hence it
happens that he attempts to discover merely the final
causes of that which has happened; and when he has
heard them he is satisfied, because there is no longer any
cause for further uncertainty. But if he cannot hear from
another what these final causes are, nothing remains but
to turn to himself and reflect upon the ends which usually
determine him to the like actions, and thus by his own
mind he necessarily judges that of another. Moreover,
since he discovers, both within and without himself, a
multitude of means which contribute not a little to the
attainment of what is profitable to himself—for example,
the eyes, which are useful for seeing, the teeth for
mastication, plants and animals for nourishment, the sun
for giving light, the sea for feeding fish, etc.—it comes to
pass that all natural objects are considered as means for
obtaining what is profitable. These too being evidently
discovered and not created by man, hence he has a
cause for believing that some other person exists who has
prepared them for man’s use. For having considered them
as means it was impossible to believe that they had
created themselves, and so he was obliged to infer from
the means which he was in the habit of providing for
himself that some ruler or rulers of nature exist, endowed
with human liberty, who have taken care of all things for
him, and have made all things for his use. Since he never
heard anything about the mind of these rulers, he was
compelled to judge of it from his own, and hence he
affirmed that the gods direct everything for his
advantage, in order that he may be bound to them and
hold them in the highest honour. This is the reason why
each man has devised for himself, out of his own brain, a
different mode of worshipping God, so that God might
love him above others, and direct all nature to the service
of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice.
Thus has this prejudice been turned into a superstition
and has driven deep roots into the mind—a prejudice
which was the reason why every one has so eagerly tried
to discover and explain the final causes of things. The
attempt, however, to show that nature does nothing in
vain (that is to say, nothing which is not profitable to
man), seems to end in showing that nature, the gods, and
man are alike mad.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Appendix
31 The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from
phenomena without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce
causes from effects, till we come to the very first cause,
which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold
the mechanism of the world, but chiefly to resolve these
and such like questions. What is there in places almost
empty of matter, and whence is it that the Sun and
planets gravitate towards one another, without dense
matter between them? Whence is it that Nature doth
nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and
beauty which we see in the world? To what end are
comets, and whence is it that planets move all one and
the same way in orbs concentric, while comets move all
manner of ways in orbs very eccentric; and what hinders
the fixed stars from falling upon one another? How came
the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art,
and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye
contrived without skill in Optics, and the ear without
knowledge of sounds? How do the motions of the body
follow from the will, and whence is the instinct in
animals? Is not the sensory of animals that place to which
the sensitive substance is present, and into which the
sensible species of things are carried through the nerves
and brain, that there they may be perceived by their
immediate presence to that substance? And these things
being rightly dispatched, does it not appear from
phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living,
intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space (as it were
in his sensory) sees the things themselves intimately,
and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them
wholly by their immediate presence to himself? Of which
things the images only carried through the organs of
sense into our little sensoriums are there seen and beheld
by that which in us perceives and thinks. And though
every true step made in this philosophy brings us not
immediately to the knowledge of the First Cause, yet it
brings us nearer to it, and on that account is to be highly
valued.
Newton, Optics, III, 1
32 Souls act according to the laws of final causes through
appetitions, ends, and means. Bodies act according to the
laws of efficient causes or motions. And the two realms,
that of efficient causes and that of final Causes, are in
harmony with one another.
Leibniz, Monadology, 79
33 We must rise [from physics] to metaphysics, making use
of the great principle, usually little employed, which
affirms that nothing takes place without sufficient reason;
that is to say, that nothing happens without its being
possible for one who should know things sufficiently, to
give a reason which is sufficient to determine why things
are so and not otherwise.
Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace, 7
34 As to the opinion that there are no Corporeal Causes this
has been heretofore maintained by some of the
Schoolmen, as it is of late by others among the modern
philosophers, who though they allow Matter to exist, yet
will have God alone to be the immediate efficient cause
of all things. These men saw that amongst all the objects
of sense there was none which had any power or activity
included in it; and that by consequence this was likewise
true of whatever bodies they supposed to exist without
the mind, like unto the immediate objects of sense. But
then, that they should suppose an innumerable multitude
of created beings, which they acknowledge are not
capable of producing any one effect in nature, and which
therefore are made to no manner of purpose, since God
might have done everything as well without them: this |
say, though we should allow it possible, must yet bea
very unaccountable and extravagant supposition.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, j3
35 The connexion of ideas does not imply the relation of
cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the
thing signified. The fire which | see is not the cause of the
pain | suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that
forewarns me of it. In like manner the noise that | hear is
not the effect of this or that motion or collision of the
ambient bodies, but the sign thereof.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 65
36 Every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could
not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first
invention or conception of it, a priori, must be entirely
arbitrary. And even after it is suggested, the conjunction
of it with the cause must appear equally arbitrary; since
there are always many other effects, which, to reason,
must seem fully as consistent and natural. In vain,
therefore, should we pretend to determine any single
event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance
of observation and experience.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 25
37 If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may
change, and that the past may be no rule for the future,
all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no
inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that
any arguments from experience can prove this
resemblance of the past to the future; since all these
arguments are founded on the supposition of that
resemblance.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 32
38 Here ... is a kind of pre-established harmony between the
course of nature and the succession of our ideas; and
though the powers and forces, by which the former is
governed, be wholly unknown to us; yet our thoughts and
conceptions have still, we find, gone on in the same train
with the other works of nature. Custom is that principle,
by which this correspondence has been effected; so
necessary to the subsistence of our species, and the
regulation of our conduct, in every circumstance and
occurrence of human life. Had not the presence of an
object, instantly excited the idea of those objects,
commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge must have
been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and
senses; and we should never have been able to adjust
means to ends, or employ our natural powers, either to
the producing of good, or avoiding of evil. Those, who
delight in the discovery and contemplation of final
causes, have here ample subject to employ their wonder
and admiration.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, V, 44
39 When we infer any particular cause from an effect, we
must proportion the one to the other, and can never be
allowed to ascribe to the cause any qualities, but what
are exactly sufficient to produce the effect. A body of ten
ounces raised in any scale may serve as a proof, that the
counterbalancing weight exceeds ten ounces; but can
never afford a reason that it exceeds a hundred. If the
cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to
produce it, we must either reject that cause, or add to it
such qualities as will we it a just proportion to the effect.
But if we ascribe to it farther qualities, or affirm it capable
of producing other effects, we can only indulge the
licence of conjecture, and arbitrarily suppose the
existence of qualities and energies, without reason or
authority.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XI, 105
40 If a clock is not made to tell the hour, | will then admit
that final causes are chimeras; and | shall consider it
quite right for people to call me "cause-finalier' that is—
an imbecile.
All the pieces of the machine of this world seem,
however, made for each other. A few philosophers affect
to mock at the final causes rejected by Epicurus and
Lucretius. It is, it seems to me, at Epicurus and Lucretius
rather that they should mock. They tell you that the eye
is not made for seeing, but that man has availed himself
of it for this purpose when he perceived that eyes could
be so used. According to them, the mouth is not made for
speaking, for eating, the stomach for digesting, the heart
for receiving the blood from the veins and for dispatching
it through the arteries, the feet for walking, the ears for
hearing. These persons avow nevertheless that tailors
make them coats to clothe them, and masons houses to
lodge them, and they dare deny to nature, to the great
Being, to the universal Intelligence, what they accord to
the least of their workmen.
Voltaire. Philosophical Dictionary: Final Causes
41 It is only because we subject the sequence of
phenomena, and consequently all change, to the law of
causality, that experience itself, that is, empirical
cognition of phenomena, becomes possible; and
consequently, that phenomena themselves, as objects of
experience, are possible only by virtue of this law.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic
42 Organisms are... the only beings in nature that,
considered in their separate existence and apart from any
relation to other things, cannot be thought possible
except as ends of nature. It is they, then, that first afford
objective reality to the conception of an end that is an
end of nature and not a practical end. Thus they supply
natural science with the basis for a teleology, or, in other
words, a mode of estimating its objects on a special
principle that it would otherwise be absolutely
unjustifiable to introduce into that science-seeing that we
are quite unable to perceive a priori the possibility of
such a kind of causality.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 65
43 Primary causes are unknown to us, but are subject to
simple and constant laws, which may be discovered by
observation, the study of them being the object of
natural philosophy.
Fourier, Analytical Theory of Heal, Preliminary Discourse
44 The necessary- is a category entirely by itself. Nothing
ever comes into existence with necessity; likewise the
necessary never comes into existence and something by
coming into existence never becomes the necessary.
Nothing whatever exists because it is necessary-, but the
necessary exisis because it is necessary- or because the
necessary is. The actual is no more necessary- than the
possible, for the necessary is absolutely different from
both....
The change involved in coming into existence is
actuality; the transition takes place with freedom. No
coming into existence is necessary. It was not necessary
before the coming into existence, for then there could not
have been the coming into existence, nor after the
coming into existence, for then there would not have
been the coming into existence.
All coming into existence takes place with freedom,
not by necessity. Nothing comes into existence by virtue
of a logical ground, but only by a cause. Every cause
terminates in a freely effecting cause. The illusion
occasioned by the intervening causes is that the coming
into existence seems to be necessary-; the truth about
intervening causes is that just as they themselves have
come into existence they point back ultimately to a freely
effecting cause. Even the possibility of deducing
consequences from a law of nature gives no evidence for
the necessity of any coming into existence, which is clear
as soon as one reflects definitively on coming into
existence. The same is the ease with manifestations of
freedom, provided we do not let ourselves be deceived by
the manifestations of freedom but reflect upon the
coming into existence.
Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, Interlude
45 Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot
be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause,
the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
Emerson, Compensation
46 The truth that every fact which has a beginning has a
cause, is co-extensive with human experience.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, V, 1
47 The state of the whole universe at any instant we believe
to be the consequence of its state at the previous instant;
insomuch that one who knew all the agents which exist at
the present moment, their collocation in space, and all
their properties, in other words, the laws of their agency,
could predict the whole subsequent history of the
universe, at least unless some new volition of a power
capable of controlling the universe should supervene.
And if any particular state of the entire universe could
ever recur a second time, all subsequent states would
return too, and history would, like a circulating decimal of
many figures, periodically repeat itself.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, V, 8
48 First causes are outside the realm of science; they forever
escape us in the sciences of living as well as in those of
inorganic bodies.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, Il, 1
49 When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall?
Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk
withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows
heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy
standing below wants to eat it? Nothing is the cause. All
this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital
organic and elemental events occur.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, IX, 1
50 As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of
metaphysical criticism all causes are obscure.
William James, Psychology, V
51 We have no definite idea of what we mean by cause, or of
what causality consists in. But the principle expresses a
demand for some deeper sort of inward connection
between phenomena than their merely habitual time-
sequence seems to us to be. The word "cause" is, in short,
an altar to an unknown god; an empty pedestal still
marking the place of a hoped-for statue. Any really
inward belonging-together of the sequent terms, if
discovered, would be accepted as what the word cause
was meant to stand for. So we seek, and seek; and in the
molecular systems we find a sort of inward belonging in
the notion of identity of matter with change of
collocation. Perhaps by still seeking we may find other
sorts of inward belonging, even between the molecules
and those "secondary qualities," etc., which they produce
upon our minds.
William James, Psychology, XXVIII
52 All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation
is one of the fundamental axioms or postulates of
science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as
gravitational astronomy, the word ‘cause’ never occurs.. .
. TO me it seems that philosophy ought not to assume
such legislative functions, and that the reason why
physics has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact,
there are no such things. The law of causality, | believe,
like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a
relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only
because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.
Russell, On the Notion of Cause
53 It is not in any sameness of causes and effects that the
constancy of scientific law consists, but in sameness of
relations. And even ‘sameness of relations’ is too simple a
phrase; ‘sameness of differential equations’ is the only
correct phrase. It is impossible to state this accurately in
non-mathematical language; the nearest approach would
be as follows: ‘There is a constant relation between the
state of the universe at any instant and the rate of
change in the rate at which any part of the universe is
changing at that instant, and this relation is many-one,
i.e., such that the rate of change in the rate of change is
determinate when the state of the universe is given.’ If
the ‘law of causality’ is to be something actually
discoverable in the practice of science, the above
proposition has a better right to the name than any ‘law
of causality’ to be found in the books of philosophers.
Russell, On the Notion of Cause
19.4 Chance
In its relation to cause, chance is essentially a negative
concept. For some writers, as the quotations here reveal,
that which happens by chance is that which happens
without cause, such as the swerve of the atoms described by
Lucretius; for other writers, it is that which, though it may
somehow be caused, is not necessitated by its causes; for
still others, it is an event the causes of which we do not
know or cannot determine, even though such causes may
exist and may even necessitate the occurrence of the event
in question. In addition, there is the concept of chance that
emerges in Aristotle’s discussion of a coincidence, such as
the accidental meeting of two persons at a place where
neither expected or planned to see the other: each,
according to Aristotle, was caused to go to that place by
decisions, motives, or other influences operating causatively
on his own behavior, but nothing caused these two lines of
causation to intersect at the moment of their coincidence.
The historians, biographers, and poets are concerned
with the role of chance in human affairs. On this subject, the
reader is referred to relevant passages in Section 15.3 on
Fate, Fortune, and Destiny. The philosophers and theologians
are concerned with necessity and contingency in nature and
with the difference between a world in which things occur by
chance or by blind necessity and a world governed by an
intelligent deity and ordered by a benevolent providence.
Spinoza, Hume, Voltaire, Darwin, J. S. Mill, and Tolstoy all
deny that anything happens by chance; this, according to
Hume, is consistent with our not knowing the causes of
events; to ascribe something to chance, Darwin points out,
is merely to confess our ignorance of the causes.
Beginning with Pascal, among the authors quoted, the
consideration of chance takes a new direction—the calculus
and theory of probability, the most obvious application of
which is to the games we call "games of chance." The reader
will find this subject further explored in passages drawn
from Laplace, Peirce, and Poincare, and the reader will also
be interested in Poincare’s contradiction of Darwin’s remark
that chance is nothing but a name for our ignorance of
causes. With regard to probability itself, quotations from
Locke and from Russell call attention to the distinction
between subjective and objective probability—the one, an
estimate of the reliability of our claim to know something, its
credibility, or the likelihood that it is true; the other, a
mathematical calculation of the betting odds on a particular
future occurrence, such as making a certain number on the
next roll of the dice or drawing a particular card from the
pack.
1 | returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to
the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread
to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor
yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance
happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
2 Artabanus. Chances rule men, and not men chances.
Herodotus, History, VII, 49
3 Jocasta. Why should man fear since chance is all in all
for him, and he can clearly foreknow nothing?
Best to live lightly, as one can, unthinkingly.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 977
4 Pericles. Sometimes the course of things is as arbitrary as
the plans of man; indeed this is why we usually blame
chance for whatever does not happen as we expected.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, |, 140
5 Crito. But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many
must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that
they can do the greatest evil to any one who has lost
their good opinion.
Socrates. | only wish it were so, Crito; and that the
many could do the greatest evil; for then they would also
be able to do the greatest good—and what a fine thing
this would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they
cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever
they do is the result of chance.
Plato, Crito, 44B
6 Athenian Stranger. | was going to say that man never
legislates, but accidents of all sorts, which legislate for us
in all sorts of ways. The violence of war and the hard
necessity of poverty are constantly overturning
governments and changing laws. And the power of
disease has often caused innovations in the slate, when
there have been pestilences, or when there has been a
succession of bad seasons continuing during many years.
Any one who sees all this, naturally rushes to the
conclusion of which | was speaking, that no mortal
legislates in anything, but that in human affairs chance is
almost everything. And this may be said of the arts of the
sailor, and the pilot, and the physician, and the general,
and may seem to be well said; and yet there is another
thing which may be said with equal truth of all of them.
Cleinias. What is it?
Ath. That God governs all things, and that chance and
opportunity co-operate with him in the government of
human affairs. There is, however, a third and less extreme
view, that art should be there also; for | should say that in
a storm there must surely be a great advantage in having
the aid of the pilot's art. You would agree?
Cle. Yes.
Plato, Laws, IV, 709A
7 Every result of chance is from what is spontaneous, but
not everything that is from what is spontaneous is from
chance.
Chance and what results from chance are appropriate
to agents that are capable of good fortune and of moral
action generally. Therefore necessarily chance is in the
sphere of moral actions. This is indicated by the fact that
good fortune is thought to be the same, or nearly the
Same, as happiness, and happiness to be a kind of moral
action, since it is well-doing. Hence what is not capable of
moral action cannot do anything by chance. Thus an
inanimate thing or a lower animal or a child cannot do
anything by chance, because it is incapable of deliberate
intention; nor can ‘good fortune’ or ‘ill fortune’ be
ascribed to them, except metaphorically, as Protarchus,
for example, said that the stones of which altars are made
are fortunate because they are held in honour, while their
fellows are trodden under foot.
Aristotle, Physics, 197a37
8 Chance has no place in that which is natural, and what
happens everywhere and in every case is no matter of
chance.
Aristotle, On the Heavens, 289b26
9 Things come into being either by art or by nature or by
luck or by spontaneity. Now art is a principle of
movement in something other than the thing moved,
nature is a principle in the thing itself (for man begets
man), and the other causes are privations of these two.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1070a6
10 When bodies are borne downwards sheer through void by
their own weights, at quite uncertain times and uncertain
spots they push themselves a little from their course: you
just and only just can call it a change of inclination. If
they were not used to swerve, they would all fall down,
like drops of rain, through the deep void, and no clashing
would have been begotten nor blow produced among the
first-beginnings: thus nature never would have produced
aught.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
11 That the mind itself does not feel an internal necessity in
all its actions and is not as it were overmastered and
compelled to bear and put up with this, is caused by a
minute swerving of first-beginnings at no fixed part of
Space and no fixed time.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
12 Moeris. Chance sways all.
Virgil, Eclogue IX, 5
13 | suspend my judgment on the question whether it is fate
and unchangeable necessity or chance which governs the
revolutions of human affairs. Indeed, among the wisest of
the ancients and among their disciples you will find
conflicting theories, many holding the conviction that
heaven does not concern itself with the beginning or the
end of our life, or, in short, with mankind at all; and that
therefore sorrows are continually the lot of the good,
happiness of the wicked; while others, on the contrary,
believe that, though there is a harmony between fate and
events, yet it is not dependent on wandering stars, but
on primary elements, and on a combination of natural
causes. Still, they leave us the capacity of choosing our
life, maintaining that, the choice once made, there is a
fixed sequence of events. Good and evil, again, are not
what vulgar opinion accounts them; many who seem to
be struggling with adversity are happy; many, amid great
affluence, are utterly miserable, if only the first bear their
hard lot with patience, and the latter make a foolish use
of their prosperity.
Tacitus, Annals, VI, 22
14 Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, ora
kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose and
without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity,
why dost thou resist? But if there is a Providence which
allows itself to be propitiated, make thyself worthy of the
help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a
governor, be content that in such a tempest thou hast in
thyself a certain ruling intelligence. And even if the
tempest carry thee away, let it carry away the poor flesh,
the poor breath, everything else; for the intelligence at
least it will not carry away.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XII, 14
15 To make the existence and coherent structure of this
universe depend upon automatic activity and upon
chance is against all good sense. Such a notion could be
entertained only where there is neither intelligence nor
even ordinary perception; and reason enough has been
urged against it, though none is really necessary.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, II, 1
16 There is a difference between universal and particular
causes. A thing can escape the order of a particular
cause, but not the order of a universal cause. For nothing
escapes the order of a particular cause except through
the intervention and hindrance of some other particular
cause; as, for instance, wood may be prevented from
burning by the action of water. Since, then, all particular
causes are included under the universal cause, it could
not be that any effect should take place outside the
range of that universal cause. So far then as an effect
escapes the order of a particular cause, it is said to be
casual or fortuitous in respect to that cause; but if we
regard the universal cause, outside whose range no effect
can happen, it is said to be foreseen. Thus, for instance,
the meeting of two servants, although to them it appears
a chance circumstance, has been fully foreseen by their
master, who has purposely sent them to meet at the one
place, in such a way that the one knows not about the
other.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 22, 2
17 Certain philosophers of old denied the government of the
world, saying that all things happened by chance. But
such an opinion can be shown to be impossible ... by
observation of things themselves. For we observe that in
nature things happen always or nearly always for the
best, which would not be the case unless some sort of
providence directed nature towards good as an end,
which is to govern. Therefore the unfailing order we
observe in things is a sign of their being governed.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1,103, 1
18 It is written / saw that under the sun the race Is not to
the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the
wise nor riches to the learned, nor favour to the skilful,
but time and chance in all. But things subject to the
Divine government are not ruled by chance. Therefore
those things which are under the sun are not subject to
the Divine government.... These things are said to be
under the sun which are generated and corrupted
according to the sun’s movement. In all such things we
find chance. Not that everything which occurs in such
things is by chance but that in each one there is an
element of chance. And the very fact that an element of
chance is found in those things proves that they are
subject to government of some kind. For unless
corruptible things of this kind were governed by a higher
being, they would tend to nothing definite, especially
those which possess no kind of knowledge. So nothing in
them would happen unintentionally, which constitutes
the nature of chance. Therefore to show how things
happen by chance and yet according to the ordering of a
higher cause, he does not say absolutely that he
observes chance in all things, but time and chance, that
is to say, that defects may be found in these things
according to some order of time.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 103, 5
19 Every action of nature terminates in some one thing.
Therefore it is impossible for that which is accidental to
be the effect per se of an active natural principle. No
natural cause can therefore have for its proper effect that
a man intending to dig a grave finds a treasure. Now it is
manifest that a heavenly body acts after the manner of a
natural principle, and so its effects in this world are
natural. It is therefore impossible that any active power of
a heavenly body be the cause of what happens by
accident here below, whether by luck or by chance.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 116, 1
20 To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme
measure, yet a better one, 1 think, than to remain in
continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But
since all the precautions that a man can take are full of
uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with
fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive
some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that
it will happen.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 24, Various Outcomes
21 King Richard. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
Catesby. Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse.
K. Rich. Slave, | have set my life upon a cast
And | will stand the hazard of the die:
| think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have | slain to-day instead of him.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
Shakespeare, Richard III, V, iv, 7
22 Chatillon. And all the unsettled humours of the land.
Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,
With ladies’ faces and fierce dragons’ spleens,
Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,
Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,
To make a hazard of new fortunes here.
Shakespeare, King John, II, |, 66
23 Portia. In terms of choice | am not solely led
By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes;
Besides, the lottery of my destiny
Bars me the right of voluntary choosing:
But if my father had not scanted me
And hedged me by his wit, to yield myself
His wife who wins me by that means | told you,
Yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair
As any comer | have look’d on yet
For my affection.
Prince of Morocco. Even for that | thank you:
Therefore, | pray you, lead me to the caskets
To try my fortune. By this scimitar
That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince
That won three fields of Sultan Solyman,
| would outstare the sternest eyes that look,
Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth,
Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear,
Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey,
To win thee, lady. But, alas the while!
If Hercules and Lichas play at dice
Which is the better man, the greater throw
May turn by fortune from the weaker hand:
So is Alcides beaten by his page;
And so may I, blind fortune leading me,
Miss that which one unworthier may attain.
And die with grieving.
Por. You must take your chance,
And either not attempt to choose at all
Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong
Never to speak to lady afterward
In way of marriage: therefore be advised.
Mor. Nor will not. Come, bring me unto my chance.
Por. First, forward to the temple: after dinner
Your hazard shall be made.
Mor. Good fortune then!
To make me blest or cursed’st among men.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, II, i, 13
24 Nestor. In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 33
25 Florizel. As the unthought-on accident is guilty
To what we wildly do, so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies
Of every wind that blows.
Shakespeare, Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 548
26 Let us... say, "God is, or He is not." But to which side shall
we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an
infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being
played at the extremity of this infinite distance where
heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?
According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor
the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of
the propositions.
Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a
choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but | blame
them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for
again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses
tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The
true course is not to wager at all."
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are
embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since
you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You
have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two
things to stake, your reason and your will, your
knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two
things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more
shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you
must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But
your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in
w’agering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances.
If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. "That is very
fine. Yes, | must wager; but | may perhaps wager too
much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and
of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one,
you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain,
you would have to play (since you are under the
necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when
you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain
three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and
gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And
this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of
which one only would be for you, you would still be right
in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly,
being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life
against three at a game in which out of an infinity of
chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of
an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an
infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of
gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what
you Stake is finite. It is all divided; wherever the infinite is
and there is not an infinity of chances of loss against that
of gain, there is no time to hesitate, you must give all.
And thus, when one is forced to play, he must renounce
reason to preserve his life, rather than risk it for infinite
gain, as likely to happen as the loss of nothingness.
For it is no use to Say it is uncertain if we will gain, and
it is certain that we risk, and that the infinite distance
between the certainty of what is staked and the
uncertainty of what will be gained, equals the finite good
which is certainly staked against the uncertain infinite. It
is not so, as every player stakes a certainty to gain an
uncertainty, and yet he stakes a finite certainty to gaina
finite uncertainty, without transgressing against reason.
There is not an infinite distance between the certainty
staked and the uncertainty of the gain; that is untrue. In
truth, there is an infinity between the certainty of gain
and the certainty of loss. But the uncertainty of the gain
iS proportioned to the certainty of the stake according to
the proportion of the chances of gain and loss. Hence it
comes that, if there are as many risks on one side as on
the other, the course is to play even; and then the
certainty of the stake is equal to the uncertainty of the
gain, so far is it from fact that there is an infinite distance
between them. And so our proposition is of infinite force,
when there is the finite to stake in a game where there
are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to
gain. This is demonstrable; and if men are capable of any
truths, this is one.
"| confess it, | admit it. But, still, is there no means of
seeing the faces of the cards?" Yes, Scripture and the rest,
etc. "Yes, but | have my hands tied and my mouth closed;
| am forced to wager, and am not free. | am not released,
and am so made that | cannot believe. What, then, would
you have me do?"
True. But at least learn your inability to believe, since
reason brings you to this, and yet you cannot believe.
Endeavour, then, to convince yourself, not by increase of
proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You
would like to attain faith and do not know the way; you
would like to cure yourself of unbelief and ask the remedy
for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and
who now stake all their possessions. These are people
who know the way which you would follow, and who are
cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the
way by which they began; by acting as if they believed,
taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this
will naturally make you believe, and deaden your
acuteness. "But this is what | am afraid of." And why?
What have you to lose?
But to show you that this leads you there, it is this
which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-
blocks...
Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You
will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a
sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those
poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not
have others? | will tell you that you will thereby gain in
this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you
will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness
in what you risk, that you will at last recognise that you
have wagered for something certain and infinite, for
which you have given nothing.
"Ah! This discourse transports me, charms me," etc.
If this discourse pleases you and seems impressive,
know that it is made by a man who has knelt both before
and after it, in prayer to that Being, infinite and without
parts, before whom he lays all he has, for you also to lay
before Him all you have for your own good and for His
glory, that so strength may be given to lowliness.
Pascal, Pensées, III, 233
27 Whatever is, is in God; but God cannot be called a
contingent thing, for He exists necessarily and not
contingently. Moreover, the modes of the divine nature
have followed from it necessarily and not contingently,
and that, too, whether it be considered absolutely, or as
determined to action in a certain manner. But God is the
cause of these modes, not only insofar as they simply
exist, but also insofar as they are considered as
determined to any action. And if they are not determined
by God, it is an impossibility and not a contingency that
they should determine themselves; and, on the other
hand, if they are determined by God, it is an impossibility
and not a contingency that they should render
themselves indeterminate. Wherefore all things are
determined from a necessity of the divine nature, not
only to exist, but to exist and act in a certain manner,
and there is nothing contingent.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Prop. 29, Demonst.
28 The highest probability amounts not to certainty, without
which there can be no true knowledge.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, 111,
14
29 All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony, not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, "Whatever is, is Right"
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 289
30 Though there be no such thing as Chance in the world;
our ignorance of the real cause of any event has the same
influence on the understanding, and begets a like species
of belief or opinion.
There is certainly a probability, which arises from a
superiority of chances on any side; and according as this
superiority encreases, and surpasses the opposite
chances, the probability receives a proportionable
encrease, and begets still a higher degree of belief or
assent to that side, in which we discover the superiority. If
a die were marked with one figure or number of spots on
four sides, and with another figure or number of spots on
the two remaining sides, it would be more probable, that
the former would turn up than The latter; though, if it had
a thousand sides marked in the same manner, and only
one side different, the probability would be much higher,
and our belief or expectation of the event more steady
and secure. This process of the thought or reasoning may
seem trivial and obvious; but to those who consider it
more narrowly, it may, perhaps, afford matter for curious
speculation.
It seems evident, that, when the mind looks forward to
discover the event, which may result from the throw of
such a die, it considers the turning up of each particular
side as alike probable; and this is the very nature of
chance, to render all the particular events,
comprehended in it, entirely equal. But finding a greater
number of sides concur in the one event than in the
other, the mind is carried more frequently to that event,
and meets it oftener, in revolving the various possibilities
or chances, on which the ultimate result depends.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VI, 46
31 It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a
cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly
examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any
real power which has anywhere a being in nature.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 74
32 All effects follow not with like certainty from their
supposed causes. Some events are found, in all countries
and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together:
Others are found to have been more variable, and
sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our
reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all
imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest
certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.
A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the
evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an
infallible experience, he expects the event with the last
degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a
full proof of the future existence of that event. In other
cases, he proceeds with more caution: He weighs the
opposite experiments: He considers which side is
supported by the greater number of experiments: to that
side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and when at
last he fixes his judgement, the evidence exceeds not
what we properly call probability. All probability, then,
supposes an opposition of experiments and observations,
where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and
to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the
superiority.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, X, 87
33 No more by the law of reason than by The law of nature
can anything occur without a cause.
Rousseau, Social Contract, Il, 4
34 Nothing was ever said with uncommon felicity but by the
cooperation of chance; and therefore wit, as well as valor,
must be content to share its honors with fortune.
Johnson, Idler No. 58
35 The explanation adopted by Epicurus... completely
denies and abolishes the distinction between a technic of
nature and its mere mechanism. Blind chance is accepted
as the explanation, not alone of the agreement of the
generated products with our conception, and,
consequently, of the technic of nature, but even of the
determination of the causes of this development on
dynamical laws, and, consequently, of its mechanism.
Hence nothing is explained, not even the illusion in our
teleological judgements, so that the alleged idealism in
them is left altogether unsubstantiated.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 73
36 All events, even those which on account of their
insignificance do not seem to follow the great laws of
nature, are a result of it just as necessarily as the
revolutions of the sun. In ignorance of the tics which
unite such events to the entire system of the universe,
they have been made to depend upon final causes or
upon hazard, according as they occur and are repeated
with regularity, or appear without regard to order; but
these imaginary' causes have gradually receded with the
widening bounds of knowledge and disappear entirely
before sound philosophy, which sees in them only the
expression of our ignorance of the true causes.
Laplace, Essay on Probabilities, |
37 Consider that chance, which, with error, its brother, and
folly, its aunt, and malice, its grandmother, rules in this
world; which every year and every day, by blows great
and small, embitters the life of every son of earth, and
yours too.
Schopenhauer, Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms
38 Those who live in the midst of democratic fluctuations
have always before their eyes the image of chance; and
they end by liking all undertakings in which chance plays
a part. They are therefore all led to engage in commerce,
not only for the sake of the profit it holds out to them, but
for the love of the constant excitement occasioned by
that pursuit.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 19
39 When we look at the plants and bushes clothing an
entangled bank, we are tempted to attribute their
proportional numbers and kinds to what we call chance.
But how false a view is this!
Darwin, Origin of Species, III
40 | have... sometimes spoken as if the variations—so
common and multiform with organic beings under
domestication, and in a lesser degree with those under
nature—were due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly
incorrect expression, but it serves to acknowledge plainly
our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation.
Darwin, Origin of Species, V
41 | am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work
will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he
who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more
irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct
species by descent from some lower form, through the
laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain
the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary
reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the
individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of
events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of
blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a
conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that
every slight variation of structure,—the union of each pair
in marriage,—the dissemination of each seed,—and other
such events, have all been ordained for some special
purpose.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
42 Chance is usually spoken of in direct antithesis to law;
whatever (it is Supposed) cannot be ascribed to any law
is attributed to chance. It is, however, certain, that
whatever happens is the result of some law; is an effect of
causes, and could have been predicted from a knowledge
of the existence of those causes, and from their laws. If |
turn up a particular card, that is a consequence of its
place in the pack. Its place in the pack was a
consequence of the manner in which the cards were
shuffled, or of the order in which they were played in the
last game; which, again, were effects of prior causes. At
every stage, if we had possessed an accurate knowledge
of the causes in existence, it would have been abstractly
possible to foretell the effect.
An event occurring by chance may be better described
as a coincidence from which we have no ground to infer
an uniformity: the occurrence of a phenomena, in certain
circumstances, without our hating reason on that account
to infer that it will happen again in those circumstances.
This, however, when looked closely into, implies that the
enumeration of the circumstances is not complete.
Whatever the fact be, since it has occurred once, we may
be sure that if a//the same circumstances were repeated,
it would occur again; and not only if all, but there is some
particular portion of those circumstances on which the
phenomenon « invariably consequent. With most of
them, however, it is not connected in any permanent
manner: its conjunction with those is said to be the effect
of chance, to be merely casual. Facts casually conjoined
are separately the effects of causes, and therefore of law-
s; but of different causes, and causes not connected by
any law.
It is incorrect, then, to say that any phenomenon is
produced by chance; but we may say that two or more
phenomena are conjoined by chance that they co-exist or
succeed one another only bv chance; meaning that they
are in no way related through causation; that they are
neither cause and effect, nor effects of the same cause,
nor effects of causes between which there subsists any
law of co-existence, nor even effects of the same
collocation of primeval causes.
Mill, System of Logic, Bk. III, XVII, 2
43 If we assume as the historians do that great men lead
humanity to the attainment of certain ends— the
greatness of Russia or of France, the balance of power in
Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the Revolution,
general progress, or anything else—then it is impossible
to explain the facts of history without introducing the
conceptions of chance and genius. ...
Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?
Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation;
genius utilized it," says history’.
But what is chance? What is genius? The words
chance and genius do not denote any really existing
thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only
denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena. |
do not know why a certain event occurs; | think that |
cannot know it; so | do not try to know it and | talk about
chance. | see a force producing effects beyond the scope
of ordinary human agencies; | do not understand Why
this occurs and | talk of genius,...
Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose
immediately intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate
purpose to be beyond our ken, may we discern the
sequence of experiences in the lives of historic characters
and perceive the cause of the effect they produce
(Incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and
then the words chance and genius become superfluous.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, | Epilogue, I!
44 The inference from the premise, A, to the conclusion, B,
depends, as we have seen, on the guiding principle that
if a fact of the class A is true, a fact of the class B is true.
The probability consists of the fraction whose numerator
is the number of times in which both A and B are true,
and whose denominator is the total number of times in
which A is true, whether B is so or not. Instead of
speaking of this as the probability of the inference, there
is not the slightest objection to calling it the probability
that if A happens, B happens. But to speak of the
probability of the event B, without naming the condition,
really has no meaning at all. It is true that when it is
perfectly obvious what condition is meant, the ellipsis
may be permitted. But we should avoid contracting the
habit of using language in this way (universal as the
habit is), because it gives rise to a vague way of thinking,
as if the action of causation might either determine an
event to happen or determine it not to happen, or leave it
more or less free to happen or not, so as to give rise to an
inherent chance in regard to its occurrence. It is quite
clear to me that some of the worst and most persistent
errors in the use of the doctrine of chances have arisen
from this vicious mode of expression.
C. S. Peirce, The Red and the Black
45 The idea of probability essentially belongs to a kind of
inference which is repeated indefinitely. An individual
inference must be either true or false, and can show no
effect of probability; and, therefore, in reference to a
single case considered in itself, probability can have no
meaning. Yet if a man had to choose between drawing a
card from a pack containing twenty-five red cards and a
black one, or from a pack containing twenty-five black
cards and a red one, and if the drawing of a red card were
destined to transport him to eternal felicity, and that of a
black one to consign him to everlasting woe, it would be
folly to deny that he ought to prefer the pack containing
the larger portion of red cards, although, from the nature
of the risk, it could not be repeated. It is not easy to
reconcile this with our analysis of the conception of
chance. But suppose he should choose the red pack, and
should draw the wrong card, what consolation would he
have? He might say that he had acted in accordance with
reason, but that would only show that his reason was
absolutely worthless. And if he should choose the right
card, how could he regard it as anything but a happy
accident? He could not say that if he had drawn from
other pack, he might have drawn the wrong because a
hypothetical proposition such as, d A, then B,” means
nothing with reference to a single case. Truth consists in
the existence of a fact corresponding to the true
proposition. Corresponding to the proposition, “if A, then
B,” there may be the fact that whenever such an event as
A happens such an event as B happens. But in the case
supposed, which has no parallel as far as man is
concerned, there would be no real fact whole existence
could give any truth to the statement that, if he had
drawn from the other pack, he might have drawn a black
card.
C. S. Peirce, The Red and the Black
46 It is an indubitable result of the theory of probabilities
that every gambler, if he continues long enough, must
ultimately be ruined.
C. S. Peirce, The Red and the Black
47 All human affairs rest upon probabilities, and the same
thing is true everywhere. If man were immortal he could
be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in
which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in
Short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would
break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every
dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we
have death.
But what, without death, would happen to every man,
with death must happen to some man. At the same time,
death makes the number of our risks, of our inferences,
finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain. The very
idea of probability and of reasoning rests on the
assumption that this number is indefinitely great.
C. S. Peirce, The Red and the Black
48 No victor believes in chance.
Nietzsche, Gay Science, 258
49 You probably feel that when religious faith expresses
itself ... in the language of the gaming table, it is put to
its last trumps. Surely Pascal’s own personal belief in
masses and holy water had far other springs; and this
celebrated page of his is but an argument for others, a
last desperate snatch at a weapon against the hardness
of the unbelieving heart. We feel that a faith in masses
and holy water adopted wilfully after such a mechanical
calculation would lack the inner soul of faith’s reality; and
if we were ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should
probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers
of this pattern from their infinite reward. It is evident that
unless there be some pre-existing tendency to believe in
masses and holy water, the option offered to the will by
Pascal is not a living option. Certainly no Turk ever took
to masses and holy water on its account; and even to us
Protestants these means of salvation seem such foregone
impossibilities that Pascal’s logic, invoked for them
specifically, leaves us unmoved. As well might the Mahdi
write to us, saying, “I am the Expected One whom God
has created in his effulgence. You shall be infinitely
happy if you confess me; otherwise you shall be cut off
from the light of the sun. Weigh, then, your infinite gain if
| am genuine against your finite sacrifice if | am not!” His
logic would be that of Pascal; but he would vainly use it
on us, for the hypothesis he offers us is dead. No
tendency to act on it exists in us to any degree.
William James, Will to Believe
50 It must well be that chance is something other than the
name we give our ignorance, that among phenomena
whose causes are unknown to us we must distinguish
fortuitous phenomena about which the calculus of
probabilities will provisionally give information, from
those which are not fortuitous and of which we can say
nothing so long as we shall not have determined the laws
governing them. For the fortuitous phenomena
themselves, it is clear that the information given us by
the calculus of probabilities will not cease to be true upon
the day when these phenomena shall be better known.
The director of a life insurance company does not
know when each of the insured will die, but he relies
upon the calculus of probabilities and on the law of great
numbers, and he is not deceived, since he distributes
dividends to his stockholders. These dividends would not
vanish if a very penetrating and very indiscrete physician
should, after the policies were signed, reveal to the
director the life chances of the insured. This doctor would
dissipate the ignorance of the director, but he would have
no influence on the dividends, which evidently are not an
outcome of this ignorance,
Poincare, Science and Method, 1,4
51 The greatest bit of chance is the birth of a great man. It is
only by chance that meeting of two germinal cells, of
different sex, containing precisely, each on its side, the
mysterious elements whose mutual reaction must
produce the genius. One will agree that these elements
must be rare and that their meeting is still more rare. How
Slight a thing it would have required to deflect from its
route the carrying spermatozoon. It would have sufficed
to deflect it a tenth of a millimeter and Napoleon would
not have been born and the destinies of a continent
would have been changed. No example can better make
us understand the veritable characteristics of chance.
Poincare, Science and Method, |, 4
19.5 Motion and Change
At the beginning of Western thought, two pre-Socratic
philosophers, Heraclitus and Parmenides, went to the
opposite extremes of asserting, on the one hand, that
everything is always in flux and never for a moment remains
unchanged, and, on the other, that permanence or
immutability reigns everywhere and that our experience of
motion or change Is a deceptive illusion. While they are not
quoted here, the views of Heraclitus and Parmenides are
commented on by later thinkers who regard motion and rest,
or change and permanence, as correlatives, neither of which
can be understood without the other.
The philosophical consideration of motion and change
attempts to discover its principles (that without which
motion or change cannot occur); proposes a classification of
the kinds of change, such as local motion, change of quality,
or alteration, change in quantity, or increase and decrease,
and what was called "substantial change," or coming to be
and passing away; speculates about whether change or
motion ever began and will ever stop or is everlasting,
without beginning or end; and asks whether endless motion
involves an unmoved mover as its cause.
The modern scientific study of motion— the motion of
bodies from place to place— begins with Galileo, and
introduces such distinctions as that between natural and
violent motion, uniform and variable motion, and such
concepts as velocity, acceleration, momentum, and inertia.
Employing these concepts, the new sciences of kinematics
and dynamics are applied by Newton to the motion of
celestial as well as terrestrial bodies. In addition to
formulating the principle of inertia as one of his three laws of
motion, Newton introduces the concept of gravity, and the
distinction between absolute and relative motion. The
reader will be interested to find the existence of absolute
motion challenged by Bishop Berkeley, for reasons that
anticipate Einstein’s views on the same subject.
1 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all
Is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he
taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation
cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and
hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about
unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the
wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they
return again.
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with
hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be done: and there
IS no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:2-9
2 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his
spots?
Jeremiah 13:23
3 Socrates. Many of our modern philosophers ... in their
search after the nature of things, are always getting dizzy
from constantly going round and round, and then they
imagine that the world is going round and round and
moving in all directions; and this appearance, which
arises out of their own internal condition, they suppose to
be a reality of nature; they think that there is nothing
stable or permanent, but only flux and motion, and that
the world is always full of every sort of motion and
change.
Plato, Cratylus, 411A
4 Socrates. Only the self-moving, never-leaving self, never
ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of
motion to all that moves besides. Now, the beginning is
unbegotten, for that which is begotten has a beginning;
but the beginning is begotten of nothing, for if it were
begotten of something, then the begotten would not
come from a beginning. But if unbegotten, it must also be
indestructible; for if beginning were destroyed, there
could be no beginning out of anything, nor anything out
of a beginning; and all things must have a beginning.
And therefore the self-moving is the beginning of motion;
and this can neither be destroyed nor begotten, else the
whole heavens and all creation would collapse and stand
still, and never again have motion or birth.
Plato, Phaedrus, 245B
5 Nature has been defined as a ‘principle of motion and
change’, and it is the subject of our inquiry. We must
therefore see that we understand the meaning of
‘motion’; for if it were unknown, the meaning of ‘nature’
too would be unknown....
The fulfilment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists
potentially, is motion—namely, of what is alterable qua
alterable, a/teration: of what can be increased and its
opposite what can be decreased (there is no common
name), increase and decrease: of what can come to be
and can pass away, coming to be and passing away: of
what can be carried along, /ocomotion.
Aristotle, Physics, 200bI/
6 We must understand that place would not have been
thought of, if there had not been a special kind of motion,
namely that with respect to place. It is chiefly for this
reason that we suppose the heaven also to be in place,
because it is in constant movement. Of this kind of
change there are two species—locomotion on the one
hand and, on the other, increase and diminution. For
these too involve variation of place: what was then in this
place has now in turn changed to what is larger or
smaller.
Aristotle, Physics, 21lal2
7 It is a law of nature that earth and all other bodies should
remain in their proper places and be moved from them
only by violence: from the fact then that some of them
are in their proper places it follows that in respect of
place also all things cannot be in motion. These and other
similar arguments, then, should convince us that it is
impossible either that all things are always in motion or
that all things are always at rest.
Aristotle, Physics, 253b33
8 Since there must always be motion without intermission,
there must necessarily be something, one thing or it may
be a plurality, that first imparts motion, and this first
movent must be unmoved. Now the question whether
each of the things that are unmoved but impart motion is
eternal is irrelevant to our present argument: but the
following considerations will make it clear that there must
necessarily be some such thing, which, while it has the
capacity of moving something else, is itself unmoved and
exempt from all change, which can affect it neither in an
unqualified nor in an accidental sense. Let us suppose, if
any one likes, that in the case of certain things it is
possible for them at different times to be and not to be,
without any process of becoming and perishing (in fact it
would seem to be necessary if a thing that has not parts
at one time is and at another time is not, that any such
thing should without undergoing any process of change
at one time be and at another time not be). And let us
further suppose it possible that some principles that are
unmoved but capable of imparting motion at one time
are and at another time are not. Even so, this cannot be
true of a//such principles, since there must clearly be
something that causes things that move themselves at
one time to be and at another not to be. For, since
nothing that has not parts can be in motion, that which
moves itself must as a whole have magnitude, though
nothing that we have said makes this necessarily true of
every movent. So the fact that some things become and
others perish, and that this is so continuously, cannot be
caused by any one of those things that, though they are
unmoved, do not always exist: nor again can it be caused
by any of those which move certain particular things,
while others move other things. The eternity and
continuity of the process cannot be caused either by any
one of them singly or by the sum of them, because this
cauSal relation must be eternal and necessary, whereas
the sum of these movents is infinite and they do not all
exist together. It is clear, then, that though there may be
countless instances of the perishing of some principles
that are unmoved but impart motion, and though many
things that move themselves perish and are succeeded
by others that come into being, and though one thing
that is unmoved moves one thing while another moves
another, nevertheless there is something that
comprehends them all, and that as something apart from
each one of them, and this it is that is the cause of the
fact that some things are and others are not and of the
continuous process of change: and this causes the motion
of the other movents, while they are the causes of the
motion of other things. Motion, then, being eternal, the
first movent, if there is but one, will be eternal also: if
there are more than one, there will be a plurality of such
eternal movents. We ought, however, to suppose that
there is one rather than many, and a finite rather than an
infinite number. When the consequences of either
assumption are the same, we should always assume that
things are finite rather than infinite in number, since in
things constituted by nature that which is finite and that
which is better ought, if possible, to be present rather
than the reverse: and here it is sufficient to assume only
one movent, the first of unmoved things, which being
eternal will be the principle of motion to everything else.
Aristotle, Physics, 258610
9 The origin of all other motions [except eternal motion] is
that which moves itself, and ... the origin of this is the
immovable, and ... the prime mover must of necessity be
immovable. And we must grasp this not only generally in
theory, but also by reference to individuals in the world of
sense, for with these in view we seek general theories,
and with these we believe that general theories ought to
harmonize. Now in the world of sense too it is plainly
impossible for movement to be initiated if there is
nothing at rest, and before all else in our present subject-
animal life.... But the point of rest in the animal is still
quite ineffectual unless there be something without
which is absolutely at rest and im-movable. Now it is
worth while to pause and consider what has been said,
for it involves a speculation which extends beyond
animals even to the motion and march of the universe.
For just as there must be something immovable within
the animal, if it is to be moved, so even mote must there
be without it something immovable, by supporting itself
upon which that which is moved moves. For were that
something always to give way (as it does for mice
walking in grain or persons walking in sand) advance
would be impossible, and neither would there be any
walking unless the ground were to remain still, nor any
flying or swimming were not the air and the sea to resist.
And this which resists must needs be different from what
is moved, the whole of it from the whole of that, and what
is thus immovable must be no part of what is moved;
otherwise there will be no movement.
Aristotle, On the Motion of Animals, 698a11
10 Since changes are of four kinds—either in respect of the
‘what’ or of the quality or of the quantity or of the place,
and change in respect of ‘thisness’ is simple generation
and destruction, and change in quantity is increase and
diminution, and change in respect of an affection is
alteration, and change of place is motion, changes will be
from given states into those contrary to them in these
several respects. The matter, then, which changes must
be capable of both states. And since that which ‘is’ has
two senses, we must say that everything changes from
that which is potentially to that which is actually, e.g.
from potentially white to actually white, and similarly in
the case of increase and diminution. Therefore not only
can a thing come to be, incidentally, out of that which is
not, but also all things come to be out of that which is,
but is potentially, and is not actually.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1069b8
11 It is necessary that there should be an eternal unmovable
substance. For substances are the first of existing things,
and if they are ail destructible, all things are destructible.
But it is impossible that movement should either have
come into being or cease to be (for it must always have
existed), or that time should. For there could not bea
before and an after if time did not exist. Movement also is
continuous, then, in the sense in which time is; for time is
either the same thing as movement or an attribute of
movement. And there is no continuous movement except
movement in place, and of this only that which is circular
Is continuous.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1071b4
12 Atoms move continuously for all time, some of them
falling straight down, others swerving, and others
recoiling from their collisions. And of the latter, some are
borne on, separating to a long distance from one another,
while others again recoil and recoil, whenever they
chance to be checked by the interlacing with others, or
else shut in by atoms interlaced around them. For on the
one hand the nature of the void which separates each
atom by itself brings this about, as it is not able to afford
resistance, and on the other hand the hardness which
belongs to the atoms makes them recoil after collision to
as great a distance as the interlacing permits separation
after the collision. And these motions have no beginning,
since the atoms and the void are the cause.
Epicurus, letter to Herodotus
13 If you think that first-beginnings of things can lag and by
lagging give birth to new motions of things, you wander
far astray from the path of true reason: since they travel
about through void, the first-beginnings of things must
all move on either by their own weight or haply by the
stroke of another. For when during motion they have, as
often happens, met and clashed, the result is a sudden
rebounding in an opposite direction; and no wonder,
since they are most hard and of weight proportioned to
their solidity and nothing behind gets in their way. And
that you may more clearly see that all bodies of matter
are in restless movement, remember that there is no
lowest point in the sum of the universe, and that first
bodies have not where to take their stand, since space is
without end and limit and extends immeasurably in all
directions round, as | have shown in many words and as
has been proved by sure reason.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
14 The earth with good title has gotten and keeps the name
of mother, since she of herself gave birth to mankind and
at a time nearly fixed shed forth every beast that ranges
wildly over the great mountains, and at the same time
the fowls of the air with all their varied shapes. But
because she must have some limit set to her bearing, she
ceased like a woman worn out by length of days.
For time changes the nature of the whole world and all
things must pass on from one condition to another, and
nothing continues like to itself: all things quit their
bounds, all things nature changes and compels to alter.
One thing crumbles away and is worn and enfeebled with
age, then another comes unto honour and issues out of
its state of contempt. In this way then time changes the
nature of the whole world and the earth passes out of one
condition into another: what once it could, it can bear no
more, in order to be able to bear what before it did not
bear.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
15 Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and
disappear, both the things which are and the things
which are produced. For substance is like a riverina
continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant
change, and the causes work in infinite varieties; and
there is hardly anything which stands still.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 23
16 Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are
hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into
existence part is already extinguished. Motions and
changes are continually renewing the world, just as the
uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the
infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream then, on
which there is no abiding, what is there of the things
which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It
would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of
the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out
of sight.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 15
17 Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place
without change? What then is more pleasing or more
Suitable to the universal nature? And canst thou take a
bath unless the wood undergoes a change? And canst
thou be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change?
And can anything else that is useful be accomplished
without change? Dost thou not see then that for thyself
also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for
the universal nature?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 18
18 When... such and such a body undergoes no change from
its existing state, we .say that it is at rest; but, if it
departs from this in any respect we then say that in this
respect it undergoes motion. Accordingly, when it departs
in various ways from its pre-existing state, it will be said
to undergo various kinds of motion. Thus, if that which is
white becomes black, or what is black becomes white, it
undergoes motion in respect to colour.... And further, it is
not only things which are altered in regard to colour and
flavour which, we say, undergo motion; when a warm
thing becomes cold, and a cold warm, here too we speak
of its undergoing motion; similarly also when anything
moist becomes dry, or dry moist. Now, the common term
which we apply to all these cases is alteration.
This is one kind of motion. But there is another kind
which occurs in bodies which change their position, or as
we say, pass from one place to another; the name of this
is transference.
These two kinds of motion, then, are simple and
primary, while compounded from them we have growth
and decay, aS when a small thing becomes bigger, ora
big thing smaller, each retaining at the same time its
particular form. And two other kinds of motion are
genesis and destruction, genesis being a coming into
existence, and destruction being the opposite.
Galen, Natural Faculties, |, 2
19 The Kosmos has had no beginning... and this is warrant
for its continued existence. Why should there be in the
future a change that has not yet occurred? The elements
there are not worn away like beams and rafters: they hold
sound for ever, and so the All holds sound. And even
supposing these elements to be in ceaseless
transmutation, yet the All persists: the ground of all the
change must itself be changeless.
Plotinus, Second Ennead, I, 4
20 It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in this world
some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is
put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion
unless it is in potency to that towards which it is in
motion. But a thing moves in so far as it is in act. For
motion is nothing else than the reduction of something
from potency to act. But nothing can be reduced from
potency to act except by something in a state of act.
Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood,
which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby
moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the
same thing should be at once In act and potency in the
same respect, but only in different respects. For what is
actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot,
though it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore
impossible that in the same respect and in the same way
a thing should be both mover and moved, that is, that it
should move itself. Therefore, whatever is moved must be
moved by another. If that by which it is moved be itself
moved, then this also must be moved by another, and
that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity,
because then there would be no first mover, and,
consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent
movers move only because as they are moved by the first
mover, just as the staff moves only because it is moved
by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first
mover which is moved by no other. And this everyone
under-stands to be God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 2, 3
21 Now it is manifest that a natural body cannot be actually
infinite .. . because every natural body has some natural
movement. But an infinite body could not have any
natural movement. Neither direct, because nothing
moves naturally by a direct movement unless it is out of
its place, and this could not happen to an infinite body,
for it would occupy every place, and thus every place
would be indifferently its own place. Neither could it
move circularly; since circular motion requires that one
part of the body is necessarily transferred to a place
occupied by another part, and this could not happen as
regards an infinite circular body; for if two lines be drawn
from the centre the farther they extend from the centre,
the farther they are from each other; therefore, if a body
were infinite, the lines would be infinitely distant from
each other, and thus one could never reach the place
belonging to any other.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 7,3
22 In the sense ... in which understanding is movement, that
which understands itself is said to move itself.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 18,3
23 Rest is, properly speaking, opposed to movement, and
consequently to the labour that arises from movement.
But although movement, strictly speaking, is a quality of
bodies, yet the word is applied also to spiritual things,
and in a twofold sense. On the one hand, every operation
may be called a movement, and thus the Divine
goodness Is said to move and go forth to the thing in
communicating itself to that thing.... On the other hand,
the desire that tends to another, is said to move towards
it. Hence rest is taken in two senses, in one sense
meaning a cessation from work, in the other, the fulfilling
of desire.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 73, 2
24 | myself think that gravity or heaviness is nothing except
a certain natural appetency implanted in the parts by the
divine providence of the universal Artisan, in order that
they should unite with one another in their oneness and
wholeness and come together in the form of a globe. It is
believable that this affect is present in the sun, moon,
and the other bright planets and that through its efficacy
they remain in the spherical figure in which they are
visible, though they nevertheless accomplish their
circular movements in many different ways.
Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, 1,9
25 In all things except those that are simply bad, change is
to be feared: change of seasons, winds, food, and humors.
And no laws are held in thew true honor except those to
which God has given some ancient duration, so that no
one knows their origin or that they were ever different.
Montaigne, Essays, 43, Of Sumptuary Laws
26 When | bethinke me on that speech whyleare
Of Mutability, and well it way,
Me seemes. that though she all unworthy were
Of the heav’ns rule, yet, very sooth to say, In all things
else she beares the greatest sway:
Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle,
And love of things so vaine to cast away;
Whose flowing pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming
sickle.
Then gin | thinke on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more change Shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things, firmely stayd
Upon the pillours of eternity.
That is contrayr to Mutabilitie:
For all that moveth doth in change delight:
But thence-forth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O that great Sabbaoth God graunt me that Sabbaoths
sight!
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Bk. VII, Vill, 1-2
27 As regards movement: the sun is the first cause of the
movement of the planets and the first mover of the
universe, even by reason of its own body. In the
intermediate space the movables, i.e., the globes of the
planets, are laid out. The region of the fixed stars supplies
the movables with a place and a base up>on which the
movables are, as it were, supported; and movement is
understood as taking place relative to its absolute
immobility. So in animals the cerebellum is the scat of the
motor faculty, and the body and its members are that
which is moved. The Earth is the base of an animal body;
the body, the base of the arm or head, and the arm, the
base of the finger. And the movement of each part takes
place upon this base as upon something immovable.
Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Bk. IV, I, 1
28 Ariel. [Sings] Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.
Shakespeare, Tempest, I, ti, 396
29 When | have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers | see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When | have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When | have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
Shakespeare, Sonnet LXIV
30 To think the Affairs of this Life are always to remain in the
Same State, is an erroneous Fancy. The Face of Things
rather seems continually to change and roll with a
circular Motion; Summer succeeds the Spring; Autumn
the Summer; Winter the Autumn; and then Spring again:
So Time proceeds in this perpetual Round; only the Life of
Man is ever hastening to it’s End, swifter than Time it self,
without Hopes to be renew’d, unless in the next, that is
unlimited and infinite.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 53
31 All motion or natural action takes place in time, more or
less rapidly, but still in determined moments well
ascertained by nature. Even those actions which appear
to take effect suddenly, and in the twinkling of an eye (as
we express it), are found to admit of greater or less
rapidity.
Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 46
32 One which can scarcely be termed a motion, and yet is
one... we may Call the motion of repose, or of abhorrence
of motion. It is by this motion that the earth stands by its
own weight, whilst its extremes move towards the middle,
not to an imaginary centre, but in order to unite. It is
owing to the same tendency, that all bodies of
considerable density abhor motion, and their only
tendency is not to move, which nature they preserve,
although excited and urged in a variety of ways to
motion. But if they be compelled to move, yet do they
always appear anxious to recover their former state, and
to cease from motion, in which respect they certainly
appear active, and attempt it with sufficient swiftness
and rapidity, as if fatigued, and impatient of delay.
Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 48
33 As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so
are all innovations, which are the births of time.
Bacon, Of Innovations
34 It were good... that men in their innovations would follow
the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth
greatly, but quietly and by degrees scarce to be
perceived.
Bacon, Of Innovations
35 It is a secret, both in nature and state, that it is safer to
change many things than one.
Bacon, Of Regiment of Health
36 The variation of soeed observed in bodies of different
specific gravities is not caused by the difference of
specific gravity but depends upon external circumstances
and, in particular, upon the resistance of the medium, so
that if this is removed all bodies would fall with the same
velocity.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, |
37 There is, in nature, perhaps nothing older than motion,
concerning which the books written by philosophers are
neither few nor small; nevertheless, | have discovered by
experiment some properties of it which are worth
knowing and which have not hitherto been either
observed or demonstrated. Some superficial observations
have been made, as, for instance, that the free motion of
a heavy falling body is continuously accelerated; but to
just what extent this acceleration occurs has not yet been
announced; for so far as | Know, no one has yet pointed
out that the distances traversed, during equal intervals of
time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in
the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unity.
It has been observed that missiles and projectiles
describe a curved path of some sort; however, no one has
pointed out the fact that this path is a parabola. But this
and other facts, not few in number or less worth knowing,
| have succeeded in proving; and what | consider more
important, there have been opened up to this vast and
most excellent science, of which my work is merely the
beginning, ways and means by which other minds more
acute than mine will explore its remote corners.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, II/
38 Any velocity once imparted to a moving body will be
rigidly maintained as long as the external causes of
acceleration or retardation are removed, a condition
which is found only on horizontal planes; for in the case
of planes which slope downwards there is already present
a cause of acceleration, while on planes sloping upward
there is retardation; from this it follows that motion along
a horizontal plane is perpetual; for, if the velocity be
uniform, it cannot be diminished or slackened, much less
destroyed.
Galileo, Two New Sciences, II/
39 That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it
will He still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But
that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in
motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason
be the same (namely, that nothing can change itself), is
not so easily assented to.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 2
40 He no longer loves the person whom he loved ten years
ago. | quite believe it. She is no longer the same, nor is
he. He was young, and she also; she is quite different. He
would perhaps love her yet, if she were what she was
then.
Pascal, Pensées, 11, 123
41 Geometry supposes... that we know what thing is meant
by the words: motion, number, space; and without
stopping uselessly to define them it penetrates their
nature and lays bare their marvelous properties.
These three things, which comprise the entire
universe... are reciprocally and necessarily related. For we
cannot imagine a motion without something which
moves, and this thing being one that unity is the origin of
all number. Finally, since motion is impossible without
Space, we see that these three things are contained in
the first. Even time is included there too, for motion and
time are correlative (fast and slow, which differentiate
motion, having a necessary reference to time).
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
42 However fast a motion may be, we can conceive a faster,
and make that still faster, and thus forever to infinity
without ever reaching a motion so fast that we can no
longer add to it. And on the contrary, however slow a
motion may be, we can make it slower, and that still
slower, and so to infinity without ever reaching sucha
degree of slowness that we cannot still descend to an
infinity of lower degrees without falling into rest.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
43 If two contrary actions be excited in the same subject, a
change must necessarily take place in both, or in one
alone, until they cease to be contrary.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Axiom 1
44 It is inconceivable to doubt that light consists in the
motion of some sort of matter. For whether one considers
its production, one sees that here upon the earth it is
chiefly engendered by fire and flame which contain
without doubt bodies that are in rapid motion, since they
dissolve and melt many other bodies, even the most
solid; or whether one considers its effects, one sees that
when light is collected, as by concave mirrors, it has the
property of burning as a fire does, that is to say, it
disunites the particles of bodies. This is assuredly the
mark of motion, at least in the true philosophy, in which
one conceives the causes of all natural effects in terms of
mechanical motions. This, in my opinion, we must
necessarily do, or else renounce all hopes of ever
comprehending anything in physics.
Huygens, Treatise on Light, |
45 The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of
resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies,
continues in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of
moving uniformly forwards in a right line. This force is
always proportional to the body whose force it is and
differs nothing from the inactivity of the mass, but in our
manner of conceiving it. A body, from the inert nature of
matter, is not without difficulty put out of its state of rest
or motion. Upon which account, this vis insita may, by a
most significant name, be called inertia or force of
inactivity. But a body only exerts this force when another
force, impressed upon it, endeavors to change its
condition; and the exercise of this force may be
considered as both resistance and impulse; it is
resistance so far as the body, for maintaining its present
state, opposes the force impressed; it is impulse so far as
the body, by not easily giving way to the impressed force
of another, endeavors to change the state of that other.
Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and
impulse to those in motion; but motion and rest, as
commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished;
nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which
commonly are taken to be so.
Newton, Principia, Definition III
46 Absolute motion is the translation of a body from one
absolute place into another; and relative motion, the
translation from one relative place into another. Thus ina
ship under sail, the relative place of a body is that part of
the ship which the body possesses; or that part of the
cavity which the body fills, and which therefore moves
together with the ship: and relative rest is the
continuance of the body in the same part of the ship, or
of its cavity. But real, absolute rest, is the continuance of
the body in the same part of that immovable space, in
which the ship itself, its cavity, and all that it contains, is
moved. Wherefore, if the earth is really at rest, the body,
which relatively rests in the ship, will really and
absolutely move with the same velocity which the ship
has on the earth. But if the earth also moves, the true
and absolute motion of the body will arise, partly from
the true motion of the earth, in immovable space, partly
from the relative motion of the ship on the earth; and if
the body moves also relatively in the ship,its true motion
will arise, partly from the true motion of the earth, in
immovable space, and partly from the relative motions as
well of the ship on the earth, as of the body in the ship;
and from these relative motions will arise the relative
motion of the body on the earth. As if that part of the
earth, where the ship is, was truly moved towards the
east, with a velocity of 10,010 parts; while the ship itself,
with a fresh gale, and full sails, is carried towards the
west, with a velocity expressed by 10 of those parts; but
a sailor walks in the ship towards the east, with 1 part of
the said velocity; then the sailor will be moved truly in
immovable space towards the east, with a velocity of
10,001 parts, and relatively on the earth towards the
west, with a velocity of 9 of those parts.
Newton. Principia, Definitions, Scholium
47 Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform
motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change
that state by forces impressed upon it. Projectiles
continue in their motions, so far as they are not retarded
by the resistance of the air, or impelled downwards by
the force of gravity. A top, whose parts by their cohesion
are continually drawn aside from rectilinear motions, does
not cease its rotation, otherwise than as it is retarded by
the air. The greater bodies of the planets and comets,
meeting with less resistance in freer spaces, preserve
their motions both progressive and circular for a much
longer time.
The change of motion is proportional to the motive
force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right
line in which that force is impressed. If any force
generates a motion, a double force will generate double
the motion, a triple force triple the motion, whether that
force be impressed altogether and at once, or gradually
and successively. And this motion (being always directed
the same way with the generating force), if the body
moved before, is added to or subtracted from the former
motion, according as they directly conspire with or are
directly contrary to each other; or obliquely joined, when
they are oblique, so as to produce a new motion
compounded from the determination of both.
To every action there is always opposed an equal
reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each
other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
Whatever draws or presses another is as much drawn or
pressed by that other. If you press a stone with your
finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. If a horse
draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse (if | may so say)
will be equally drawn back towards the stone; for the
distended rope, by the same endeavor to relax or unbend
itself, will draw the horse as much towards the stone as it
does the stone towards the horse, and will obstruct the
progress of the one as much as it advances that of the
other. If a body impinge upon another, and by its force
change the motion of the other, that body also (because
of the equality of the mutual pressure) will undergo an
equal change, in its own motion, towards the contrary
part. The changes made by these actions are equal, not
in the velocities but in the motions of bodies; that is to
say, if the bodies are not hindered by any other
impediments. For, because the motions are equally
changed, the changes of the velocities made towards
contrary parts are inversely proportional to the bodies.
This law takes place also in attractions, as will be proved
in the next Scholium.
Newton, Principia, Axioms I-III
48 If soheres be however dissimilar (as to density of matter
and attractive force) in the same ratio onwards from the
centre to the circumference; but everywhere similar, at
every given distance from the centre, on all sides round
about; and the attractive force of every point decreases
as the square of the distance of the body attracted: | say,
that the whole force with which one of these spheres
attracts the other will be inversely proportional to the
square of the distance of the centres.
Newton, Principia, |, 12
49 If it universally appears, by experiments and
astronomical observations, that all bodies about the earth
gravitate towards the earth, and that in proportion to the
quantity of matter which they severally contain; that the
moon likewise, according to the quantity of its matter,
gravitates towards the earth; that, on the other hand, our
sea gravitates towards the moon; and all the planets one
towards another; and the comets in like manner towards
the sun; we must, in consequence of this rule, universally
allow that all bodies whatsoever are endowed with a
principle of mutual gravitation. For the argument from
the appearances concludes with more force for the
universal gravitation of all bodies than for their
impenetrability; of which, among those in the celestial
regions, we have no experiments, nor any manner of
observation. Not that | affirm gravity to be essential to
bodies: by their vis insita | mean nothing but their inertia.
This is immutable. Their gravity is diminished as they
recede from the earth.
Newton, Principia, III, Rule II!
50 There is... {an] idea, which, though suggested by our
senses, yet is more constantly offered to us by what
passes in our minds; and that is the idea of succession.
For if we look immediately into ourselves, and reflect on
what is observable there, we shall find our ideas always,
whilst we are awake, or have any thought, passing in
train, one going and another coming, without
intermission.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, VII, 9
51 Modes of motion answer those of extension; swift and
slow are two different ideas of motion, the measures
whereof are made of the distances of time and space put
together; so they are complex ideas, comprehending time
and space with motion.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XVIII, 2
52 We have ideas but of two sorts of action, viz. motion and
thinking. These, in truth, though called and counted
actions, yet, if nearly considered, will not be found to be
always perfectly so. For, if | mistake not, there are
instances of both kinds, which, upon due consideration,
will be found rather passions than actions; and
consequently so far the effects barely of passive powers
in those subjects, which yet on their accounts are
thought agents. For, in these instances, the substance
that hath motion or thought receives the impression,
whereby it is put into that action, purely from without,
and so acts merely by the capacity it has to receive such
an impression from some external agent; and such power
is not properly an active power, but a mere passive
capacity in the subject. Sometimes the substance or
agent puts itself into action by its own power, and this is
properly active power. Whatsoever modification a
substance has, whereby it produces any effect, that is
called action: v.g. a solid substance, by motion, operates
on or alters the sensible ideas of another substance, and
therefore this modification of motion we call action. But
yet this motion in that solid substance is, when rightly
considered, but a passion, if it received it only from some
external agent. So that the active power of motion is in
no substance which cannot begin motion in itself or in
another substance when at rest.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk, Il, XXI, 74
53 It does not appear to me that there can be any motion
other than re/ative; so that to conceive motion there must
be at least conceived two bodies, whereof the distance or
position in regard to each other is varied. Hence, if there
was one only body in being it could not possibly be
moved. This seems evident, in that the idea | have of
motion doth necessarily include relation.
But, though in every motion it be necessary to
conceive more bodies than one, yet it may be that one
only is moved, namely, that on which the force causing
the change in the distance or situation of the bodies, is
impressed. For, however some may define relative
motion, so as to term that body moved which changes its
distance from some other body, whether the force or
action causing that change were impressed on it or no,
yet as relative motion is that which is perceived by sense,
and regarded in the ordinary affairs of life, it should seem
that every man of common sense knows what it is as well
as the best philosopher. Now, | ask any one whether, in
his sense of motion as he walks along the streets, the
stones he passes over may be said to move, because they
change distance with his feet? To me it appears that
though motion includes a relation of one thing to
another, yet it is not necessary that each term of the
relation be denominated from it. As a man may think of
somewhat which does not think, so a body may be moved
to or from another body which is not therefore itself in
motion.
As the place happens to be variously defined, the
motion which is related to it varies. A man in a ship may
be said to be quiescent with relation to the sides of the
vessel, and yet move with relation to the land. Or he may
move eastward in respect of the one, and westward in
respect of the other. In the common affairs of life men
never go beyond the earth to define the place of any
body; and what is quiescent in respect of that is
accounted absolutely to be so. But philosophers, who
have a greater extent of thought, and juster notions of
the system of things, discover even the earth itself to be
moved. In order therefore to fix their notions they seem
to conceive the corporeal world as finite, and the utmost
unmoved walls or shell thereof to be the place whereby
they estimate true motions. If we sound our own
conceptions, | believe we may find all the absolute
motion we can frame an idea of to be at bottom no other
than relative motion thus defined. For, as hath been
already observed, absolute motion, exclusive of all
external relation, is incomprehensible; and to this kind of
relative motion all the above-mentioned properties,
causes, and effects ascribed to absolute motion will, if |
mistake not, be found to agree.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 112-114
54 Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Pope, Essay on Criticism, Il, 335
55 The more communicative a people are, the more easily
they change their habits, because each is in a greater
degree a spectacle to the other and the singularities of
individuals are better observed. The climate which
influences one nation to take pleasure in being
communicative, makes it also delight in change, and that
which makes it delight in change forms its taste.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XIX, 8
56 To begin with the examination of motion; ‘tis evident this
iS a quality altogether inconceivable alone, and without a
reference to some other object. The idea of motion
necessarily supposes that of a body moving. Now what is
our idea of the moving body, without which motion is
incomprehensible? It must resolve itself into the idea of
extension or of solidity; and consequently the reality of
motion depends upon that of these other qualities.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, IV, 4
57 Aman used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
Johnson, Rasselas, XII
58 Such, said Nekayah, is the state of life, that none are
happy but by the anticipation of change: the change
itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is
to change again.
Johnson, Rasselas, XLVI
59 Johnson. When | was a young man, being anxious to
distinguish myself, | was perpetually starting new
propositions. But | soon gave this over; for, | found that
generally what was new was false.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 26, 1779)
60 The permanent in phenomena must be regarded as the
substratum of all determination of time, and
consequently also as the condition of the possibility of all
synthetical unity of perceptions, that is, of experience;
and all existence and all change in time can only be
regarded as a mode in the existence of that which abides
unchangeably. Therefore, in all phenomena, the
permanent is the object /n /tse/f, that is, the substance;
but all that changes or can change belongs only to the
mode of the existence of this substance or substances,
consequently to its determinations.
| find that in all ages not only the philosopher, but
even the common understanding, has preposited this
permanence as a substratum of all change in
phenomena; indeed, | am compelled to believe that they
will always accept this as an indubitable fact. Only the
philosopher expresses himself in a more precise and
definite manner, when he says: "In all changes in the
world, the substance remains, and the accidents alone
are changeable." But of this decidedly synthetical
proposition, | nowhere meet with even an attempt at
proof; nay, it very rarely has the good fortune to stand, as
it deserves to do, at the head of the pure and entirely a
priori \aws of nature. In truth, the statement that
substance is permanent, is tautological. For this very
permanence is The ground on which we apply the
category of substance to the phenomenon; and we
should have been obliged to prove that in all phenomena
there is something permanent, of the existence of which
the changeable is nothing but a determination. But
because a proof of this nature cannot be dogmatical, that
is cannot be drawn from conceptions, inasmuch as it
concerns a synthetical proposition a priori, and as
philosophers never reflected that such propositions are
valid only in relation to possible experience, and
therefore cannot be proved except by means of a
deduction of the possibility of experience, it is no wonder
that while it has served as the foundation of all
experience (for we feel the need of it in empirical
cognition), it has never been supported by proof.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic
61 In order to represent change as the intuition
corresponding to the conception of causality, we require
the representation of motion as change in space; in fact,
it is through it alone that changes, the possibility of
which no pure understanding can perceive, are capable
of being intuited. Change is the connection of
determinations contradictorily opposed to each other in
the existence of one and the same thing. Now, how it is
possible that out of a given state one quite opposite to it
in the same thing should follow, reason without an
example can not only not conceive, but cannot even
make intelligible without intuition; and this intuition is
the motion of a point in space; the existence of which in
different spaces (as a consequence of opposite
determinations) alone makes the intuition of change
possible. For, in order to make even internal change
cognitable, we require to represent time, as the form of
the internal sense, figuratively by a line, and the internal
change by the drawing of that line (motion), and
consequently are obliged to employ external intuition to
be able to represent the successive existence of
ourselves in different states. The proper ground of this
fact is that all change to be perceived as change
presupposes something permanent in intuition, while in
the internal sense no permanent intuition is to be found.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic
62 The changes that take place in nature—how infinitely
manifold soever they may be—exhibit only a perpetually
self-repeating cycle; in nature there happens "nothing
new under the sun," and the multiform play of its
phenomena so far induces a feeling of ennurs, only in
those changes which take place in the region of spirit
does anything new arise.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, 3
63 Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing
grooves of change.
Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 182
64 Arthur. The old order changeth, yielding place to new.
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur, 408
65 All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle
which is taking place every instant.
Thoreau, Walden: Economy
66 Suppose we were able, within the length of a second, to
note 10,000 events distinctly, instead of barely 10, as
now; if our life were then destined to hold the same
number of impressions, it might be 1000 times as short.
We should live less than a month, and personally know
nothing of the change of seasons. If born in winter, we
should believe in Summer as we now believe in the heats
of the Carboniferous era. The motions of organic beings
would be so slow to our senses as to be inferred, not seen.
The sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be almost
free from change, and so on. But now reverse the
hypothesis and suppose a being to get only one 1000th
part of the sensations that we get in a given time, and
consequently to live 1000 times as long. Winters and
summers be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms
and the swifter-growing plants will shoot into being so
rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations; annual
shrubs will rise and fall from the earth like restlessly
boiling-water springs; the motions of animals will be as
invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and
cannon-balls; the sun will scour through the sky like a
meteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, etc. That such
imaginary cases (barring the superhuman longevity) may
be realized somewhere in the animal kingdom it would be
rash to deny.
William James, Psychology, XV
67 Newton in his description of space and time has confused
what is ‘real’ potentiality with what is actual fact. He has
thereby been led to diverge from the judgment of ‘the
vulgar’ who ‘conceive those quantities under no other
notions but from the relation they bear to sensible
objects.’ The philosophy of organism starts by agreeing
with ‘the vulgar’ except that the term ‘sensible object’ is
replaced by ‘actual entity’; so as to free our notions from
participation in an epistomological theory as to sense-
perception. When we further consider how to adjust
Newton’s other descriptions to the organic theory, the
surprising fact emerges that we must identify the
atomized quantum of extension correlative to an actual
entity, with Newton’s absolute place and absolute
duration. Newton's proof that motion does not apply to
absolute place, which in its nature is immovable, also
holds. Thus an actual entity never moves: it is where it is
and what it is. In order to emphasize this characteristic by
a phrase connecting the notion of ‘actual entity’ more
closely with our ordinary habits of thought, | will also use
the term ‘actual occasion’ in the place of the term ‘actual
entity.’ Thus the actual world is built up of actual
occasions; and by the ontological principle whatever
things there are in any sense of ‘existence,’ are derived
by abstraction from actual occasions. | shall use the term
‘event’ in the more general sense of a nexus of actual
occasions, interrelated in some determinate fashion in
one extensive quantum. An actual occasion is the limiting
type of an event with only one member.
It is quite obvious that meanings have to be found for
the notions of ‘motion’ and of ‘moving bodies’... It is
sufficient to say that a molecule in the sense of a moving
body, with a history of local change, is not an actual
occasion; it must therefore be some kind of nexus of
actual occasions. In this sense it is an event, but not an
actual occasion. The fundamental meaning of the notion
of ‘change’ is ‘the difference between actual occasions
comprised in some determinate event.’
Whitehead, Process and Reality, 11, 2
68 This subject of the formation of the three laws of motion
and of the law of gravitation deserves critical attention.
The whole development of thought occupied exactly two
generations. It commenced with Galileo and ended with
Newton's Principia; and Newton was born in the year that
Galileo died. Also the lives of Descartes and Huygens fall
within the period occupied by these great terminal
figures. The issue of the combined labours of these four
men has some right to be considered as the greatest
single intellectual success which mankind has achieved.
In estimating its size, we must consider the completeness
of its range. It constructs for us a vision of the material
universe, and it enables us to calculate the minutest
detail of a particular occurrence. Galileo took the first
step in hitting on the right line of thought. He noted that
the critical point to attend to was not the motion of
bodies but the changes of their motions. Galileo’s
discovery is formularised by Newton in his first law of
motion:—‘Every body continues in its state of rest, or of
uniform motion in a straight line, except so far as it may
be compelled by force to change that state.’
This formula contains the repudiation of a belief which
had blocked the progress of physics for two thousand
years.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, III
69 Perhaps the most powerful solvent of the pre-scientific
outlook has been the first law of motion, which the world
owes to Galileo, though to some extent he was
anticipated by Leonardo da Vinci.
The first law of motion says that a body which is
moving will go on moving in the same direction with the
same velocity until something stops it. Before Galileo it
had been thought that a lifeless body will not move of
itself, and if it is in motion it will gradually come to rest.
Only living beings, it was thought, could move without
help of some external agency. Aristotle thought that the
heavenly bodies were pushed by gods. Here on earth,
animals can set themselves in motion and can cause
motion in dead matter. There are, it was conceded,
certain kinds of motion which are “natural” to dead
matter: earth and water naturally move downwards, air
and fire upwards; but beyond these simple “natural”
motions everything depends upon impulsion from the
souls of living beings.
So long as this view prevailed, physics as an
independent science was impossible, since the physical
world was thought to be not causally self-contained. But
Galileo and Newton between them proved that all the
movements of the planets, and of dead matter on the
earth, proceed according to the laws of physics, and once
started, will continue indefinitely. There is no need of
mind in this process. Newton still thought that a Creator
was necessary to get the process going, but that after
that He left it to work according to its own laws.
Russell, Science and Tradition
70 Motion consists merely in the fact that bodies are
sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, and
that they are at intermediate places at intermediate
times. Only those who have waded through the quagmire
of philosophic speculation on this subject can realize
what a liberation from antique prejudices is involved in
this simple and straightforward commonplace.
Russell, Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
71 With slight exaggeration, it may be said that the
thoroughgoing way in which Aristotle defined,
distinguished and classified rest and movement, the
finished and the incomplete, the actual and potential, did
more to fix tradition, the genteel tradition one is tempted
to add, which identifies-the fixed and regular with reality
of Being and the changing and hazardous with deficiency
of Being than ever was accomplished by those who took
the shorter path of asserting that change is illusory.
Dewey, Experience and Nature, I!
72 | believe that if one were convinced of the reality of
change and if one made an effort to grasp it, everything
would become simplified, philosophical difficulties,
considered insurmountable, would fall away. Not only
would philosophy gain by it, but our everyday life—I
mean the impression things make upon us and the
reaction of our intelligence, our sensibility and our will
upon things— would perhaps be transformed and, as it
were, transfigured. The point is that usually we look at
change but we do not see it. We speak of change, but we
do not think about it. We say that change exists, that
everything changes, that change is the very law of
things: yes, we say it and we repeat it; but those are only
words, and we reason and philosophise as though change
did not exist.
Bergson, The Creative Mind, V
73 Only haste and lack of circumspection in conceiving what
Spirit is and how it moves could assign to it the origin of
change. On the contrary, while spirit is extraordinarily
mobile in its existence, it borrows this mobility from the
hair-trigger organisation and unstable equilibrium of its
organs, and of the stimulations which excite them
incessantly. In its own nature, spirit arrests the flux of
things, as best it may, in its intuitions, and turns it into a
store of synthetic pictures and symbols, sensuous and
intellectual. We may therefore say with more reason that
the world imposes movement on a spirit which by its own
genius would rather be addressed to the eternal, than say
that reality seems successive only to a flighty spirit,
turning distractedly the leaves of a book written in
eternity. Matter, not spirit, is the seat and principle of the
flux. Spirit, being an emanation of this flux, seems indeed
a pilgrim wandering and almost lost in the wilderness of
essence and in the dark treasure-house of truth; but in
respect to the realm of matter, spirit is like a child asking
questions and making pause, and often brutally run over
and crushed by arush of changes which it cannot
understand.
Santayana, Realm of Matter, V
74 If it is true that we cannot bathe twice in the same river,
because the water has flowed on, it is true also that the
Same water which was formerly here is now farther down;
so that we might bathe in it again if only we ran down the
bank with greater celerity than the water. But our second
plunge, though into the same water, would be at another
point in the stream: and it is this combination of
continuity with instability that we indicate when we
speak of a river or a flux. The dialectic of continuity—
whether it may be analysed into an infinite number of
discrete points or into an indefinite number of intervals—
was probably not considered by nature before she began
to exist: there is therefore no need to consider it in
describing existence.
Santayana, Realm of Matter, V
19.6 Space
Philosophers, physicists, and geometers are all interested in
space, but from somewhat different points of view. The
mathematical treatment of space is too technical to be more
than briefly indicated here in a few passages that talk of
points and lines. The treatment of space by the
mathematical physicist is, for the same reason, also touched
on lightly—in a passage from Newton on the distinction
between absolute and relative space (a distinction
challenged by Berkeley), and in a passage from Einstein on
the absolute four-dimensional, space-time matrix. The major
portion of the quotations reflect the controversial questions
about space that have occupied the philosophers.
One of these is the question about the infinite extent of
space—whether space has an edge or boundary. Another is
the question about the infinite divisibility of soace—
whether between any two points in space chosen at random
there is always an infinite number of intermediate points.
Still another is the question about the void—about the
existence in nature of totally empty space, space devoid of
matter. This must not be confused with the question of
whether or not a vacuum can be produced by human
contrivance. If empty space or void does exist in nature,
then a question is raised about action at a distance; if it
does not, then a question is raised concerning the possibility
of motion.
Among the philosophers, two introduce variants on the
idea of space. Aristotle discusses place as the envelope that
contains a body, in contradistinction to the space through
which a body moves from place to place. Descartes
discusses extension as the property distinctive of matter,
just as, in his view, thought is the property distinctive of
mind. Kant, William James, and Russell discuss the
perception of space and disagree about whether it is
developed from experience or is an a priori form of intuition
constitutive of our experience.
1 Timaeus. This new beginning of our discussion of the
universe requires a fuller division than the former; for
then we made two classes, now a third must be revealed.
The two sufficed for the former discussion: one, which we
assumed, was a pattern intelligible and always the same;
and the second was only the imitation of the pattern,
generated and visible. There is also a third kind which we
did not distinguish at the time, conceiving that the two
would be enough. But now the argument seems to
require that we should set forth in words another kind,
which is difficult of explanation and dimly seen. What
nature are we to attribute to this new kind of being? We
reply, that it is the receptacle, and in a manner the nurse,
of all generation.
Plato, Timaeus, 48B
2 We must acknowledge that there is one kind of being
which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible,
never receiving anything into itself from without, nor
itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the
contemplation is granted to intelligence only. And there is
another nature of the same name with it, and like to it,
perceived by sense, created, always in motion, becoming
in place and again vanishing out of place, which is
apprehended by opinion and sense. And there is a third
nature, which is space, and is eternal, and admits not of
destruction and provides a home for all created things,
and is apprehended without the help of sense, by a kind
of spurious reason, and is hardly real; which we
beholding as in a dream, say of all existence that it must
of necessity be in some place and occupy a space, but
that what is neither in heaven nor in earth has no
existence. Of these and other things of the same kind,
relating to the true and waking reality of nature, we have
only this dreamlike sense, and we are unable to cast off
sleep and determine the truth about them. For an image,
since the reality, after which it is modelled, does not
belong to it, and it exists ever as the fleeting shadow of
some other, must be inferred to be in another [i.e. in
Space], grasping existence in some u-ay or other, or it
could not be at all. But true and exact reason, vindicating
the nature of true being, maintains that while two things
[i.e. the image and space] are different they cannot exist
one of them in the other and so be one and also two at
the same time.
Thus have 1 concisely given the result of my thoughts;
and my verdict is that being and space and generation,
these three, existed in their three wa>'s before the
heaven.
Plato, Timaeus, 51B
3 If place is what primarily contains each body, it would be a
limit, so that the place would be the form or shape of
each body by which the magnitude or the matter of the
magnitude is defined: for this is the limit of each body.
If, then, we look at the question in this way the place
of a thing is its form. But, if we regard the place as the
extension of the magnitude, it is the matter. For this is
different from the magnitude: it is what is contained and
defined by the form, as by a bounding plane. Matter or
the indeterminate is of this nature; when the boundary
and attributes of a sphere are taken away, nothing but
the matter is left.
This is why Plato in the Timaeus says that matter and
Space are the same; for the ‘participant’ and space are
identical. (It is true, indeed, that the account he gives
there of the ‘participant’ is different from what he says in
his so-called ‘unwritten teaching’. Nevertheless, he did
identify place and space.) | mention Plato because, while
all hold place to be something, he alone tried to say what
it is.
In view of these facts we should naturally expect to
find difficulty in determining what place is, if indeed it /s
one of these two things, matter or form. They demand a
very close scrutiny, especially as it is not easy to
recognize them apart.
But it is at any rate not difficult to see that place
cannot be either of them. The form and the matter are
not separate from the thing, whereas the place can be
separated.... Where air was, water in turn comes to be,
the one replacing the other; and similarly with other
bodies. Hence the place of a thing is neither a part nora
state of it, but is separable from it. For place is supposed
to be something like a vessel—the vessel being a
transportable place. But the vessel is no part of the thing.
Aristotle, Physics, 209b1
4 Place is thought to be something important and hard to
grasp, both because the matter and the shape present
themselves along with it, and because the displacement
of the body that is moved takes place in a stationary
container, for it seems possible that there should be an
interval which is other than the bodies which are moved.
The air, too, which is thought to be incorporeal,
contributes something to the belief: it is not only the
boundaries of the vessel which seem to be place, but also
what is between them, regarded as empty, Just, in fact, as
the vessel is transportable place, so place is a non-
portable vessel. So when what is within a thing which is
moved, is moved and changes its place, as a boat ona
river, what contains play's the part of a vessel rather than
that of place. Place on the other hand is rather what is
motionless: so it is rather the whole river that is place,
because as a whole it is motionless.
Hence we conclude that the innermost motionless
boundary of what contains Is place.
Aristotle, Physics, 212a8
5 Let us explain...that there is no void existing separately, as
some maintain. If each of the simple bodies has a natural
locomotion, e.g. fire upward and earth downward and
towards the middle of the universe, it is clear that it
cannot be the void that is the condition of locomotion.
What, then, will the void be the condition of? It is thought
to be the condition of movement in respect of place, and
it is not the condition of this.
Again, if void is a sort of place deprived of body, when
there is a void where will a body placed in it move to? It
certainly cannot move into the whole of the void. The
same argument applies as against those who think that
place is something separate, into which things are
carried; viz. how will what is placed in it move, or rest?
Much the same argument will apply to the void as to the
‘up’ and 'down' in place, as is natural enough since those
who maintain the existence of the void make it a place.
And in what way will things be present either in place
or in the void? For the expected result does not take
place when a body is placed as a whole in a place
conceived of as separate and permanent; for a part of it,
unless it be placed apart, will not be in a place but in the
whole. Further, if separate place does not exist, neither
will void.
If people say that the void must exist, as being
necessary if there is to be movement, what rather turns
out to be the case, if one studies the matter, is the
opposite, that not a single thing can be moved if there is
a void; for as with those who for a like reason say the
earth is at rest, so, too, in the void things must be at rest;
for there is no place to which things can move more or
less than to another; since the void in so far as it is void
admits no difference.
Aristotle, Physics, 214b12
6 All things are not on all sides jammed together and kept in
by body; there is also void in things. To have learned this
will be good for you on many accounts; it will not suffer
you to wander in doubt and be to seek in the sum of
things and distrustful of our words. If there were not void,
things could not move at all; for that which is the
property of body, to let and hinder, would be present to
all things at all times; nothing therefore could go on,
since no other thing would be the first to give way.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
7 If room and space which we call void did not exist, bodies
could not be placed anywhere nor move about at all to
any side; as we have demonstrated to you a little before.
Moreover there is nothing which you can affirm to be at
once separate from all body and quite distinct from void,
which would so to say count as the discovery of a third
nature.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
8 If all the space of the whole sum were enclosed within
fixed borders and were bounded, in that case the store of
matter by its solid weights would have streamed together
from all sides to the lowest point nor could anything have
gone on under the canopy of heaven, no nor would there
have been a heaven nor sunlight at all, inasmuch as all
matter settling down through infinite time past, would lie
together in a heap. But as it is, Sure enough no rest is
given to the bodies of the first-beginnings, because there
is no lowest point at all, to which they might stream
together as it were, and where they might take up their
positions. All things are ever going on in ceaseless motion
on all sides and bodies of matter stirred to action are
supplied from beneath out of infinite space. Therefore the
nature of room and the space of the unfathomable void
are such as bright thunderbolts cannot race through in
their course though gliding on through endless tract of
time, no nor lessen one jot the journey that remains to go
by all their travel: so huge a room is spread out on all
sides for things without any bounds in all directions
round.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, 1
9 Space being infinite, matter. .. must also be infinite, lest
after the winged fashion of flames the walls of the world
should suddenly break up and fly abroad along the
mighty void, and all other things follow for like reasons
and the innermost quarters of heaven tumble in from
above and the earth in an instant withdraw from beneath
our feet and amid the commingled ruins of things in it
and of heaven, ruins unloosing the first bodies, should
wholly pass away along the unfathomable void, so that in
a moment of time not a wrack should be left behind,
nothing save untenanted space and viewless first-
beginnings. For on whatever side you shall first
determine first bodies to be wanting, this side will be the
gate of death for things, through this the whole crowd of
matter will fling itself abroad.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
10 The first dimension is called "line," for "line" is that which
is extended in one direction. Two dimensions are called
"surface," for a "surface" is that which is extended in two
directions. Three dimensions are called "solid," fora
"solid" is that which is extended in three directions, and it
is by no means possible to conceive of a solid which has
more than three dimensions, depth, breadth, and length.
By these are defined the six directions which are said to
exist in connection with every body and by which
motions in space are distinguished, forward, backward,
up, down, right and left; for of necessity two directions
opposite to each other follow upon each dimension, up
and down upon one, forward and backward upon the
second, and right and left upon the third.
Nicomachus, Arithmetic, Il, 6
11 The notion of a vacuum not only implies that in which
nothing is, but also requires a Space capable of holding a
body and in which there is not a body... . We hold
however that before the world was there was no place or
Space.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 46, 1
12 Between every nvo points there are infinite intermediate
points, since "no two points follow one another without a
middle".... And the same must of necessity be said of
divisible places, and this is shown from the continuous
motion of a body. For a body is not moved from place to
place except in time. But in the whole time which
measures the motion of a body, there are not two nows in
which the body moved is not in one place and in another;
for if it were in one and the same place in two nows, it
would follow that it would be at rest there, since to be at
rest is nothing else than to be in the same place now and
previously. Therefore, since there are infinite nows
between the first and the last now of the time which
measures the motion, there must be infinite places
between the first from which the motion begins, and the
last where the motion ceases.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 53, 2
13 A body is not related to place except through the
medium of its proper dimensions, in respect of which a
located body is confined through contact with the
locating body. Hence it is not possible for a body to
occupy a place smaller than its quantity, unless its proper
quantity be made in some way less than itself.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ill Suppl., 83, 5
14 Local movement changes nothing that is intrinsic toa
thing, but only that which is without, namely place.
Hence that which is moved locally is perfect as to those
things which are within, although it has an imperfection
as to place, because while it is in one place it is in
potency with regard to another place, since it cannot be
in several places at the same time.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 84, 2
15 We cannot with certainty determine whether there bea
vacuum, either extensive or intermixed with matter. Of
one thing, however, we are satisfied, that the reason
assigned by Leucippus and Democritus for the
introduction of a vacuum (namely, that the same bodies
could not otherwise comprehend, and fill greater and less
Spaces) is false. For there is clearly a folding of matter, by
which it wraps and unwraps itself in space within certain
limits, without the intervention of a vacuum. Nor is there
two thousand times more of vacuum in air than in gold,
as there should be on this hypothesis.
Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 48
16 By extension we understand whatever has length,
breadth, and depth, not inquiring whether it be a real
body or merely space; nor does it appear to require
further explanation, since there is nothing more easily
perceived by our imagination.... Hence we announce that
by extension we do not here mean anything distinct and
separate from the extended object itself; and we make it
a rule not to recognize those metaphysical entities which
really cannot be presented to the imagination. For even
though someone could persuade himself, for example,
that supposing every extended object in the universe
were annihilated, that would not prevent extension in
itself alone existing, this conception of his would not
involve the use of any corporeal image, but would be
based on a false judgment of the intellect working by
itself.
Descartes, Rules for Direction of the Mind, XIV
17 Although there are spaces in which | find nothing which
excites my senses, | must not from that conclude that
these spaces contain no body.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, VI
18 My conception of the superficies by which | believe our
senses are affected, is not different from that employed
(or which ought to be employed) by all mathematicians
and philosophers; they distinguish it from body and
assume it to be wholly devoid of depth. But the term
superficies is taken in two ways by mathematicians: viz.
in the sense of a body, to the length and breadth of which
they attend and which is viewed altogether apart from its
depth, although depth be not denied of it; or only as a
mode of body, when straightway all depth is denied of it.
Consequently for the sake of avoiding ambiguity | said
that | spoke of that superficies which, being only a mode,
can be no part of body; for a body is a substance, anda
mode cannot be a part of substance. Yet | did not deny
that it was the extremity of a body; nay, on the contrary, |
said that it could with the greatest propriety be called the
extremity of the contained body as much as of the
containing, in the sense in which one says that bodies are
contiguous when their extremities are together. For
certainly when two bodies touch each other, the
extremity of each is one and the same, and this is part of
neither but the same mode of both, and can even remain
although these bodies are removed, provided only that
others of accurately the same size and figure succeed to
their place. Nay that space which the Aristotelians call
the superficies of the surrounding body can be
understood to be no other superficies than that which is
no substance but a mode. For neither is the place of a
town changed, although the surrounding air be changed
or some other substance be substituted for it, nor
consequently does the superficies which is here taken for
a place form any pan of the surrounding air or of the
town.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, VI
19 No man... can conceive anything, but he must conceive it
in some place; and endued with some determinate
magnitude; and which may be divided into parts; nor
that anything is all in this place, and all in another place
at the same time; nor that two or more things can be in
one and the same place at once: for none of these things
ever have or can be incident to sense, but are absurd
speeches.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 3
20 The world (I mean not the earth only, that denominates
the lovers of it "worldly men," but the universe, that is,
the whole mass of all things that are) is corporeal, that is
to say, body; and hath the dimensions of magnitude,
namely, length, breadth, and depth: also every part of
body is likewise body, and hath the like dimensions; and
consequently every part of the universe is body, and that
which is not body is no part of the universe: and because
the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing,
and consequently nowhere.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, 46
211 had always held that the vacuum was not a thing
impossible in nature and that she did not flee it with such
horror aS many imagine.
| was forced to this opinion by seeing how slight was
the foundation of the maxim so widely accepted that
nature does not permit a vacuum, a maxim based only on
experiments of which the greater number are false
though considered most certain; and of the rest, some are
so far from contributing to its proof that they show nature
abhors too much fulness rather than flees a vacuum, and
the most favorable do not bring anything more to light
than that nature abhors a vacuum; they do not show that
she cannot suffer it to be.
Pascal, Concerning the Vacuum
22 The essential difference between empty space and body,
which has length, breadth, and depth, is that one is
immobile and the other is mobile, and that one can
receive within itself a body which penetrates its
dimensions, whereas the other cannot; for the maxim on
the impenetrability of dimensions is to be understood
only of the dimensions of two material bodies; otherwise
it would not be universally accepted. Whence it can be
seen that there is as much difference between
nothingness and empty space as there is between empty
Space and material body, and that thus empty space isa
mean between material body and nothingness.
Pascal, Concerning the Vacuum
23 There is no geometer who does not believe that space is
infinitely divisible. One can no more be a geometer
without this principle than one can be a man without a
soul. And yet there is no geometer who understands an
infinite division. We are sure of that truth only for the
reason, certainly sufficient, that we perfectly grasp the
falsity of the statement that by dividing a space we can
reach an indivisible part, a part, that is, having no
extension.
Pascal, Geometrical Demonstration
24 When | consider the short duration of my life, swallowed
up in the eternity before and after the little space which |
fill and even can sec, engulfed in the infinite immensity
of spaces of which | am ignorant and which know me not,
| am frightened and am astonished at being here rather
than there; for there is no reason why here rather than
there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here?
By whose order and direction have this place and time
been allotted to me?... The eternal silence of these
infinite spaces frightens me.
Pascal, Pensées, IIl, 205-206
25 Before thir eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Ilimitable Ocean without bound.
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth.
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise
Of endless warrs, and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring
Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag
Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns,
Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumber'd as the Sands
Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil,
Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise
Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
Hee rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits,
And by decision more imbroiles the fray
By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d a while,
Pondering his Voyage: for no narrow frith
He had to cross.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 890
26 If corporeal substance could be so divided that its parts
could be really distinct, why could not one part be
annihilated, the rest remaining, as before, connected with
one another? Any why must all be so fitted together that
there can be no vacuum? For of things which are really
distinct the one from the other, one can be and remain in
its own position without the other. Since, therefore, it is
supposed that there is no vacuum in nature... but that all
the parts must be united, so that no vacuum can exist, it
follows that they cannot be really separated; that is to
say, that corporeal substance, insofar as it is substance,
cannot be divided. If, nevertheless, any one should now
ask why there is a natural tendency to consider quantity
as Capable of division, | reply that quantity is conceived
by us in two ways; either abstractly or superficially; that
is to Say, aS we imagine it, or else as substance, in which
way it is conceived by the intellect alone. If, therefore, we
regard quantity (as we do very often and easily) as it
exists in the imagination, we find it to be finite, divisible,
and composed of parts; but if we regard it as it exists in
the intellect, and conceive it insofar zs it is substance,
which is very difficult, then, as we have already
sufficiently demonstrated, we find it to be infinite, one,
and indivisible.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Prop. 15, Schol.
27 Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to
anything external, remains always similar and
immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or
measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses
determine by its position to bodies; and which is
commonly taken for immovable space; such is the
dimension of a subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial
Space, determined by its position in respect of the earth.
Absolute and relative space are the same in figure and
magnitude; but they do not remain always numerically
the same. For if the earth, for instance, moves, a space of
our air, which relatively and in respect of the earth
remains always the same, wall at one time be one part of
the absolute space into which the air passes; at another
time it will be another part of the same, and so,
absolutely understood, it will be continually changed.
Place is a part of space which a body takes up, and is
according to the space, either absolute or relative. | say, a
part of space; not the situation, nor the external surface
of the body. For the places of equal solids are always
equal; but their surfaces, by reason of their dissimilar
figures, are often unequal. Positions properly have no
quantity, nor are they so much the places themselves, as
the properties of places. The motion of the whole is the
same with the sum of the motions of the parts; that is,
the translation of the whole, out of its place, is the same
thing with the sum of the translations of the parts out of
their places; and therefore the place of the whole is the
Same as the sum of the places of the parts, and for that
reason, it is internal, and in the whole body.
Newton, Principia, Definitions, Scholium
28 As the order of the parts of time is immutable, so also is
the order of the parts of space. Suppose those parts to be
moved out of their places, and they will be moved (if the
expression may be allowed) out of themselves. For times
and spaces are, as it were, the places as well of
themselves as of all other things. All things are placed in
time as to order of succession; and in space as to order of
situation. It is from their essence or nature that they are
places; and that the primary places of things should be
movable, is absurd. These are therefore the absolute
places; and translations out of those places, are the only
absolute motions.
But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or
distinguished from one another by our senses, therefore
in their stead we use sensible measures of them. For from
the positions and distances of things from any body
considered as immovable, we define all places; and then
with respect to such places, we estimate all motions,
considering bodies as transferred from some of those
places into others. And so, instead of absolute places and
motions, we use relative ones; and that without any
inconvenience in common affairs; but in philosophical
disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and
consider things themselves, distinct from what are only
sensible measures of them. For it may be that there is no
body really at rest, to which the places and motions of
others may be referred.
Newton, Principia, Definitions, Scholium
29 | will here show how men come to form to themselves the
notion of space. They consider that many things exist at
once and they observe in them a certain order of co-
existence, according to which the relation of one thing to
another is more or less simple. This order, is their
situation or distance. When it happens that one of those
co-existent things changes its relation to a multitude of
others, which do not change their relation among
themselves; and that another thing, newly come,
acquires the same relation to the others, as the former
had; we then say it is come into the place of the former...
And supposing, or feigning, that among those co-
existents, there is a sufficient number of them, which
have undergone no change; then we may say, that those
which have such a relation to those fixed existents, as
others had to them before, have now the same place
which those others had. And that which comprehends all
those places, is called space.
Leibniz, Letters to Samuel Clarke, V
30 By this idea of solidity is the extension of body
distinguished from the extension of space:—the
extension of body being nothing but the cohesion or
continuity of solid, separable, movable parts; and the
extension of space, the continuity of unsolid, inseparable,
and immovable parts. Upon the solidity of bodies also
depend their mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion.
Of pure space then, and solidity, there are several
(amongst which | confess myself one) who persuade
themselves they have clear and distinct ideas; and that
they can think on space, without anything in it that
resists or is protruded by body. This is the idea of pure
space, which they think they have as clear as any idea
they can have of the extension of body: the idea of the
distance between the opposite parts of a concave
superficies being equally as clear without as with the
idea of any solid parts between: and on the other side,
they persuade themselves that they have, distinct from
that of pure space, tire idea of something that fills space,
that can be protruded by the impulse of other bodies or
resist their motion.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. n, IV, 5
31 We can have no idea of the place of the universe, though
we can of all the parts of it; because beyond that we have
not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in
reference to which we can imagine it to have any relation
of distance; but all beyond it is one uniform space or
expansion, wherein the mind finds no variety, no marks.
For to say that the world is somewhere, means no more
than that it does exist; this, though a phrase borrowed
from place, signifying only its existence, not location: and
when one can find out, and frame in his mind, clearly and
distinctly, the place of the universe, he will be able to tell
us whether it moves or stands still in the
undistinguishable inane of infinite soace: though it be
true that the word place has sometimes a more confused
sense, and stands for that space which anybody takes up;
and so the universe is in a place.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, XIII, 10
32 The philosophic consideration of motion does not imply
the being of an absolute Space, distinct from that which
is perceived by sense and related bodies; which that it
cannot exist without the mind is clear upon the same
principles that demonstrate the like of all other objects of
sense. And perhaps, if we inquire narrowly, we shall find
we cannot even frame an idea of pure Space exclusive of
all body. This | must confess seems impossible, as being a
most abstract idea. When | excite a motion in some part
of my body if it be free or without resistance, | say there is
Space; but if 1 find a resistance, then | say there is Body;
and in proportion. as the resistance to motion is lesser or
greater, | say the space is more or less pure. So that when
| soeak of pure or empty space, it is not to be sup-posed
that the word "space" stands for an idea distinct from or
conceivable without body and motion—though indeed we
are apt to think every noun substantive stands for a
distinct idea that may be separated from all others; which
has occasioned infinite mistakes. When, therefore,
supposing all the world to be annihilated besides my own
body, | say there still remains pure Space, thereby
nothing else is meant but only That | conceive it possible
for the limbs of my body to be moved on all sides without
the least resistance, but if that too, were annihilated then
there could be no motion, and consequently no Space.
Some, perhaps, may think the sense of seeing doth
furnish them with the idea of pure space; but it is plain
from what we have elsewhere shewn, that the ideas of
Space and distance are not obtained by that sense...,
What is here laid down seems to put an end to all
those disputes and difficulties that have sprung up
amongst the learned concerning the nature of pure
Space.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 116-117
33 The idea of space is convey’d to the mind by two senses,
the sight and touch; nor does any thing ever appear
extended, that is not either visible or tangible. That
compound impression, which represents extension,
consists of several lesser impressions, that are indivisible
to the eye or feeling, and may be call’d impressions of
atoms or corpuscles endow’d with colour and solidity. But
this is not all. Tis not only requisite, that these atoms
shou’d be colour’d or tangible, in order to discover
themselves to our senses; 'tis also necessary we shou’d
preserve the idea of their colour or tangibility in order to
comprehend them by our imagination. There is nothing
but the idea of their colour or tangibility, which can
render them conceivable by the mind. Upon the removal
of the ideas of these sensible qualities, they are utterly
annihilated to the thought or imagination.
Now such as the parts are, such is the whole. If a point
be not consider’d as colour’d or tangible, it can convey to
us no idea; and consequently the idea of extension,
which is compos’d of the ideas of these points, can never
possibly exist. But if the idea of extension really can
exist, aS we are conscious it does, its parts must also
exist; and in order to that, must be consider’d as colour’d
or tangible. We have therefore no idea of space or
extension, but when we regard it as an object either of
our sight or feeling.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Il, 3
34 Our system ooncernitig space and time consists of two
parts, which are intimately connected together. The first
depends on this chain of reasoning. The capacity of the
mind is not infinite; consequently no idea of extension or
duration consists of an infinite number of parts or inferior
ideas, but of a finite number, and these simple and
indivisible: 'Tis therefore possible for space and time to
exist conformable to this idea: And if it be possible, 'tis
certain they actually do exist conformable to it; since
their infinite divisibility is utterly impossible and
contradictory.
The other part of our system is a consequence of this.
The parts, into which the ideas of space and time resolve
themselves, become at last indivisible; and these
indivisible parts, being nothing in themselves, are
inconceivable when not fill'd with something real and
existent. The ideas of space and time are therefore no
separate or distinct ideas, but merely those of the
manner or order, in which objects exist: Or, in other
words, ‘tis impossible to conceive either a vacuum and
extension without matter, or a time, when there was no
succession or change in any real existence.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, II, 4
35 Space is not a conception which has been derived from
outward experiences. For, in order that certain sensations
may relate to something without me (that is, to
something which occupies a different part of space from
that in which | am); in like manner, in order that | may
represent them not merely as without, of, and near to
each other, but also in separate places, the
representation of space must already exist as a
foundation. Consequently, the representation of space
cannot be borrowed from the relations of external
phenomena through experience; but, on the contrary,
this external experience is itself only possible through the
said antecedent representation.
Space then is a necessary representation a priori,
which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions.
We never can imagine or make a representation to
ourselves of the non-existence of space, though we may
easily enough think that no objects are found in it.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic
36 Space does not represent any property of objects as
things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their
relations to each other; in other words, space does not
represent to us any determination of objects such as
attaches to the objects themselves, and would remain,
even though all subjective conditions of the intuition
were abstracted. For neither absolute nor relative
determinations of objects can be intuited prior to the
existence of the things to which they belong, and
therefore not a priori,... It is therefore from the human
point of view only that we can speak of space, extended
objects, etc. If we depart from the subjective condition,
under which alone we can obtain external intuition, or, in
other words, by means of which we are affected by
objects, the representation of space has no meaning
whatsoever.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic
37 Let no one be surprised [that]... there may be a space
without order just as there may be an order without
space. And the primitive perceptions of space are
certainly of an unordered kind. The order which the
Spaces first perceived potentially include must, before
being distinctly apprehended by the mind, be woven into
those spaces by a rather complicated set of intellectual
acts. The primordial largenesses which the sensations
yield must be measured and subdivided by
consciousness, and added together, before they can form
by their synthesis what we know as the real Space of the
objective world.
William James, Psychology, XX
38 Whatever sensible data can be attended to together we
locate together. Their several extents seem one extent.
The place at which each appears is held to be the same
with the place at which the others appear. They become,
in short, So many properties of one and the same real
thing. This is the first and great commandment, the
fundamental "act" by which our world gets spatially
arranged.
William James, Psychology, XX
39 The imagined aggregate of positions occupied by all the
actual or possible, moving or stationary, things which we
know, is our notion of "real" soace—a very incomplete
and vague conception in all minds.
William James, Psychology, XX
40 The essence of the Kantian contention is that there are
not spaces, but Soace —one infinite continuous Unit —
and that our knowledge of this cannot be a piecemeal
sensational affair, produced by summation and
abstraction. To which the obvious reply is that, if any
known thing bears on its front the appearance of
piecemeal construction and abstraction, it is this very
notion of the infinite unitary space of the world. It isa
notion, if ever there was one; and no intuition. Most of us
apprehend it in the barest symbolic abridgment: and if
perchance we ever do try to make it more adequate, we
just add one image of sensible extension to another until
we are tired. Most of us are obliged to turn round and
drop the thought of the space in front of us when we
think of that behind. And the space represented as near
to us seems more minutely subdivisible than that we
think of as lying far away.
William James, Psychology, XX
41 It is often said the images of external objects are
localized in space, even That they can not be formed
except on this condition. It is also said that this space,
which serves thus as a ready prepared frame for our
sensations and our representations, is identical with that
of the geometers, of which it possesses all the properties.
.,. But let us see Whether they are not subject to an
illusion that a more profound analysis would dissipate.
What, first of all, are the properties of space, properly
so called? | mean of that space which is the object of
geometry and which | shall call geometric space. The
following are some of the most essential;
1° It is continuous;
2° It is infinite;
3° It has three dimensions;
4° It is homogeneous, that is to say, all its points are
identical one with another;
5° It is isotropic, that is to say, all the straights which
pass through the same point are identical one with
another.
Compare it now to the frame of our representations
and our sensations, which | may call perceptual space.
Visual Soace.—Consider first a purely visual
impression, due to an image formed on the bottom of the
retina.
A cursory analysis shows us this image as continuous,
but as possessing only two dimensions; this already
distinguishes from geometric space what we may call
pure visual space.
Besides, this image is enclosed in a limited frame.
Finally, there is another difference not less important:
this pure visual space is not homogeneous. All the points
of the retina, aside from the images which may there be
formed, do not play the same role. The yellow spot can in
no way be regarded as identical with a point on the
border of the retina. In fact, not only does the same
object produce there much more vivid impressions, but in
every limited frame the point occupying the center of the
frame will never appear as equivalent to a point near one
of the borders.
No doubt a more profound analysis would show us that
this continuity of visual space and its two dimensions are
only an illusion; it would separate it therefore still more
from geometric space, but we shall not dwell on this
remark.
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, Il, 4
42 Perceptual space, under its triple form, visual, tactile and
motor, is essentially different from geometric space.
It is neither homogeneous, nor isotropic; one can not
even say that it has three dimensions.
It is often said that we ‘project’ into geometric space
the objects of our external perception; that we ‘localize’
them.
Has this a meaning, and if so what?
Does it mean that we represent to ourselves external
objects in geometric space?
Our representations are only the reproduction of our
sensations; they can therefore be ranged only in the
same frame as these, that is to say, in perceptual space.
It is as impossible for us to represent to ourselves
external bodies in geometric space, as it is for a painter
to paint on a plane canvas objects with their three
dimensions.
Perceptual space is only an image of geometric space,
an image altered in shape by a sort of perspective, and
we can represent to ourselves objects only by bringing
them under the laws of this perspective.
Therefore we do not represent to ourselves external
bodies in geometric space, but we reason on these bodies
as if they were situated in geometric space.
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, II,4
43 We speak in the singular of The Universe, of Nature, of
[physis] which can be translated as Process. There is the
one all-embracing fact which is the advancing history of
the one Universe. This community of the world, which is
the matrix for all begetting, and whose essence is process
with retention of connectedness,—this community is what
Plato terms The Receptacle. In our effort to divine his
meaning, we must remember that Plato says that it is an
obscure and difficult concept, and that in its own essence
the Receptacle is devoid of all forms. It is thus certainly
not the ordinary geometrical space with its mathematical
relations. Plato calls his Receptacle, ‘The foster-mother of
all becoming’. He evidently conceived it as a necessary
notion without which our analysis of Nature is defective.
It is dangerous to neglect Plato’s intuitions. He carefully
varies his phrases in referring to it, and implies that what
he says is to be taken in its most abstract sense. The
Receptacle imposes a common relationship on all that
happens, but does not impose what that relationship
Shall be. It seems to be a somewhat more subtle notion
than Aristotle’s ‘matter’ which, of course, is not the
‘matter’ of Galileo and Newton. Plato’s Receptacle may be
conceived as the necessary community within which the
course of history is set, in abstraction from all the
particular historical facts. | have directed attention to
Plato’s doctrine of The Receptacle because, at the present
moment, physical science is nearer to it than at any
period since Plato’s death. The space-time of modern
mathematical physics, conceived in abstraction from the
particular mathematical formula which applies to the
happenings in it, is almost exactly Plato’s Receptacle. It is
to be noted that mathematical physicists are extremely
uncertain as to what these formula are exactly, nor do
they believe that any such formula can be derived from
the mere notion of space-time. Thus, as Plato declares,
Space-time in itself is bare of all forms.
Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, IX, 4
44 Psychology is concerned with space, not as a system of
relations among material objects but as a feature of our
perceptions. If we could accept naive realism, this
distinction would have little importance: we should
perceive material objects and their spatial relations, and
the space that characterizes our perceptions would be
identical with the space of physics. But in fact naive
realism cannot be accepted, percepts are not identical
with material objects, and the relation of perceptual to
physical space is not identity.
Russell, Human Knowledge, III, 6
45 The construction of one space Jn which all our perceptual
experiences are located is a triumph of pre-scientific
common sense. Its merit lies in its convenience, not in
any ultimate truth that it may be supposed to possess.
Common sense, in attributing to it a degree of
nonconventional truth beyond what it actually has a right
to claim, is in error, and this error, uncorrected, adds
greatly to the difficulty of a sound philosophy of space.
Russell, Human Knowledge, Ill, 6
46 It is a wide-spread error that the special theory of
relativity is supposed to have, to a certain extent, first
discovered, or at any rate, newly introduced, the four-
dimensionality of the physical continuum. This, of course,
is not the case. Classical mechanics, too, is based on the
four-dimensional continuum of space and time. But in the
four-dimensional continuum of classical physics the
subspaces with constant time value have an absolute
reality, independent of the choice of the reference
system. Because of this [fact], the four-dimensional
continuum falls naturally into a three-dimensional and a
one-dimensional (time), so that the four-dimensional
point of view does not force itself upon one as necessary.
The special theory of relativity, on the other hand,
creates a formal dependence between the way in which
the spatial co-ordinates, on the one hand, and the
temporal co-ordinates, on the other, have to enter into
the natural laws.
Einstein, Autobiographical Notes
47 |It is scarcely possible to give any other definition of
Space: space is what enables us to distinguish a number
of identical and simultaneous sensations from one
another; it is thus a principle of differentiation other than
that of qualitative differentiation, and consequently itis a
reality with no quality.
Bergson, Time and Free Will, 11
48 What... physical space or time may properly be, we could
know perfectly only by knowing perfectly the intimate
movement and ultimate ranges of matter—not a human
task. We know matter, as it behoves us to know it, in the
measure in which our highly selective action and mental
chronicle of action penetrate into its meshes.... Physical
Space and time are integral elements in this realm of
matter: they are physical, which is as much as to say that
they are contingent, to be explored by experiment rather
than by reasoning, to be shared by us rather than
contemplated. They may change their form if they
choose, like any existence, and may manifest a different
essence in their new instances.
It is therefore a problem never to be solved except
provisionally and locally, how far a human sensation of
sentimental time or of pictorial space, or how far any
geometrical model of a pure space or time, may fitly
express the temporal and spatial dimensions of nature, or
be a true measure for them.
Santayana, Realm of Matter, IV
49 Pictorial space is one of the dearest possessions of the
human spirit: it would be thankless of us to be impatient
because it is subjective, as if it ought not to have been
so. It might no doubt have had a different sensuous
texture, and /night have conveyed much the same
practical information in that other guise; but it could
hardly have been more beautiful than, to the human eye,
are the colours of the spectrum, the forms of motion, and
the spheres of shadow and of light.
Santayana, Realm of Matter, IV
19.7 Time
Unlike space, which elicits no comment from the poets, time
is a Subject about which they wax eloquent, indeed. It is also
one that puzzles the philosophers even more than space
does. Just as the quotations from Shakespeare’s sonnets
represent the range of the poetic response to time, so the
quotations from Augustine’s Confessions represent different
aspects of the philosopher’s puzzlement about time—about
its definition; about its division into past, present, and
future; about its beginning and end, or its endlessness; and
about its relation to eternity or timelessness. In this last
connection, the reader should observe that the word
"eternity" is sometimes used for time everlasting, time
without beginning or end, and sometimes for the
transcendence of time, or timelessness. It is only in the
second of these two meanings that one can make sense of
the statement by Plato and others that time is the moving
image of eternity.
Another point of dispute concerns the relation of time to
motion, Aristotle asserting and Locke denying that time is
the measure of motion. Philosophers apart, the physicists
find time as indispensable as distance in the measurement
of motion. But they in turn dispute about such matters as
the existence of absolute time as opposed to relative or local
time, and about the separability or inseparability of time
and space.
The issue touched on in Section 19.5, about the eternity
of motion, without beginning or end, recurs here in a related
question about time. Did time ever begin and will it ever
end? One theologian, Augustine, explains the folly of asking
what God was doing before the beginning of time; another,
Aquinas, insists that if we affirm that the world and time did
have a beginning, we must do so by faith in God’s own
revelation in the opening sentence of Genesis, for in no
other way can we know an answer to the question. Aquinas
takes a similar view of the end of the world and of time.
As in the case of space, so here too the reader will find a
disagreement between Kant and James about the perception
of time. In addition, the reader will find some interesting
psychological observations by James concerning the
experience of what he calls "the specious present," and
concerning the difference between empty and filled time, as
something experienced and as something remembered.
1 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday
when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:4
2 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every
purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break
down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn,
and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain
from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, anda
time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep
silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, anda
time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
3 Chorus. Time brings all things to pass.
Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 965
4 Timaeus. When the father and creator saw the creature
which he had made moving and living, the created image
of the eternal gods, he rejoiced, and in his joy determined
to make the copy still more like the original; and as this
was eternal, he sought to make the universe eternal, so
far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was
everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fulness
upon a creature was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to
have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in
order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving
according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity;
and this image we call time. For there were no days and
nights and months and years before the heaven was
created, but when he constructed the heaven he created
them also. They are all parts of time, and the past and
future are created species of time, which we
unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal
essence; for we say that he "was," he "is," he "will be,"
but the truth is that "is" alone is properly attributed to
him, and that "was" and "will be" are only to be spoken of
becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is
immovably the same cannot become older or younger by
time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter will be,
older or younger, nor is subject at all to any of those
states which affect moving and sensible things and of
which generation is the cause. These are the forms of
time, which imitates eternity and revolves according toa
law of number. Moreover, when we say that what has
become is become and what becomes is becoming, and
that what will become is about to become and that the
non-existent is non-existent—all these are inaccurate
modes of expression....
Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the
same instant in order that, having been created together,
if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might
be dissolved together. It was framed after the pattern of
the eternal nature, that it might resemble this as far as
was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, and the
created heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time.
Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of
time.
Plato, Timaeus, 37B
5 Time is a measure of motion and of being moved, and it
measures the motion by determining a motion which will
measure exactly the whole motion, as the cubit does the
length by determining an amount which will measure out
the whole. Further ‘to be in time' means, for movement,
that both it and its essence are measured by time (for
simultaneously it measures both the movement and its
essence, and this is what being in time means for it, that
its essence should be measured).
Aristotle, Physics, 22lal
6 Will time then fail? Surely not, if motion always exists. Is
time then always different or does the same time recur?
Clearly time is, in the same way as motion is. For if one
and the same motion sometimes recurs, it will be one and
the same time, and if not, not.
Since the ‘now' is an end and a beginning of time, not
of the same time however, but the end of that which is
past and the beginning of that which is to come, it follows
that, as the circle has its convexity and its concavity, ina
sense, in the same thing, so time is always at a beginning
and at an end. And for this reason it seems to be always
different; for the ‘now’ is not the beginning and the end
of the same thing; if it were, it would be at the same time
and in the same respect two opposites. And time will not
fail; for it is always at a beginning.
Aristotle, Physics, 222a29
7 Time... exists not by itself, but simply from the things
which happen the sense apprehends what has been done
in time past, as well as what is present and what is to
follow after. And we must admit that no one feels time by
itself abstracted from the motion and calm rest of things.
So when they say that the daughter of Tyndarus was
ravished and the Trojan nations were subdued in war, we
must mind that they do not force us to admit that these
things are by themselves, since those generations of
men, of whom these things were accidents, time now
gone by has irrevocably swept away.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
8 See you not that even stones are conquered by time, that
high towers fall and rocks moulder away, that shrines and
idols of gods are worn out with decay, and that the holy
divinity cannot prolong the bounds of fate or struggle
against the fixed laws of nature?
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
9 But time is lost, which never will renew,
While we too far the pleasing path pursue,
Surveying nature with too nice a view.
Virgil, Georgies, III
10 Ev’n as we speak, grim Time speeds swift away;
Seize now and here the hour that is, nor trust some later
day!
Horace, Odes, |, 11
11 No round of hopes for us! So speaks the year.
And Time that steals our day.
Horace, Odes, IV, 7
12 Time flies.
Ovid, Fasti, VI, 5
13 Nothing is constant in the whole world. Everything isina
state of flux, and comes into being as a transient
appearance. Time itself flows on with constant motion,
just like a river: for no more than a river can the fleeting
hour stand still. As wave is driven on by wave, and, itself
pursued, pursues the one before, so the moments of time
at once flee and follow, and are ever new.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV
14 Our life is most short and unhappy,
Fading away like a flower, and even while we are
drinking,
Calling for garlands and girls and perfumes, old age
steals upon us,
Always, before we know.
Juvenal, Satire 1X
15 Time is like a river made up of the events which happen,
and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been
seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place,
and this will be carried away too.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 43
16 What is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is
folded around what is in time exactly as—we read—it is
folded about what is in place and in number.
Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, IV, 15
17 Time takes no holiday. It does not roll idly by, but through
our senses works its own wonders in the mind. Time came
and went from one day to the next; in its coming and its
passing it brought me other hopes and other memories,
and little by little patched me up again with the kind of
delights which had once been mine.
Augustine, Confessions, IV, 8
18 Before God made heaven and earth. He did not make
anything. For if He had made something, what would it
have been but a creature? And | wish | knew all that it
would be profitable for me to know, as well as | Know that
no creature was made before any creature was made.
But a lighter mind, adrift among images of time and its
passing, might wonder that You, O God almighty and all-
creating and all-conserving, Maker of heaven and earth,
should have abstained from so vast a work for the
countless ages that passed before You actually wrought
it. Such a mind should awaken and realize how ill-
grounded is his wonder.
How could countless ages pass when You, the Author
and Creator of all ages, had not yet made them? What
time could there be that You had not created? or how
could ages pass, if they never were?
Thus, since You are the Maker of all times, if there
actually was any time before You made heaven and earth,
how can it be said that You were not at work? If there was
time, You made it, for time could not pass before You
made time. On the other hand, if before heaven and earth
were made there was no time, then what is meant by the
question "What were You doing then?" If there was not
any time, there was not any "then". ...
You are the Maker of all time, and before all time You
are, nor was there ever a time when there was no time!
Augustine, Confessions, XI, 12-13
19 If we conceive of some point of time which cannot be
divided into even the minutest parts of moments, that is
the only point that can be called present; and that point
flees at such lightning speed from being future to being
past, that it has no extent of duration at all.
Augustine, Confessions, XI, 15
20 If the future and the past exist, | want to know where
they are. And if | cannot yet know this, at least | do know
that wherever they are, they are there not as future or
past, but present. If wherever they are they are future,
then in that place they are not yet; if past, then they are
there no more. Thus wherever they are and whatever
they are, they are only as present. When we relate the
past truly, it is not the things themselves that are
brought forth from our memory—for these have passed
away: but words conceived from the images of the things:
for the things stamped their prints upon the mind as they
passed through it by way of the senses. Thus for example
my boyhood, which no longer exists, is in time past,
which no longer exists; but the likeness of my boyhood,
when | recall it and talk of it, | look upon in time present,
because it is still present in my memory.
Augustine, Confessions, Xl, 18
21 Whatever may be the mode of this mysterious foreseeing
of things to come, unless the thing is it cannot be seen.
But what now is, is not future but present. Therefore
when we speak of seeing the future, obviously what is
seen is not the things which are not yet because they are
still to come, but their causes or perhaps the signs that
foretell them, for these causes and signs do exist here
and now. Thus to those who see them now, they are not
future but present, and from them things to come are
conceived by the mind and foretold. These concepts
already exist, and those who foretell are gazing upon
them, present within themselves.
Augustine, Confessions, Xl, 18
22 At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor
past actually exists. Nor is it right to say there are three
times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more
correct to say: there are three times, a present of things
past, a present of things present, a present of things
future. For these three exist in the mind, and | find them
nowhere else: the present of things past is memory the
present of things present is sight, the present of things
future is expectation.
Augustine, Confessions, Xl, 20
23 Where does time come from, and by what way does it
pass, and where does it go, while we are measuring it?
Where is it from?—obviously from the future. But what
way does it pass?—by the present. Where does it go?—
into the past. In other words it passes from that which
does not yet exist, by way of that which lacks extension,
into that which is no longer.
Augustine, Confessions, XI, 21
24 | confess to You, Lord, that | still do not know what time is.
And again | confess to You, Lord, that | Know that | am
uttering these things in time: | have been talking of time
for a long time, and this long time would not be a long
time unless time had passed. But how do! know this,
since | do not Know what time is? Or perhaps | do know,
but simply do not know how to express what | know. Alas
for me, | do not even know what | do not know!
Augustine, Confessions, XI, 25
25 If eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that
time does not exist without some movement and
transition, while in eternity there is no change, who does
not see that there could have been no lime had not some
creature been made, which by some motion could give
birth to change—the various parts of which motion and
change, as they cannot be simultaneous, succeed one
another—and thus, in these shorter or longer intervals of
duration, time would begin? Since then, God, in Whose
eternity is no change at all, is the Creator and Ordainer of
time, | do not see how He can be said to have created the
world after spaces of time had elapsed, unless it be said
that prior to the world there was some creature by whose
movement time could pass.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 6
26 We can reasonably say there was a time when Rome was
not; there was a time when Jerusalem was not; there was
a time when Abraham was not; there was a time when
man was not, and so on: in fine, if the world was not
made at the commencement of time, but after some time
had elapsed, we can say there was a time when the world
was not. But to say there was a time when time was not,
iS aS absurd as to say there was a man when there was no
man; or, this world was when this world was not.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 15
27 It is manifest that time and eternity are not the same.
Some have founded the nature of this difference on the
fact that eternity lacks beginning and end, whereas time
has a beginning and an end. This, however, is an
accidental and not an absolute difference, because,
granted that time always was and always will be,
according to the idea of those who think the movement of
the heavens goes on for ever, there would yet remain a
difference between eternity and time... arising from the
fact that eternity is simultaneously whole, which cannot
be applied to time; for eternity is the measure of a
permanent being, while time is the measure of
movement.
Supposing, however, that this difference be
considered on the part of the things measured, and not
as regards the measures, then there is another reason for
it, since that alone is measured by time which has
beginning and end in time.. .. Hence, if the movement of
the heavens lasted always, time would not be its measure
as regards the whole of its duration, since the infinite is
not measurable; but it would measure any revolution
whatsoever which has beginning and end in time.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 10, 4
28 As eternity is the proper measure of being itself, so time
is the proper measure of movement; and hence,
according as any being recedes from permanence of
being, and undergoes change, it recedes from eternity,
and is subject to time. Therefore the being of things
corruptible, because it is changeable, is not measured by
eternity, but by time; for time measures not only things
actually changed, but also things changeable. Hence it
not only measures movement, but it also measures
repose, which belongs to whatever is naturally movable,
but is not actually in motion.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 10, 4
29 In time there is something indivisible—namely, the
instant; and there is something else which endures—
namely, time. But in eternity the indivisible now stands
always still.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 42, 2
30 Even supposing that the world always was, it would not
be equal to God in eternity... because the divine Being is
all being simultaneously without succession; but with the
world it is otherwise.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 46, 2
31 Beatrice. Tne nature of the universe which stilleth the
centre and moveth all the rest around, hence doth begin
as from its starting point.
And this heaven hath no other where than the divine
mind wherein is kindled the love which rolleth it and the
pow’er which it sheddeth.
Light and love grasp it in one circle, as doth it the
others, and this engirdment he only who doth gird it
understandeth.
Its movement by no other is marked out; but by it all
the rest are measured, as ten by half and fifth.
And how Time in this same vessel hath its roots, and in
the rest its leaves, may now be manifest to thee.
Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 106
32 And well may Seneca, and many more.
Bewail lost time far more than gold in store.
‘For chattels lost may yet recovered be,
But time lost ruins us for aye,’ says he.
It will not come again, once it has fled,
Not any more than will Mag’s maidenhead
When she has lost it in her wantonness;
Let’s not grow mouldy thus in idleness.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Man of Law’s Prologue, Intro.
33 What really /s? That which is eternal: that is to say, what
never had birth, nor will ever have an end; to which time
never brings any change. For time is a mobile thing,
which appears as in a shadow, together with matter,
which is ever running and flowing, without ever
remaining stable or permanent. To which belong the
words before and after, and has been or will be, which at
the very first sight show very evidently that time is not a
thing that is; for it would be a great stupidity anda
perfectly apparent falsehood to say that that w which is
not yet in being, or which already has ceased to be. And
as for these words, present, immediate, now, on which it
seems that we chiefly found and support our
understanding of time, reason discovering this
immediately destroys it; for she at once splits and divides
it into future and past, as though wanting to see it
necessarily divided in two.
The same thing happens to nature that is measured,
as to time that measures it. For there is nothing in it
either that abides or is stable; but all things in it are
either born, or being born, or dying. For which reason it
would be a sin to say of God, who is the only one that /s,
that he was or wil/ be. For those terms represent
declinings, transitions, or vicissitudes of what cannot
endure or remain in being. Wherefore we must conclude
that God alone /s —not at all according to any measure of
time, but according to an eternity immutable and
immobile, not measured by time or subject to any
decline; before whom there is nothing, nor will there be
after, nor is there anything more new or more recent; but
one who really is— who by one single now fills the ever,
and there is nothing that really is but he alone—nor can
we say "He has been," or "He will be"—without beginning
and without end.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
34 Goe to my love, where she is carelesse layd,
Yet in her winters bowre, not well awake;
Tell her the joyous time wil not be staid.
Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.
Spenser, Amoretti, LXX
35 King Richard. | wasted time, and now doth time waste
me.
Shakespeare, Richard Il, V, v, 49
36 The Bastard. Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton
Time,
Is it as he will?
Shakespeare, King John, Ill, i, 324
37 Jaques. He drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, "It is ten o’clock:
Thus we may see," quoth he, "how the world wags;
"Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ’twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale."
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Il, vii, 20
38 Rosalind. Time travels in divers paces with divers
persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time
trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands
still withal.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, III, 11, 326
39 Clown. The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, V, i, 385
40 Hector. The end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator. Time,
Will one day end it.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, IV, v, 224
41 Macbeth. Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, tii, 146
42 Prospero. How is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
Shakespeare, Tempest, I, ti, 48
43 Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws.
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XIX
44 The present time has no causal dependence on the time
immediately preceding it. Hence, in order to secure the
continued existence of a thing, no less a cause is required
than that needed to produce it at the first.
Descartes, Arguments Demonstrating the Existence of
God and the Distinction Between Sold and Body, Axiom
2,
45 Restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories
unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of
date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope
to live so long in our names as some have done in their
persons; one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the
other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of
the world are acted, or time may be too short for our
designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose
death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot
hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of
the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We
whose generations are ordained in this setting part of
time are providentially taken off from such imaginations;
and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of
futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the
next world, and cannot excusably decline the
consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids
pillars of snow, and all that’s past a moment.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn~ Burial, V
46 Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be
content to be as though they had not been, to be found
in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-
seven names make up the first story, and the recorded
names ever since contain not one living century. The
number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The
night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows
when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current
arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since
death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could
doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest
sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter
arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie
down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the
brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos,
and time that grows old in itself bids us hope no long
duration; diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial, V
47 Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no
longer the same persons.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 122
48 Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
Milton, On Time
49 By eternity, | understand existence itself, so far as it is
conceived necessarily to follow from the definition alone
of the eternal thing.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Def. 8
50 Duration is the indefinite continuation of existence.
Spinoza, Ethics, Il, Def. 5
51 Eternity cannot be defined by time, or have any
relationship to it.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 23, Schol.
52 If we look at the common opinion of men, we shall see
that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of their
minds, but they confound it with duration, and attribute
it to imagination or memory, which they believe remain
after death.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 34, Schol.
53 Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from
its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything
external, and by another name is called duration:
relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible
and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of
duration by the means of motion, which is commonly
used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a
month, a year.
Newton, Principia, Definitions, Scholium
54 It may be, that there is no such thing as an equable
motion, whereby time may be accurately measured. All
motions may be accelerated and retarded, but the
flowing of absolute time is not liable to any change. The
duration of perseverance of the existence of things
remains the same, whether the motions are swift or slow,
or none at all: and therefore this duration ought to be
distinguished from what are only sensible measures
thereof.
Newton, Principia, Definitions, Scholium
55 One thing seems strange to me,—that whilst all men
manifestly measured time by the motion of the great and
visible bodies of the world, time yet should be defined to
be the "measure of motion": whereas it is obvious to
every one who reflects ever so little on it, that to measure
motion, space is as necessary to be considered as time;
and those who look a little farther will find also the bulk
of the thing moved necessary to be taken into the
computation, by any one who will estimate or measure
motion so as to Judge right of it. Nor indeed does motion
any otherwise conduce to the measuring of duration,
than as it constantly brings about the return of certain
sensible ideas, in seeming equidistant periods. For if the
motion of the sun were as unequal as of a ship driven by
unsteady winds, sometimes very slow, and at others
irregularly very swift; or if, being constantly equally swift,
it yet was not circular, and produced not the same
appearances,— it would not at all help us to measure
time, any more than the seeming unequal motion of a
comet does.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XIV, 22
56 Having frequently in our mouths the name Eternity, we
are apt to think we have a positive comprehensive idea of
it, which is as much as to say, that there is no part of that
duration which is not clearly contained in our idea. It is
true that he that thinks so may have a clear idea of
duration; he may also have a clear idea of a very great
length of duration; he may also have a clear idea of the
comparison of that great one with still a greater: but it
not being possible for him to include in his idea of any
duration, let it be as great as it will, the whole extent
together of a duration, where he supposes no end, that
part of his idea, which is still beyond the bounds of that
large duration he represents to his own thoughts, is very
obscure and undetermined. And hence it is that in
disputes and reasonings concerning eternity, or any other
infinite, we are very apt to blunder, and involve ourselves
In manifest absurdities.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Il, XXIX,
15
57 Whenever | attempt to frame a simple idea of time,
abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind,
which flows uniformly and is participated by all beings, |
am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties. | have
no notion of it at all, only | hear others say it is infinitely
divisible, and speak of it in such a manner as leads me to
entertain odd thoughts of my existence; since that
doctrine lays one under an absolute necessity of
thinking, either that he passes away innumerable ages
without a thought, or else that he is annihilated every
moment of his life, both which seem equally absurd. Time
therefore being nothing, abstracted from the succession
of ideas in our minds, it follows that the duration of any
finite spirit must be estimated by the number of ideas or
actions succeeding each other in that same spirit or
mind. Hence, it is a plain consequence that the soul
always thinks; and in truth whoever shall go about to
divide in his thoughts, or abstract the ex/stence of a spirit
from its cogitation, will, | believe, find it no easy task.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 98
58 Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying,
Never finding full repast.
Till | eat the world at last.
Swift, On Time
59 No Preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the
same Train and Turn of Thought that elder People have
tried in vain to put into our Heads before.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
60 'Tis a property inseparable from time, and which ina
manner constitutes its essence, that each of m parts
succeeds another, and that none of them, however
contiguous, can ever be co-existent. For the same reason,
that the year 1737 cannot concur with the present year
1738, every moment must be distinct from, and posterior
or antecedent to another. 'Tis certain then, that time, as it
exists must be compos'd of indivisible moments. For if in
time we could never arrive at an end of division and if
each moment, as it succeeds another, were not perfectly
single and indivisible, there would be an infinite number
of co-existent moments, or parts of time; which | believe
will be allow'd to be an arrant contradiction.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. 1,11, 2
61 To understand what time is aright, without which we
never can comprehend infinity, insomuch as one isa
portion of the other— ns'c ought seriously to sit down
and consider what idea it is we have of duration, so as to
give a Satisfactory account how we came by it. What is
that to any body? quoth my uncle Toby. For if you will
turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my
father, and observe attentively, you will perceive,
brother, that whilst you and | are talking together, and
thinking, and smoking our pipes, or whilst we receive
successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do
exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the
continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing
else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our
minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing
co-existing with our thinking—and so according to that
preconceived—You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle
Toby.
--'Tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our
computations of time, we are so used to minute, hours,
weeks, and months—and of clocks (I wish there was not a
clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several
portions to us, and to those who belong to us—that ‘twill
be well, if in time to come, the succession of our ideas be
of any use or service to us at all.
Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my
father, in every sound man's head, there is a regular
succession of ideas of one sort or other, which follow each
other in train just like—A train of artillery? said my uncle
Toby—A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my father—which
follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain
distances, Just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn
turned round by the heat of a candle.—I declare, quoth
my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack. Then,
brother Toby, | have nothing more to say to you upon the
subject, said my father.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Ill, 18
62 Time wastes too fast: every letter | trace tells me with
what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of
it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about
thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a
windy day, never to return more—every thing presses on
—whilst thou art twisting that lock,—see! it grows grey;
and every time | kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every
absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal
separation which we are shortly to make.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, IX, 8
63 | was exceedingly uneasy at the awkward appearance |
supposed | should make to Johnson and the other
gentlemen whom | had invited, not being able to receive
them at home, and being obliged to order supper at the
Mitre. | went to Johnson in the morning, and talked of it as
a serious distress. He laughed, and said, "Consider, Sir,
how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth
hence."— Were this consideration to be applied to most
of the little vexatious incidents of life, by which our quiet
is too often disturbed, it would prevent many painful
sensations. | have tried it frequently, with good effect.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 6, 1763)
64 Nae man can tether time or tide.
Burns, Tam O'Shanter
65 Time is not an empirical conception. For neither
coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if
the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a
priori. Without this presupposition we could not represent
to ourselves that things exist together at one and the
same time, or at different times, that is,
contemporaneously, or in succession.
Time is a necessary representation, lying at the
foundation of all our intuitions. With regard to
phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from
them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and
unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent
to ourselves time void of phenomena. Time is therefore
given a priori. |\n it alone is all reality of phenomena
possible. These may all be annihilated in thought, but
time itself, as the universal condition of their possibility,
cannot be so annulled.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic
66 The infinity of time signifies nothing more than that
every determined quantity of time is possible only
through limitations of one time lying at the foundation.
Consequently, the original representation, time, must be
given as unlimited. But as the determinate
representation of the parts of time and of every quantity
of an object can only be obtained by limitation, the
complete representation of time must not be furnished by
means of conceptions, for these contain only partial
representations. Conceptions, on the contrary, must have
immediate intuition for their basis.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic
67 Time is the formal condition a priori of all phenomena
whatsoever. Space, as the pure form of external intuition,
is limited as a condition a priori to external phenomena
alone. On the other hand, because all representations,
whether they have or have not external things for their
objects, still in themselves, as determinations of the
mind, belong to our internal state; and because this
internal state is subject to the formal condition of the
internal intuition, that is, to time—time is a condition a
priori of all phenomena whatsoever—the immediate
condition of all internal, and thereby the mediate
condition of all external phenomena.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic
68 | met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear—
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Shelley, Ozymandias
69 Oh, Time! the beautiffer of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled—
Time! the corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love,—sole philosopher.
Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV, 130
70 Time is the negative element in the sensuous world.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Intro., 3
71 Length of time is something entirely relative, and the
element of spirit is eternity. Duration, properly speaking,
cannot be said to belong to it.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Intro.
72 Time is that in which all things pass away; it is merely the
form under which the will to live—the thing-in-itself and
therefore imperishable—has revealed to it that its efforts
are in vain; it is that agent by which at every moment all
things in our hands become as nothing, and lose any real
value they possess.
Schopenhauer, Vanity of Existence
73 Aman finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly
existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-
existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again,
comes an equally long period when he must exist no
more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it
cannot be true. The crudest intellect cannot speculate on
such a subject without having a presentiment that Time
is something ideal in its nature. This ideality of Time and
Space is the key to every true system of metaphysics;
because it provides for quite another order of things than
is to be met with in the domain of nature. This is why
Kant is so great.
Schopenhauer, Vanity of Existence
74 The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time,
rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing
ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like
exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not:
this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us
dumb.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
75 Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters, IV
76 Time is but the stream | go a-fishing in. | drink at it; but
while | drink | see the sandy bottom and detect how
Shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity
remains. | would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose
bottom is pebbly with stars, | cannot count one. | know
not the first letter of the alphabet. | have always been
regretting that | was not as wise as the day | was born.
The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into
the secret of things. | do not wish to be any more busy
with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and
feet. | feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My
instinct tells me that my' head is an organ for burrowing,
as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with
it | would mine and burrow my way through these hills. |
think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so
by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors | judge; and
here | will begin to mine.
Thoreau, Walden: Where | Lived, and What | Lived For
77 Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling;
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.
FitzGerald, Rubaiyat, VII
78 What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.
Browning, A Grammarian's Funeral
79 Time is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is
unthinkable otherwise.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, II Epilogue, X
80 The practically cognized present is no knife-edge, but a
saddle-back, with a certain breadth of its own on which
we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions
into time. The unit of composition of our perception of
time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were—a
rearward-and a forward-looking end. It is only as parts of
this duration-block that the relation of succession of one
end to the other is perceived. We do not first feel one end
and then feel the other after it, and from the perception
of the succession infer an interval of time between, but
we seem to feel the interval of time as a whole, with its
two ends embedded in it. The experience is from the
outset a synthetic datum, not a simple one; and to
sensible perception its elements are inseparable,
although attention looking back may easily decompose
the experience, and distinguish its beginning from its
end.
William James, Psychology, XV
81 In the experience of watching empty time flow... , we tell
it off in pulses. We say "now! now! now!" or we count
“more! more! more!" as we feel it bud. This composition
out of units of duration is called the law of time’s discrete
flow. The discreteness is, however, merely due to the fact
that our successive acts of recognition or apperception of
what it is are discrete. The sensation is as continuous as
any sensation can be. All continuous sensations are
named in beats, we notice that a certain finite "more" of
them is passing or already past...
After a small number of beats our impression ol the
amount we have told off becomes quite vague. Our only
way of knowing it accurately is by counting, or noticing
the clock, or through some other symbolic conception.
When the times exceed hours or days, the conception is
absolutely symbolic. We think of the amount we mean
either solely as a name, or by running over a few salient
dates therein, with no pretence of imagining the full
durations that lie between them. No one has anything
like a perception of the greater length of the time
between now and the first century than of that between
now and the tenth. To an historian, it is true, the longer
interval will suggest a host of additional dates and
events, and so appear a more multitudinous thing. And
for the same reason most people will think they directly
perceive the length of the past fortnight to exceed that of
the past week. But there is properly no comparative time
intuition in these cases at all. It is but dates and events,
representing time, their abundance symbolizing its
length. | am sure that this is so, even where the times
compared are no more than an hour or so in length.
William James, Psychology, XV
82 The specious present, the intuited duration, stands
permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own
quality unchanged by the events that stream through it.
Each of these, as it slips out, retains the power of being
reproduced; and when reproduced, is reproduced with
the duration and neighbors which it originally had. Please
observe, however, that the reproduction of an event, after
it has once completely dropped out of the rearward end
of the specious present, is an entirely different psychic
fact from its direct perception in the specious present as
a thing immediately past. A creature might be entirely
devoid of reproductive memory, and yet have the time-
sense; but the latter would be limited, in his case, to the
few seconds immediately passing by. Time older than that
he would never recall.
William James, Psychology, XV
83 We cannot point to a time itself, but only to some event
occurring at that time. There is therefore no reason in
experience to suppose that there are times as opposed to
events: the events, ordered by the relations of
simultaneity and succession, are all that experience
provides.
Russell, World of Physics and the World of Sense
84 The contention that time is unreal and that the world of
sense is illusory must, | think, be regarded as based upon
fallacious reasoning. Nevertheless, there is some sense—
easier to feel than to state—in which time is an
unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality. Past
and future must be acknowledged to be as real as the
present, and a certain emancipation from slavery to lime
is essential to philosophic thought. The importance of
time is rather practical than theoretical, rather in relation
to our desires than in relation to truth. A truer image of
the world, | think, is obtained by picturing things as
entering into the stream of time from an eternal world
outside, than from a view which regards time as the
devouring tyrant of all that is. Both in thought and in
feeling, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of
wisdom.
Russell, Problem of Infinity
85 Most people will be inclined to agree with St. Augustine:
"What, then, is time? If no one asks of me, | know; if |
wish to explain to him who asks, | Know not."
Philosophers, of course, have learned to be glib about
time, but the rest of mankind, although the subject feels
familiar, are apt to be aware that a few questions can
reduce them to hopeless confusion. "Docs the past exist?
No. Does the future exist? No. Then only the present
exists? Yes. But within the present there is no lapse of
time? Quite so. Then time does not exist? Oh, | wish you
wouldn't be so tiresome." Any philosopher can elicit this
dialogue by a suitable choice of interlocuter.
Russell, Human Knowledge, IV, 5
86 Since Einstein, we know that... each piece of matter has
its own local time. There is very’ little difference between
the local time of one piece of matter and that of another
unless their relative velocity is an appreciable fraction of
the velocity of light. The local time of a given piece of
matter is that which will be shown by a perfectly accurate
chronometer which travels with it. Beta particles travel
with velocities that do not fall very far short of that of
light. If we could place a chronometer on a beta particle
and make the particle travel in a closed path, we should
find, when it returned, that the chronometer would not
agree with one that had remained throughout stationary
in the laboratory. A more curious illustration (which | owe
to Professor Reichenbach) is connected with the
possibility of travel to the stars. Suppose we invented a
rocket apparatus which could send a projectile to Sirius
with a velocity ten-elevenths of that of light. From the
point of view of the terrestrial observer the journey would
take about 55 years, and one might therefore suppose
that if the projectile carried passengers who were young
when they started, they would be old when they arrived.
But from their point of view the journey will only have
taken about 11 years. This will not only be the time taken
as measured by their clocks, but also the time as
measured by their physiological processes—decay of
teeth, loss of hair, etc. If they looked and felt like men of
20 when they started, they will look and feel like men of
31 when they arrive. It is only because we do not
habitually come across bodies traveling with a speed
approaching that of light that such odd facts remain
unnoticed except by men of science.
Russell, Human Knowledge, IV, 5
87 The non-mathematician is seized by a mysterious
shuddering when he hears of "four-dimensional" things,
by a feeling not unlike that awakened by thoughts of the
occult. And yet there is no more common-place statement
than that the world in which we live is a four-dimensional
Space-time continuum.
Space is a three-dimensional continuum. By this we
mean that it is possible to describe the position of a point
(at rest) by means of three numbers (co-ordinates) x, y, Z,
and that there is an indefinite number of points in the
neighbourhood of this one, the position of which can be
described by co-ordinates such as x1, yl, z1, which may
be as near as we choose to the respective values of the
co-ordinates x, y, z of the first point. In virtue of the latter
property we speak of a "continuum," and owing to the
fact that there are three co-ordinates we speak of it as
being "three-dimensional."
Similarly, the world of physical phenomena which was
briefly called "world" by Minkowski is naturally four-
dimensional in the space-time sense. For it is composed
of individual events, each of which is described by four
numbers, namely, three space co-ordinates x, y, zanda
time co-ordinate, the time-value ¢. The "world" is in this
sense also a continuum; for to every event there are as
many "neighbouring" events (realised or at least
thinkable) as we care to choose, the co-ordinates x1, y1,
Z1, t1 of which differ by an indefinitely small amount
from those of the event x, y, z, toriginally considered.
That we have not been accustomed to regard the world in
this sense as a four-dimensional continuum is due to the
fact that in physics, before the advent of the theory of
relativity, time played a different and more independent
role, as compared with the space co-ordinates. It is for
this reason that we have been in the habit of treating
time as an independent continuum. As a matter of fact,
according to classical mechanics, time is absolute, i.e. it
is independent of the position and the condition of
motion of the system of co-ordinates. We see this
expressed in the last equation of the Galileian
transformation (t'= 2).
The four-dimensional mode of consideration of the
"world" is natural on the theory’ of relativity, since
according to this theory time is robbed of its
independence.
Einstein, Relativity, |, 17
88 When | follow with my eyes on the dial of a clock the
movement of the hand which corresponds to the
oscillations of the pendulum, | do not measure duration,
as seems to be thought; | merely count simultaneities,
which is very different. Outside of me, in space, there is
never more than a single position of the hand and the
pendulum, for nothing is left of the past positions. Within
myself a process of organization or interpenetration of
conscious states is going on, which constitutes true
duration. It is because | endure in this way that | picture
to myself what | call the past oscillations of the pendulum
at the same time as | perceive the present oscillation.
Now, let us withdraw for a moment the ego which thinks
these so-called successive oscillations: there will never
be more than a single oscillation, and indeed only a
single position, of the pendulum, and hence no duration.
Withdraw, on the other hand, the pendulum and its
oscillations; there will no longer be anything but the
heterogeneous duration of the ego, without moments
external to one another, without relation to number.
Bergson, Time and Free Will, Il
89 To announce that something will take place at the end of
a time tis to declare that consciousness will note
between now and then a number t of simultaneities of a
certain kind. And we must not be led astray by the words
"between now and then," for the interval of duration
exists only for us and on account of the interpenetration
of our conscious states. Outside ourselves we should find
only space, and consequently nothing but simultaneities,
of which we could not even say that they are objectively
successive, since succession can only be thought through
comparing the present with the past.—That the interval
of duration itself cannot be taken into account by science
is proved by the fact that, if all the motions of the
universe took place twice or thrice as quickly, there
would be nothing to alter either in our formulae or in the
figures which are to be found in them. Consciousness
would have an indefinable and as it were qualitative
impression of the change, but the change would not
make itself felt outside consciousness, since the same
number of simultaneities would go on taking place in
Space.
Bergson, Time and Free Will, H
90 What precisely is the present? If it is a question of the
present instant,—l mean, of a mathematical instant which
would be to time what the mathematical point is to the
line,—it is clear that such an instant is a pure abstraction,
an aspect of the mind; it cannot have real existence. You
could never create time out of such instants any more
than you could make a line out of mathematical points.
Even if it does exist, how could there be an instant
anterior to it? The two instants could not be separated by
an interval of time since, by hypothesis, you reduce time
to a juxtaposition of instants. Therefore they would not be
separated by anything, and consequently they would be
only one: two mathematical points which touch are
identical.
Bergson, The Creative Mind, V
91 By physical time | understand an order of derivation
integral to the flux of matter; so that if two worlds had no
material connection, and neither was in any of its parts
derived from the other, they could not possibly have
positions in the same physical time. The same essence of
succession might be exhibited in both; the same kind of
temporal vistas might perplex the sentimental
inhabitants of each of them; but no date in one would
coincide with a date in the other, nor would their
respective temporal scales and rates of precipitation have
any common measure.
The notion that there is and can be but one time, and
that half of it is always intrinsically past and the other
half always intrinsically future, belongs to the normal
pathology of an animal mind: it marks the egotistical
outlook of an active being endowed with imagination.
Such a being will project the moral contrast produced by
his momentary absorption in action upon the conditions
and history of that action, and upon the universe at large.
A perspective of hope and one of reminiscence
continually divide for him a specious eternity; and for him
the dramatic center of existence, though always ata
different point in physical time, will always be precisely in
himself.
Santayana, Realm of Matter, IV
92 Sentimental time is a genuine, if poetical, version of the
march of existence, even as pictorial space is a genuine,
if poetical, version of its distribution. The views taken are
short, especially towards the future, but being extensible
they suggest well enough the unfathomable depths of
physical time in both directions; and if the views, being
views, must be taken from some arbitrary point, they may
be exchanged for one another, thus annulling the bias of
each, in so far as the others contradict it. | am far from
wishing to assert that the remainder or resultant will be
the essence of physical time; but for human purposes a
just view enough is obtained if we remember that each
now and here is called so only by one voice, and that all
other voices call it a then and a there. ...
The least sentimental term in sentimental time is the
term now, because it marks the junction of fancy with
action. Now is often a word of command; it leans towards
the future, and seems to be the voice of the present
summoning the next moment to arise, and pouncing
upon it when it does so. For now has in it emotionally all
the cheeriness of material change: it comes out of the
past as if impatient at not having come sooner, and it
passes into the future with alacrity, as if confident of
losing nothing by moving on. For it is evident that actual
succession can contain nothing but nows, so that now in
a certain way is immortal. But this immortality is only a
continual reiteration, a series of moments each without
self-possession and without assurance of any other
moment; so that if ever the now loses its indicative
practical force and becomes introspective, it becomes
acutely sentimental, a perpetual hope unrealised and a
perpetual dying.
Santayana, Realm of Matter, IV
93 October began as months do; their entrance is, in itself,
an unostentatious and soundless affair, without outward
signs and tokens; they, as it were, steal in softly and,
unless you are keeping close watch, escape your notice
altogether. Time has no divisions to mark its passage,
there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to
announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even
when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring
bells and fire off pistols.
Mann, Magic Mountain, V
94 If Time is considered by itself, it immediately dissolves
into an absolute multiplicity of instants which considered
separately lose all temporal nature and are reduced
purely and simply to the total a-temporality of the this.
Thus Time is pure nothingness in-itself, which can seem
to have a being only by the very act in which the For-
itself overleaps it in order to utilize it. This being,
however, is that of a particular figure which is raised on
the undifferentiated ground of time and which we call the
lapse of time. In fact our first apprehension of objective
time is practical: it is while being my possibilities beyond
co-present being that | discover objective time as the
worldly correlate of nothingness which separates me from
my possible. From this point of view time appears as a
finite, organized form in the heart of an indefinite
dispersion. The lapse of time is the result of a
compression of time at the heart of an absolute
decompression, and it is the project of ourselves toward
our possibilities which realizes the compression. This
compression of time is certainly a form of dispersion and
of separation, for it expresses in the world the distance
which separates me from myself. But on the other hand,
since | project myself toward a possible only across an
organized series of dependent possibles which are what |
have to be in order to—, and since their non-thematic and
non-positional revelation is given in the non-positional
revelation of the major possible toward which | project
myself, time is revealed to me as an objective, temporal
form, as an organized echeloning of probabilities. This
objective form or lapse is like the trajectory of my act.
Thus time appears through trajectories. But just as
Spatial trajectories decompose and collapse into pure
static spatiality, so the temporal trajectory collapses as
soon as it is not simply lived as that which objectively
implies our expectation of ourselves. In fact the probables
which are revealed to me tend naturally to be isolated as
in-itself probables and to occupy a strictly separated
fraction of objective time. Then the lapse of time
disappears, and time is revealed as the shimmer of
nothingness on the surface of a strictly a-temporal being.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Pt. Il, Ill, 4
19.8 The Universe or Cosmos
Many of the questions that have appeared in earlier sections
of this chapter, especially the sections on cause, motion and
change, space, and time, reappear here in the form of
questions about the beginning and end of the world, its
infinity or boundlessness, and its creation or origin.
Similarly, the question raised in the section on nature, about
God’s immanence in nature or his transcendence of it, recurs
here as a question about the relation of God to the universe
or cosmos.
New questions do appear here. Is there only one universe
or is there a multiplicity of worlds, even an infinity of them?
Is this the best of all possible worlds, in which everything
that happens has a sufficient reason? The affirmative
answer, as given by Leibniz, has always been taken as the
hallmark of philosophical optimism. It is opposed on rational
grounds by Aquinas, who argues that a better world than
this is possible; and it is laughed out of court by the ridicule
that Voltaire heaps upon it. Related questions are discussed
by others: whether the universe is intrinsically rational or
intelligible, and whether God’s creation of the world was an
act of free choice on his part or something entirely
necessitated.
Another point of dispute is the conception of a world-soul
—an indwelling principle animating the universe and giving
it intelligent direction. This conception, proposed by
philosophers in antiquity, is rejected by later Christian
theologians.
It is generally agreed that cosmos is the opposite of
chaos; even those who conceive the universe as resulting
from a fortuitous concourse of atoms find order in its
structure and its processes. But the extent and character of
its order are disputed. As opposed to the vision of a universe
that is a thoroughly integrated whole, in which there are no
loose ends or independent threads, William James proposed
what he calls a "pluralistic universe,” one in which there are
many loosely concatenated strands, operating with some
degree of independence of one another.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God
divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he
called Night. And the evening and the morning were the
first day.
Genesis 1:1-5
2 The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world,
and they that dwell therein.
Psalm 24:1
3 One generation passeth away, and another generation
cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
Ecclesiastes 1:4
4 Timaeus. Let me tell you... why the creator made this world
of generation. He was good, and the good can never have
any jealousy of anything. And being free from Jealousy,
he desired that all things should be as like himself as
they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of
creation and of the world, as we Shall do well in believing
on the testimony of wise men: God desired that all things
should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was
attainable. Wherefore also finding the whole visible
sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and
disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order,
considering that this was in every way better than the
other. Now the deeds of the best could never be or have
been other than the fairest; and the creator, reflecting on
the things which are by nature visible, found that no
unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer than
the intelligent taken as a whole; and that intelligence
could not be present in anything which was devoid of
soul. For which reason, when he was framing the
universe, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body,
that he might be the creator of a work which was by
nature fairest and best. Wherefore, using the language of
probability, we may say that the world became a living
creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the
providence of God.
This being supposed, let us proceed to the next stage:
In the likeness of what animal did the Creator make the
world? It would be an unworthy thing to liken it to any
nature which exists as a part only; for nothing can be
beautiful which is like any imperfect thing; but let us
suppose the world to be the very image of that whole of
which all other animals both individually and in their
tribes are portions. For the original of the universe
contains in itself all intelligible beings, just as this world
comprehends us and all other visible creatures, For the
Deity, intending to make this world like the fairest and
most perfect of intelligible beings, framed one visible
animal comprehending within itself all other animals of a
kindred nature. are we right in saying that there is one
world, or that they are many and infinite? There must be
one only, if the created copy is to accord with the
original. For that which includes all other intelligible
creatures cannot have a second or companion; in that
case there would be need of another living being which
would include both, and of which they would be parts,
and the likeness would be more truly said to resemble not
them, but that other which included them. In order then
that the world might be solitary, like the perfect animal,
the creator made not two worlds or an infinite number of
them; but there is and ever will be one only-begotten and
created heaven.
Plato, Timaeus, 29B
5 Timaeus. And he [the Creator] gave to the world the figure
which was Suitable and also natural. Now to the animal
which was to comprehend all animals, that figure was
suitable which comprehends within itself all other figures.
Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe,
round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every
direction equidistant from the centre, the most perfect
and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered
that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he
finished off, making the surface smooth all around for
many reasons; in the first place, because the living being
had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining
outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was
nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding
atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been
any use of organs by the help of which he might receive
his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since
there was nothing which went from him or came into him:
for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was
created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and
all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself.
For the Creator conceived that a being which was self-
sufficient would be far more excellent than one which
lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything
or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not
think jt necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he
any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking;
but the movement suited to his spherical form was
assigned to him, being of all the seven that which is most
appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made
to move in the same manner and on the same spot,
within his own limits revolving in a circle. All the other six
motions were taken away from him, and he was made not
to partake of their deviations. And as this circular
movement required no feet, the universe was created
without legs and without feet.
Plato, Timaeus, 33A
6 Timaeus. When all things were in disorder God created in
each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relation
to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they
could possibly receive. For in those days nothing had any
proportion except by accident; nor did any of the things
which now have names deserve to be named at all—as,
for example, fire, water, and the rest of the elements. All
these the creator first set in order, and out of them he
constructed the universe, which was a single animal
comprehending in itself all other animals, mortal and
immortal. Now of the divine, he himself was the creator,
but the creation of the mortal he committed to his
offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him the
immortal principle of the soul; and around this they
proceeded to fashion a mortal body, and made it to be
the vehicle of the soul, and constructed within the body a
soul of another nature which was mortal, subject to
terrible and irresistible affections—first of all, pleasure,
the greatest incitement to evil; then, pain, which deters
from good; also rashness and fear, two foolish
counsellors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope easily
led astray—these they mingled with irrational sense and
with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so
framed man.
Plato, Timaeus, 69A
7 It is evident not only that there is not, but also that there
could never come to be, any bodily mass whatever
outside the circumference. The world as a whole,
therefore, includes a//its appropriate matter, which is, as
we saw, natural perceptible body. So that neither are
there now, nor have there ever been, nor can there ever
be formed more heavens than one, but this heaven of
ours iS one and unique and complete.
Aristotle, On the Heavens, 279a/7
8 Everything which has a function exists for its function. The
activity of God is immortality, i.e. eternal life. Therefore
the movement of that which is divine must be eternal.
But such is the heaven, viz. a divine body, and for that
reason to it is given the circular body whose nature it is to
move always in a circle. Why, then, is not the whole body
of the heaven of the same character as that part?
Because there must be something at rest at the centre of
the revolving body; and of that body no part can be at
rest, either elsewhere or at the centre. It could do so only
if the body’s natural movement were towards the centre.
But the circular movement is natural, since otherwise it
could not be eternal: for nothing unnatural is eternal. The
unnatural is subsequent to the natural, being a
derangement of the natural which occurs in the course of
its generation. Earth then has to exist; for it is earth
which is at rest at the centre.
Aristotle, On the Heavens, 286a9
9 The sun and the stars and the whole heaven are ever
active, and there is no fear that they may sometime stand
still, as the natural philosophers fear they may. Nor do
they tire in this activity; for movement is not for them, as
it is for perishable things, connected with the potentiality
for opposites, so that the continuity of the movement
should be laborious; for it is that kind of substance which
is matter and potency, not actuality, that causes this.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1050b23
10 There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of
ours. For the atoms being infinite in number, as was
proved already, are borne on far out into space. For those
atoms, which are of such nature that a world could be
created out of them or made by them, have not been
used up either on one world or on a limited number of
worlds, nor again on all the worlds which are alike, or on
those which are different from these. So that there
nowhere exists an obstacle to the infinite number of the
worlds.
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus
11 We must believe that worlds, and indeed every limited
compound body which continuously exhibits a similar
appearance to the things we see, were created from the
infinite, and that all such things, greater and less alike,
were separated off from individual agglomerations of
matter; and that all are again dissolved, some more
quickly, some more slowly, some suffering from one set of
causes, others from another. And further we must believe
that these worlds were neither created all of necessity
with one configuration nor yet with every kind of shape.
Furthermore, we must believe that in all worlds there are
living creatures and plants and other things we see in
this world; for indeed no one could prove that in a world
of one kind there might or might not have been in.
eluded the kinds of seeds from which living things and
plants and all the rest of the things we see are composed,
and that in a world of another kind they could not have
been.
Epicurus, Letter la Herodotus
12 There are some... who think that the number of the sand
is infinite in multitude; and | mean by the sand not only
that which exists about Syracuse and the rest of Sicily
but also that which is found in every region whether
inhabited or uninhabited. Again there are some who,
without regarding it as infinite, yet think that no number
has been named which is great enough to exceed its
multitude. And it is clear that they who hold this view, if
they imagined a mass made up of sand in other respects
as large as the mass of the earth, including in it all the
seas and the hollows of the earth filled up to a height
equal to that of the highest o! the mountains, would be
many times further still from recognising that any
number could be expressed which exceeded the
multitude of the sand so taken. But | will try to show you
by means of geometrical proofs, which you will be able to
follow, that, of the numbers named by me and given in
the work which | sent to Zeuxippus, some exceed not
only the number of the mass of sand equal in magnitude
to the earth filled up in the way described, but also that
of a mass equal in magnitude to the universe.
Archimedes, Sand-Reckoner
13 Be far from believing this, that all things as they say
press to the centre of the sum, and that for this reason
the nature of the world stands fast without any strokes
from the outside and the uppermost and lowest parts
cannot part asunder in any direction, because all things
have been always pressing towards the centre....
Groundless error has devised such dreams for fools,
because they have embraced false principles of reason.
For there can be no centre where the universe is infinite;
no nor, even if there were a centre, could anything take
up a position there any more on that account than for
some quite different reason be driven away. For all room
and space, which we term void, must through centre,
through no-centre alike give place to heavy bodies, in
whatever directions their motions tend. Nor is there any
spot of such a sort that when bodies have reached it, they
can lose their force of gravity and stand upon void; and
that again which is void must not serve to support
anything, but must, as its nature craves, continually give
place. Things cannot therefore in such a way be held in
union, o’ermastered by love of a centre.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
14 Since the body of the earth and water and the light
breath of air and burning heats, out of which this sum of
things is seen to be formed, do all consist of a body that
had a birth and is mortal, the whole nature of the world
must be reckoned of a like body. For those things whose
parts and members we see to be of a body that had a
birth and of forms that are mortal, we perceive to be
likewise without exception mortal, and at the same time
to have had a birth. Since therefore | see that the chiefest
members and parts of the world are destroyed and
begotten anew, | may be sure that for heaven and earth
as well there has been a time of beginning and there will
be a time of destruction.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
15 Whether the world is a soul, or a body under the
government of nature, like trees and crops, it embraces in
its constitution all that it is destined to experience
actively or passively from its beginning right on to its
end; it resembles a human being, all whose capacities are
wrapped up in the embryo before birth. Ere the child has
seen the light the principle of beard and grey hairs is
innate. Albeit small and hidden, all the features of the
whole body and of every succeeding period of life are
there. In like manner the creation of the world embraces
sun and moon, stars with their successive phases, and
the birth of all sentient life; and no less the methods of
change in all earthly things.
Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales, Ill, 29
16 Before there was any earth or sea, before the canopy of
heaven stretched overhead, Nature presented the same
aspect the world over, that to which men have given the
name of Chaos. This was a shapeless uncoordinated
mass, nothing but a weight of lifeless matter, whose ill-
assorted elements were indiscriminately heaped together
in one place. There was no sun, in those days, to provide
the world with light, no crescent moon ever filling out her
horns: the earth was not poised in the enveloping air,
balanced there by its own weight, nor did the sea stretch
out its aims along the margins of the shores. Although
the elements of land and air and sea were there, the
earth had no firmness, the water no fluidity, there was no
brightness in the sky. Nothing had any lasting shape, but
everything got in the way of everything else; for, within
that one body, cold warred with hot, moist with dry, soft
with hard, and light with heavy.
This strife was finally resolved by a god, a natural
force of a higher kind, who separated the earth from
heaven, and the waters from the earth, and set the clear
air apart from the cloudy atmosphere. When he had freed
these elements, sorting them out from the heap where
they had lain, indistinguishable from one another, he
bound them fast, each in its separate place, forming a
harmonious union. The fiery aether, which has no weight,
formed the vault of heaven, flashing upwards to take its
place in the highest sphere. The air, next to it in
lightness, occupied the neighbouring regions. Earth,
heavier than these, attracted to itself the grosser
elements, and sank down under its own weight, while the
encircling sea took possession of the last place of all, and
held the solid earth in its embrace. In this way the god,
whichever of the gods it was, set the chaotic mass in
order, and, after dividing it up, arranged it in its
constituent parts.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, |
17 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not
any thing made that was made.
John 1:1—3
18 And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, |
was about to write: and | heard a voice from heaven
saying unto me. Seal up those things which the seven
thunders uttered, and write them not.
And the angel which | saw stand upon the sea and
upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,
And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who
created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the
earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and
the things which are therein, that there should be time no
longer:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel,
when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should
be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the
prophets.
Revelation 10:4-7
19 And he saith unto me. Seal not the sayings of the
prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which
is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let
him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy
Still.
And, behold, | come quickly; and my reward is with
me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
lam Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,
the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they
may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in
through the gates into the city.
For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and
whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and
whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
| Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these
things in the churches. | am the root and the offspring of
David, and the bright and morning star.
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him
that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
For | testify unto every man that heareth the words of
the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are
written in this book:
And if any man Shall take away from the words of the
book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of
the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book.
He which testifieth these things saith. Surely | come
quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Revelation 22:10-20
20 All that has by nature with systematic method been
arranged in the universe seems both in part and asa
whole to have been determined and ordered in
accordance with number, by the forethought and the
mind of him that created all things; for the pattern was
fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of
number preexistent in the mind of the world-creating
God, number conceptual only and immaterial in every
way, but at the same time the true and the eternal
essence, so that with reference to it, as to an artistic plan,
should be created all these things, time, motion, the
heavens, the stars, all sorts of revolutions.
Nicomachus, Arithmetic, |, 6
21 Either it is a well-arranged universe or a chaos huddled
together, but still a universe. But can a certain order
subsist in thee, and disorder in the All?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 27
22 The universe is either a confusion, and a mutual
involution of things, and a dispersion; or it is unity and
order and providence. If then it is the former, why do |
desire to tarry in a fortuitous combination of things and
such a disorder? And why do | care about anything else
than how | shall at last become earth?... But if the other
supposition is true, | venerate, and | am firm, and | trust
in him who governs.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 10
23 We hold that the ordered universe, in its material mass,
has existed for ever and will for ever endure.
Plotinus, Second Ennead, |, 1
24 Where there is motion within but not outwards and the
total remains unchanged, there is neither growth nor
decline, and thus the Kosmos never ages.
Plotinus, Second Ennead, I, 3
25 The administration of the universe emails neither labour
nor loss.
Plotinus, Second Ennead, 1,4
26 We cannot but recognize from what we observe in this
universe that some such principle of order prevails
throughout the entire of existence—the minutest of
things a tributary to the vast total; the marvellous art
shown not merely in the mightiest works and sublimest
members of the All, but even amid such littleness as one
would think Providence must disdain: the varied
workmanship of wonder in any and every animal form;
the world of vegetation, too; the grace of fruits and even
of leaves, the lavishness, the delicacy, the diversity of
exquisite bloom; and all this not issuing once, and then
to die out, but made ever and ever anew as the
Transcendent Beings move variously over this earth.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, Il, 13
27 |f You fill heaven and earth, do they contain You? Or do
You fill them, and yet have much over since they cannot
contain You? Is there some other place into which that
overplus of You pours that heaven and earth cannot hold?
Surely You have no need of any place to contain You since
You contain all things, and fill them indeed precisely by
containing them. The vessels thus filled with You do not
render You any support: for though they perished utterly.
You would not be spilt out. And in pouring Yourself out
upon us, You do not come down to us but rather elevate
us to You: You are not scattered over us, but we are
gathered into one by You. You fill all things: but with Your
whole being? It is true that all things cannot wholly
contain You: but does this mean that they contain part of
You? and do they all contain the same part at the same
time? or do different parts of creation contain different
parts of You—greater parts or smaller according to their
own magnitude? But are there in You parts greater and
smaller? Or are You not in every place at once in the
totality of Your being, while yet nothing contains You
wholly?
Augustine, Confessions, 1,3
28 How, O God, did You create heaven and earth? Obviously
it was not in heaven or on earth that You made heaven
and earth; nor in the air nor in the waters, since these
belong to heaven and earth; nor did You make the
universe in the universe, because there was no place for
it to be made in until it was made. Nor had You any
material in Your hand when You were making heaven and
earth: for where should You have got what You had not
yet made to use as material? What exists, save because
You exist? You spoke and heaven and earth were created;
in Your word You created them.
Augustine, Confessions, Xl, 5
29 Thus Lord, You who do not change as things and
circumstances change but are the Self-same, and the
Self-same and the Self-same, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God
Almighty—You, Lord, in the Beginning, which is from You,
in Your wisdom, which is born of Your substance, made
something and made it of nothing.
You created heaven and earth, but not of Your own
substance: for in that event they would have been equal
to Your only-begotten Son and hence to Yourself; and it
would have been altogether unjust that something not
proceeding from You should be equal to You. But, apart
from You there was no other thing existent to make them
of, O God, Trinity that is One, Unity that is Three.
Therefore it was of nothing that You made heaven and
earth, the great thing and the small thing: for You are
almighty and good and must make all things good, the
great heaven and the small earth. You were and nothing
else was, and of nothing You made heaven [the heaven of
heaven] and earth, these two, one close to You, the other
close to nothing, one than which You alone are higher,
the other than which nothing is lower.
Augustine, Confessions, XII, 7
30 If God is the soul of the world, and the world is as a body
to Him, who is the soul, He must be one living being
consisting of soul and body, and... this same God is a
kind of womb of nature containing all things in Himself,
so that the lives and souls of all living things are taken,
according to the manner of each one’s birth, out of His
soul which vivifies that whole mass, and therefore
nothing at all remains which is not a part of God. And if
this is so, who cannot see what impious and irreligious
consequences follow such as that whatever one may
trample, he must trample a part of God, and in slaying
any living creature, a part of God must be slaughtered?
But | am unwilling to utter all that may occur to those
who think of it, yet cannot be spoken without irreverence.
Augustine, City of God, IV, 12
31 There are some... who, though they do not suppose that
this world is eternal, are of opinion either that this is not
the only world, but that there are numberless worlds, or
that indeed it is the only one, but that it dies, and is born
again at fixed intervals, and this times without number;
but they must acknowledge that the human race existed
before there were other men to beget them. For they
cannot suppose that, if the whole world perish, some men
would be left alive in the world, as they might survive in
floods and conflagrations, which those other speculators
suppose to be partial, and from which they can therefore
reasonably argue that a few men survived whose
posterity would renew the population; but as they believe
that the world itself is renewed out of its own material, so
they must believe that out of its elements the human
race was produced, and then that the progeny of mortals
sprang like that of other animals from their parents.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 11
32 As to those who are always asking why man was not
created during these countless ages of the infinitely
extended past, and came into being so lately that,
according to Scripture, less than GOOD years have
elapsed since He began to be, | would reply to them
regarding the creation of man, just as | replied regarding
the origin of the world to those who will not believe that
it is not eternal, but had a beginning, which even Plato
himself most plainly declares, though some think his
statement was not consistent with his real opinion. If it
offends them that the time that has elapsed since the
creation of man is so short, and his years so few
according to our authorities, let them take this into
consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and
that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or
indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable
eternity. Consequently, if there had elapsed since the
creation of man, | do not say five or six, but even sixty or
six hundred thousand years, or sixty times as many, or
six hundred or six hundred thousand times as many, or
this sum multiplied until it could no longer be expressed
in numbers, the same question could still be put, "Why
was he not made before?" For the past and boundless
eternity during which God abstained from creating man is
so great that, compare it with what vast and untold
number of ages you please, so long as there is a definite
conclusion of this term of time, it is not even as if you
compared the minutest drop of water with the ocean that
everywhere flows around the globe. For of these two, one
indeed is very small, the other incomparably vast, yet
both are finite; but that space of time which starts from
some beginning, and is limited by some termination, be it
of what extent it may, if you compare it with that which
has no beginning, | Know not whether to say we should
count it the very minutest thing, or nothing at all.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 12
33 In vain ... do we attempt to compute definitely the years
that may remain to this world, when we may hear from
the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to Know this.
Yet some have said that four hundred, some five hundred,
others a thousand years, may be completed from the
ascension of the Lord up to His final coming. But to point
out how each of them supports his own opinion would
take too long, and is not necessary; for indeed they use
human conjectures, and bring forward nothing certain
from the authority of the canonical Scriptures. But on this
subject He puts aside the figures of the calculators, and
orders silence, Who says, "It is not for you to know the
times, which the Father hath put in His own power."
Augustine, City of God, XVIII, 53
34 As... the world was not made by chance, but by God
acting by His intellect .., there must exist in the divine
mind a form to the likeness of which the world was made.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 15, 1
35 The universe, the things that exist now being supposed,
cannot be better, on account of the most noble order
given to these things by God, in which the good of the
universe consists. For if any one thing were bettered, the
proportion of order would be destroyed, just as if one
string were stretched more than it ought to be, the
melody of the harp would be destroyed. Yet God could
make other things, or add something to those things that
are made, and then that universe would be better.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 25, 6
36 One God produced one world by reason of His love for
Himself.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 32, 1
37 Nothing except God can be from eternity. And this
statement is not impossible to uphold, for... the will of
God is the cause of things. Therefore things are necessary
according as it is necessary for God to will them, since
the necessity of the effect depends on the necessity of
the cause.... Absolutely speaking, it is not necessary that
God should will anything except Himself, It is not
therefore necessary for God to will that the world should
always exist; but the world is eternal to the extent that
God wills it to be eternal, since the being of the world
depends on the will of God, as on its cause. It is not
therefore necessary for the world to be always,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 46, 1
38 We hold by faith alone, and it cannot be proved by
demonstration, that the world did not always exist... .
The reason of this is that the newness of the world cannot
be demonstrated from the world itself. For the principle of
demonstration is the essence of a thing. Now everything
according to the notion of its species abstracts from here
and now; hence it is said that "universals are everywhere
and always." Hence it cannot be demonstrated that man,
or heaven, or a stone did not always exist.
Likewise neither can it be demonstrated on the part of
the efficient cause, which acts by will. For the will of God
cannot be investigated by reason, except as regards
those things which God must will of necessity, and what
He wills about creatures is not among these.... But the
divine will can be manifested to man by revelation, on
which faith rests. Hence that the world began to exist is
an object of faith, but not of demonstration or science.
And it is useful to consider this, lest any-one, presuming
to demonstrate what is of faith should bring-forward
reasons that are not cogent, so as to give occasion to
unbelievers to laugh thinking that on such reasons we
believe things that are of faith.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 46 2
39 As the end of a thing corresponds to its beginning, it is
not possible to be ignorant of the end of things if we
know their beginning. Therefore, since the beginning of
all things is something outside the universe, namely, God
... we must conclude that the end of all things is some
extrinsic good. This can be proved by reason. For it is
clear that good has the nature of an end; therefore, a
particular end of anything consists in some particular
good, while the universal end of all things is the universal
good. But the universal good is that which is good of
itself by virtue of its essence, which is the very essence of
goodness, whereas a particular good is good by
participation. Now it is manifest that in the whole created
universe there is not a good which is not such by
participation. Therefore that good which is the end of the
whole universe must be a good outside the universe.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 103, 2
40 Not to have gain of any good unto himself, which may
not be, but that his splendour might, as it glowed,
declare, / am.
In his eternity beyond time, beyond all other
comprehension, as was his pleasure, the eternal love
revealed him in new loves.
Nor did he lie, as slumbering, before; for nor before nor
after was the process of God’s outflowing over these
waters.
Form and matter, united and in purity, issued into
being which had no flaw, as from a threestringed bow
three arrows;
and as in glass, in amber, or in crystal, a ray so
gloweth that from its coming to its pervading all, there is
no interval.
Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 13
41 Oh grace abounding, wherein | presumed to fix my look
on the eternal light so long that | consumed my sight
thereon!
Within its depths | saw ingathered, bound by love in
one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe;
substance and accidents and their relations, as though
together fused, after such fashion that what | tell of is one
simple flame.
The universal form of this complex | think that |
beheld, because more largely, as | say this, | feel that |
rejoice.
A single moment maketh a deeper lethargy for me
than twenty and five centuries have wrought on the
emprise that erst threw Neptune in amaze at Argo’s
shadow.
Dante, Paradiso, XXXIIl, 82
42 Aristotle says that the movement of a body which is one
and simple is simple, and the simple movements are the
rectilinear and the circular. And of rectilinear movements,
one is upward, and the other is downward. As a
consequence, every simple movement is either toward
the centre, i.e., downward, or away from the centre, i.e.,
upward, or around the centre, i.e., circular. Now it belongs
to earth and water, which are considered heavy, to be
borne downward, i.c., to seek the centre; for air and fire,
which are endowed with lightness, move upward, i.e.,
away from the centre. It seems fitting to grant rectilinear
movement to these four elements and to give the
heavenly bodies a circular movement around the centre.
So Aristotle. Therefore, said Ptolemy of Alexandria, if the
Earth moved, even if only by its daily rotation, the
contrary of what was said above would necessarily take
place. For this movement which would traverse the total
circuit of the Earth in twenty-four hours would necessarily
be very headlong and of an unsurpassable velocity. Now
things which are suddenly and violently whirled around
are seen to be utterly unfitted for reuniting, and the more
unified are seen to become dispersed, unless some
constant force constrains them to stick together. And a
long time ago, he says, the scattered Earth would have
passed beyond the heavens, as is certainly ridiculous;
and a fortiori so would all the living creatures and all the
other separate masses which could by no means remain
unshaken. Moreover, freely falling bodies would not arrive
at the places appointed them, and certainly not along the
perpendicular line which they assume so quickly. And we
would see clouds and other things floating in the air
always borne toward the west....
For these and similar reasons they say that the Earth
remains at rest at the middle of the world and that there
is no doubt about this. But if someone opines that the
Earth revolves, he will also say that the movement is
natural and not violent. Now things which are according
to nature produce effects contrary to those which are
violent. For things to which force or violence is applied
get broken up and are unable to subsist for a long time.
But things which are caused by nature are in a right
condition and are kept in their best organization.
Therefore Ptolemy had no reason to fear that the Earth
and all things on the Earth would be scattered ina
revolution caused by the efficacy of nature, which is
greatly different from that of art or from that which can
result from the genius of man. But why did he not feel
anxiety about the world instead, whose movement must
necessarily be of greater velocity, the greater the
heavens are than the Earth? Or have the heavens
become so immense, because an unspeakably vehement
motion has pulled them away from the centre, and
because the heavens would fall if they came to rest
anywhere else?
Surely if this reasoning were tenable, the magnitude of
the heavens would extend infinitely. For the farther the
movement is borne upward by the vehement force, the
faster will the movement be, on account of the ever-
increasing circumference which must be traversed every
twenty-four hours: and conversely, the immensity of the
sky would increase with the increase in movement. In this
way, the velocity would make the magnitude increase
infinitely, and the magnitude the velocity. And in
accordance with the axiom of physics that that which Is
infinite cannot be traversed or moved in any way, then
the heavens will necessarily come to rest.
But they say that beyond the heavens there is not any
body or place or void or anything at all; and accordingly
it is not possible for the heavens to move outward: in that
case it is rather surprising that something can be held
together by nothing. But if the heavens were infinite and
were finite only with respect to a hollow space inside,
then it will be said with more truth that there is nothing
outside the heavens, since anything which occupied any
Space would be in them; but the heavens will remain
immobile. For movement is the most powerful reason
wherewith they try to conclude that the universe is finite.
But let us leave to the philosophers of nature the
dispute as to whether the world is finite or infinite, and
let us hold as certain that the Earth is held together
between its two poles and terminates in a spherical
surface. Why therefore should we hesitate any longer to
grant to it the movement which accords naturally with its
form, rather than put the whole world in a commotion—
the world whose limits we do not and cannot know? And
why not admit that the appearance of daily resolution
belongs to the heavens but the reality belongs to the
Earth?
Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, |, 7-8
43 Pitiable is the state of the stars, abject the lot of earth, if
this high dignity of soul is denied them, while it is
granted to the worm, the ant, the roach, to plants and
morels; for in that case worms, roaches, moths, were more
beauteous objects in nature and more perfect, inasmuch
as nothing is excellent, nor precious, nor eminent, that
hath not soul. But since living bodies spring from earth
and sun and by them are animate, and since in the earth
herbage springs up without sowing of seeds (e.g., when
soil is taken out of the bowels of the earth and carried to
some great elevation or to the top of a lofty tower and
there exposed to the sunshine, after a little while a
miscellaneous herbage springs up in it unbidden), it is
not likely that they (Sun and earth) can do that which is
not in themselves; but they awaken souls, and
consequently are themselves possessed of souls.
Therefore the bodies of the globes, as being the foremost
parts of the universe, to the end they might be in
themselves and in their state endure, had need of souls
to be conjoined to them, for else there were neither life,
nor prime act, nor movement, nor unition, nor order, nor
coherence, nor conactus, nor sympathia, nor any
generation, nor alternation of seasons, and no
propagation; but all were in confusion and the entire
world lapse into chaos, and, in fine, the earth were void
and dead and without any use.
William Gilbert, On the Loadstone, V, 12
44 The world ... is alone, having nothing outside, resting on
itself immobile as a whole; and it alone is all things.
Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Bk. IV, 1, 2
45 If it was Tycho Brahe’s opinion concerning that bare
wilderness of globes that it does not exist fruitlessly in
the world but is filled with inhabitants: with how much
greater probability shall we make a conjecture as to
God’s works and designs even for the other globes, from
that variety which we discern in this globe of the Earth.
For He Who created the species which should inhabit the
waters, beneath which however there is no room for the
air which living things draw in; Who sent birds supported
on wings into the wilderness of the air; Who gave white
bears and white wolves to the snowy regions of the North,
and as food for the bears the whale, and for the wolves,
birds’ eggs; Who gave lions to the deserts of burning
Libya and camels to the wide-spread plains of Syria, and
to the lions an endurance of hunger, and to the camels
an endurance of thirst: did He use up every art in the
globe of the Earth so that He was unable, every goodness
so that he did not wish, to adorn the other globes too with
their fitting creatures, as either the long or short
revolutions, or the nearness or removal of the sun, or the
variety of eccentricities or the shine or darkness of the
bodies, or the properties of the figures wherewith any
region is supported persuaded?
Kepler, Harmonies of the World, V, 10
46 Hamlet. Indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,
this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 308
47 Ulysses. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What places and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure!
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 85
48 | had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the
Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is
without a mind.
Bacon, Of Atheism
49 | resolved to leave all this world to their disputes, and to
speak only of what would happen in a new world if God
now created, somewhere in an imaginary space, matter
sufficient wherewith to form it, and if He agitated in
diverse ways, and without any order, the diverse portions
of this matter, so that there resulted a chaos as confused
as the poets ever feigned, and concluded His work by
merely lending His concurrence to Nature in the usual
way, leaving her to act in accordance with the laws which
He had established. So, to begin with, | described this
matter and tried to represent it in such a way, that it
seems to me that nothing in the world could be more
clear or intelligible, excepting what has just been said of
God and the Soul. For | even went so far as expressly to
assume that there was in it none of these forms or
qualities which are so debated in the Schools, nor
anything at all the knowledge of which is not so natural
to our minds that none could even pretend to be ignorant
of it. Further, | pointed out what are the laws of Nature,
and, without resting my reasons on any other principle
than the infinite perfections of God, | tried to
demonstrate all those of which one could have any
doubt, and to show that they are of such a nature that
even if God had created other worlds, He could not have
created any in which these laws would fail to be
observed. After that, | showed how the greatest part of
the matter of which this chaos is constituted, must in
accordance with these laws, dispose and arrange itself in
such a fashion as to render it similar to our heavens; and
how meantime some of its parts must form an earth,
some planets and comets, and some others a sun and
fixed stars.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, V
50 It... occurs to me that we should not consider one single
creature separately, when we inquire as to whether the
works of God are perfect, but should regard all his
creations together. For the same thing which might
possibly seem very imperfect with some semblance of
reason if regarded by itself, is found to be very perfect if
regarded as part of the whole universe.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, lV
51 From the mere fact that God, i.e. a supremely perfect
being, exists, it follows that if there be a world it must
have been created by him.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, III
52 Those philosophers who said [that] the world, or the soul
of the world, was God spake unworthily of Him, and
denied His existence: for by God is understood the cause
of the world; and to say the world is God is to say there is
no cause of it, that is, no God.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 31
53 To say the world was not created, but eternal, seeing that
which is eternal has no cause, is to deny there is a God.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 31
54 But while all men doubt, and none can determine how
long the World shall last, some may wonder that it hath
spun out so long and unto our days. For if the Almighty
had not determin’d a fixed duration unto it, according to
his mighty and merciful designments in it, if he had not
said unto it, as he did unto a part of it, hitherto shall thou
go and no farther; if we consider the incessant and
cutting provocations from the Earth, it is not without
amazement how his patience hath permitted so long a
continuance unto it, how he, who cursed the Earth in the
first days of the first Man, and drowned it in the tenth
Generation after, should thus lastingly contend with
Flesh and yet defer the last flames.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, IIl, 26
55 Think not thy time short in this World since the World it
self is not long. The created World is but a small
Parenthesis in Eternity; and a short interposition for a
time between such a state of duration, as was before it
and may be after it. And if we should allow of the old
Tradition that the world should last Six Thousand years, it
could scarce have the name of old, since the first Man
lived near a sixth part thereof, and seven Methusela's
would exceed its whole duration.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, Ill, 29
56 The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in
the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We
may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable
Space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the
reality of things. It is an infinite sohere, the centre of
which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In
short, it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty
power of God that imagination loses itself in that
thought.
Pascal, Pensées, Il, 72
57 Uriel. | saw when at his Word the formless Mass,
This worlds material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar
Stood rul’d, stood vast infinitude confin’d;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shon, and order from disorder sprung:
Swift to thir several Quarters hasted then
The cumbrous Elements, Earth, Flood, Aire, Fire,
And this Ethereal quintessence of Heav’n
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rowld orbicular, and turnd to Starrs
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course,
The rest in circuit walles this Universe.
Look downward on that Globe whose hither side
With light from hence, though but reflected, shines;
That place is Earth the seat of Man, that light
His day, which else as th’ other Hemisphere
Night would invade, but there the neighbouring Moon
(So call that opposite fair Starr) her aide
Timely interposes, and her monthly round Still ending,
still renewing through mid Heav’n,
With borrowd light her countenance triform
Hence fills and empties to enlighten the Earth,
And in her pale dominion checks the night.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 708
58 Let ther be Light, said God, and forthwith Light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure
Sprung from the Deep, and from her Native East
To journie through the aide gloom began,
Sphear’d in a radiant Cloud, for yet the Sun
Was not; shee in a cloudie Tabernacle
Sojourn’d the while. God saw the Light was good;
And light from darkness by the Hemisphere
Divided: Light the Day, and Darkness Night
He nam’d. Thus was the first Day Eev’n and Morn.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VII, 243
59 Michael. So shall the World goe on,
To good malignant, to bad men benigne,
Under her own waight groaning, till the day
Appeer of respiration to the just,
And vengeance to the wicked, at return
Of him so lately promiss’d to thy aid,
The Womans seed, obscurely then foretold,
Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord,
Last in the Clouds from Heav’n to be reveald
In glory of the Father, to dissolve
Satan with his perv'erted World, then raise
From the conflagrant mass, purg’d and refin’d,
New Heav’ns, new Earth, Ages of endless date
Founded in righteousness and peace and love,
To bring forth fruits Joy and eternal Bliss.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XII, 537
60 Things could have been produced by God in no other
manner and in no other order than that in which they
have been produced. All things have necessarily followed
from the given nature of God, and from the necessity of
His nature have been determined to existence and action
in a certain manner. If, therefore, things could have been
of another nature, or could have been determined in
another manner to action, so that the order of nature
would have been different, the nature of God might then
be different to that which it now is, and hence that
different nature would necessarily exist, and there might
consequently be two or more Gods, which is absurd.
Therefore, things could be produced by God in no other
manner and in no other order than that in which they
have been produced.
Spinoza, Ethics, I, Prop. 33; Demonst.
61 It seems probable to me that God in the beginning
formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable,
moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with
such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as
most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and
that these primitive particles being solids, are
incomparably harder than any porous bodies
compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear
or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide
what God himself made one in the first creation. While
the particles continue entire, they may compose bodies
of one and the same nature and texture in all ages; but
should they wear away, or break in pieces, the nature of
things depending on them would be changed. Water and
earth, composed of old worn particles and fragments of
particles, would not be of the same nature and texture
now, with water and earth composed of entire particles in
the beginning. And, therefore, that Nature may be
lasting, the changes of corporeal things are to be placed
only in the various separations and new associations and
motions of these permanent particles.
Newton, Optics, III, 1
62 By the help of these principles [of motion], all material
things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid
particles above mentioned, variously associated in the
first creation by the counsel of an intelligent agent. For it
became Him who created them to set them in order. And
if He did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any other
origin of the world, or to pretend that it might arise out of
a chaos by the mere laws of Nature; though, being once
formed, it may continue by those laws for many ages. For
while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of
positions blind fate could never make all the planets
move one and the same way in orbs concentric, some
inconsiderable irregularities excepted, which may have
risen from the mutual actions of comets and planets upon
one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this
system wants a reformation. Such a wonderful uniformity
in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of
choice.
Newton, Optics, III, 1
63 Since space is divisible in infinitum, and matter is not
necessarily in all places, it may be also allowed that God
is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and
figures, and in several proportions to space, and perhaps
of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the
laws of Nature, and make worlds of several sorts in
several parts of the Universe. At least, | see nothing of
contradiction in all this.
Newton, Optics, III, 1
64 Although the world is not metaphysically necessary, so
that its opposite involves a contradiction or logical
absurdity, it is nevertheless physically necessary' or so
determined that its opposite involves imperfection or
moral absurdity. And as possibility is the principle of
essence, so perfection or degree of essence (through
which more things are compossible the greater it is) is the
principle of existence. Whence at the same time it is
manifest how the Author of the world is free, although He
does all things determinately, for He acts from a principle
of wisdom or perfection. Indifference springs from
ignorance, and the wiser a man is the more is he
determined towards that which is most perfect.
Leibniz, On the Ultimate Origination of Things
65 It follows from the supreme perfection of God that in
producing the universe He has chosen the best possible
plan, in which there is the greatest variety along with the
greatest order; ground, place, time being as well
arranged as possible; the greatest effect produced by the
simplest ways; the most power, knowledge, happiness
and goodness in created things that the universe
allowed. For as all possible things in the understanding of
God claim existence in proportion to their perfections, the
result of all these claims must be the most perfect actual
world that is possible. And apart from this it would not be
possible to give a reason why things have gone thus
rather than otherwise.
Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace, 10
66 If we would emancipate ourselves from vulgar notions,
and raise our thougNhts, as far as they would reach, toa
closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim
at some dim and seeming conception how matter might
at first be made, and begin to exist, by the power of that
eternal first Being: but to give beginning and being toa
spirit would be found a more inconceivable effect of
omnipotent power. But this being what would perhaps
lead us too far from the notions on which the philosophy
now in the world is built, it would not be pardonable to
deviate so far from them; or to inquire, so far as grammar
itself would authorize, if the common settled opinion
opposes it: especially in this place, where the received
doctrine serves well enough to our present purpose, and
leaves this past doubt, that the creation or beginning of
any one substance out of nothing being once admitted,
the creation of all other but the Creator himself, may,
with the same case, be supposed.
Locke, Concerning Human Understandings Bk. IV, X, 18
67 We must not imagine that the inexplicably fine machine
of an animal or vegetable costs the great Creator any
more pains or trouble in its production than a pebble
does; nothing being more evident than that an
Omnipotent Spirit can indifferently produce everything
by a mere frat or act of His will. Hence, it is plain that the
splendid profusion of natural things should not be
interpreted weakness or prodigality in the agent who
produces them, but rather be looked on as an argument
of the riches of His power.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 152
68 See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being, which from God began,
Natures aethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,
No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing!—On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroy’d:
From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And if each system in gradation roll,
Alike essential to th' amazing whole;
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanc’d from her orbit fly,
Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky,
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl’d,
Being on being wreck’d, and world on world,
Heav’n’s whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature tremble to the throne of God.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle |, 233
69 The world may indeed be considered as a vast machine,
in which the great wheels are originally set in motion by
those which are very minute, and almost imperceptible to
any but the strongest eyes.
Fielding, Tom Jones, V, 4
70 There are many philosophers who, after an exact scrutiny
of all the phenomena of nature, conclude, that the whole,
considered as one system, is, in every period of its
existence, ordered with perfect benevolence; and that
the utmost possible happiness will, in the end, result to
all created beings, without any mixture of positive or
absolute ill or misery. Every physical ill, say they, makes
an essential part of this benevolent system, and could
not possibly be removed, even by the Deity himself,
considered as a wise agent, without giving entrance to
greater ill, or excluding greater good, which will result
from it. From this theory, some philosophers, and the
ancient Stoics among the rest, derived a topic of
consolation under all afflictions, while they taught their
pupils that those ills under which they laboured were, in
reality, goods to the universe; and that to an enlarged
view, which could comprehend the whole system of
nature, every event became an object of Joy and
exultation. But though this topic be specious and
sublime, it was soon found in practice weak and
ineffectual. You would surely more irritate than appease a
man lying under the racking pains of the gout by
preaching up to him the rectitude of those general laws,
which produced the malignant humours in his body, and
led them through the proper canals, to the sinews and
nerves, where they now excite such acute torments.
These enlarged views may, for a moment, please the
imagination of a speculative man, who is placed in ease
and security; but neither can they dwell with constancy
on his mind, even though undisturbed by the emotions of
pain or passion; much less can they maintain their
ground when attacked by such powerful antagonists.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VIII, 79
71 Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologo-cosmoloni-gology.
He proved most admirably, that there could not be an
effect without a cause; that, in this best of possible
worlds, my Lord the Baron’s castle was the most
magnificent of castles, and my Lady the best of
Baronesses that possibly could be.
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be
otherwise than they are: for all things having been made
for some end, they must necessarily be for the best end.
Observe well, that the nose has been made for carrying
spectacles; therefore we have spectacles. The legs are
visibly designed for stockings, and therefore we have
stockings. Stones have been formed to be hewn, and
make castles; therefore my Lord has a very fine castle;
the greatest baron of the province ought to be the best
accommodated. Swine were made to be eaten; therefore
we Cat pork all the year round: consequently, those who
have merely asserted that all is good have said a very
foolish thing; they should have said all is the best
possible."
Voltaire, Candide, |
72 The day following, having found some provisions, in
rummaging through the rubbish, they recruited their
strength a little. Afterwards, they employed themselves
like others, in administering relief to the inhabitants that
had escaped from death. Some citizens that had been
relieved by them gave them as good a dinner as could be
expected amidst such a disaster. It is true that the repast
was mournful, and the guests watered their bread with
their tears. But Pangloss consoled them by the assurance
that things could not be otherwise; "For," said he, "all this
must necessarily be for the best. As this volcano is at
Lisbon, it could not be elsewhere; as it is impossible that
things should not be what they are, as all is good."
A little man clad in black, who belonged to the
inquisition, and sat at his side, took him up very politely,
and said: "It seems, sir, you do not believe in original sin;
for if all is for the best, then there has been neither fall
nor punishment."
"| most humbly ask your excellency’s pardon,"
answered Pangloss, still more politely; "for the fall of man
and the curse necessarily entered into the best of worlds
possible." "Then, sir, you do not believe there is liberty,"
said the inquisitor. "Your excellency will excuse me," said
Pangloss; "liberty can consist with absolute necessity; for
it was necessary we should be free; because, in short, the
determinate will—"
Pangloss was in the middle of his proposition, when
the inquisitor made a signal with his head to the tall
armed footman in a cloak.
Voltaire, Candide, V
73 Candide, affrighted, interdicted, astonished, all bloody,
all panting, said to himself: "If this is the best of possible
worlds, what then are the rest?"
Voltaire, Candide, VI
74 Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not
to be is a great ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not
to be before we were born?... Why do we exist? why is
there anything?
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Why?
75 Every beginning is in time, and all limits to extension are
in space. But space and time are in the world of sense.
Consequently phenomena in the world are conditionally
limited, but the world itself is not limited, either
conditionally or unconditionally.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
76 Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?...
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Blake, The Tiger
77 Faust. 'Tis written: "In the beginning was the Word!"
Here now I’m balked! Who'll put me in accord?
It is impossible, the Word so high to prize,
| must translate it otherwise
If | am rightly by the Spirit taught.
‘Tis written: In the beginning was the Thought!
Consider well that line, the first you see,
That your pen may not write too hastily!
Is it then Thought that works, creative, hour by hour?
Thus should it stand: In the beginning was the Power!
Yet even while | write this word, | falter,
For something warns me, this too | shall alter.
The Spirit’s helping me! | see now what | need
And write assured: In the beginning was the Deed!
Goethe, Faust, 1,1224
78 It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being
the whole universe may be as one plain, the distance
between planet and planet being only as the pores ina
grain of sand, and the spaces between system and
system no greater than the intervals between one grain
and the grain adjacent.
Coleridge, Omniana
79 This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a
miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to
whosoever will think of it.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
80 There is no chance and no anarchy in the universe. All is
system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his
sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the
firmament; there is he alone with them alone, they
pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning
him up to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly,
fall snowstorms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast
crowd which sways this way and that and whose
movement and doings he must obey: he fancies himself
poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives
hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing
to be done, now that. What is he that he should resist
their will, and think or act for himself? Every moment new
changes and new showers of deceptions to baffle and
distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the air
clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still
sitting around him on their thrones—they alone with him
alone.
Emerson, I/lusions
81 To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from
his chamber as from society. | am not solitary whilst | read
and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would
be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come
from those heavenly worlds will separate between him
and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere
was made transparent with this design, to give man, in
the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the
sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are!
H the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,
how would men believe and adore; and preserve for
many generations the remembrance of the city of God
which had been shown! But every night come out these
envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their
admonishing smile.
Emerson, Nature, |
82 Many an aeon moulded earth before her highest, man,
was born,
Many an aeon |oo may pass when earth is man-less
and forlorn.
Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 205
83 This fine old world of ours is but a child
Yet in the go-can. Patience! Give it time
To learn its limbs; there is a hand that guides.
Tennyson, The Princess, Conclusion, 77
84 This may not be the best of all possible worlds, but to say
that it is the worst is mere petulant nonsense.
T. H. Huxley, Struggle for Existence in Human Society
85 The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God's in his heaven—
All’s right with the world!
Browning, Pippa Passes, |
86 The bodies and beings on the surface of our earth
express the harmonious relation of the cosmic conditions
of our planet and our atmosphere with the beings and
phenomena whose existence they permit. Other cosmic
conditions would necessarily make another world appear
in which all the phenomena would occur which found in it
their necessary conditions, and from which would
disappear all that could not develop in it. But no matter
what infinite varieties of phenomena we conceive on the
earth, by placing ourselves in thought in all the cosmic
conditions that our imagination can bring to birth, we are
still forced to admit that this would all take place
according to the laws of physics, chemistry and
physiology, which have existed without our knowledge
from all eternity; and that whatever happens, nothing is
created by way either of force or of matter; that only
different relations will be produced and through them
creation of new beings and phenomena.
Claude Bernard, Experimental Medicine, Il, 1
87 Ivan. "| tell you that | accept God simply’. But you must
note this: if God exists and if He really did create the
world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the
geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the
conception of only three dimensions in space. Yet there
have been and still are geometricians and philosophers,
and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt
whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely, the
whole of being, was only created in Euclid’s geometry;
they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which
according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet
somewhere in infinity. | have come to the conclusion that,
since | can’t understand even that, | can’t expect to
understand about God. | acknowledge humbly that | have
no faculty for settling such questions, | have a Euclidian
earthly mind, and how could | solve problems that are not
of this world? And | advise you never to think about it
either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether
He exists or not. All such questions are utterly
inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only
three dimensions. And so | accept God and am glad to,
and what’s more, | accept His wisdom, His purpose—
which are utterly beyond our ken; | believe in the
underlying order and the meaning of life; | believe in the
eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be
blended. | believe in the Word to Which the universe is
striving, and Which Itself was ‘with God,' and Which Itself
is God and so on, and so on, to infinity. There are all sorts
of phrases for it. | seem to be on the right path, don’t I?
Yet would you believe it, in the final result | don’t accept
this world of God’s and, although | know it exists, | don’t
accept it at all. It’s not that | don’t accept God, you must
understand, it’s the world created by Him | don’t and
cannot accept. Let me make it plain. | believe like a child
that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the
humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish
like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the
impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that
in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony,
something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice
for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for
the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the
blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible
to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men—
but though all that may come to pass, | don’t accept it. |
won’t accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and | see it
myself, | shall see it and say that they’ve met, but still |
won't accept it. That’s what’s at the root of me, Alyosha;
that’s my creed. | am in earnest in what | say. | began our
talk as stupidly as | could on purpose, but I’ve led up to
my confession, for that’s all you want. You didn’t want to
hear about God, but only to know what the brother you
love lives by. And so I’ve told you."
Ivan concluded his long tirade with marked and
unexpected feeling.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, V, 3
88 Father Zossima. "All creation and all creatures, every leaf
is striving to the Word, singing glory to God, weeping to
Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery
of their sinless life. Yonder," said I, "in the forest wanders
the dreadful bear, fierce and menacing, and yet innocent
in it." And | told him how once a bear came to a great
saint who had taken refuge in a tiny cell in the wood. And
the great saint pitied him, went up to him without fear
and gave him a piece of bread. "Go along," said he,
"Christ be with you," and the savage beast walked away
meekly and obediently, doing no harm. And the lad was
delighted that the bear had walked away without hurting
the saint, and that Christ was with him too. "Ah," said he,
“how good that is, how good and beautiful is all God’s
work!" He sat musing softly and sweetly. | saw he
understood. And he slept beside me a light and sinless
sleep. May God bless youth! And | prayed for him as |
went to sleep. Lord, send peace and light to Thy people!
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, VI, |
89 Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, lay
down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell
asleep. He again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after
the battle of Borodino.
Again real events mingled with dreams and again
someone, he or another, gave expression to his thoughts,
and even to the same thoughts that had been expressed
in his dream at Mozhaysk.
"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes
and moves and that movement is God. And while there is
life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life
is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to
love this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent sufferings."
"Karataev!" came to Pierre’s mind.
And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-
forgotten, kindly old man who had given him geography
lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a bit," said the old man, and
showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive—a vibrating
ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted
of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops
moved and changed places, sometimes several of them
merging into one, sometimes one dividing into many.
Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much space
as possible, but others striving to do the same
compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes
merged with it.
"That is life," said the old teacher.
“How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it |
did not know it before?"
"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so
as to reflect Him to the greatest extent And it grows,
merges, disappears from the surface, sinks to the depths,
and again emerges. There now, Karataev has spread out
and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?" said the
teacher.
"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and
Pierre woke up.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, XIV, 15
90 Away with those wearisomely hackneyed terms Optimism
and Pessimism! For the occasion for using them becomes
less and less from day to day, only the chatterboxes still
find them so absolutely necessary. For why in all the
world should any one wish to be an optimist unless he
had a God to defend who must have created the best of
worlds if he himself be goodness and perfection,—what
thinker, however, still needs the hypothesis of a God? But
every occasion for a pessimistic confession of faith is also
lacking when one has no interest in being annoyed at the
advocates of God (the theologians, or the theologising
philosophers), and in energetically defending the
opposite view, that evil reigns, that pain is greater than
pleasure, that the ux)rld is a bungled piece of work, the
manifestation of an ill-will to life. But who still bothers
about the theologians now—except the theologians?
Apart from all theology and its contentions, it is quite
clear that the world is not good and not bad (to say
nothing of its being the best or the worst), and that the
terms "good" and "bad" have only significance with
respect to man, and indeed, perhaps, they are not
justified even here in the way they are usually employed;
in any case we must get rid of both the calumniating and
the glorifying conception of the world.
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 28
91 What at bottom is meant by calling the universe many or
by calling it one?
Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine
that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality
may be externally related. Everything you can think of,
however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a
genuinely ‘external’ environment of some sort or amount.
Things are ‘with' one another in many ways, but nothing
includes everything, or dominates over everything. The
word ‘and’ trails along after every sentence. Something
always escapes. ‘Ever not quite’ has to be said of the best
attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-
inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is thus more like a
federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom.
However much may be collected, however much may
report itself as present at any effective centre of
consciousness or action, something else is self-governed
and absent and unreduced to unity.
Monism, on the other hand, insists that when you
come down to reality as such, to the reality of realities,
everything is present to everything else in one vast
instantaneous co-implicated completeness—nothing can
in any sense, functional or substantial, be really absent
from anything else, all things interpenetrate and
telescope together in the great total conflux.
William James, A Pluralistic Universe, VIII
92 There is a hideous fatalism about it [the Danvinian
process], a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty
and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and
aspiration, to such casually picturesque changes as an
avalanche may make in a mountain landscape, ora
railway accident in a human figure. To call this Natural
Selection is a blasphemy, possible to many for whom
Nature is nothing but a casual aggregation of inert and
dead matter, but eternally impossible to the spirits and
souls of the righteous. If it be no blasphemy, but a truth
of science, then the stars of heaven, the showers and
dew, the winter and summer, the fire and heat, the
mountains and hills, may no longer be called to exalt the
Lord with us by praise: their work is to modify all things
by blindly starving and murdering everything that is not
lucky enough to survive in the universal struggle for
hogwash.
Shaw, Back to Mathuselah, Pref.
93 The riddle of the universe is not so simple. There is the
aspect of permanence in which a given type of
attainment is endlessly repeated for its own sake: and
there is the aspect of transition to other things—it may be
of higher worth, and it may be of lower worth. Also there
are its aspects of struggle and of friendly help. But
romantic ruthlessness is no nearer to real politics, than is
romantic self-abnegation.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, VI
94 The universe is an assemblage of solar systems which we
have every reason to believe analogous to our own. No
doubt they are not absolutely independent of one
another. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the
farthest planet, and, on the other hand, our entire solar
system is moving in a definite direction as if it were
drawn. There is, then, a bond between the worlds. But
this bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in
comparison with the mutual dependence which unites
the parts of the same world among themselves; so that it
is not artificially, for reasons of mere convenience, that
we isolate our solar system: nature itself invites us to
isolate it. As living beings, we depend on the planet on
which we are, and on the sun that provides for it, but on
nothing else. As thinking beings, we may apply the law-s
of our physics to our own world, and extend them to each
of the worlds taken separately; but nothing tells us that
they apply to the entire universe, nor even that such an
affirmation has any meaning; for the universe is not
made, but is being made continually. It is growing,
perhaps indefinitely, by the addition of new worlds.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, III
95 The world is everything that is the case.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
The world is determined by the facts, and by these
being a//the facts.
For the totality of facts determines both what is the
case, and also all that is not the case.
The facts in logical space are the world.
The world divides into facts.
Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and
everything else remain the same.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1-1.21
96 Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.44
Chapter 20
RELIGION
Chapter 20 is divided into fifteen sections: 20.1 The
Distinguishing Features of Religion, 20.2 Judaism, 20.3
Christianity, 20.4 Church, 20.5 God, 20.6 Gods and
Goddesses, 20,7 Angels and Devils, 20.8 Worship and
Service, 20.9 Heresy and Unbelief, 20.10 Prophecy, 20.11
Miracles, 20.12 Superstition, 20.13 Sin and Temptation,
20.14 Redemption and Salvation, and 20.15 Heaven and
Hell.
Religion is one of the two largest chapters in this book,
the other being a chapter to which it is intimately related—
Chapter 9 on Ethics. It might have had an even larger
number of sections had we not allocated certain topics or
themes to other chapters. We placed the treatment of
religious faith in Chapter 6 on Knowledge, Section 6,5 on
Opinion, Belief, and Faith. In Chapter 15 on History, we
placed discussions of predestination and providence in
Section 15.3 on Fate, Fortune, and Destiny. Quotations
dealing with the relation of the world to God and its coming
to be through divine creation will be found in Section 19.8
on The Universe or Cosmos in Chapter 19 on Nature and the
Cosmos; similarly, quotations dealing with man’s relation to
God or the gods will be found in the opening section of
Chapter | on Man. The treatment of sacred or dogmatic
theology is associated with the treatment of natural
theology in Section 17.1 on Philosophy and Philosophers.
Extensive as it is, both in number of topics covered and
the quantity of quotations collected under them, this
chapter remains inadequate in its representation of religious
thought and theological speculation in the Western
tradition. Just as we have eschewed including the technical
treatment of certain themes or problems in other fields, such
as economics or mathematics, so here we have not included
the highly subtle and technical discussion of certain
subjects or problems in theology, such as grace and free will,
the divine attributes, the problem of evil, the sacraments,
immortality and the resurrection of the body, and so on.
However, what is presented here is an illustrative sampling
of what has been said on a fairly large number of major
themes in the sphere of Western religion. In addition to
being limited to the West, the materials here are also limited
in time, for they are not representative of some new currents
in both theology and the philosophy of religion that have
emerged in the last fifty years.
The first three sections of the chapter deal with the
nature and traits of religion and with two of the three great
religions of the West—Judaism and Christianity. Discussion of
Mohammedanism and of the Muslim religious community
does not occur in the books from which we have drawn
quotations. Section 20.4 treats the central religious
institution—the organized religious community, whether it
be called church, temple, or synagogue. Closely related to
Section 20.1 on The Distinguishing Features or Religion is
Section 20.12 on Superstition: together they attempt to
draw the line between religion and its counterfeit.
Section 20.5 on God and Section 20.6 on Gods and
Goddesses, together with Section 20.7 on Angels and Devils,
deal with subjects that have inspired the fancy of the poets
as well as elicited the speculations and arguments of the
philosophers and theologians. This is true also of Heaven
and Hell, treated in Section 20,15.
While not exhaustive of the themes that might have been
treated, the remaining sections—20.8 on Worship and
Service, 20.9 on Heresy and Unbelief, 20.10 on Prophecy,
20.11 on Miracles, 20.13 on Sin and Temptation, and 20.14
on Redemption and Salvation —represent important topics
or problems in Western religious thought and life.
As pointed out at the beginning, the reader will find that
Chapter 9 on Ethics covers matters that are also covered
here, though in a different context, especially its Sections
9.1, 9.3, 9.5, 9.6, and 9.8. Other cross-references will be
pointed out in the opening texts that preface particular
sections of this chapter.
20.1 The Distinguishing Features of
Religion
The religions represented here, limited as they are by the
range of the books from which our quotations are drawn, are
those reflected in the writings of classical antiquity and in
the Old and the New Testament. In addition to the contrast
between polytheism and monotheism, the Greek and Roman
religions differ from Judaism and Christianity in another
crucial respect: the latter are, as they are so often called,
"religions of the book," that is, religions which rest their faith
upon the word of God as that is revealed to man in Holy
Writ.
There is still another difference that is indicated in
certain passages quoted below: the pagan attitude toward
religion was one of tolerance toward a diversity of creeds; it
accepted religious pluralism; but Judaism and Christianity
introduced into the world the notion of "the one true
religion" and, with it, an intolerance of infidels. This fact is
commented on adversely by those who see in religious
intolerance one of the most baneful sources of hate and
hostility among peoples. The quotations also include
Satirical diatribes against the abuses of religion as well as
attacks that fail to recognize the difference between religion
and its perversions and argue for its total rejection or
eradication.
The treatment here of the distinguishing features of
religion includes comment on the roots or seeds of religion;
the institution of state religions and the role that religion
plays in society and politics; the distinction between
organized or institutionalized religion and humanistic or
personal religions; and the psychological aspects of religious
experience and the psychogenesis of the religious impulse.
It also involves discussion of man’s relation to God or the
gods—his worship and fear of the divine, his knowledge of
God, his trust in or reliance on deity. The reader will find
these matters treated also in other sections of this chapter,
especially sections 20.2, 20.3, and 20.8. The discussion of
man’s knowledge of God and of religious faith or belief will
be found in Chapter 6 on Knowledge, especially Section 6.5
on Opinion, Belief, and Faith; and for the consideration of
theology as an organized body of knowledge, the reader
should consult Section 17.1 on Philosophy and Philosophers.
1 Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.
Deuteronomy 8:3
2 A scrupulous fear of the gods, is the very thing which
keeps the Roman commonwealth together. To such an
extraordinary height is this carried among them, both in
private and public business, that nothing could exceed it.
Many people might think this unaccountable; but in my
opinion their object is to use it cis a check upon the
common people. If it were possible to form a stale wholly
of philosophers, such a custom would perhaps be
unnecessary. But seeing that every multitude is fickle,
and full of lawless desires, unreasoning anger, and
violent passion, the only resource is to keep them in
check by mysterious terrors and scenic effects of this
sort. Wherefore, to my mind, the ancients were not acting
without purpose or at random, when they brought in
among the vulgar those opinions about the gods, and the
belief in the punishments in Hades: much rather do |
think that men nowadays are acting rashly and foolishly
in rejecting them.
Polybius, Histories, Vl, 56
3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the
Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God.
Matthew 4:3—4
4 Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the
bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles
perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both
are preserved.
Matthew 9:17
5 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is
this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27
6 Numa... wished that his citizens should neither see nor
hear any religious service in a perfunctory and
inattentive manner, but, laying aside all other
occupations, should apply their minds to religion as toa
most serious business.
Plutarch, Numa Pompilius
7 The first honourable office [Aemilius Paulus] aspired to was
that of aedile, which he carried against twelve
competitors of such merit that all of them in process of
time were consuls. Being afterwards chosen into the
number of priests called augurs, appointed amongst the
Romans to observe and register divinations made by the
flight of birds or prodigies in the air, he so carefully
studied the ancient customs of his country, and so
thoroughly understood the religion of his ancestors, that
this office, which was before only esteemed a title of
honour and merely upon that account sought after, by his
means rose to the rank of one of the highest arts, and
gave a confirmation to the correctness of the definition,
which some philosophers have given of religion, that it is
the science of worshipping the gods.
Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus
8 So much were all things at Rome made to depend upon
religion; they would not allow any contempt of the omens
and the ancient rites, even though attended with the
highest success, thinking it to be of more importance to
the public safety that the magistrates should reverence
the gods, than that they should overcome their enemies.
Plutarch, Marcellus
9 What folly ... or rather what madness, to submit ourselves
through any sentiment of religion to demons, when it
belongs to the true religion to deliver us from that
depravity which makes us like to them!
Augustine, City of God, VIII, 17
10 The true religion commands us to put away all
disquietude of heart, and agitation of mind, and also all
commotions and tempests of the soul.
Augustine, City of God, VIII, 17
11 It is, if | may say so, by spiritually embracing Him that the
intellectual soul is filled and impregnated with true
virtues. We are enjoined to love this good with all our
heart, with all our soul, with all our strength. To this good
we ought to be led by those who love us, and to lead
those we love. Thus are fulfilled those two
commandments on which hang all the law and the
prophets: "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul"; and
"Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself,” For, that man
might be intelligent in his self-love, there was appointed
for him an end to which he might refer all his actions,
that he might be blessed. For he who loves himself
wishes nothing else than this. And the end set before him
is "to draw near to God." And so, when one who has this
intelligent self-love is commanded to love his neighbour
as himself, what else is enjoined than that he shall do all
in his power to commend to him the love of God? This is
the worship of God, this is true religion, this right piety,
this the service due to God only.
Augustine, City of God, X, 3
12 Religion has two kinds of acts. Some are its proper and
immediate acts, which it elicits, and by which man is
directed to God alone, for instance, sacrifice, adoration
and the like. But it has other acts, which it produces
through the medium of the virtues which it commands,
directing them to the honor of God, because the virtue
which is concerned with the end, commands the virtues
which are concerned with the means. Accordingly to visit
the fatherless and widows in their tribulation is an act of
religion aS Commanding and an act of mercy as eliciting;
and to keep oneself unspotted from this world is an act of
religion aS Commanding, but of temperance or of some
similar virtue as eliciting.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-ll, 81, 1
13 Religion directs man to God not as its object but as its
end.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, /I-Il,81,5
14 Religion is not faith, but a confession of faith by outward
SIgNs.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-ll, 94, 1
15 He who enters religion does not make profession to be
perfect, but he professes to endeavour to attain
perfection; even as he who enters the schools does not
profess to have knowledge, but to study in order to
acquire knowledge.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 186, 2
16 When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)—
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.
And specially from every shire’s end
Of England they to Canterbury wend,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and weak.
Chaucer, Canterbuy Tales. The Prologue
17 | think that the practice 1 see is bad, of trying to
strengthen and support our religion by the good fortune
and prosperity of our enterprises. Our belief has enough
other foundations; it does not need events to authorize it.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 32, We Should Meddle Soberly
18 Of all the ancient human opinions concerning religion,
that one, it seems to me, was most probable and most
excusable which recognized God as an incomprehensible
power, origin and preserver of all things, all goodness, all
perfection, accepting and taking in good part the honor
and reverence that human beings rendered him, under
whatever aspect, under whatever name, in whatever
manner.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
19 O God, what an obligation do we not have to the
benignity of our sovereign creator for having freed our
belief from the folly of those vagabond and arbitrary
devotions, and having based it on the eternal foundation
of his holy word?
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
20 Seeing there are no signs nor fruit of religion but in man
only, there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of
religion is also only in man; and consisteth in some
peculiar quality, or at least in some eminent degree
thereof, not to be found in other living creatures.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 12
21 In these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of
second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and
taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the
natural seed of religion; which, by reason of the different
fancies, judgements, and passions of several men, hath
grown up into ceremonies so different that those which
are used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to
another.
For these seeds have received culture from two sorts
of men. One sort have been they that have nourished and
ordered them, according to their own invention. The
other have done it by God’s commandment and direction.
But both sorts have done it with a purpose to make those
men that relied on them the more apt to obedience, laws,
peace, charity, and civil society. So that the religion of
the former sort is a part of human politics; and teacheth
part of the duty which earthly kings require of their
subjects. And the religion of the latter sort is divine
politics; and containeth precepts to those that have
yielded themselves subjects in the kingdom of God. Of
the former sort were all the founders of Commonwealths,
and the lawgivers of the Gentiles: of the latter sort were
Abraham, Moses, and our blessed Saviour, by whom have
been derived unto us the laws of the kingdom of God.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 12
22 Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 25
23 The conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, is to
put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart
by grace. But to will to put it into the mind and heart by
force and threats is not to put religion there, but terror.
Pascal, Pensées, Ill, 185
24 Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To
remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is
not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire
respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make
good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true.
Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man;
lovable because it promises the true good.
Pascal, Pensées, Ill, 187
25 Religion is suited to all kinds of minds. Some pay
attention only to its establishment, and this religion is
such that its very establishment suffices to prove its
truth. Others trace it even to the apostles, The more
learned go back to the beginning of the world. The angels
see it better still, and from a more distant time.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 285
26 True religion consists in annihilating self before that
Universal Being, whom we have so often provoked, and
who can justly destroy us at any time; in recognising that
we can do nothing without Him, and have deserved
nothing from Him but His displeasure. It consists in
knowing that there is an unconquerable opposition
between us and God, and that without a mediator there
can be no communion with Him.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 470
27 Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who
will not take the trouble to seek it, if it be obscure, should
be deprived of it. Why, then do any complain, if it be
such as can be found by seeking?
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 574
28 The easiest conditions to live in according to the world
are the most difficult to live in according to God, and vice
versa. Nothing is so difficult according to the world as the
religious life; nothing is easier than to live it according to
God. Nothing is easier, according to the world, than to
live in high office and great wealth; nothing is more
difficult than to live in them according to God, and
without acquiring an interest in them and a liking for
them.
Pascal, Pensées, XIV, 906
29 But let my due feet never fail,
To walk the studious Cloysters pale,
And love the high embowed Roof,
With antick Pillars massy proof,
And storied Window's richly dight,
Casting a dimm religious light.
There let the pealing Organ blow,
To the full voic’d Quire below,
In Service high, and Anthems cleer,
As may with sweemes, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into extasies,
And bring all Heav’n before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peacefull hermitage,
The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell,
Where | may sit and rightly spell
Of every Star that Heav’n doth shew,
And every Herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To somthing like Prophetic strain.
Milton, [1 Penseroso, 155
30 There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off
to another than the charge and care of their Religion. ...A
wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits,
finds Religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many
piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to
keep a stock going upon that trade. What should he do?
fain he would have the name to be religious, fain he
would bear up with his neighbours in that. What does he
therefore, but resolve to give over toiling, and to find
himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may
commit the whole managing of his religious affairs? some
Divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he
adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with
all the locks and keys, into his custody; and indeed
makes the very person of that man his religion; esteems
his associating with him a sufficient evidence and
commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say
his religion is now no more within himself, but is become
a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him,
according as that good man frequents the house. He
entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him;
his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally
supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted,
and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced brewage, and
better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite
would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany
and Jerusalem, his Religion walks abroad at eight, and
leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day
without his Religion.
Milton, Areopagilica
31 The greatest part of these ceremonies and superstitions
consists in the religious use of such things as are in their
own nature indifferent; nor are they sinful upon any other
account than because God is not the author of them. The
sprinkling of water and the use of bread and wine are
both in their own nature and in the ordinary occasions of
life altogether indifferent. Will any man, therefore, say
that these things could have been introduced into
religion and made a part of divine worship if not by divine
institution? If any human authority or civil power could
have done this, why might it not also enjoin the eating of
fish and drinking of ale in the holy banquet as a part of
divine worship? Why not the sprinkling of the blood of
beasts in churches, and expiations by water or fire, and
abundance more of this kind? But these things, how
indifferent soever they be in common uses, when they
come to be annexed unto divine worship, without divine
authority, they are as abominable to God as the sacrifice
of a dog. And why is a dog so abominable? What
difference is there between a dog and a goat, in respect
of the divine nature, equally and infinitely distant from all
affinity with matter, unless it be that God required the
use of one in His worship and not of the other? We see,
therefore, that indifferent things, how much soever they
be under the power of the civil magistrate, yet cannot,
upon that pretence, be introduced into religion and
imposed upon religious assemblies, because, in the
worship of God, they wholly cease to be indifferent.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
32 We have just enough Religion to make us hate, but not
enough to make us love one another.
Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
33 i conceive some scattered Notions about a superior Power
to be of singular Use for the common People, as
furnishing excellent Materials to keep Children quiet
when they grow peevish, and providing Topicks of
Amusement in a tedious Winter Night,
Swift, Argument Against Abolishing Christianity
34 Human laws, made to direct the will, ought to give
precepts, and not counsels; religion, made to influence
the heart, should give many counsels, and few precepts.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIV, 7
35 In a country so unfortunate as to have a religion that God
has not revealed, it is necessary for it to be agreeable to
morality; because even a false religion is the best
security we can have of the probity of men.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws XXIV, 8
36 Religion may support a state when the laws themselves
are incapable of doing it.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIV, 16
37 The pious man and the atheist always talk of religion; the
one speaks of what he loves, and the other of what he
fears.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws XXV, 1
38 Men are extremely inclined to the passions of hope and
fear; a religion, therefore, that had neither a heaven nora
hell could hardly please them.
Montesquieu, Somt of Laws, XXV, 2
39 Examine the religious principles which have, in fact,
prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded
that they are any thing but sick men’s dreams: Or
perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies
of monkeys in human shape, than the serious, positive,
dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies
himself with the name of rational.
Hume, Natural History of Religion, XV
40 After our holy religion (which is doubtless the only good
one) which would be the least bad?
Wouldn't it be the simplest one? Wouldn’t it be the
one that taught a good deal of morality and very little
dogma? The one that tended to make men just, without
making them absurd? The one that wouldn’t command
belief in impossible, contradictory things insulting to the
Divinity and pernicious to mankind, and wouldn’t dare to
threaten with eternal punishment anyone who has
common sense? Wouldn’t it be the religion that didn’t
uphold its beliefs with executioners, and didn’t inundate
the world with blood for the sake of unintelligible
sophisms? The one in which an ambiguity, a play on
words, or two or three forged charters wouldn’t make a
sovereign and a god of a priest who is often a man who
has committed incest, a murderer, and a poisoner? The
one that wouldn’t make kings subject to this priest? The
one that taught nothing but the worship of a God, justice,
tolerance, and humanity?
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Religion
41 Religion, considered in relation to society, which is either
general or particular, may also be divided into two kinds:
the religion of man, and that of the citizen. The first,
which has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is
confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme God
and the eternal obligations of morality, is the religion of
the Gospel pure and simple, the true theism, what may
be called natural divine right or law. The other, which is
codified in a single country, gives it its gods, its own
tutelary patrons; it has its dogmas, its rites, and its
external cull prescribed by law; outside the single nation
that follows it, all the world is in its sight infidel, foreign
and barbarous; the duties and rights of man extend for it
only as far as its own altars. Of this kind were all the
religions of early peoples, which we may define as civil or
positive divine right or law.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, 8
42 We ought not to speak about religion to children, if we
wish them to possess any.
Rousseau, Confessions, 11
43 To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the
rewards are distant and which is animated only by Faith
and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it
be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances,
by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of
example.
Johnson, Life of Milton
44 The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the
Roman world, were all considered by the people, as
equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by
the magistrate, as equally useful.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 11
45 Every mode of religion, to make a deep and lasting
impression on the human mind, must exercise our
obedience, by enjoining practices of devotion; and must
acquire our esteem, by inculcating moral duties
analogous to the dictates of our own hearts.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VIII
46 The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of
describing Religion as she descended from Heaven,
arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is
imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable
mixture of error and corruption which she contracted ina
long residence upon earth, among a weak and
degenerate raced beings.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
47 The careless Polytheist, assailed by new and unexpected
terrors, against which neither his priests nor his
philosophers could afford him any certain protection, was
very frequently terrified and subdued by the menace of
eternal tortures. His fears might assist the progress of his
faith and reason; and if he could once persuade himself
to suspect that the Christian religion might possibly be
true it became an easy task to convince him that it was
the safest and most prudent party that he could possibly
embrace.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
48 The opinion and practice of the monasteries of Mount
Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot
who flourished in the eleventh century. "When thou art
alone in thy cell," says the ascetic teacher, "shut thy
door, and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above
all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin
on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thought towards the
middle of thy belly, the region of the naval; and search
the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will
be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and
night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has
the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is
involved in a mystic and etherial light." This light, the
production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an
empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the
Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LXIII
49 Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; ’tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind.
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.
Blake, Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau
50 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-—everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;
And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
Wordsworth, It h a Beautous Evening, Calm and Free
51 Religion [cannot] maintain itself apart from thought, but
either advances to the comprehension of the idea, or,
compelled by thought itself, becomes intensive belief—or
lastly, from despair of finding itself at home in thought,
flees back from it in pious horror, and becomes
superstition.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, IV, Introduction
52 The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being
able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to
conceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrine in all
seriousness as true sensu proprio, and as absurdities form
an essential part of these doctrines, you have the great
mischief of a continual fraud.
Schopenhauer, Christian System
53 | believe that the sole effectual means which
governments can employ in order to have the doctrine of
the immortality of the soul duly respected is always to act
as if they believed in it themselves; and | think that it is
only by scrupulous conformity to religious morality in
great affairs that they can hope to teach the community
at large to know, to love, and to observe it in the lesser
concerns of life.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Il, 15
54 The thing a man does practically believe (and this is
often enough without asserting it even to himself, much
less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to
heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations
to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny
there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and
creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion.
Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity
55 If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
| keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, | am the wings;
| am the doubter and the doubt,
And | the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
Emerson, Brahma
56 Religion among the low becomes low. As it loses its truth,
it loses credit with the sagacious. They detect the
falsehood of the preaching, but when they say so, all
good citizens cry, Hush; do not weaken the State, do not
take off the strait-jacket from dangerous persons. Every
honest fellow must keep up the hoax the best he can;
must patronize providence and piety, and wherever he
sees anything that will keep men amused, schools or
churches or poetry or picture-galleries or music, or what
not, he must cry "Hist-a-boy," and urge the game on.
What a compliment we pay to the good Spirit with our
superserviceable zeal!
Emerson, The Conservative
57 England felt the full heat of the Christianity which
fermented Europe, and drew, like the chemistry of fire, a
firm line between barbarism and culture. The power of
the religious sentiment put an end to human sacrifices,
checked appetite, inspired the crusades, inspired
resistance to tyrants, inspired self-respect, set bounds to
serfdom and slavery% founded liberty, created the
religious architecture... inspired the 'English Bible, the
liturgy’, the monkish histories, the chronicle of Richard of
Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, and translated
the sanctities of old hagiology into English virtues on
English ground. It was a certain affirmative or aggressive
state of the Caucasian races. Man awoke refreshed by the
sleep of ages. The violence of the northern savages
exasperated Christianity into power. It lived by the love of
the people.
Emerson, English Traits, XIII
58 Mrs. Skewton. Say, like those wicked Turks, there is no
What’s-his-name but Thingummy, and What-you-may-
call-it is his prophet!
Dickens, Dombey and Son, XXVII
59 Not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness,
and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul;
and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we
have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of
spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity;
and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things
the most appalling to mankind.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the
heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus
stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation,
when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is
it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as
the visible absence of colour, and at the same time the
concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is
such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide
landscape of snows—a colourless, allcolour of atheism
from which we shrink? And when we consider that other
theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly
hues—every stately or lovely emblazoning—the sweet
tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded
velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young
girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually
inherent in substance, but only laid on from without; and
when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical
cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in
itself, and if operating without medium upon matter,
would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its
own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe
lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland,
who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon
their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at
the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect
around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was
the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
Melville, Moby Dick, XLII
60 The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no
scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against
the heavens. It is clear sky.
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
61 A man’s real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is
his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted.
This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even
as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his
creed, as to a Straw, thinking that that does him good
service because his sheet anchor does not drag,
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
62 The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: man makes
religion; religion does not make man. Religion is, in fact,
the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has
either not yet gained himself or has lost himself again.
But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world.
Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this
society, produce religion, which is an inverted world-
consciousness, because they are an inverted world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its
encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its
Spiritualistic point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral
sanction, its solemn complement its universal basis of
consolation and justification It is the fantastic realization
of the human being because the human being has
attained no true reality. Thus, the struggle against
religion is indirectly the struggle against that world of
which religion is the spiritual aroma.
The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression
of and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the
sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium
of the people.
Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy
of Right," Intro.
63 Every established fact which is too bad to admit o! any
other defence, is always presented to us as an injunction
of religion.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
64 To make your children capable of honesty is the
beginning of education. Make them men first, and
religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; buta
knave’s religion is always the rottenest thing about him.
Ruskin, Time and Tide, VIII
65 If it is reasonable to consider medicine, or architecture, or
engineering, in a certain sense, divine arts, as being
divinely ordained means of our receiving divine benefits,
much more may ethics be called divine; while as to
religion, it directly professes to be the method of
recommending ourselves to Him and learning His will. If
then it be His gracious purpose that we should learn it,
the means He gives for learning it, be they promising or
not to human eyes, are sufficient because they are His.
And what they are at this particular time, or to this
person, depends on His disposition. He may have
imposed simple prayer and obedience on some men as
the instrument of their attaining to the mysteries and
precepts of Christianity. He may lead others through the
written word, at least for some stages of their course; and
if the formal basis on which He has rested His revelations
be, as it is, of an historical and philosophical character,
then antecedent probabilities, subsequently corroborated
by facts, will be sufficient, as in the parallel case of other
history, to bring us safely to the matter, or at least to the
organ, of those revelations.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pt. |, Ill, 2
66 Religion has its own enlargement, and an enlargement,
not of tumult, but of peace. It is often remarked of
uneducated persons, who have hitherto thought little of
the unseen world, that, on their turning to God, looking
into themselves, regulating their hearts, reforming their
conduct, and meditating on death and judgment, heaven
and hell, they seem to become, in point of intellect,
different beings from what they were. Before, they took
things as they came, and thought no more of one thing
than another. But now every event has a meaning; they
have their own estimate of whatever happens to them;
they are mindful of times and seasons, and compare the
present with the past; and the world, no longer dull,
monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a various and
complicated drama, with parts and an object, and an
awful moral.
Newman, Idea of a University, Discourse VI
67 Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of
Religion; | am as sensitive of them as any one; but | have
never been able to see a connexion between
apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and
multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand
doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten
thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as |
understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are
incommensurate.
Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, V
68 The object of religion is conduct, and conduct is really,
however men may overlay it with philosophical
disquisitions, the simplest thing in the world. That is to
say, it is the simplest thing in the world as far as
understanding is concerned; as regards doing, it is the
hardest thing in the world. Here is the difficulty,—to do
what we very well know ought to be done; and instead of
facing this, men have searched out another with which
they occupy themselves by preference,—the origin of
what is called the moral sense, the genesis and
physiology of conscience, and so on. No one denies that
here, too, is difficulty, or that the difficulty is a proper
object for the human faculties to be exercised upon; but
the difficulty here is spcailative. It is not the difficulty of
religion, which is a practical one; and it often tends to
divert the attention from this. Yet surely the difficulty of
religion is great enough by itself, if men would but
consider it, to satisfy the most voracious appetite for
difficulties. It extends to rightness in the whole range of
what we call conduct; in three-fourths, therefore, at the
very lowest computation, of human life.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, |
69 Religion, if we follow the intention of human thought and
human language in the use of the word, is ethics
heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; the passage
from morality to religion is made when to morality is
applied emotion.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, |
70 Religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts
by which the human race has manifested its impulse to
perfect itself,—religion, that voice of the deepest human
experience,—does not only enjoin and sanction the aim
which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting
ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it
prevail; but also, in determining generally in what human
perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion
identical with that which culture,—culture seeking the
determination of this question through a//the voices of
human experience which have been heard upon it, of art,
science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion,
in order to give a greater fulness and certainty to its
solution,—likewise reaches. Religion says: The Kingdom
of God is within you; and culture, in like manner, places
human perfection in an interna/ condition, in the growth
and predominance of our humanity proper, as
distinguished from our animality. It places it in the ever-
increasing efficacy and in the general harmonious
expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which
make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of
human nature. As | have said on a former occasion: 'It is
in making endless additions to itself, in the endless
expansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and
beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal. To
reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that
is the true value of culture.’ Not a having and a resting,
but a growing and a becoming, is the character of
perfection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it
coincides with religion.
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, |
71 The essence of religion consists solely in the answer to
the question, 'Why dol live, and what is my relation to
the infinite universe around me?’
All the mctaphpics of religion, all the doctrines about
deities and about the origin of the world, and all external
worship—which are usually supposed to be religion—are
but indications (differing according to geographical,
ethnographical, and historical circumstances) of the
existence of religion. There is no religion from the most
elevated to the coarsest that has not at its root this
establishing of man’s relation to the surrounding universe
or to its first cause. There is no religious rite however
coarse, nor any cult however refined, that has not this at
its root. Every religious teaching is the expression which
the founder of that religion has given of the relation he
considered himself (and consequently all other people
also) to occupy as a man towards the universe and its
origin and first cause.
Tolstoy, Religion and Morality
72 The religious man thinks only of himself.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LX]
73 Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to
believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to
act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole
defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action
required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no
way different from that dictated by the naturalistic
hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity,
better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy
is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. |
myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis
gives to the world an expression which specifically
determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part
unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic
scheme of belief.
William James, Will to Believe
74 The peace of rationality may be sought through ecstasy
when logic fails. To religious persons of every shade of
doctrine moments come when the world, as it is, seems
So divinely orderly, and the acceptance of it by the heart
so rapturously complete, that intellectual questions
vanish; nay, the intellect itself is hushed to sleep—as
Wordsworth says, "thought is not; in enjoyment it
expires." Ontological emotion so fills the soul that
ontological speculation can no longer overlap it and put
her girdle of interrogation marks round existence. Even
the least religious of men must have felt with Walt
Whitman, when loafing on the grass on some transparent
summer morning, that "swiftly arose and spread round
him the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument
of the earth." At such moments of energetic living we feel
as if there were something diseased and contemptible,
yea vile, in theoretic grubbing and brooding. In the eye of
healthy sense the philosopher is at best a learned fool.
William James, Sentiment of Rationality
75 Overcoming of all the usual barriers between the
individual and the Absolute is the great mystic
achievement. In mystic states we both become one with
the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This
is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition,
hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In
Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian
mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring
note, so that there is about mystical utterances an
eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and
think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics
have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land.
Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their
speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XVI-
XVII
76 The pivot round which the religious life, as we have
traced it, revolves, is the interest of the individual in his
private personal destiny. Religion, in short, isa
monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, XX
77 The great religious conceptions which haunt the
imaginations of civilized mankind are scenes of
solitariness: Prometheus chained to his rock Mahomet
brooding in the desert, the meditations of the Buddha,
the solitary Man on the Cross. It belongs to the depth of
the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God.
Whitehead, Religion in the Making, I, 2
781am...a dissenter from all Known religions and | hope
that every kind of religious belief will die out. | do not
believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a
force for good. Although | am prepared to admit that in
certain times and places it has had some good effects, |
regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason,
and to a stage of development which we are now
outgrowing.
Russell, Sceptical Essays, XII
79 A religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must
be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.
Fundamentally, indeed, every religion is in this same way
a religion of love for all those whom it embraces; while
cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong
to it are natural to every religion.
Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, V
80 In my Future of an //lusion | was concerned much less
with the deepest sources of religious feeling than with
what the ordinary man understands by his religion, that
system of doctrines and pledges that on the one hand
explains the riddle of this world to him with an enviable
completeness, and on the other assures him that a
solicitous Providence is watching over him and will make
up to him in a future existence for any shortcomings in
this life. The ordinary man cannot imagine this
Providence in any other form but that of a greatly exalted
father, for only such a one could understand the needs of
the sons of men, or be softened by their prayers and
placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is
so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to
one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it is painful to
think that the great majority of mortals will never be able
to rise above this view of life.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, II
81 If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur
of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to
do for men. It gives them information about the source
and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection
and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of
life, and it guides their thoughts and actions by means of
precepts which are backed by the whole force of its
authority.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
82 While the different religions wrangle with one another as
to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view
the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded.
Freud, Hew Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
83 Religion is an attempt to get control over The sensory
world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-
world, which we have developed inside us as a result of
biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot
achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp
of the times in which they originated, the ignorant
childhood days of the human race. Its consolations
deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is
not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion
seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations
instead, for human society cannot do without them, and
it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with
religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its
place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to bea
lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the
civilized individual must pass through on his way from
childhood to maturity.
Freud, Hew Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysts,
XXXV
84 There is such a thing as high-level popularization, which
respects the broad outlines of scientific truth, and
enables ordinary- cultivated minds to get a general grasp
of it until the time comes when a greater effort reveals it
to them in detail, and, above all, allows them to
penetrate deeply into its significance. The propagation of
the mystical through religion seems to us something of
the kind. In this sense, religion is to mysticism what
popularization is to science.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, III
85 Religion no longer reveals divine personalities, future
rewards, and tenderer Elysian consolations; nor does it
seriously propose a heaven to be reached by a ladder nor
a purgatory to be shortened by prescribed devotions. It
merely gives the real world an ideal status and teaches
men to accept a natural life on supernatural grounds.
Santayana, Life of Reason, |, Introduction
8G Religion, after all, is the serious business of the human
race.
Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, V
20.2 Judaism
As the reader would expect, tins section is dominated by
quotations from the books of the Old Testament. These are
the passages that exhibit or expound the religion of Judaism
—its rituals and observances, its credal commitments, its
events in the history of "the chosen people," its reception
and development of the Mosaic law, and its inspiration and
influence of the prophets.
Quotations here represent a wide diversity of secular
comments on Judaism and on the relation of the Jews to the
gentiles. The reader will find striking observations made by
such historians as Tacitus and Gibbon, as well as by a
philosopher of history, Hegel. The reader will find
discussions of Judaism, and especially of the difference
between the Old Law and the New, by such theologians as
Augustine and Aquinas, as well as by one of the most
interesting of Christian apologists, Pascal, who stresses the
Christian fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. The
philosophers—Hobbes, Spinoza, and J. S. Mill—consider the
theocratic institutions of Judaism, and Mill dwells on the
contribution of the Jews along with the Greeks as the twin
fountainheads of Western civilization. Freud gives the
discussion a psychological turn by his speculations
concerning the psychogenesis of Jewish monotheism. And, in
certain quotations, anti-Semitism manifests itself more or
less explicitly.
1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy
country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s
house, unto a land that | will shew thee;
And | will make of thee a great nation, and | will bless
thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt bea
blessing:
And | will bless them that bless thee, and curse him
that curseth thee: and in thee shall all fauni-lies of the
earth be blessed.
Genesis 12:1-3
2 And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated
from him. Lilt up now thine eyes, and look from the place
where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward,
and westward:
For all the land which thou seest, to thee will | give it,
and to thy seed for ever.
And | will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so
that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall
thy seed also be numbered.
Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in
the breadth of it; for | will give it unto thee.
Genesis 13:14-17
3 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and
you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you
Shall be circumcised.
And ye Shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and
it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.
And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised
among you, every man child in your generations, he that
is born in the house, or bought with money of any
stranger, which is not of thy seed.
He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought
with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my
covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting
covenant.
And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his
foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from
his people; he hath broken my covenant.
Genesis 17:10-14
4 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said,
Behold, here | am.
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac,
whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Mo-ri-ah;
and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the
mountains which | will tell thee of.
And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and
saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him,
and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt
offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which
God had told him.
Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and
saw the place afar off.
And Abraham said unto his young men. Abide ye here
with the ass; and | and the lad will go yonder and
worship, and come again to you.
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and
laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand,
and a knife; and they went both of them together.
And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My
father: and he said. Here am 1, my son. And he said.
Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb fora
burnt offering?
And Abraham said. My son, God will provide himself a
lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them
together.
And they came to the place which God had told him
of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in
order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar
upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the
knife to slay his son.
And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of
heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here
am l.
And he said. Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither
do thou any thing unto him: for now | know that thou
fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine
only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and
behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his
horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered
him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
Genesis 22:1-13
5 And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of
Pa-dan-aram, and blessed him.
And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name
Shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy
name: and he called his name Israel.
And God said unto him, | am God Almighty: be fruitful
and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be
of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
And the land which | gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee
| will give it, and to thy seed after thee will | give the
land.
Genesis 35:9-12
6 Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what |
will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let
them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out
of his land.
And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, | am
the Lord:
And | appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto
Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name
Jehovah was | not known to them.
And | have also established my covenant with them, to
give them the land of Ca-na-an, the land of their
pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers.
And | have also heard the groaning of the children of
Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and | have
remembered my covenant.
Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, | am the
Lord, and | will bring you out from under the burdens of
the Egyptians, and | will rid you out of their bondage, and
| will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great
judgments:
And | will take you to me for a people, and | will be to
you a God: and ye shall know that | am the Lord your
God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of
the Egyptians.
Exodus 6:1-7
7 And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of
Egypt, saying.
This month shall be unto you the beginning of
months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.
Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In
the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every
man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a
lamb for an house:
And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him
and his neighbour next unto his house take it according
to the number of the souls; every man according to his
eating shall make your count for the lamb.
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first
year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the
goats:
And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the
Same month: and the whole assembly of the
congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the
two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses,
wherein they shall eat it.
And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with
fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they
Shall eat it.
Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but
roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the
purtenance thereof.
And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning;
and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall
burn with fire.
And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your
shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye
Shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord’s passover.
For | will pass through the land of Egypt this night,
and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both
man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt | will
execute judgment: | am the Lord.
And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the
houses where ye are; and when | see the blood, | will pass
over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy
you, when | smite the land of Egypt.
And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye
shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your
generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for
ever.
Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the
first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for
whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until
the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation,
and in the seventh day there shall be an holy
convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in
them, save that which every man must eat, that only may
be done of you.
And ye Shall observe the feast of unleavened bread;
for in this selfsame day have | brought your armies out of
the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in
your generations by an ordinance for ever.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month
at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and
twentieth day of the month at even.
Seven days Shall there be no leaven found in your
houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened,
even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of
Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land.
Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations
Shall ye eat unleavened bread.
Exodus 12:1-20
8 And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and
thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that
all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.
It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for
bringing them out from the land of Egypt: this is that
night of the Lord to be observed of all the children of
Israel in their generations.
And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the
ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat
thereof:
But every man’s servant that is bought for money,
when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat
thereof.
A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof.
In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry
forth ought of the flesh abroad out of the house; neither
Shall ye break a bone thereof.
All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.
And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will
keep the passover to the Lord, let all his males be
circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and
he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no
uncircumcised person shall eat thereof.
One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto
the stranger that sojourneth among you.
Thus did all the children of Israel; as the Lord
commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they.
And it came to pass the selfsame day, that the Lord
did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by
their armies.
Exodus 12 : 41-51
9 Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear
you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any
image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for | am
the Lord your God.
Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my
Sanctuary: | am the Lord.
If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my
commandments, and do them;
Then | will give you rain in due season, and the land
Shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall
yield their fruit.
And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and
the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye
Shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land
Safely.
And | will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down,
and none shall make you afraid: and | will rid evil beasts
out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your
land.
Leviticus 26 : 1-6
10 Then will | remember my covenant with Jacob, and also
my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with
Abraham will | remember; and | will remember the land.
The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her
sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and
they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity;
because, even because they despised my judgments, and
because their soul abhorred my statutes.
And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their
enemies, | will not cast them away, neither will | abhor
them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant
with them: for | am the Lord their God.
But | will for their sakes remember the covenant of
their ancestors, whom | brought forth out of the land of
Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that | might be their
God: | am the Lord.
These are the statutes and judgments and lau-s which
the Lord made between him and the children of Israel in
mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
Leviticus 26:42-46
11 And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them Hear, O
Israel, the statutes and judgments which | speak in your
ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do
them.
The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.
The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but
with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.
The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out
of the midst of the fire,
(1 stood between the Lord and you at that time to shew
you the word of the Lord: for ye were afraid by reason of
the fire, and went not up into the mount;) saying,
| am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have none other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any
likened of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in
the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the
earth:
Thou shall not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve
them: for | the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me,
And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love
me and keep my commandments.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh
his name in vain.
Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy
God hath commanded thee.
Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy
God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son,
nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy
maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy
manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as
thou.
And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of
Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out
thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out
arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep
the sabbath day.
Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God
hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged,
and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not kill.
Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
Neither shalt thou steal.
Neither shah thou bear false witness against thy
neighbour.
Neither shah thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither
shah thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his
manservant, or his maidservant, his ox. or his ass, or any
thing that is thy neighbour’s.
These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in
the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of
the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no
more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and
delivered them unto me.
Deuteronomy 5:1-22
12 And king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel, that
were assembled unto him, were with him before the ark,
sacrificing sheep and oxen, that could not be told nor
numbered for multitude.
And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of
the Lord unto his place, into the oracle of the house, to
the most holy place, even under the wings of the cher-u-
bims.
For the cher-u-bims spread forth their two wings over
the place of the ark, and the cher-u-bims covered the ark
and the staves thereof above.
And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the
staves were seen out in the holy place before the oracle,
and they were not seen without: and there they are unto
this day.
There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of
stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord
made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they
came out of the land of Egypt.
And it came to pass, when the priests were come out
of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the
Lord,
So that the priests could not stand to minister because
of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house
of the Lord.
Then spake Solomon, The Lord said that he would
dwell in the thick darkness.
| have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled
place for thee to abide in for ever.
And the king turned his face about, and blessed all the
congregation of Israel: (and all the congregation of Israel
stood;)
And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which
spake with his mouth unto David my father, and hath
with his hand fulfilled it, saying,
Since the day that | brought forth my people Israel out
of Egypt, | chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to
build an house, that my name might be therein; but |
chose David to be over my People Israel.
| Kings 8:5-16
13 | know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth:
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet
in my flesh shall | see God.
Job 19:25-26
14 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and the
people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.
Psalm 33:12
15 | will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever: with my
mouth will | make known thy faithfulness to all
generations.
For | have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy
faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens.
| have made a covenant with my chosen, | have sworn
unto David my servant,
Thy seed will | establish for ever, and build up thy
throne to all generations.
Psalm 89:1-4
16 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we
wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of
uS a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How Shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
If | forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget
her cunning.
If | do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth; if | prefer not Jerusalem above my chief
joy.
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of
Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the
foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast
served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little
ones against the stones.
Psalm 137:1-9
17 But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for | have
redeemed thee, | have called thee by thy name; thou art
mine.
When thou passest through the waters, | will be with
thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be
burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
For | am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy
Saviour: | gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba
for thee.
Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been
honourable, and 1 have loved thee: therefore will | give
men for thee, and people for thy life.
Fear not: for | am with thee: | will bring thy seed from
the east, and gather thee from the west;
| will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep
not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from
the ends of the earth;
Even every one that is called by my name: for | have
created him for my glory, | have formed him; yea, | have
made him.
Isaiah 43:1-7
18 Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel,
the Saviour.
Isaiah 45:15
19 The Jews have purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one
in essence. They call those profane who make
representations of God in human shape out of perishable
materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and
eternal, neither capable of representation, nor of decay.
They therefore do not allow any images to stand in their
cities, much less in their temples. This flattery is not paid
to their kings, nor this honour to our Emperors. From the
fact, however, that their priests used to chant to the
music of flutes and cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy,
and that a golden vine was found in the temple, some
have thought that they worshipped Father Liber, the
conqueror of the East, though their institutions do not by
any means harmonize with the theory; for Liber
established a festive and cheerful worship, while the
Jewish religion is tasteless and mean.
Tacitus, Histories, V, 5
20 Without the mad rites of Mars and Bellona they [the
Jew’s] carried on war; and while, indeed, they did not
conquer without victory, yet they did not hold it to bea
goddess, but the gift of their God. Without Segetia they
had harvests; without Bubona, oxen; honey without
Mellona; apples without Pomona: and, in a word,
everything for which the Romans thought they must
supplicate so great a crowd of false gods, they received
much more happily from the one true God. And if they
had not sinned against Him with impious curiosity, which
seduced them like magic arts, and drew them to strange
gods and idols, and at last led them to kill Christ, their
kingdom would have remained to them and would have
been, if not more spacious, yet more happy than that of
Rome. And now that they are dispersed through almost
all lands and nations, it is through the providence of that
one true God; that whereas the images, altars, groves,
and temples of the false gods are everywhere overthrown,
and their sacrifices prohibited, it may be shown from their
books how this has been foretold by their prophets so
long before.
Augustine, City of God, IV, 34
21 Before the coming of Christ, the state of the Old Law was
not changed as regards the fulfilment of the Law, which
was effected in Christ alone; but it was changed as
regards the condition of the people that were under the
Law. Because, at first the people were in the desert,
having no fixed abode; afterwards they were engaged in
various wars with the neighbouring nations; and lastly, at
the time of David and Solomon, the state of that people
was one of great peace. And then for the first time the
temple was built in the place which Abraham, instructed
by God, had chosen for the purpose of sacrifice.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-ll, 102 4
22 The tabernacle was divided into two parts. One was
called the "Holy of Holies," and was placed to the west.
The other was called the "Holy Place," which was situated
to the east. Moreover there was a court facing the
tabernacle. Accordingly there are two reasons for this
distinction. One is in respect of the tabernacle being
ordained to the worship of God. Because the different
parts of the world are thus betokened by the division of
the tabernacle. For that part which was called the Holy of
Holies signified the higher world, which is that of spiritual
substances, while that part which is called the Holy Place
signified the corporeal world. Hence the Holy Place was
separated from the Holy of Holies by a veil, which was of
four different colours (denoting the four elements),
namely, of linen, signifying earth, because linen, that is,
flax, grows out of the earth; purple, signifying water,
because the purple tint was made from certain shells
found in the sea; violet, signifying air, because it has the
colour of the air; and scarlet twice dyed, signifying fire.
And this because matter composed of the four elements
is a veil between us and incorporeal substances. Hence
the high-priest alone, and that once a year, entered into
the inner tabernacle, that is, the Holy of Holies, by which
we are taught that man’s final perfection consists in his
entering into that world. But into the outward tabernacle,
that is, the Holy Place, the priests entered every day,
though the people were only admitted to the court;
because the people are able to perceive material things,
the inner nature of which only wise men by dint of study
are able to discover.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 102, 4
23 The inner tabernacle, called the Holy of Holies, signified
the higher world of spiritual substances; hence that
tabernacle contained three things, namely, the ark of the
testament in which was a golden pot that had manna,
and the rod of Aaron that had blossomed, and the tables
on which were written the ten commandments of the Law.
Now the ark stood between two cherubim that looked one
towards the other; and over the ark was a table, called
the propitiatory, raised above the wings of the cherubim,
as though it were held up by them, and appearing, to the
imagination, to be the very scat of God. For this reason it
was Called the propitiatory, as though the people
received propitiation thence at the prayers of the high-
priest. And so it was held up, so to speak, by the
cherubim, in obedience, as it were, to God, while the ark
of the testament was like the foot-stool to Him that sat on
the propitiatory. These three things denote three things
in that higher world. First, God Who is above all, and
incomprehensible to any creature Hence no likeness of
Him was set up, in order to denote His invisibility. But
there was something to represent His seat, since, that is,
the creature, which is beneath God, as the seat is under
the one sitting on it, is comprehensible. Again in that
higher world there are spiritual substances called angels.
These are signified by the two cherubim, looking one
towards the other, to show that they are at peace with
one another... Who maketh peace in... high places.
For this reason, too, there was more than one cherub, to
betoken the multitude of heavenly spirits, to prevent
their receiving worship from those who had been
commanded to worship but one God. Moreover there are,
enclosed as it were in that spiritual world, the intelligible
types of whatsoever takes place in this world, just as in
every cause are enclosed the types of its effects, and in
the craftsman the types of the works of his craft. This was
signified by the ark, which represented, by means of the
three things it contained, the three things of greatest
import in human affairs. These are wisdom, signified by
the tables of the testament; the power of governing,
represented by the rod of Aaron; and life, denoted by the
manna which was the means of sustenance. Or else these
three signified the three Divine attributes, namely,
wisdom, in the tables; power, in the rod, goodness, in the
manna—both by reason of its sweetness, and because it
was through the goodness of God that it was granted to
man, so that therefore it was preserved as a memorial of
the Divine mercy.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 102, 4
24 Under the Old Law there were seven temporal
solemnities, and one continual solemnity. ... There was a
continual feast, since the lamb was sacrificed every day,
morning and evening; and this continual feast of an
abiding sacrifice signified the perpetuity of Divine
happiness. Of the temporal feasts the first was that which
was repeated every week. This was the solemnity of the
Sabbath, celebrated in memory of the work of the
creation of the universe. Another solemnity, namely, the
New Moon, was repeated every month, and was observed
in memory of the work of the Divine government. For the
things of this lower world owe their variety chiefly to the
movement of the moon; therefore this feast was kept at
the new moon, and not at the full moon, to avoid the
worship of idolaters who used to offer sacrifices to the
moon at that particular time. These two blessings are
bestowed in common on the whole human race, and
hence they were repeated more frequently.
The other five feasts were celebrated once a year, and
they commemorated the benefits which had been
conferred especially on that people. For there was the
feast of the Passover in the first month to commemorate
the blessing of being delivered out of Egypt. The feast of
Pentecost was celebrated fifty days later, to recall the
blessing of the giving of the Law. The other three feasts
were kept in the seventh month, nearly the whole of
which was solemnized by them, just as the seventh day.
For on the first of the seventh month was the feast of
Trumpets, in memory of the delivery of Isaac, when
Abraham found the ram caught by its horns, which they
represented by the horns which they blew. The feast of
Trumpets was a kind of invitation whereby they prepared
themselves to keep the following feast which was kept on
the tenth day. This was the feast of Expiation, in memory
of the blessing whereby, at the prayer of Moses, God
forgave the people’s sin of worshipping the calf. After this
was the feast of Scenopegia or of Tents, which was kept
for seven days, to commemorate the blessing of being
protected and led by God through the desert, where they
lived in tents. Hence during this feast they had to take
the fruits of the fairest tree, that is, the citron, and trees
of dense foliage, that is, the myrtle, which is fragrant, and
branches of palm-trees, and willows of the brook, which
retain their greenness a long time. And these are to be
found in the Land of promise, to signify that God had
brought them through the arid land of the wilderness to a
land of delights. On the eighth day another feast was
observed, of Assembly and Congregation, on which the
people collected the expenses necessary for the divine
worship, and it signified the uniting of the people and the
peace granted to them in the Land of promise.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 102, 4
25 They [the Jews] are, as it were, the first-born in the family
of God.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, lV, 16
26 Shylock. | am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,
subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle
us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and
if you wrong us, Shall we not revenge? If we are like you
in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a
Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian
example? Why revenge.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III, 1, 60
27 The king of any country is the public person, or
representative of all his own subjects. And God the king
of Israel was the Holy One of Israel, The nation which is
subject to one earthly sovereign is the nation of that
sovereign, that is, of the public person. So the Jews, who
were God’s nation, were called a holy nation. For by holy
is always understood either God Himself or that which is
God's in propriety; as by public is always meant either
the person of the Commonwealth itself, or something that
is so the Commonwealth’s as no private person can claim
any propriety therein.
Therefore the Sabbath (God’s day) is a holy day; the
Temple (God’s house), a holy house; sacrifices, tithes, and
offerings (God’s tribute), holy duties; priests, prophets,
and anointed kings, under Christ (God’s ministers), holy
men; the celestial ministering spirits (God’s messengers),
holy angels; and the like: and wheresoever the word holy
is taken properly, there is still something signified of
propriety gotten by consent. In saying "Hallowed be Thy
name," we do but pray to God for grace to keep the first
Commandment of having no other Gods but Him.
Mankind is God’s nation in propriety: but the Jews only
were a holy nation. Why, but because they became his
propriety by covenant?
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 35
28 It is not unremarkable what Philo first observed, That the
Law of Moses continued two thousand years without the
least alteration; whereas, we see, the Laws of other
Common-weals do alter with occasions.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 23
29 The Jew is obstinate in all fortunes; the persecution of
fifteen hundred years hath but confirmed them in their
Errour: they have already endured whatsoever may be
inflicted, and have suffered, in a bad cause, even to the
condemnation of their enemies.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 25
30 To give faith to the Messiah, it was necessary there
should have been precedent prophecies, and that these
should be conveyed by persons above suspicion, diligent,
faithful, unusually zealous, and known to all the world.
To accomplish all this, God chose this carnal people, to
whom He entrusted the prophecies which foretell the
Messiah as a deliverer and as a dispenser of those carnal
goods which this people loved. And thus they have had
an extraordinary passion for their prophets and, in sight
of the whole world, have had charge of these books which
foretell their Messiah, assuring all nations that He should
come and in the way foretold in the books, which they
held open to the whole world. Yet this people, deceived
by the poor and ignominious advent of the Messiah, have
been His most cruel enemies. So that they, the people
least open to suspicion in the world of favouring us, the
most strict and most zealous that can be named for their
law and their prophets, have kept the books incorrupt.
Hence those who have rejected and crucified Jesus Christ,
who has been to them an offence, are those who have
charge of the books which testify of Him, and state that
He will be an offence and rejected. Therefore they have
shown it was He by rejecting Him, and He has been alike
proved both by the righteous Jews who received Him and
by the unrighteous who rejected Him, both facts having
been foretold.
Wherefore the prophecies have a hidden and spiritual
meaning to which this people were hostile, under the
carnal meaning which they loved. If the spiritual meaning
had been revealed, they would not have loved it, and,
unable to bear it, they would not have been zealous of
the preservation of their books and their ceremonies; and
if they had loved these spiritual promises, and had
preserved them incorrupt till the time of the Messiah,
their testimony would have had no force, because they
had been his friends.
Therefore it was well that the spiritual meaning should
be concealed; but, on the other hand, if this meaning had
been so hidden as not to appear at all, it could not have
served as a proof of the Messiah. What then was done? In
a crowd of passages it has been hidden under the
temporal meaning, and in a few has been clearly
revealed; besides that, the time and the state of the
world have been so clearly foretold that it is clearer than
the sun. And in some places this spiritual meaning is so
clearly expressed that it would require a blindness, like
that which the flesh imposes on the spirit when it is
subdued by it, not to recognise it.
See, then, what has been the prudence of God. This
meaning is concealed under another in an infinite
number of passages, and in some, though rarely, it is
revealed; but yet so that the passages in which it is
concealed are equivocal and can suit both meanings;
whereas the passages where it is disclosed are
unequivocal and can only suit the spiritual meaning.
So that this cannot lead us into error and could only
be misunderstood by so carnal a people.
For when blessings are promised in abundance, what
was to prevent them from understanding the true
blessings, but their covetousness, which limited the
meaning to worldly goods? But those whose only good
was in God referred them to God alone. For there are two
principles, which divide the wills of men, covetousness
and charity. Not that covetousness cannot exist along
with faith in God, nor charity with worldly riches, but
covetousness uses God and enjoys the world, and charity
is the opposite.
Now the ultimate end gives names to things. All which
prevents us from attaining it is called an enemy to us.
Thus the creatures, however good, are the enemies of the
righteous, when they turn them away from God, and God
Himself is the enemy of those whose covetousness He
confounds.
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 571
31 The Jewish religion is wholly divine in its authority, its
duration, its perpetuity, its morality, its doctrine, and its
effects.
Pascal, Pensées, IX, 603
32 The religion of the Jews seemed to consist essentially in
the fatherhood of Abraham, in circumcision, in sacrifices,
in ceremonies, in the Ark, in the temple, in Jerusalem,
and, finally, in the law, and in the covenant with Moses.
| say that it consisted in none of those things, but only
in the love of God, and that God disregarded all the other
things.
Pascal, Pensées, IX, 610
33 Michael. God from the Mount of S/na/, whose gray top
Shall tremble, he descending, will himself
In Thunder Lightning and loud Trumpets sound
Ordaine them Lawes; part such as appertaine
To civil Justice, part religious Rites
Of sacrifice, informing them, by types
And shadowes, of that destind Seed to bruise
The Serpent, by what meanes he shall achieve
Mankinds deliverance. But the voice of God
To mortal eare is dreadful; they beseech
That Moses might report to them his will,
And terror cease; he grants them thir desire,
Instructed that to God is no access
Without Mediator, whose high Office now
Moses in figure beares, to introduce
One greater, of whose day he shall foretell,
And all the Prophets in thir Age, the times
Of great Messiah shall sing. Thus Laws and Rites
Establisht, such delight hath God in Men
Obedient to his will, that he voutsafes
Among them to set up his Tabernacle,
The holy One with mortal Men to dwell:
By his prescript a Sanctuary is fram’d
Of Cedar, overlaid with Gold, therein
An Ark, and in the Ark his Testimony,
The Records of his Cov’nant, over these
A Mercie-seat of Gold between the wings
Of two bright Cherubim, before him burn
Seaven Lamps as in a Zodiac representing
The Heav’nly fires; over the Tent a Cloud
Shall rest by Day, a fierie gleame by Night,
Save when they journie, and at length they come,
Conducted by his Angel to the Land
Promisd to Abraham and his Seed: the rest
Were long to tell, how many Battels fought,
How many Kings destroyd, and Kingdoms won,
Or how the Sun shall in mid Heav’n stand still
A day entire, and Nights due course adjourne,
Mans voice commanding, Sun in Gibeon stand,
And thou Moon in the vale of A/a/on,
Till /srae/ overcome; so call the third
From Abraham, Son of /saac, and from him
His whole descent, who thus shall Canaan win.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XIl, 227
34 Even a cursory perusal will show us that the only respects
in which the Hebrews surpassed other nations, are in
their successful conduct of matters relating to
government, and in their surmounting great perils solely
by God’s external aid; in other ways they were on a par
with their fellows, and God was equally gracious to all.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, III
35 The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murm’ring race,
As ever tried th’ extent and stretch of grace;
God’s pamper’d people, whom, debauch’d with ease,
No king could govern, nor no God could please.
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 45
36 If the God who guided the Jews wanted to give them a
good land, if these unhappy people had actually lived in
Egypt, why didn’t he leave them in Egypt? The only
answers to this question are theological phrases.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Judea
37 If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious
matters, it is clear that we all ought to become Jews,
because Jesus Christ our Saviour was born a Jew, lived a
Jew, died a Jew, and that he said expressly that he was
accomplishing, that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Tolerance
38 May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in
this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the
other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under
his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to
make him afraid.
Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation,
Newport, R.I. (1790)
39 The Jews, who, under the Assyrian and Persian
monarchies, had languished for many ages the most
despised portion of their slaves, emerged from obscurity
under the successors of Alexander; and as they
multiplied to a surprising degree in the East, and
afterwards in the West, they soon excited the curiosity
and wonder of other nations. The sullen obstinacy with
which they maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial
manners seemed to mark them out a distinct species of
men, who boldly professed, or who faintly disguised, their
implacable hatred to the rest of human-kind. Neither the
violence of Antiochus, nor the arts of Herod, nor the
example of the circumjacent nations, could ever
persuade the Jews to associate with the institutions of
Moses the elegant mythology of the Greeks. According to
the maxims of universal toleration, the Romans protected
a superstition which they despised. The polite Augustus
condescended to give orders that sacrifices should be
offered for his prosperity in the temple of Jerusalem;
while the meanest of the posterity of Abraham, who
should have paid the same homage to the Jupiter of the
Capitol, would have been an object of abhorrence to
himself and to his brethren. But the moderation of the
conquerors was insufficient to appease the jealous
prejudices of their subjects, who were alarmed and
scandalised at the ensigns of paganism, which
necessarily introduced themselves into a Roman
province. The mad attempt of Caligula to place his own
statue m the temple of Jerusalem was defeated by the
unanimous resolution of a people who dreaded death
much less than such an idolatrous profanation. Their
attachment to the law of Moses was equal to their
detestation of foreign religions. The current of zeal and
devotion, as it was contracted into a narrow channel, ran
with the strength, and sometimes with the fury, of a
torrent.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
40 The devout and even scrupulous attachment to the
Mosaic religion, So conspicuous among the Jews who lived
under the second temple, becomes still more surprising if
it is compared with the stubborn incredulity of their
forefathers. When the law was given in thunder from
Mount Sinai; when the tides of the ocean and the course
of the planets were suspended for the convenience of the
Israelites; and when temporal rewards and punishments
were the immediate consequences of their piety or
disobedience, they perpetually relapsed into rebellion
against the visible majesty of their Divine King, placed
the idols of the nations in the sanctuary of Jehovah, and
imitated every fantastic ceremony that was practised in
the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Phoenicia.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
41 It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that, while the
learned nations of antiquity were deluded by the fables of
polytheism, their simple ancestors of Palestine preserved
the knowledge and worship of the true God. The moral
attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with
the standard of human virtue: his metaphysical qualities
are darkly expressed; but each page of the Pentateuch
and the Prophets is an evidence of his power: the unity of
his name is inscribed on the first table of the law; and his
sanctuary was never defiled by any visible image of the
invisible essence.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, L
42 The God of the Jewish people is the God only of Abraham
and of his seed: national individuality and a special local
worship are involved in such a conception of deity. Before
him all other gods are false: moreover the distinction
between "true" and "false" is quite abstract; for as
regards the false gods, not a ray of the divine is supposed
to shine into them. But every form of spiritual force, and a
fortiori every religion is of such a nature, that whatever
be its peculiar character, an affirmative element is
necessarily contained in it. However erroneous a religion
may be, it possesses truth, although in a mutilated
phase. In every religion there is a divine presence, a
divine relation; and a philosophy of history has to seek
out the spiritual element even in the most imperfect
forms. But it does not follow that because it is a religion,
it is therefore good. We must not fall into the lax
conception that the content is of no importance but only
the form. This latitudinarian tolerance the Jewish religion
does not admit, being absolutely exclusive.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. I, Ill, 3
43 The fundamental characteristics of the Jewish religion are
realism and optimism, views of the world which are
closely allied; they form, in fact, the conditions of theism.
For theism looks upon the material world as absolutely
real, and regards life as a pleasant gift bestowed upon us.
Schopenhauer, Christian System
44 The Jews... had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy,
and their organised institutions were as obviously of
sacerdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These did for
them what was done for other Oriental races by their
institutions—subdued them to industry and order, and
gave them a national life. But neither their kings nor their
priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the
exclusive moulding of their character. Their religion,
which enabled persons of genius and a high religious
tone to be regarded and to regard themselves as inspired
from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious
unorganised institution— the Order (if it may be so
termed) of Prophets. Under the protection, generally
though not always effectual, of their sacred character, the
Prophets were a power in the nation, often more than a
match for kings and priests, and kept up, in that little
corner of the earth, the antagonism of influences which is
the only real security for continued progress. Religion
consequently was not there what it has been in so many
other places— a consecration of all that was once
established, and a barrier against further improvement.
Mill, Representative Government, 11
45 The Jews, instead of being stationary like other Asiatics,
were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive people of
antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the starting-
point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation.
Mill, Representative Government, I!
46 The Jews are the most remarkable nation of world history
because, faced with the question of being or not being,
they preferred, with a perfectly uncanny conviction,
being at any price: the price they had to pay was the
radical fa/sification of all nature, all naturalness, all
reality, the entire inner world as well as the outer. They
defined themselves counter to all those conditions under
which a nation was previously able to live, was permitted
to live; they made of themselves an antithesis to natural
conditions—they inverted religion, religious worship,
morality, history, psychology one after the other in an
irreparable way into the contradiction of their natural
values.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XXIV
47 To the Jewish people fate dealt a series of severe trials
and painful experiences, so their God became hard,
relentless, and, as it were, wrapped in gloom. He retained
the character of a universal God who reigned over all
lands and peoples; the fact, however, that his worship
had passed from the Egyptians to the Jews found its
expression in the added doctrine that the Jews were his
chosen people, whose special obligations would in the
end find their special reward. It might not have been easy
for that people to reconcile their belief in their being
preferred to all others by an all-powerful God with the
dire experiences of their sad fate. But they did not let
doubts assail them, they increased their own feelings of
guilt to silence their mistrust and perhaps in the end they
referred to "God’s unfathomable will," as religious people
do to this day.
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Pt. III, 1, 1
48 Of all the peoples who lived in antiquity in the basin of
the Mediterranean the Jewish people is perhaps the only
one that still exists in name and probably also in nature.
With an unexampled power of resistance it has defied
misfortune and ill-treatment, developed special character
traits, and, incidentally, earned the hearty dislike of all
other peoples.
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Pt. Ill, Il, 2
49 The preference which through two thousand years the
Jews have given to spiritual endeavour has, of course,
had its effect; it has helped to build a dike against
brutality and the inclination to violence which are usually
found where athletic development becomes the ideal of
the people. The harmonious development of spiritual and
bodily activity, as achieved by the Greeks, was denied to
the Jews. In this conflict their decision was at least made
in favour of what is culturally the more important.
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Pt. I/I, Il, 4
50 The religion that began with the prohibition against
making an image of its God has developed in the course
of centuries more and more into a religion of instinctual
renunciation.
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Pt. Ill, Il, 5
51 The people met with hard times; the hopes based on the
favour of God were slow in being fulfilled; it became not
easy to adhere to the illusion, cherished above all else,
that they were God’s chosen people. If they wished to
keep happiness, then the consciousness of guilt because
they themselves were such sinners offered a welcome
excuse for God’s severity. They deserved nothing better
than to be punished by him, because they did not
observe the laws; the need for satisfying this feeling of
guilt, which, coming from a much deeper source, was
insatiable, made them render their religious precepts
ever and ever more strict, more exacting, but also more
petty. In a new transport of moral asceticism the Jews
imposed on themselves constantly increasing instinctual
renunciation, and thereby reached-—at least in doctrine
and precepts—ethical heights that had remained
inaccessible to the other peoples of antiquity,
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Pt. III, Il, 9
52 As the Vedas offer a glimpse into the antecedents of
Greek mythology, so Hebrew studies open up vistas into
the antecedents of Christian dogma. Christianity in its
Patristic form was an adaptation of Hebrew religion to the
Graeco-Roman world, and later, in the Protestant
movement, a readaptation of the same to what we may
call the Teutonic spirit. In the first adaptation, Hebrew
positivism was wonderfully refined, transformed into a
religion of redemption, and endowed with a semi-pagan
mythology, a pseudo-Platonic metaphysics, and a quasi-
Roman organisation. In the second adaptation,
Christianity received a new basis and standard in the
spontaneous faith of the individual; and, as the traditions
thus undermined in principle gradually dropped away, it
was reduced by the German theologians to a romantic
and mystical pantheism. Throughout its transformations,
however, Christianity remains indebted to the Jews not
only for its founder, but for the nucleus of its dogma, cult,
and ethical doctrine. If the religion of the Jews, therefore,
Should disclose its origin, the origin of Christianity would
also be manifest.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 5
20.3 Christianity
The seminal quotations here are, of course, those drawn
from the New Testament, depicting events in the life of Jesus
Christ and reporting his deeds and utterances. However, the
reader should be aware that many passages from the
Gospels, from the Acts of the Apostles, and from the epistles
of St. Paul—passages that might have been included here—
have been placed in other sections of this chapter. Here, as
in the case of Judaism, the secular view of Christianity, and
especially of its first impact on a pagan world, is given us by
the historians.
Intimations and expositions of Christian doctrine will be
found in quotations from the great theologians, both Roman
Catholic and Protestant. Here again the reader must be
advised that, since other sections of this chapter deal with
specific aspects of Christian doctrine, many passages from
the theologians that might have been placed here have
been allocated elsewhere. Special attention should be called
to the observations on Christianity by Pascal, who is
certainly one of the most brilliant and stalwart defenders of
Christianity. He argues eloquently and persuasively for the
proposition that Christianity is the one true religion, a
proposition that is also affirmed, but defended differently, by
Montesquieu and Hegel.
Adverse views of Christianity are presented by Spinoza,
Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Marx among others. Less hostile is
the approach of those who distinguish between the ideals of
Christianity and their inadequate approximation in reality,
suggesting that Christianity has been infrequently practiced
and that few is the number of those who have called
themselves Christians who have followed in the footsteps of
Christ.
1 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name
Shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God,
The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there
Shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his
kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth even for ever.
Isaiah 9:6-7
2 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse,
and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit
of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and
might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;
And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear
of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his
eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:
But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and
reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and he
Shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with
the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.
And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and
faithfulness the girdle of his reins.
Isaiah 11:1-5
3 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that
bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation;
that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!
Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice
together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye,
when the Lord shall bring again Zion.
Isaiah 52:7-8
4 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces
from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace
was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened
not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he
openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who
shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the
land of the living: for the transgression of my people was
he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the
rich in his death; because he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him
to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,
he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the
pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will | divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he
hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was
numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of
many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 53:3-12
5 Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people
from their sins.
Matthew 1:21
6 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his
savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth
good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden
under foot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill
cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a
bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all
that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in
heaven.
Matthew 5:13-16
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Matthew 7:7
8 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the
birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not
where to lay his head.
And another of his disciples said unto him. Lord, suffer
me first to go and bury my father.
But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead
bury their dead.
Matthew 8:20-22
9 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
| will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for | am
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28-30
10 As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and
brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said. Take, eat;
this is my body.
And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to
them, saying. Drink ye all of it;
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is
shed for many for the remission of sins.
Matthew 26:26-28
11 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a
decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be
taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cy-re-ni-us was
governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of
Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is
called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and
lineage of David:)
To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great
with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days
were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped
him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;
because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and
the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they
were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them. Fear not: for, behold, |
bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all
people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of
the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good
will toward men.
And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away
from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to
another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see
this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath
made known unto us.
And they came with haste, and found Mary, and
Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
And when they had seen it, they made known abroad
the saying which was told them concerning this child.
And all they that heard it wondered at those things
which were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in
her heart.
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising
God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it
was told unto them.
And when eight days were accomplished for the
circumcising of the child, his name was called /esus
which was so named of the angel before he was
conceived in the womb.
Luke 2:1-21
12 As the people were in expectation, and all men mused in
their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not;
John answered, saying unto them all, | indeed baptize
you with water; but one mightier than | cometh, the
latchet of whose shoes | am not worthy to unloose: he
Shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:
Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge
his floor, and will gather the wheat into his gamer; but
the chaff he wall burn with fire unquenchable.
And many other things in his exhortation preached he
unto the people.
But Herod the te-trarch, being reproved by him for Hc-
ro-di-as his brother Philip’s wife, and (or all the evils
which Herod had done.
Added yet this above all, that he shut up John in
prison.
Now when all the people were baptized, it came to
pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the
heaven was opened,
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a
dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which
said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee | am well pleased.
Luke 3:15-22
13 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, | say
unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born
when he is old? can he enter the second time into his
mother’s womb, and be born?
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, | say unto thee, Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which
is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that | said unto thee, Ye must be born
again.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it Cometh,
and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the
Spirit.
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can
these things be?
John 3:3-9
14 Verily, verily, | say unto you, He that believeth on me
hath everlasting life.
| am that bread of life.
Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are
dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven,
that aman may cat thereof, and not die.
| am the living bread which came down from heaven: if
any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the
bread that | will give is my flesh, which | will give for the
life of the world.
The Jew's therefore strove among themselves, saying.
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus said unto them. Verily, verily, | say unto
you. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink
his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath
eternal life; and | will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink
indeed.
He that cateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,
dwelleth in me, and | in him.
As the living Father hath sent me, and | live by the
Father: so he that cateth me, even he shall live by me,
This is that bread which came down from heaven: not
as your fathers did cat manna, and are dead: he that
eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
John 6:47-58
15 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind
from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did
sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his
parents; but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him.
| must work the works of him that sent me, while it is
day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
As long as | am in the world, | am the light of the
world.
John 9:1-5
16 Jesus saith unto him, | am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
John 14:6
17 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,
Shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:7
18 Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in
the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached
unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up
into glory.
! Timothy 3:16
19 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
| John 5:7
20 | was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind
me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
Saying, |am Alpha and O-meg-a, the first and the last:
and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto
the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and
unto Smyrna, and unto Per-ga-mos, and unto Thy-a-ti-ra,
and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto La-od-i-
ce-a.
And | turned to see the voice that spake with me. And
being turned, | saw seven golden candlesticks;
And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like
unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the
foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white
as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned ina
furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of
his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his
countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
And when | saw him, | fell at his feet as dead. And he
laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me. Fear not; |
am the first and the last:
lam he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, | am
alive for evermore. Amen.
Revelation 1:10-18
21 All human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and
the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister
belief that the conflagration was the result of an order.
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the
guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class
hated for their abominations, called Christians by the
populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin,
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius
at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus,
and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for
the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first
source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things
hideous and shameful from every part of the world find
their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest
was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their
information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so
much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against
mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their
deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn
by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were
doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly
illumination, when daylight had expired.
Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was
exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the
people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car.
Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and
exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of
compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public
good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being
destroyed.
Tacitus, Annals, XV, 44
22 There are, to be sure, other things also quite as "foolish"
[as the birth of Christ], which have reference to the
humiliations and sufferings of God. Or else, let them call
a crucified God "wisdom." But Marcion will apply the knife
to this [doctrine] also, and even with greater reason. For
which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely to
raise a blush of shame, that [God] should be born, or that
He should die? that He should bear the flesh, or the
cross? be circumcised, or be crucified? be cradled, or be
coffined? be laid in a manger, or in a tomb? [Talk of
“wisdom!"] You will show more of that if you refuse to
believe this also. But, after all, you will not be "wise"
unless you become a "fool" to the world, by believing
"the foolish things of God."... And He was buried, and rose
again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.
Tertullian, De Carne Christi, 5
23 The sermon which Our Lord delivered on the mountain
contains the whole process of forming the life of a
Christian. Therein man’s interior movements are ordered
perfectly. For after declaring that his end is Happiness,
and after commending the authority of the apostles,
through whom the teaching of the Gospel was to be
promulgated, He orders man’s interior movements, first in
regard to man himself, secondly in regard to his
neighbour.
This he does in regard to man himself, in two ways,
corresponding to man’s two interior movements in
respect of any prospective action namely, volition of what
has to be done, and intention of the end. Therefore, in the
first place. He directs man’s will in respect of the various
precepts of the Law by prescribing that man should
refrain not merely from those external works that are evil
in themselves, but also from internal acts, and from the
occasions of evil deeds. In the second place He directs
man’s intention, by teaching that in our good works we
should seek neither human praise, nor worldly riches,
which is to lay up treasures on earth.
Afterwards He directs man’s interior movement in
respect of his neighbour, by forbidding us, on the one
hand, to judge him rashly, unjustly, or presumptuously,
and, on the other, to entrust him too readily with sacred
things if he be unworthy.
Lastly, He teaches us how to fulfil the teaching of the
Gospel; namely, by imploring the help of God, by striving
to enter by the narrow door of perfect virtue, and by
being wary lest we be led astray by evil influences.
Moreover He declares that we must observe His
commandments, and that it is not enough to make
profession of faith, or to work miracles, or merely to hear
His words.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 108, 3
24 | admonish every pious Christian that he take not offence
at the plain, unvarnished manner of speech of the Bible.
Let him reflect that what may seem trivial and vulgar to
him, emanates from the high majesty, power, and wisdom
of God. The Bible is the book that makes fools of the wise
of this world; It is understood only of the plain and simple
hearted. Esteem this book as the precious fountain that
can never be exhausted. In it thou findest the swaddling-
clothes and the manger whither the angels directed the
poor, simple shepherds; they seem poor and mean, but
dear and precious is the treasure that lies therein.
Luther, Table Talk, H57
25 All the wisdom of the world is childish foolishness in
comparison with the acknowledgment of Christ. For what
iS more wonderful than the unspeakable mystery, that
the Son of God, the image of the eternal Father, took
upon him the nature of man. Doubtless, he helped his
supposed father, Joseph, to build houses; for Joseph was a
carpenter. What will they of Nazareth think at the day of
judgment, when they shall see Christ sitting in his divine
majesty; surely they will be astonished, and say; Lord,
thou helpest build my house, how comest thou now to
this high honour?
When Jesus was born, doubtless, he cried and wept
like other children, and his mother tended him as other
mothers tend their children. As he grew up, he was
submissive to his parents, and waited on them, and
carried his supposed father’s dinner to him, and when he
came back, Mary, no doubt, often said: "My dear little
Jesus, where hast thou been?" He that takes not offence
at the simple, lowly, and mean course of the life of Christ,
is endued with high divine art and wisdom; yea, has a
special gift of God in the Holy Ghost. Let us ever bear in
mind, that our blessed Saviour thus humbled and abased
himself, yielding even to the contumelious death of the
cross, for the comfort of us poor miserable, and damned
creatures.
Luther, Table Talk, H187
26 The operative cause of the sacrament is the word and
institution of Christ, who ordained it. The substance Is
bread and wine, prefiguring the true body and blood of
Christ, which is spiritually received by faith. The final
cause of instituting the same, is the benefit and the fruit,
the strengthening of our faith, not doubting that Christ’s
body and blood were given and shed for us, and that our
sins by Christ’s death certainly are forgiven.
Luther, Table Talk, H363
27 Shylock. O father Abram, what these Christians are,
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect
The thoughts of others!
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, iii, 161
28 Marcellus. Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, i, 158
29 Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are
to be received into the kingdom of God; that is to say,
into eternal life; that is to say, to remission of sin: for as
eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered
by the remitting of men’s sins.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 42
30 Religions, as the pagan, are... popular, for they consist in
externals. But they are not for educated people. A purely
intellectual religion would be more suited to the learned,
but it would be of no use to the common people. The
Christian religion alone is adapted to all, being composed
of externals and internals. It raises the common people to
the internal, and humbles the proud to the external; it is
not perfect without the two, for the people must
understand the spirit of the letter, and the learned must
submit their spirit to the letter.
Pascal, Pensées, IV, 251
31 The Christian religion... teaches men these two truths;
that there is a God whom men can know, and that there
iS a corruption in their nature which renders them
unworthy of Him, It is equally important to men to know
both these points; and it is equally dangerous for man to
know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to
know his own wretchedness without knowing the
Redeemer who can free him from it. The knowledge of
only one of these points gives rise either to the pride of
philosophers, who have known God, and not their own
wretchedness, or to the despair of atheists, who know
their own wretchedness, but not the Redeemer.
And, as it is alike necessary to man to know these two
points, so is it alike merciful of God to have made us
know them. The Christian religion does this; it is in this
that it consists.
Let us herein examine the order of the world and see if
all things do not tend to establish these two chief points
of this religion: Jesus Christ is the end of all, and the
centre to which all tends. Whoever knows Him knows the
reason of everything.
Those who fall into error err only through failure to see
one of these two things. We can, then, have an excellent
knowledge of God without that of our own wretchedness
and of our own wretchedness without that of God. But we
cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same
time both God and our own wretchedness.
Therefore | shall not undertake here to prove by
natural reasons either the existence of God, or the Trinity,
or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that nature;
not only because | should not feel myself sufficiently able
to find in nature arguments to convince hardened
atheists, but also because such knowledge without Jesus
Christ is useless and barren. Though a man should be
convinced that numerical proportions are immaterial
truths, eternal and dependent on a first truth, in which
they subsist and which is called God, | should not think
him far advanced towards his own salvation.
The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the
author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the
elements; that is the view of heathens and Epicureans.
He is not merely a God who exercises His providence over
the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who
worship Him a long and happy life. That was the portion
of the Jews, But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love
and of comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those
whom He possesses, a God who makes them conscious of
their inward wretchedness, and His infinite mercy, who
unites Himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with
humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders
them incapable of any other end than Himself.
All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in
nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to
form for themselves a means of Knowing God and serving
Him without a mediator. Thereby they fall either into
atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian
religion abhors almost equally.
Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it
should needs be either that it would be destroyed or bea
hell.
If the world existed to instruct man of God, His divinity
would shine through every part in it in an indisputable
manner; but as it exists only by Jesus Christ, and for Jesus
Christ, and to teach men both their corruption and their
redemption, all displays the proofs of these two truths.
All appearance indicates neither a total exclusion nor
a manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a God
who hides Himself. Everything bears this character.
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 556
32 That religion has always existed on earth which consists
in believing that man has fallen from a state of glory and
of communion with God into a state of sorrow, penitence,
and estrangement from God, but that after this life we
Shall be restored by a Messiah who should have come. All
things have passed away, and this has endured, for which
all things are.
Men have in the first age of the world been carried
away into every kind of debauchery, and yet there were
saints, as Enoch, Lamech, and others, who waited
patiently for the Christ promised from the beginning of
the world, Noah saw the wickedness of men at its height;
and he was held worthy to save the world in his person,
by the hope of the Messiah of whom he was the type.
Abraham was surrounded by idolaters, when God made
known to him the mystery of the Messiah, whom he
welcomed from afar. In the time of Isaac and Jacob,
abomination was spread over all the earth; but these
saints lived in faith; and Jacob, dying and blessing his
children, cried in a transport which made him break off
his discourse, "I await, O my God, the Saviour whom Thou
hast promised. .. The Egyptians were infected both with
idolatry and magic; the very people of God were led
astray by their example. Yet Moses and others believed
Him whom they saw not, and worshipped Him, looking to
the eternal gifts which He was preparing for them.
The Greeks and Latins then set up false deities; the
poets made a hundred different theologies, while the
philosophers separated into a thousand different sects;
and yet in the heart of Judaea there were always chosen
men who foretold the coming of this Messiah, which was
known to them alone.
He came at length in the fullness of time, and time has
since witnessed the birth of so many schisms and
heresies, SO many political revolutions, so many changes
in all things; yet this Church, which worships Him who
has always been worshipped, has endured
uninterruptedly. It is a wonderful, incomparable, and
altogether divine fact that this religion, which has always
endured, has always been attacked. It has been a
thousand times on the eve of universal destruction, and
every time it has been in that state, God has restored it
by extraordinary acts of His power.
Pascal, Palsies, IX, 613
33 Michael. Nor after resurrection shall he stay
Longer on Earth then certaine times to appeer
To his Disciples, Men who in his Life
Still follow’d him; to them shall leave in charge
To teach all nations what of him they learn’d
And his Salvation, them who shall beleeve
Baptizing in the profluent streame, the signe
Of washing them from guilt of sin to Life
Pure, and in mind prepar’d, if so befall.
For death, like that which the redeemer dy’d.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XII, 436
34 | have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of
professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace,
temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with
such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one
another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the
virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.
Spinoza, Theohgico-Political Treatise, Pref.
35 Christians are distinguished from the rest of the world,
not by faith, nor by charity, nor by the other fruits of the
Holy Spirit, but solely by their opinions, inasmuch as they
defend their cause, like everyone else, by miracles, that
is by ignorance, which is the source of all malice; thus
they turn a faith, which may be true, into superstition.
Spinoza, Letter to Henry Oldenburg (Nov. 1675)
36 Now | saw in my Dream, that the highway up which
Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a Wall,
and that Wall is called Sa/vation. Up this way therefore
did burdened Christian run, but not without great
difficulty, because of the load on his back.
He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat
ascending; and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little
below in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So | saw in my Dream,
that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden
loosed from off his Shoulders, and fell from off his back,
and began to tumble; and so continued to do, till it came
to the mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and | saw
it nO more.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, |
37 The System of the Gospel, after the Fate of other
Systems, is generally antiquated and exploded; and the
Mass or Body of the common People, among whom it
seems to have had its latest Credit, are now grown as
much ashamed of it as their Betters; Opinions, like
Fashions, always, descending from those of Quality to the
middle Sort, and thence to the Vulgar, where at length
they are dropp’d and vanish.
Swift, Argument Against Abolishing Christianity
38 The Christian religion, which ordains that men should
love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation
blest with the best civil, the best political laws; because
these, next to this religion are the greatest good that men
can give and receive.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIV,1
39 The principles of Christianity, deeply engraved on the
heart, would be infinitely more powerful than the false
honour of monarchies, than the humane virtues of
republics, or the servile fear of despotic states.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIV, 6
40 Christianity as a religion is entirely spiritual, occupied
solely with heavenly things; the country of the Christian
is not of this world. He does his duty, indeed, but does it
with profound indifference to the good or ill success of his
cares. Provided he has nothing to reproach himself with,
it matters little to him whether things go well or ill here
on earth. If the State is prosperous, he hardly dares to
Share in the public happiness, for fear he may grow proud
of his country’s glory; if the State is languishing, he
blesses the hand of God that h hard upon His people.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, 8
41 Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its
Spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by
such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and
they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts
for too little in their eyes.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, 8
42 Johnson. As to the Christian religion, Sir, besides the
strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance
in its favour from the number of great men who have
been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration
of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a
man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was
convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the
world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion.
Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very
firm believer.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 28,1763)
43 On Sunday, June 3, we all went to Southill church, which
Is very near to Mr. Dilly’s house. It being the first Sunday
of the month, the holy sacrament was administered, and |
staid to partake of it. When | came afterwards into Dr.
Johnson's room, he said, "You did right to stay and receive
the communion; | had not thought of it." This seemed to
imply that he did not choose to approach the altar
without a previous preparation, as to which good men
entertain different opinions, some holding that it is
irreverent to partake of that ordinance without
considerable premeditation; others, that whoever is a
sincere Christian, and in a proper frame of mind to
discharge any other ritual duty of our religion, may,
without scruple, discharge this most solemn one. A
middle notion | believe to be the just one, which is, that
communicants need not think a long train of preparatory
forms indispensably necessary; but neither should they
rashly and lightly venture upon so aweful and mysterious
an institution. Christians must judge each for himself,
what degree of retirement and self-examination is
necessary upon each occasion.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 3, 1781)
44 The Christians were not less adverse to the business than
to the pleasures of this world. The defence of our persons
and property they knew not how to reconcile with the
patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness
of past injuries, and commanded them to invite the
repetition of fresh insults. Their simplicity was offended
by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by
the active contention of public life; nor could their
humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful on any
occasion to shed the blood of our fellow-creatures, either
by the sword of justice or by that of war, even though
their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the
peace and safety of the whole community. .. . This
indolent, or even criminal disregard to the public welfare,
exposed them to the contempt and reproaches of the
Pagans, who very frequently asked, what must be the fate
of the empire, attacked on every side by the barbarians,
if all mankind should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments
of the new sect? To this insulting question the Christian
apologists returned obscure and ambiguous answers, as
they were unwilling to reveal the secret cause of their
security; the expectation that, before the conversion of
mankind was accomplished, war, government, the Roman
empire, and the world itself, would be no more. It may be
observed that, in this instance likewise, the situation of
the first Christians coincided very happily with their
religious scruples, and that their aversion to an active life
contributed rather to excuse them from the service than
to exclude them from the honours of the state and army.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
45 it is not easy to extract any distinct ideas from the Vague
though eloquent declamations of the Fathers, or to
ascertain the degree of immortal glory and happiness
which they confidently promised to those who were so
fortunate as to shed their blood in the cause of religion.
They inculcated with becoming diligence that the fire of
martyrdom supplied every defect and expiated every sin;
that, while the souls of ordinary Christians were obliged
to pass through a slow and painful purification, the
triumphant sufferers entered into the immediate fruition
of eternal bliss, where, in the society of the patriarchs,
the apostles, and the prophets, they reigned with Christ,
and acted as his assessors in the universal judgment of
mankind.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XVI
46 A quiet conscience makes one so serene! Christians have
burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles
would have done as they did.
Byron, Don Juan, |, 83
47 Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that unlike
other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its
chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series
of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions
and sufferings of individuals: it is this history which
constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.
Schopenhauer, Christian System
48 This is the miracle of Christianity, more wonderful than
that one of changing the water into wine; this miracle in
all stillness, without any change of rulers, moreover
without a hand being moved, of making every man,
divinely understood, into a king, so easily, so smoothly,
so miraculously, that the world in a certain sense does
not need to know it. For in the world outside, there the
king will and ought to be the only one who rules
according to his conscience; but to obey—for
conscience’s sake will be permitted everyone; moreover,
no one, no one can prevent it. And there within, there far
within, where the Christian dwells in the conscience-
relation, there is everything changed.
Lo, the world raises a tumult just to bring about a little
change; it sets heaven and earth in motion for nothing,
like the mountain which brought forth a mouse:
Christianity in all stillness brings about the change of the
infinite as if it were nothing. It is so quiet, quiet as
nothing worldly can be; as quiet as only the dead and
inwardness can be; and what else is Christianity but
inwardness!
Thus Christianity transforms every relation between
men into a conscience-relationship, and thus also into a
love-relationship.
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, I, 3B
49 The Christian world is always offended by the true
Christian. Only now the passion of offense is not
ordinarily so strong that it wishes to eradicate him; no, it
will only continue to mock and insult him. This is easy to
explain. At the time when the world was itself conscious
of not being Christian, then there was something to fight
about, then it was a fight to the death. But now, when the
world is proudly and calmly certain that it is Christian,
the true Christian insistence is merely something to laugh
at. The confusion is even more distressing than in the
first period of Christianity. That was distressing, but there
was meaning in it, since the world was fighting to the
death against Christianity. But the world’s present lofty
calmness in its consciousness of being Christian, its
cheap bit of mockery, if one wishes to call it that—of the
real Christian: this almost borders on madness. For never
in its first period was Christianity thus made the object of
ridicule.
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, I, 5
50 Official preaching has falsely represented religion,
Christianity, as nothing but consolation, happiness etc.
And consequently doubt has the advantage of being able
to say in a superior way: | do not wish to be made happy
by an illusion.
If Christianity were truthfully presented as suffering,
ever greater as one advances further in it: doubt would
have been disarmed, and in any case there would have
been no opportunity for being superior—where it was a
matter of avoiding— pain.
Kierkegaard, Journals (1851)
51 Every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the
Christian?
Emerson, Self-Reliance
52 The modern Christian is a man who has consented to say
all the prayers in the liturgy, provided you will let him go
straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward. All his
prayers begin with "Now | lay me down to sleep," and he
is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to
his "long rest." He has consented to perform certain old,
established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not
wish to hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn’t wish to
have any supplementary articles added to the contract to
fit it to the present time. He shows the whites of his eyes
on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week.
Thoreau, Plea for Captain John Brown
53 Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the
willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has
dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the
morning with joy.
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
54 The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And
for a society based upon the production of commodities,
in which the producers in general enter into social
relations with one another by treating their products as
commodities and values, whereby they reduce their
individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous
human labour—for such a society, Christianity with its
cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois
developments, Protestantism, Deism, etc., is the most
fitting form of religion.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, I, 1
55 To pretend that Christianity was intended to stereotype
existing forms of government and society, and protect
them against change, is to reduce it to the level of
Islamism or of Brahminism. It is precisely because
Christianity has not done this that it has been the religion
of the progressive portion of mankind, and Islamism,
Brahminism, etc. have been those of the stationary
portions; or rather (for there is no such thing as a really
stationary society) of the declining portions. There have
been abundance of people, in all ages of Christianity,
who tried to make it something of the same kind; to
convert us into a sort of Christian Mussulmans, with the
Bible for a Koran, prohibiting all improvement: and great
has been their power, and many have had to sacrifice
their lives in resisting them. But they have been resisted,
and the resistance has made us what we are, and will yet
make us what we are to be.
Mill, Subjection of Women, I!
56 Sometimes an attempt is made to determine the "leading
idea," as it has been called, of Christianity, an ambitious
essay as employed on a supernatural work, when, even as
regards the visible creation and the inventions of man,
such a task is beyond us. Thus its one idea has been said
by some to be the restoration of our fallen race, by others
philanthropy, by others the tidings of immortality, or the
spirituality of true religious service, or the salvation of the
elect, or mental liberty, or the union of the soul with God.
If, indeed, it is only thereby meant to use one or other of
these as a central idea for convenience, in order to group
others around it, no fault can be found with such a
proceeding; and in this sense | should myself call the
Incarnation the central aspect of Christianity, out of
which the three main aspects of its teaching take their
rise, the sacramental, the hierarchical, and the ascetic.
But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to
exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is
dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric
and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark;
it is love, and it is fear.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pi. I, I, 1
57 Christianity is that which righteousness really is.
Therefore, if something called Christianity prevails, and
yet the promises are not satisfied, the inference is that
this something is not that which righteousness really is,
and therefore not really Christianity.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, XII
58 Father Paissy. The science of this world, which has
become a great power, has, especially in the last century,
analysed everything divine handed down to us in the
holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this
world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But
they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the
whole, and in deed their blindness is marvellous. Yet the
whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted
nineteen centuries, is it not still a living a moving power
in the individual soul and in the masses of people? It is
still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who
have destroyed everything! For even those who have
renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost
being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither
their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able
to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the
ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted,
the result has been only grotesque.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, lV, 1
59 It is a basic tenet of Christianity that all men are equal,
not only because of their equal relation to the infinite,
but because they are brothers, they are all acknowledged
as sons of God.
Tolstoy, What Is Religion?, VI
60 The Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom,
all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same
time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Ill, 46
61 Suppose we could contemplate the oddly painful and
equally crude and subtle comedy of European
Christianity with the mocking and aloof eyes of an
Epicurean god, | think our amazement and laughter
would never end: doesn’t it seem that a single will
dominated Europe for eighteen centuries—to turn man
into a sublime miscarriage?
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Ill, 62
62 What is more harmful than any vice?—Active sympathy
for the ill-constituted and weak—Christianity.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, I
63 One should not embellish or dress up Christianity: it has
waged a war to the death against this higher type of
man, it has excommunicated all the fundamental
instincts of this type, it has distilled evil, the Evi/ One, out
of these instincts—the strong human being as the type of
reprehensibility, as the ‘outcast’. Christianity has taken
the side of everything weak, base, ill-constituted, it has
made an ideal out of opposition to the preservative
instincts of strong life; it has depraved the reason even of
the intellectually strongest natures by teaching men to
feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful, as
misleading, as temptations. The most deplorable
example: the depraving of Pascal, who believed his
reason had been depraved by original sin while it had
only been depraved by his Christianity!
Nietzsche, Antichrist, V
64 Why not give Christianity a trial? The question seems a
hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute adherence to
the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.” Yet it is
beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of
his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his
millions of money, and his moralities and churches and
political constitutions. “This man” has not been a failure
yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way.
Shaw, Androcles and the Lion, Pref.
65 The doctrines in which Jesus is thus confirmed are,
roughly, the following:
1. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the
son of God; and God is the son of man. God is a spirit, to
be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not an elderly
gentleman to be bribed and begged from. We are
members one of another; so that you cannot injure or
help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself.
God is your father: you are here to do God’s work; and
you and your father are one.
2. Get rid of property by throwing it into the common
stock. Dissociate your work entirely from money
payments. If you let a child starve you are letting God
starve. Get rid of all anxiety about tomorrow’s dinner and
clothes, because you cannot serve two masters: God and
Mammon.
3. Get rid of judges and punishment and revenge.
Love your neighbor as yourself, he being a part of
yourself. And love your enemies: they are your neighbors.
4. Get rid of your family entanglements. Every mother
you meet is as much your mother as the woman who bore
you. Every man you meet is as much your brother as the
man she bore after you. Dont waste your time at family
funerals grieving for your relatives: attend to life, not to
death: there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out
of it, and better. In the kingdom of heaven, which, as
aforesaid, is within you, there is no marriage nor giving in
marriage, because you cannot devote your life to two
divinities: God and the person you are married to.
Shaw, Androcles and the Lion, Pref.
66 Christianity has two faces. Popular Christianity has for its
emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanguinary
execution after torture, for its central mystery an insane
vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there
is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the
sacred mystery of Equality, and forbids the glaring futility
and folly of vengeance, often politely called punishment
or justice. The gibbet part of Christianity is tolerated. The
other is criminal felony.
Shaw, Major Barbara, Pref.
67 Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now | know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last.
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats, The Second Coming
68 Religious experience... may take other forms than the
Christian, and within Christianity it may take other forms
than the Catholic; but the Catholic form is as good as any
intrinsically for the devotee himself, and it has immense
advantages over its probable rivals in charm, in
comprehensiveness, in maturity, in internal rationality, in
external adaptability; so much so that a strong
anticlerical government, like the French, cannot safely
leave the church to be overwhelmed by the forces of
science, good sense, ridicule, frivolity, and avarice (all
strong forces in France), but must use violence as well to
do it. In the English church, too, it is not those who
accept the deluge, the resurrection, and the sacraments
only as symbols that are the vital party, but those who
accept them literally; for only these have anything to say
to the poor, or to the rich, that can refresh them. Ina
frank supernaturalism, in a tight clericalism, not ina
pleasant secularisation, lies the sole hope of the church.
Its sole dignity also lies there. It will not convert the
world; it never did and it never could. It will remain a
voice crying in the wilderness; but it will believe what it
cries, and there will be some to listen to it in the future,
as there have been many in the past. As to modernism, it
is suicide. It is the last of those concessions to the spirit
of the world which half-believers and double-minded
prophets have always been found making; but itis a
mortal concession. It concedes everything; for it
concedes that everything in Christianity, as Christians
hold it, is an illusion.
Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, II
69 Let the reader fill out this outline [of the Christian epic]
for himself with its thousand details; let him remember
the endless mysteries, arguments, martyrdoms,
consecrations that carried out the sense and made vital
the beauty of the whole. Let him pause before the
phenomenon; he can ill afford, if he wishes to understand
history or the human mind, to let the apparition float by
unchallenged without delivering up its secret. What shall
we say of this Christian dream?
Those who are still troubled by the fact that this dream
is by many taken for a reality, and who are consequently
obliged to defend themselves against it, as against some
dangerous error in science or in philosophy, may be
allowed to marshal arguments in its disproof. Such,
however, is not my intention. Do we marshal arguments
against the miraculous birth of Buddha, or the story of
Cronos devouring his children? We seek rather to honour
the piety and to understand the poetry embodied in
those fables. If it be said that those fables are believed by
no one, | reply that those fables are or have been
believed just as unhesitatingly as the Christian theology,
and by men no less reasonable or learned than the
unhappy apologists of our own ancestral creeds. Matters
of religion should never be matters of controversy. We
neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn
him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion. That
he harbours it is no indication of a want of sanity on his
part in other matters. But while we acquiesce in his
experience, and are glad he has it, we need no
arguments to dissuade us from sharing it. Each man may
have his own loves, but the object in each case is
different. And so it is, or should be, in religion.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 6
20.4 Church
The Temple, in the Old Testament, is both an architectural
monument and a unique religious symbol; destroyed, it can
be rebuilt; forgotten, it can be restored and remembered. It
is by no means the only place of Jewish worship; synagogues
exist wherever a small number of Jews come together to
worship communally; in contrast, the Temple is the sole
repository of the Ark of the Covenant and houses the holy of
holies.
As there can be many synagogues, so there can be many
churches, each a house of worship, each a cell of the
Christian religious community. But unlike the Temple, the
Church, in the Christian tradition, has no architectural
embodiment, nor is it a religious symbol or a unique
repository of sacred objects. Rather it is, in the language of
Christian theologians, the mystical body of Christ, the city of
God on earth. The relation of church and state is thus
conceived as the relation of the city of God to the city of
man; further subtleties are introduced by the distinction
between the church visible and the church invisible, the
church militant and the church triumphant.
The quotations included here discuss, among other
things, the foundation of the Church, the unity of the Church
and the plurality of churches, the mode of government
appropriate to the Church, and church reform.
1 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren,
Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net
into the sea: for they were fishers.
And he saith unto them, Follow me, and | will make
you fishers of men.
And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.
And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren,
James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship
with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he
called them.
And they immediately left the ship and their father,
and followed him.
Matthew 4:18-22
2 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Phi-lip-pi, he
aSked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that | the
Son of man am?
And they said, Some say that thou art John the
Baptist: some, E-li-as; and others, Jer-e-mi-as, or one of
the prophets.
He saith unto them. But whom say ye that | am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art
thou, Simon Bar-jo-na: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed h unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
And | say also unto thee. That thou art Peter, and upon
this rock | will build my church; and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it.
And | will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on
earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Matthew 16:13-19
3 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and
tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall
hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or
two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses
every word may be established.
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the
church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be
unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.
Verily | say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again | say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on
earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be
done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in my
name, there am | in the midst of them.
Matthew 18:15-20
4 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a
mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but
some doubted.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever | have
commanded you: and, lo, | am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world. Amen.
Matthew 28:16-20
5 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at
meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and
hardness of heart, because they believed not them which
had seen him after he was risen.
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and
preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but
he that believeth not shall be damned.
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my
name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with
new tongues;
They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any
deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands
on the sick, and they shall recover.
Mark 16:14-18
6 And there was also a strife among them, which of them
should be accounted the greatest.
And he said unto them. The kings of the Gentiles
exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise
authority upon them are called benefactors.
But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among
you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he
that doth serve.
For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he
that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but | am
among you as he that serveth.
Ye are they which have continued with me in my
temptations.
And | appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath
appointed unto me;
That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom,
and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Luke 22:24-30
7 Verily, verily, | say unto you, He that entereth not by the
door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way,
the same is a thief and a robber.
But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of
the sheep.
To him the porter openeth; and the sheep heai his
voice; and he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth
them out.
And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he gocth
before them, and the sheep follow him; for they know his
voice.
And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from
him: for they know not the voice of strangers.
This parable spake Jesus unto them; but they
understood not what things they were which he spake
unto them.
Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, | say
unto you, | am the door of The sheep.
All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers:
but the sheep did not hear them.
| am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be
saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and
to destroy: | am come that they might have life, and that
they might have it more abundantly.
1 am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth
his life for the sheep.
John 10:1-11
8 Simon Peter said unto him. Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus
answered him, Whither | go, thou canst not follow me
now; but thou shah follow me afterwards.
Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot | follow thee
now? | will lay down my life for thy sake.
Jesus answered him. Wilt thou lay down thy life for my
sake? Verily, verily, | say unto thee, The cock shall not
crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.
John 13:36-38
9 These things | command you, that ye love one another.
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before
it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own:
but because ye are not of the world, but | have chosen
you out of the world, therefore The world hateth you.
John 15:17-19
10 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the
week, when the doors were shut where The disciples were
assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in
the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his
hands and his side. Then were The disciples glad, when
they saw the Lord.
Then said Jesus to them again. Peace be unto you: as
my Father hath sent me, even so send | you.
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and
saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto
them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are
retained.
John 20:19-23
11 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter,
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He
saith unto him. Yea, Lord; thou know-est that | love thee.
He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of
Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou
knowest that | love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my
sheep.
He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto
him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto
him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that |
love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
John 21:15-17
12 On this account some allegorize all that concerns
Paradise itself, where the first men, the parents of the
human race, are, according to the truth of holy Scripture,
recorded to have been; and they understand all its trees
and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life, as if
they had no existence in the external world, but were
only so spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual
meanings. As if there could not be a real terrestrial
Paradise! As if there never existed these two women,
Sarah and Hagar, nor the two sons who were born to
Abraham, the one of the bond woman, the other of the
free, because the apostle says that in them the two
covenants were prefigured; or as if water never flowed
from the rock when Moses struck it, because therein
Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says,
"Now that rock was Christ!" No one, then, denies that
Paradise may signify the life of the blessed; its four rivers,
the four virtues, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and
justice; its trees, all useful knowledge; its fruits, the
customs of the godly; its tree of life, wisdom herself, the
mother of all good; and the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, the experience of a broken commandment. The
punishment which God appointed was in itself, a just,
and therefore a good thing; but man’s experience of it is
not good.
These things can also and more profitably be
understood of the Church, so that they become prophetic
foreshadowings of things to come. Thus Paradise is the
Church, as it is called in the Canticles; the four rivers of
Paradise are the four gospels; the fruit-trees the saints,
and the fruit their works; the tree of life is the holy of
holies, Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
the will’s free choice. For if man despise the will of God,
he can only destroy himself; and so he learns the
difference between consecrating himself to the common
good and revelling in his own. For he who loves himself is
abandoned to himself, in order that, being overwhelmed
with fears and sorrows, he may cry, if there be yet soul in
him to feel his ills, in the words of the psalm, "My soul is
cast down within me," and when chastened, may Say,
“Because of his strength | will wait upon Thee." These and
similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put
upon Paradise without giving offence to any one, while
yet we believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed by
its circumstantial narrative of facts.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 21
13 In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church
measures her future loftiness by her present humility,
and is exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows,
disquieting labours, and dangerous temptations, when
she soberly rejoices, rejoicing only in hope, there are
many reprobates mingled with the good, and both are
gathered together by the gospel as in a dragnet; and in
this world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed without
distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when the
wicked must be separated from the good, that in the
good, as in His temple, God may be all in all. We
acknowledge, indeed, that His word is now fulfilled who
Spake in the psalm, and said, "| have announced and
spoken; they are multiplied above number." This takes
place now, since He has spoken, first by the mouth of His
forerunner John, and afterward by His own mouth, saying,
"Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He chose
disciples, whom He also called apostles, of lowly birth,
unhonoured, and illiterate, so that whatever great thing
they might be or do. He might be and do it in them. He
had one among them whose wickedness He could use
well in order to accomplish His appointed passion, and
furnish His Church an example of bearing with the
wicked. Having sown the Holy Gospel as much as that
behoved to be done by His bodily presence. He suffered,
died, and rose again, showing by His passion what we
ought to suffer for the truth, and by His resurrection what
we ought to hope for in adversity; saving always the
mystery of the sacrament, by which His blood was shed
for the remission of sins. He held converse on the earth
forty days with His disciples, and in their sight ascended
into heaven, and after ten days sent the promised Holy
Spirit. lt was given as the chief and most necessary sign
of His coming on those who had believed, that every one
of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus
signifying that the unity of the Catholic Church would
embrace all nations and would in like manner speak in all
tongues.
Augustine, City of God, XVIII, 49
14 The Church is His body, as the apostle’s teaching shows
us; and it is even called His spouse. His body, then, which
has many members, and all performing different
functions, He holds together in the bond of unity and
love, which is its true health. Moreover He exercises it in
the present time, and purges it with many wholesome
afflictions, that, when He has transplanted it from this
world to the eternal world, He may take it to Himself as
His bride, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 16
15 The universal Church cannot err, since she is governed
by the Holy Ghost Who is the Spirit of truth.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-/l, 1, 9
16 It is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the
Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the
Church teaches. Otherwise, if, of the things taught by the
Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects
what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the
teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his
own will.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 5, 3
17 Those who are unbelievers, though not actually in the
Church, are in the Church potentially. And this
potentiality is rooted in two things—first and principally,
in the power of Christ, which is sufficient for the salvation
of the whole human race; secondly, in the liberty of
choice.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Hl, 8, 3
18 The term Church is taken in two senses. For sometimes it
denotes the body only, which is united to Christ as its
Head. In this way alone has the Church the character of
Spouse, and in this way Christ is not a member of the
Church, but is the Head from which all the members
receive. In another sense the Church denotes the head
and members united together; and thus Christ is said to
be a member of the Church, in so far as He fulfils an office
distinct from all others, by pouring forth life into the other
members, although He is not very properly called a
member, since a member implies a certain restriction,
whereas in Christ spiritual good is not restricted but is
absolutely entire, so that He is the entire good of the
Church, nor is He together with others anything greater
than He is by Himself.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 95, 3
19 There where we came, at the first step, was white marble
so polished and smooth that | mirrored me therein as |
appear.
The second darker was than perse, of a stone, rugged
and calcined, cracked in its length and in its breadth.
The third, which is massy above, seemed to me of
porphyry so flaming red as blood that spurts from a vein.
Upon this God’s angel held both his feet, sitting upon
the threshold, which seemed to me adamantine stone.
Up by the three steps, with my good will, my Leader
[Virgil] brought me, saying: "Humbly ask that the bolt be
loosed."
Devoutly | flung me at the holy feet; for mercy | craved
that he would open to me; but first on my breast thrice |
smote me.
Seven P’s upon my forehead he described with the
point of his sword and: "Do thou wash these wounds
when thou art within," he said.
Ashes, or earth which is dug out dry, would be of one
colour with his vesture, and from beneath it he drew forth
two keys.
One was of gold and the other was of silver; first with
the white and then with the yellow he did so to the gate
that | was satisfied.
"Whensoever one of these keys fails so that it turns
not aright in the lock," said he to us, "this passage opens
not.
More precious is one, but the other requires exceeding
art and wit ere it unlocks, because it is the one which
unties the knot.
From Peter | hold them; and he told me to err rather in
opening, than in keeping it locked, if only the people fell
prostrate at my feet."
Then he pushed the door of the sacred portal, saying:
"Enter, but | make you ware that he who looketh behind
returns outside again."
Dante, Purgalorio, IX, 94
20 In form, then, of a white rose displayed itself to me that
sacred soldiery which in his blood Christ made his
spouse;
but the other, which as it flieth seeth and doth sing his
glory who enamoureth it, and the excellence which hath
made it what it is,
like to a swarm of bees which doth one while plunge
into the flowers and another while wend back to where its
toil is turned to sweetness,
ever descended into the great flower adorned with so
many leaves, and reascended thence to where its love
doth ceaseless make sojourn.
They had their faces all of living flame, and wings of
gold, and the rest so white that never snow reacheth such
limit.
When they descended into the flow'er, from rank to
rank they proffered of the peace and of the ardour which
they acquired as they fanned their sides,
nor did the interposing of so great a flying multitude,
betwixt the flower and that which was above, impede the
vision nor the splendour;
for the divine light so penetrateth through the
universe, in measure of its worthiness, that naught hath
power to oppose it.
Dante, Paradiso, XXXI, 1
21 This... monk let such old things slowly pace
And followed new-world manners in their place.
He cared not for that text a clean-plucked hen
Which holds that hunters are not holy men;
Nor that a monk, when he is cloisterless,
Is like unto a fish that’s waterless;
That is to say, a monk out of his cloister.
But this same text he held not worth an oyster;
And | said his opinion was right good.
What? Should he study as a madman would
Upon a book in cloister cell? Or yet
Go labour with his hands and swink and sweat,
As Austin bids? How shall the world be served?
Let Austin have his toil to him reserved.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: The Prologue
22 The Church owes its life to the word of promise through
faith, and is nourished and preserved by this same word.
That is to say, the promises of God make the Church, not
the Church the promise of God. For the Word of God is
incomparably superior to the Church, and in this Word
the Church, being a creature, has nothing to decree,
ordain or make, but only to be decreed, ordained and
made. For who begets his own parent? Who first brings
forth his own maker?
Luther, Babylonian Captivity of the Church
23 The Christian Church... will always exist on earth,
together with the office of preaching the Gospel, Baptism,
and the Lord’s Supper. These are in force as long as the
world remains. For if He is to be an eternal Priest, He must
always have a people or a following which recognizes His
priestly office and exists by virtue of it. He must have
people who believe in Him, preach Him, and confess His
name in word and conduct. If He did not have sucha
following any longer. He could no longer be called a
Priest. Therefore, He maintains Christendom on earth
until the Last Day against all the power and might that
opposes, and rages against, it. In this Christendom He
rules as Priest or true pope through the office of the
ministry and through the power of the Holy Spirit, in
order even in this life to make new men out of us, to
communicate to us His eternal and divine gifts, that now
we may have daily and everlasting forgiveness of sins,
His power and strength, victory over death, devil, and
hell, and may begin our life of eternal righteousness.
Luther, Commentary on Psalm 110
24 Where God’s word is purely taught, there is also the
upright and true church; for the true church is supported
by the Holy Ghost, not by succession of inheritance.
Luther, Table Talk, H370
25 It is impossible for the Christian and true church to
subsist without the shedding of blood, for her adversary,
the devil, is a liar and a murderer. The church grows and
increases through blood; she is sprinkled with blood; she
is sooiled and bereaved of her blood; when human
creatures will reform the church, then it costs blood.
Luther, Table Talk, H371
26 The word Church is used in the sacred Scriptures in two
senses. Sometimes, when they mention the Church, they
intend that which is really such in the sight of God, into
which none are received but those who by adoption and
grace are the children of God, and by the sanctification of
the Spirit are the true members of Christ. And then it
comprehends not only the saints at any one time resident
on earth, but all the elect who have lived from the
beginning of the world. But the word Church is frequently
used in the Scriptures to designate the whole multitude,
dispersed all over the world, who profess to worship one
God and Jesus Christ, who are initiated into his faith by
baptism, who testify their unity in true doctrine and
charity by a participation of the sacred supper, who
consent to the word of the Lord, and preserve the
ministry which Christ has instituted for the purpose of
preaching it. In this Church are included many
hypocrites, who have nothing of Christ but the name and
appearance; many persons ambitious, avaricious,
envious, slanderous, and dissolute in their lives, who are
tolerated for a time, either because they cannot be
convicted by a legitimate process, or because discipline
is not always maintained with sufficient vigour. As it is
necessary, therefore, to believe that Church, which is
invisible to us, and known to God alone, so this Church,
which is visible to men, we are commanded to honour,
and to maintain communion with it.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 1
27 Connected with the preaching of the gospel, another
assistance and support for our faith is presented to us in
the sacraments; on the subject of which it is highly
important to lay down some certain doctrine, that we
may learn for what end they were instituted, and how
they ought to be used. In the first place, it is necessary to
consider what a sacrament is. Now, | think it will be a
simple and appropriate definition, if we say that it is an
outward sign, by which the Lord seals in our consciences
the promises of his good-will towards us, to support the
weakness of our faith; and we on our part testify our piety
towards him, in his presence and that of angels, as well
as before men. It may, however, be more briefly defined,
in other words, by calling it a testimony of the grace of
God towards us, confirmed by an outward sign, with a
reciprocal attestation of our piety towards him.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 14
28 Methinks, Sir Knight-Errant, said he [Vivaldo] to him, you
have taken up one of the strictest and most mortifying
Professions in the World. | don’t think but that a
Carthusian Friar has a better Time on’t than You have.
Perhaps, answer’d Don Quixote, the Profession of a
Carthusian may be as Austere, but | am within two
Fingers Breadth of doubting, whether it may be as
Beneficial to the World as ours. For, if we must speak the
Truth, the Soldier, who put his Captain’s Command in
Execution, may be said to do as much at least as the
Captain who commanded him. The Application is easy:
For, while those religious Men have nothing to do, but
with all Quietness and Security to say their Prayers for
the Prosperity of the World, We Knights, like Soldiers,
execute what they do but pray for, and procure those
Benefits to Mankind, by the Strength of our Arms, and at
the Hazard of our Lives, for which they only interceed.
Nor do we do this shelter’d from the Injuries of the Air,
but under no other Roof than that of the wide Heavens,
expos’d to Summer’s scorching Heat, and Winter’s
pinching Gold. So that we may justly style ourselves the
Ministers of Heaven, and the Instruments of its Justice
upon Earth; and as the Business of War is not to be
compass’d without vast Toil and Labour, so the religious
Soldier must undoubtedly be preferr’d before the
religious Monk, who living still quiet and at Ease, has
nothing to do but to pray for the Afflicted and Distressed.
However, Gentlemen, do not imagine | wou’d insinuate as
if the Profession of a Knight-Errant was a State of
Perfection equal to that of a holy Recluse: | would only
infer from what I’ve said, and what | my self endure, that
Ours without question is more laborious, more subject to
the Discipline of heavy Blows, to Maceration, to the
Penance of Hunger and Thirst, and in a Word, to Rags, to
Want and Misery. For if you find that some Knights-Errant
have at last by their Valour been rais’d to Thrones and
Empires, you may be sure it has been still at the Expence
of much Sweat and Blood. And had even those happier
Knights been depriv’d of those assisting Sages and
Inchanters, who help’d ’em in all Emergencies, they
wou'd have been strangely disappointed of their mighty
Expectations.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, I, 13
29 Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that
he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance | may think
myself so much better than | am, as that they who are
about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for
me, and | know not that. The church is catholic, universal,
SO are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all.
When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for
that child is thereby connected to that body which is my
head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof | ama
member. And when she buries a man, that action
concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one
volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out
of the book, but translated into a better language; and
every chapter must be so translated. God employs
several translators; some pieces are translated by age,
some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but
God’s hand is in every translation and his hand shall bind
up all our scattered leaves again for that library where
every book shall he open to one another. As therefore the
bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher
only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls
us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near
the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far
as a Suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and
estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders
should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was
determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If
we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for
our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by
rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as
well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him
that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from
that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is
united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when
it rises? but who takes off his c)c from a comet when that
breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon
any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell
which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No
man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of
the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed
away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a
promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or
of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me
because | am involved in mankind, and therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, XVII
30 | define a Church to be: a company of men professing
Christian religion, united in the person of one sovereign;
at whose command they ought to assemble, and without
whose authority they ought not to assemble. And
because in all Commonwealths that assembly which is
without warrant from the civil sovereign is unlawful; that
Church also which is assembled in any Commonwealth
that hath forbidden them to assemble is an unlawful
assembly.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 39
31 There is on earth no such universal Church as all
Christians are bound to obey, because there is no power
on earth to which all other Commonwealths are subject.
There are Christians in the dominions of several princes
and states, but every one of them is subject to that
Commonwealth whereof he is himself a member, and
consequently cannot be subject to the commands of any
other person.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 39
32 The greatest and main abuse of Scripture, and to which
almost all the rest are either consequent or subservient,
is the wresting of it to prove that the kingdom of God,
mentioned so often in the Scripture, is the present
Church, or multitude of Christian men now living, or that,
being dead, are to rise again at the last day.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, 44
33 Those who do confine the Church of God, either to
particular Nations, Churches or Families, have made it far
narrower then our Saviour ever meant it.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 55
34 If some... men, who, by an extraordinary vocation, have
made profession of withdrawing from the world and
adopting the monks’ dress, in order to live in a more
perfect state than ordinary Christians, have fallen into
excesses which horrify ordinary Christians, and have
become to us what the false prophets were among the
Jews; this is a private and personal misfortune, which
must indeed be deplored, but from which nothing can be
inferred against the care which God takes of His Church;
since all these things are so clearly foretold, and it has
been so long since announced that these temptations
would arise from people of this kind; so that when we are
well instructed, we see in this rather evidence of the care
of God than of His forgetfulness in regard to us.
Pascal, Pensees, XIV, 889
35 God regards only the inward; the Church judges only by
the outward. God absolves as soon as He secs penitence
in the heart; the Church when she secs it in works. God
will make a church pure within, which confounds, by its
inward and entirely spiritual holiness, the inward impiety
of proud sages and Pharisees; and the Church will make
an assembly of men whose external manners are so pure
as to confound the manners of the heathen. If there are
hypocrites among them, but so well disguised that she
does not discover their venom, she tolerates them; for,
though they are not accepted of God, whom they cannot
deceive, they are of men, whom they do deceive. And
thus she is not dishonoured by their conduct, which
appears holy.
Pascal, Pensées, XIV, 905
36 Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,
(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)
He shook his Miter’d locks, and stem bespake,
How well could | have spar’d for thee, young swain,
Anow of such as for their bellies sake,
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck’ning make.
Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn’d ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Milton, Lycidas, 108
37 The rites of religion and the outward observances of piety
should be in accordance with the public peace and well-
being, and should therefore be determined by the
sovereign power alone.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, XIX
38 A church ... | take to be a voluntary society of men,
joining themselves together of their own accord in order
to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they
judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of
their souls.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
39 No man by nature is bound unto any particular church or
sect, but everyone joins himself voluntarily to that
society in which he believes he has found that profession
and worship which is truly acceptable to God. The hope
of salvation, as it was the only cause of his entrance into
that communion, so it can be the only reason of his stay
there. For if afterwards he discover anything either
erroneous in the doctrine or incongruous in the worship
of that society to which he has joined himself, why should
it not be as free for him to go out as it was to enter? No
member of a religious society can be tied with any other
bonds but what proceed from the certain expectation of
eternal life. A church, then, is a society of members
voluntarily uniting to that end.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
40 To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the
rewards are distant and which is animated only by Faith
and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it
be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances,
by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of
example.
Johnson, Life of Milton
41 It may be laid down as a certain maxim that, all other
things being supposed equal, the richer the church, the
poorer must necessarily be, either the sovereign on the
one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases,
the less able must the state be to defend itself.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
42 The acquisition of... absolute command over the
consciences and understanding of a congregation,
however obscure or despised by the world, is more truly
grateful to the pride of the human heart than the
possession of the most despotic power imposed by arms
and conquest on a reluctant people.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
43 In one of the marches of Constantine [according to the
Christian fable of Eusebius], he is reported to have seen
with his own eyes the luminous trophy of the cross,
placed above the meridian sun, and inscribed with the
following words: By this conquer. This amazing object in
the sky eistonished the whole army, as well as the
emperor himself, who was yet undetermined in the choice
of a religion: but his astonishment was converted into
faith by the vision of the ensuing night. Christ appeared
before his eyes; and displaying the same celestial sign of
the cross, he directed Constantine to frame a similar
standard, and to march, with an assurance of victory,
against Maxentius and all his enemies... . The Catholic
church, both of the East and of the West, has adopted a
prodigy which favours, or seems to favour, the popular
worship of the cross. The vision of Constantine
maintained an honourable place in the legend of
superstition till the bold and sagacious spirit of criticism
presumed to depreciate the triumph, and to arraign the
truth, of the first Christian emperor.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX
44 A magnificent temple is a laudable monument of national
taste and religion, and the enthusiast who entered the
dome of St. Sophia might be tempted to suppose that it
was the residence, or even the workmanship, of the Deity.
Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant is the labour,
if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect
that crawls upon the surface of the temple!
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XL
45 Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold. But the
Ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm.
Blake, The Little Vagabond
46 The Church ... is not merely a religion as opposed to
another religion, but is at the same time a particular form
of secular existence, occupying a place side by side with
other secular existence. The religious existence of the
Church is governed by Christ; the secular side of its
government is left to the free choice of the members
themselves.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, Ill 2
47 |If aman will hold fast to this which is indeed Christ’s own
saying, that the truth is the way, he will perceive ever
more clearly that a Church triumphant in this world is a
vain conceit, that in this world there can be question only
of a Church militant.
Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, Ill, 5
48 Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of
Peace serving in the host of the God of War—Mars, As
such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the
altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he
indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon;
because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the
meek to that which practically is the abrogation of
everything but brute force.
Melville, Billy Budd
49 The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full
of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.
Thoreau, The Christian Fable
50 Grand Inquisitor. So long as man remains free he strives
for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find
someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is
established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree
at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are
concerned not only to find what one or the other can
worship, but to find something that all would believe in
and worship; what is essential is that all may be together
in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief
misery of every man individually and of all humanity from
the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship
they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up
gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods
and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your
gods!"
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. 11, V, 5
51 The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in
common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites.
The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation,
rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence,
submissiveness, progress, life.
Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within you
52 | condemn Christianity, | bring against the Christian
Church the most terrible charge any prosecutor has ever
uttered. To me it is the extremest thinkable form of
corruption, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption
conceivably possible. The Christian Church has left
nothing untouched by its depravity, it has made of every
value a disvalue, of every thuth a lie, of every kind of
integrity a vileness of soul. People still dare to talk to me
of its ‘humanitarian’ blessings! To abolish any state of
distress whatever has been profoundly inexpedient to it:
it has lived on states of distress, it has created states of
distress in order to eternalize itself.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LXII
53 We may recall from what we know of the morphology of
groups that it is possible to distinguish very different
kinds of groups and opposing lines in their development.
There are very fleeting groups and extremely lasting
ones; homogeneous ones, made up of the same sorts of
individuals, and unhomogeneous ones; natural groups,
and artificial ones, requiring an external force to keep
them together; primitive groups, and highly organized
ones with a definite structure. But for reasons which have
yet to be explained we should like to lay particular stress
upon a distinction to which the authorities have rather
given too little attention; | refer to that between
leaderless groups and those with leaders. And, in
complete opposition to the usual practice, we shall not
choose a relatively simple group formation as our point of
departure, but shall begin with highly organized, lasting,
and artificial groups. The most interesting example of
such structures are churches—communities of believers—
and armies.
A church and an army are artificial groups, that is, a
certain external force is employed to prevent them from
disintegrating and to check alterations in their structure.
As arule a person is not consulted, or is given no choice,
as to whether he wants to enter such a group; any
attempt at leaving it is usually met with persecution or
with severe punishment, or has quite definite conditions
attached to it. It is quite outside our present interest to
enquire why these associations need such special
safeguards. We are only attracted by one circumstance,
namely that certain facts, which are far more concealed
in other cases, can be observed very clearly in those
highly organized groups which are protected from
dissolution in the manner that has been mentioned.
In a church (and we may with advantage take the
Catholic Church as a type) as well as in an army, however
different the two may be in other respects, the same
illusion holds good of there being a head—in the Catholic
Church Christ, in an army its commander-in-chief—who
loves all the individuals in the group with an equal love.
Everything depends upon this illusion; if it were to be
dropped, then both Church and army would dissolve, so
far as the external force permitted them to. This equal
love was expressly enunciated by Christ; "Inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me." He stands to the individual
members of the group of believers in the relation of a
kind elder brother; he is their father surrogate. All the
demands that are made upon the individual are derived
from this love of Christ’s. A democratic character runs
through the Church, for the very reason that before Christ
everyone is equal, and that everyone has an equal share
in his love. It is not without a deep reason that the
similarity between the Christian community and a family
is invoked, and that believers call themselves brothers in
Christ, that is, brothers through the love which Christ has
for them.
Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, V
54 The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.
The ‘potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo’s voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way—
The Church can sleep and feed at once.
| saw the ’potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow.
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
T, S. Eliot, The Hippopotamus
55 To receive that call, Stephen, said the priest, is the
greatest honour that the Almighty God can bestow upon
a man. No king or emperor on this earth has the power of
the priest of God. No angel or archangel in heaven, no
saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself has the power
of a priest of God: the power of the keys, the power to
bind and to loose from sin, the power of exorcism, the
power to cast out from the creatures of God the evil
Spirits that have power over them, the power, the
authority, to make the great God of Heaven come down
upon the altar and take the form of bread and wine. What
an awful power, Stephen!
Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, IV
20.5 God
In the Western tradition, the idea of God has generated a
very voluminous discussion. The quotations included here
represent, we hope, a judicious selection from that
discussion, but many aspects of it, especially intricate
subtleties that delight philosophers and theologians, cannot
be adequately covered, and some are not even touched on.
The notion of a single deity, or reference to God in the
singular, is not confined to books that reflect the Jewish and
Christian faiths. Such references are also to be found in the
writings of the Greek and Roman poets and philosophers,
side by side with references to the Olympian deities or the
gods of the Roman pantheon. In fact, the works of Plato and
Aristotle contain passages that have come to be looked
upon as anticipations of the doctrines about God's nature
and attributes and of the demonstration of God’s existence
that are more fully developed later in the writings of
Christian theologians. The other major source upon which
the theologians draw is, of course, the Old and the New
Testament, the latter especially for the doctrines of the
trinity, of the incarnation, and of the resurrection. For
theological exegesis, the most remarkable scriptural
passage is, perhaps, the one in Exodus, in which God
announces himself to Moses in the words: "I am that | am."
A great many of the quotations drawn from the
theologians and philosophers deal with the question of
God's existence and with the arguments that are claimed to
demonstrate it. One argument in particular, the famous
ontological argument first proposed by Anselm, is rejected
by theologians and philosophers who think that the
existence of God must be proved or at least affirmed on
some basis other than the conception we entertain of the
supreme being.
The positions of the deist and the pantheist, as well as of
the agnostic and the atheist, are represented here along
with a variety of versions of orthodox theism. As the reader
would expect, the reader will find Augustine, Anselm,
Aquinas, Luther, Galvin, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, and
Locke aligned, in one way or another, against Spinoza,
Hume, Voltaire, Kant, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Freud.
Pascal’s contribution to the discussion stands out for its
emphasis on the mystery of God and on the reasonableness
of seeking God even though reason itself affords no
assurance of finding him through arguments or proofs.
Other discussions relevant to our knowledge of God will
be found in Section 6.4 on Error, Ignorance, and the Limits of
Human Knowledge, Section 6.5 on Opinion, Belief, and Faith,
and Section 17.1 on Philosophy and Philosophers.
1 Moses said, | will now turn aside, and see this great sight,
why the bush is not burnt.
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see,
God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and
said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
And he said. Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is
holy ground.
Moreover he said, | am the God of thy father, the God
of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And
Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
Exodus 3:3-6
2 God said unto Moses, / am that | am: and he said, Thus
shah thou say unto the children of Israel, / am hath sent
me unto you.
And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shah thou
say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for
ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
Exodus 3:14-/5
3 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto
the Lord, and spake, saying, | will sing unto the Lord, for
he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider
hath he thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become
my salvation: he is my God, and | will prepare him an
habitation; my father’s God, and | will exalt him.
The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name.
Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the
sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea.
The depths have covered them: they sank into the
bottom as a stone.
Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power:
thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.
And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast
overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest
forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble.
And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were
gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap,
and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.
The enemy said, | will pursue, | will overtake, | will
divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; |
will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them:
they sank as lead in the mighty waters.
Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is
like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing
wonders?
Exodus 15:1-11
4 Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me,
and live.
Exodus 33:20
5 The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be
gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give
thee peace.
Numbers 6:24-26
6 The Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4:24
7 And he [the angel of the Lord] said, Go forth, and stand
upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord
passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the
mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the-Lord;
but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an
earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not
in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
| Kings 19:11-12
8 Though he slay me, yet will | trust in him: but | will
maintain mine own ways before him.
Job 13:15
9 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament
sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night
sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is
not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their
words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a
tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from
the heat thereof.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the
testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the
eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the
Judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in
keeping of them there is great reward.
Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from
secret faults.
Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me: then shall | be
upright, and | shall be innocent from the great
transgression.
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my
heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength,
and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:1-14
10 Hear, O my people, and | will speak; O Israel, and | will
testify against thee: | am God, even thy God.
| will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt
offerings, to have been continually before me.
| will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out
of thy folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle
upon a thousand hills.
| know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild
beasts of the field are mine.
If 1 were hungry, | would not tell thee: for the world is
mine, and the fulness thereof.
Psalm 50:7-12
11 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
Psalm 53:1
12 0 Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou
understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art
acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord,
thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine
hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, |
cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall | go from thy spirit? or whither shall | flee
from thy presence?
If | ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if | make my
bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If | take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand
Shall hold me.
If | say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the
night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night
shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both
alike to thee.
Psalm 139:1-12
13 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. Prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a
highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and
hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made
straight, and the rough places plain:
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it.
The voice said. Cry. And he said, What shall | cry? All
flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the
flower of the field:
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the
spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is
grass.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of
our God shall stand for ever.
Isaiah 40:3-8
14 And above the firmament that was over their heads was
the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire
stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the
likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.
And | saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of
fire round about within it, from the appearance of his
loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins
even downward, | saw as it were the appearance of fire,
and it had brightness round about.
As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in
the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness
round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of
the glory of the Lord.
Ezekiel 1:26-28
15 Diotima. God mingles not with man; but through Love all
the intercourse and converse of god with man, whether
awake or asleep, is carried on.
Plato, Symposium, 203A
16 Socrates. God [is] perfectly simple and true both in word
and deed; he changes not; he deceives not, either by
sign or word, by dream or waking vision.
Plato, Republic, 11, 382B
17 There is... something which is always moved with an
unceasing motion, which is motion in a circle; and this is
plain not in theory only but in fact. Therefore the first
heaven must be eternal. There is therefore also
something which moves it. And since that which moves
and is moved is intermediate, there is something which
moves without being moved, being eternal, substance,
and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of
thought move in this way; they move without being
moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are
the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite,
and the real good is the primary object of rational wish.
But desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion
on desire; for the thinking is the starting-point. And
thought is moved by the object of thought, and one of
the two columns of opposites is in itself the object of
thought; and in this, substance is first, and in substance,
that which is simple and exists actually. (The one and the
simple are not the same; for ‘one’ means a measure, but
‘simple’ means that the thing itself has a certain nature.)
But the beautiful, also, and that which is in itself
desirable are in the same column; and the first in any
class is always best, or analogous to the best.
That a final cause may exist among unchangeable
entities is shown by the distinction of its meanings. For
the final cause is (a) some being for whose good an
action is done, and (b) something at which the action
aims; and of these the latter exists among unchangeable
entities though the former does not. The final cause,
then, produces motion as being loved, but all other
things move by being moved. Now if something is moved
it is capable of being otherwise than as it is. Therefore if
its actuality is the primary form of spatial motion, then in
so far as it is subject to change, in this respect it is
capable of being otherwise,—in place, even if not in
substance. But since there is something which moves
while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way
be otherwise than as it is. For motion in space is the first
of the kinds of change, and motion in a circle the first
kind of spatial motion; and this the first mover produces.
The first mover, then, exists of necessity; and in so far as
it exists by necessity, its mode of being is good, and it is
in this sense a first principle. For the necessary has all
these senses—that which is necessary perforce because it
is contrary to the natural impulse, that without which the
good is impossible, and that which cannot be otherwise
but can exist only in a single way.
On such a principle, then, depend the heavens and
the world of nature. And it is a life such as the best which
we enjoy, and enjoy for but a short time (for it is ever in
this state, which we cannot be), since its actuality is also
pleasure. (And for this reason are waking, perception, and
thinking most pleasant, and hopes and memories are so
on account of these.) And thinking in itself deals with
that which is best in itself, and that which is thinking in
the fullest sense with that which is best in the fullest
sense. And thought thinks on itself because it shares the
nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object
of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its
objects, so that thought and object of thought are the
same. For that which is capable of receiving the object of
thought, i.e. the essence, is thought. But it is active when
it possesses this object. Therefore the possession rather
than the receptivity is the divine element which thought
seems to contain, and the act of contemplation is what is
most pleasant and best. If, then, God is always in that
good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our
wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And
God /s in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for
the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality;
and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and
eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being,
eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous
and eternal belong to God; for this /s God.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072a20
18 The nature of the divine thought involves certain
problems; for while thought is held to be the most divine
of things observed by us, the question how it must be
situated in order to have that character involves
difficulties. For if it thinks of nothing, what is there here of
dignity? It is just like one who sleeps. And if it thinks, but
this depends on something else, then (since that which is
its substance is not the act of thinking, but a potency) it
cannot be the best substance; for it is through thinking
that its value belongs to it. Further, whether its substance
is the faculty of thought or the act of thinking, what does
it think of? Either of itself or of something else; and if of
something else, either of the same thing always or of
something different. Docs it matter, then, or not, whether
it thinks of the good or of any chance thing? are there not
some things about which it is incredible that it should
think? Evidently, then, it thinks of that which is most
divine and precious, and it does not change; for change
would be change for the worse, and this would be already
a movement. First, then, if ‘thought’ is not the act of
thinking but a potency, it would be reasonable to
suppose that the continuity of its thinking is wearisome
to it. Secondly, there would evidently be something else
more precious than thought, viz. that which is thought of.
For both thinking and the act of thought will belong even
to one who thinks of the worst thing in the world, so that
if this ought to be avoided (and it ought, for there are
even some things which it is better not to see than to
see), the act of thinking cannot be the best of things.
Therefore it must be of itself that the divine thought
thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its
thinking is a thinking on thinking.
But evidently knowledge and perception and opinion
and understanding have always something else as their
object, and themselves only by the way. Further, if
thinking and being thought of are different, in respect of
which does goodness belong to thought? For to be an act
of thinking and to be an object of thought are not the
same thing. we answer that in some cases the knowledge
is the object. In the productive sciences it is the
substance or essence of the object, matter omitted, and
in the theoretical sciences the definition or the act of
thinking is the object. Since, then, thought and the
object of thought are not different in the case of things
that have not matter, the divine thought and its object
will be the same, i.e. the thinking will be one with the
object of its thought.
A further question is left—whether the object of the
divine thought is composite; for if it were, thought would
change in passing from part to part of the whole. We
answer that everything which has not matter is
indivisible—as human thought, or rather the thought of
composite beings, is in a certain period of time (for it
does not possess the good at this moment or at that, but
its best, being something different from it, is attained
only in a whole period of time), so throughout eternity is
the thought which has /tse/ffor its object.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1074b15
19 The activity of God, which surpasses all others in
blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human
activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must
be most of the nature of happiness.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1178b22
20 Velleius. God is completely inactive and unfettered by
the need for occupation. He neither toils nor labors, but
delights in his own wisdom and virtue. He knows for
certain that he will always enjoy perfect and eternal
pleasures. This is the God whom we can properly call
happy...
But if the world itself is considered to be God, what
could be less restful than to revolve at incredible speed
around an axis, without a single moment of respite?
Repose is a necessary condition for happiness. But on the
other hand, if some god dwells in the world as its ruler
and pilot, maintaining the course of the stars, the
changes of season, and all the processes of creation,
watching over all the interests of man on land and sea,
what a bondage to tiresome and laborious business that
would be.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 19
21 Nature is nothing else but God and the divine Reason
that pervades the whole universe. You may, if you wish,
address this creator of the world by different names, such
as Jupiter Best and Greatest, the Thunderer, or the Stayer.
This last title does not derive from the tale told by
historians about the Roman battle-line being stayed from
flight in answer to prayers. It simply means that all things
are upheld by his benefits. Thus he is called Stayer and
Stabilizer. You may also call him Fate; that would be no
mistake. For since Fate is only a connected chain of
causes, he is the first of the causes on which all
succeeding ones depend. Any name that you choose to
apply to him will be appropriate if it connotes a power
that operates in heaven. His titles are as countless as his
benefits.
Seneca, On Benefits, IV, 7
22 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not
any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was
John,
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the
Light, that all men through him might believe.
He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of
that Light.
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him,
and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power
to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on
his name.
John 1:1-12
23 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24
24 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Hebrews 10:31
23 God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
I John 1:5
26 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and
every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not kKnoweth not God; for God is love.
| John 4:7-8
27 1am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,
saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to
come, the Almighty.
Revelation 1:8
28 God governs the world, not by irresistible force, but
persuasive argument and reason, controlling it into
compliance with his eternal purposes.
Plutarch, Phocion
29 We ought first to learn that there is a God and that he
provides for all things; also that it is not possible to
conceal from him our acts, or even our intentions and
thoughts. The next thing is to learn what is the nature of
the Gods; for such as they are discovered to be, he, who
would please and obey them, must tr>' with all his power
to be like them. If the divine is faithful, man also must be
faithful; if it is free, man also must be free; if beneficent,
man also must be beneficent; if magnanimous, man also
must be magnanimous; as being then an imitator of God,
he must do and say everything consistently with this fact.
Epictetus, Discourses, II, 14
30 Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing,
the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed,
and its exuberance has produced the new.
Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, II, 1
31 What ... is my God, what but the Lord God? For Who is
Lord but the Lardy or Who ts God but our God? O Thou,
the greatest and the best, mightiest, almighty, most
merciful and most just, utterly hidden and utterly
present, most beautiful and most strong, abiding yet
mysterious, suffering no change and changing all things:
never new, never old, making all tilings new, bringing age
upon the proud and they know it not; ever in action, ever
at rest, gathering all things to Thee and needing none;
sustaining and fulfilling and protecting, creating and
nourishing and making perfect; ever seeking though
lacking nothing. Thou lovest without subjection to
passion, Thou are jealous but not with fear; Thou canst
know repentance but not sorrow, be angry yet
unperturbed by anger. Thou canst change the works Thou
hast made but Thy mind stands changeless. Thou dost
find and receive back what Thou didst never lose; art
never in need but dost rejoice in Thy gains, art not
greedy but dost exact interest manifold. Men pay Thee
more than is of obligation to %vin return from Thee, yet
who has anything that is not already Thine? Thou owest
nothing yet dost pay as if in debt to Thy creature,
forgivest what is owed to Thee yet dost not lose thereby.
And with all this, what have | said, my God and my Life
and my sacred Delight? What can anyone say when he
speaks of Thee? Yet woe to them that speak not of Thee
at all, since those who say most are but dumb.
Augustine, Confessions, I, 4
32 Heaven and earth and all that is in them tell me wherever
| look that | should love You, and they cease not to tell it
to all men, so that there is no excuse for them. For You
will have mercy on whom You will have mercy and You
will show mercy to whom You will show mercy: otherwise
heaven and earth cry their praise of You to deaf ears.
But what is it that | love when | love You? Not the
beauty of any bodily thing, nor the order of seasons, not
the brightness of light that rejoices the eye, nor the sweet
melodies of all songs, nor the sweet fragrance of flowers
and ointments and spices: not manna nor honey, not the
limbs that carnal love embraces. None of these things do
| love in loving my God. Yet in a sense | do love light and
melody and fragrance and food and embrace when | love
my God—the light and the voice and the fragrance and
the food and embrace in the soul, when that light shines
upon my soul which no place can contain, that voice
sounds which no time can take from me, | breathe that
fragrance which no wind scatters, | eat the food which is
not lessened by eating, and | lie in the embrace which
satiety never comes to sunder. This it is that | love, when |
love my God.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 6
33 What is... God? | asked the earth and it answered: "T am
not He"; and all things that are in the earth made the
Same confession. | asked the sea and the deeps and the
creeping things, and they answered: "We are not your
God; seek higher." | asked the winds that blow, and the
whole air with all that is in it answered: "Anaximenes was
wrong; | am not God." | asked the heavens, the sun, the
moon, the stars, and they answered: "Neither are we God
whom you seek." And | said to all the things that throng
about the gateways of the senses: "Tell me of my God,
since you are not He. Tell me something of Him." And
they cried out in a great voice: "He made us." My
question was my gazing upon them, and their answer
was their beauty. And | turned to myself and said: "And
you, who are you?" And | answered: "A man." Now clearly
there is a body and a soul in me, one exterior, one
interior. From which of these two should | have enquired
of my God? | had already sought Him by my body, from
earth to heaven, as far as my eye could send its beams
on the quest. But the interior part is the better, seeing
that all my body’s messengers delivered to it, as ruler
and judge, the answers that heaven and earth and all
things in them made when they said: "We are not God,"
and, "He made us." The inner man knows these things
through the ministry of the outer man: | the inner man
knew them, I, | the soul, through the senses of the body. |
asked the whole frame of the universe about my God and
it answered me: "| am not He, but He made me."
Augustine, Confessions, X, 6
34 We worship that God Who has appointed to the natures
created by Him both the beginnings and the end of their
existing and moving: Who holds, knows, and disposes the
causes of things; Who hath created the virtue of seeds;
Who hath given to what creatures He would a rational
soul, which is called mind; Who hath bestowed the
faculty and use of speech; Who hath imparted the gift of
foretelling future things to whatever spirits it seemed to
Him good; Who also Himself predicts future things
through whom He pleases, and through whom He will
remove diseases; Who, when the human race is to be
corrected and chastised by wars, regulates also the
beginnings, progress, and ends of these wars; Who hath
created and governs the most vehement and most violent
fire of this world, in due relation and proportion to the
other elements of immense nature; Who is the governor
of all the waters; Who hath made the sun brightest of all
material lights, and hath given him suitable power and
motion; Who hath not withdrawn, even from the
inhabitants of the nether world. His dominion and power;
Who hath appointed to mortal natures their suitable seed
and nourishment, dry or liquid; Who establishes and
makes fruitful the earth; Who bountifully bestows its
fruits on animals and on men; Who knows and ordains,
not only principal causes, but also subsequent causes;
Who hath determined for the moon her motion; Who
affords ways in heaven and on earth for passage from one
place to another; Who hath granted also to human minds,
which He hath created, the knowledge of the various arts
for the help of life and nature; Who hath appointed the
union of male and female for the propagation of
offspring; Who hath favoured the societies of men with
the gift of terrestrial fire for the simplest and most
familiar purposes, to burn on the hearth and to give light.
These are, then, the things which that most acute and
most learned man Varro has laboured to distribute among
the select gods, by | Know not what physical
interpretation, which he has got from other sources and
also conjectured for himself. But these things the one
true God makes and does, but as the same God—that is,
as He who is wholly everywhere, included in no space,
bound by no chains, mutable in no part of His being,
filling heaven and earth with omnipresent power, not
with a needy nature. Therefore He governs all things in
such a manner as to allow them to perform and exercise
their own proper movements. For although they can be
nothing without Him, they are not what He is. He does
also many things through angels; but only from Himself
does He beatify angels. So also, though He send angels to
men for certain purposes. He does not for all that beatify
men by the good inherent in the angels, but by Himself,
as He does the angels themselves.
Augustine, City of God, VII, 30
35 God is ever the constant foreknowing overseer, and the
everpresent eternity of His sight moves in harmony with
the future nature of our actions, as it dispenses rewards
to the good, and punishments to the bad. Hopes are not
vainly put in God, nor prayers in vain offered: if these are
right, they cannot but be answered. Turn therefore from
vice: ensue virtue: raise your soul to upright hopes: send
up on high your prayers from this earth. If you would be
honest, great is the necessity enjoined upon your
goodness, since all you do is done before the eyes of an
all-seeing Judge.
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, V
36 Lord, do thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give
me, so far as thou knowest it to be profitable, to
understand that thou art as we believe; and that thou art
that which we believe. And, indeed, we believe that thou
art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.
Or is there no such nature, since the fool hath said in his
heart, there is no God? But, at any rate, this very fool,
when he hears of this being of which | soeak—a being
than which nothing greater can be conceived—
understands what he hears, and what he understands is
in his understanding; although he does not understand it
to exist.
For, it is one thing for an object to be in the
understanding, and another to understand that the
object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he
will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding,
but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has
not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting,
he both has it in his understanding, and he understands
that it exists, because he has made it.
Hence, even the fool is convinced that something
exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing
greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he
understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the
understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing
greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the
understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the
understanding alone; then it can be conceived to exist in
reality; which is greater.
Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be
conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very
being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is
one, than which a greater can be conceived. But
obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that
there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be
conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in
reality.
And it assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be
conceived not to exist. For, it is possible to conceive of a
being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is
greater than one which can be conceived not to exist.
Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be
conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that,
than which nothing greater can lye conceived. But this is
an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a
being than which nothing greater can be conceived to
exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and
this being thou an, O Lord, our God.
So truly, therefore, dost thou exist, O Lord, my God,
that thou canst not be conceived not to exist; and rightly.
For, if a mind could conceive of a being better than thee,
the creature would rise above the Creator; and this is
most absurd. And, indeed, whatever else there is, except
thee alone, can be conceived not to exist. To thee alone,
therefore, it belongs to exist more truly than all other
beings, and hence in a higher degree than all others. For,
whatever else exists does not exist so truly, and hence in
a less degree it belongs to it to exist. Why, then, has the
fool said in his heart, there is no God, since it is so
evident, to a rational mind, that thou dost exist in the
highest degree of all? Why, except that he is dull anda
fool?
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, II-III
37 But how art thou omnipotent, if thou art not capable of
all things? Or, if thou canst not be corrupted and canst
not lie, nor make what is true, false—as, for example, if
thou shouldst make what has been done not to have
been done, and the like—how art thou capable of all
things? Or else to be capable of these things is not
power, but impotence. For, he who is capable of these
things is capable of what is not for his good, and of what
he ought not to do; and the more capable of them he is,
the more power have adversity and perversity against
him; and the less has he himself against these.
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, VII
38 O Lord, our God, the more truly art thou omnipotent,
since thou art capable of nothing through impotence, and
nothing has power against thee.
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, VII
39 Truly, O Lord, this is the unapproachable light in which
thou dwellest; for truly there is nothing else which can
penetrate this light, that it may see thee there. Truly, |
see it not, because it is too bright for me. And yet,
whatsoever | see, | see through it, as the weak eye sees
what it sees through the light of the sun, which in the sun
itself it cannot look upon. My understanding cannot reach
that light, for it shines too bright. It does not comprehend
it, nor does the eye of my soul endure to gaze upon it
long. It is dazzled by the brightness, it is overcome by the
greatness, it is overwhelmed by the infinity, it is dazed by
the largeness, of the light.
O supreme and unapproachable light | O whole and
blessed truth, how far art thou from me, who am so near
to thee! How far removed an thou from my vision, though
| am so near to thine! Everywhere thou art wholly
present, and | see thee not. In thee | move, and in thee |
have my being; and | cannot come to thee. Thou art
within me, and about me, and | feel thee not.
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, XVI
40 Assuredly thou art life, thou art wisdom, thou art truth,
thou an goodness, thou art blessedness, thou art eternity,
and thou art every true good. Many are these attributes:
my straitened understanding cannot see so many at one
view, that it may be gladdened by all at once. How, then.
O Lord, art thou all these things? are they parts of thee,
or is each one of these rather the whole, which thou art?
For, whatever is composed of parts is not altogether one,
but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself; and
either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution.
But these things are alien to thee, than whom nothing
better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in
thee. Lord, nor art thou more than one. But thou art so
truly a unitary being, and so identical with thyself, that in
no respect art thou unlike thyself; rather thou art unity
itself, indivisible by any conception. Therefore, life and
wisdom and the rest are not parts of thee, but all are one;
and each of these is the whole, which thou art, and which
all the rest are.
In this way, then, it appears that thou hast no pans,
and that thy eternity, which thou art. is nowhere and
never a part of thee or of thy eternity. But everywhere
thou art as a whole, and thy eternity exists as a whole
forever.
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, XVIII
41 To know that God exists in a general and confused way is
implanted in us by nature, since God is man’s Happiness.
For man naturally desires happiness, and what is
naturally desired by man must be naturally known to
him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God
exists.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 2, 1
42 Perhaps not everyone who hears this word "God"
understands it to signify something than which nothing
greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed
God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands
that by this word "God" is signified something than which
nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not
therefore follow that he understands that what the word
signifies exists actually, but only that it exists in the
intellect. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists,
unless it be admitted that there actually exists something
than which nothing greater can I|)e thought. And this is
what is not admitted by those who hold that God does
not exist.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 2, |
43 The existence of God and other like truths about God
which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of
faith, but are preambles to the articles. For faith
presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace
presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something
that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to
prevent a man who cannot grasp a proof accepting, asa
matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of
being known and demonstrated.
Aquinas, Stanma Theologica, |, 2, 2
44 In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient
causes. There is no case Known (nor indeed, is it possible)
in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself,
because in that case it would be prior to itself, which is
impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go
on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in
order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and
the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause,
whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only.
Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect.
Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient
causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate
cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to
infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will
there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient
causes, all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is
necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which
everyone gives the name of God....
we find in nature things that are possible to be and
not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to be
corrupted, and consequently they are possible to be and
not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for
that which is possible not to be at some time is not.
Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one
time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if
this were true, even now there would be nothing in
existence, because that which does not exist only begins
to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at
one time nothing was in existence, it would have been
impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus
even now nothing would be in existence—which is clearly
false. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but
there must exist something the existence of which is
necessary. But every necessary thing either has its
necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible
to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their
necessity caused by another, as has been already proved
in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we must admit the
existence of some being having of itself its own necessity,
and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in
others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 2, 3
45 In some way God is in every place, and this is to be
everywhere. First, as He is in all things as giving them
being, power, and operation, so He is in every place as
giving it being and power to be in a place. Again, things
placed are in place in so far as they fill a place; and God
fills every place; not, indeed, as a body, for a body is said
to fill place in so far as it excludes the presence of
another body; but by God being in a place, others are not
thereby excluded from it; rather indeed. He Himself fills
every place by the very fact that He gives being to the
things that fill every place.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 8, 2
46 Eternity is nothing else but God Himself. Hence God is
not called eternal as if He were in any way measured, but
the notion of measurement is there taken according to
the apprehension of our mind alone,
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 10, 2
47 God comprehends in Himself the whole perfection of
being. If then many gods existed, they would necessarily
differ from each other. Something therefore would belong
to one which did not belong to another. And if this were a
privation, one of them would not be absolutely perfect;
but if a perfection, one of them would be without it. So it
is impossible for many gods to exist. Hence also the
ancient philosophers, constrained as it were by truth
itself, when they asserted an infinite principle asserted
likewise that there was only one such principle.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 11, 3
48 Oh grace abounding, wherein | presumed to fix my look
on the eternal light so long that | consumed my sight
thereon!
Within its depths | saw ingathered, bound by love in
one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe;
substance and accidents and their relations, as though
together fused, after such fashion that what | tell of is one
simple flame.
The universal form of this complex | think that |
beheld, because more largely, as | say’ this, | feel that |
rejoice.
A single moment maketh a deeper lethargy for me
than twenty and five centuries have wrought on the
emprise that erst threw Neptune in amaze at Argo’s
shadow.
Thus all suspended did my mind gaze fixed,
immovable, intent, ever enkindled by its gazing.
Such at that light doth man become that to turn
thence to any other sight could not by possibility be ever
yielded.
For the good, which is the object of the will, is therein
wholly gathered, and outside it that same thing is
defective which therein is perfect.
Now shall my speech fall farther short even of what |
can remember than an infant’s who still bathes his
tongue at breast.
Not that more than a single semblance was in the
living light whereon | looked, which ever is such as it was
before;
but by the sight that gathered strength in me one sole
appearance even as | changed worked on my gaze.
In the profound and shining being of the deep light
appeared to me three circles, of three colours and one
magnitude;
one by the second as Iris by Iris seemed reflected, and
the third seemed a fire breathed equally from one and
from the other.
Oh but how scant the utterance, and how faint, to my
conceit! and it, to what | saw, is such that it sufficeth not
to call it little.
O Light eternal who only in thyself abidest, only
thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood
self-understanding, turnest love and smiling!
That circling which appeared in thee to be conceived
as a reflected light, by mine eyes scanned some little,
in itself, of its own colour, seemed to be painted with
our effigy, and thereat my sight was all committed to it.
As the geometer who all sets himself to measure the
circle and who findeth not, think as he may, the principle
he lacketh;
such was | at this new seen spectacle; | would perceive
how the image consorteth with the circle, and how it
settleth there;
but not for this were my proper wings, save that my
mind was smitten by a flash wherein its will came to it.
To the high fantasy here power failed; but already my
desire and will were rolled—even as a wheel that moveth
equally—by the Love that moves the sun and the other
Stars.
Dante, Paradiso, XXXIIl, 82
49 | can’t understand what must be in a man’s mind if he
doesn’t feel seriously that there is a God when he sees
the sun rise. It must at times occur to him that there are
eternal things, or else he must push his face into the dirt
like a sow. For it’s incredible that they [the planets] be
observed to move without inquiring whether there isn’t
somebody who moves them.
Luther, Table Talk, 447
50 Though our mind cannot conceive of God, without
ascribing some worship to him, it will not be sufficient
merely to apprehend that he is the only proper object of
universal worship and adoration, unless we are also
persuaded that he is the fountain of all good, and seek
for none but in him. This | maintain, not only because he
sustains the universe, as he once made it, by his infinite
power, governs it by his wisdom, preserves it by his
goodness, and especially reigns over the human race in
righteousness and judgment, exercising a merciful
forbearance, and defending them by his protection; but
because there cannot be found the least particle of
wisdom, light, righteousness, power, rectitude, or sincere
truth which does not proceed from him, and claim him for
its author.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 2
51 To represent God as a Creator only for a moment, who
entirely finished all his work at once, were frigid and
jejune; and in this it behoves us especially to differ from
the heathen, that the presence of the Divine power may
appear to us no less in the perpetual state of the world
than in its first origin.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, |, 16
52 God, wishing to teach us that the good have something
else to hope for, and the wicked something else to fear,
than the fortunes and misfortunes of this world, handles
and allots these according to his occult disposition, and
deprives us of the means of foolishly making our profit of
them.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 32, We Should Meddle Soberly
53 What is there... more vain than to try to divine God by
our analogies and conjectures, to regulate him and the
world by our capacity and our laws, and to use at the
expense of the Deity this little shred of ability that he was
pleased to allot to our natural condition? And, because
we cannot stretch our vision as far as his glorious throne,
to have brought him here below to our corruption and our
miseries?
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
54 It has always seemed to me that for a Christian this sort
of talk is full of indiscretion and irreverence: "God cannot
die, God cannot go back on his word, God cannot do this
or that." | do not think it is good to confine the divine
power thus under the law's of our speech. And the
probability that appears to us in these propositions
should be expressed more reverently and religiously.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
55 When we Say that the infinity of the centuries both past
and to come is to God but an instant, that his goodness,
wisdom, power, are the same thing as his essence—our
tongues Say it, but our intelligence does not apprehend
it.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 12, Apology for Raymond
Sebond
56 He Who is before the ages and on into the ages thus
adorned the great things of His wisdom: nothing
excessive, nothing defective, no room for any censure.
How lovely are his works! All things, in twos, one against
one, none lacking its opposite.
He has strengthened the goods—adornment and
propriety—of each and every one and established them
in the best reasons, and who will be satiated seeing their
glory?
Kepler, Harmonies of the World, V, 9
57 Dogberry. Well, God’s a good man.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, III, V, 39
58 Natural theology ... is that knowledge or rudiment of
knowledge concerning God, which may be obtained by
the contemplation of his creatures; which knowledge may
be truly termed divine in respect of the object, and
natural in respect of the light. The bounds of this
knowledge are, that it sufficeth to convince atheism, but
not to inform religion: and therefore there was never
miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist, because
the light of nature might have led him to confess a God:
but miracles have been wrought to convert idolaters and
the superstitious, because no light of nature extendeth to
declare the will and true worship of God. For as all works
do show forth the power and skill of the workman, and
not his image, so it is of the works of God, which do show
the omnipotency and wisdom of the maker, but not his
image.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. 11, VI, 1
59 It is at least as certain that God, who is a Being so
perfect, is, or exists, as any demonstration of geometry
can possibly be.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, IV
60 That idea ... by which | understand a Supreme God,
eternal, infinite, [immutable], omniscient, omnipotent,
and Creator of all things which are outside of Himself, has
certainly more objective reality in itself than those ideas
by which finite substances are represented.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, III
61 From the fact that | cannot conceive a mountain without
a valley, it does not follow that there is any mountain or
any valley in existence, but only that the mountain and
the valley, whether they exist or do not exist, cannot in
any way be separated one from the other. While from the
fact that | cannot conceive God without existence, it
follows that existence is inseparable from Him, and hence
that He really exists; not that my thought can bring this
to pass, or impose any necessity on things, but, on the
contrary, because the necessity which lies in the thing
itself, i.e. the necessity of the existence of God
determines me to think in this way. For it is not within my
power to think of God without existence (that is of a
supremely perfect Being devoid of a supreme perfection)
though it is in my power to imagine a horse either with
wings or without wings.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, V
62 We have in the notion of God absolute immensity,
simplicity, and a unity that embraces all other attributes;
and of this idea we find no example in us.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, I
63 When God is said to be unthinkable, that applies to the
thought that grasps him adequately, and does not hold
good of that inadequate thought which we possess and
which suffices to let us know that he exists,
Descartes, Objections and Replies, I
64 Some one must exist in whom are formally or eminently
all the perfections of which we have any idea. But we
possess the idea of a power so great that by Him and Him
alone, in whom this power is found, must heaven and
earth be created, and a power such that likewise
whatever else is apprehended by me as possible must be
created by Him too. Hence concurrently with God’s
existence we have proved all this likewise about him.
Descartes, Demonstrating the Existence of God and the
Distinction Between Soul and Body, Prop. 3, Corol.
65 When you say how strange it is that other men do not
think about God in the same way as | do, when He has
impressed the idea of Himself on them exactly as on me,
it is precisely as if you were to marvel that since all are
acquainted with the idea of a triangle, they do not all
perceive an equal number of truths about it, and some
probably reason about this very figure incorrectly.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, V
66 Perpetual fear, always accompanying mankind in the
ignorance of causes, as it were in the dark, must needs
have for object something. And therefore when there is
nothing to be seen, there is nothing to accuse either of
their good or evil fortune but some power or agent
invisible: in which sense perhaps it was that some of the
old poets said that the gods were at first created by
human fear: which, spoken of the gods (that is to say, of
the many gods of the Gentiles), is very true. But the
acknowledging of one God eternal, infinite, and
omnipotent may more easily be derived from the desire
men have to know the causes of natural bodies, and their
several virtues and operations, than from the fear of what
was to befall them in time to come. For he that, from any
effect he seeth come to pass, should reason to the next
and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the
cause of that cause, and plunge himself profoundly in the
pursuit of causes, shall at last come to this, that there
must be (as even the heathen philosophers confessed)
one First Mover; that is, a first and an eternal cause of all
things; which is that which men mean by the name of
God: and all this without thought of their fortune, the
solicitude whereof both inclines to fear and hinders them
from the search of the causes of other things; and
thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many gods as
there be men that feign them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 12
67 That we may know what worship of God is taught us by
the light of nature, | will begin with His attributes. Where,
first, it is manifest, we ought to attribute to Him
existence: for no man can have the will to honour that
which he thinks not to have any being.
Secondly, that those philosophers who said the world,
or the soul of the world, was God spake unworthily of
Him, and denied His existence: for by God is understood
the cause of the world; and to say the world is God is to
say there is no cause of it, that is, no God.
Thirdly, to say the world was not created, but eternal,
seeing that which is eternal has no cause, is to deny
there is a God.
Fourthly, that they who, attributing, as they think,
ease to God, take from Him the care of mankind, take
from Him his honour: for it takes away men’s love and
fear of Him, which is the root of honour.
Fifthly, in those things that signify greatness and
power, to say He is finite is not to honour Him: for it is not
a sign of the will to honour God to attribute to Him less
than we can; and finite is less than we can, because to
finite it is easy to add more.
Therefore to attribute figure to Him is not honour; for
all figure is finite:
Nor to say we conceive, and imagine, or have an idea
of Him in our mind; for whatsoever we conceive is finite:
Nor to attribute to Him parts or totality; which are the
attributes only of things finite:
Nor to say He is in this or that place ... nor that He is
moved or resteth; for both these attributes ascribe to Him
place:
Nor that there be more gods than one, because it
implies them all finite; for there cannot be more than one
infinite:
Nor to ascribe to Him (unless metaphorically, meaning
not the passion, but the effect) passions that partake of
grief; as repentance, anger, mercy: or of want; as
appetite, hope, desire; or of any passive faculty: for
passion is power limited by somewhat else.
And therefore when we ascribe to God a wil/, it is not
to be understood, as that of man, for a rational appetite;
but as the power by which He effecteth everything.
Likewise when we attribute to Him sight, and other
acts of sense; as also Knowledge and understanding;
which in us is nothing else but a tumult of the mind,
raised by external things that press the organical parts of
man’s body: for there is no such thing in God, and, being
things that depend on natural causes, cannot be
attributed to Him.
He that will attribute to God nothing but what is
warranted by natural reason must either use such
negative attributes as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible;
or superlatives, as most high, most great, and the like; or
indefinite, as good, just, holy, creator, and in such sense
as if He meant not to declare what He is (for that were to
circumscribe Him within the limits of our fancy), but how
much we admire Him, and how ready we would be to
obey Him; which is a sign of humility, and of a will to
honour Him as much as we can: for there is but one name
to signify our conception of His nature, and that is | AM;
and but one name of His relation to us, and that is God, in
which is contained father, king, and lord.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 31
68 The nature of God is incomprehensible; that is to say, we
understand nothing of what He is, but only that He is;
and therefore the attributes we give Him are not to tell
one another what He is, nor to signify our opinion of His
nature, but our desire to honour Him with such names as
we conceive most honourable amongst ourselves.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 34
69 Neither had these or any other ever such advantage of
me, as to incline me to any point of Infidelity or desperate
positions of Atheism; for | have been these many years of
opinion there was never any. Those that held Religion was
the difference of Man from Beasts, have spoken probably,
and proceed upon a principle as inductive as the other.
That doctrine of Epicurus, that denied the Providence of
God, was no Atheism, but a magnificent and high
strained conceit of his Majesty, which he deemed too
sublime to mind the trivial Actions of those inferiour
Creatures. That fatal Necessity of the Stoicks, is nothing
but the immutable Law of his will. Those that heretofore
denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, have been
condemned, but as Hereticks; and those that now deny
our Saviour (though more than Hereticks) are not so
much as Atheists: for though they deny two persons in
the Trinity, they hold as we do, there is but one God.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 20
70 Not only the zeal of those who seek Him proves God, but
also the blindness of those who seek Him not.
Pascal, Pensées, III, 200
71 It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is
incomprehensible that He should not exist; that the soul
should be joined to the body, and that we should have no
soul; that the world should be created, and that it should
not be created, etc.; that original sin should be, and that
it should not be.
Pascal, Pensees, I/l, 230
72 It is the heart which experiences God, and not the
reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by
the reason.
Pascal, Pensees, IV, 278
73 It is... true that everything teaches man his condition, but
he must understand this well. For it is not true that all
reveals God, and it is not true that all conceals God. But it
is at the same time true that He hides Himself from those
who tempt Him, and that He reveals Himself to those who
seek Him, because men are both unworthy and capable
of God; unworthy by their corruption, capable by their
original nature.
Pascal, Pensees, VIII, 557
74 If the compassion of God is so great that He instructs us
to our benefit, even when He hides Himself, what light
ought we not to expect from Him when He reveals
Himself?
Pascal, Pensees, XIII, 848
75 Hail holy light, ofspring of Heav’n first-born,
Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam
May | express thee unblam’d? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear’st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee | re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap’t the Stygian Pool, though long detain’d
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th' Orphean Lyre
| sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav’nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee | revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou
Revisit’st not these eyes, that rowle in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs,
Or dim suffusion veild.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, |
76 Thee Father first they [the angel choir] sung Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee Author of all being.
Fountain of Light, thy self invisible
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit’st
Thron’d inaccessible, but when thou shad’st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant Shrine,
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appeer,
Yet dazle Heav’n, that brightest Seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil thir eyes.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 372
77 By God, | understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to
say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one
of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Def. 6
78 God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each
one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence,
necessarily exists.
If this be denied, conceive, if it be possible, that God
does not exist. Then it follows that His essence does not
involve existence. But this is absurd. Therefore God
necessarily exists.
Spinoza, Ethics, I, Prop. 11, Demonst.
79 Neither in God nor outside God is there any cause or
reason which can negate His existence, and therefore
God necessarily exists.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Prop. 11, Another Proof
80 God and all His attributes are eternal, that is to say, each
one of His attributes expresses existence. The same
attributes of God, therefore, which manifest the eternal
essence of God, at the same time manifest His eternal
existence; that is to say, the very same thing which
constitutes the essence of God constitutes at the same
time His existence, and therefore His existence and His
essence are one and the same thing.
Spinoza, Ethics, |, Prop. 20
81 God loves no one and hates no one; for God is not
affected with any affect of joy or sorrow, and
consequently He neither loves nor hates any one.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 17, Corol.
82 God alone has a distinct knowledge of all, for He is the
source of all. It has been very well said that as a centre
He is everywhere, but His circumference is nowhere, for
everything is immediately present to Him without any
distance from this centre,
Leibniz, Principles of Nature and of Grace, 13
83 The conception of God which is the most common and
the most full of meaning is expressed well enough in the
words: God is an absolutely perfect being. The
implications, however, of these words fail to receive
sufficient consideration. For instance, there are many
different kinds of perfection, all of which God possesses,
and each one of them pertains to him in the highest
degree.
We must also know what perfection is. One thing
which can surely be affirmed about it is that those forms
or natures which are not susceptible of it to the highest
degree, say the nature of numbers or of figures, do not
permit of perfection. This is because the number which is
the greatest of all (that is, the sum of all the numbers),
and likewise the greatest of all figures, imply
contradictions. The greatest knowledge, however, and
omnipotence contain no impossibility. Consequently
power and knowledge do admit of perfection, and in so
far as they pertain to God they have no limits.
Whence it follows that God who possesses supreme
and infinite wisdom acts in the most perfect manner not
only metaphysically, but also from the moral standpoint.
And with respect to our selves it can be said that the
more we are enlightened and informed in regard to the
works of God the more will we be disposed to find them
excellent and conforming entirely to that which we might
desire.
Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, |
84 God alone (or the Necessary Being) has this prerogative
that if he be possible he must necessarily exist, and, as
nothing is able to prevent the possibility of that which
involves no bounds, no negation, and consequently, no
contradiction, this alone is sufficient to establish a priori
his existence. We have, therefore, proved his existence
through the reality of eternal truths. But a little while ago
we also proved it a posteriori, because contingent beings
exist which can have their ultimate and sufficient reason
only in the necessary being which, in turn, has the reason
for existence in itself.
Leibniz, Monadology, 45
85 The first contrivance of those very artificial parts of
animals, the eyes, cars, brain, muscles, heart, lungs,
midriff, glands, larynx, hands, wings, swimming bladders,
natural spectacles, and other organs of sense and motion;
and the instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of
nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful,
ever-living agent, who being in all places, is more able by
His will to move the bodies within His boundless uniform
sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of
the Universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of
our own bodies. And yet we are not to consider the world
as the body of God, or the several parts thereof as the
parts of God. He is a uniform Being, void of organs,
members or parts, and they are his creatures subordinate
to him, and subservient to His will; and He is no more the
soul of them than the soul of man is the soul of the
species of things carried through the organs of sense into
the place of its sensation, where it perceives them by
means of its immediate presence, without the
intervention of any third thing. The organs of sense are
not for enabling the soul to perceive the species of things
in its sensorium, but only for conveying them thither; and
God has no need of such organs, He being everywhere
present to the things themselves.
Newton, Optics, III, |
86 The visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power
appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a
rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them,
cannot miss the discovery of a Deity. And the influence
that the discovery of such a Being must necessarily have
on the minds of all that have but once heard of it is so
great, and carries such a weight of thought and
communication with it, that it seems stranger to me that
a whole nation of men should be anywhere found so
brutish as to want the notion of a God, than that they
should be without any notion of numbers, or fire.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 1, Ill, 9
87 It is as certain that there is a God, as that the opposite
angles made by the intersection of two straight lines are
equal. There was never any rational creature that set
himself sincerely to examine the truth of these
propositions that could fail to assent to (hem; though yet
it be past doubt that there are many men, who, having
not applied their thoughts that way, are ignorant both of
the one and the other.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. |, in, 17
88 If we attentively consider the constant regularity, order,
and concatenation of natural things, the surprising
magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and
the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of creation,
together with the exact harmony and correspondence of
the whole, but above all the never-enough-admired laws
of pain and pleasure, and the instincts or natural
inclinations, appetites, and passions of animals; | say if
we consider all these things, and at the same time attend
to the meaning and import of the attributes One, Eternal,
Infinitely Wise, Good, and Perfect, we shall clearly
perceive that they belong to the aforesaid Spirit, "who
works all in all," and "by whom all things consist."
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 146
89 A human spirit or person is not perceived by sense, as
not being an idea; when therefore we see the colour, size,
figure, and motions of a man, we perceive only certain
sensations or ideas excited in our own minds; and these
being exhibited to our view in sundry distinct collections,
serve to mark out unto us the existence of finite and
created spirits like ourselves. Hence it is plain we do not
see a man—if by man is meant that which lives, moves,
perceives, and thinks as we do—but only such a certain
collection of ideas as directs us to think there is a distinct
principle of thought and motion, like to ourselves,
accompanying and represented by it. And after the same
manner we see God; all the difference is that, whereas
some one finite and narrow assemblage of ideas denotes
a particular human mind, whithersoever we direct our
view, we do at all times and in all places perceive
manifest tokens of the Divinity: everything we see, hear,
feel, or anywise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect
of the power of God; as is our perception of those very
motions which are produced by men.
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 148
90 It argues surely more power in the Deity to delegate a
certain degree of power to inferior creatures than to
produce every thing by his own immediate volition. It
argues more wisdom to contrive at first the fabric of the
world with such perfect foresight that, of itself, and by its
proper operation, it may serve all the purposes of
providence, than if the great Creator were obliged every
moment to adjust its parts, and animate by his breath all
the wheels of that stupendous machine.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, VII, 56
91 God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver;
the laws by which He created all things are those by
which He preserves them. He acts according to these
rules, because He knows them; He knows them, because
He made them; and He made them, because they are in
relation to His wisdom and power.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, |, 1
92 The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a
Supreme Being as good as He is powerful, who has
formed all beings with extension, vegetating, sentient
and reflecting; who perpetuates their species, who
punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards virtuous
actions with kindness.
The theist does not know how God punishes, how he
protects, how he pardons, for he is not reckless enough to
flatter himself that he knows how God acts, but he knows
that God acts and that He is just. Difficulties against
Providence do not shake him in his faith, because they
are merely great difficulties, and not proofs. He submits
to this Providence, although he perceives but a few
effects and few signs of this Providence: and, judging of
the things he does not see by the things he secs, he
considers that this Providence reaches all places and all
centuries.
Reconciled in this principle with the rest of the
universe, he does not embrace any of the sects, all of
which contradict each other; his religion is the most
ancient and the most widespread; for the simple worship
of a God has preceded all the systems of the world. He
speaks a language that all peoples understand, while
they do not understand one another. He has brothers
from Pekin to Cayenne, and he counts all wise men as his
brethren. He believes that religion does not consist either
in the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain
display, but in worship and justice. The doing of good,
there is his service; being submissive to God, there is his
doctrine. The Mahometan cries to him—"Have a care if
you do not make the pilgrimage to Mecca!" "Woe unto
you," says a Recollet, "if you do not make a journey to
Notre-Dame de Lorette!" He laughs at Lorette and at
Mecca; but he succours the needy and defends the
oppressed.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Theist
93 If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.
Voltaire, Epitre d l’Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs
(Nov. 10, 1770)
94 While all the ambitious attempts of reason to penetrate
beyond the limits of experience end in disappointment,
there is still enough left to satisfy us in a practical point
of view. No one, it is true, will be able to boast that he
knows that there is a God and a future life; for, if he
knows this, he is just the man whom | have long wished
to find. All knowledge, regarding an object of mere
reason, can be communicated; and | should thus be
enabled to hope that my own knowledge would receive
this wonderful extension, through the instrumentality of
his instruction. No, my conviction is not /ogical, but moral
certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the
moral sentiment), | must not even say: /t is morally
certain that there is a God, etc., but: / am morally certain,
that is, my belief in God and in another world is so
interwoven with my moral nature that | am under as little
apprehension of having the former torn from me as of
losing the latter,
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Method
95 Whence have we the conception of God as the supreme
good? Simply from the idea of moral perfection, which
reason frames a priori and connects inseparably with the
notion of a free will.
Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals, II
96 It is morally necessary to assume the existence of God.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Pt. I, n, 2
97 While fear doubtless in the first instance may have been
able to produce gods, that is demons, it is only reason by
its moral principles that has been able to produce the
conception of God —and it has been able to do so despite
the great ignorance that has prevailed in what concerns
the teleology of nature, or the considerable doubt that
arises from the difficulty of reconciling by a sufficiently
established principle the mutually conflicting phenomena
that nature presents.
Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, 86
98 Faust. Who dare name Him?
And who avow:
"| believe in Him"?
Who feels and would
Have hardihood
To say: "I don’t believe in Him"?
The All-Enfolder,
The All-Upholder,
Enfolds, upholds He not
You, me. Himself?
Do not the heavens over-arch us yonder?
Does not the earth lie firm beneath?
Do not eternal stars rise friendly
Looking down upon us?
Look I not, eye in eye, on you.
And do not all things throng
Toward your head and heart,
Weaving in mystery eternal,
Invisible, visible, near to you?
Fill up your heart with it, great though it is,
And when you’re wholly in the feeling, in its bliss.
Name it then as you will,
Name it Happiness! Heart! Love! God!
| have no name for that!
Feeling is all in all;
Name is but sound and smoke,
Beclouding Heaven’s glow.
Goethe, Faust, |, 3432
99 —Brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent, at every turn,
Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—
Were all the workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.
Wordsworth, The Simplon Pass
100 That the history of the world, with all the changing
scenes which its annals present, is this process of
development and the realization of spirit—this is the true
Theodicaea, the justification of God in history. Only this
insight can reconcile spirit with the history of the world—
viz., that what has happened, and is happening every
day, is not only not "without God," but is essentially His
work.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. IV, Ill, 3
101 What is this unknown something with which the Reason
collides when inspired by its paradoxical passion, with
the result of unsettling even man’s knowledge of himself?
It is the Unknown. It is not a human being, in so far as we
know what man is; nor is it any other known thing. So let
us Call this unknown something: God. It is nothing more
than a name we assign to it. The idea of demonstrating
that this unknown something (God) exists, could scarcely
suggest itself to the Reason. For if God does not exist it
would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he does
exist it would be folly to attempt it.
Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, III
102 O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
| can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
Tennyson, In Memoriam, LIV
103 For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
| hope to see my Pilot face to face
When | have crost the bar.
Tennyson, Crossing the Bar
104 The belief in God has often been advanced as not only
the greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions
between man and the lower animals. It is however
impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief
is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief
in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal;
and apparently follows from a considerable advance in
man’s reason, and from a still greater advance in his
faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. | am aware
that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used
by many persons as an argument for His existence. But
this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled
to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant
Spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief
in them is far more general than in a beneficent Deity.
The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not
seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been
elevated by long-continued culture.
Darwin, Descent of Man, III, 21
105 Men are growing to be seriously alive to the fact that
the historical evolution of humanity, which is generally,
and | venture to think not unreasonably, regarded as
progress, has been, and is being, accompanied by a co-
ordinate elimination of the supernatural from its
originally large occupation of men’s thoughts.
T. H. Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, Prologue
106 To whom turn | but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with
hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the
same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power
expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall
live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much
good more;
On the earth the broken ares; in the heaven a perfect
round.
Browning, Abt Vogler
107 But | need, now as then, [in youth]
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:
So, take and use thy work;
Amend what flaws may Iurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra
108 The word "God" is used in most cases as by no means a
term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry
and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, at a not
fully grasped object of the speaker’s consciousness, a
literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things
by it as their consciousness differs.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, |
109 No one will say, that it is admittedly certain and
verifiable, that there is a personal first cause, the moral
and intelligent governor of the universe, whom we may
call God if we will. But that ail things seem to us to have
what we call a law of their being, and to tend to fulfil it, is
certain and admitted; though whether we will call this
God or not, is a matter of choice. Suppose, however, we
call it God, we then give the name of God to a certain and
admitted reality; this, at least, is an advantage.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, |
no Ivan. There was an old sinner in the eighteenth century
who declared that, if there were no God, he would have to
be invented... , And man has actually invented God. And
what’s strange, what would be marvellous, is not that
God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea,
the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of
such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so
touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man,
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, V, 3
111 /van. If God exists and if He really did create the world,
then, as we all know, He created it according to the
geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the
conception of only three dimensions in space. Yet there
have been and still are geometricians and philosophers,
and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt
whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely, the
whole of being, was only created in Euclid’s geometry;
they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which
according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet
somewhere in infinity. | have come to the conclusion that,
since | can’t understand even that, | can’t expect to
understand about God. | acknowledge humbly that | have
no faculty for settling such questions, 1 have a Euclidian
earthly mind, and how could | solve problems that are not
of this world? And | advise you never to think about it
either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether
He exists or not. All such questions are utterly
inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only
three dimensions.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, V, 3
112 "| ought to tell you that | do not believe ... do not
believe in God," said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort,
feeling it essential to speak the whole truth.
The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a
rich man with millions in hand might smile at a poor
fellow who told him that he, poor man, had not the five
rubles that would make him happy.
"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the
Mason. "You cannot know Him. You do not know Him and
that is why you are unhappy."
"Yes, yes, |am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what
am | to do?"
"You Know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very
unhappy. You do not know Him, but He is here. He is in
me, He is in my words. He is in thee, and even in those
blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!" pronounced
the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.
He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm
himself.
"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and | would not
be speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we
speaking? Whom hast thou denied?" he suddenly asked
with exulting austerity and authority in his voice. "Who
invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence came thy
conception of the existence of such an incomprehensible
Being? Why didst thou, and why did the whole world,
conceive the idea of the existence of such an
incomprehensible Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal,
and infinite in all His attributes?..."
He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason
began again, looking not at Pierre but straight before
him, and turning the leaves of his book with his old hands
which from excitement he could not keep still. "If it were
a man whose existence thou didst doubt | could bring
him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to
thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His
omnipotence. His infinity, and all His mercy to one who is
blind, or who shuts his eyes that he may not see or
understand Him and may not see or understand his own
vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art
thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou
couldst utter those blasohemous words," he went on, with
a somber and scornful smile. "And thou art more foolish
and unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with
the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as
he does not understand its use, he does not believe in
the master who made it. To Know Him is hard.... For ages,
from our forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to
attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our
aim; but in our lack of understanding we see only our
weakness and His greatness...."
Tolstoy, War and Peace, V, 2
113 Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
G. M. Hopkins, Pied Beauty
114 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.
Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have
trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the
soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.
G. M. Hopkins, God's Grandeur
115 Thus spake the devil unto me, once on atime: "Ever
God hath his hell: it is his love for man."
And lately did | hear him say these words: "God is
dead: of his pity for man hath God died."
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, IV, Introduction
116 A people which still believes in itself still also has its
own God. In him it venerates the conditions through
which it has prospered, its virtues—it projects its joy in
itself, its feeling of power on to a being whom one can
thank for them. He who is rich wants to bestow; a proud
people needs a God in order to sacrifice. ... Within the
bounds of such presuppositions religion is a form of
gratitude. One is grateful for oneself: for that one needs a
God.—Such a God must be able to be both useful and
harmful, both friend and foe—he is admired in good and
bad alike. The anti-natura/ castration of a God into a God
of the merely good would be totally undesirable here.
One has as much need of the evil God as of the good
God: for one does not owe one’s existence to
philanthropy or tolerance precisely. ... Of what
consequence would a God be who knew nothing of anger,
revengefulness, envy, mockery, cunning, acts of
violence? to whom even the rapturous ardeurs of victory
and destruction were unknown? One would not
understand such a God: why should one have him?—To
be sure: when a people is perishing; when it feels its faith
in the future, its hope of freedom vanish completely;
when it becomes conscious that the most profitable thing
of all is submissiveness and that the virtues of
submissiveness are a condition of its survival, then its
God has to alter too. He now becomes a dissembler,
timid, modest, counsels ‘peace of soul’, no more hatred,
forbearance, ‘love’ even towards friend and foe. He is
continually moralizing, he creeps into the cave of every
private virtue, becomes a God for everybody', becomes a
private man, becomes a cosmopolitan.... Formerly he
represented a people, the strength of a people,
everything aggressive and thirsting for power in the soul
of a people: now he is merely the good God.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XVI
117 The Christian conception of God—God as God of the
sick, God as spider, God as spirit—is one of the most
corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on earth: perhaps it
even represents the low-water mark in the descending
development of the God type.
Nietzsche, XVIII
118 Even the slightest trace of piety in us ought to make us
feel that a God who cures a headcold at the right moment
or tells us to get into a coach just as a downpour is about
to start is so absurd a God he would have to be abolished
even if he existed. A God as a domestic servant, as a
postman, as an almanac-maker—at bottom a word for the
stupidest kind of accidental occurrence.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, LI
119 If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!"
Then would | bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than |
Had willed and meted me the tears | shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy’ lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
Hardy, Hap
120 God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the
ultimate irrationality. For no reason can be given for just
that limitation which it stands in His nature to impose,
God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete
actuality. No reason can be given for the nature of God,
because that nature is the ground of rationality.
Whitehead, Science and the Modem World, XI
121 1 do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no
God. | equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The
Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or
of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these
hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie
outside the region of even probable knowledge, and
therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
Russell, | Believe, |
122 The same father , .. who gave the child his life and
preserved it from the dangers which that life involves,
also taught it what it may or may not do, made it accept
certain limitations of its instinctual wishes, and told it
what consideration it would be expected to show towards
its parents and brothers and sisters, if it wanted to be
tolerated and liked as a member of the family circle, and
later on of more extensive groups. The child is brought up
to know its social duties by means of a system of love-
rewards and punishments, and in this way it is taught
that its security in life depends on its parents (and,
subsequently, other people) loving it and being able to
believe in its love for them. This whole state of affairs is
carried over by the grown man unaltered into his religion.
The prohibitions and commands of his parents live on in
his breast as his moral conscience; God rules the world of
men with the help of the same system of rewards and
punishments, and the degree of protection and happiness
which each individual enjoys, depends on his fulfilment
of the demands of morality; the feeling of security, with
which he fortifies himself against the dangers both of the
external world and of his human environment, is founded
on his love of God and the consciousness of God’s love
for him. Finally, he has in prayer a direct influence on the
divine will, and in that way insures for himself a share in
the divine omnipotence.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
123 The last contribution to the criticism of the religious
Weltanschauung has been made by psychoanalysis,
which has traced the origin of religion to the helplessness
of childhood, and its content to the persistence of the
wishes and needs of childhood into maturity. This does
not precisely imply a refutation of religion, but itisa
necessary rounding off of our knowledge about it, and, at
least on one point, it actually contradicts it, for religion
lays claim to a divine origin. This claim, to be sure, is not
false if our interpretation of God is accepted.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
124 Obvious considerations like these furnish the proof of
God’s existence, not as philosophers have tried to
express it after the fact and in relation to mythical
conceptions of God nady current, but as mankind
originally perceived it, and (where religion is
Spontaneous) perceives it still. There is such an order in
experience that we find our desires doubly dependent on
something which, because it disregards our will, we call
an external power. Sometimes it overwhelms us with
scourges and wonders, so that we must marvel at it and
fear; sometimes it removes, or after removing restores, a
support necessary to our existence and happiness, so
that we must cling to it, hope for it, and love it. Whatever
is serious in religion, whatever is bound up with morality
and fate, is contained in those plain experiences of
dependence and of affinity to that on which we depend.
The rest is poetry, or mythical philosophy, in which
definitions not warranted in the end by experience are
given to that power which experience reveals. To reject
such arbitrary definitions is called atheism by those who
frame them; but a man who studies for himself the
ominous and the friendly aspects of reality and gives
them the truest and most adequate expression he can is
repeating what the founders of religion did in the
beginning. He is their companion and follower more truly
than are the apologists for secondhand conceptions
which these apologists themselves have never compared
with the facts, and which they prize chiefly for
misrepresenting actual experience and giving it
imaginary extensions.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 3
125 He Who Himself begot, middler the Holy Ghost, and
Himself sent Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and
othere, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and
whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
crosstree. Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell,
fared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred
years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet
Shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead
when all the quick shall be dead already.
Joyce, Ulysses
20.6 Gods and Goddesses
One striking difference between the quotations in this
section and the quotations in Section 20.5 on God is that
here the poets and the historians hold forth most eloquently
and vividly whereas there the philosophers and theologians
heap argument upon argument. Another difference, of
course, is the contrast between the colorful
anthropomorphic personality of each particular god and
goddess and the abstract metaphysical characterization of a
supernatural being.
The tragic and epic poets of antiquity, as well as the
historians, give us a familiarity with the dwellers on Mt.
Olympus, or their Roman counterparts, that enhances our
appreciation of the later literature in which allusion to these
deities is so frequently made. Their stories about the
adventures and misadventures of the capricious or wayward
divinities led Plato to call for the exclusion of the poets from
the ideal state, in order to prevent immoral actions from
being imitated or misleading lessons from being learned.
The reader will find that famous passage from the Republic
in Section 13.2 on Freedom of Thought and Expression:
Censorship.
The pagan philosophers manifest a certain detachment in
their comments on the deities worshipped in the polytheistic
religions of antiquity, often dealing with the popular beliefs
about the gods in terms of their own more abstract
consideration of God. In the materialistic cosmology of the
ancient atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, the gods are exiled
to a place of pleasure without power. No harm is done in
admitting their existence if they are deprived of any power
to intervene in the order of nature or to control man by the
distribution of rewards and punishments.
As might be expected, adverse criticisms of pagan
polytheism are expressed by Christian theologians and by
philosophers who profess a commitment to Christian beliefs.
This raises, of course, the problem of the line that divides
authentic religion from mythology and superstition, in
connection with which the reader is referred to Section
20.12 on Superstition. It is also suggested that the reader
compare Gibbon’s remarks on Christianity in Section 20.3
with his comments here on pagan religious beliefs.
1 Dione. That man who fights the immortals lives for no long
time,
his children do not gather to his knees to welcome
their father
when he returns home after the fighting and the bitter
warfare.
Homer, Iliad, V, 407
2 Zeus. Come, you gods, make this endeavour, that you all
may learn this.
Let down out of the sky a cord of gold; lay hold of it
all you who are gods and all who are goddesses, yet
not
even so can you drag down Zeus from the sky to the
ground, not
Zeus the high lord of counsel, though you try until you
grow weary.
Yet whenever | might strongly be minded to pull you,
| could drag you up, earth and all and sea and all with
you,
then fetch the golden rope about the horn of Olympos
and make it fast, so that all once more should dangle
in mid air.
So much stronger am | than the gods, and stronger
than mortals.
Homer, Iliad, VIII, 18
3 Zeus. My word, how mortals take the gods to task!
All their afflictions come from us, we hear.
And what of their own failings? Greed and folly
double the suffering in the lot of man.
Homer, Odyssey, |, 30
4 Menelaos. Young friends, no mortal man can via with Zeus.
His home and all his treasures are for ever Homer,
Odyssey,
Homer, Odyssey, IV, 79
5 A Suitor. They go in foreign guise, the gods do, looking like
strangers, turning up in towns and settlements to keep
an eye on manners, good or bad.
Homer, Odyssey, XVII, 486
6 Invisible the gods arc ever nigh,
Pass through the midst and bend th’ all-seeing eye:
Who heed not heaven’s revenge, but wrest the right,
And grind the poor, are naked to their sight.
Hesiod, Works and Days
7 Children of Jove, all hail! but deign to give
Th’ enchanting song! record the sacred race
Of ever-living gods; who sprang from earth,
From the starr’d heaven, and from the murky night,
And whom the salt deep nourish’d into life.
Declare how first the gods and earth became;
The rivers and th' immeasurable sea
Raging in foamy swell; the glittering stars,
And the wide heaven above; and who from these
Of deities arose, dispensing good;
Say how their treasures, how their honours each
Allotted shared; how first they fix’d abode
Amidst Olympus’ many-winding vales.
Hesiod, Theogony
8 The Persians... have no images of the gods, no temples
nor altars, and consider the use of then a sign of folly.
This comes, | think, from their not believing the gods to
have the same nature with men, as the Greeks imagine.
Herodotus, History, |, 131
9 Heracles. | do not believe the gods commit
adultery, or bind each other in chains.
| never did believe it; | never shall;
nor that one god is tyrant of the rest.
If god is truly god, he is perfect,
lacking nothing.
Euripides, Heracles, 1341
10 Ta/thybius. Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive
ourselves with unsubstantial dreams and lies, while
random careless chance and change alone control the
world?
Euripides, Hecuba, 489
11 Hecuba. | ama slave, | Know, and slaves are weak. But
the gods are strong, and over them there stands some
absolute, some moral order or principle of law more final
still.
Upon this moral law the world depends; through it the
gods exist; by it we live, defining good and evil.
Euripides, Hecuba, 798
12 Polymestor. The inconsistent gods make chaos of our
lives, pitching us about with such savagery of change
that we, out of our anguish and uncertainty, may turn to
them.
Euripides, Hecuba, 958
13 Creusa. O you who give the seven-toned lyre
A voice which rings out of the lifeless,
Rustic horn the lovely sound
Of the Muses’ hymns,
On you, Latona’s son, here
In daylight | will lay blame.
You came with hair flashing
Gold, as | gathered
Into my cloak flowers ablaze
With their golden light.
Clinging to my pale wrists
As | cried for my mother’s help
You led me to bed in a cave,
A god and my lover,
With no shame,
Submitting to the Cyprian’s will.
In misery | bore you
A son, whom in fear of my mother
| placed in that bed
Where you cruelly forced me.
Ah! He is lost now,
Snatched as food for birds,
My son and yours; O lost!
But you play the lyre,
Chanting your paeans.
O hear me, son of Latona,
Who assign your prophecies
From the golden throne
And the temple at earth’s center,
| will proclaim my words in your ears:
You are an evil lover;
Though you owed no debt
To my husband, you have
Set a son in his house.
But my son, yes and yours, hard-hearted,
Is lost, carried away by birds,
The clothes his mother put on him abandoned.
Delos hates you and the young
Laurel which grows by the palm
With its delicate leaves, where Latona
Bore you, a holy child, fruit of Zeus.
Euripides, lon, 881
14 Chorus. —You on the streets!
—You on the roads!
—Make way!
—Let every mouth be hushed. Let no ill-omened words
profane your tongues.
—Make way! Fall back!
—Hush.
—For now | raise the old, old hymn to Dionysus.
—Blessed, blessed are those who know the mysteries
of god.
—Blessed is he who hallows his life in the worship of
god, he whom the spirit of god possesseth, who is one
with those who belong to the holy body of god.
—Blessed are the dancers and those who are purified,
who dance on the hill in the holy dance of god.
—Blessed are they who keep the rite of Cybele the
Mother.
—Blessed are the thyrsus-bearers, those who wield in
their hands the holy wand of god.
—Blessed are those who wear the crown of the ivy of
god.
—Blessed, blessed are they: Dionysus is their God!
Euripides, Bacchae, 68
15 Chorus. —He is sweet upon the mountains. He drops to
the earth from the running packs.
He wears the holy fawn-skin. He hunts the wild goat and
Kills it.
He delights in the raw flesh.
He runs to the mountains of Phrygia, to the mountains of
Lydia he runs!
He is Bromius who leads us! Evohe!
—With milk the earth flows! It flows with wine! It runs
with the nectar of bees!
—Like frankincense in its fragrance is the blaze of the
torch he bears.
Flames float out from his trailing wand as he runs, as he
dances, kindling the stragglers, spurring with cries, and
his long curls stream to the wind!
—And he cries, as they cry, Evohe/—
On, Bacchae!
On, Bacchae!
Follow, glory of golden Tmolus, hymning god witha
rumble of drums, with a cry. Evohe! to the Evian god, with
a cry of Phrygian cries, when the holy flute like honey
plays the sacred song of those who go
to the mountain!
to the mountain!
—Then, in ecstasy, like a colt by its grazing mother,
the Bacchante runs with flying feet, she leaps!
Euripides, Bacchae, 135
16 Chorus.—Slow but unmistakable
the might of the gods moves on.
It punishes that man,
infatuate of soul
and hardened in his pride,
who disregards the gods.
The gods are crafty:
they lie in ambush
along step of time
to hunt the unholy.
Beyond the old beliefs,
no thought, no act shall go.
Small, small is the cost
to believe in this:
whatever is god is strong;
whatever long time has sanctioned,
that is a law forever;
the law tradition makes
is the law of nature.
Euripides, Bacchae, 882
17 Agathon. Love set in order the empire of the gods— the
love of beauty, as is evident, for with deformity Love has
no concern. In the days of old, as | began by saying,
dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were
ruled by Necessity; but now since the birth of Love, and
from the Love of the beautiful, has sprung every good in
heaven and earth.
Plato, Symposium, 197A
18 Socrates. Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence
of human things, and not of human beings? ... | wish,
men of Athens, that he would answer, and not be always
trying to get up an interruption. Did ever any man
believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-
playing, and not in flute-players? No, my friend; | will
answer to you and to the court, as you refuse to answer
for yourself. There is no man who ever did. But now
please to answer the nest question: Can a man believe in
spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or
demigods?
Meletus. He cannot.
How lucky | am to have extracted that answer, by the
assistance of the court! But then you swear in the
indictment that | teach and believe in divine or spiritual
agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate, |
believe in spiritual agencies,—so you say and swear in
the affidavit; and yet if | believe in divine beings, how
can | help believing in spirits or demigods;—must | not?
To be sure | must; and therefore | may assume that your
silence gives consent. Now what are spirits or demigods?
are they not either gods or the sons of gods?
Certainly they are.
But this is what | call the facetious riddle invented by
you: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you Say first
that | do not believe in gods, and then again that | do
believe in gods; that is, if | believe in demigods. For if the
demigods are the illegitimate sons of gods, whether by
the nymphs or by any other mothers, of whom they are
said to be the sons—what human being will ever believe
that there are no gods if they are the sons of gods? You
might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny
that of horses and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could
only have been intended by you to make trial of me. You
have put this into the indictment because you had
nothing real of which to accuse me. But no one who has a
particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you
that the same men can believe in divine and superhuman
things, and yet not believe that there are gods and
demigods and heroes.
Plato, Apology, 27A
19 Athenian Stranger. Of the stars too, and of the moon, and
of the years and months and seasons, must we not say in
like manner, that since a soul or souls having every sort
of excellence are the causes of all of them, those souls
are Gods, whether they are living beings and reside in
bodies, and in this way order the whole heaven, or
whatever be the place and mode of their existence;—and
will any one who admits all this venture to deny that all
things are full of Gods?
Cleinias. No one. Stranger, would be such a madman.
Plato, Laws, X, 899A
20 One difficulty which is as great as any has been
neglected both by modem philosophers and by their
predecessors—whether the principles of perishable and
those of imperishable things are the same or different. If
they are the same, how are some things perishable and
others imperishable, and for what reason? The school of
Hesiod and all the theologians thought only of what was
plausible to themselves, and had no regard to us. For,
asserting the first principles to be gods and born of gods,
they say that the beings which did not taste of nectar
and ambrosia became mortal: and clearly they are using
words which are familiar to themselves, yet what they
have said about the very application of these causes b
above our comprehension. For if the gods taste of nectar
and ambrosia for their pleasure, these are in no wise the
causes of their existence; and if they taste them to
maintain their existence, how can gods who need food be
eternal?—But into the subtleties of the mythologists it is
not worth our while to inquire seriously.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1000a5
21 We assume the gods to be above all other beings blessed
and happy; but what sort of actions must we assign to
them? Acts of justice? Will not the gods seem absurd if
they make contracts and return deposits, and so on? Acts
of a brave man, then, confronting dangers and running
risks because it is noble to do so? Or liberal acts? To
whom will they give? It will be strange if they are really to
have money or anything of the kind. And what would
their temperate acts be? Is not such praise tasteless,
since they have no bad appetites? If we were to run
through them all, the circumstances of action would be
found trivial and unworthy of gods. Still, every one
supposes that they live and therefore that they are
active; we cannot suppose them to sleep like Endymion,
Now if you take away from a living being action, and still
more production, what is left but contemplation?
Therefore the activity of Gk>d, which surpasses all others
in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human
activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must
be most of the nature of happiness.
Aristotle, Ethics, 1178b9
22 If you well apprehend and keep in mind these things,
nature free at once and rid of her haughty lords is seen to
do all things spontaneously of herself without the
meddling of the gods. For | appeal to the holy breasts of
the gods who in tranquil peace pass a calm time and an
unruffled existence, who can rule the sum, who hold in
his hand with controlling force the strong reins, of the
immeasurable deep? who can at once make all the
different heavens to roll and warm with ethereal fires all
the fruitful earths, or be present in all places at all times,
to bring darkness with clouds and shake with noise the
heaven's serene expanse, to hurl lightnings and often
throw down his own temples, and withdrawing into the
deserts there to spend his rage in practising his bolt
which often passes the guilty by and strikes dead the
innocent and unoffending?
Lucretius, Nature of Things, II
23 For soon as thy philosophy issuing from a godlike
intellect has begun with loud voice to proclaim the nature
of things, the terrors of the mind are dispelled, the walls
of the world part asunder, 1 see things in operation
throughout the whole void: the divinity of the gods is
revealed and their tranquil abodes which neither winds
do shake nor clouds drench with rains nor snow
congealed by sharp frosts harms with hoary fall: an ever
cloudless ether o’ercanopies them, and they laugh with
light shed largely round. Nature too supplies all their
wants and nothing ever impairs their peace of mind.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, III
24 This too you may not possibly believe, that the holy seats
of the gods exist in any parts of the world: the fine nature
of the gods far withdrawn from our senses is hardly seen
by the thought of the mind; and since it has ever eluded
the touch and stroke of the hands, it must touch nothing
which is tangible for us; for that cannot touch which does
not admit of being touched in turn. And therefore their
seats as well must be unlike our seats, fine, even as their
bodies are fine.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
25 We are told that there is no race in the world so
uncivilized or barbarous but that it has some intimation
of a belief in the gods. It is certain that many men
entertain wrong ideas about the gods. This results from a
corrupt nature. Nevertheless, all men hold to some divine
power and a divine nature, and this is not because of
some human agreement or convention. Nor is it a belief
established by rules or statutes. It is commonly accepted
that such a unanimity among the world’s races is
according to natural law.
Cicero, Disputations, |, 13
26 The gods have been portrayed by the poets as angry and
lustful. They have described for us the gods' wars,
battles, squabbles, and wounds; their hatreds, enmities,
quarrels; their births and deaths; their complaints and
sorrows; their unbridled passions; their adulteries and
imprisonments; their unions with humans and the birth of
mortal progeny from an immortal parent. These errors of
the poets may be classed with the monstrous teachings
of the astrologers and the insane mythology of Egypt, as
well as with popular theology, which is a mass of
inconsistency derived from ignorance. Anyone who thinks
about the unfounded and irrational nature of these
doctrines should regard Epicurus with reverence and rank
him among the gods about whom we are inquiring. He
alone perceived that the gods exist because nature
herself has imprinted a conception of them on the minds
of men.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 16
27 Velleius. We agree that the gods are supremely happy.
Since no one is happy without virtue, and virtue does not
exist apart from reason, and reason is only found in
human form, we must also assume that the gods possess
the form of men.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 18
28 Lucillius. lf some people interpret the will of certain
beings, naturally those beings themselves must exist.
There are people who interpret the will of the gods.
Therefore we must admit that the gods exist. But
someone may argue that not all prophecies come true.
Not all sick persons get well either, but that doesn’t
disqualify the practice of medicine. Omens of future
events are revealed by the gods. Men may not
understand these omens, but the fault is with the human
powers of inference, not with the nature of the gods.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II, 4
29 Gods are convenient to have, so let us concede their
existence,
Bring to their obsolete shrine plenty of incense and
wine.
Nor are they careless, aloof, calm in the semblance of
slumber:
Live an innocent life; godhead is certainly near.
Keep true faith, and return whatever is placed in your
keeping;
Keep your hands clean of blood; never indulge ina
fraud.
Ovid, Art of Love, |, 637
30 Pythagoras... conceived of the first principle of being as
transcending sense and passion, invisible and incorrupt,
and only to be apprehended by abstract intelligence. So
Numa forbade the Romans to represent God in the form
of man or beast, nor was there any painted or graven
image of a diety admitted amongst them for the space of
the first hundred and seventy years, all which time their
temples and chapels were kept free and pure from
images; to such baser objects they deemed it impious to
liken the highest, and all access to God impossible,
except by the pure act of the intellect. His sacrifices, also,
had great similitude to the ceremonial of Pythagoras, for
they were not celebrated with effusion of blood, but
consisted of flour, wine, and the least costly offerings.
Plutarch, Numa Pompilius
31 So dispassionate a temper [as Pericles’], a life so pure
and unblemished, in the height of power and place,
might well be called Olympian, in accordance with our
conceptions of the divine beings, to whom, as the natural
authors of all good and of nothing evil, we ascribe the
rule and government of the world. Not as the poets
represent, who, while confounding us with their ignorant
fancies, are themselves confuted by their own poems and
fictions, and call the place, indeed, where they say the
gods make their abode, a secure and quiet seat, free from
all hazards and commotions, untroubled with winds or
with clouds, and equally through all time illumined with a
soft serenity and a pure light as though such were a
home most agreeable for a blessed and immortal nature;
and yet, in the meanwhile, affirm that the gods
themselves are full of trouble and enmity and anger and
other passions, which no way become or belong to even
men that have any understanding.
Plutarch, Pericles
32 We cannot suppose that the divine beings actually and
literally turn our bodies and direct our hands and our feet
this way or that, to do what is right: it is obvious that
they must actuate the practical and elective element of
our nature, by certain initial occasions, by images
presented to the imagination, and thoughts suggested to
the mind, such either as to excite it to, or avert and
withhold it from, any particular course.
Plutarch, Coriolanus
33 The Gods take no thought for our happiness, only for our
punishment.
Tacitus, Historic |, 3
34 In truth [gods] do exist, and they do care for human
things, and they have put all the means in man’s power
to enable him not to fall into real evils.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II, 11
35 The least-known things are the fittest to be deified;
wherefore to make gods of ourselves, like antiquity,
passes the utmost bounds of feeble-mindedness. | would
even rather have followed those who worshiped the
serpent, the dog, and the ox; inasmuch as their nature
and being is less known to us, and we have more chance
to imagine what we please about those animals and
attribute extraordinary faculties to them. But to have
made gods of our condition, the imperfection of which we
should know; to have attributed to them desire, anger,
vengeances, marriages, generation, kinships, love and
jealousy, our limbs and our bones, our fevers and our
pleasures, our deaths, our burials—this must have come
from a marvelous intoxication of the human intelligence.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
36 Gloucester. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
Shakespeare, Lear, IV, i, 38
37 Florizel. The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them. Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellow’d; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain.
Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, IV, iv, 25
38 And for that part of religion which consisteth in opinions
concerning the nature of powers invisible, there is almost
nothing that has a name that has not been esteemed
amongst the Gentiles, in one place or another, a god or
devil; or by their poets feigned to be animated,
inhabited, or possessed by some spirit or other.
The unformed matter of the world was a god by the
name of Chaos.
The heaven, the ocean, the planets, the fire, the earth,
the winds, were so many gods.
Men, women, a bird, a crocodile, a calf, a dog, a snake,
an onion, a leek, were deified. Besides that, they filled
almost all places with spirits called demons: the plains,
with Pan and Panises, or Satyrs; the woods, with Fauns
and Nymphs; the sea, with Tritons and other Nymphs;
every river and fountain, with a ghost of his name and
with Nymphs; every house, with its Lares, or familiars;
every man, with his Genius; Hell, with ghosts and
spiritual officers, as Charon, Cerberus, and the Furies; and
in the night time, all places with /arvae, /emures, ghosts
of men deceased, and a whole kingdom of fairies and
bugbears. They have also ascribed divinity, and built
temples, to mere accidents and qualities; such as are
time, night, day, peace, concord, love, contention, virtue,
honour, health, rust, fever, and the like; which when they
prayed for, or against, they prayed to as if there were
ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and
letting fall or withholding that good, or evil, for or against
which they prayed. They invoked also their own wit, by
the name of Muses; their own ignorance, by the name of
Fortune; their own lust, by the name of Cupid; their own
rage, by the name Furies; their own privy members by
the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions to
incubi and succubae: insomuch as there was nothing
which a poet could introduce as a person in his poem
which they did not make either a god or a devil.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 12
39 What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they have,
who acknowledged and worshipped hundreds? Every
deity that they owned above one was an infallible
evidence of their ignorance of Him, and a proof that they
had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and
externity were excluded. To which, if we add their gross
conceptions of corporeity, expressed in their images and
representations of their deities; the amours, marriages,
copulations, lusts, quarrels, and other mean qualities
attributed by them to their gods; we shall have little
reason to think that the heathen world, i.e. the greatest
part of mankind, had such ideas of God in their minds as
he himself, out of care that they should not be mistaken
about him, was author of.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. |, Ill, 15
40 If they say that the variety of deities worshipped by the
heathen world were but figurative ways of expressing the
several attributes of that incomprehensible Being, or
several parts of his providence, | answer: what they might
be in the original | will not here inquire; but that they
were so in the thoughts of the vulgar | think nobody will
affirm.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. |, Ill, 15
41 You find certain phenomena in nature. You seek a cause
or author. You imagine that you have found him. You
afterwards become so enamoured of this offspring of your
brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must
produce something greater and more perfect than the
present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder.
You forget, that this superlative intelligence and
benevolence are entirely imaginary, or at least, without
any foundation in reason; and that you have no ground to
ascribe to him any qualities, but what you see he has
actually exerted and displayed in his productions. Let
your gods, therefore, O philosophers, be suited to the
present appearances of nature: and presume not to alter
these appearances by arbitrary suppositions, in order to
suit them to the attributes, which you so fondly ascribe to
your deities.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, XI, 106
42 The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his
national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different
religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a
dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant
journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles
of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The
thin texture of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with
various but not discordant materials. As soon as it was
allowed that sages and heroes, who had lived, or who had
died for the benefit of their country, were exalted toa
state of power and immortality, it was universally
confessed that they deserved, if not the adoration, at
least the reverence of all mankind. The deities of a
thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed, in
peace, their local and respective influence; nor could the
Roman who deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the
Egyptian who presented his offering to the beneficent
genius of the Nile. The visible powers of Nature, the
planets, and the elements, were the same throughout the
universe. The invisible governors of the moral world were
inevitably cast in a similar mould of fiction and allegory.
Every virtue, and even vice, acquired its divine
representative; every art and profession its patron, whose
attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were
uniformly derived from the character of their peculiar
votaries. A republic of gods of such opposite tempers and
interest required, in every system, the moderating hand
of a supreme magistrate, who, by the progress of
knowledge and flattery, was gradually invested with the
sublime perfections of an Eternal Parent, and an
Omnipotent Monarch. Such the mild spirit of antiquity,
that the nations were less attentive to the difference than
to the resemblance of their religious worship. The Greek,
the Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before their
respective altars, easily persuaded themselves, that
under various names, and with various ceremonies, they
adored the same deities.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I!
43 The deities of Olymipus, as they are painted by the
immortal bard, imprint themselves on the minds which
are the least addicted to superstitious credulity. Our
familiar knowledge of their names and characters, their
forms and attributes, seems to bestow on those airy
beings a real and substantial existence; and the pleasing
enchantment produces an imperfect and momentary
assent of the imagination to those fables which are the
most repugnant to our reason and experience.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXIII
44 The weakness of polytheism was, in some measure,
excused by the moderation of its claims; and the
devotion of the Pagans was not incompatible with the
most licentious scepticism.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXIII
45 |am not sure but | should betake myself in extremities to
the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my
country’s God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired
new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but
hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a
gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not
exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as
many a god of the Greeks. | should fear the infinite power
and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal hardly as yet
apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no sister Juno, no
Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me.... The
Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the
vices of men, but in many important respects essentially
of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his
pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and
his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo,
and his chosen daughter lambe; for the great god Pan is
not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of
all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, | am
most constant at his shrine.
Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
(Sunday)
46 That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as
anything so brief could be on so great a subject.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 3
20.7 Angels and Devils
Superhuman in the sense that they are superior to man but
not supernatural because, like man, they have natures
created by God, the angels (the bad angels, the devils or
demons, as well as the good) occupy a special place in the
Judeo-Christian cosmology that has only a faint analogy with
the role played by the demigods in other religions. In their
most frequent appearance in the Old Testament and the
New, they perform the function of messengers or emissaries
of the Lord; but, as other passages indicate, that is by no
means their only raison d’etre. They comprise, on the one
hand, the heavenly host, the celestial hierarchy, engaged in
the adoration of God; and, on the other, they are the
damned as well as the ministers of damnation in the nether
regions below.
We know, both from Scripture and from the poets, the
proper names of only a small number of the angels and
demons. The name most familiar to us is that of the fallen
Seraph, variously called Lucifer, Satan, or Mephistopheles,
who appears as the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Among
the good angels, we are acquainted by name only with
angels of a much lower rank, such as the archangels Michael
and Gabriel. Indeed, one of the most striking things we are
told about these creatures by Christian theologians is that
they are arranged in nine ranks or grades, the lowest being
the angels and archangels who act as guardians of
individual men or as messengers from God to man, the
highest being the cherubim and seraphim, whose prime
function is simply to adore their Creator and to praise him.
In three of the greatest poems of Western literature—in
Dante’s Divine Comedy, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, and in
Goethe’s Faust —angels and demons play leading roles.
Their portrayal in these poems, rather than their
appearances in the Bible or the theories about them
developed by the theologians, dominates our imagination.
In addition, it is in such poems as Milton’s Lycidas that we
are made aware of the mischievous and prankish fairies that
represent vestigial traces of the demons or devils of the
older pagan religions that Christianity long struggled to
replace. And in Pope’s charming Rape of the Lock, a whole
panoply of minor but nonetheless spiritual figures watch
over such things as the arrangement of tea tables and the
ordering of wardrobes.
As the reader will find, the picture of the angels and
demons given by the poets does not fully accord with the
analysis of their nature and behavior by the theologians. For
the poets, angels seem on the whole to be remarkably
human—although, of course, more beautiful, powerful, wise.
For the theologians, the angels are incorporeal substances,
pure spirits or intelligences, having an amazing set of
properties appropriate to such natures, by comparison with
which man is at best a superior animal. Among the many
things the reader will learn by examining the quotations
presented here from such works as the elaborate "Treatise on
Angels" in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, two in
particular will correct widely prevalent misimpressions. One
is that theologians were never in doubt about the number of
angels able to occupy a single point in space, such as the
head of a pin; the second is that the souls of the departed
who join the community of saints are not transformed into
angels, although they are "taken up into the angelic orders."
A third point is not documented because no theologian ever
doubted it: all angels are male.
1 Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that
do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his
word.
Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his,
that do his pleasure.
Psalm 103:20-21
2 So the prayers of them both were heard before the majesty
of the great God. And Raphael was sent to heal them
both, that is, to scale away the whiteness of Tobit’s eyes,
and to give Sara the daughter of Raguel for a wife to
Tobias the son of Tobit.
Tobit 3:16-17
3 Surely | will keep close nothing from you. For | said, It was
good to keep close the secret of a king, but that it was
honorable to reveal the works of God. Now therefore,
when thou didst pray, and Sara thy daughter-in-law, | did
bring the remembrance of your prayers before the Holy
One: and when thou didst bury the dead, | was with thee
likewise. And when thou didst not delay to rise up, and
leave thy dinner, to go and cover the dead, thy good
deed was not hid from me: but | was with thee. And now
God hath sent me to heal thee and Sara thy daughter-in-
law. |am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which
present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out
before the glory of the Holy One.
Then they were both troubled, and fell upon their
faces: for they feared. But he said unto them, Fear not, for
it shall go well with you; praise God therefore. For not of
any favor of mine, but by the will of our God | came;
wherefore praise him for ever. All these days | did appear
unto you; but | did neither eat nor drink, but ye did see a
vision. Now therefore give God thanks: for | go up to him
that sent me; but write all things which are done ina
book. And when they arose, they saw him no more. Then
they confessed the great and wonderful works of God,
and how the angel of the Lord had app>eared unto them.
Tobit 12:11-22
4 Athenian Stranger. There is a tradition of the happy life of
mankind in days when all things were spontaneous and
abundant. And of this the reason is said to have been as
follows:—Cronos knew what we ourselves were declaring,
that no human nature invested with supreme power is
able to order human affairs and not overflow with
insolence and wrong. Which reflection led him to appoint
not men but demigods, who are of a higher and more
divine race, to be the kings and rulers of our cities; he did
as we do with flocks of sheep and other tame animals. For
we do not appoint oxen to be the lords of oxen, or goats
of goats; but we ourselves are a superior race and rule
over them. In like manner God, in his love of mankind,
placed over us the demons, who are a superior race, and
they with great ease and pleasure to themselves, and no
less to us, taking care of us and giving us peace and
reverence and order and justice never failing, made the
tribes of men happy and united.
Plato, Laws, IV, 713A
5 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye
cannot hear my word.
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your
father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,
and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in
him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for
he is a liar, and the father of it.
And because | tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if | say the
truth, why do ye not believe me?
He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore
hear them not, because ye are not of God.
John 8:43-47
6 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as
a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may
devour.
| Peter 5:8
7 And | beheld, and | heard the voice of many angels round
about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the
number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand,
and thousands of thousands.
Revelation 5:11
8 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his
angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found
anymore in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent,
called the Devil, and Satan, which deceived! the whole
world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were
cast out with him.
Revelation 12:7-9
9 And | saw an angel come down from heaven, having the
key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent,
which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand
years.
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up,
and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the
nations no more, till the thousand years should be
fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little
season....
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall
be loosed out of his prison,
And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in
the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather
them together to battle: the number of whom is as the
sand of the sea.
Revelation 20:1-8
10 No credence whatever is to be given to the opinion of
Apuleius and the other philosophers of the same school,
namely, that the demons act as messengers and
interpreters between the gods and men to carry our
petitions from us to the gods, and to bring back to us the
help of the gods. On the contrary, we must believe them
to be spirits most eager to inflict harm, utterly alien from
righteousness, swollen with pride, pale with envy, subtle
in deceit; who dwell indeed in this air as in a prison, in
keeping with their own character, because, cast down
from the height of the higher heaven, they have been
condemned to dwell in this element as the just reward of
irretrievable transgression.
Augustine, City of God, VIII, 22
11 The demons... have knowledge without charity, and are
thereby so inflated or proud that they crave those divine
honours and religious services which they know to be due
to the true God, and still, as far as they can, exact these
from all over whom they have influence.
Augustine, City of God, IX, 20
12 The good angels... hold cheap all that knowledge of
material and transitory things which the demons are so
proud of possessing—not that they are ignorant of these
things, but because the love of God, whereby they are
sanctified, is very dear to them, and because, in
comparison of that not merely immaterial but also
unchangeable and ineffable bcauty» with the holy love of
which they are inflamed, they despise all things which
are beneath it and all that is not it, that they may with
every good thing that is in them enjoy that good which is
the source of their goodness. And therefore they have a
more certain knowledge even of those temporal and
mutable things, because they contemplate their
principles and causes in the word of God, by which the
world was made—those causes by which one thing is
approved, another rejected, and all arranged. But the
demons do not behold in the wisdom of God these
eternal, and, as it were, cardinal causes of things
temporal, but only foresee a larger part of the future than
men do, by reason of their greater acquaintance with the
signs which are hidden from us. Sometimes, too, it is their
own intentions they predict. And, finally, the demons are
frequently, the angels never, deceived. For it is one thing,
by the aid of things temporal and changeable, to
conjecture the changes that may occur in time, and to
modify such things by one’s own will and faculty—and
this is to a certain extent permitted to the demons—it is
another thing to foresee the changes of times in the
eternal and immutable laws of God, which live in His
wisdom, and to know the will of God, the most infallible
and powerful of all causes, by participating in His spirit;
and this is granted to the holy angels by a just discretion.
And thus they are not only eternal, but blessed. And the
good wherein they are blessed is God, by Whom they
were created. For without end they enjoy the
contemplation and participation of Him.
Augustine, City of God, IX, 22
13 What Catholic Christian does not know that no new devil
will ever arise among the good angels, as he knows that
this present devil will never again return into the
fellowship of the good?
Augustine, City of God, XI, 13
14 Though in the order of nature angels rank above men,
yet, by the scale of justice, good men are of greater value
than bad angels.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 16
15 That certain angels sinned, and were thrust down to the
lowest parts of this world, where they are, as it were,
incarcerated till their final damnation in the day of
judgment, the Apostle Peter very plainly declares, when
he sa>'s that "God spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of
darkness to be reserved into judgment." Who, then, can
doubt that God, either in foreknowledge or in act,
separated between these and the rest? And who will
dispute that the rest are justly called "light"? For even we
who are yet living by faith, hoping only and not yet
enjoying equality with them, are already called "light" by
the apostle: "For ye were sometimes darkness, but now
are ye light in the Lord." But as for these apostate angels,
all who understand or believe them to be worse than
unbelieving men are well aware that they are called
"darkness." Wherefore, though light and darkness are to
be taken in their literal signification in these passages of
Genesis in which it is said, "God said. Let there be light,
and there was light," and "God divided the light from the
darkness," yet, for our part, we understand these two
societies of angels—the one enjoying God, the other
swelling with pride; the one to whom it is said, "Praise ye
Him, all His angels," the other whose prince says, "All
these things will | give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and
worship me"; the one blazing with the holy love of God,
the other reeking with the unclean lust of self-
advancement. And since, as it is written, "God resisteth
the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble," we may
say, the one dwelling in the heaven of heavens, the other
cast thence, and raging through the lower regions of the
air; the one tranquil in the brightness of piety, the other
tempest-tossed with beclouding desires; the one, at
God's pleasure, tenderly succouring, justly avenging—the
other, set on by its own pride, boiling with the lust of
subduing and hurting; the one the minister of God’s
goodness to the utmost of their good pleasure, the other
held in by God’s power from doing the harm it would; the
former laughing at the latter when it does good
unwillingly by its persecutions, the latter envying the
former when it gathers in its pilgrims. These two angelic
communities, then, dissimilar and contrary to one
another, the one both by nature good and by will upright,
the other also good by nature but by will depraved, as
they are exhibited in other and more explicit passages of
holy writ, so | think they are spoken of in this book of
Genesis under the names of "light" and "darkness".
Augustine, City of God, XI, 33
16 That the contrary propensities in good and bad angels
have arisen, not from a difference in their nature and
origin, since God, the good Author and Creator of all
essences, created them both, but from a difference in
their wills and desires, it is impossible to doubt. While
some steadfastly continued in that which was the
common good of all, namely, in God Himself, and in His
eternity, truth, and love; others, being enamoured rather
of their own power, as if they could be their own good,
lapsed to this private good of their own, from that higher
and beatific good which was common to all, and,
bartering the lofty dignity of eternity for the inflation of
pride, the most assured verity for the slyness of vanity,
uniting love for factious partisanship, they became proud,
deceived, envious. The cause, therefore, of the
blessedness of the good is adherence to God. And so the
cause of the others’ misery will be found in the contrary,
that is, in their not adhering to God.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 1
17 Though we cannot call the devil a fornicator or drunkard,
or ascribe to him any sensual indulgence (though he is
the secret instigator and prompter of those who sin in
these ways), yet he is exceedingly proud and envious.
And this viciousness has so possessed him, that on
account of it he is reserved in chains of darkness to
everlasting punishment. Now these vices, which have
dominion over the devil, the apostle attributes to the
flesh, which certainly the devil has not. For he says
“hatred, variance, emulations, strife, envying" are the
works of the flesh; and of all these evils pride is the origin
and head, and it rules in the devil though he has no flesh.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 3
18 It is He Who, when He foreknew that man would in his
turn sin by abandoning God and breaking His law, did not
deprive him of the power of freewill, because He at the
same time foresaw what good He Himself would bring out
of the evil, and how from this mortal race, deservedly and
justly condemned, He would by His grace collect, as now
He does, a people so numerous, that He thus fills up and
repairs the blank made by the fallen angels, and that
thus that beloved and heavenly city is not defrauded of
the full number of its citizens, but perhaps may even
rejoice in a still more overflowing population.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 1
19 The angels of God are our angels, as Christ is God’s and
also ours. They are God’s, because they have not
abandoned Him; they are ours, because we are their
fellow-citizens.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 29
20 If every one to whom we ought to show, or who ought to
show to us, the offices of mercy is by right called a
neighbour, it is manifest that the command to love our
neighbour embraces the holy angels also, seeing that so
great offices of mercy have been performed by them on
our behalf.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 30
21 Angels need an assumed body, not for themselves, but
on our account, that by conversing familiarly with men
they may give evidence of that intellectual
companionship which men expect to have with them in
the life to come. Moreover that angels assumed bodies
under the Old Law was a figurative indication that the
Word of God would take a human body, because all the
apparitions in the Old Testament were ordered to that one
whereby the Son of God appeared in the flesh.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 51, 2
22 There are not two angels in the same place. The reason of
this is because it is impossible for two complete causes to
be the causes immediately of one and the same thing.
This is evident in every genus of causes; for there is one
proximate form of one thing, and there is one proximate
mover, although there may be several remote movers.
Nor can it be objected that several individuals may row a
boat, since no one of them is a perfect mover, because no
one man’s strength is sufficient for moving the boat,
while all together are as one mover, in so far as their
united strengths all combine in producing the one
movement. Hence, since the angel is said to be in one
place by the fact that his power touches the place
immediately by way of a perfect container... there can be
but one angel in one place.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 52, 3
23 Men cannot know future things except in their causes, or
by God’s revelation. The angels know the future in the
same way, but much more acutely.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 57, 3
24 Angels and intellectual souls are incorruptible by the
very fact of their having a nature whereby they are
capable of truth. But they did not possess this nature
from eternity. It was bestowed upon them when God
Himself willed it. Consequently it does not follow that the
angels existed from eternity-
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 61, 2
25 The demons do not delight in the obscenities of the sins
of the flesh as if they themselves were disposed to carnal
pleasures; it is wholly through envy that they take
pleasure in all sorts of human sins, so far as these are
hindrances to a man’s good.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 63, 2
26 The demons know a truth in three ways: first of all by the
subtlety of their nature; for although they are darkened
by privation of the light of grace, yet they are
enlightened by the light of their intellectual nature.
Secondly, by revelation from the holy angels; for while
not agreeing with them in conformity of will, they do
agree, nevertheless, by their likeness of intellectual
nature, according to which they can accept what is
manifested by others. Thirdly, they know by long
experience; not as deriving it from the senses, but when
the likeness of their innate intelligible species is
completed in individual things, they know some things as
present, which they previously did not know would come
to pass.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 64, 1
27 Both a good and a bad angel by their own natural power
can move the human imagination. This may be explained
as follows.... Corporeal naturec obeys the angel as
regards local movement, so that whatever can be caused
by the local movement of bodies is subject to the natural
power of the angels. Now- it is manifest that imaginative
apparitions are sometimes caused in us by the local
movement of animal spirits and humours. Hence Aristotle
says, when assigning the cause of visions in dreams, that
“when an animal sleeps, the blood descends in
abundance to the sensitive principle, and movements
descend with it"; that is, the impressions left from the
movements of sensible things, which movements are
preserved in the animal spirits, "and move the sensitive
principle," so that a certain appearance ensues, as if the
sensitive principle were being then changed by the
external objects themselves. Indeed, the disturbance of
the spirits and humours may be so great that such
appearances may even occur to those who are awake, as
is seen in mad people, and the like. So, as this happens
by a natural disturbance of the humours, and sometimes
also by the will of man who voluntarily imagines what he
previously experienced, so also the same may be done by
the power of a good or a bad angel, sometimes with
alienation from the bodily senses, sometimes without
such alienation.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 111, 3
28 Each man has a guardian angel appointed to him. The
reason for this is that the guardianship of angels belongs
to the execution of Divine Providence concerning men.
But God’s providence acts differently as regards men and
as regards other corruptible creatures, for they are
related differently to incorruptibility. For men are not only
incorruptible in the common species, but also in the
proper forms of each individual, which are the rational
souls, which cannot be said of other incorruptible things.
Now it is manifest that the providence of God is chiefly
exercised towards what remains for ever; but as regards
things which pass away, the providence of God acts so as
to order them to the things which are perpetual. Thus the
providence of God is related to each man as it is to every
genus or species of things corruptible. But, according to
Gregory, "the different orders are assigned to the
different genera of things, for instance the Powers to
coerce the demons, the Virtues to work miracles in things
corporeal." And it is probable that the different species
are presided over by different angels of the same order.
Hence it is also reasonable to suppose that different
angels are appointed to the guardianship of different
men.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 113, 2
29 The wicked angels assail men in two ways. First, by
instigating them to sin. And thus they are not sent by
God to assail us, but are sometimes permitted to do so
according to God's just judgments. But sometimes their
assault is a punishment to man. And thus they are sent
by God, as the lying spirit was sent to punish Achab, King
of Israel.... For punishment is referred to God as its first
author. Nevertheless the demons who are sent to punish,
do so with an intention other than that for which they are
sent; for they punish from hatred or envy, although they
are sent by God on account of His justice.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 114, 1
30 The devil is the occasional and indirect cause of all our
sins in so far as he induced the first man to sin, by reason
of whose sin human nature is so infected that we are all
prone to sin, even as the burning of wood might be
imputed to the man who dried the wood so as to make it
easily inflammable. He is not, however, the direct cause
of all the sins of men, as though each were the result of
his suggestion.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 80, 4
31 And now there came, upon the turbid waves, a crash of
fearful sound, at which the shores both trembled;
a sound as of a wind, impetuous for the adverse heats,
which smites the forest without any stay;
shatters off the boughs, beats down, and s\veeps
away; dusty in front, it goes superb, and makes the wild
beasts and the shepherds flee.
He loosed my eyes, and said; "Now turn thy nerve of
vision on that ancient foam, there where the smoke is
harshest."
As frogs, before their enemy the serpent, ran all
asunder through the water, till each squats upon the
bottom:
so i Saw more than a thousand ruined spirits flee
before one, who passed the Stygian ferry with soles
unwet.
He waved that gross air from his countenance, often
moving his left hand before him; and only of that trouble
seemed he weary.
Well did | perceive that he was a Messenger of
Heaven; and | turned to the Master [Virgil]; and he made
a sign that | should stand quiet, and bow down to him.
Ah, how full he seemed to me of indignation! He
reached the gate, and with a wand opened it: for there
was no resistance.
"O outcasts of Heaven! race despised!" began he,
upon the horrid threshold, "why dwells this insolence in
you?
Why spurn ye at that Will, whose object never can be
frustrated, and which often has increased your pain?
What profits it to butt against the Fates? Your
Cerberus, if ye remember, still bears his chin and his
throat peeled for doing so."
Then he returned by the filthy way, and spake no word
to us; but looked like one whom other care urges and
incites than that of those who stand before him.
Dante, Inferno, IX, 64
32 Friar. | heard once at Bologna many of the Devil’s vices
told; amongst which, | heard that he is a liar and the
father of lies.
Dante, Inferno, XXIII, 142
33 The Emperor of the dolorous realm {Satan], from mid
breast stood forth out of the ice; and | m size am liker to a
giant,
than the giants are to his arms: mark now how great
that whole must be, which corresponds to such a part.
If he was once as beautiful as he is ugly now, and
lifted up his brows against his Maker, well may all
affliction come from him.
Oh how great a marvel seemed it to me, when | saw
three faces on his head! The one in front, and it was fiery
red;
the others were two, that were adjoined to this, above
the very middle of each shoulder; and they were joined
[at] his crest;
and the right seemed between white and yellow; the
left was such to look on, as they who come from where
the Nile [descends].
Under each there issued forth two mighty wings, of
size befitting such a bird; sea-sails | never saw so broad.
No plumes had they; but were in form and texture like
a bat’s: and he was flapping them, so that three winds
went forth from him
Thereby Cocytus all was frozen; with six eyes he wept,
and down three chins gushed tears and bloody foam.
In every mouth he champed a sinner with his teeth,
like a brake; so that he thus kept three of them in
torment.
To the one in front, the biting was nought, compared
with the tearing: for at times the back of him remained
quite stript of skin.
"That soul up there, which suffers greatest
punishment," said the Master [Virgil], "is Judas Iscariot,
he who has his head within, and outside plies his legs.
Of the other two, who have their heads beneath, that
one, who hangs from the black visage is Brutus: see how
he writhes himself, and utters not a word;
and the other is Cassius, who seems so stark of limb.
But night is reascending; and now must we depart: for we
have seen the whole."
Dante, Inferno, XXXIV, 28
34 [There are three hierarchies of angels and] each
hierarchy has three orders, so that the Church holds and
affirms nine orders of spiritual creatures. The first is that
of the Angels, the second of the Arch-angels, the third of
the Thrones; and these three orders make the first
hierarchy; not first in order of nobility, nor in order of
creation (for the others are more noble, and all were
created at once), but first in the order of our ascent to
their loftiness. Next come the Dominations, afterwards
the Virtues, then the Principalities; and these make the
second hierarchy. Above these are the Powers, and the
Cherubim, and above all are the Seraphim; and these
make the third hierarchy, And the number of the
hierarchies and that of the orders constitutes a most
potent system of their speculation. For inasmuch as the
divine majesty is in three persons, which have one
substance, they may be contemplated in three-fold
manner. For the supreme power of the Father may be
contemplated; and this it is that the first hierarchy, to wit
first in nobility and last in our enumeration, gazes upon;
and the supreme wisdom of the Son may be
contemplated; and this it is that the second hierarchy
gazes upon; and the supreme and most burning love of
the Holy Spirit may be contemplated; and this it is that
the third hierarchy gazes upon: the which being nearest
unto us gives us of the gifts which it receiveth. And
inasmuch as each person of the divine Trinity may be
considered in three-fold manner, there are in each
hierarchy three orders diversely contemplating. The
Father may be considered without respect to aught save
himself; and this contemplation the Seraphim do use,
who see more of the first cause than any other angelic
nature. The Father may be considered according as he
hath relation to the Son, to wit how he is parted from him
and how united with him, and this do the Cherubim
contemplate. The Father may further be considered
according as from him proceeded! the Holy Spirit, and
how he is parted from him and how united with him; and
this contemplation the Powers do use. And in like fashion
may there be speculation of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Wherefore it behoves that there be nine manners
of contemplating spirits to gaze upon the light which
alone seeth itself completely. And here is a word which
may not be passed in silence. 1 say that out of all these
orders some certain were lost so soon as they were
created, | take it to the number of a tenth part; for the
restoration of which human nature was afterward created.
Dante, Convivio, Il, 6
35 Death has been introduced into the world through the
devil’s envy, and on this account the devil is called the
author of death. For what else does Satan do than seduce
from true religion, provoke sedition, cause wars,
pestilence, etc., and bring about every evil?
Luther, Table Talk, 1379
36 The acknowledgment of angels is needful in the church.
Therefore godly preachers should teach them logically.
First, they should show what angels are, namely, spiritual
creatures without bodies. Secondly, what manner of
spirits they are, namely good spirits and not evil; and
here evil spirits must also be spoken of, not created evil
by God, but made so by their rebellion against God, and
their consequent fall; this hatred began in Paradise, and
will continue and remain against Christ and his church to
the world’s end. Thirdly, they must speak touching their
function, which... is to present a mirror of humility to
godly Christians, in that such pure and perfect creatures
as the angels do minister unto us, poor and wretched
people, in household and temporal policy, and in religion.
They are our true and trusty servants, performing offices
and works that one poor miserable mendicant would be
ashamed to do for another. In this sort ought we to teach
with care, method, and attention, touching the sweet and
loving angels. Whoso speaks of them not in the order
prescribed by logic, may speak of many irrelevant things,
but little or nothing to edification.
The angels are near to us, to those creatures whom by
God’s command they are to preserve, to the end we
receive no hurt of the devil, though, withal, they behold
God's face, and stand before him. Therefore when the
devil intends to hurt us, then the loving holy angels resist
and drive him away; for the angels have long arms, and
although they stand before the face and in the presence
of God and his son Christ, yet they are hard by and about
us in those affairs, which by God we are commanded to
take in hand. The devil is also near and about us,
incessantly tracking our steps, in order to deprive us of
our lives, our saving health, and salvation. But the holy
angels defend us from him, insomuch that he is not able
to work us such mischief as willingly he would.
Luther, Table Talk, H570-571
37 When Satan will not leave off tempting thee, then bear
with patience, hold on hand and foot, nor faint, as if there
would be no end thereof, but stand courageously, and
attend God’s leisure, Knowing that what the devil cannot
accomplish by his sudden and powerful assaults, he
thinks to gain by craft, by persevering to vex and tempt
thee, thereby to make thee faint and weary, as in the
Psalm is noted: "Many a time have they afflicted me from
my youth up; yet they have not prevailed against me,"
etc. But be fully assured, that in this sport with the devil,
God, with all his holy angels, takes delight and joy; and
assure thyself, also, that the end thereof will be blessed
and happy, which thou shalt certainly find to thy
everlasting comfort.
Luther, Table Talk, H660
38 We are frequently informed in the Scripture, that angels
are celestial spirits, whose ministry and service God uses
(or the execution of whatever he has decreed; and hence
this name is given to them, because God employs them
as messengers to manifest himself to men. Other
appellations also, by which they are distinguished, are
derived from a similar cause. They are called Hosts,
because, as life-guards, they surround their prince,
aggrandizing his majesty, and rendering it conspicuous;
and, like soldiers, are ever attentive to the signal of their
leader; and are so prepared for the performance of his
commands, that he has no sooner signified his will than
they are ready for the work, or rather are actually
engaged in it. Such a representation of the throne of God
is exhibited in the magnificent descriptions of the
Prophets, but particularly of Daniel; where he says, when
God had ascended the Judgment-seat, that "thousand
thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times
ten thousand stood before him." Since by their means the
Lord wonderfully exerts and declares the power and
strength of his hand, thence they are denominated
Powers. Because by them he exercises and administers
his government in the world, therefore they are called
sometimes Principalities, sometimes Powers, sometimes
Dominions. Lastly, because the glory of God in some
measure resides in them, they have also, for this reason,
the appellation of Thrones; although on this last name |
would affirm nothing, because a different interpretation is
equally or even more suitable. But, omitting this name,
the Holy Spirit often uses the former ones, to magnify the
dignity of the angelic ministry. Nor, indeed, is it right that
no honour should be paid to those instruments, by whom
God particularly exhibits the presence of his power.
Moreover, they are more than once called gods; because
in their ministry, as in a mirror, they give us an imperfect
representation of Divinity. Though | am pleased with the
interpretation of the old writers, on those passages where
the Scripture records the appearance of an angel of God
to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and others, that Christ was
that angel, yet frequently, where mention is made of
angels in general, this name is given to them. Nor should
this surprise us; for, if that honour be given to princes
and governors, because, in the performance of their
functions, they are vicegerents of God, the supreme King
and Judge, there is far greater reason for its being paid to
angels, in whom the splendour of the Divine glory is far
more abundantly displayed.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, |, 14
39 When Satan is called the god and prince of this world,
the strong man armed, the prince of the power of the air,
a roaring lion, these descriptions only tend to make us
more cautious and vigilant, and better prepared to
encounter him.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, |, 14
40 Having been previously warned that we are perpetually
threatened by an enemy, and an enemy desperately bold
and extremely strong, skilled in every artifice,
indefatigable in diligence and celerity, abundantly
provided with all kinds of weapons, and most expert in
the science of war, let us make it the grand object of our
attention, that we suffer not ourselves to be oppressed
with slothfulness and inactivity, but, on the contrary,
arousing and collecting all our courage, be ready fora
vigorous resistance; and as this warfare is terminated
only by death, let us encourage ourselves to
perseverance.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, |, 14
41 They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward,
And their bright squadrons round about us plant;
And all for love, and nothing for reward;
O why should hevcnly God to men have such regard?
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Bk. II, VIII, 2
42 Puck. | am that merry wanderer of the night.
1 jest to Oberon and make him smile
When | a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk | in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips | bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip | from her bum, down topples she,
And "tailor" cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, |, 43
43 Puck. |'ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty
minutes.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, i, 175
44 Titania. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs
And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes,
To have my love to bed and to arise;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.
Shakespeare, Midsummer-Night's Dream, III, i, 167
45 Antonio. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I, Ili, 99
46 Marcellas. Tis gone! [Ex/t Ghost. ]
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable.
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
Bernardo. \t was about to speak, when the cock crew.
Horatio. And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. | have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and, at his warning
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, i, 142
47 Hamlet. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, iv, 39
48 Hamlet. The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ti, 628
49 Banquo. And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, iii, 123
50 Malcolm. Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, iti, 22
51 Caliban. All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
And yet | needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ the mire,
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid ’em; but
For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me
And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am |
All wound with adders who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.
Shakespeare, Tempest, II, ii, 1
52 Prospero. Yc elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and
groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, | have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have | given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have | made shake and by the spurs pluck’d up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
| here abjure, and, when | have required
Some heavenly music, which even now | do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
Shakespeare, Tempest, V, I, 34
53 Ariel. Where the bee sucks, there suck I.
In a cowslip’s bell | lie;
There | couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back 1 do fly After summer merrily.
Merrily, Merrily shall | live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Shakespeare, Tempest, V, I, 88
54 At the round earths imagin’d corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soulcs.
Donne, Holy Sonnet VII
55 By the name of angel is signified, generally, a
messenger; and most often a messenger of God: and by a
messenger of God is signified anything that makes known
His extraordinary presence; that is to say, the
extraordinary manifestation of His power, especially by a
dream or vision.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 34
56 The kingdom of darkness ... is nothing else but a
confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over
men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and
erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both
of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for
the kingdom of God to come.
Hobbes, Leviathan, IV, 44
57 Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat,
She was pincht, and pull’d she sed,
And he by Friars Lanthorn led
Tells how the drudging Goblin swet,
To ern his Cream-bowle duly set,
When in one night, ere glimps of morn.
His shadowy Flalc hath thresh’d the Corn
That ten day-labourers could not end.
Milton, L'Allegro, 100
58 There the companions of his fall, o’rewhelm’d
With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and weltering by bis side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and nam’d
Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heav’n call’d Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
If thou beest he; But O how fall’n! how chang’d
From him, who in the happy Realms of Light
Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 76
59 So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
Chain’d on the burning Lake, nor ever thence
Had ris’n or heav’d his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-mling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enrag’d might see
How all his malice sens’d but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shewn
On Man by him seduc’t, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour’d.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 209
60 Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their Essence pure,
Not ti’d or manacl’d with joynt or limb.
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose
Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aerie purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfill.
Milton, Paradise Lost, 1, 423
61 Neither Man nor Angel can discern
Hypocrisie, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heav’n and Earth.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 682
62 Adam. Nor think, though men were none,
That heav’n would want spectators, God want praise;
Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:
All these with ceasless praise his works behold
Both day and night.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 675
63 Satan with his Powers
Farr was advanc’t on winged speed, an Host
Innumerable as the Starrs of Night,
Or Starrs of Morning, Dew-drops, which the Sun
Impearls on every leaf and every’ flouer.
Regions they pass’d, the mightie Regencies
Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones
In thir triple Degrees, Regions to which
All thy Dominion, Adam, is no more
Then what this Garden is to all the Earth,
And all the Sea, from one entire globose
Stretcht into Longitude; which having pass’d
At length into the limits of the North
They came, and Satan to his Royal seat
High on a Hill, far blazing, as a Mount
Rais’d on a Mount, with Pyramids and Towrs
From Diamond Quarries hew’n, & Rocks of Gold,
The Palace of great Lucifer, (so call
That Structure in the Dialect of men
Interpreted) which not long after, hee
Affecting all equality with God,
In imitation of that Mount whereon
Messiah was declar’d in sight of Heav’n,
The Mountain of the Congregation call’d;
For thither he assembl’d all his Train,
Pretending so commanded to consult
About the great reception of thir King,
Thither to come, and with calumnious Art
Of counterfeted truth thus held thir ears.
Thrones, Dominations, Princedomes, Vertues, Powers,
If these magnific Titles yet remain
Not meerly titular, since by Decree
Another now hath to himself ingross’t
All Power, and us eclipst under the name
Of King anointed, for whom all this haste
Of midnight march, and hurried meeting here,
This onely to consult how we may best
With what may be devis’d of honours new
Receive him coming to receive from us
Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile,
Too much to one, but double how endur’d,
To one and to his image now proclaim’d?
But what if better counsels might erect
Our minds and teach us to cast off this Yoke?
Will ye submit your necks, and chuse to bend
The supple knee? ye will not, if | trust
To know ye right, or if ye know your selves
Natives and Sons of Heav’n possest before
By none, and if not equal all, yet free,
Equally free; for Orders and Degrees
Jarr not with liberty, but well consist.
Who can in reason then or right assume
Monarchic over such as live by right
His equals, if in power and splendor less,
In freedome equal? or can introduce
Law and Edict on us, who without law
Erre not, much less for this to be our Lord,
And look for adoration to th’ abuse
Of those Imperial Titles which assert
Our being ordain’d to govern, not to serve?
Milton, Paradise Lost, V, 740
64 Raphael. The sword
Of Michael from the Armoric of God
Was giv’n him temperd so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheere, nor staid,
But with swift wheele reverse, deep entring shar’d
All his right side; then Satan first knew pain,
And writh’d him to and fro convolv’d; so sore
The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Pass’d through him, but th’ Ethereal substance clos’d
Not long divisible, and from the gash
A stream of Nectarous humor issuing flow’d
Sanguin, such as Celestial Spirits may bleed.
And all his Armour staind ere while so bright.
Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 320
65 God. Because thou hast done this, thou art accurst
Above all Cattel, each Beast of the Field;
Upon thy Belly groveling thou shah goe,
And dust shah eat all the days of thy Life.
Between Thee and the Woman | will put
Enmitie, and between thine and her Seed;
Her Seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel.
Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 175
66 It is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the
tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be the
Angels’ Ministry at the end of mortal things.
Milton, Areopagitica
67 Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of
the way, and said, | am void of fear in this matter, prepare
thy self to die, for | swear by my Infernal Den, that thou
shalt go no further, here will | spill thy soul; and with that,
he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a
Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so
prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for
he saw ‘twas time to bestir him; and Apol/yon as fast
made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the
which, nonwithstanding all that Christian could do to
avoid it, Apo//yon wounded him in his head, his hand and
foot; this made Christian give a little back; Apo//yon
therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again
took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This
sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till
Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that
Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow
weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to
gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave
him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew
out of his hand. Then said Apol/yon, | am sure of thee
now; and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so
that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would
have it, while Apo//yon was fetching of his last blow,
thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian
nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it,
saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when |
fall, | shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust,
which made him give back, as one that had received his
mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him
again, saying. Nay, in all these things we are more than
Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that,
Apollyon spread forth his Dragon’s wings, and sped him
away, that Christian saw him no more.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, |
68 It is not impossible to conceive, nor repugnant to reason,
that there may be many species of spirits, as much
separated and diversified one from another by distinct
properties whereof we have no ideas, as the species of
sensible things are distinguished one from another by
qualities which we know and observe in them. That there
should be more species of intelligent creatures above us,
than there are of sensible and material below us, is
probable to me from hence: that in all the visible
corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. Ill, VI, 12
69 Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed,
To Maids alone and Children are revealed:
What though no credit doubting Wits may give?
The Fair and Innocent shall still believe.
Know, then, unnumbered Spirits round thee fly,
The light Militia of the lower sky:
These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o’er the Box, and hover round the Ring.
Pope, The Rape of the Lock, I, 37
70 The Sprites of fiery Termagants in Flame
Mount up, and take a Salamander’s name.
Soft yielding minds to Water glide away,
And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental Tea.
The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of mischief still on Earth to roam.
The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair.
And sport and flutter in the fields of Air.
Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste
Rejects mankind, is by some Sylph embraced:
For Spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.
What guards the purity of melting Maids,
In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades,
Safe from the treach’rous friend, the daring spark,
The glance by day, the whisper in the dark,
When kind occasion prompts their warm desires.
When music softens, and when dancing fires?
Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,
Though Honour is the word with Men below.
Pope, The Rape of the Lock, I, 59
71 But now secure the painted vessel glides,
The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides:
While melting music steals upon the sky,
And softened sounds along the waters die;
Smooth flow the waves, the Zephyrs gently play,
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.
All but the Sylph—with careful thoughts opprest,
Th’ impending woe sat heavy on his breast.
He summons strait his Denizens of air;
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:
Soft o’er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe,
That seemed but Zephyrs to the train beneath.
Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold,
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light,
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,
Thin glitt’ring textures of the filmy dew,
Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes,
While every beam new transient colours flings,
Colours that change whene’er they wave their wings.
Pope, The Rape of the Lock, II, 47
72 This day, black Omens threat the brightest Fair,
That e’er deserved a watchful spirit’s care;
Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight;
But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law.
Or some frail China jar receive a flaw;
Or stain her honour or her new brocade;
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade;
Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball;
Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall.
Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair:
The flutt’ring fan be Zephyretta’s care;
The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;
And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine;
Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav’rite Lock;
Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.
To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note.
We trust th’ important charge, the Petticoat:
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale;
Form a strong line about the silver bound,
And guard the wide circumference around.
Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o’ertake his sins,
Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin’s eye:
Gums and Pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
Or Alum styptics with contracting power
Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower:
Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling Mill,
In fumes of burning Chocolate shall glow,
And tremble at the sea that froths below!
He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend;
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend;
Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair;
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear:
With beating hearts the dire event they wait,
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of Fate.
Pope, The Rape of the Lock, H, 101
73 | look upon the vulgar observation, "That the devil often
deserts his friends, and leaves them in the lurch," to be a
great abuse on that gentleman’s character. Perhaps he
may sometimes desert those who are only his cup
acquaintance; or who, at most, are but half his; but he
generally stands by those who are thoroughly his
servants, and helps them off in all extremities, till their
bargain expires.
Fielding, Tom Jones, XVIII, 5
74 | have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak
of themselves as the only wise; this they do witha
confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 21
75 Of course, Satan has some kind of case, it goes without
saying. It may be a poor one, but that is nothing; that can
be said about any one of us.... We may not pay him
reverence for that would be indiscreet; but we can at
least respect his talents. A person who has for untold
centuries maintained the imposing position of spiritual
head of four fifths of the human race, and political head
of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of
executive abilities of the loftiest order. ... | would like to
see him. | would rather see him and shake him by the tail
than any other member of the European Concert.
Mark Twain, Concmimg the Jews
20.8 Worship and Service
We understand the common expression "religious services"
to stand for the program of prayers, chants, hymns, readings
from scripture, confessions of faith and of sin, and
sometimes sacraments and sermons that constitute the
liturgy of worship engaged in communally by the members
of a religious sect. But religious worship need not be
communal, nor does the performance of other religious acts,
such as prayer, confession, and thanksgiving.
The quotations included here cover the acts of piety and
reverence in the pagan religions of antiquity as well as the
forms of worship practiced in Judaism and Christianity.
Prayer, veneration, and sacrifice are prominent in both
traditions. But the notion of propitiating the deity by
sacrifice and the veneration of his graven image, which play
a large part in pagan worship, are either expunged from or
are radically transformed in Judaism and Christianity.
Passages taken from both the Old and the New Testament
speak decisively on these points.
Prayer is, perhaps, the subject most frequently touched
on in the quotations below. The purpose and the efficacy of
prayer are discussed; and an interesting variety of actual
prayers are presented. What the theologians have to say
about prayer contrasts sharply with the non-theological
approach to the subject, typified by Coleridge’s remark that
"He prayeth best, who loveth best/ All things both great and
small."
1 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it:
because that in it he had rested from all his work which
God created and made.
Galesis 2:3
2 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shah love the Lord thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
And these words, which | command thee this day, shall
be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine
house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when
thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand,
and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy
house, and on thy gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
3 And it was told king David, saying, The Lord hath blessed
the house of Obed-edom, and all that pertaineth unto
him, because of the ark of God. So David went and
brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom
into the city of David with gladness.
And it was so, that when they that bare the ark of the
Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings.
And David danced before the Lord with all his might;
and David was girded with a linen e-phod.
So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark
of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the
trumpet.
And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David,
Mi-chal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and
saw king David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and
she despised him in her heart- -..
Then David returned to bless his household. And Mi-
chal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and
said. How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who
uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of
his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly
uncovered! himself |
And David said unto Mi-chal, It was before the Lord,
which chose me before thy father, and before all his
house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord,
over Israel: therefore will | play before the Lord.
Il Samuel 6:12-21
4 Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation.
Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my
God: for unto thee will | pray.
My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the
morning will | direct my prayer unto thee, and will look
up.
Psalm 5:1-3
5 Hear the right, O Lord, attend unto my cry, give ear unto
my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips.
Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let
thine eyes behold the things that are equal.
Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in
the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; | am
purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.
Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips |
have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.
Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip
not.
| have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God:
incline thine car unto me, and hear my speech.
Shew thy marvellous loving-kindness, O thou that
savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in
thee from those that rise up against them.
Psalm 17:1-7
6 O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all
the earth.
Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; shew forth his
salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders
among all people.
For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised: he is to
be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord
made the heavens.
Honour and majesty are before him: strength and
beauty are in his sanctuary.
Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give
unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name: bring
an offering, and come into his courts.
O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear
before him, all the earth.
Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth: the
world also shall be established that it shall not be moved:
he shall judge the people righteously.
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let
the sea roar, and the fulness thereof.
Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then
Shall all the trees of the wood rejoice
Before the Lord.
Psalm 96:1-13
7 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his
presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath
made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and
the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his
courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his
name.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his
truth endureth to all generations.
Psalm 100:1-5
8 Out of the depths have | cried unto thee, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the
voice of my supplications.
If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who
Shall stand?
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest
be feared.
Psalm 130:1-4
9 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto
me? saith the Lord: | am full of the burnt offerings of
rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and | delight not in the
blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
When ye come to appear before me, who hath
required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an
abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the
calling of assemblies, | cannot away with; it is iniquity,
even the solemn meeting.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul
hateth: they are a trouble unto me; | am weary to bear
them.
And when ye spread forth your hands, | will hide mine
eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, | will
not hear; Your hands are full of blood.
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your
doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:11-17
10 Wherewith shall | come before the Lord, and bow myself
before the high God? shall | come before him with burnt
offerings, with calves of a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or
with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall | give my
firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the
sin of my soul?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Micah 6:6-8
11 Phoinix. The very immortals can be moved; their virtue
and honour and strength are greater than ours are,
and yet with sacrifices and offerings for endearment,
with libations and with savour men turn back even the
immortals
in supplication, when any man does wrong and
transgresses.
Homer, Iliad, IX, 497
12 Phoinix. There are... the spirits of Prayer, the daughters of
great Zeus,
and they are lame of their feet, and wrinkled, and cast
their eyes sidelong,
who toil on their way left far behind by the spirit of
Ruin:
but she. Ruin, is strong and sound on her feet, and
therefore
far outruns all Prayers, and wins into every country
to force men astray; and the Prayers follow as healers
after her.
If aman venerates these daughters of Zeus as they
draw near,
such a man they bring great advantage, and hear his
entreaty;
but if aman shall deny them, and stubbornly with a
harsh word
refuse, they go to Zeus, son of Kronos, in supplication
that Ruin may overtake this man, that he be hurt, and
punished.
Homer, Iliad, 1X, 502
13 Creon. And still you dared to overstep these laws?
Antigone. For me it was not Zeus who made that order.
Nor did that Justice who lives with the gods below
mark out such law's to hold among mankind.
Nor did | think your orders were so strong
that you, a mortal man, could over-run
the gods’ unwritten and unfailing laws.
Not now, nor yesterday’s, they always live,
and no one knows their origin in time.
So not through fear of any man’s proud spirit
would | be likely to neglect these laws,
draw on myself the gods’ sure punishment.
| knew that | must die; how could | not?
even without your warning. If | die
before my time, | say it is a gain.
Who lives in sorrows many as are mine
how shall he not be glad to gain his death?
And so, for me to meet this fate, no grief.
But if | left that corpse, my mother’s son,
dead and unburied I'd have cause to grieve
as now | grieve not.
And if you think my acts are foolishness
the foolishness may be in a fool’s eye.
Sophocles, Antigone, 449
14 Chorus. Our happiness depends
on wisdom all the way.
The gods must have their due.
Great words by men of pride
bring greater blows upon them.
So wisdom comes to the old.
Sophocles, Antigone, 1347
15 Heracles. Keep holy in the sight of God.
All else our father Zeus thinks of less moment.
Holiness does not die with the men that die.
Whether they die or live, it cannot perish.
Sophocles, Philoctetes, 1441
16 Jon. | have a glorious task:
To set my hands to serve
Not a man but the immortals.
| will never weary
Over my pious tasks.
Euripides, lon, 131
17 Chorus. Not by sounding lament
but only by prayer and reverent love
for the gods, my child, will you learn to live gentler days.
Euripides, Electra, 196
18 Chorus. —Uncontrollable, the unbeliever goes,
In spitting rage, rebellious and amok,
madly assaulting the mysteries of god,
profaning the rites of the mother of god.
Against the unassailable he runs, with rage
obsessed. Headlong he runs to death.
For death the gods exact, curbing by that bit
the mouths of men. They humble us with death
that we remember what we are who are not god,
but men. We run to death. Wherefore, | say,
accept, accept:
humility is wise; humility is blest.
But what the world calls wise | do not want.
Elsewhere the chase. | hunt another game,
those great, those manifest, those certain goals,
achieving which, our mortal lives are blest.
Let these things be the quarry of my chase:
purity; humility; an unrebellious soul,
accepting all. Let me go the customary way,
the timeless, honored, beaten path of those who walk
with reverence and awe beneath the sons of heaven.
Euripides, Bacchae, 996
19 Socrates. | mean to say that the holy has been
acknowledged by us to be loved of God because it is
holy, not to be holy because it is loved.
Euthyphro. Yes.
Soc. But that which is dear to the gods is dear to them
because it is loved by them, not loved by them because it
is dear to them.
Euth. True.
Soc. But, friend Euthyphro, if that which is holy is the
same with that which is dear to God, and is loved
because it is holy, then that which is dear to God would
have been loved as being dear to God; but if that which
is dear to God is dear to him because loved by him, then
that which is holy would have been holy because loved
by him. But now you see that the reverse is the case, and
that they are quite different from one another. For one is
of a kind to be loved because it is loved, and the other is
loved because it is of a kind to be loved. Thus you appear
to me, Euthyphro, when | ask you what is the essence of
holiness, to offer an attribute only, and not the essence—
the attribute of being loved by all the gods. But you still
refuse to explain to me the nature of holiness. And
therefore, if you please, | will ask you not to hide your
treasure, but to tell me once more what holiness or piety
really is, whether dear to the gods or not (for that is a
matter about which we will not quarrel); and what is
impiety?
Euth. | really do not know, Socrates, how to express
what | mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on
whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and
walk away from us,
Plato, Euthyphro, 1OB
20 Timaeus. All men... who have any degree of right
feeling, at the beginning of every enterprise, whether
small or great, always call upon God. And we, too, who
are going to discourse of the nature of the universe, how
created or how existing without creation, if we be not
altogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid of Cods
and Goddesses and pray that our words may be
acceptable to them and consistent with themselves.
Plato, Timaeus, 27B
21 Athenian Stranger. The prayer of a fool is full of danger,
being likely to end in the opposite of what he desires.
Plato, Laws, Ill, 688A
22 Athenian Stranger. What life is agreeable to God, and
becoming in his followers? One only, expressed once for
all in the old saying that "like agrees with like, with
measure measure," but things which have no measure
agree neither with themselves nor with the things which
have. Now God ought to be to us the measure of all
things, and not man, as men commonly say: the words
are far more true of him. And he who would be dear to
God must, as far as is possible, be like him and such as he
is. Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for
he is like him; and the intemperate man is unlike him,
and different from him, and unjust. And the same applies
to other things; and this is the conclusion, which is also
the noblest and truest of all sayings—that for the good
man to offer sacrifice to the Gods, and hold converse with
them by means of prayers and offerings and every kind of
service, is the noblest and best of all things, and also the
most conducive to a happy life, and very fit and meet.
But with the bad man, the opposite of this is true: for the
bad man has an impure soul, whereas the good is pure;
and from one who is polluted, neither a good man nor
God can without impropriety receive gifts. Wherefore the
unholy do only waste their much service upon the Gods,
but when offered by any holy man, such service is most
acceptable to them. This is the mark at which we ought
to aim. But what weapons shall we use, and how shall we
direct them? In the first place, we affirm that next after
the Olympian Gods and the Gods of the State, honour
should be given to the Gods below; they should receive
everything in even numbers, and of the second choice,
and ill omen, while the odd numbers, and the first choice,
and the things of lucky omen, are given to the Gods
above, by him who would rightly hit the mark of piety.
Next to these Gods, a wise man will do service to the
demons or spirits, and then to the heroes, and after them
will follow the private and ancestral Gods, who are
worshipped as the law prescribes in the places which are
sacred to them.
Plato, Laws, IV, 716B
23 No act is it of piety to be often seen with veiled head to
turn to a stone and approach every altar and fall
prostrate on the ground and spread out the palms before
the statues of the gods and sprinkle the altars with much
blood of beasts and link vow on to vow, but rather to be
able to look on all things with a mind at peace.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
24 Cotta. Piety is justice towards the gods. But if men and
gods have nothing in common, how can any claims of
justice exist between them? Holiness is the science of
divine worship. But why should the gods be reverenced, if
we have not received, nor expect to receive, any benefit
from them?
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 41
25 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect.
Matthew 5:48
26 And when thou prayest, thou shall not be as the
hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and in the comers of the streets, that they
may be seen of men. Verily | say unto you, They have
their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and
when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is
in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall
reward thee openly.
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the
heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for
their much speaking.
Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father
knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which
art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is
in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory, for ever. Amen.
Matthew 6:5-13
27 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more
than me is not worthy of me.
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after
me, is not worthy of me.
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth
his life for my sake shall find it.
Matthew 10:37-39
28 A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first,
and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.
He answered and said, | will not: but afterward he
repented, and went.
And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he
answered and said, | go, sir: and went not.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They
say unto him. The first. Jesus saith unto them. Verily | say
unto you. That the publicans and the harlots go into the
kingdom of God before you.
Matthew 21:28-31
29 He said unto another, Follow me. But he said. Lord, suffer
me first to go and bury my father.
Jesus said unto him. Let the dead bury their dead: but
go thou and preach the kingdom of God.
And another also said, Lord, | will follow thee; but let
me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my
house.
And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand
to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of
God.
Luke 9:59-62
30 And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in
themselves that they were righteous, and despised
others:
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a
Pharisee, and the other a publican.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God,
| thank thee, that | am not as other men are, extortioners,
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
| fast twice in the week, | give tithes of all that |
possess.
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up
so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his
breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
| tell you, this man went down to his house justified
rather than the other.
Luke 18:9-14
31 A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for
himself a kingdom, and to return.
And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten
pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till | come.
But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after
him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.
And it came to pass, that when he was returned,
having received the kingdom, then he commanded these
servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the
money, that he might know how much every man had
gained by trading.
Then came the first, saying. Lord, thy pound hath
gained ten pounds.
And he said unto him. Well, thou good servant:
because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou
authority over ten cities.
And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath
gained five pounds.
And he said likewise to him. Be thou also over five
cities.
And another came, saying. Lord, behold, here is thy
pound, which | have kept laid up in a napkin:
For | feared thee, because thou art an austere man:
thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest
that thou didst not sow.
And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will |
judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that | was
an austere man, taking up that | laid not down, and
reaping that | did not sow:
Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the
bank, that at my coming | might have required mine own
with usury?
And he said unto them that stood by. Take from him
the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
(And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)
For | say unto you. That unto every one which hath
Shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he
hath shall be taken away from him.
Luke 19:12-26
32 Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will | do, that
the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If ye shall ask any thing in my name, | will do it.
John 14:13-14
33 | beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may
prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will
of God.
Romans 12:1-2
34 The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with
the affections and lusts.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-25
35 Pray without ceasing.
| Thessalonians 5:17
36 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he
hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily
food,
And one of you say unto them. Depart in peace, be ye
warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not
those things which are needful to the body; what doth it
profit?
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
Yea, aman may say, Thou hast faith, and | have works:
shew me thy faith without thy works, and | will shew thee
my faith by my works.
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well:
the devils also believe, and tremble.
But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without
works is dead?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when
he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by
works was faith made perfect?
And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham
believed God, and it was imputed unto him for
righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and
not by faith only.
Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by
works, when she had received the messengers, and had
sent them out another way?
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith
without works is dead also.
James 2:14-26
37 When he had taken the book, the four beasts and four
and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having
every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours,
which are the prayers of saints.
Revelation 5:8
38 Ought we not when we are digging and ploughing and
eating to sing this hymn to God? "Great is God, who has
given us such implements with which we shall cultivate
the earth: great is God who has given us hands, the
power of swallowing, a stomach, imperceptible growth,
and the power of breathing while we sleep." This is what
we ought to sing on every occasion, and to sing the
greatest and most divine hymn for giving us the faculty
of comprehending these things and using a proper way.
Well then, since most of you have become blind, ought
there not to be some man to fill this office, and on behalf
of all to sing the hymn to God? For what else can | do, a
lame old man, than sing hymns to God? If then | was a
nightingale, | would do the part of a nightingale: if | were
a swan, | would do like a swan. But now | am a rational
creature, and | ought to praise God: this is my work; | do
it, nor will | desert this post, so long as! am allowed to
keep it; and | exhort you to join in this same song.
Epictetus, Discourses, |, 16
39 | say that we ought not to desire in every way what is not
our own. And the sorrow of another is another’s sorrow:
but my sorrow is my own. I, then, will stop my own sorrow
by every means, for it is in my power: and the sorrow of
another | will endeavor to stop as far as | can; but | will
not attempt to do it by every means; for if | do, | shall be
fighting against God, | shall be opposing Zeus and shall
be placing myself against him in the administration of
the universe; and the reward of this fighting against God
and of this disobedience not only will the children of my
children pay, but | also shall myself, both by day and by
night, startled by dreams, perturbed, trembling at every
piece of news, and having my tranquillity depending on
the letters of others.
Epictetus, Discourses, I/l, 24
40 A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down
on the ploughed fields of the Athenians and on the
plains.—In truth we ought not to pray at all, or we ought
to pray in this simple and noble fashion.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 7
41 Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who
constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied
with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all
that the daemon wishes, which Zeus hath given to every
man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself. And
this is every man’s understanding and reason.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 27
42 Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is
Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And
man desires to praise Thee. He is but a tiny part of all
that Thou hast created. He bears about him his mortality,
the evidence of his sinfulness, and the evidence that
Thou dost resist the proud: yet this tiny part of all that
Thou hast created desires to praise Thee.
Thou dost so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy.
For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are
restless till they rest in Thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know
which is the soul’s first movement toward Thee—to
implore Thy aid or to utter its praise of Thee; and whether
it must know Thee before it can implore. For it would
seem clear that no one can call upon Thee without
knowing Thee, for if he did he might invoke another than
Thee, Knowing Thee not. Yet may it be that a man must
implore Thee before he can know Thee? But, how shall
they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? or how
shall they believe without a preacher? And, they shall
praise the Lord that seek Him; for those that seek shall
find; and finding Him they will praise Him. Let me seek
Thee, Lord, by praying Thy aid, and let me utter my
prayer believing in Thee: for Thou hast been preached to
us. My faith, Lord, cries to Thee, the faith that Thou hast
given me, that Thou hast inbreathed in me, through the
humanity of Thy Son and by the ministry of Thy Preacher.
Augustine, Confessions, I, 1
43 Neither could the blessed immortals retain, nor we
miserable mortals reach, a happy condition without
worshipping the one God of gods, who is both theirs and
ours.... For we are all His temple, each of us severally and
all of us together, because He condescends to inhabit
each individually and the whole harmonious body, being
no greater in all than in each, since He is neither
expanded nor divided. Our heart when it rises to Him is
His altar; the priest who intercedes for us is His Only-
begotten; we sacrifice to Him bleeding victims when we
contend for His truth even unto blood; to Him we offer
the sweetest incense when we come before Him burning
with holy and pious love; to Him we devote and surrender
ourselves and His gifts in us; to Him, by solemn feasts
and on appointed days, vve consecrate the memory of
His benefits, lest through the lapse of time ungrateful
oblivion should steal upon us; to Him we offer on the altar
of our heart the sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled
by the fire of burning love. It is that we may see Him, so
far as He can be seen; it is that we may cleave to Him
that we are cleansed from all stain of sins and evil
passions and are consecrated in His name. For He is the
fountain of our happiness, He the end of all our desires.
Being attached to Him, or rather let me say, re-attached—
for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him—
being, | say, re-attached to Him, we tend towards Him by
love, that we may rest in Him, and find our blessedness
by attaining that end.
Augustine, City of God, X, 3
44 There is... something in humility which, strangely
enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which
debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that
loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious
humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and
nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore
humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But
pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing
subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme, falls
to a low condition.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 13
45 It is a matter of no moment in the city of God whether he
who adopts the faith that brings men to God adopts it in
one dress and manner of life or another, so long only as
he lives in conformity with the commandments of God.
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 19
46 We worship God by external sacrifices and gifts, not for
His own profit, but for that of ourselves and our
neighbour. For He does not need our sacrifices, but
wishes them to be offered to Him in order to arouse our
devotion and to profit our neighbour. Hence mercy, by
which we supply others’ defects is a sacrifice more
acceptable to Him, as conducing more directly to our
neighbour’s well-being. ... Do not forget to do good and
to impart, for by suck sacrifices God's favour is obtained.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 30, 4
47 By the one same act man both serves and worships God,
for worship regards the excellence of God, to Whom
reverence is due; while service regards the subjection of
man who, by his condition, is under an obligation of
showing reverence to God. To these two belong all acts
ascribed to religion, because, by them all, man bears
witness to the Divine excellence and to his own
subjection to God, either by offering something to God, or
by assuming something Divine.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 81, 3
48 The worship of religion is paid to images, not as
considered in themselves, nor as things, but as images
leading us to God incarnate. Now movement to an image
as image does not stop at the image, but goes on to the
thing it represents.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 81, 3
49 We pay God honor and reverence, not for His sake
(because He is of Himself full of glory to which no
creature can add anything), but for our own sake,
because by the very fact that we revere and honor God,
our mind is subjected to Him; wherein its perfection
consists, since a thing is perfected by being subjected to
its Superior.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 81, 7
50 God bestows many things on us out of His liberality, even
without our asking for them: but that He wishes to
bestow certain things on us at our asking, is for the sake
of our good, namely, that we may acquire confidence in
having recourse to God, and that we may recognize in
Him the Author of our goods.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 83, 2
51 The very fact that we wish to cling to God in a Spiritual
fellowship pertains to reverence for God: and
consequently the act of any virtue assumes the character
of a sacrifice through being done in order that we may
cling to God in holy fellowship.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-IIl, 85, 3
52 The humbled souls. O our Father who art in heaven, not
circumscribed, but through the greater love thou hast for
thy first works on high,
praised be thy name and thy worth by every creature,
as ‘tis meet to give thanks to thy sweet effluence.
May the peace of thy kingdom come upon us, for we
cannot of ourselves attain to it with all our wit, if it come
not.
As of their will thine angels make sacrifice to thee,
singing Hosanna, so may men make of theirs.
Give us this day our daily manna, without which he
backward goes through this rough desert, who most
toileth to advance.
And as we forgive every one the evil we have suffered,
do thou forgive in loving-kindness and regard not our
desert.
Put not our virtue, which lightly is subdued, to trial
with the old adversary, but deliver us from him who so
pricks it.
This last prayer, dear Lord, is not made for us, for need
is not, but for those who have remained behind us.
Dante, Purgatorio, XI, 1
53 Bernard. Virgin mother, daughter of thy son, lowly and
uplifted more than any creature, fixed goal of the eternal
counsel,
thou art she who didst human nature so ennoble that
its own Maker scorned not to become its making.
In thy womb was lit again the love under whose
warmth in the eternal peace this flower hath thus
unfolded.
Here art thou unto us the meridian torch of love and
there below with mortals art a living spring of hope.
Lady, thou art so great and hast such worth, that if
there be who would have grace yet betaketh not himself
to thee, his longing seeketh to fly without wings.
Thy kindliness not only succoureth whoso requesteth,
but doth oftentimes freely forerun request.
In thee is tenderness, in thee is pity, in thee
munificence, in thee united whatever in created being is
of excellence.
Now he who from the deepest pool of the universe
even to here hath seen the spiritlives one after one
imploreth thee, of grace, for so much power as to be
able to uplift his eyes more high towards final bliss;
and I, who never burned for my own vision more than |
do for his, proffer thee all my prayers, and pray they be
not scant,
that thou do scatter for him every cloud of his
mortality with prayers of thine, so that the joy supreme
may be unfolded to him.
And further do | pray thee, Queen who canst all that
thou wilt, that thou keep sound for him, after so great a
vision, his affections.
Let thy protection vanquish human ferments; see
Beatrice, with how many Saints, for my prayers folding
hands.
Dante, Paradiso, XXXIll, 1
54 That first he wrought and afterwards he taught;
Out of the gospel then that text he caught,
And this figure he added thereunto—
That, if gold rust, what shall poor iron do?
For if the priest be foul, in whom we trust,
What wonder if a layman yield to lust?
And shame it is, if priest take thought for keep,
A shitty shepherd, shepherding clean sheep.
Well ought a priest example good to give,
By his own cleanness, how his flock should live.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: The Prologue
55 The most acceptable service we can do and show unto
God, and which alone he desires of us, is, that he be
praised of us.
Luther, Table Talk, H99
56 To serve Christ ... is not to put on a hood or to be
preoccupied with Mosaic ceremonies. But it is rather an
entirely spiritual thing, not in the way in which the monks
speak of something being spiritual which takes place only
in the heart. But it is a spiritual service which originates
with the Spirit. For whoever speaks the words of the Spirit
is rightly said to preach, teach, and speak spiritually.
Thus one is also said to live spiritually who is busy with
holy deeds, that is, who does what is prescribed in the
Ten Commandments. So the head of a household lives
spiritually when he governs his own home through faith
in the Son of God. Truly, spiritual obedience is to do
through faith in the Son of God what you are ordered to
do by God’s command. There you have what it means to
serve this King. It is not to enter a monastery, as the
monks are wont to do, nor to choose these deeds or
those, but to behold this King, to listen to Him, and
afterwards to do what you have heard.
Luther, Commentary on Psalm 2
57 | may be wrong, | don’t know; but since by a particular
favor of divine goodness a certain form of prayer has
been prescribed and dictated to us word for word by the
mouth of God, it has always seemed to me that its use
should be more ordinary with us than it is. And if | had my
way, on sitting down to table and rising from it, on
getting up and going to bed, and on all particular actions
with which we are accustomed to associate prayers, |
should like it to be the Lord’s Prayer that Christians
employ, if not exclusively, at least always. The Church
may extend and diversify prayers according to the need
of our instruction, for well | Know that it is always the
Same substance and the same thing. But we ought to
have given that one this privilege, that the people should
have it continually in their mouths; for it is certain that it
says all that is necessary and that it is very proper for all
occasions....
| was just now thinking about where that error of ours
comes from, of having recourse to God in all our designs
and enterprises, and calling on him in every kind of need
and in whatever spot our weakness wants help, without
considering whether the occasion is just or unjust, and
invoking his name and his power, in whatever condition
or action we are involved, however vicious it may be.
He is indeed our sole and unique protector, and can do
anything to help us; but although he deigns to honor us
with that sweet fatherly relationship, nevertheless he is
as just as he is good and as he is powerful. But he
exercises his justice much more often than his power, and
favors us according to its dictates, not according to our
requests.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 56, Of Prayers
58 The first law that God ever gave to man was a law of pure
obedience; it was a naked and simple commandment
about which man had nothing to know or discuss; since
to obey is the principal function of a reasonable soul,
recognizing a heavenly superior and benefactor. From
obeying and yielding spring all other virtues, as from
presumption all sin.
Montaigne, Essays, Il, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
59 It now remains that at last, with my eyes and hands
removed from the tablet of demonstrations and lifted up
towards the heavens, | should pray, devout and
supplicating, to the Father of lights: O Thou Who dost by
the light of nature promote in us the desire for the light of
grace, that by its means Thou mayest transport us into
the light of glory, | give thanks to Thee, O Lord Creator,
Who hast delighted me with Thy makings and in the
works of Thy hands have | exulted. Behold | now, | have
completed the work of my profession, having employed
as much power of mind as Thou didst give to me; to the
men who are going to read those demonstrations | have
made manifest the glory of Thy works, as much of its
infinity as the narrows of my intellect could apprehend.
My mind has been given over to philosophizing most
correctly: if there is anything unworthy of Thy designs
brought forth by me—a worm born and nourished in a
wallowing place of sins—breathe into me also that which
Thou dost wish men to know, that 1 may make the
correction: If | have been allured into rashness by the
wonderful beauty of Thy works, or if | have loved my own
glory among men, while | am advancing in the work
destined for Thy glory, be gentle and merciful and pardon
me; and finally deign graciously to effect that these
demonstrations give way to Thy glory and the salvation
of souls and nowhere be an obstacle to that.
Kepler, Harmonies of the Worlds V, 9
60 King. O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother’s murder. Pray can | not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
| stand in pause where | shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? "Forgive me my foul murder"?
That cannot be; since | am still possess’d
Of those effects for which | did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well....
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Ill, tii, 36
61 As the wandring Knight and Squire went discoursing of
this and other Matters, they had not rode much more
than a League, ere they espy’d about a dozen Men, who
look’d like Country-Fellows sitting at their Victuals, with
their Cloaks under them, on the green Grass, in the
middle of a Meadow. Near ’em they saw several white
Clothes or Sheets spread out and laid close to one
another, that seem’d to cover something. Don Quixote
rode up to the People, and after he had civilly saluted
"em, ask’d what they had got under that Linen? Sir,
answer’d one of the Company, they are some carv’d
Images that are to be set up at an Altar we are erecting in
our Town. We cover ’em, lest they should be sullied, and
carry ‘em on our Shoulders for fear they should be
broken. If you please, said Don Quixote, | should be glad
to see 'em; for considering the Care you take of ’em, they
should be Pieces of Value. Ay, marry are they, quoth
another, or else we’re damnably cheated; for there’s ne’er
an Image among ’em that does not stand us in more than
fifty Ducats; and, that you may know I’m no Liar, do but
stay, and you shall see with your own Eyes. With that,
getting up on his Legs, and leaving his Victuals, he went
and took off the Cover from one of the Figures, that
happen’d to be St George on Horseback, and under his
Feet a Serpent coil’d up, his Throat transfix’d with a
Lance, with the Fierceness that is commonly represented
in the Piece; and all, as they use to say, spick and span-
new, and shining like beaten Gold. Don Quixote having
seen the Image, This, said he, was one of the best
Knights-Errant the Divine Warfare or Church-Militant ever
had: His Name was Don St George, and he was an
extraordinary Protector of Damsels. What’s the next? The
Fellow having uncover’d it, it proved to be St Martin on
Horseback. This Knight too, said Don Quixote at the first
sight, was one of the Christian Adventurers, and | am apt
to think he was more liberal than valiant; and thou
may’st perceive it, Sancho, by his dividing his Cloak, with
a poor Man; he gave him half, and doubtless ‘twas Winter
time, or else he would have giv’n it him whole, he was so
charitable. Not so neither, | fancy, quoth Sancho, but |
guess he stuck to the Proverb: To Give and Keep what's
fit. Requires a Share of Wit. Don Quixote smil’d, and
desir’d the Men to shew him the next Image; which
appear’d to be that of the Patron of Spain a Horse-back,
with his Sword bloody, trampling down Moors, and
treading over Heads. Ay, this is a Knight indeed, (cry'd
Don Quixote, when he saw it) one of those that fought in
the Squadrons of the Saviour of the World: He is call'd
Don Sant-Jago, Meta Mores, or Don St James the Moor-
killer, and may be reckon’d one of the most valorous
Saints and Professors of Chivalry that the Earth then
enjoy’d, and Heaven now possesses. Then they uncover’d
another Piece, which shew’d St Paul falling from his
Horse, with all the Circumstances usually express’d in the
Story of his Conversion, and represented so to the Life,
that he look’d as if he had been answering the Voice that
spoke to him from Heaven. This, said Don Quixote, was
the greatest Enemy the Church Militant had once, and
prov'd afterwards the greatest Defender it will ever have.
In his Life a true Knight-Errant, and in Death a stedfast
Saint; an indefatigable Labourer in the Vineyard of the
Lord, a Teacher of the Gentiles, who had Heaven for his
School, and Christ himself for his Master and Instructor.
Then Don Quixote perceiving there were no more Images,
desir’d the Men to cover those he had seen: And now, my
good Friends, said he to ‘em, | cannot but esteem the
Sight that | have had of these Images as a happy Omen;
for these Saints and Knights were of the same Profession
that | follow, which is that of Arms: The Difference only
lies in this Point, that They were Saints, and fought
according to the Rules of holy Discipline; and! ama
Sinner, and fight after the manner of Men. They
conquer’d Heaven by Force, for Heaven is taken by
Violence; but |, alas, cannot yet tell what | gain by the
Force of my Labours! Yet were my Dulcinea de! Toboso but
free from her Troubles, by a happy Change in my Fortune,
and an Improvement in my Understanding, | might
perhaps take a better Course than | do. Heaven grant it,
quoth Sancho, and let the Devil do his worst.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 58
62 The end of worship amongst men is power. For where a
man seeth another worshipped, he supposeth him
powerful, and is the readier to obey him; which makes his
power greater. But God has no ends: the worship we do
him proceeds from our duty and is directed according to
our capacity by those rules of honour that reason
dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent
men, in hope of benefit, for fear of damage, or in
thankfulness for good already received from them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 31
63 The obedience required at our hands by God, that
accepteth in all our actions the will for the deed, is a
serious endeavour to obey Him; and is called also by all
such names as signify that endeavour. And therefore
obedience is sometimes called by the names of charity
and Jove, because they imply a will to obey; and our
Saviour himself maketh our love to God, and to one
another, a fulfilling of the whole law; and sometimes by
the name of righteousness, for righteousness is but the
will to give to every one his own, that is to say, the will to
obey the laws; and sometimes by the name of
repentance, because to repent implieth a turning away
from sin, which is the same with the return of the will to
obedience. Whosoever therefore unfeignedly desireth to
fulfil the commandments of God, or repenteth him truly
of his transgressions, or that loveth God with all his heart,
and his neighbour as himself, hath all the obedience
necessary to his reception into the kingdom of God: for if
God should require perfect innocence, there could no
flesh be saved.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 43
64 A man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at
least wish to die like a Christian.
Pascal, Pensées, II, 63
65 Experience makes us see an enormous difference
between piety and goodness,
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 496
66 There is nothing so perilous as what pleases God and
man. For those states, which please God and man, have
one property which pleases God, and another which
pleases men; as the greatness of Saint Teresa. What
pleased God was her deep humility in the midst of her
revelations; what pleased men was her light. And so we
torment ourselves to imitate her discourses, thinking to
imitate her conditions, and not so much to love what God
loves and to put ourselves in the state which God loves.
It is better not to fast, and be thereby humbled, than
to fast and be self-satisfied therewith.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 499
67 When | consider how my light is spent,
E’re half my day's, in this dark world and wide.
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
| fondly ask; But patience to prev'ent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.
Milton, When | consider how my light is spent
68 Adam. Henceforth | leame, that to obey is best,
And love with feare the onely God, to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemd weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek; that suffering for Truths sake
Is fortitude to highest victorie,
And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life;
Taught this by his example whom | now
Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.
Milton, Paradise Lost, XII, 561
69 The desire of doing well which is born in us, because we
live according to the guidance of reason, | call Piety.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Prop. 37, Schol. 1
70 There is a false appearance of piety and religion in
dejection; and although dejection is the opposite of
pride, the humble dejected man is very near akin to the
proud.
Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Appendix XXII
71 Good Will. We make no objections against any,
notwithstanding all that they have done before they
come hither, they in no wise are cast out, and therefore,
good Christian, come a little way with me, and | will teach
thee about the way thou must go. Look before thee; dost
thou see this narrow way? THAT is the way thou must go.
It was cast up by the Patriarchs, Prophets, Christ, and his
Apostles; and it is as straight as a Rule can make it: This
is the way thou must go.
But said Christian, Ils there no turnings nor windings
by which a Stranger may lose the way?
Good Will. Yes, there are many ways butt down upon
this; and they are crooked, and wide: But thus thou
may'st distinguish the right from the wrong, That only
being straight and narrow.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, |
72 He that worships God does it with design to please Him
and procure His favour. But that cannot be done by him
who, upon the command of another, offers unto God that
which he knows will be displeasing to Him, because not
commanded by Himself. This is not to please God, or
appease his wrath, but willingly and knowingly to
provoke Him by a manifest contempt, which is a thing
absolutely repugnant to the nature and end of worship.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
73 When external worship is attended with great
magnificence, it flatters our minds and strongly attaches
us to religion. The riches of temples and those of the
clergy greatly affect us. Thus even the misery of the
people is a motive that renders them fond of a religion
which has served as a pretext to those who were the
cause of their misery.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXV, 2
74 Almost all civilised nations dwell in houses; hence
naturally arose the idea of building a house for God in
which they might adore and seek him, amidst all their
hopes and fears.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXV, 3
75 The great art... of piety, and the end for which all
religious rites seem to be instituted, is the perpetual
renovation of the motives to virtue by a voluntary
employment of our mind in the contemplation of its
excellence, its importance, and its necessity, which, in
proportion as they are more frequently and more willingly
revolved, gain a more forcible and permanent influence
till in time they become the reigning ideas and standing
principles of action and the test by which everything
proposed to the judgment is rejected or approved.
Johnson, Rambler No. 7
76 In religion, as a rule, prostration, adoration with bowed
head, coupled with contrite, timorous posture and voice,
seems to be the only becoming demeanour in presence of
the Godhead, and accordingly most nations have
assumed and still observe it. Yet this cast of mind is far
from being intrinsically and necessarily involved in the
idea of the sublimity of a religion and of its object. The
man that is actually in a state of fear, finding in himself
good reason to be so, because he is conscious of
offending with his evil disposition against a might
directed by a will at once irresistible and just, is far from
being in the frame of mind for admiring divine greatness,
for which a temper of calm reflection and a quite free
judgement are required. Only when he becomes
conscious of having a disposition that is upright and
acceptable to God, do those operations of might serve to
stir within him the idea of the sublimity of this Being, so
far as he recognizes the existence in himself of a
sublimity of disposition consonant with His will, and is
thus raised above the dread of such operations of nature,
in which he no longer sees God pouring forth the vials of
the wrath.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 28
77 For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
Blake, The Divine Image
78 Gretchen. Oh, bend Thou,
Mother of Sorrows; send Thou
A look of pity on my pain.
Thine heart’s blood welling
With pangs past telling,
Thou gazest where Thy Son hangs slain.
Thou, heavenward gazing,
Art deep sighs raising
On high for His and for Thy pain.
Who feeleth
How reeleth
This pain in every bone?
All that makes my poor heart shiver,
Why it yearneth and doth quiver,
Thou dost know and Thou alone!
Wherever | am going,
How woe, woe, woe is growing,
Ah, how my bosom aches!
When lonely watch Tm keeping,
Tm weeping, weeping, weeping.
My heart within me breaks.
The plants before my window
| wet with tears—ah, me!—
As in the early morning
| plucked these flowers for Thee.
Ah, let my room but borrow
The early sunlight red,
| sit in all my sorrow
Already on my bed.
Help! rescue me from death and stain!
Oh, bend Thou,
Mother of Sorrows; send Thou
A look of pity on my pain!
Goethe. Faust, |, 3587
79 He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 614
80 It is said of James, the head of the community in
Jerusalem, that the skin of his knees was as hard asa
camel’s from constantly praying, and that he could pray
for days together. To our age that may seem laughable;
but one should remember what eloquence and fullness of
heart is implied by being able to pray for so long without
growing tired, particularly as we have difficulty enough in
making a truly heartfelt prayer.
Kierkegaard, Journals (Oct. 1, 1838)
81 The immediate person thinks and imagines that when he
prays, the important thing, the thing he must
concentrate upon, is that God should hear what HE /s
praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the
reverse: the true relation in prayer is not when God hears
what is prayed for, but when the person praying
continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who
hears what God wills. The immediate person, therefore,
uses many words and, therefore, makes demands in his
prayer; the true man of prayer only attends.
Kierkegaard, Journals (1846)
82 Arthur. 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways.
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
| have lived my life, and that which | have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.’
Tennyson, Morte d'Arthur, 291
83 Oh, thou big while God aloft there somewhere in yon
darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here;
preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel
fear!
Melville, Moby Dick, XL
84 Early in the morning—about six—Mr. Bulstrode rose and
spent some time in prayer. Docs any one suppose that
private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to
the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech,
and speech is representative: w ho can represent himself
just as he is, even in his own reflections?
George Eliot, Middlemarch, VII, 70
85 Father Zossima. Young man, be not forgetful of prayer.
Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will
be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you
fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an
education.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. Il, 3
86 We hear, in these days of scientific enlightenment, a
great deal of discussion about the efficacy of prayer; and
many reasons are given us why we should not pray,
whilst others are given us why we should. But in all this
very little is said of the reason why we do pray, which is
simply that we cannot help praying. It seems probable
that, in spite of all that "science" may do to the contrary,
men will continue to pray to the end of time, unless their
mental nature changes in a manner which nothing we
know should lead us to expect. The impulse to pray a
necessary consequence of the fact that whilst the
innermost of the empirical selves of a man is a Self of the
social sort, it yet can find its only adequate Socius in an
ideal world.
William James, Psychology, X
20.9 Heresy and Unbelief
The quotations included in this section divide into two main
groups, one dealing with orthodoxy and heresy, the other
with that form of unbelief which undermines religion—
atheism.
The epithet “atheist" or “infidel" is applied by the
members of a religious community to those who deny or do
not acknowledge the existence of the divinity worshiped in
that community. Thus, for example, Spinoza was
anathematized as an atheist by the Jewish community
because his affirmation of God, heartfelt and impassioned as
it was, involved the denial of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. The heretic, in contrast, differs from other members of
the religious community to which he belongs by advancing
an interpretation of some point in their common faith that
they regard as unsound. In the Jewish community, the
decisive judgment defining or reaffirming orthodoxy and
ejecting a particular heresy was rendered by the Sanhedrin;
in the Christian community, by a church council, as, for
example, the Council of Nicea in 325 which rejected the
Arian heresy and formulated the orthodoxy of the Nicene or
Athanasian creed.
Among the Fathers of the Church, Augustine is probably
more responsible than any other for the formation of
Christian orthodoxy through the definition and rejection of
the many heresies that abounded in the early centuries of
Christianity. It would be impossible, within the scope of this
book, to exemplify this by quotation from all his
antiheretical tracts; but the reader will find a sampling of
such polemics in the quotations from Augustine that attack
the errors of the Manicheans. The names of other heresies
and the disputes over them will be found in Gibbon’s report
of this aspect of the development of Christianity within the
Roman empire. The quotations from Aquinas and from
Luther not only contribute a precise definition of heresy, but
also discuss various ways of arguing with heretics and point
out the useful service that heretics perform for the religious
community that excommunicates them.
It is interesting to note that, in the group of quotations
dealing with unbelief and atheism, post-Reformation authors
predominate. They are concerned with the problems of
religious tolerance and persecution and, in this context, with
the treatment to be accorded infidels and atheists.
On both of the main subjects treated here the reader is
referred for the discussion of relevant considerations to
Section 6.5 on Opinion, Belief, and Faith and to Section 6.6
on Doubt and Skepticism.
1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
Psalm 14:1
2 For first of all, when yc come together in the church, | hear
that there be divisions among you; and | partly believe it.
For there must be also heresies among you, that they
which are approved may be made manifest among you.
! Corinthians 11:18-19
3 But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and
contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are
unprofitable and vain.
A man that is an heretick after the first and second
admonition reject;
Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and
sinneth, being condemned of himself,
Titus 3:9-11
4 | fell in with a sect of men [the Manicheans] talking high-
sounding nonsense, carnal and wordy men. The snares of
the devil were in their mouths, to trap souls with an
arrangement of the syllables of the names of God the
Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Paraclete,
the Holy Ghost, our Comforter. These names were always
on their lips, but only as sounds and tongue noises; for
their heart was empty of the true meaning. they cried out
"Truth, truth;" they were forever uttering the word to me,
but the thing was nowhere in them; indeed they spoke
falsehood not only of You, who are truly Truth, but also of
the elements of this world, Your creatures. Concerning
these | ought to have passed beyond even the
philosophers who spoke truly, for love of You, O my
supreme and good Father, Beauty of all things beautiful.
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did the very marrow of my
soul pant for You when time and again | heard them
sound Your name. But it was all words—words spoken,
words written in many huge tomes.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 6
5 Ham... who was the middle son of Noah, and, as it were,
separated himself from both, and remained between
them, neither belonging to the first-fruits of Israel nor to
the fullness of the Gentiles, what does he signify but the
tribe of heretics, hot with the spirit, not of patience, but
of impatience, with which the breasts of heretics are wont
to blaze, and with which they disturb the peace of the
saints? But even the heretics yield an advantage to those
that make proficiency, according to the apostle’s saying,
“There must also be heresies, that they which are
approved may be made manifest among you." Whence,
too, it is elsewhere said, "The son that receives
instruction will be wise, and he uses the foolish as his
servant," For while the hot restlessness of heretics stirs
questions about many articles of the Catholic faith, the
necessity of defending them forces us both to investigate
them more accurately, to understand them more clearly,
and to proclaim them more earnestly; and the question
mooted by an adversary becomes the occasion of
instruction.
Augustine, City of Cod, XVI, 2
6 It is believed by some that those who do not abandon the
name of Christ, and have been baptized in the Church
and have not been cut off by any schism or heresy, no
matter in what wickedness they live, not washing it away
by penance nor redeeming it through almsgiving, but
persevering in it stubbornly up to the last day of this life,
are to be saved by fire (a fire made to endure in
proportion to the magnitude of their evil deeds) and not
to receive the punishment of eternal fire. But those who
believe this and still are Catholics seem to me to be led
astray by a kind of human benevolence.
Augustine, Enchiridion, XVIII
7 Many heretics abound; and God has permitted them to
abound to this end, that we may not be always nourished
with milk and remain in senseless infancy. For inasmuch
as they have not understood how the divinity of Christ is
set forth to our acceptance, they have concluded
according to their will; and by not discerning aright, they
have brought in most troublesome questions upon
catholic believers; and the hearts of believers began to
be disturbed and to waver. Then immediately it became a
necessity for spiritual men, who had not only read in the
Gospel anything respecting the divinity of our Lord Jesus
Christ, but had also understood it, to bring forth the
armour of Christ against the armour of the devil, and with
all their might to fight in most open conflict for the
divinity of Christ against false and deceitful teachers;
lest, while they were silent, others might perish.
Augustine, On the Gospel of St. John, XXXVI, 6
8 Unbelievers cannot be said "to believe in a God" as we
understand it in relation to the act of faith. For they do
not believe that God exists under the conditions that
faith determines. Hence they do not truly believe ina
God, since ... to know simple things defectively is not to
know them at all.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 2, 2
9 To have the faith is not part of human nature, but it is part
of human nature that man’s mind should not go against
his inner instinct, and the outward preaching of the truth.
Hence, in this way, unbelief is contrary to nature.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-ll, 10, 1
10 In disputing about the faith, two things must be
observed, one on the part of the disputant, the other on
the part of his hearers. On the part of the disputant, we
must consider his intention. For if he were to dispute as
though he had doubts about the faith, and did not hold
the truth of faith for certain, and as though he intended
to probe it with arguments, without doubt he would sin,
as being doubtful of the faith and an unbeliever. On the
other hand, it is praiseworthy to dispute about the faith
in order to confute errors, or even for practice.
On the part of the hearers we must consider whether
those who hear the disputation are instructed and firm in
the faith, or simple and wavering. As to those who are
well instructed and firm in the faith, there can be no
danger in disputing about the faith in their presence. But
as to simple-minded people, we must make a distinction.
For either they are provoked and molested by
unbelievers, for instance Jews or heretics, or pagans, who
strive to corrupt the faith in them, or else they are not
subject to provocation in this matter, as in those
countries where there are no unbelievers. In the first case
it is necessary to dispute in public about the faith,
provided there be those who are equal and adapted to
the task of confuting errors, since in this way simple
people are strengthened in the faith, and unbelievers are
deprived of the opportunity to deceive, while if those who
ought to withstand the perverters of the truth of faith
were silent, this would tend to strengthen error. Hence
Gregory says; "Even as a thoughtless speech gives rise to
error, SO does an indiscreet silence leave those in error
who might have been instructed." On the other hand, in
the second case it is dangerous to dispute in public about
the faith, in the presence of simple people, whose faith
for this very reason is more firm, that they have never
heard anything differing from what they believe. Hence it
is not expedient for them to hear what unbelievers have
to say against the faith.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 10, 7
11 There are two ways in which a man may deviate from the
rectitude of the Christian faith. First, because he is
unwilling to assent to Christ Himself; and such a man has
an evil will, so to say, in respect of the very end. This
pertains to the species of unbelief in pagans and Jews.
Secondly, because, though he intends to assent to Christ,
yet he fails in his choice of those things by which he
assents to Christ, because he chooses, not what Christ
really taught, but the suggestions of his own mind.
Therefore, heresy is a species of unbelief pertaining to
those who profess the Christian faith, but corrupt its
dogmas.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il-ll, 11, 1
12 With regard to heretics two points must be observed;
one, on their own side, the other, on the side of the
Church. On their own side there is the sin, by which they
deserve not only to be separated from the Church by
excommunication, but also to be severed from the world
by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the
faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which
supports temporal life. Therefore if forgers of money and
other evil-doers are condemned to death at once by the
secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics,
as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only
excommunicated but even put to death.
On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy
which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, and
therefore she condemns not at once, but after the first
and second admonition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 11, 3
13 |, who was desirous to behold the condition which such a
fortress encloses,
as soon as | was in, sent my eyes around; and saw, on
either hand, a spacious plain full of sorrow and of evil
torment.
As at Arles, where the Rhone stagnates, as at Pola near
the Quarnaro gulf, which shuts up Italy and bathes its
confines,
the sepulchres make all the place uneven; so did they
here on every side, only the manner here was bitterer:
for amongst the tombs were scattered flames, whereby
they were made all over so glowing-hot, that iron more
hot no craft requires.
Their covers were all raised up; and out of them
proceeded moans so grievous, that they seemed indeed
the moans of spirits sad and wounded.
And |: "Master [Virgil], what are these people who,
buried within those chests, make themselves heard by
their painful sighs?"
And he to me; "[Here] are the Arch-heretics with their
followers of every sect; and much more, than thou
thinkest, the tombs are laden.
Like with like is buried here; and the monuments are
more and less hot." Then, after turning to the right hand,
we passed between the tortures and the high
battlements.
Dante, Inferno, IX, 106
14 | saw many herds of naked souls, who were all lamenting
very miserably; and there seemed imposed upon them a
diverse law.
Some were lying supine upon the ground; some sitting
all crouched up; and others roaming incessantly.
Those that moved about were much more numerous;
and those that were lying in the torment were fewer, but
uttered louder cries of pain.
Over all the great sand, falling slowly, rained dilated
flakes of fire, like those of snow in Alps without a wind.
As the flames which Alexander, in those hot regions of
India, saw fall upon his host, entire to the ground;
whereat he with his legions took care to tramp the soil,
for the fire was more easily extinguished while alone:
so fell the eternal heat, by which the sand was
kindled, like tinder under flint and steel, redoubling the
pain.
Ever restless was the dance of miserable hands, now
here, now there, shaking off the fresh burning.
| began: "Master, thou who conquerest all things, save
the hard Demons, that came forth against us at the
entrance of the gate,
who is that great spirit, who seems to care not for the
fire, and lies disdainful and contorted, so that the rain
seems not to ripen him?"
And he himself, remarking that | asked my Guide
[Virgil] concerning him, exclaimed: "What | was living,
that am | dead.
Though Jove weary out his smith, from whom in anger
he took the sharp bolt with which on my last day | was
transfixed;
and though he weary out the others, one by one, at
the black forge in Mongibello, crying: ‘Help, help, good
Vulcan!’
as he did at the strife of Phlegra; and hurl at me with
all his might, yet should he not thereby have joyful
vengeance."
Then my Guide spake with a force such as | had not
heard before: "O Capaneus! in that thy pride remains
unquenched,
thou art punished more: no torture, except thy own
raving, would be pain proportioned to thy fury."
Then to me he turned with gentler lip, saying: "That
was the one of the seven kings who laid siege to Thebes;
and he held, and seems to hold,
God in defiance and prize him lightly; but, as | told
him, his revilings are ornaments that well befit his
breast."
Dante, Inferno, XIV, 19
15 What greater rebellion against God, what greater
wickedness, what greater contempt of God is there than
not believing his promise? For what is this but to make
God a liar or to doubt that he is truthful?—that is, to
ascribe truthfulness to one’s self but lying and vanity to
God? Does not a man who dote this deny God and set
himself up as an idol in his heart? Then of what good are
works done in such wickedness, even if they were the
works of angels and apostles? Therefore God has rightly
included all things, not under anger or lust, but under
unbelief, so that they who imagine that they are fulfilling
the law by doing the works of chastity and mercy
required by the law (the civil and human virtues) might
not be saved. They are included under the sin of unbelief
and must either seek mercy or be justly condemned.
Luther, Freedom of a Christian
16 Heretics ought to be persuaded by argument, and not by
fire; and this was the way of the early Fathers. If it were
wise policy to suppress heretics by burning them, then
the executioners would be the most learned teachers on
earth. We should have no need to study books any
longer, for he who could overthrow his fellow by violence
would have the right to burn him at the stake.
Luther, Appeal to the Ruling Class of German
Nationality, III
17 We are brought back to the belief in God either by love or
by force. Atheism being a proposition as it were unnatural
and monstrous, difficult too and not easy to establish in
the human mind, however insolent and unruly it may be,
plenty of men have been seen, out of vanity and pride in
conceiving opinions that are not common and that reform
the world, to affect to profess it outwardly; who, if they
are mad enough, are not strong enough nevertheless to
have implanted it in their conscience. They will not fail to
clasp their hands to heaven if you stick them a good
sword-thrust in the chest.
Montaigne, Essays, II, 12, Apology for Raymond Sebond
18 This matter of divinity is handled either in form of
instruction of truth, or in form of confutation of falsehood.
The declinations from religion, besides the privative,
which is atheism and the branches thereof, are three;
heresies, idolatry, and witchcraft: heresies, when we
serve the true God with a false worship; idolatry, when
we worship false gods, supposing them to be true; and
witchcraft, when we adore false gods, Knowing them to
be wicked and false.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. Il, XXV, 24
19 | had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the
Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is
without a mind. And therefore God never wrought miracle
to convince atheism, because his ordinary works
convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth
man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth
men’s minds about to religion: for while the mind of man
looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes
rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth
the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it
must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even that
school which is most accused of atheism doth most
demonstrate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and
Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand times more
credible, that four mutable elements and one immutable
fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God,
than that an army of infinite small portions or seeds
unplaced should have produced this order and beauty
without a divine marshal. The Scripture saith, The fool
hath said in his heart, there is no God: it is not said. The
fool hath thought in his heart so as he rather saith it by
rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can
thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none
deny there is a God but those for whom it maketh that
there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that
atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man, than
by this; that atheists will ever be talking of that their
opinion, as if they fainted in it within themselves, and
would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of
others.
Bacon, Of Atheism
20 All that is said by the atheist against the existence of
God, always depends either on the fact that we ascribe to
God affections which are human, or that we attribute so
much strength and wisdom to our minds that we even
have the presumption to desire to determine and
understand that which God can and ought to do. In this
way all that they allege will cause us no difficulty,
provided only we remember that we must consider our
minds as things which are finite and limited, and God as
a Being who is incomprehensible and infinite.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Pref.
21 By denying the existence or providence of God, men may
Shake off their ease, but not their yoke. But to call this
power of God, which extendeth itself not only to man, but
also to beasts, and plants, and bodies inanimate, by the
name of kingdom, is but a metaphorical use of the word.
For he only is properly said to reign that governs his
subjects by his word and by promise of rewards to those
that obey it, and by threatening them with punishment
that obey it not. Subjects therefore in the kingdom of God
are not bodies inanimate, nor creatures irrational;
because they understand no precepts as his: nor atheists,
nor they that believe not that God has any care of the
actions of mankind; because they acknowledge no word
for his, nor have hope of his rewards, or fear of his
threatenings. They therefore that believe there is a God
that governeth the world, and hath given precepts, and
propounded rewards and punishments to mankind, are
God’s subjects; all the rest are to be understood as
enemies.
Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 31
22 That Heresies should arise, we have the Prophesie of
Christ; but that old ones should be abolished, we hold no
prediction.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 8
23 What reason have [atheists] for saying that we cannot
rise from the dead? What is more difficult, to be born or to
rise again; that what has never been should be, or that
what has been should be again? Is it more difficult to
come into existence than to return to it? Habit makes the
one appear easy to us; want of habit makes the other
impossible, A popular way of thinking!
Why cannot a virgin bear a child? Does a hen not lay
eggs without a cock? What distinguishes these outwardly
from others? And who has told us that the hen may not
form the germ as well as the cock?
Pascal, Pensées, Ill, 222
24 God (and the Apostles), foreseeing that the seeds of
pride would make heresies spring up, and being unwilling
to give them occasion to arise from correct expressions,
has put in Scripture and the prayers of the Church
contrary words and sentences to produce their fruit in
time.
Pascal, Pensées, VIII, 579
25 Chorus of Danites. Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to Men;
Unless there be who think not God at all,
If any be, they walk obscure;
For of such Doctrine never was there School,
But the heart of the Fool,
And no man therein Doctor but himself.
Milton, Samson Agonistes, 293
26 Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if
her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they
sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A
man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe
things only because his Pastor says so, or the Assembly
so determines, without knowing other reason, though his
belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his
heresy.
Milton, Areopagitica
27 Truth indeed came once into the world with her Divine
Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on:
but when He ascended, and His Apostles after Him were
laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of
deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon
with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris,
took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a
thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds.
From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such
as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis
made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down
gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them.
We have not yet found them all. Lords and Commons, nor
ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall
bring together every joint and member, and shall mould
them into an immortal feature of loveliness and
perfection.
Milton, Areopagitica
28 Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of
a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the
bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an
atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in
thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their
atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no
pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege
of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not
absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to
establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the
Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason
why they should not be tolerated.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
29 However clearly we may think this or the other doctrine
to be deduced from Scripture, we ought not therefore to
impose it upon others as a necessary article of faith
because we believe it to be agreeable to the rule of faith,
unless we would be content also that other doctrines
should be imposed upon us in the same manner, and that
we should be compelled to receive and profess all the
different and contradictory opinions of Lutherans,
Calvinists, Remonstrants, Anabaptists, and other sects
which the contrivers of symbols, systems, and
confessions are accustomed to deliver to their followers
aS genuine and necessary deductions from the Holy
Scripture. | cannot but wonder at the extravagant
arrogance of those men who think that they themselves
can explain things necessary to salvation more clearly
than the Holy Ghost, the eternal and infinite wisdom of
God.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
30 The disbelief of a divine providence renders a man
uncapable of holding any publick station: for, since kings
avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the
Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd, than for a
prince to employ such men as disown the authority under
which he acteth.
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, |, 6
31 M. Bayle has pretended to prove that it is better to be an
Atheist than an Idolater; that is, in other words, that it is
less dangerous to have no religion at all than a bad one.
"| had rather," said he, "it should be said of me that | had
no existence than that |ama villain." This is only a
sophism founded on this, that it is of no importance to
the human race to believe that a certain man exists,
whereas it is extremely useful for them to believe the
existence of a God. From the idea of his nonexistence
immediately follows that of our independence; or, if we
cannot conceive this idea, that of disobedience. To say
that religion is not a restraining motive, because it does
not always restrain, is equally absurd as to say that the
civil laws are not a restraining motive. It is a false way of
reasoning against religion to collect, in a large work, a
long detail of the evils it has produced if we do not give
at the same time an enumeration of the advantages
which have flowed from it. Were | to relate all the evils
that have arisen in the world from civil laws, from
monarchy, and from republican government, | might tell
of frightful things. Were it of no advantage for subjects to
have religion, it would still be of some, if princes had it,
and if they whitened with foam the only rein which can
restrain those who fear not human laws.
Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, XXIV, 2
32 There is not a greater number of philosophical
reasonings, displayed upon any subject, than those,
which prove the existence of a Deity, and refute the
fallacies of Athe/sts; and yet the most religious
philosophers still disoute whether any man can so
blinded as to be a speculative atheist. How shall we
reconcile these contradictions? The knights-errant, who
wandered about to clear the world of dragons and giants,
never entertained the least doubt with regard to the
existence of these monsters.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, X/l, 116
33 What conclusion shall we draw from all this? That
atheism is a very pernicious monster in those who
govern; that it is also pernicious in the persons around
statesmen, although their lives may be innocent, because
from their cabinets it may pierce right to the statesmen
themselves; that if it is not so deadly as fanaticism, it is
nearly always fatal to virtue. Let us add especially that
there are less atheists to-day than ever, since
philosophers have recognized that there is no being
vegetating without germ, no germ without a plan, etc.,
and that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction.
Some geometers who are not philosophers have
rejected final causes, but real philosophers admit them; a
catechist proclaims God to the children, and Newton
demonstrates Him to the learned.
If there are atheists, whom must one blame, if not the
mercenary tyrants of souls, who, making us revolt against
their knaveries, force a few weak minds to deny the God
whom these monsters dishonour. How many times have
the people’s leeches brought oppressed citizens to the
point of revolting against their king!
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Atheism
34 Now, it matters very much to the community that each
citizen should have a religion. That will make him love his
duty; but the dogmas of that religion concern the State
and its members only so far as they have reference to
morality and to the duties which he who professes them
is bound to do to others. Each man may have, over and
above, what opinions he pleases, without it being the
Sovereign’s business to take cognisance of them; for, as
the Sovereign has no authority in the other world,
whatever the lot of its subjects may be in the life to
come, that is not its business, provided they are good
citizens in this life.
There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of
which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as
religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which
a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.
While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish
from the State whoever does not believe them—it can
banish him, not for impiety, but as an anti-social being,
incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of
sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If any one, after
publicly recognising these dogmas, behaves as if he does
not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has
committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the
law.
Rousseau, Social Contract, IV, 8
35 Johnson. Every society has a right to preserve publick
peace and order, and therefore has a good right to
prohibit the propagadon of opinions which havea
dangerous tendency. To say the magistrate has this right,
is uSing an inadequate word; it is the society for which
the magistrate is agent. He may be morally or
theologically wrong in restraining the propagation of
opinions which he thinks dangerous, but he is politically
right.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (May 7, 1773)
36 Johnson. Sir, there is a great cry about infidelity; but
there are, in reality, very few infidels. | have heard a
person, originally a Quaker, but now, | am afraid, a Deist,
say, that he did not believe there were, in all England,
above two hundred infidels.
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 14, 1775)
37 The opinions of the Academics and Epicureans were of a
less religious cast; but whilst the modest science of the
former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of
the latter urged them to deny, the providence of a
Supreme Ruler. The spirit of inquiry, prompted by
emulation, and supported by freedom, had divided the
public teachers of philosophy into a variety of contending
sects; but the ingenuous youth who, from every part,
resorted to Athens, and the other seats of learning in the
Roman empire, were alike instructed in every school to
reject and to despise the religion of the multitude. How,
indeed, was it possible, that a philosopher should accept,
as divine truths, the idle tales of the poets, and the
incoherent traditions of antiquity; or, that he should
adore, as gods, those imperfect beings whom he must
have despised, as men! Against such unworthy
adversaries, Cicero condescended to employ the arms of
reason and eloquence; but the satire of Lucian was a
much more adequate, as well as more efficacious weapon.
We may be well assured, that a writer conversant with the
world would never have ventured to expose the gods of
his country to public ridicule, had they not already been
the objects of secret contempt among the polished and
enlightened orders of society.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I!
38 It is the undoubted right of every society to exclude from
its communion and benefits such among its members as
reject or violate those regulations which have been
established by general consent. In the exercise of this
power the censures of the Christian church were chiefly
directed against scandalous sinners, and particularly
those who were guilty of murder, of fraud, or of
incontinence; against the authors, or the followers, of any
heretical opinions which had been condemned by the
judgment of the episcopal order; and against those
unhappy persons who, whether from choice or from
compulsion, had polluted themselves after their baptism
by any act of idolatrous worship. The consequences of
excommunication were of a temporal as well as a spiritual
nature. The Christian against whom it was pronounced
was deprived of any part in the oblations of the faithful.
The tics both of religious and of private friendship were
dissolved: he found himself a profane object of
abhorrence to the persons whom he the most esteemed,
or by whom he had been the most tenderly beloved; and
as far as an expulsion from a respectable society could
imprint on his character a mark of disgrace, he was
shunned or suspected by the generality of mankind.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
39 So easily was he [the emperor Constantius) offended by
the slightest deviation from his imaginary standard of
Christian truth, that he persecuted, with equal zeal, those
who defended the consubstantiality, those who asserted
the similar substance, and those who denied the /ikeness,
of the Son of God. Three bishops, degraded and banished
for those adverse opinions, might possibly meet in the
same place of exile; and, according to the difference of
their temper, might either pity or insult the blind
enthusiasm of their antagonists, whose present sufferings
would never be compensated by future happiness.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX!
40 Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of
Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith
of the princes and prelates w'ho reigned in the capital of
the East \vas rejected in the purer schools of Rome and
Alexandria. The archiepiscopal throne of Macedonius,
which had been polluted with so much Christian blood,
was successively filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus. Their
diocese enjoyed a free importation of vice and error from
every province of the empire; the eager pursuit of
religious controversy afforded a new occupation to the
busy idleness of the metropolis: and we may credit die
assertion of an intelligent observer, who describes, with
some pleasantry, the effects of their loquacious zeal.
"This city," says he, "is full of mechanics and slaves, who
are all of them profound theologians, and preach in the
shops and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a
piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son differs
from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are
told, by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the
Father; and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the
answer Is, that the Son was made out of nothing."
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXVII
41 By asecond edict he [Leo III] proscribed the existence as
well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of
Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from
idolatry; the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints
were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was
spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the
Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of
six emperors, and the East and West were involved ina
noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XLIX
42 The laws of the pious emperors, which seldom touched
the lives of less odious heretics, proscribed without mercy
or disguise the tenets, the books, and the persons of the
Montanists and Manichaeans: the books were delivered to
the flames; and all who should presume to secrete such
writings, or to profess such opinions, were devoted to an
ignominious death.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LIV
43 We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his
constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against,
not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot
prevail long.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
44 lf, from a practical point of view, the hypothesis of a
Supreme and All-sufficient Being is to maintain its
validity without opposition, it must be of the highest
importance to define this conception in a correct and
rigorous manner—as the transcendental conception of a
necessary being, to eliminate all phenomenal elements
(anthropomorphism in its most extended signification),
and at the same time to overflow all contradictory
assertions—be they atheistic, deistic, or
anthropomorphic. This is of course very easy; as the same
arguments which demonstrated the inability of human
reason to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being must
be alike sufficient to prove the invalidity of its denial. For
it is impossible to gain from the pure speculation of
reason demonstration that there exists no Supreme
Being, as the ground of all that exists, or that this being
possesses none of those properties which we regard as
analogical with the dynamical qualities of a thinking
being, or that, as the anthropomorphists would have us
believe, it is subject to all the limitations which sensibility
imposes upon those intelligences which exist in the world
of experience.
A Supreme Being is, therefore, for the speculative
reason, a mere ideal, though a faultless one—a
conception which perfects and crowns the system of
human cognition, but the objective reality of which can
neither be proved nor disproved by pure reason. If this
defect is ever supplied by a moral theology, the
problematic transcendental theology which has
preceded, will have been at least serviceable as
demonstrating the mental necessity existing for the
conception, by the complete determination of it which it
has furnished, and the ceaseless testing of the
conclusions of a reason often deceived by sense, and not
always in harmony with its own ideas.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic
45 Principle is a better test of heresy than doctrine. Heretics
are true to their principles, but change to and fro,
backwards and forwards, in opinion; for very opposite
doctrines may be exemplifications of the same principle.
Thus the Antiochenes and other heretics sometimes were
Arians, sometimes Sabellians, sometimes Nestorians,
sometimes Monophysites, as if at random, from fidelity to
their common principle, that there is no mystery in
theology. Thus Calvinists become Unitarians from the
principle of private judgment. The doctrines of heresy are
accidents and soon run to an end; its principles are
everlasting.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Pt. Il, V, 2
46 The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite
direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift
achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was
convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and
at once he instinctively said to himself: "| want to live for
immortality, and | will accept no compromise." In the
same way, if he had decided that God and immortality
did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist
and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labour
question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the
question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the
question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to
mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on
earth.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt, I, |, 5
47 Ivan. "You see, only suppose that there was one such man
among all those who desire nothing but filthy material
gain—if there’s only one like my old Inquisitor, who had
himself eaten roots in the desert and made frenzied
efforts to subdue his flesh to make himself free and
perfect. But yet all his life he loved humanity, and
suddenly his eyes were opened, and he saw that it is no
great moral blessedness to attain perfection and freedom,
if at the same time one gains the conviction that millions
of God’s creatures have been created as a mockery, that
they will never be capable of using their freedom, that
these poor rebels can never turn into giants to complete
the tower, that it was not for such geese that the great
idealist dreamt his dream of harmony. Seeing all that he
turned back and joined—the clever people. Surely that
could have happened?"
“Joined whom, what clever people?" cried Alyosha,
completely carried away. "They have no such great
cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps
nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor
does not believe in God, that’s his secret!"
"What if it is so! At last you have guessed it. It’s
perfectly true, it’s true that that’s the whole secret, but
isn’t that suffering, at least for a man like that, who has
wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could not
shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old age
he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the
advice of the great dread spirit could build up any
tolerable sort of life for the feeble, unruly, ‘incomplete,
empirical creatures created in jest.’ And so, convinced of
this, he secs that he must follow the counsel of the wise
spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and
therefore accept lying and deception, and lead men
consciously to death and destruction, and yet deceive
them all the way so that they may not notice where they
are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at least
on the way think themselves happy. And note, the
deception is in the name of Him in Whose ideal the old
man had so fervently believed all his life long. Is not that
tragic? And if only one such stood at the head of the
whole army ‘filled with the lust of power only for the sake
of filthy gain'—would not one such be enough to make a
tragedy? More than that, one such standing at the head
is enough to create the actual leading idea of the Roman
Church with all its armies and Jesuits, its highest idea. |
tell you frankly that | firmly believe that there has always
been such a man among those who stood at the head of
the movement. Who knows, there may have been some
such even among the Roman Popes. Who knows, perhaps
the spirit of that accursed old man who loves mankind so
obstinately in his own way, is to be found even now ina
whole multitude of such old men, existing not by chance
but by agreement, as a secret league formed long ago for
the guarding of the mystery, to guard it from the weak
and the unhappy, so as to make them happy. No doubt it
iS SO, and so it must be indeed."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. 11, V, 5
48 The Visitor. Oh, blind race of men who have no
understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied
God—and | believe that period, analogous with geological
periods, will come to pass—the old conception of the
universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what’s
more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew.
Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for
joy and happiness in the present world. Man %vill be
lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-
god will appear. From hour to hour extending his
conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science,
man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it
that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of
heaven.
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. IV, XI, 9
49 The existentialist... thinks it very distressing that God
does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in
a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can
no longer be an a prion Good, since there is no infinite
and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it
written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that
we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane
where there are only men. Dostoevsky said, "If God didn’t
exist, everything would be possible." That is the very
starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is
permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is
forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he
find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses
for himself.
Sartre, Existentialism
20.10 Prophecy
Two meanings of prophecy emerge in the quotations
collected here. One is the foretelling or prediction of the
future. The discussion of prophecy in this sense of the term
belongs in a chapter on Religion only to the extent that the
future foreseen has been predestined by the gods or by God;
hence, the prophet or seer is also called a "diviner" or one
who has skill in divination. Secular foresight and scientific
prediction are treated elsewhere in this volume, as are fate
and fortune when these are separated from divine
providence. The reader will find such matters considered in
Section 15.3 on Fate, Fortune, and Destiny and in Section
17.2 on Science and Scientific Method.
In its other meaning, prophecy involves more than the
simple prediction of future events, though it may involve
that also. Inspired by God, the Hebrew prophets serve as the
medium through which God speaks to his chosen people,
conveying his condemnation of their misdeeds and
exhorting them to mend their ways. Prophecy, in this sense,
is not only a medium of revelation and a form of mediation
between God and man, but also the preachment of moral
ideals and the castigation of moral iniquities. The passages
from the Old Testament illustrate this meaning of prophecy
and the role that the Hebrew prophets played at critical
moments in the history of Judaism.
The poets and historians of antiquity provide us with
examples of prophecy in the other sense. The philosophers
and theologians, both ancient and medieval, discuss the art
of divination, the interpretation of dreams for this purpose,
and the use or misuse of astrology to foretell the future. One
modern writer, Spinoza, expresses the opinion that the
prophets of the Old Testament should be read solely for their
moral preachments; and another modern writer, Hume,
suggests that prophecies, if they are regarded as conveying
a message from God, must also be regarded as miraculous.
The reader will find Hume’s opinions about the miraculous in
Section 20.11 on Miracles.
1 And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the
mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over
against Jericho, And the Lord shewed him all the land of
Gil-e-ad, unto Dan.
And all Naph-ta-li, and the land of E-phra-im, and Ma-
nas-seh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea,
And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho,
the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.
And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which |
sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, |
will give it unto thy seed: | have caused thee to see it
with thine eyes, but thou shall not go over thither...
And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto
Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.
In all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent
him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his
servants, and to all his land.
And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror
which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
2 Am 1a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?
Can any hide himself in secret places that | shall not
see him? saith the Lord. Do not | fill heaven and earth?
saith the Lord.
| have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy
lies in my name, saying, 1 have dreamed, | have
dreamed.
How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that
prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of
their own heart;
Which think to cause my people to forget my name by
their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour,
as their fathers have forgotten my name for Ba-al.
The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream;
and he that hath my word, let him speak my word
faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.
Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a
hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
Therefore, behold, | am against the prophets, saith the
Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour.
Behold, | am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that
use their tongues, and say. He saith.
Behold, | am against them that prophesy false dreams,
saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to
err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet | sent them
not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit
this people at all, saith the Lord.
Jeremiah 23:23-32
3 The Lord hath sent unto you all his servants the prophets,
rising early and sending them; but ye have not
hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear.
They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil
way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the
land that the Lord hath given unto you and to your
fathers for ever and ever:
And go not after other gods to serve them, and to
worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the
works of your hands; and | will do you no hurt.
Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the Lord;
that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your
hands to your own hurt....
And | will bring upon that land all my words which |
have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this
book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the
nations.
Jeremiah 25:4-13
4 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel;
Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the
midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your
dreams which ye cause to be dreamed.
For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: | have
not sent them, saith the Lord.
For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be
accomplished at Babylon | will visit you, and perform my
good word toward you, in caus-ing you to return to this
place.
For | know the thoughts that | think toward you, saith
the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you
an expected end.
Jeremiah 29:8-11
5 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in
the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the
valley which was full of bones,
And caused me to pass by them round about: and,
behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo,
they were very dry.
And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones
live? And | answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.
Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones,
and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the
Lord.
Ezekiel 37:1-4
6 Prometheus. | have known all before,
all that shall be, and clearly known; to me,
nothing that hurts shall come with a new face.
So must | bear, as lightly as | can,
the destiny that fate has given me;
for | Know well against necessity,
against its strength, no one can fight and win.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 100
7 Orestes. Even the gods, who at least bear the title of wise,
prove no less false than flitting dreams; in things divine
as well as human, confusion reigns; and 'tis only one
cause of grief, when a man, through no folly of his own
but from obeying the dictates of prophets, is ruined, as
ruined he is in the judgment of those who know.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 570
8 Servant. How rotten this business of prophets is, how full
of lies.
There never was any good in burning things on fires
nor in the voices of fowl. It is sheer idiocy even to think
that birds do people any good....
Why consult the prophets? We should sacrifice to the
gods, ask them for blessings, and let prophecy go.
The art was invented as a bait for making money, but
no man ever got rich on magic without work. The best
prophet is common sense, our native wit.
Euripides, Helen, 745
9 Teiresias. A man’s a fool to use the prophet’s trade.
For if he happens to bring bitter news
he’s hated by the men for whom he works;
and if he pities them and tells them lies
he wrongs the gods. No prophet but Apollo
should sing to men, for he has nought to fear.
Euripides, Phoenician Women, 954
10 Socrates. There is also a madness which is a divine gift,
and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men.
For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi
and the priestesses at Dodo-na when out of their senses
have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public
and private life, but when in their senses few or none.
And | might also tell you how the Sibyl and other inspired
persons have given to many an one many an intimation
of the future which has saved them from falling. But it
would be tedious to speak of what every one knows.
Plato, Phaedrus, 244A
11 Timaets. God has given the art of divination not to the
wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in
his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when
he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is
enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper
or possession. And he who would understand what he
remembers to have been said, whether in a dream or
when he was awake, by the prophetic and inspired
nature, or would determine by reason the meaning of the
apparitions which he has seen, and what indications they
afford to this man or that, of past, present or future good
and evil, must first recover his wits. But, while he
continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions
which he secs or the words which he utters; the ancient
saying is very true, that "only a man who has his wits can
act or judge about himself and his own affairs." And for
this reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be
judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them
prophets; they are quite unaware that they are only the
expositors of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be
called prophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy.
Plato, Timaeus, 71B
12 As to the divination which takes place in sleep, and is
said to be based on dreams, we cannot lightly either
dismiss it with contempt or give it implicit confidence.
The fact that all persons, or many, Suppose dreams to
possess a special significance, tends to inspire us with
belief in it [such divination], as founded on the testimony
of experience; and indeed that divination in dreams
should, as regards some subjects, be genuine, is not
incredible, for it has a show of reason; from which one
might form a like opinion also respecting all other
dreams. Yet the fact of our seeing no probable cause to
account for such divination tends to inspire us with
distrust. For, in addition to its further unreasonableness,
it is absurd to combine the idea that the sender of such
dreams should be God with the fact that those to whom
he sends them are not the best and wisest, but merely
commonplace persons.
Aristotle, Prophesying by Dreams, 462b12
13 Divination is made up of a little error and superstition,
plus a lot of fraud.
Cicero, Divination, 11, 39
14 Arriv’d at Cumae, when you view the flood
Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood,
The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin’d.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits.
The notes and names, inscrib’d, to leaves commits.
What she commits to leaves, in order laid.
Before the cavern’s entrance are display’d:
Unmov’'d they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapors issue from behind,
The leaves are borne aloft in liquid air,
And she resumes no more her museful care.
Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter’d verse,
Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.
Thus, many not succeeding, most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid.
And with loud curses leave the mystic shade.
Virgil, Aeneid, III
15 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the
wilderness of Judaea,
And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand.
For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias,
saying. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Matthew 3:1—3
16 Think not that | am come to destroy the law, or the
prophets: | am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily | say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till
all be fulfilled.
Matthew 5:17-18
17 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Matthew 7:15
18 Certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered,
saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
But he answered and said unto them, An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there
Shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet
Jonas:
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the
whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth.
Matthew 12:38-40
19 A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country,
and in his own house.
Matthew 13:57
20 If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they
be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Luke 16:31
21 When they therefore were come together, they asked of
him, saying. Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the
kingdom to Israel?
And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the
times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his
Own power.
Acts 1:6-7
22 The fortunes of cities as well as of men... have their
certain periods of time prefixed, which may be collected
and foreknown from the position of the stars at their first
foundation.
Plutarch, Romulus
23 Among other great changes that happen, as they say, at
the turn of ages, the art of divination, also, at one time
rises in esteem, and is more successful in its predictions,
clearer and surer tokens being sent from God, and then,
again, in another generation declines as low, becoming
mere guesswork for the most part, and discerning future
events by dim and uncertain intimations.
Plutarch, Sulla
24 But You, O Ruler of Your creation, how is it that you can
show souls things that are to come? For such things You
have told Your prophets. In what manner do You show the
future to man, for whom nothing future yet is? Or do You
show only present signs of things to come? For what does
not exist obviously cannot be shown. The means You use
is altogether beyond my gaze; my eyes have not the
strength; of myself | shall never be able to see so deep.
Augustine, Confessions, Xl, 19
25 In the manner of prophecy, figurative and literal
expressions are mingled, so that a serious mind may, by
useful and salutary effort, reach the spiritual sense; but
carnal sluggishness, or the slowness of an uneducated
and undisciplined mind, rests in the superficial letter, and
thinks there is nothing beneath to be looked for.
Augustine, City of God, XX, 21
26 The majority of men follow their passions, which are
movements of the sensitive appetite, in which
movements heavenly bodies can co-operate; but few are
wise enough to resist these passions. Consequently
astrologers are able to foretell the truth in the majority of
cases, especially in a general way. But not in particular
cases, for nothing prevents man resisting his passions by
his free-will. And so the astrologers themselves say that
the wise man is stronger than the stars, in so far as, that
is, he conquers his passions.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 115, 4
27 Casca. Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
| have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and | have seen
The ambidous ocean swell and rage and foam.
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did | go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.
Cicero. Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
Casca. A common slave—you know him well by Sight-
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join’d, and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain’d unscorch’d.
Besides—| ha’ not since put up my sword—
Against the Capitol | met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
“These are their reasons; they are natural";
For, | believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.
Cic. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
But men may construe things for their fashion.
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, |, tii, 3
28 Banguo. If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not.
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, tii, 58
29 The foresight of things to come, which is providence,
belongs only to him by whose will they are to come. From
him only, and supernaturally, proceeds prophecy. The
best prophet naturally is the best guesser; and the best
guesser, he that is most versed and studied in the
matters he guesses at, for he hath most signs to guess by.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 3
30 When God speaketh to man, it must be either
immediately or by mediation of another man, to whom He
had formerly spoken by Himself immediately. How God
speaketh to a man immediately may be understood by
those well enough to whom He hath so spoken; but how
the same should be understood by another is hard, if not
impossible, to know. For if a man pretend to me that God
hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and
| make doubt of it, | cannot easily perceive what
argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it. It is
true that if he be my sovereign, he may oblige me to
obedience, so as not by act or word to declare | believe
him not; but not to think any otherwise than my reason
persuades me. But if one that hath not such authority
over me shall pretend the same, there is nothing that
exacteth either belief or obedience.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 32
31 Though God Almighty can speak to a man by dreams,
visions, voice, and inspiration, yet He obliges no man to
believe He hath so done to him that pretends it; who,
being aman, may err and, which is more, may lie.
How then can he to whom God hath never revealed
His will immediately (saving by the way of natural
reason) Know when he is to obey or not to obey His word,
delivered by him that says he is a prophet?... To which |
answer out of the Holy Scripture that there be two marks
by which together, not asunder, a true prophet is to be
known. One is the doing of miracles; the other is the not
teaching any other religion than that which is already
established. Asunder, | say, neither of these is sufficient.
... In which words two things are to be observed; first,
that God will not have miracles alone serve for arguments
to approve the prophet’s calling; but for an experiment of
the constancy of our adherence to Himself. For the works
of the Egyptian sorcerers, though not so great as those of
Moses, yet were great miracles. Secondly, that how great
soever the miracle be, yet if it tend to stir up revolt
against the king or him that governeth by the king’s
authority, he that doth such miracle is not to be
considered otherwise than as sent to make trial of their
allegiance.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 32
32 The prophecies are the strongest proof of Jesus Christ. It
is for them also that God has made most provision; for
the event which has fulfilled them is a miracle existing
since the birth of the Church to the end. So God has
raised up prophets during sixteen hundred years, and,
during four hundred years afterwards, He has scattered
all these prophecies among all the Jews, who carried
them into all parts of the world. Such was the preparation
for the birth of Jesus Christ, and, as His Gospel was to be
believed by all the world, it was not only necessary that
there should be prophecies to make it believed, but that
these prophecies should exist throughout the whole
world, in order to make it embraced by the whole world.
Pascal, Pensees, XI, 706
33 If one man alone had made a book of predictions about
Jesus Christ, as to the time and the manner, and Jesus
Christ had come in conformity to these prophecies, this
fact would have infinite weight.
But there is much more here. Here is a succession of
men during four thousand years, who, consequently and
without variation, come, one after another, to foretell this
same event. Here is a whole people (the Jews] who
announce it and who have existed for four thousand
years, in order to give corporate testimony of the
assurances which they have and from which they cannot
be diverted by whatever threats and persecutions people
may make against them. This is far more important.
Pascal, Pensées, XI, 710
34 The Jews, in slaying Him in order not to receive Him as
the Messiah, have given Him the final proof of being the
Messiah.
And in continuing not to recognise Him, they made
themselves irreproachable witnesses. Both in slaying Him
and in continuing to deny Him, they have fulfilled the
prophecies.
Pascal, Pensées, XII, 761
35 Prophecy, or revelation, is sure knowledge revealed by
God to man. A prophet is one who interprets the
revelations of God to those who are unable to attain to
sure knowledge of the matters revealed, and therefore
can only apprehend them by simple faith.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, |
36 The authority of the prophets has weight only in matters
of morality, and... their soeculative doctrines affect us
little.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, Pref.
37 No one except Christ received the revelations of God
without the aid of imagination, whether in words or
vision. Therefore the power of prophecy implies not a
peculiarly perfect mind, but a peculiarly vivid
imagination.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, |
38 All prophecies are real miracles, and as such only, can be
admitted as proofs of any revelation. If it did not exceed
the capacity of human nature to foretell future events, it
would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument
for a divine mission or authority from heaven.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, X, 101
39 It must be admitted, a prophet’s profession is a wretched
one. For every one who, like Elijah, goes traveling from
planet to planet in a shining chariot of light drawn by
four white horses, there are a hundred who go on foot and
must beg their dinner from door to door.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Prophets
40 Any man may grave tablets of stone, or buy an oracle, or
feign secret intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird
to whisper in his ear, or find other vulgar ways of
imposing on the people. He whose knowledge goes no
further may perhaps gather round him a band of fools;
but he will never found an empire, and his extravagances
will quickly perish with him. Idle tricks form a passing tie;
only wisdom can make it lasting.
Rousseau, Social Contract, 11, 7
41 But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain!
The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,
And lea’e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy.
Burns, To a Mouse
42 The future has not yet happened. But it is not on that
account less necessary than the past, since the past did
not become necessary by coming into existence, but on
the contrary proved by coming into existence that it was
not necessary. If the past had become necessary it would
not be possible to infer the opposite about the future, but
it would rather follow that the future also was necessary.
If necessity could gain a foothold at a single point, there
would no longer be any distinguishing between the past
and the future. To assume to predict the future
(prophesy) and to assume to understand the necessity of
the past are one and the same thing, and only custom
makes the one seem more plausible than the other to a
given generation.
Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, Interlude
43 Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told;
somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with
pencil on canvas, sometimes with chisel on stone,
sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul’s
worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite
music; but clearest and most permanent, in words.
The man enamored of this excellency becomes its
priest or poet. The office is coeval with the world. But
observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of the
office. The spirit only can teach.
Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar,
not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has;
he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul
descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can
teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every
man can open his door to these angels, and they shall
bring him the gift of tongues. But the man who aims to
speak as books enable, as synods use, as the fashion
guides, and as interest commands, babbles. Let him
hush.
Emerson, Address to Harvard Divinity School
44 There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of
any event that however it may end there will always be
people to say: "I said then that it would be so," quite
forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures many
were to quite the contrary effect.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, X, 1
45 The prophet has drunk more deeply than anyone of the
cup of bitterness, but his countenance is so unshaken
and he speaks such mighty words of cheer that his will
becomes our will, and our life is kindled at his own.
William James, Pychology, XXVI
46 The attempt to translate Prophetic Vision, expressed in
the language of poetic truth, into a metaphysical blue-
print, expressed in the language of scientific truth, has
two untoward effects. It forces us to direct our attention
from what is essential and momentous in the poetic truth
of Prophetic Vision to the trivial and intrinsically insoluble
question of its relation to scientific truth; and it
substitutes a provisional report for a timeless intuition.
Even if we could succeed in translating poetic truth into
scientific truth at the risk of robbing it of its meaning and
value, our scientific formula would no sooner have been
drafted than it would be already obsolete.
Toynbee, An Historian's Approach to Religion, IX
20.11 Miracles
As the reader might expect, the writers quoted here divide
rather sharply into those who accept miracles as certainly
within God’s power to perform and those who reject miracles
as impossible because they violate the laws of nature. One
of the subtle issues involved in this dispute is whether a
miracle consists in the doing of the impossible or is the
occurrence of what is only improbable, not impossible. The
theologians who offer us definitions of the miraculous, and
provide us with the classification of different types of
miracles, take the latter view: even an omnipotent God
cannot do the impossible; the laws of nature do not express
necessities that make their contravention by miracles
consist in doing the impossible. The philosophers (who reject
miracles), among them especially Spinoza and Hume, differ
among themselves on the question of whether or not the
laws of nature express necessities that can be known by us;
if not, as Hume appears to maintain, miracles may present
us with striking exceptions to the normal course of nature,
but they cannot be judged impossible.
The reader’s attention is called to Augustine’s remark
that the existence of man himself—at once an animal and
rational—is a greater miracle than any other; to Pascal’s
treatment of the miracles performed by Christ as evidence of
his divinity and of the truth of his teachings; to Gibbon’s
skeptical treatment of the miracles that were supposed to
have occurred in the early centuries of Christianity; to
Kierkegaard’s insight, expressed also by Dostoevsky, that
faith in Christ precedes and underlies belief in the miracles
he performed; and to Santayana’s observation that science
has its miracles, too.
Matters relevant to the discussion of miracles will be
found in Section 19.1 on Nature AND THE Natural, in Section
19.3 on Cause, in Section 19.4 on Chance, and in Section
20.12 on Superstition.
1 Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea
returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and
the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the
Egyptians in the midst of the sea.
And the waters returned, and covered the chariots,
and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came
into the sea after them; there remained not so much as
one of them.
But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the
midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on
their right hand, and on their left.
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of
the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon
the sea shore.
And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did
upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the Lord, and
believed the Lord, and his servant Moses.
Exodus 14:27-31
2 Neb-u-chad-nez-zar spake and said unto them. Is it true, O
Sha-drach. Me-shach, and Abed-nego, do not ye serve my
gods, nor worship the golden image which | have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the
sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and
dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and
worship the image which | have made; well: but if ye
worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst
of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall
deliver you out of my hands?
Sha-drach, Me-shach, and Abed-nego, answered and
said to the king, O Neb-u-chad-nez-zar, we are not careful
to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us
from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out
of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will
not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which
thou hast set up.
Then was Neb-u-chad-nez-zar full of fury, and the form
of his visage was changed against Sha-drach, Me-shach,
and Abed-nego: therefore he spake, and commanded that
they should heat the furnace one seven times more than
it was wont to be heated.
And he commanded the most mighty men that were in
his army to bind Sha-drach, Me-shach, and Abed-nego,
and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
Then these men were bound in their coats, their
hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were
cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.
Therefore because the king’s commandment was
urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the
fire slew those men that took up Sha-drach, Me-shach,
and Abed-nego.
And these three men, Sha-drach, Mc-shach, and Abed-
nego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery
furnace.
Then Neb-u-chad-nez-zar the king was aston-ied, and
rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his
counsellors. Did not we cast three men bound into the
midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king.
True, O king.
He answered and said, Lo, | see four men loose,
walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt;
and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.
Then Ncb-u-chad-nez-zar came near to the mouth of
the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Sha-
drach, Me-shach, and Abed-nego, ye servants of the most
high God, come forth, and come hither. Then Sha-drach,
Me-shach, and Abed-nego, came forth of the midst of the
fire.
And the princes, governors, and captains, and the
king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these
men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was
an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats
changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.
Daniel 3:14-27
3 When he was come down from the mountain, great
multitudes followed him.
And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him,
saying. Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying,
| will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was
cleansed.
And Jesus saith unto him, Sec thou tell no man; but go
thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that
Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
Matthew 8:1-4
4 When Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him,
crying, and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on us.
And when he was come into the house, the blind men
came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that |
am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord.
Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your
faith be it unto you.
And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly
charged them, saying. See that no man know it.
But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his
fame in all that country.
As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb
man possessed with a devil.
And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake; and
the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in
Israel.
But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through
the prince of the devils.
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages,
leaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel
of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every
disease among the people.
Matthew 9:27-35
5 Straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the
ship, and to go to the other side before unto Beth-sa-i-da,
while he sent away the people.
And when he had sent them away, he departed into a
mountain to pray.
And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of
the sea, and he alone on the land.
And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was
contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the
night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and
would have passed by them.
But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they
supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out:
For they all saw him, and were troubled. And
immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them,
Be of good cheer: it is |; be not afraid.
And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind
ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves
beyond measure, and wondered.
For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for
their heart was hardened.
Mark 6:45-52
6 The Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him,
seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him.
And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith. Why doth
this generation seek after a sign? verily | say unto you,
There shall no sign be given unto this generation.
Mark 8:11-12
7 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;
and the mother of Jesus was there:
And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the
Marriage.
And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith
unto him, They have no wine.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have | to do with
thee? mine hour is not yet come.
His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he
saith unto you, do it.
And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after
the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or
three firkins apiece.
Jesus saith unto them. Fill the waterpots with water.
And they filled them up to the brim.
And he saith unto them. Draw out now, and bear unto
the governor of the feast. And they bare it.
When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that
was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the
servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the
feast called the bridegroom,
And saith unto him. Every man at the beginning doth
set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then
that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine
until now.
This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee,
and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed
on him.
John 2:1-11
8 Then said Jesus unto him. Except ye see signs and
wonders, ye will not believe.
John 4:48
9 The standing miracle of this visible world is little thought
of, because always before us, yet, when we arouse
ourselves to contemplate it, it is a greater miracle than
the rarest and most unheard-of marvels. For man himself
iS a greater miracle than any miracle done through his
instrumentality-
Augustine, City of God, X, 12
10 God, Who made the visible heaven and earth, does not
disdain to work visible miracles in heaven or earth, that
He may thereby awaken the soul which is immersed in
things visible to worship Himself, the Invisible.
Augustine, City of God, X, 12
11 When we declare the miracles which God has wrought, or
will yet work, and which we cannot bring under the very
eyes of men, sceptics keep demanding that we shall
explain these marvels to reason. And because we cannot
do so, inasmuch as they are above human
comprehension, they suppose we are speaking falsely.
These persons themselves, therefore, ought to account
for all these marvels which we either can or do see. And if
they perceive that this is impossible for man to do, they
should acknowledge that it cannot be concluded that a
thing has not been or shall not be because it cannot be
reconciled to reason, since there are things now in
existence of which the same is true.
Augustine, City of God, XXI, 5
12 The word miracle is derived from admiration, which arises
when an effect is manifest, and its cause is hidden, as
when aman sees an eclipse of the sun without knowing
its cause. ,. . Now the cause of an effect which makes its
appearance may be known to one, but unknown to
others. And so a thing is wonderful to one man, and not
at all to others; as an eclipse is to a rustic, but not to an
astronomer. Now a miracle is called so as being full of
wonder, and as having a cause absolutely hidden from
all; and this cause is God. Therefore those things which
God does outside those causes which we know, are called
miracles.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 105, 7
13 A miracle is said to go beyond the hope of nature, not
beyond the hope of grace, which hope comes from faith,
by which we believe in the future resurrection.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 105, 7
14 A miracle properly so called is when something is done
outside the order of nature. But it is not enough fora
miracle if something is done outside the order of any
particular nature; for otherwise anyone would perform a
miracle by throwing a stone upwards, as such a thing is
outside the order of the stone’s nature. So for something
to be called a miracle it is required that it be against the
order of the whole created nature. But God alone can do
this, because, whatever an angel or any other creature
does by its own power, is according to the order of
created nature, and thus it is not a miracle. Hence God
alone can work miracles.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 110, 4
15 If we take a miracle in the strict sense, the demons
cannot work miracles, nor can any creature, but God
alone, since in the strict sense a miracle is something
done outside the order of the entire created nature, under
which order every power of a creature is contained. But
sometimes miracles may be taken in a wide sense for
whatever exceeds the human power and experience. And
thus demons can work miracles, that is, things which
rouse man’s astonishment, by reason of their being
beyond his powder and outside his sphere of knowledge.
For even a man by doing what is beyond the power and
knowledge of another leads him to marvel at what he has
done, so that in a way he seems to that man to have
worked a miracle.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, |, 114, 4
16 Glendower. | can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur. Why, so can |, or so can any man; But will
they come when you do call for them?
Shakespeare, | Henry IV, Ill, 1, 53
17 How long, said Don Quixote, do you reckon that | have
been in the Cave? A little above an Hour, answered
Sancho. That's impossible, said Don Quixote, for | saw
Morning and Evening, and Evening and Morning, three
times since; so that | could not be absent less than three
Days from this upper World. Ay, ay, quoth Sancho, my
Master’s in the Right; for these Inchantments, that have
the greatest Share in all his Concerns, may make That
seem three Days and three Nights to him, which is but an
Hour to other People. It must be so, said Don Quixote. |
hope. Sir, said the Scholar, you have eaten something in
all that time. Not one Morsel, reply'd Don Quixote, neither
have had the least desire to Eat, or so much as thought of
it all the while. Do not they that are Inchanted sometimes
Eat? ask’d the Scholar. They never do, answered Don
Quixote, and consequently they are never troubled with
exonerating the Dregs of Food; tho’ ’tis not unlikely that
their Nails, their Beards and Hair still grow. Do they never
sleep neither, said Sancho? Never, said Don Quixote; at
least they never clos’d their Eyes while | was among ’em,
nor | neither. This makes good the Saying, quoth Sancho,
Tell me thy Company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.
Troth! you have all been in-chanted together.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 23
18 As for the narrations touching the prodigies and miracles
of religions, they are either not true, or not natural; and
therefore impertinent for the story of nature.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, |, 4
19 The testimony that men can render of divine calling can
be no other than the operation of miracles, or true
prophecy (which also is a miracle), or extraordinary
felicity. And therefore, to those points of religion which
have been received from them that did such miracles,
those that are added by such as approve not their calling
by some miracle obtain no greater belief than what the
custom and laws of the places in which they be educated
have wrought into them. For as in natural things men of
judgement require natural signs and arguments, so in
supernatural things they require signs supernatural
(which are miracles) before they consent inwardly and
from their hearts.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 1, 12
20 Seeing... miracles now cease, we have no sign left
whereby to acknowledge the pretended revelations or
inspirations of any private man; nor obligation to give ear
to any doctrine, farther than it is conformable to the Holy
Scriptures.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 32
21 It belongeth to the nature of a miracle that it be wrought
for the procuring of credit to God’s messengers,
ministers, and prophets, that thereby men may know
they are called, sent, and employed by God, and thereby
be the better inclined to obey them.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 37
22 That Miracles are ceased, | can neither prove, nor
absolutely deny, much less define the time and period of
their cessation: that they survived Christ, is manifest
upon the Record of Scripture: that they out-lived the
Apostles also, and were revived at the Conversion of
Nations, many years after, we cannot deny, if we shall not
question those Writers whose testimonies we do not
controvert in points that make for our own opinions;
therefore that may have some truth in it that is reported
by the Jesuites of their Miracles in the /ndies; | could wish
it were true, or had any other testimony than their own
Pens. They may easily believe those Miracles abroad, who
daily conceive a greater at home, the transmutation of
those visible elements into the Body and Blood of our
Saviour: for the conversion of Water into Wine, which he
wrought in Cana, or what the Devil would have had him
done in the Wilderness, of Stones into Bread, compared
to this, will scarce deserve the name of a Miracle. Though
indeed to speak properly, there is not one Miracle greater
than another, they being the extraordinary effects of the
Hand of God, to which all things are of an equal facility;
and to create the World as easie as one single Creature.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 27
23 That Miracles have been, | do believe; that they may yet
be wrought by the living, | do not deny: but have no
confidence in those which are fathered on the dead; and
this hath ever made me suspect the efficacy of reliques,
to examine the bones, question the habits and
appurtenances of Saints, and even of Christ himself.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 28
24 It is not possible to have a reasonable belief against
miracles.
Pascal, Pensées, XIII, 815
25 Jesus Christ performed miracles, then the apostles, and
the first saints in great number; because the prophecies
not being yet accomplished, but in the process of being
accomplished by them, the miracles alone bore witness to
them. It was foretold that the Messiah should convert the
nations. How could this prophecy be fulfilled without the
conversion of the nations? And how could the nations be
converted to the Messiah, if they did not see this final
effect of the prophecies which prove Him? Therefore, till
He had died, risen again, and converted the nations, all
was not accomplished; and so miracles were needed
during all this time. Now they are no longer needed
against the Jews; for the accomplished prophecies
constitute a lasting miracle.
Pascal, Pensées, XIII, 838
26 As men are accustomed to call Divine the knowledge
which transcends human understanding, so also do they
style Divine, or the work of God, anything of which the
cause is not generally known: for the masses think that
the power and providence of God are most clearly
displayed by events that are extraordinary and contrary
to the conception they have formed of nature, especially
if such events bring them any profit or convenience: they
think that the clearest possible proof of God’s existence is
afforded when nature, as they suppose, breaks her
accustomed order, and consequently they believe that
those who explain or endeavour to understand
phenomena or miracles through their natural causes are
doing away with God and His providence. They suppose,
forsooth, that God is inactive so long as nature works in
her accustomed order, and vice versa, that the power of
nature and natural causes are idle so long as God is
acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct one from
the other, the power of God and the power of nature,
though the latter is in a sense determined by God, or (as
most people believe now) created by Him. What they
mean by either, and what they understand by God and
nature they do not know, except that they imagine the
power of God to be like that of some royal potentate, and
nature’s power to consist in force and energy.
The masses then style unusual phenomena "miracles,"
and partly from piety, partly for the sake of opposing the
students of science, prefer to remain in ignorance of
natural causes, and only to hear of those things which
they know least, and consequently admire most.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, VI
27 A miracle is an event of which the causes cannot be
explained by the natural reason through a reference to
ascertained workings of nature; but since miracles were
wrought according to the understanding of the masses,
who are wholly ignorant of the workings of nature, it is
certain that the ancients took for a miracle whatever they
could not explain by the method adopted by the
unlearned in such cases, namely, an appeal to the
memory a recalling of something similar, which is
ordinarily regarded without wonder; for most people
think they sufficiently understand a thing when they
have ceased to wonder at it. The ancients, then, and
indeed most men up to the present day, had no other
criterion for a miracle; hence we cannot doubt that many
things are narrated in Scripture as miracles of which the
causes could easily be explained by reference to
ascertained workings of nature.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, VI
28 Though the common experience and the ordinary course
of things have justly a mighty influence on the minds of
men, to make them give or refuse credit to anything
proposed to their belief; yet there is one case, wherein
the strangeness of the fact lessens not the assent to a fair
testimony given of it. For where such supernatural events
are Suitable to ends aimed at by Him who has the power
to change the course of nature, there, under such
circumstances, that may be the fitter to procure belief, by
how much the more they are beyond or contrary to
ordinary observation. This is the proper case of miracles,
which, well attested, do not only find credit themselves,
but give it also to other truths, which need such
confirmation.
Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, XVI, 13
29 Sometimes an event may not, /n itse/f, seem to be
contrary to the laws of nature, and yet, if it were real, it
might, by reason of some circumstances, be denominated
a miracle; because, in fact, it is contrary to these laws.
Thus if a person, claiming a divine authority, should
command a sick person to be well, a healthful man to fall
down dead, the clouds to pour rain, the winds to blow, in
short, should order many natural events, which
immediately follow upon his command; these might
justly be esteemed miracles, because they are really, in
this case, contrary to the law’s of nature. For if any
suspicion remain, that the event and command concurred
by accident, there is no miracle and no transgression of
the law’s of nature. If this suspicion be removed, there is
evidently a miracle, and a transgression of these laws;
because nothing can be more contrary to nature than
that the voice or command of a man should have such an
influence. A miracle may be accurately defined, a
transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of
the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.
A miracle may either be discoverable by men or not. This
alters not its nature and essence. The raising of a house
or ship into the air is a visible miracle. The raising of a
feather, when the w’ind wants ever so little of a force
requisite for that purpose, is as real a miracle, though not
so sensible with regard to us,
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, X, 90, fn,
30 A miracle is a violation of the law’s of nature; and asa
firm and unalterable experience has established these
laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of
the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience
can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable,
that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain
suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is
extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are
found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is
required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a
miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle,
if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no
miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die
on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more
unusual than any other, has yet been frequently
observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man
should come to life; because that has never been
observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be
a uniform experience against every miraculous event,
otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.
And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is
here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact,
against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof
be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an
opposite proof, which is superior.
The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim
worthy of our attention), "That no testimony is sufficient
to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a
kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than
the fact, which it endeavours to establish; and even in
that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and
the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that
degree of force, which remains, after deducting the
inferior." When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man
restored to life, | immediately consider with myself,
whether it be more probable, that this person should
either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he
relates, should really have happened. | weigh the one
miracle against the other; and according to the
superiority, which | discover, | pronounce my decision,
and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of
his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event
which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend
to command my belief or opinion.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings X, 90-91
31 The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies,
and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either
been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect
themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the
strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and
the marvellous, and ought reasonably to beget a
suspicion against all relations of this kind.
Hume, Concerning Human Understandings X, 93
32 Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be, in
this case, Almighty, it does not, upon that account,
become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us
to know the attributes or actions of such a Being,
otherwise than from the experience which we have of his
productions, in the usual course of nature.
Hume, Concerning Human Understanding, X, 99
33 | mentioned Hume’s argument against the belief of
miracles, that it is more probable that the witnesses to
the truth of them are mistaken, or speak falsely, than that
the miracles should be true. Johnson, "Why, Sir, the great
difficulty of proving miracles should make us very
cautious in believing them. But let us consider; although
God has made Nature to operate by certain fixed laws,
yet it is not unreasonable to think that he may suspend
those laws, in order to establish a system highly
advantageous to mankind. Now the Christian religion is a
most beneficial system, as it gives us light and certainty
where we were before in darkness and doubt. The
miracles which prove it are attested by men who had no
interest in deceiving us; but who, on the contrary, were
told that they should suffer persecution, and did actually
lay down their lives in confirmation of the truth of the
facts which they asserted. Indeed, for some centuries the
heathens did not pretend to deny the miracles; but said
they were performed by the aid of evil spirits. This is a
circumstance of great weight. Then, Sir, when we take the
proofs derived from prophecies which have been so
exactly fulfilled, we have most satisfactory evidence.
Supposing a miracle possible, as to which, in my opinion,
there can be no doubt, we have as strong evidence for
the miracles in support of Christianity, as the nature of
the thing admits."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (July 21, 1763)
34 The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke,
where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX
35 The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the
dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane
or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude
that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been
deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has
much more frequently been insulted by fiction. Every
event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to
deviate from the ordinary course of nature, has been
rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XX
36 [Clovis], the victorious king of the Franks, proceeded
without delay to the siege of Angouleme. At the sound of
his trumpets the walls of the city imitated the example of
Jericho, and instantly fell to the ground; a splendid
miracle, which may be reduced to the supposition that
some clerical engineers had secretly undermined the
foundations of the rampart.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XXXVIII
37 Such is the progress of credulity, that miracles, most
doubtful on the spot and at the moment, will be received
with implicit faith at a convenient distance of time and
Space.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LVIII
38 We do not adopt the right point of view in thinking of
Christ only as a historical bygone personality. So
regarded, the question is asked: what are we to make of
his birth, his father and mother, his early domestic
relations, his miracles, etc.?—i.e., what is he unspiritually
regarded? Considered only in respect of his talents,
character and morality, as a teacher and so forth, we
place him in the same category with Socrates and others,
though his morality may be ranked higher. But excellence
of character, morality, etc.—all this is not the ne plus
ultra in the requirements of spirit—does not enable man
to gain the speculative idea of spirit for his conceptive
faculty. If Christ is to be looked upon only as an excellent,
even impeccable individual, and nothing more, the
conception of the speculative idea, of absolute truth is
ignored. But this is the desideratum, the point from which
we have to start. Make of Christ what you will,
exegetically, critically, historically—demonstrate as you
please, how the doctrines of the Church were established
by councils, attained currency as the result of this or that
episcopal interest or passion, or originated in this or that
quarter; let all such circumstances have been what they
might—the only concerning question is: what is the idea
or the truth in and for itself?
Further, the real attestation of the divinity of Christ is
the witness of one’s own spirit—not miracles; for only
Spirit recognizes spirit. The miracles may lead the way to
such recognition. A miracle implies that the natural
course of things is interrupted: but it is very much a
question of relation what we call the "natural course";
and the phenomena of the magnet might, under cover of
this definition, be reckoned miraculous. Nor does the
miracle of the divine mission of Christ prove anything; for
Socrates likewise introduced a new Self-consciousness on
the part of spirit, diverse from the traditional tenor of
men’s conceptions. The main question is not his divine
mission but the revelation made in Christ and the purport
of his mission. Christ himself blames the Pharisees for
desiring miracles of him, and speaks of false prophets
who will perform miracles.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, Ill, 2
39 The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is for ever
here!
Carlyle, The Hero as Priest
40 jxus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw
with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its
severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it,
and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated
the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you
and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and
evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World.
He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine.
Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you
see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as |
now think.’ But what a distortion did his doctrine and
memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following
ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear
to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding
caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in
the next age, ‘This was Jehovah come down out of
heaven. | will kill you, if you say he was a man.’ The
idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric
have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not
built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity
became a Mythus, as the poetic reaching of Greece and
of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that
man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he
knew that this daily miracle shines as the character
ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by
Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster.
It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
Emerson, Address to Harvard Divinity School
41 If there is to be any sense in the assertion that miracles
prove who Christ is, we must begin with not knowing who
He is, that is to say, in the situation of
contemporaneousness with an individual man, who is like
other men, in whom there is nothing directly to be seen,
an individual man who thereupon performs a miracle and
himself says that it is a miracle he performs. What does
this signify? It signifies that this individual man makes
himself out to be more than man, makes himself out to be
something pretty near to being God. Is not this cause for
offence? You see something inexplicable, miraculous (and
that is all), he himself says that it is a miracle—and with
your own eyes you behold the individual man. The
miracle can prove nothing; for if you do not believe that
he is what he says he is, you deny the miracle. A miracle
can make one attentive—now thou art in a state of
tension, and all depends upon what thou dost choose,
offence or faith. It is thy heart that must be revealed.
Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, Il, B
42 It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of
the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to
seek for miracles as evidence; or the extent to which
religion, and religion of a true and admirable kind, has
been, and is still, held in connection with a reliance upon
miracles. This reliance will long outlast the reliance on
the supernatural prescience of prophecy, for it is not
exposed to the same tests. To pick Scripture-miracles one
by one to pieces is an odious and repulsive task; it is also
an unprofitable one, for whatever we may think of the
affirmative demonstrations of them, a negative
demonstration of them is, from the circumstances of the
case, impossible. And yet the human mind is assuredly
passing away, however slowly, from this hold of reliance
also; and those who make it their stay will more and more
find it fail them, will more and more feel themselves
disturbed, shaken, distressed, and bewildered.
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, V
43 It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The
genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find
strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if
he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he
would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the
fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature
till then unrecognised by him. Faith does not, in the
realist, soring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.
If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very
realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas
said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he
did see he said, "My Lord and my God!" Was it the miracle
forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed
solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully
believed in his secret heart even when he said, "I do not
believe till | see."
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt. I, |, 5
44 Miracles are so called because they excite wonder. In
unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing
excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar
excites wonder also, and the laws of nature, if we admit
such laws, excite more wonder than the detached events.
Each morning the sunrise excites wonder in the poet, and
the order of the solar system excites it every night in the
astronomer. Astronomy explains the sunrise, but what
Shall explain the solar system? The universe, which would
explain everything, is the greatest of wonders, anda
perpetual miracle.
Santayana, The Idea of Christ in the Gospels
45 Science, which thinks to make belief in miracles
impossible, is itself belief in miracles—in the miracles
best authenticated by history and by daily life.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 2
20.12 Superstition
The condemnation of superstition is shared equally by those
who defend religion or are apologists for it and by those who
reject religion itself, the latter on the ground that it is
nothing but superstition. The reader will find Lucretius in
antiquity, Gibbon in the eighteenth century (the so-called
“age of reason"), and Freud in our own time to be eloquent
exponents of this view. Those who take the opposite view,
that a sharp line can be drawn between superstitious beliefs
and practices, on the one hand, and valid religious beliefs
and genuine religious rites, on the other, differ among
themselves about precisely where and how to draw the line.
For example, some of the writers represented here regard
the belief in miracles as superstitious; others, the belief in
sorcerers; others, the belief in omens or portents and in
astrological predictions; and still others call idolaters
superstitious or those who believe in magic, witchcraft, and
the influence of demons. Such writers include outstanding
Christian theologians as well as secular philosophers who
tend to be skeptical about many of the doctrines or dogmas
of orthodox religion. All alike agree that superstition is a vice
directly opposed to religion, and that superstition must be
overcome to purify religion of the dross that encrusts it.
Even Voltaire admits that the horrible crimes with which
religion is often charged should be attributed to
superstition, not true religion; though he also remarks that a
people not at all superstitious would have to bea
community of philosophers and that true faith for one sect is
superstition for another.
Since the discussion here turns on the line that divides
superstition from religion, the reader would do well to
compare what is said here with what is said in Section 20.1
on The Distinguishing Features of Religion.
1 When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth
crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed
her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect
lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece [Epicurus]
ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and
first to withstand her to her face. Him neither story of
gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with threatening roar
could quell: they only chafed the more the eager courage
of his soul, filling him with desire to be the first to burst
the fast bars of nature’s portals. Therefore the living force
of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the
flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in
mind and spirit the immeasurable universe; whence he
returns a conqueror to tell us what can, what cannot
come into being; in short on what principle each thing
has its powers defined, its deepset boundary mark.
Therefore religion is put under foot and trampled upon in
turn; us his victory brings level with heaven.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
2 Often and often that very religion has given birth to sinful
and unholy deeds. Thus in Aulis the chosen chieftains of
the Danai, foremost of men, foully polluted with
lphianassa’s blood the altar of the Trivian maid. Soon as
the fillet encircling her maiden tresses shed itself in equal
lengths adown each cheek, and soon as she saw her
father standing sorrowful before the altars and beside
him the ministering priests hiding the knife and her
countrymen at sight of her shedding tears, speechless in
terror she dropped down on her knees and sank to the
ground. Nor aught in such a moment could it avail the
luckless girl that she had first bestowed the name of
father on the king. For lifted up in the hands of the men
she was carried shivering to the altars, not after due
performance of the customary rites to be escorted by the
clear-ringing bridal song, but in the very season of
marriage, stainless maid mid the stain of blood, to fall a
sad victim by the sacrificing stroke of a father, that thus a
happy and prosperous departure might be granted to the
fleet. So great the evils to which religion could prompt!
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
3 Fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, because they
see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the
causes of which they can in no way understand, believing
them therefore to be done by power divine.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, |
4 |f you shall suppose that the deeds of Hercules surpass his,
you will be carried still farther away from true reason. For
what would yon great gaping maw of Nemean lion now
harm us and the bristled Arcadian boar? Ay or what could
the bull of Crete do and the hydra plague of Lerna,
fenced round with its envenomed snakes? Or how could
the triple-breasted might of threefold Gcryon, how could
the birds with brazen arrowy feathers that dwelt in the
Stymphalian swamps do us such mighty injury, and the
horses of Thracian Diomede breathing fire from their
nostrils along the Bistonian borders and Ismara? And the
serpent which guards the bright golden apples of the
Hes-perides, fierce, dangerous of aspect, girding the
tree’s stem with his enormous body, what harm pray
could he do us beside the Atlantic shore and its sounding
main, which none of us goes near and no barbarian
ventures to approach? And all other monsters of the kind
which have been destroyed, if they had not been
vanquished, what harm could they do, | ask, though now
alive? None methinks: the earth even now so abounds to
repletion in wild beasts and is filled with troublous terror
throughout woods and great mountains and deep forests;
places which we have it for the most part in our own
power to shun. But unless the breast is cleared, what
battles and dangers must then find their way into us in
our own despite! What poignant cares inspired by lust
then rend the distressful man, and then also what mighty
fears! And pride, filthy lust and wantonness? What
disasters they occasion, and luxury and all sorts of sloth?
Lucretius, Nature of Things, V
5 And since | have shown that the quarters of ether are
mortal and that heaven is formed of a body that had a
birth, and since of all the things which go on and must go
on in it, | have unravelled most, hear further what
remains to be told; since once for all | have willed to
mount the illustrious chariot of the Muses, and ascending
to heaven to explain the true law of winds and storms,
which men foolishly lay to the charge of the gods, telling
how, when they are angry, they raise fierce tempests;
and, when there is a lull in the fury of the winds, how that
anger is appeased, how the omens which have been are
again changed, when their fury has thus been appeased;
| have willed at the same time to explain all the other
things which mortals observe to go on upon earth and in
heaven, when often they are in anxious suspense of
mind, and which abase their souls with fear of the gods
and weigh and press them down to earth, because
ignorance of the causes constrains them to submit things
to the empire of the gods and to make over to them the
kingdom. For they who have been rightly taught that the
gods lead a life without care, if nevertheless they wonder
on what plan all things can be carried on, above all in
regard to those things which are seen overhead in the
ethereal borders, are borne back again into their old
religious scruples and take unto themselves hard
taskmasters, whom they poor wretches believe to be
almighty, not knowing what can, what cannot be, in short
on what principle each thing has its powers defined, its
deep-set boundary mark; and therefore they are led all
the farther astray by blind reason.
Lucretius, Nature of Things, VI
6 A ready acceptance of error is harmful to the reputation,
especially in the matter of how much credence is to be
given to omens, sacred rites, and other religious
observances. We risk offending the gods if we pay no
attention to such things. And we risk being considered
superstitious if we rely on them completely.
Cicero, Divination, I, 4
7 We are obligated to propagate true religion, since it is
closely associated with the knowledge of nature. It is also
our duty to eradicate superstition. For superstition dogs
our heels at every turn. When you listen to a prophet,
regard an omen, offer sacrifices, or watch a flight of birds,
go to an astrologer or fortune teller, when there is
thunder and lightning during a storm, or when some
prodigy appears, superstition is at your side. And since
such signs are uSually all around us, no one who believes
them can have peace of mind.
Cicero, Divination, Il, 72
8 Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of
Athens, | perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious.
For as | passed by, and beheld your devotions, | found
an altar with this inscription. Jo the Unknown God. Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare | unto you.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing
that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in
temples made with hands;
Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he
needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath,
and all things.
Acts 17;22-25
9 We ourselves could relate divers wonderful things, which
we have been told by men of our own time, that are not
lightly to be rejected; but to give too easy credit to such
things, or wholly to disbelieve them, is equally
dangerous, so incapable is human infirmity of keeping
any bounds, or exercising command over itself, running
off sometimes to superstition and dotage, at other times
to the contempt and neglect of all that is supernatural.
But moderation is best, and to avoid all extremes.
Plutarch, Camillus
10 An ignorant wonder at appearances ... in the heavens,
possesses the minds of people unacquainted with their
causes, eager for the supernatural, and excitable through
an inexperience which the knowledge of natural causes
removes, replacing wild and timid superstition by the
good hope and assurance of an intelligent piety.
Plutarch, Pericles
11 All the arrangements made by men for the making and
worshipping of idols are superstitious, pertaining as they
do either to the worship of what is created or of some part
of it as God, or to consultations and arrangements about
signs and leagues with devils, such, for example, as are
employed in the magical arts, and which the poets are
accustomed not so much to teach as to celebrate.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 20
12 It comes to pass that men who lust after evil things are,
by a secret judgment of God, delivered over to be
mocked and deceived, as the just reward of their evil
desires. For they are deluded and imposed on by the false
angels, to whom the lowest part of the world has been
put in subjection by the law of God’s providence, and in
accordance with His most admirable arrangement of
things. And the result of these delusions and deceptions
is, that through these superstitious and baneful modes of
divination, many things in the past and future are made
known, and turn out just as they are foretold; and in the
case of those who practise superstitious observances,
many things turn out agreeably to their observances, and
ensnared by these successes, they become more eagerly
inquisitive, and involve themselves further and further in
a labyrinth of most pernicious error. And to our
advantage, the Word of God is not silent about this
species of fornication of the soul; and it does not warn the
soul against following such practices on the ground that
those who profess them speak lies, but it says, “Even if
what they tell you should come to pass, hearken not unto
them.”
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, Il, 23
13 Superstition is a vice contrary to religion by excess, not
that it offers more to the divine worship than true
religion, but because it offers divine worship either to
whom it ought not, or in a manner it ought not.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—lII, 92, 1
14 The species of superstition are differentiated, first on the
part of the mode, secondly on the part of the object. For
the divine worship may be given either to whom it ought
to be given, namely, to the true God, but in an undue
mode, and this is the first species of superstition; or to
whom it ought not to be given, namely, to any creature
whatsoever, and this is another genus of superstition,
divided into many species in respect of the various ends
of divine worship. For the end of divine worship is in the
first place to give reverence to God, and in this respect
the first species of this genus is /do/atry, which unduly
gives divine honor to a creature. The second end of
religion is that man may be taught by God Whom he
worships; and to this must be referred divinatory
superstition, which consults the demons through
compacts made with them, whether tacit or explicit.
Thirdly, the end of divine worship is a certain direction of
human acts according to the precepts of God the object
of that worship: and to this must be referred the
superstition of certain observances.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I/—lII, 92, 2
15 Superstition is a confession of unbelief by external
worship. Such a confession is signified by the term
idolatry, but not by the term heresy, which only means a
false opinion. Therefore heresy is a species of unbelief,
but idolatry is a species of superstition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-ll, 94, 1
16 The magic art is to be absolutely repudiated and avoided
by a Christian, even as other arts of vain and noxious
superstition.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-/l, 96, 1
17 It is easy to see how superstition mocks God with
hypocritical services, while it attempts to please him. For,
embracing only those things which he declares he
disregards, it either contemptuously practises, or even
openly rejects, what he prescribes and declares to be
pleasing in his sight. Persons who introduce newly-
invented methods of worshipping God, really worship and
adore the creature of their distempered imaginations; for
they would never have dared to trifle in such a manner
with God, if they had not first feigned a god conformable
to their own false and foolish notions.
Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, I, 4
18 It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions,
enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences
comes from the power of imagination, acting principally
upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.
Their belief has been so strongly seized that they think
they see what do not see.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 21, Power of the Imagination
19 Horatio. In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, i, 113
20 The corruption of philosophy by the mixing of it up with
superstition and theology, is of a much wider extent, and
IS most injurious to it both as a whole and in parts.
Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 65
21 Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it
addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the
similitude of superstition to religion makes it the more
deformed.
Bacon, Of Superstition
22 From... ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and
other strong fancies, from vision and sense, did arise the
greatest part of the religion of the Gentiles in time past,
that worshipped satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and the like; and
nowadays the opinion that rude people have of fairies,
ghosts, and goblins, and of the power of witches. For, as
for witches, | think not that their witchcraft is any real
power, but yet that they are justly punished for the false
belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined
with their purpose to do it if they can, their trade being
nearer to a new religion than to a craft or science. And for
fairies, an walking ghosts, the opinion of them has, |
think, been on purpose either taught, or not confuteed, to
keep in credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy
water, and other such inventions of ghostly men.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt but God can make
unnatural apparitions: but that He does it so often as men
need to fear such things more than they fear the slay, or
change, of the course of Nature, which he also can stay,
and change, is no point of Christian faith. But evil men,
under pretext that God can do anything, are so bold as to
say anything when it serves their turn, though they think
it untrue; it is the part of a wise man to believe them no
further than right reason makes that which they say
appear credible. If this superstitious fear of spirits were
taken away, and with it prognostics from dreams, false
prophecies, and many other things depending thereon,
by which crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple
people, men would be much more fitted than they are for
civil obedience.
Hobbes, Leviathan, |, 2
23 They that make little or no inquiry into the natural causes
of things, yet from the fear that proceeds from the
ignorance itself of what it is that hath the power to do
them much good or harm are inclined to suppose, and
feign unto themselves, several kinds of powers invisible,
and to stand in awe of their own imaginations, and in
lime of distress to invoke them; as also in the time of an
expected good success, to give them Uianks, making the
creatures of their own fancy their gods. By which means
it hath come to pass that from the innumerable variety of
fancy, men have created in the world innumerable sorts
of gods. And this fear of things invisible is the natural
seed of that which every one in himself calleth re/igion;
and in them that worship or fear that power otherwise
than they do, superstition.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 1,11
24 Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern
all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always
favoured by fortune; but being frequently driven into
Straits where rules are useless, and being often kept
fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the
uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favours, they
are consequently, for the most part, very’ prone to
credulity.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, Pref.
25 That the corruption of the best of things produces the
worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved,
among other instances, by the pernicious effects of
superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true
religion.
These two species of false religion, though both
pernicious, are yet of a very different, and even of a
contrary nature. The mind of man is subject to certain
unaccountable terrors and apprehensions, proceeding
either from the unhappy situation of private or public
affairs, from ill health, from a gloomy and melancholy
disposition, or from the concurrence of all these
circumstances. In such a state of mind, infinite unknown
evils are dreaded from unknown agents; and where real
objects of terror are wanting, the soul, active to its own
prejudice, and fostering its predominant inclination, finds
imaginary ones, to whose power and malevolence it sets
no limits. As these enemies are entirely invisible and
unknown, the methods taken to appease them are
equally unaccountable, and consist in ceremonies,
observances, mortifications, sacrifices, presents, or in any
practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly
or knavery recommends to a blind and terrified credulity.
Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance,
are, therefore, the true sources of Superstition.
Hume, Of Superstition and Enthusiasm
26 Those who ridicule vulgar superstitions, and expose the
folly of particular regards to meats, days, places,
postures, apparel, have an easy task; while they consider
all the qualities and relations of the objects, and discover
no adequate cause for that affection or antipathy,
veneration or horror, which have so mighty an influence
over a considerable part of mankind.
Hume, Concerning Principles of Morals, III
27 The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to
the tyrant. Further, the superstitious man is governed by
the fanatic and becomes fanatic. Superstition born in
Paganism, adopted by Judaism, infested the Christian
Church from the earliest times. All the fathers of the
Church, without exception, believed in the power of
magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she
always believed in it: she did not excommunicate
sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men
who were really in communication with the devil...
Up to what point does statecraft permit superstition to
be destroyed? This is a very thorny question; it is like
asking up to what point one should make an incision in a
dropsical person, who may die under the operation. It is a
matter for the doctor’s discretion.
Can there exist a people free from all superstitious
prejudices? That is to ask—Can there exist a nation of
philosophers? It is said that there is no superstition in the
magistrature of China, it is probable that none vril!
remain in the magistraturc of a few towns of Europe.
Then the magistrates will stop the superstition of the
people from being dangerous. These magistrates’
example will not enlighten the mob, but the principal
persons of the middle classes will hold the mob in check.
There is not perhaps a single riot, a single religious
outrage in which the middle classes were not formerly
imbrued, because these middle classes were then the
mob; but reason and time will have changed them. Their
softened manners will soften those of the lowest and
most savage populace; it is a thing of which we have
striking examples in more than one country. In a word,
less superstition, less fanaticism; and less fanaticism, less
misery.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary: Superstition
28 Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm
and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of
people were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not
be much exposed to it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, 1
29 From the first of the fathers to the last of the popes, a
succession of bishops, of saints, of martyrs, and of
miracles, is continued without interruption; and the
progress of superstition was so gradual and almost
imperceptible, that we know not in what particular link
we should break the chain of tradition.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
30 The decline of ancient prejudice exposed a very
numerous portion of human kind to the danger of a
painful and comfortless situation. A state of scepticism
and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But
the practice of superstition is so congenial to the
multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still
regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the
marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard
to future events, and their strong propensity to extend
their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible
world, were the principal causes which favoured the
establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is
the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of
mythology will most probably be succeeded by the
introduction of some other mode of superstition. Some
deities of a more recent and fashionable cast might soon
have occupied the deserted temples of Jupiter and
Apollo, if, in the decisive moment, the wisdom of
Providence had not interposed a genuine revelation fitted
to inspire the most rational esteem and conviction, whilst,
at the same time, it was adorned with all that could
attract the curiosity, the wonder, and the veneration of
the people.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
3) The objects which had been transformed by the magic of
superstition appeared to the eyes of the Paulicians in
their genuine and naked colours. An image made without
hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to
whose skill alone the wood and canvas must be indebted
for their merit or value. The miraculous relics were a heap
of bones and ashes, destitute of life or virtue, or of any
relation, perhaps, with the person to whom they were
ascribed. The true and vivifying cross was a piece of
sound or rotten timber; the body and blood of Christ, a
loaf of bread and a cup of wine, the gifts of nature and
the symbols of grace. The mother of God was degraded
from her celestial honours and immaculate virginity; and
the saints and angels were no longer solicited to exercise
the laborious office of mediation in heaven and ministry
upon earth. In the practice, or at least in the theory, of
the sacraments, the Paulicians were inclined to abolish all
visible objects of worship, and the words of the Gospel
were, in their judgment, the baptism and communion of
the faithful.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LIV
32 The services of Luther and his rivals are solid and
important; and the philosopher must own his obligations
to these fearless enthusiasts. By their hands the lofty
fabric of superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to
the intercession of the Virgin, has been levelled with the
ground. Myriads of both sexes of the monastic profession
were restored to the liberty and labours of social life. A
hierarchy of saints and angels, of imperfect and
subordinate deities, were stripped of their temporal
power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial
happiness: their images and relics were banished from
the church; and the credulity of the people was no longer
nourished with the daily repetition of miracles and
visions. The imitation of paganism was supplied by a pure
and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the
most worthy of man, the least unworthy of the Deity.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, LIV
33 Humility, taking the form of an uncompromising
judgement upon his shortcomings, which, with
consciousness of good intentions, might readily be
glossed over on the ground of the frailty of human
nature, is a sublime temper of the mind voluntarily to
undergo the pain of remorse as a means of more and
more effectually eradicating its cause. In this way religion
is intrinsically distinguished from superstition, which
latter rears in the mind, not reverence for the sublime,
but dread and apprehension of the all-powerful Being to
whose will terror-stricken man secs himself subjected, yet
without according Him due honour. From this nothing can
arise but grace-begging and vain adulation, instead of a
religion consisting in a good life.
Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 28
34 Idolatry, ... is a superstitious delusion that one can make
oneself acceptable to the Supreme Being by other means
than that of having the moral law at heart.
Kant, Critique of Teleotogical Judgment, 89
35 It is hardly surprising that geniuses, and criminals too ...
in short all those who, in one way or another, are placed
outside the normal, should be superstitious. They have no
impressa vestigia for their feet, they go forward along
unknown or forbidden paths, and so they are observant in
quite a different degree from others, and moreover of
very different things. The mass of people do not really
live, they are mere repetitions, live in the security of the
probable, and so they are not superstitious, that is to say
that they do not notice that this belief of theirs in the
probable, and their security within the probable is, in
another sense, a tremendous superstition.
Kierkegaard, Journals (1851)
36 The same high mental faculties which first led man to
believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism,
polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would
infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers
remained poorly developed, to various strange
superstitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to
think of—such as the sacrifice of human beings to a
blood-loving god; the trial of innocent persons by the
ordeal of poison or fire; witchcraft, etc.—yet it is well
occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they
shew us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the
improvement of our reason, to science, and to our
accumulated knowledge.
Darwin, Descent of Man, |, 3
37 As philosophy has at times corrupted her divines, so has
paganism corrupted her worshippers; and as the more
intellectual have been involved in heresy, so have the
ignorant been corrupted by superstition.
Newman, Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine, Ft. Il, Vill, 2
38 You know how tenaciously anything that has once found
psychological expression persists. You will, therefore, not
be surprised to hear that a great many manifestations of
animism have lasted up to the present day, mostly as
what are called superstitions, side by side with and
behind religion. But more than that, you can hardly avoid
coming to the conclusion that our philosophy has
preserved essential traits of animistic modes of thought,
such as the overestimation of the magic of words and the
belief that real processes in the external world follow the
lines laid down by our thougNts. It is, to be sure, an
animism without magical practices. On the other hand we
should expect to find that in the age of animism there
must already have been some kind of morality, some
rules governing the intercourse of men with one another.
But there is no evidence that they were closely bound up
with animistic beliefs. Probably they were the immediate
expression of the distribution of power and of practical
necessities.
It would be very interesting to know what determined
the transition from animism to religion; but you may
imagine in what darkness this earliest epoch in the
evolution of the human mind is still shrouded. It seems to
be a fact that the earliest form in which religion appeared
was the remarkable one of totemism, the worship of
animals, in the train of which followed the first ethical
commands, the taboos, ... | once worked out a suggestion,
in accordance with which this change is to be traced back
to an upheaval in the relationships in the human family.
The main achievement of religion, as compared with
animism, lies in the psychic binding of the fear of
demons. Nevertheless, the evil spirit still has a place in
the religious system as a relic of the previous age.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
XXXV
39 We sometimes speak as if superstition or belief in the
miraculous was disbelief in law and was inspired by a
desire to disorganise experience and defeat intelligence.
No supposition could be more erroneous. Every
superstition is a little science, inspired by the desire to
understand, to foresee, or to control the real world. No
doubt its hypothesis is chimerical, arbitrary, and founded
on a confusion of efficient causes with ideal results. But
the same is true of many a renowned philosophy.
Santayana, Life of Reason, Ill, 2
20.13 Sin and Temptation
Temptation is treated here along with sin because, according
to the theologians who discuss the matter, temptation is
primarily to be understood as providing the occasion for sin.
The clause in the Lord’s Prayer that beseeches God to lead
us not into temptation asks for exemption from the
occasions to sin.
In one contemporary revision of the language of that
prayer, the words "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those
who sin against us" have been erroneously substituted for
the words "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those
who trespass against us"—erroneously, at least according to
the traditional conception of sin as exclusively an offense
against God or a violation of the divine law, never merely
the injuring of one man by another in contravention of the
human law.
With the exception of Hobbes, who blurs the distinction
between sin and crime by regarding the violation of the civil
law as asin, the view that prevails in the quotations
gathered below conceives sin in theological not political or
moral terms. For the consideration of the moral counterpart
of sin in the form of moral iniquity or vice, the reader should
consult Section 9.7 on Right and Wrong and Section 9.10 on
Virtue and Vice; and for the political or social counterpart of
sin in the form of crime, the reader should go to Section 12.4
on Crime and Punishment.
The quotations collected here cover many aspects of the
subject, but not all; and many that are mentioned are barely
touched on, not treated in detail. The reader will find some
discussion of the temptation of Adam and the consequences
of his sin, not only for him but for all his descendants; the
distinction between original or inherited sin and individual
or acquired sin; the distinction between mortal and venial
sins, together with the classification of mortal sins and the
consideration of which among them is primary and the root
of all the rest; the denial of collective responsibility for the
sins of the fathers; and man’s need for a redeemer to be
saved from his proneness to sin that is a defect of fallen
human nature, in consequence of Adam’s sin. This whole
subject of redemption and salvation is more fully treated in
Section 20.14.
There are, of course, among the writers quoted below
those, such as Spinoza or Freud, who reject the very notion
of sin, or who interpret the sense of sin as having its origins
in feelings of guilt that can be accounted for psychologically.
The reader’s attention should also be drawn to the fact that
some of the most interesting passages quoted are taken
from the two great poems that are concerned with sin, its
causes and consequences, the gradations of sin and of the
punishments thereof. The two poems are Dante’s Divine
Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost. They are a principal
source of quotations for Section 20.7 on Angels and Devils
and for Section 20.15 on Heaven and Hell, as well as here.
In the Christian tradition, certain human vices or
weaknesses are considered (at least in some circumstances)
to be major, or mortal, sins. Among these are anger, avarice,
envy, lust, and pride. Consideration of these sins from other
points of view than that taken here will be found in Sections
4.3 on Anger, 4.9 on Greed and Avarice (and in Section 11.2
on Wealth and Poverty), 4.8 on Pity and Envy, 3.3 on Sexual
Love, and 4.11 on Pride and Humility.
1 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and
there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow
every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the
tree of knowledge of good and evil...
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the
garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of
every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou
Shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shall surely die.
Genesis 2:8-17
2 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the
woman. Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not cat of every tree
of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent. We may cat of
the fruit of the trees of the garden;
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
garden, God hath said. Ye shall not cat of it, neither shall
ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to
be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did cat, and gave also unto her husband with her;
and he did eat.
Genesis 3:1-6
3 The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving
iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the
guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation.
Numbers 14:18
4 Be sure your sin will find you out.
Numbers 32:23
5 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy
lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy
tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse
me from my sin.
For 1 acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is
ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have | sinned, and done this
evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when
thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, | was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my
mother conceive me.
Psalm 51:1-5
6 My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.
If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let
us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:
Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole,
as those that go down into the pit:
We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our
houses with spoil;
Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse:
My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain
thy foot from their path:
For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed
blood.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any
bird.
And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily
for their own lives.
So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain;
which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
Proverbs 1:10-19
7 He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso
confesseth and forsakelh them shall have mercy.
Proverbs 28:13
8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither
poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:
Lest | be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord?
or lest | be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God
in vain.
Proverbs 30:8-9
9 For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good,
and sinneth not.
Ecclesiastes 7:20
10 What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the
land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge?
As | live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
any more to use this proverb in Israel.
Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so
also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it
Shall die.
Ezekiel 18:2-4
11 Chorus, A man thought
the gods deigned not to punish mortals
who trampled down the delicacy of things
inviolable. That man was wicked.
The curse on great daring
shines clear; it wrings atonement
from those high hearts that drive to evil,
from houses blossoming to pride
and peril. Let there be
wealth without tears; enough for
the wise man who will ask no further.
There is not any armor
in gold against perdition
for him who spurns the high altar
of Justice down to the darkness.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 369
12 Theseus. The mind of man—how far will it advance?
Where will its daring impudence find limits?
If human villainy and human life
Shall wax in due proportion, if the son
Shall always grow in wickedness past his father,
the Gods must add another world to this
that all the sinners may have space enough.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 936
13 When you look over your own vices, winking at them, as
it were, with sore eyes; why are you with regard to those
of your friends as sharp-sighted as an eagle, or the
Epidaurian serpent?
Horace, Satires, |, 3
14 We have committed some sins; others we have
considered committing. Some we have desired; others we
have encouraged. Some transgressions we are innocent
of only because they did not succeed. With this in mind,
we should be more forebearing toward transgressors and
pay more attention to those who reprove us.
Seneca, On Anger, II, 28
15 Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Matthew 4:7
16 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the
spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Matthew 26:41
17 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from
Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those
days he did cat nothing: and when they were ended, he
afterward hungered.
And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God,
command this stone that it be made bread.
And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That
man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of
God.
And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain,
shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world ina
moment of time.
And the devil said unto him, All this power will | give
thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me;
and to whomsoever | will | give it.
If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee
behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the
Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him ona
pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the
Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over
thee, to keep thee:
And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any
time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he
departed from him for a season.
Luke 4:1-13
18 Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,
more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need
no repentance.
Luke 15:7
19 The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the
truth in unrighteousness;
Because that which may be known of God is manifest
in them, for God hath shewed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being understood by the things
that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so
that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him
not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into
an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and
fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness
through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their
own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and
worshipped and served the creature more than the
Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections:
for even their women did change the natural use into
that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of
the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men
with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving
in themselves that recompence of their error which was
meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their
knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to
do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters,
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without
natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which
commit such things are w'orthy of death, not only do the
same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Romans 1:18-32
20 Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye
should obey it in the lusts thereof.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God,
as those that are alive from the dead, and your members
as instruments of righteousness unto God.
For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are
not under the law, but under grace.
What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the
law, but under grace? God forbid.
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves
servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey;
whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto
righteousness?
But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin,
but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
which was delivered you.
Being then made free from sin, ye became the
servants of righteousness.
Romans 6:11-18
21 For the wages of sin is death.
Romans 6:23
22 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed
lest he fall.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is
common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer
you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with
the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may
be able to bear it.
| Corinthians 10:12—13
23 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;
Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations,
wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such
like: of the which | tell you before, as | have also told you
in time past, that they which do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21
24 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when
he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the
Lord hath promised to them that love him.
Let no man say when he is tempted, | am tempted of
God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither
tempteth he any man:
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of
his own lust, and enticed.
Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin:
and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
James 1:12-15
25 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar,
and his word is not in us.
1 John 1:8-10
26 All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but
is of the world.
| John 2:16
27 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his
seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is
born of God.
| John 3:9
28 Men are no doubt involuntary sinners in the sense that
they do not actually desire to sin; but this does not alter
the fact that wrong-doers, of their own choice, are,
themselves, the agents; it is because they themselves act
that the sin is in their own; if they were not agents they
could not sin.
Plotinus, Third Ennead, Il, 10
29 | grew in vice through desire of praise; and when | lacked
opportunity to equal others in vice, | invented things |
had not done, lest | might be held cowardly for being
innocent, or contemptible for being chaste. With the
basest companions | walked the streets of Babylon [the
city of this World as opposed to the city of God] and
wallowed in its filth as if it had been a bed of spices and
precious ointments. To make me cleave closer to that
city’s very center, the invisible Enemy trod me down and
seduced me, for | was easy to seduce.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 3
30 Your law, O Lord, punishes theft; and this law is so written
in the hearts of men that not even the breaking of it blots
it out: for no thief bears calmly being stolen from—not
even if he is rich and the other steals through want. Yet |
chose to steal, and not because want drove me to it—
unless a want of justice and contempt for it and an excess
for iniquity. For | stole things which | already had in
plenty and of better quality. Nor had | any desire to enjoy
the things | stole, but only the stealing of them and the
sin.
Augustine, Confessions, Il, 4
31 Pride wears the mask of loftiness of spirit, although You
alone, O God, are high over all. Ambition seeks honor and
glory, although You alone are to be honored before all
and glorious forever. By cruelty the great seek to be
feared, yet who is to be feared but God alone: from His
power what can be wrested away, or when or where or
how or by whom? The caresses by which the lustful
seduce are a seeking for love: but nothing is more
caressing than Your charity, nor is anything more
healthfully loved than Your supremely lovely, supremely
luminous Truth. Curiosity may be regarded as a desire for
knowledge, whereas You supremely know all things.
Ignorance and sheer stupidity hide under the names of
simplicity and innocence: yet no being has simplicity like
to Yours: and none is more innocent than You, for it is
their own deeds that harm the wicked. Sloth pretends
that it wants quietude: but what sure rest is there save
the Lord? Luxuriousness would be called abundance and
completeness; but You are the fullness and inexhaustible
abundance of incorruptible delight. Wastefulness is a
parody of generosity: but You are the infinitely generous
giver of all good. Avarice wants to possess overmuch: but
You possess all. Enviousness claims that it strives to
excel: but what can excel before You? Anger clamors for
just vengeance: but whose vengeance is so just as Yours?
Fear is the recoil from a new and sudden threat to
something one holds dear, and a cautious regard for
one’s own Safety: but nothing new or sudden can happen
to You, nothing can threaten Your hold upon things loved,
and where is safety secure save in You? Grief pines at the
loss of things in which desire delighted: for it wills to be
like to You from whom nothing can be taken away.
Thus the soul is guilty of fornication when she turns
from You and seeks from any other source what she will
nowhere find pure and without taint unless she returns to
You. Thus even those who go from You and stand up
against You are still perversely imitating You. But by the
mere fact of their imitation, they declare that You are the
creator of all that is, and that there is nowhere for them to
go where You are not.
So once again what did | enjoy in that theft of mine?
Of what excellence of my Lord was | making perverse and
vicious imitation? Perhaps it was the thrill of acting
against Your law—at least in appearance, since | had no
power to do so in fact, the delight a prisoner might have
in making some small gesture of liberty—getting a
deceptive sense of omnipotence from doing something
forbidden without immediate punishment. | was that
slave, who fled from his Lord and pursued his Lord’s
shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life and abyss
of death! Could you find pleasure only in what was
forbidden, and only because it was forbidden?
Augustine, Confessions, 11, 6
32 Men are separated from God only by sins, from which we
are in this life cleansed not by our own virtue, but by the
divine compassion; through His indulgence, not through
our own power. For, whatever virtue we call our own is
itself bestowed upon us by His goodness.
Augustine, City of God, X, 22
33 God was not ignorant that man would sin, and that,
being himself made subject now to death, he would
propagate men doomed to die, and that these mortals
would run to such enormities in sin that even the beasts
devoid of rational will, and who were created in numbers
from the waters and the earth, would live more securely
and peaceably with their own kind than men, who had
been propagated from one individual for the very
purpose of commending concord. For not even lions or
dragons have ever waged with their kind such wars as
men have waged with one another.
Augustine, City of God, XII, 22
34 The first men were... so created that if they had not
sinned, they would not have experienced any kind of
death; but... having become sinners, they were so
punished with death that whatsoever sprang from their
stock should also be punished with the same death. For
nothing else could be born of them than that which they
themselves had been. Their nature was deteriorated in
proportion to the greatness of the condemnation of their
sin, so that what existed as punishment in those who first
sinned, became a natural consequence in their children.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 3
35 As man the parent is, such is man the offspring. In the
first man, therefore, there existed the whole human
nature, which was to be transmitted by the woman to
posterity, when that conjugal union received the divine
sentence of its own condemnation; and what man was
made, not when created, but when he sinned and was
punished, this he propagated, so far as the origin of sin
and death are concerned.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 3
36 The corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul,
is not the cause but the punishment of the first sin; and it
was not the corruputible flesh that made the soul sinful,
but the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 3
37 It is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie. For no
sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we
desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill
with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that
it may be well with us, but which makes us more
miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the
source of man's happiness lies only in God, Whom he
abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by Using
according to whom he sins?
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 4
38 Our first parents fell into open disobedience because
already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had
never been done had not an evil will preceded it. And
what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For "pride is
the beginning of sin." And what is pride but the craving
for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when
the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its
end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens
when it become its own satisfaction. And it does so when
it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to
satisfy it more than itself. This falling away is
spontaneous; for if the will had remained steadfast in the
love of that higher and changeless good by which it was
illumined to intelligence and kindled into love, it would
not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself and so
become frigid and benighted.
Augustine, City of God, XIV, 13
39 That the whole human race has been condemned in its
first origin, this life itself, if life it is to be called, bears
witness by the host of cruel ills with which it is filled. Is
not this proved by the profound and dreadful ignorance
which produces all the errors that enfold the children of
Adam, and from which no man can be delivered without
toil, pain, and fear? Is it not proved by his love of so many
vain and hurtful things, which produces gnawing cares,
disquiet, griefs, fears, wild joys, quarrels, lawsuits, wars,
treasons, angers, hatreds, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft,
robbery, perfidy, pride, ambition, envy, murders,
parricides, cruelty, ferocity, wickedness, luxury,
insolence, impudence, shamelessness, fornications,
adulteries, incests, and the numberless uncleannesses
and unnatural acts of both sexes, which it is shameful so
much as to mention; sacrileges, heresies, blasohemies,
perjuries, oppression of the innocent, calumnies, plots,
falsehoods, false witnessings, unrighteous judgments,
violent deeds, plunderings, and whatever similar
wickedness has found its way into the lives of men....
These are indeed the crimes of wicked men, yet they
spring from that root of error and misplaced love which is
born with every son of Adam. For who is there that has
not observed with what profound ignorance, manifesting
itself even in infancy, and with what superfluity of foolish
desires, beginning to appear in boyhood, man comes into
this life, so that, were he left to live as he pleased, and to
do whatever he pleased, he would plunge into all, or
certainly into many of those crimes and iniquities.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 22
40 Mortal sin occurs in two ways in the act of free choice.
First, when something evil is chosen; as man sins by
choosing adultery, which is evil of itself. Such sin always
comes of ignorance or error. Otherwise what is evil would
never be chosen as good. The adulterer errs in the
particular, choosing this delight of a disordered act as
something good to be performed now, from the
inclination of passion or of habit, even though he does
not err in his universal judgment, but retains a right
opinion in this respect. In this way there can be no sin in
the angel, because there are no passions in the angels to
fetter reason or intellect.... Nor, again, could any habit
inclining to sin precede their first sin. In another way sin
comes of free choice by choosing something good in
itself, but not according to the order of due measure or
rule, so that the defect which induces sin is only on the
part of the choice which does not have its due order
(except on the part of the thing chosen); as if one were to
pray without heeding the order established by the
Church. Such a sin does not presuppose ignorance, but
merely absence of consideration of the things which
ought to be considered. In this way the angel sinned, by
seeking his own good, from his own free choice, without
being ordered to the rule of the Divine will.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 63, 1
41 If God had deprived the world of all those things which
proved an occasion of sin, the universe would have been
imperfect. Nor was it fitting for the common good to be
destroyed in order that individual evil might be avoided,
especially as God is so powerful that He can direct any
evil to a good end.
Aquinas, Summa Theohgica, I, 92, 1
42 The theologian considers sin chiefly as an offence against
God. and the moral philosopher as something contrary to
reason. Hence Augustine defines sin with reference to its
being "contrary to the eternal law" more fittingly than
with reference to its being contrary to reason; the more
so, as the eternal law directs us in many things that
Surpass human reason, for example in matters of faith.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 71, 6
43 Habit and despair are stages following the complete
species of sin, even as boyhood and youth follow the
complete generation of a man.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 72, 7
44 A sin is so much the graver according as the disorder
occurs in a principle which is higher in the order of
reason.... Therefore a sin which is about the very
substance of man, for example murder, is graver than a
sin which is about external things, for instance theft; and
graver still is a sin committed directly against God, for
example unbelief, blasohemy, and the like; and in each
of these grades of sin, one sin will be graver than another
according as it is about a higher or a lower principle.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 73, 3
45 Charity is not any kind of love, but the love of God.
Hence not any kind of hatred is opposed to it directly, but
the hatred of God, which is the most grievous of all sins.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I|—II, 73, 4
46 Every sinful act proceeds from inordinate desire for some
temporal good. Now the fact that anyone desires a
temporal good inordinately, is due to the fact that he
loves himself inordinately, for to wish anyone some good
is to love him. Therefore it is evident that inordinate love
of self is the cause of every sin.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 77, 4
47 The first sin infects nature with a human corruption
pertaining to nature; but other sins infect it with a
corruption pertaining only to the person.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II, 81, 2
48 The weak should avoid associating with sinners, on
account of the danger in which they stand of being
perverted by them. But it is commendable for the perfect,
of whose corruption there is no fear, to associate with
sinners that they may convert them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 25, 6
49 By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and
consequently falls away from the dignity of his manhood,
in so far as he is naturally free, and exists for himself, and
he falls into the slavish state of the beasts, by being
disposed of according as he is useful to others.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 64, 2
30 Whilst | was rushing downwards, there appeared before
my eyes one who seemed hoarse from long silence.
When | saw him in the great desert, | cried: "Have pity
on me, whate’er thou be, whether shade or veritable
man!"
He answered me: "Not man, a man | once was; and my
parents were Lombards, and both of Mantua by country.
| was born sub Julio, though it was late; and lived at
Rome under the good Augustus, in the time of the false
and lying Gods.
A poet | was; and sang of that just son of Anchises,
who came from Troy after proud Ilium was burnt.
But thou, why returnest thou to such disquiet? why
ascendest not the delectable mountain, which is the
beginning and the cause of all gladness?"
"Art thou then that Virgil, and that fountain which
pours abroad so rich a stream o! speech?" | answered
him, with bashful front,
"O glory, and light of other poets! May the long zeal
avail me, and the great love, that made me search thy
volume.
Thou art my master and my author; thou alone art he
from whom | took the good style that hath done me
honour.
See the beast from which | turned back; help me from
her, thou famous sage; for she makes my veins and
pulses tremble."
“Thou must take another road," he answered, when he
Saw me weeping, "if thou desirest to escape from this wild
place:
because this beast, for which thou criest, lets not men
pass her way; but so entangles that she slays them;
and has a nature so perverse and vicious, that she
never satiates her craving appetite; and after feeding,
she is hungrier than before,"
Dante, Inferno, I, 61
51 Sordello. Through all the circles of the woeful realm...
came | here. A virtue from heaven moved me, and with it
| come.
Not for doing, but for not doing, have | lost the vision
of the high Sun, whom thou desirest, and who too late by
me was known,
Down there is a place not sad with torments, but with
darkness alone, where the lamentations sound not as
wailings, but are sighs.
There [in Limbo] do | abide with the innocent babes,
bitten by the fangs of death, ere they were exempt from
human sin.
There dwell | with those who clad them not with the
three holy virtues, and without offence knew the others
and followed them all.
Dante, Purgatorio, VII, 22
52 We [Virgil and Dante] drew nigh, and were at a place,
whence there where first appeared to me a break just like
a fissure which divides a wall,
| espied a gate, and three steps beneath to go to it, of
divers colours, and a warder who as yet spake no word.
And as more | opened mine eyes there, | saw him
seated upon the topmost step, such in his countenance
that | endured him not;
and in hand he held a naked sword which reflected the
rays so towards us, that | directed mine eyes to it oft in
vain.
“Tell, there where ye stand, what would ye?” he began
to say; “where is the escort? Beware lest coming upward
be to your hurt!”
“A heavenly lady who well knows these things,” my
Master answered him, “even now did say to us: ‘Go ye
thither, there is the gate.’ ”
“And may she speed your steps to good,” again began
the courteous door-keeper; “come then forward to our
stairs.”
There where we came, at the first step, was white
marble so polished and smooth that | mirrored me therein
as | appear.
The second darker was than perse, of a stone, rugged
and calcined, cracked in its length and in its breadth.
The third, which is massy above, seemed to me of
porphyry so flaming red as blood that spurts from a vein.
Upon this God’s angel held both his feet, sitting upon
the threshold, which seemed to me adamantine stone.
Up by the three steps, with my good will, my Leader
brought me, saying: “Humbly ask that the bolt be
loosed.”
Devoutly | flung me at the holy feet; for mercy | craved
that he would open to me; but first on my breast thrice |
smote me.
Seven P’s upon my forehead he described with the
point of his sword and: “Do thou wash these wounds
when thou art within,” he said.
Ashes, or earth which is dug out dry, would be of one
colour with his vesture, and from beneath it he drew forth
two keys.
One was of gold and the other was of silver; first with
the white and then with the yellow he did so to the gate
that | was satisfied.
“Whensoever one of these keys fails so that it turns
not aright in the lock,” said he to us, “this passage opens
not.
More precious Is one, but the other requires exceeding
art and wit ere it unlocks, because it is the one which
unties the knot.
From Peter | hold them; and he told me to err rather in
opening, than in keeping it locked, if only the people fell
prostrate at my feet.”
Then he pushed the door of the sacred portal, saying:
“Enter, but | make you ware that he who looketh behind
returns outside again.”
Dante, Purgatorio, IX, 73
53 Now were we mounting up by the sacred steps, and
meseemed | was exceeding lighter, than meseemed
before on the flat;
wherefore I: “Master, say, what heavy thing has been
lifted from me, that scarce any toil is perceived by me in
journeying?”
He [Virgil] answered: “When the P’s which have
remained still nearly extinguished on thy face, ah, like
the one, be wholly rased out,
thy feet shall be so vanquished by goodwill, that not
only will they feel it no toil, but it shall be a delight to
them to be urged upward.”
Dante, Purgatorio, XII, 115
54 Short time Beatrice left me thus; and began, casting the
ray upon me of a smile such as would make one blessed
though in the flame:
“According to my thought that cannot err, how just
vengeance justly was avenged, hath set thee pondering;
but | will speedily release thy mind; and do thou
hearken, for my words shall make thee gift of an august
pronouncement.
Because he not endured for his own good a rein upon
the power that wills, that man who ne’er was born, as he
condemned himself, condemned his total offspring;
wherefore the human race lay sick down there for
many an age, in great error, till it pleased the Word of
God to descend
where he joined that nature which had gone astray
from its Creator to himself, in person, by sole act of his
eternal Love.
Now turn thy sight to what | now discourse: This
nature, so united to its Maker, as it was when created was
unalloyed and good;
but by its own self had it been exiled from Paradise,
because it swerved from the way of truth, and from its
proper life.
As for the penalty, then, inflicted by the cross,—if it be
measured by the Nature taken on, never did any other
bite as justly;
and, in like manner, ne’er was any so outrageous if we
look to the Person who endured it, in whom this nature
was contracted.
So from one act issued effects apart; God and the Jews
rejoiced in one same death; thereat shuddered the earth
and heaven opened.
No more, now, should it seem hard saying to thee that
just vengeance was afterward avenged by a just court.”
Dante, Paradiso, VII, 16
55 Adam. Now know, my son, that not the tasting of the tree
was in itself the cause of so great exile, but only the
transgressing of the mark.
Dante, Paradiso, XXVI, 115
56 Pandar. To prove my point, recall how those great clerks
Who most have erred against a certain law,
And are converted from their wicked works
By God’s good grace that doth them to him draw,
Are just the ones who hold God most in awe,
And grow into his most believing band,
For they know best all error to withstand.
Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, |, 144
57 Hearken this word, be warned by this one case;
The lion lies in wait by night and day
To slay the innocent, if he but may.
Dispose your hearts in grace, that you withstand
The Fiend, who'd make you thrall among his band
He cannot tempt more than beyond your might;
For Christ will be your champion and knight.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Friar’s Tale
58 Forsooth, sin is of two kinds; it is either venial or mortal
sin. Verily, when man loves any creature more than he
loves Jesus Christ our Creator, then is it mortal sin. And
venial sin it is if a man love Jesus Christ less than he
ought.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Parson’s Tale
59 Now it is a needful thing to tell which are the mortal sins,
that is to say, the principal sins; they are all leashed
together, but are different in their ways. Now they are
called principal sins because they are the chief sins and
the trunk from which branch all others. And the root of
these seven sins is pride, which is the general root of all
evils; for from this root spring certain branches, as anger,
envy, acedia or sloth, avarice (or covetousness, for vulgar
understanding), gluttony, and lechery.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Parson’s Tale
60 After baptism original sin is like a wound which has
begun to heal. It is really a wound, yet it is becoming
better and is constantly in the process of healing,
although it is still festering, is painful, etc. So original sin
remains in the baptized until their death, although it is in
the process of being rooted out. It is rendered harmless,
and so it cannot accuse or damn us.
Luther, Table Talk, 138
61 When you feel that something is wrong and you have a
bad conscience about it, this is not the sin against the
Holy Spirit, but when you sin and have a good conscience
about it, this is the sin against the Holy Spirit.
Luther, Table Talk, 388
62 Sins against the Holy Ghost are, first, presumption;
second, despair; third, opposition to and condemnation of
the known truth; fourth, not to wish well, but to grudge
one’s brother or neighbour the grace of God; fifth, to be
hardened; sixth, to be impenitent.
Luther, Table Talk, H245
63 These two sins, hatred and pride, deck and trim
themselves out, as the devil clothed himself, in the
Godhead. Hatred will be godlike; pride will be truth.
These two are right deadly sins: hatred is killing; pride is
lying.
Luther Table Talk, H253
64 The sins of common, untutored people are nothing in
comparison with the sins committed by great and high
persons, that are in spiritual and temporal offices.
Luther, Table Talk, H255
65 When | am assailed with heavy tribulations, 1 rush out
among my pigs, rather than remain alone by myself. The
human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put
wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat
to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then
‘tis itself it grinds and wears away. So the human heart,
unless it be occupied with some employment, leaves
space for the devil, who wriggles himself in, and brings
with him a whole host of evil thoughts, temptations, and
tribulations, which grind out the heart.
Luther, Table Talk, H654
66 The mind of man is so completely alienated from the
righteousness of God, that it conceives, desires, and
undertakes every thing that is impious, perverse, base,
impure, and flagitious; ... his heart is so thoroughly
infected by the poison of sin, that it cannot produce any
thing but what is corrupt; and ... if at any time men do
any thing apparently good, yet the mind always remains
involved in hypocrisy and fallacious obliquity, and the
heart enslaved by its inward perverseness.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Il, 5
67 The corrupt conceptions of the mind, provoking us to
transgressions of the law% whether suggested by our
own concupiscence or excited by the devil, are
temptations; and things not evil in themselves,
nevertheless become temptations through the subtlety of
the devil, when they are obtruded on our eyes in sucha
manner that their intervention occasions our seduction or
declension from God. And these temptations are either
from prosperous, or from adverse events. From prosperous
ones, as riches, power, honours; which generally dazzle
men’s eyes by their glitter and external appearance of
goodness, and insnare them with their blandishments,
that, caught with such delusions and intoxicated with
such delights, they forget their God. From unpropitious
ones, as poverty, reproaches, contempt, afflictions, and
other things of this kind; overcome with the bitterness
and difficulty of which, they fall into despondency, cast
away faith and hope, and at length become altogether
alienated from God.
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 20
63 From all inordinate and sinful affections; and from alt the
deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil,
Good Lord, deliver us.
Book of Common Prayer
69 Escalus. Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, |, 38
70 Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ti, 181
71 Lear. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.
Shakespeare, Lear, VI, vi, 169
72 Pericles. One sin, | know, another doth provoke;
Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke.
Shakespeare, Pericles, |, i, 137
73 Then, as mankinde, so is the worlds whole frame
Quite out of joynt, almost created lame:
For, before God had made up all the rest,
Corruption entred, and deprav’d the best:
It seis’d the Angels, and then first of all
The world did in her cradle take a fall,
And turn’d her braines, and tooke a generall maime,
Wronging each joynt of th’universall frame.
The noblest pan, man, fell it first; and then
Both beasts and plants, curst in the curse of man.
So did the world from the first houre decay,
That evening was beginning of the day,
And now the Springs and Sommers which we see,
Like sonnes of women after fiftie bee.
Donne, First Anniversary
74 Thou hast made me, And shall thy worke decay?
Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste,
| runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
1 dare not move my dim me eyes any way,
Despaire behind, and death before doth cast
Such terrour, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sinne in it, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;
Onely thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave | can lookc, | rise againe;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one houre my selfe | can sustaine;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.
Donne, Holy Sonnet |
75 1 ama little world made cunningly
Of Elements, and an Angelike spright,
But black sinne hath betraid to endlesse night
My worlds both pans, and (oh) both parts must die.
Donne, Holy Sennet V
76 Man, by the fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and
bis empire over creation, both of which can be partially
recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith,
the second by the arts and sciences.
Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 52
77 A sinis not only a transgression of a law, but also any
contempt of the legislator. For such contempt is a breach
of all his laws at once, and therefore may consist, not only
in the commission of a fact, or in the speaking of words
by the laws forbidden, or in the omission of what the law
commandeth, but also in the /ntention or purpose to
transgress. For the purpose to break the law is some
degree of contempt of him to whom it belongeth to see it
executed. To be delighted in the imagination only of
being possessed of another man’s goods, servants, or
wife, without any intention to take them from him by
force or fraud, is no breach of the law, that saith, "’Thou
Shalt not covet"; nor is the pleasure a man may have in
imagining or dreaming of the death of him from whose
life he expecteth nothing but damage and displeasure, a
sin; but the resolving to put some act in execution that
tendeth thereto. For to be pleased in the fiction of that
which would please a man if it were real is a passion so
adherent to the nature both of man and every other
living creature, as to make it a sin were to make sin of
being aman.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 27
78 It is... an astonishing thing that the mystery furthest
removed from our knowledge, namely, that of the
transmission of sin, should be a fact without which we
can have no knowledge of ourselves. For it is beyond
doubt that there is nothing which more shocks our reason
than to say that the sin of the first man has rendered
guilty those who, being so removed from this source,
seem incapable of participation in it. This transmission
does not only seem to us impossible, it seems also very
unjust. For what is more contrary to the rules of our
miserable justice than to damn eternally an infant
incapable of will, for a sin wherein he seems to have so
little a share that it was committed six thousand years
before he was in existence? Certainly nothing offends us
more rudely than this doctrine; and yet, without this
mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are
incomprehensible to ourselves. The knot of our condition
takes its twists and turns in this abyss, so that man is
more inconceivable without this mystery than this
mystery is inconceivable to man.
Pxscal, Pensées, VII, 434
79 If there is one sole source of everything, there is one sole
end of everything; everything through Him, everything
for Him. The true religion, then, must teach us to worship
Him only, and to love Him only. But as we find ourselves
unable to worship what we know not, and to love any
other object but ourselves, the religion which instructs us
in these duties must instruct us also of this inability, and
teach us also the remedies for it. It teaches us that by one
man all was lost, and the bond broken between God and
us, and that by one man the bond is renewed.
We are born so averse to this love of God, and it is so
necessary, that we must be born guilty, or God would be
unjust.
Pascal, Pensees, VII, 489
80 There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who
believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe
themselves righteous.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 534
81 Comus. O foolishnes of men! that lend their ears
To those budge doctors of the Stoick Furr,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynick Tub,
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence.
Wherefore did Nature powre her bounties forth.
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Thronging the Seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please, and sate the curious taste?
And set to work millions of spinning Worms,
That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair'd silk
To deck her Sons, and that no comer might
Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loyns
She hutch’t th’all-worshipt ore, and precious gems
To store her children with; if all the world
Should in a pet of temperance feed on Pulse,
Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but Freize,
Th’all-giver would be unthank't, would be unprais’d.
Not half his riches known, and yet despis’d.
And we should serve him as a grudging master,
As a penurious niggard of his wealth,
And live like Natures bastards, not her sons.
Milton, Comus, 706
82 Of mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse.
Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 1
83 Say first, for Heav’n hides nothing from thy view
[O Heavenly Muse]
Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause
Mov’d our Grand Parents in that happy State,
Favour’d of Heav’n so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his Will
For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?
Who first seduc’d them to that fowl revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d
The Mother of Mankinde, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 27
84 God. Oncly begotten Son, seest thou what rage
Transports our adversarie, whom no bounds
Prescrib’d, no barrs of Hell, nor all the chains
Heapt on him there, nor yet the main Abyss
Wide interrupt can hold; so bent he seems
On desperat revenge, that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head. And now
Through all restraint broke loose [Satan] wings his way
Not farr off Heav’n, in the Precincts of light,
Directly towards the new created World,
And Man there plac’t, with purpose to assay
If him by force he can destroy, or worse,
By som false guile pervert; and shall pervert;
For man will heark’n to his glozing lyes.
And easily transgress the sole Command,
Sole pledge of his obedience; So will fall
Hee and his faithless Progenie: whose fault?
Whose but his own?
Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 80
85 Her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, [Eve] pluck’d, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.
Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 780
86 God. Thy sorrow | will greatly multiplie
By thy Conception; Childern thou shall bring
In sorrow forth, and to thy Husbands will
Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule.
On Adam last thus judgement he pronounc’d.
Because thou has heark’nd to the voice of thy Wife,
And eaten of the Tree concerning which
| charg’d thee, saying: Thou shall not eate thereof.
Curs’d is the ground for thy sake, thou in sorrow
Shalt eate thereof all the days of thy Life;
Thornes also and Thistles it shall bring thee forth
Unbid, and thou shah eate th’ Herb of th' Field,
In the sweat of thy Face shah thou eate Bread,
Till thou return unto the ground, for thou
Out of the ground wast taken, know thy Birth,
For dust thou art, and shalt to dust returne.
Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 193
87 They are not skilful considerers of human things, who
imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; for,
besides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very
act of diminishing, though some part of it may for a time
be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in
such a universal thing as books are; and when this is
done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye take from a
covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left,
ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish all
objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest
discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye
cannot make them chaste, that came not thither so: such
great care and wisdom is required to the right managing
of this point. Suppose we could expel sin by this means;
look how much we thus expel of sin, So much we expel of
virtue: for the matter of them both is the same; remove
that, and ye remove them both alike.
Milton, Areopagitica
88 | cannot admit that sin and evil have any positive
existence, far less that anything can exist, or come to
pass, contrary to the will of God. On the contrary, not
only do! assert that sin has no positive existence, | also
maintain that only in speaking improperly, or humanly,
can we Say that we sin against God, as in the expression
that men offend God.
Spinoza, Letter to William de Blyenbergh (Jan, 5, 1665)
89 There is no original sin in the human heart, the how and
why of the entrance of every vice can be traced. The only
natural passion is self-love or selfishness taken in a wider
sense.
Rousseau, Emile, I/
90 Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human
race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told
as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there
were two sorts of people: one, the diligent, intelligent,
and, above all, frugal e/ite; the other, lazy rascals,
spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The
theological legend of original sin tells us certainly how
man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat
of his brow; but the history of economic original sin
reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no
means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that
the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort
had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And
from this original sin dates the poverty of the great
majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now
nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that
increases constantly although they have long ceased to
work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to
us in the defence of property.
Marx, Capital, Vol. I, VIII, 26
91 She [the Catholic Church] holds that it were better for
sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail,
and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of
starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal
affliction goes, than that one soul, | will not say, should
be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should
tell one wilful untruth, ... or steal one poor farthing
without excuse.
Newman, Lectures on Anglican Difficulties, VIII
92 Grand Inquisitor. The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of
self-destruction and non-existence... the great spirit
talked with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told in the
books that he "tempted" Thee. Is that so? And could
anything truer be said than what he revealed to Thee in
three questions and what Thou didst reject, and what in
the books is called "the temptation"? And yet if there has
ever been on earth a real stupendous miracle, it took
place on that day, on the day of the three temptations.
The statement of those three questions was itself the
miracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake
of argument that those three questions of the dread spirit
had perished utterly from the books, and that we had to
restore them and to invent them anew, and to do so had
gathered together all the wise men of the earth—rulers,
chief priests, learned men, philosophers, poets—and had
set them the task to invent three questions, such as
would not only fit the occasion, but express in three
words, three human phrases, the whole future history of
the world and of humanity—dost Thou believe that all the
wisdom of the earth united could have invented anything
in depth and force equal to the three questions which
were actually put to Thee then by the wise and mighty
spirit in the wilderness? From those questions alone, from
the miracle of their statement, we can see that we have
here to do not with the fleeting human intelligence, but
with the absolute and eternal. For in those three
questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as
it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold,
and in them are united all the unsolved historical
contradictions of human nature. At the time it could not
be so clear, since the future was unknown; but now that
fifteen hundred years have passed, we see that
everything in those three questions was so justly divined
and foretold, and has been so truly fulfilled, that nothing
can be added to them or taken from them.
Judge Thyself who was right—Thou or he who
questioned Thee then?
Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Pt, Il, V, 5
93 Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not
want the apple for the apple’s sake; he wanted it only
because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not
forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the
serpent.
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson's Calendar, II
94 The priest disvalues, dissanctifies nature: it is only at the
price of this that he exists at all. —Disobedience of God,
that is to say of the priest, of ‘the Law’, now acquires the
name ‘sin’; the means of ‘becoming reconciled again with
God’ are, as is only to be expected, means by which
subjection to the priest is only more thoroughly
guaranteed: the priest alone ‘redeems’.... From a
psychological point of view, ‘sins’ are indispensable in
any society organized by priests: they are the actual
levers of power, the priest /ives on sins, he needs ‘the
commission of sins’.... Supreme law: ‘God forgives him
who repents’—in plain language: who subjects himself to
the priest.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XXVI
95 Sin... that form par excellence of the self-violation of
man, was invented to make science, culture, every kind
of elevation and nobility of man impossible.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, XLIX
96 If the Son of God was obliged to sacrifice his life to
redeem mankind from original sin, then by the law of the
talion, the requital of like for like, that sin must have
been a killing, a murder. Nothing else could call for the
sacrifice of a life in expiation. And if the original sin was
an offence against God the Father, the primal crime of
mankind must have been a parricide, the killing of the
primal father of the primitive human horde, whose image
in memory was later transfigured into a deity.
Freud, Thoughts on War and Death, I!
97 A relatively strict and vigilant conscience is the very sign
of a virtuous man, and though saints may proclaim
themselves sinners, they are not so wrong, in view of the
temptations of instinctual gratifications to which they are
peculiarly liable—since, as we know, temptations do but
increase under constant privation, whereas they subside,
at any rate temporarily, if they are sometimes gratified.
The field of ethics is rich in problems, and another of the
facts we find here is that misfortune, i.e., external
deprivation, greatly intensifies the strength of conscience
in the superego. As long as things go well with a man, his
conscience is lenient and lets the ego do all kinds of
things; when some calamity befalls, he holds an
inquisition within, discovers his sin, heightens the
standards of his conscience, imposes abstinences on
himself and punishes himself with penances.
Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents, VII
20.14 Redemption and Salvation
If the reader compares the quotations of this section with
those of Section 20.13 on Sin and Temptation and of those of
Section 20.15 on Heaven and Hell, the reader will find that
the subjects treated in the three sections are so closely
related that the allocation of texts to one rather than
another place has been somewhat arbitrary. Within the
Christian tradition at least, and perhaps also in other
religions as well, it is the existence of sin that calls upon God
to mete out either merciful forgiveness or just punishment. If
men were without sin, there would be no need fora
redeemer and savior; if the sins of all were automatically
washed away by the sacrificial atonement of a redeemer,
there would be no damned in Hell; unless, with God's grace,
Salvation is attainable even if not fully merited, there would
be no admission of the blessed to the company of the
angelic choir in Heaven.
The mention of the angels reminds us that it was the sin
of Satan or Lucifer that separated the good angels from the
bad and populated Hell with its demons or devils, and
Heaven with its nine hierarchies of angels. As the reader of
Section 20.7 on Angels and Devils will discover, because the
angelic substance is aeviternal and immutable, unlike that
of the individual man, the sins of the fallen angels are
irredeemable. They are irretrievably and forever damned
from the first moment of their sin (which is also the first
moment of creation), just as, from that moment too, the
good angels are unchangeably in the presence of God.
The quotations below, including a large number from the
Old and the New Testament, deal with atonement for sin, by
sacrifice or other means; with the need for a mediator
between man and God to reconcile God’s mercy with his
justice; with the reasons why man’s redemption requires
God to become man in the person of Jesus Christ, and to
shed his blood on the cross to wash away the sins of the
world; and with the healing power of God’s grace to remove
the wounds of original sin and to enable men to perform the
good works that have some merit for salvation. The
intricacies of the doctrine of grace, and the great debate
over salvation through faith or through good works, have not
been adequately represented here, and cannot be in view of
their complexity and subtlety. As damnation is eternal
death, so salvation is eternal life, the joys of which
constitute the beatitude of the blessed united with God. For
the difference between such eternal happiness and the
temporal happiness that all men seek and some attain in
this earthly life, the reader must compare what is said here
about beatitude with what is said about happiness in
Section 9.8.
1 Salvation belongeth unto the Lord.
Psalm 3:8
2 The Lord is my shepherd; | shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he
leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though | walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, | will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and
thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of
mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup
runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life: and | will dwell in the house of the Lord
for ever.
Psalm 23:1-6
3 But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their
strength in the time of trouble.
And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he
Shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them,
because they trust in him.
Psalm 37:39-40
4 Purge me with hyssop, and | shall be clean: wash me, and |
Shall be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones
which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine
iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right
spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy
holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold
me with thy free spirit.
Psalm 51:7-12
5 O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the
high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings,
lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say
unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and
his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him,
and his work before him.
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather
the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and
Shall gently lead those that are with young.
Isaiah 40:9-11
6 For, behold, | create new heavens and a new earth: and
the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which |
create....
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion
Shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the
serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my
holy mountain, saith the Lord.
Isaiah 65:17-25
7 And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us
cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is
upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for
whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine
occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy
country? and of what people art thou?
And he said unto them, | am an Hebrew; and | fear the
Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and
the dry land.
Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto
him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he
fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told
them.
Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee,
that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought,
and was tempestuous.
And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth
into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for | know
that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.
Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the
land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was
tempestuous against them.
Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, We
beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish
for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for
thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee.
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea:
and the sea ceased from her raging.
Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered
a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows.
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up
Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days
and three nights.
Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the
fish’s belly,
And said, | cried by reason of mine affliction unto the
Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and
thou heardest my voice.
For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of
the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy
billows and thy waves passed over me.
Then | said, | am cast out of thy sight; yet | will look
again toward thy holy temple.
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the
depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped
about my head.
| went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the
earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou
brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.
When my soul fainted within me | remembered, the
Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy
temple.
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own
mercy.
But | will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of
thanksgiving; | will pay that that | have vowed. Salvation
is of the Lord.
And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out
Jonah upon the dry land.
Jonah 1:7-17; 2:1-10
8 Behold, | will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the
way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall
suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the
covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come,
saith the Lord of hosts
But who may abide the day of his coming? and who
Shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s
fire, and like fullers’ soap:
And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and
he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold
and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering
in righteousness.
Malachi 3:1-3
9 The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,
Renews its finished course: Saturnian times
Roll round again; and mighty years, begun
From their first orb, in radiant circles run.
The base degenerate iron offspring ends:
A golden progeny from heaven descends.
O chaste Lucina! speed the mother’s pains;
And haste the glorious birth! thy own Apollo reigns!
The lovely boy, with his auspicious face,
Shall Pollio’s consulship and triumph grace:
Majestic months set out with him to their appointed race.
The father banished virtue shall restore;
And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.
The son shall lead the life of gods, and be
By gods and heroes seen, and gods and heroes see.
The jarring nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal virtues rule mankind.
Virgil, Eclogues, IV
10 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill
Shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made
straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;
And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
Luke 3:5-6
11 There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in
the stars; and upon the earth distress o nations, with
perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after
those things which are coming on the earth: for the
powers of heaven shall be shaken.
And then shall they see the Son of man coming ina
cloud with power and great glory.
And when these things begin to come to pass, then
look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption
draweth nigh.
Luke 21:25-28
12 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and
saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world.
John 1:29
13 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:14-16
14 Then Jesus said unto them. Verily, verily, | say unto you,
Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my
Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is he which cometh down from
heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
Then said they unto him. Lord, evermore give us this
bread.
And Jesus said unto them, | am the bread of life: he
that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that
believeth on me shall never thirst.
But | said unto you. That ye alSo have seen me, and
believe not.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and
him that cometh to me | will in no wise cast out.
For | came down from heaven, not to do mine own will,
but the will of him that sent me.
And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of
all which he hath given me! should lose nothing, but
should raise it up again at the last day.
And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one
which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have
everlasting life: and | will raise him up at the last day.
John 6:32-40
15 If any man hear my words, and believe not, | judge him
not: for | came not to judge the world, but to save the
world.
John 12:47
16 Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered
into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.
! Corinthians 2:9
17 Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price:
therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit,
which are God’s.
| Corinthians 6:19-20
18 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8
19 Let the wicked in their restlessness go from Thee and flee
away. Yet Thou dost see them, cleaving through their
darkness. And all the universe is beautiful about them,
but they are vile. What harm have they done Thee? Or
have they brought dishonour upon Thy government,
which from the heavens unto the latest things of earth is
just and perfect? Where indeed did they flee to when
they fled from Thy face? Or where dost Thou not find
them? The truth is that they fled, that they might not see
Thee who sawest them. And so with eyes blinded they
stumbled against Thee—for Thou dost not desert any of
the things that Thou hast made—they stumbled against
Thee in their injustice and justly suffered, since they had
withdrawn from Thy mercy and stumbled against Thy
justice and fallen headlong upon Thy wrath. Plainly they
do not know that Thou art everywhere whom no place
compasses in, and that Thou alone art ever present even
to those that go furthest from Thee. Let them therefore
turn back and seek Thee because Thou hast not deserted
Thy creatures as they have deserted their Creator. Let
them turn back, and behold Thou art there in their hearts,
in the hearts of those that confess to Thee and cast
themselves upon Thee and weep on Thy breast as they
return from ways of anguish. Gently Thou dost wipe away
their tears and they weep the more and are consoled in
their weeping: because Thou, Lord, and not any man that
is only flesh and blood, Thou, Lord who hast made them,
dost remake them and give them comfort.
Augustine, Confessions, V, 2
20 The true Mediator, whom in the secret of Your mercy You
have shown to men and sent to men, that by His example
they might learn humility— the Mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus, appeared between sinful
mortals and the immortal Just One: for like men He was
mortal, like God He was Just; so that, the wages of justice
being life and peace, He might, through the union of His
own justice with God, make void the death of those
sinners whom He justified by choosing to undergo death
as they do. He was shown forth to holy men of old that
they might be saved by faith in His Passion to come, as
we by faith in His Passion now that He has suffered it. As
man. He is Mediator; but as Word, He is not something in
between, for He is equal to God, God with God, and
together one God.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 43
21 How much Thou hast loved us, O good Father, Who hast
spared not even Thine own Son, but delivered Him up for
us wicked men! How Thou hast loved us, for whom He
who thought it not robbery to be equal with Thee became
obedient even unto the death of the Cross, He who alone
was free among the dead, having power to lay down His
life and power to take it up again: for us He was to Thee
both Victor and Victim, and Victor because Victim; for us
He was to Thee both Priest and Sacrifice, and Priest
because Sacrifice: turning us from slaves into Thy sons,
by being Thy Son and becoming a Slave. Rightly is my
hope strong in Him, who sits at Thy right hand and
intercedes for us; otherwise | should despair. For many
and great are my infirmities, many and great; but Thy
medicine is of more power. We might well have thought
Thy Word remote from union with man and so have
despaired of ourselves, if It had not been made flesh and
dwelt among us.
Augustine, Confessions, X, 43
22 If ... it must needs be that all men, so long as they are
mortal, are also miserable, we must seek an intermediate
who is not only man, but also God, that, by the
interposition of His blessed mortality, He may bring men
out of their mortal misery to a blessed immortality. In this
intermediate two things are requisite, that He become
mortal and that He do not continue mortal. He did
become mortal, not rendering the divinity of the Word
infirm, but assuming the infirmity of flesh. Neither did He
continue mortal in the flesh, but raised it from the dead;
for it is the very fruit of His mediation that those, for the
sake of whose redemption He became the Mediator,
should not abide eternally in bodily death. Wherefore it
became the Mediator between us and God to have both a
transient mortality and a permanent blessedness, that by
that which is transient He might be assimilated to
mortals, and might translate them from mortality to that
which is permanent.
Augustine, City of God, IX, 15
23 God’s Son, assuming humanity without destroying His
divinity, established and founded this faith, that there
might be a way for man to man’s God through a God-
man. For this is the Mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus. For it is as man that He is the Mediator
and the Way. Since, if the way lieth between him who
goes and the place whither he goes, there is hope of his
reaching it; but if there be no way, or if he know not
where it is, what boots it to know whither he should go?
Now the only way that is infallibly secured against all
mistakes, is when the very same person is at once God
and man, God our end, man our way.
Augustine, City of God, XI, 2
24 The salvation of man could not be achieved otherwise
than through Christ.... There is no other name. ... given to
men, whereby we must be saved. Consequently the law
that brings all in a perfect way to salvation could not be
given until after the coming of Christ. But before His
coming it was necessary to give to the people, of whom
Christ was to be born, a law containing certain rudiments
of saving justice, in order to prepare them to receive Him.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 91, 5
25 Man, by his natural endowments, cannot produce
meritorious works proportionate to everlasting life, but for
this a higher power is needed, namely, the power of
grace. And thus without grace man cannot merit
everlasting life. Yet he can perform works conducing to a
good which is natural to man, as to toil in the fields, to
drink, to eat, or to have friends, and the like.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-/l, 109, 5
26 There is a twofold grace: one whereby man himself is
united to God, and this is called sanctifying grace; the
other is that whereby one man co-operates with another
in leading him to God, and this gift is called gratuitous
grace, since it is bestowed on a man beyond the
capability of nature, and beyond the merit of the person.
But whereas it is bestowed on a man not to justify him,
but rather that he may co-operate in the justification of
another, it is not called sanctifying grace.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, !-/l, 111, 1
27 God does not justify us without ourselves, because whilst
we are being justified we consent to God’s justice by a
movement of our free choice. Nevertheless this
movement is not the cause of grace, but the effect; hence
the whole operation pertains to grace.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—lII, 111, 2
28 By taking flesh, God did not lessen His majesty, and in
consequence did not lessen the reason for reverencing
Him, which is increased by the increase of knowledge of
Him. But, on the contrary, because He wished to draw
near to us by taking flesh. He drew us to know Him the
more.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ill, 1, 2
29 Although it belongs to Christ as God to take away sin as
having the authority, yet it belongs to Him as man to
satisfy for the sin of the human race. And in this sense He
is called the Mediator of God and men.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, 26, 2
30 After we were on the upper edge of the high cliff, out on
3
H
the open hillside, "Master mine," said 1, "what way shall
we take?"
And he [Virgil] to me: "Let no step of thine descend,
ever up the mount behind me win thy way, until some
wise escort appear to us. ., . This mountain is such, that
ever at the beginning below ’tis toilsome, and the more a
man ascends the less it wearies.
Therefore when it shall seem to thee so pleasant that
the ascending becomes to thee easy, even as in a boat to
descend with the stream,
then shalt thou be at the end of this path: there hope
to rest thy weariness."
Dante, Purgatorio, IV, 34
"But tell us, if thou knowest, why the mount gave before
such shakings, and wherefore all seemed to shout with
one voice down to its soft base."
Thus, by asking, did he [Virgil] thread the very
needle’s eye of my desire, and with the hope alone my
thirst was made less fasting.
That spirit [Statius] began: "The holy rule of the
mount suffereth naught that is arbitrary, or that is
outside custom.
Here it is free from all terrestrial change; that which
Heaven receives into itself from itself may here operate
as Cause, and naught else:
since neither rain, nor hail, nor snow, nor dew, nor
hoarfrost, falls any higher than the short little stairway of
the three steps.
Clouds, dense or thin, appear not, nor lightning flash,
nor Thaumas' daughter, who yonder oft changes her
region.
Dry vapour rises not higher than the top of the three
steps which | spake of, where Peter's vicar hath his feet.
It quakes perchance lower down little or much, but by
reason of wind which is hidden in the earth, | know not
how, it has never quaked up here.
It quakes here when some soul fceleth herself
cleansed, so that she may rise up, or set forth, to mount
on high, and such a shout follows her.
Of the cleansing the will alone gives proof, which fills
the soul, all free to change her cloister, and avails her to
will.
She wills indeed before, but that desire permits it not
which divine justice sets, counter to will, toward the
penalty, even as it was toward the sin.
And | who have lain under this torment five hundred
years and more, only now felt free will for a better
threshold.
Therefore didst thou feel the earthquake, and hear the
pious spirits about the mount give praises to that Lord—
soon may he send them above."
Dante, Purgatorio, XXI, 34
32 When the stairway was all soed beneath us, and we were
upon the topmost step, on me did Virgil fix his eyes,
and said: "Son, the temporal fire and the eternal, hast
thou seen, and art come to a place where I, of myself,
discern no further.
Here have | brought thee with wit and with art; now
take thy pleasure for guide; forth art thou from the steep
ways, forth art from the narrow.
Behold there the sun that shineth on thy brow behold
the tender grass, the flowers, and the shrubs, which the
ground here of itself alone brings forth.
While the glad fair eyes are coming, which weeping
made me come to thee, thou canst sit thee down and
canst go among them.
No more expect my word, nor my sign. Free, upright,
and whole, is thy will, and 'twere a fault not to act
according to its prompting; wherefore | do crown and
mitre thee over thyself."
Dante, Purgatorio, XXVII, 124
33 Even if in the power of the Holy Spirit a man were to keep
the law completely, he ought nevertheless to pray for
divine mercy, for God has ordained that man should be
saved not by the law but by Christ.
Luther, Table Talk, 85
34 There is nothing so easy, so gentle, and so favorable as
the divine law; she calls us to herself, sinful and
detestable as we are; she stretches out her arms to us
and takes us to her bosom, no matter how vile, filthy, and
besmirched we are now and are to be in the future. But
still, in return, we must look on her in the right way. We
must receive this pardon with thanksgiving, and, at least
for that instant when we address ourselves to her, have a
soul remorseful for its sins and at enmity with the
passions that have driven us to offend her.
Montaigne, Essays, |, 56, Of Prayers
35 If we held to God by the mediation of a living faith, if we
held to God through him and not through ourselves, if we
had a divine foothold and foundation, human accidents
would not have the power to shake us as they do. Our fort
would not be prone to surrender to so weak a battery; the
love of novelty, the constraint of princes, the good
fortune of one party, a heedless and accidental change in
our opinions, would not have the power to shake and
alter our belief; we would not allow it to be troubled by
every new argument or by persuasion, not even by all the
rhetoric there ever was; we should withstand those waves
with inflexible and immobile firmness. ... If this ray of
divinity touched us at all, it would appear all over: not
only our words, but also our works would bear its light
and luster. Everything that came from us would be seen
to be illuminated by this noble brightness.
Montaigne, Essays, 11, 12, Apology for Raymond
Sebond
36 Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage;
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness; so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.
Shakespeare, Lear, V, iii, 8
37 And now, my Friend, said he [Don Quixote], turning to
Sancho, pardon me that | have brought upon thee, as
well as my self, the Scandal of Madness, by drawing thee
into my own Errors, and persuading thee that there have
been and still are Knights-Errant in the World. Woe is me,
my dear Master’s Worship! cry’d Sancho, all in Tears,
don’t die this Bout, but e’en take My Counsel, and live on
a many Years; ‘tis the maddest Trick a Man can ever play
in his whole Life, to let his Breath sneak out of his Body
without any more ado, and without so much as a Rap o’er
the Pate, or a Kick of the Guts; to go out /ike the Snuff of
a Farthing-Candle, and die merely of the Mulligrubs, or
the Sullens. For Shame, Sir, don’t give way to
Sluggishness, but get out of your doleful Dumps, and
rise. Is this a Time to lie honing and groaning a Bed, when
we shou’d be in the Fields in our Shepherd’s Cloathing, as
we had resolv’d? Ten to one but behind some Bush, or
under some Hedge, we may find the Lady Madam
Dulcinea, strip’d of her inchanted Rags, and as fine as a
Queen. Mayhaps you take it to Heart, that you were
unhors’d, and a little Crupper-scratched t’other Day; but
if that be all, lay the Blame upon Me, and say ‘twas My
Fault, in not girting Rosinante tight enough. You know
too, there’s nothing more common in your Errantry-
Books, than for the Knights to be every Foot jostl’d out of
the Saddle. There’s nothing but Ups and Downs in this
World, and he that’s cast down to Day, may be a cock-a-
hoop to Morrow. Even so, said Sampson, honest Sancho
has a right Notion of the Matter. Soft and fair. Gentleman,
reply’d Don Quixote, ne’er look for Birds of this Year in the
Nests of the last: | was mad, but 1 am now in my Senses; |
was once Don Quixote de la Mancha, but am now (as |
said before) the plain Alonso Quixano, and | hope the
Sincerity of my Words, and my Repentance, may restore
me the same Esteem you have had for me before.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 74
38 Salvation of a sinner Supposeth a precedent redemption;
for he that is once guilty of sin is obnoxious to the
penalty of the same; and must pay, or some other for
him, such ransom as he that is offended, and has him in
his power, shall require. And seeing the person offended
is Almighty God, in whose power are all things, such
ransom is to be paid before salvation can be acquired, as
God hath been pleased to require. By this ransom is not
intended a satisfaction for sin equivalent to the offence,
which no sinner for himself, nor righteous man can ever
be able to make for another: the damage a man does to
another he may make amends for by restitution or
recompense, but sin cannot be taken away by
recompense; for that were to make the liberty to sina
thing vendible.
Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 38
39 | believe many are saved, who to man seem reprobated;
and many are reprobated, who in the opinion and
sentence of man, stand elected: there will appear at the
Last day, strange and unexpected examples both of his
Justice and his Mercy.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 57
40 The Catholic religion does not bind us to confess our sins
indiscriminately to everybody; it allows them to remain
hidden from all other men save one, to whom she bids us
reveal the innermost recesses of our heart and show
ourselves as we are. There is only this one man in the
world whom she orders us to undeceive, and she binds
him to an inviolable secrecy, which makes this knowledge
to him as if it were not. Can we imagine anything more
charitable and pleasant? And yet the corruption of man is
such that he finds even this law harsh; and it is one of the
main reasons which has caused a great part of Europe to
rebel against the Church.
How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man,
which feels it disagreeable to be obliged to do in regard
to one man what in some measure it were right to do to
all men | For is it right that we should deceive men?
Pascal, Pensées, II, 100
41 Grace is indeed needed to turn a man into a saint; and he
who doubts it does not Know what a saint or a man is.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 508
42 The Incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery
by the greatness of the remedy which he required.
Pascal, Pensées, VII, 526
43 This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav’ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing.
That he our deadly forfeit should release.
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
Milton, On the Morning of Christs Nativity, 1
44 God. Man falls deceiv’d
By the other [Satan] first: Man therefore shall find grace,
The other none: in Mercy and Justice both,
Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel,
But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 130
45 God. Man disobeying,
Disloyal breaks his fealtie, and sinns
Against the high Supremacie of Heav’n,
Affecting God-head, and so loosing all,
To expiate his Treason hath naught left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posteritie must die,
Die hce or Justice must; unless for him
Som other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 203
46 Christ. Behold mee, then, mee for him, life for life
| offer, on mee let thine anger fall;
Account mce man; | for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleas’d, on me let Death wreck all his rage.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 236
47 |f salvation lay ready to hand and could be discovered
without great labour, how could it be possible that it
should be neglected almost by everybody? But all noble
things are as difficult as they are rare.
Spinoza, Ethics, V, Prop. 42, Schol.
48 When these men had thus bravely shewed themselves
against Doubting Castle, and had slain Giant Despair,
they went forward, and went on till they came to the
Delectable Mountains, where Christian and Hopeful
refreshed themselves with the Varieties of the Place. They
also acquainted themselves with the Shepherds there,
who welcomed them as they had done Christian before,
unto the Delectable Mountains.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, I!
49 It was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken
with a Summons, by the same Post as the other, and had
this for a Token that the Summons was true, That his
Pitcher was broken at the Fountain. When he understood
it, he called for his Friends, and told them of it. Then said
he, |am going to my Fathers, and tho' with great
Difficulty | am got hither, yet now | do not repent me of all
the Trouble | have been at to arrive where | am. My
Sword, | give to him that shall succeed me in my
Pilgrimage, and my Courage and Ski//, to him that can get
it. My Marks and Scars | carry with me, to be a Witness for
me, that | have fought his Battles who now will be my
Rewarder. When the Day that he must go hence, was
come, many accompanied him to the River side, into
which, as he went, he said, Death, where Is thy Sting?
And as he went down deeper, he said, Grave, where Is
thy Victory? So he passed over, and all the Trumpets
sounded for him on the other side.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, II
50 There are a thousand ways to wealth, but one only way to
heaven.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
51 No way whatsoever that | shall walk in against the
dictates of my conscience will ever bring me to the
mansions of the blessed. | may grow rich by an art that |
take not delight in; | may be cured of some disease by
remedies that | have not faith in; but | cannot be saved
by a religion that | distrust and by a worship that | abhor.
It is in vain for an unbeliever to take up the outward show
of another man’s profession. Faith only and inward
sincerity are the things that procure acceptance with
God.
Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration
52 He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
--The Accusing Spirit, which flew up to heaven’s
chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in;—and
the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear
upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.
Sterne, Tristram Shandy, VI, 8
53 | proceeded: "What do you think, Sir, of Purgatory, as
believed by the Roman Catholicks?" Johnson. "Why, Sir, it
is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion that the
generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked
as to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to
merit being admitted into the society of blessed spirits;
and therefore that God is graciously pleased to allow of a
middle state, where they may be purified by certain
degrees of suffering. You see, Sir, there is nothing
unreasonable in this."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Oct. 26, 1769)
54 Dr. Johnson surprised him [Dr. Adams] not a little, by
acknowledging with a look of horrour, that he was much
oppressed by the fear of death. The amiable Dr. Adams
suggested that God was infinitely good. Johnson. "That
he is infinitely good, as far as the perfection of his nature
will allow, | certainly believe; but it is necessary for good
upon the whole, that individuals should be punished. As
to an individual, therefore, he is not infinitely good; and
as | cannot be sure that | have fulfilled the conditions on
which salvation is granted, | am afraid | may be one of
those who shall be damned," (looking dismally). Dr.
Adams. "What do you mean by damned?" Johnson.
(passionately and loudly,) "Sent to Hell, Sir, and punished
everlastingly!" Dr. Adams. "| don’t believe that doctrine."
Johnson. "Hold, Sir, do you believe that some will be
punished at all?" Dr. Adams. "Being excluded from
Heaven will be a punishment; yet there may be no great
positive suffering." johnson. "Well, Sir; but, if you admit
any degree of punishment, there is an end of your
argument for infinite goodness simply considered; for,
infinite goodness would inflict no punishment whatever.
There is not infinite goodness physically considered;
morally there is."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (June 12, 1784)
55 The Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings.
G. M. Hopkins, God's Grandeur
56 The ordinary moralistic state of mind makes the salvation
of the world conditional upon the success with which
each unit does its part. Partial and conditional salvation is
in fact a most familiar notion when taken in the abstract,
the only difficulty being to determine the details. Some
men are even disinterested enough to be willing to be in
the unsaved remnant as far as their persons go, if only
they can be persuaded that their cause will prevail—all of
us are willing, whenever our activity-excitement rises
sufficiently high. | think, in fact, that a final philosophy of
religion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis
more seriously than it has hitherto been willing to
consider it. For practical life at any rate, the chance of
Salvation is enough. No fact in human nature is more
characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance.
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience,
Postscript
20.15 Heaven and Hell
Whereas redemption and salvation through the intercession
of a divine mediator is, for the most part, a Christian
doctrine and a distinguishing feature of the Christian
religion, heaven and hell figure significantly among the
religious beliefs of pagan antiquity, though usually under
other names, such as Hades and the Elysian Fields. Hence
the ancient poets, and particularly Homer and Virgil who
recount visits by their heroes to the abode of the shades,
take their place here, along with Dante and Milton, among
the authors depicting the joys of the blessed and the
tortures of the damned. On the other hand, Plato, who,
among ancient philosophers, is most concerned with the
immortality of the soul and the judgment it is subject to
after death, conceives divine rewards and punishments in
terms of reincarnation, accompanied by a better or worse
earthly life, rather than in terms of heaven and hell.
As the quotations below indicate, many are the questions
asked and answered by medieval theologians concerning
the state of the damned in hell and the condition of the
blessed in heaven: such questions as whether the tortures of
hell are mainly spiritual or physical; whether the pain of loss
or deprivation or the pain of sense constitutes the reality of
hell; whether references to "hell-fire" are to be interpreted
literally or metaphorically; whether the blessed in heaven
are aware of the tortures of the damned and whether they
take pleasure in such awareness; whether there are lower
and higher levels of beatitude in heaven as there are less
and more intense gradations of punishment in hell; and
whether the reincarnation of the body and its being reunited
with the soul in heaven increases the joys of the blessed.
In the secular literature of a later age, the joys of heaven
and the terrors of hell tend to become less vivid and
approach the vanishing point of unreality. Nevertheless,
even with loss of belief in their reality, they remain as
symbols of joy and misery, betokening the fulfillment of
man’s highest hopes or his abandonment to utter despair.
There is also, in the quotations from more recent writers, a
strain of satire concerning the preferability of hell to heaven
in terms of who is there and what is going on in each place,
summed up in a statement by Mark Twain not quoted here:
“Heaven for climate, Hell for society.”
For the discussion of closely related matters, the reader is
referred to Section 20.7 on Angels and Devils, Section 20.13
on Sin and Temptation, and Section 20.14 on Redempton
and Salvation.
1 The children of men put their trust under the shadow of
thy wings.
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of
thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of
thy pleasures.
For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall
we see light.
Psalm 36:7-9
2 | had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than
to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
Psalm 84:10
3 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy
coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief
ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all
the kings of the nations.
All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also
become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise
of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the
worms cover thee.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which
didst weaken the nations!
For thou hast said in thine heart, | will ascend into
heaven, | will exalt my throne above the stars of God: |
will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the
sides of the north:
| will ascend above the heights of the clouds; | will be
like the most High.
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of
the pit.
They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and
consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the
earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;
That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed
the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his
prisoners?
All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in
glory, every one in his own house.
But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable
branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust
through with a sword; that go down to the stones of the
pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.
Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because
thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the
seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.
Isaiah 14:9-20
4 [Hephaistos] spoke, and the goddess of the white arms
Hera smiled at him,
and smiling she accepted the goblet out of her son’s
hand.
Thereafter beginning from the left he poured drinks for
the other
gods, dipping up from the mixing bowl the sweet
nectar.
But among the blessed immortals uncontrollable
laughter
went up as they saw Hephaistos bustling about the
palace.
Thus thereafter the whole day long until the sun went
under
they feasted, nor was anyone’s hunger denied a fair
portion,
nor denied the beautifully wrought lyre in the hands of
Apollo
nor the antiphonal sweet sound of the Muses singing.
Afterwards when the light of the flaming sun went
under
they went away each one to sleep in his home where
for each one the far-renowned strong-handed
Hephaistos
had built a house by means of his craftsmanship and
cunning.
Zeus the Olympian and lord of the lightning went to
his own bed, where always he lay when sweet sleep
came on him.
Going up to the bed he slept and Hera of the gold
throne beside him.
Homer, Iliad, |, 595
5 Poseidon. We are three brothers born by Rheia to Kronos,
Zeus, and |, and the third is Hades, lord of the dead
men.
All was divided among us three ways, each given his
domain.
| when the lots were shaken drew the grey sea to live
in
forever; Hades drew the lot of the mists and the
darkness,
and Zeus was allotted the wide sky, in the cloud and
the bright air.
But earth and high Olympos are common to all three.
Homer, Iliad, XV, 187
6 She departed, grey-eyed Athena,
to where the gods have their eternal dwelling—
as men say—in the fastness of Olympos.
Never a tremor of wind, or a splash of rain,
no errant snowflake comes to stain that heaven,
so calm, so vaporless, the world of light.
Here, where the gay gods live their days of pleasure,
the grey-eyed one withdrew.
Homer, Odyssey, VI, 40
7 Odysseus. We made the land, put ram and ewe ashore,
and took our way along the Ocean stream
to find the place foretold for us by Kirke.
There Perimedcs and Eurylokhos
pinioned the sacred beasts. With my drawn blade
| soaded up the votive pit, and poured
libations round it to the unnumbered dead:
sweet milk and honey, then sweet wine, and last
clear water; and | scattered barley down.
Then | addressed the blurred and breathless dead,
vowing to slaughter my best heifer for them
before she calved, at home in Ithaka,
and bum the choice bits on the altar fire;
as for Teiresias, | swore to sacrifice
a black lamb, handsomest of all our flock.
Thus to assuage the nations of the dead
| pledged these rites, then slashed the lamb and ewe,
letting their black blood stream into the wellpit.
Now the souls gathered, stirring out of Erebos,
brides and young men, and men grown old in pain,
and tender girls whose hearts were new to grief;
many were there, too, torn by brazen lanceheads,
battle-slain, bearing still their bloody gear.
From every side they came and sought the pit
with rustling cries; and | grew sick with fear.
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 20
8 Odysseus. Then | saw Tantalos put to the torture: in a cool
pond he stood, lapped round by water clear to the chin,
and being athirst he burned to slake his dry weasand
with drink, though drink he would not ever again. For
when the old man put his lips down to the sheet of water
it vanished round his feet, gulped underground, and
black mud baked there in a wind from hell. Boughs, too,
drooped low above him, big with fruit, pear trees,
pomegranates, brilliant apples, luscious figs, and olives
ripe and dark; but if he stretched his hand for one, the
wind under the dark sky tossed the bough beyond him.
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 581
9 Odysseus. Herakles, down the vistas of the dead, faded
from sight; but | stood fast, awaiting other great souls
who perished in times past. | should have met, then, god-
begotten Theseus and Peirithoos, whom both | longed to
see, but first came shades in thousands, rustling in a
pandemonium of whispers, blown together, and the
horror took me that Persephone had brought from darker
hell some saurian death’s head.
Homer, Odyssey, XI, 627
10 Theonoe. AH men, in the world below and in the world
above must pay for acts committed here. The mind
of those who have died, blown into the immortal air,
immortally has knowledge, though all life is gone.
Euripides, Helen, 1013
11 Socrates. In the days of Cronos there existed a law
respecting the destiny of man, which has always been,
and still continues to be in Heaven—that he who has
lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he
is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in
perfect happiness out of the reach of evil; but that he
who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the
house of vengeance and punishment, which is called
Tartarus.
Plato, Gorgias, 523A
12 Socrates. | tell you a tale; not one of the tales which
Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale
of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth.
He was Slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the
bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of
corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and
carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day,
as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and
told them what he had seen in the other world. He said
that when his soul left the body he went on a journey
with a great company, and that they came toa
mysterious place at which there were two openings in the
earth; they were near together, and over against them
were two other openings tn the heaven above. In the
intermediate space there were judges seated> who
commanded the just, after they had given judgment on
them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to
ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in
like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend
the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the
symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He
drew near, and they told him that he was to be the
messenger who would carry the report of the other world
to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to
be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw
on one side the souls departing at either opening of
heaven and earth when sentence had been given on
them; and at the two other openings other souls, some
ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel,
some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And
arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a
long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the
meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and
those who knew one another embraced and conversed,
the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring
about the things above, and the souls which came from
heaven about the things beneath. And they told one
another of what had happened by the way, those from
below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the
things which they had endured and seen in their journey
beneath the earth (now the journey lasted a thousand
years), while those from above were describing heavenly
delights and visions of inconceivable beauty.
Plato, Republic, X, 614A
13 So pray’d the Trojan prince, and, while he pray’d,
His hand upon the holy altar laid.
Then thus replied the prophetess divine:
"O goddess-born of great Anchiscs’ line,
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
To few great Jupiter imparts this grace,
And those of shining worth and heav’nly race,
Betwixt those regions and our upper light,
Deep forests and impenetrable night
Possess the middle space: th’ infernal bounds
Cocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds.
But if so dire a love your soul invades,
As twice below to view the trembling shades;
If you so hard a toil will undertake,
As twice to pass th’ innavigable lake;
Receive my counsel. In the neighb’ring grove
There stands a tree; the queen of Stygian Jove
Claims it her own; thick woods and gloomy night
Conceal the happy plant from human sight.
One bough it bears; but (wondrous to behold!)
The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:
This from the vulgar branches must be torn,
And to fair Proserpine the present borne,
Ere leave be giv’n to tempt the nether skies.
The first thus rent a second will arise,
And the same metal the same room supplies.
Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to see
The lurking gold upon the fatal tree:
Then rend it off, as holy rites command;
The willing metal will obey thy hand.
Following with ease, if favor’d by thy fate.
Thou art foredoom’d to view the Stygian state:
If not, no labor can the tree constrain;
And strength of stubborn arms and steel are vain.
Besides, you know not, while you here attend,
Th’ unworthy fate of your unhappy friend:
Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost.
Depriv’d of fun’ral rites, pollutes your host.
Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead,
Two sable sheep around his hearse be led;
Then, living turfs upon his body lay:
This done, securely take the destin’d way,
To find the regions destitute of day,"
She said, and held her peace.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
’
14 Obscure they [Aeneas and the Prophetess] went thro
dreary shades, that led
Along the waste dominions of the dead.
Thus wander travelers in woods by night,
By the moon’s doubtful and malignant light,
When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies,
And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.
Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,
And pale Diseases, and repining Age,
Want, Fear, and Famine’s unresisted rage;
Here Toils, and Death, and Dealth’s half-brother, Sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep;
With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;
The Furies’ iron beds; and Strife, that shakes
Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes.
Full in the midst of this infernal road,
An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:
The God of Sleep there hides his heavy head,
And empty dreams on ev’ry leaf are spread.
Of various forms unnumber’d specters more,
Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.
Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,
And Briareus with all his hundred hands;
Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;
And vain Chimaera vomits empty flame.
The chief unsheath’d his shining steel, prepar’d,
Tho’ seiz’d with sudden fear, to force the guard,
Off’ring his brandish’d weapon at their face;
Had not the Sibyl stopp’d his eager pace,
And told him what those empty phantoms were:
Forms without bodies, and impassive air.
Hence to deep Acheron they take their way,
Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay,
Are whirl’d aloft, and in Cocytus lost.
There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast—
A sordid god: down from his hoary chin
A length of beard descends, uncomb’d, unclean;
His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.
He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers;
The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears.
He look’d in years; yet in his years were seen
A youthful vigor and autumnal green.
An airy crowd came rushing where he stood,
Which fill’d the margin of the fatal flood:
Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,
And mighty heroes’ more majestic shades,
And youths, intomb’d before their fathers’ eyes,
With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries.
Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,
Or fowls, by winter forc’d, forsake the floods.
And wing their hasty flight to happier lands;
Such, and so thick, the shiv’ring army stands,
And press for passage with extended hands.
Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:
The rest he drove to distance from the shore.
The hero, who beheld with wond’ring eyes
The tumult mix’d with shrieks, laments, and cries,
Ask’d of his guide, what the rude concourse meant;
Why to the shore the thronging people bent;
What forms of law among the ghosts were us’d:
Why some were ferried o’er, and some refus’d.
"Son of Anchises, offspring of the gods,"
The Sibyl said, "you see the Stygian floods,
The sacred stream which heav’n’s imperial state
Attests in oaths, and fears to violate.
The ghosts rejected are th’ unhappy crew
Depriv’d of sepulchers and fun’ral due:
The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host.
He ferries over to the farther coast;
Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves
With such whose bones are not compos’d in graves.
A hundred years they wander on the shore;
At length, their penance done, are wafted o’er."
Virgil Aeneid, VI
15 No sooner landed, in his den they found
The triple porter of the Stygian sound.
Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rear
His crested snakes, and arm’d his bristling hair.
The prudent Sibyl had before prepar’d
A sop, in honey steep’d, to charm the guard;
Which, mix’d with pow’rful drugs, she cast before
His greedy grinning jaws, just op’d to roar.
With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,
With hunger press’d, devours the pleasing bait.
Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;
He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave.
The keeper charm’d, the chief without delay
Pass’d on, and took th’ irremeable way.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
16 Before the gates, the cries of babes new-born,
Whom fate had from their tender mothers torn,
Assault his ears: then those whom form of laws
Condemn’d to die, when traitors judg’d their cause.
Nor want they lots, nor judges to review
The wrongful sentence, and award a new.
Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears;
And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears.
Round in his um the blended balls he rolls.
Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.
The next, in place and punishment, are they
Who prodigally throw their souls away;
Fools, who, repining at their wretched state,
And loathing anxious life, suborn’d their fate.
With late repentance now they would retrieve
The bodies they forsook, and wish to live;
Their pains and poverty desire to bear,
To view the light of heav’n, and breathe the vital air:
But Fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose.
And with nine circling streams the captive souls inclose.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
17 And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spent
The little time of stay which Heav’n had lent;
But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:
"Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day:
Tis here, in different paths, the way divides;
The right to Pluto’s golden palace guides;
The left to that unhappy region tends,
Which to the depth of Tartarus descends;
The seat of night profound, and punish’d fiends."
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
18 They He below, on golden beds display’d;
And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.
The Queen of Furies by their sides is set,
And snatches from their mouths th' untasted meat,
Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,
Tossing her torch, and thund’ring in their ears.
Then they, who brothers’ better claim disown,
Expel their parents, and usurp the throne;
Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold,
Sit brooding on unprofitable gold;
Who dare not give, and e’en refuse to lend
To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend.
Vast is the throng of these; nor less the train
Of lustful youths, for foul adult’ry slain:
Hosts of deserters, who their honor sold,
And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold.
All these wthin the dungeon’s depth remain,
Despairing pardon, and expecting pain.
Ask not what pains; nor farther seek to know
Their process, or the forms of law below.
Some roll a weighty stone; some, laid along,
And bound with burning wires, on spokes of wheels are
hung.
Unhappy Theseus, doom’d for ever there,
Is fix’d by Fate on his eternal chair;
And wretched Phlegyas warns the world with cries
(Could warning make the world more just or wise):
‘Learn righteousness, and dread th’ avenging deities.’
To tyrants others have their country sold,
Imposing foreign lords, for foreign gold;
Some have old laws repeal’d, new statutes made,
Not as the people pleas’d, but as they paid;
With incest some their daughters’ bed profan’d:
All dar’d the worst of ills, and, what they dar’d, attain’d.
Had | a hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,
And throats of brass, inspir’d with iron lungs,
| could not half those horrid crimes repeat,
Nor half the punishments those crimes have met.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
19 They took their way
Where long extended plains of pleasure lay:
The verdant fields with those of heav’n may vie,
With ether vested, and a purple sky;
The blissful seats of happy souls below.
Stars of their own, and their own suns, they know;
Their airy limbs in sports they exercise,
And on the green contend the wrestler’s prize.
Some in heroic verse divinely sing;
Others in artful measures lead the ring.
The Thracian bard, surrounded by the rest,
There stands conspicuous in his flowing vest;
His flying fingers, and harmonious quill,
Strikes sev’n distinguish’d notes, and sev’n at once they
fill...
To these the Sibyl thus her speech address’d,
And first to him surrounded by the rest
(Tow’ring his height, and ample was his breast):
"Say, happy souls, divine Musaeus, say,
Where lives Anchiscs, and where lies our way
To find the hero, for whose only sake
We sought the dark abodes, and cross’d the bitter lake?"
To this the sacred poet thus replied:
"In no fix’d place the happy souls reside.
In groves we live, and lie on mossy beds,
By crystal streams, that murmur thro’ the meads:
But pass yon easy hill, and thence descend;
The pa tit conducts you to your journey’s end."
This said, he led them up the mountain’s brow,
And shews them all the shining fields below.
They wind the hill, and thro’ the blissful meadow’s go.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
20 Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains;
But long-contracted filth e’en in the soul remains.
The relics of inveterate vice they wear,
And spots of sin obscene in ev'ry face appear.
For this are various penances enjoin’d;
And some are hung to bleach upon the wind,
Some plung’d in waters, others purg’d in fires,
Till all the dregs are drain’d, and all the rust expires.
All have their manes, and those manes bear:
The few, so cleans’d, to these abodes repair,
And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air.
Then are they happy, when by length of time
The scurf is worn away of each committed crime;
No speck is left of their habitual stains,
But the pure ether of the soul remains.
Virgil, Aeneid, VI
21 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where
moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break
through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do
not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there 'will your heart be
also.
Matthew 6:19-21
22 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man,
seeking goodly pearls:
Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went
and sold ail that he had, and bought it.
Matthew 13:45-46
23 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast
into the sea, and gathered of every kind:
Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat
down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the
bad away.
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall
come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just.
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall
be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Matthew 13:47-50
24 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an
householder, which went out early in the morning to hire
labourers into his vineyard.
And when he had agreed with the labourers for a
penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
And he went out about the third hour, and saw others
standing idle in the marketplace,
And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and
whatsoever is right | will give you. And they went their
Way.
Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and
did likewise.
And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found
others standing idle, and saith unto them. Why stand ye
here all the day idle?
They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He
saith unto them. Go ye also into the vineyard; and
whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.
So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith
unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their
hire, beginning from the last unto the first.
And when they came that were hired about the
eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
But when the first came, they supposed that they
should have received more; and they likewise received
every man a penny.
And when they had received it, they murmured
against the goodman of the house,
Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and
thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne
the burden and heat of the day.
But he answered one of them, and said. Friend, | do
thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
Take that thine is, and go thy way: | will give unto this
last, even as unto thee.
Is it not lawful for me to do what | will with mine own?
Is thine eye evil, because | am good?
So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be
called, but few chosen.
Matthew 20:1-16
25 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of
his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he
Shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the
goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand,
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Matthew 25:31-34
26 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in
purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which
was laid at his gate full of sores,
And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked
his sores.
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was
carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich
man also died, and was buried;
And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and
seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on
me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his
finger in water, and cool my tongue; for | am tormented
in this flame.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy
lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art
tormented.
And beside all this, between us and you there is a
great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from
hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that
would come from thence.
Luke 16:19-26
27 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not
so, | would have told you.
John 14:2
28 Behold, | shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but
we Shall all be changed,
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be
raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this
mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on in-
corruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written.
Death is swallowed up in victory.
| Corinthians 15:51—54
29 One of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are
these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence
came they?
And | said unto him. Sir, thou kKnowest. And he said to
me, These are they which came out of great tribulation,
and have washed their robes, and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve
him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on
the throne shall dwell among them.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more;
neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.
For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall
feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of
waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
Revelation 7:13-17
30 | saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven
and the first earth were passed away; and there was no
more sea.
And | John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride
adorned for her husband.
And | heard a great voice out of heaven saying.
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will
dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God
himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain: for the former
things are passed away.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, | make
all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these
words are true and faithful.
And he said unto me, It is done. | am Alpha and O-
meg-a, the beginning and the end. | will give unto him
that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and | will
be his God, and he shall be my son.
Revelation 21:1-7
31 We must not... contrary to nature, send the bodies ... of
good men to heaven; but we must really believe that,
according to their divine nature and law, their virtue and
their souls are translated out of men into heroes, out of
heroes into demi-gods, out of demi-gods, after passing, as
in the rite of initiation, through a final cleansing and
sanctification, and so freeing themselves from all that
pertains to mortality and sense, are thus, not by human
decree, but really and according to right reason, elevated
into gods admitted thus to the greatest and most blessed
perfection.
Plutarch, Romulus
32 If to any man the tumult of the flesh grew silent, silent
the images of earth and sea and air: and if the heavens
grew silent, and the very soul grew silent to herself and
by not thinking of self mounted beyond self: if all dreams
and imagined visions grew silent, and every tongue and
every sign and whatsoever is transient—-for indeed if any
man could hear them, he should hear them saying with
one voice: We did not make ourselves, but He made us
who abides forever: but if, having uttered this and so set
us to listening to Him who made them, they all grew
silent, and in their silence He alone spoke to us, not by
them but by Himself: so that we should hear His word, not
by any tongue of flesh nor the voice of an angel nor the
sound of thunder nor in the darkness of a parable, but
that we should hear Himself whom in all these things we
love, should hear Himself and not them... and if this could
continue, and all other visions so different be quite taken
away, and this one should so ravish and absorb and wrap
the beholder in inward joys that his life should eternally
be such as that one moment of understanding ., . would
not this be: Enter Thou into the joy of Thy Lord? But when
Shall it be? Shall it be when we shall all rise again and
shall not all be changed?
Augustine, Confessions, IX, 10
33 The bodies of the righteous... such as they shall be in the
resurrection, shall need neither any fruit to preserve them
from dying of disease or the wasting decay of old age, nor
any other physical nourishment to allay the cravings of
hunger or of thirst; for they shall be invested with so sure
and every way inviolable an immortality, that they shall
not eat save when they choose, nor be under the
necessity of eating, while they enjoy the power of doing
SO.
Augustine, City of God, XIII, 22
34 Hell, which also is called a lake of fire and brimstone, will
be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the
damned, whether men or devils—the solid bodies of the
one, aerial bodies of the others; or if only men have
bodies as well as souls, yet the evil spirits, though
without bodies, shall be so connected with the bodily
fires as to receive pain without imparting life,
Augustine, City of God, XXI, 10
35 It may very well be, and it is thoroughly credible, that we
Shall in the future world see the material forms of the new
heavens and the new earth in such a way that we shall
most distinctly recognize God everywhere present and
governing all things, material as well as spiritual, and
Shall see Him, not as now we understand the invisible
things of God, by the things which are made, and see Him
darkly, as in a mirror, and in part, and rather by faith than
by bodily vision of material appearances, but by means of
the bodies we shall wear and which we shall see wherever
we turn our eyes.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 29
36 How great shall be that felicity, which shall be tainted
with no evil, which shall lack no good, and which shall
afford leisure for the praises of God, Who shall be all in
all! For | know not what other employment there can be
where no lassitude shall slacken activity, nor any want
stimulate to labour.... True peace shall be there, where no
one Shall suffer opposition either from himself or any
other, God Himself, Who is the Author of virtue, shall
there be its reward; for, as there is nothing greater or
better, He has promised Himself. What else was meant by
His word through the prophet, "I will be your God, and ye
Shall be my people," than, "I shall be their satisfaction, |
Shall be all that men honourably desire"—life, and health,
and nourishment, and plenty, and glory, and honour, and
peace, and all good things? This, too, is the right
interpretation of the saying of the apostle, "That God may
be all in all." He shall be the end of our desires who shall
be seen without end, loved without cloy, praised without
weariness. This outgoing of affection, this employment,
Shall certainly be, like eternal life itself, common to all.
But who can conceive, not to say describe, what
degrees of honour and glory shall be awarded to the
various degrees of merit? Yet it cannot be doubted that
there shall be degrees. And in that blessed city there
Shall be this great blessing, that no inferior shall envy
any superior, as now the archangels are not envied by
the angels, because no one will wish to be what he has
not received, though bound in strictest concord with him
who has received; as in the body the finger does not seek
to be the eye, though both members are harmoniously
included in the complete structure of the body. And thus,
along with his gift, greater or less> each shall receive this
further gift of contentment to desire no more than he has.
Augustine, City of God, XXII, 30
37 As there is a kind of death of the soul, which consists in
the putting away of former habits and former ways of life,
and which comes through repentance, so also the death
of The body consists in the dissolution of the former
principle of life. And just as the soul, after it has put away
and destroyed by repentance its former habits, is created
anew after a better pattern, so we must hope and believe
that the body, after that death which we all owe as a debt
contracted through sin, shall at the resurrection be
changed into a better form; not that flesh and blood shall
inherit the kingdom of God (for that is impossible), but
that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall put on immortality. And thus the body, being
the source of no uneasiness because it can feel no want,
Shall be animated by a spirit perfectly pure and happy,
and shall enjoy unbroken peace.
Augustine, Christian Doctrine, |, 19
38 In the lost there can be fear of punishment to a greater
degree than hope of glory in the Blessed. Because in the
lost there will be a succession of punishments, so that the
notion of something future remains there, which is the
object of fear. But the gloriy of the saints has no
succession, by reason of its being a kind of participation
of eternity, in which there is neither past nor future, but
only the present.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-Il, 67, 4
39 Fulness of joy can be understood in two ways. First, on
the part of the thing rejoiced in, so that one rejoice in it
as much as It is fitting that one should rejoice in it, and
thus God’s joy alone in Himself is filled, because it is
infinite, and this is wholly fitting to the infinite goodness
of God; but the joy of any creature must be finite.
Secondly, fulness of joy may be understood on the part of
the one who rejoices. Now joy is compared to desire as
rest to movement. .. and rest is full when there is no
more movement. Hence joy is full, when there remains
nothing to be desired. But as long as we are in this world,
the movement of desire does not cease in us, because it
still remains possible for us to approach nearer to God by
grace.... When once, however, perfect happiness has
been attained, nothing will remain to be desired because
then there will be full enjoyment of God, in which man
will obtain whatever he had desired, even with regard to
other goods... . Hence desire will be at rest, not only our
desire for God, but all our desires, so that the joy of the
blessed is full to perfection,—indeed over-full, since they
will obtain more than they were capable of desiring.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-Il, 28, 3
40 The necessity of holding the resurrection arises from this
—that man may obtain the last end for which he was
made, for this cannot be accomplished in this life nor in
the life of the separated soul, , . otherwise man would
have been made in vain, if he were unable to obtain the
end for which he was made. And since it is necessary for
the end to be obtained by the selfsame thing that was
made for that end, lest it appear to be made without
purpose, it is necessary for the selfsame man to rise
again; and this is effected by the selfsame soul being
united to the selfsame body. For otherwise there would be
no resurrection properly speaking, if the same man were
not reformed. Hence to maintain that he who rises again
is not the selfsame man is heretical, since it is contrary to
the truth of Scripture which proclaims the resurrection.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 79, 2
41 Athing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First, in
itself, when one rejoices in a thing as such, and thus the
saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked.
Secondly, accidentally, by reason namely of something
joined to it; and in this way the saints will rejoice in the
punishment of The wicked, by considering therein the
order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which
will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and
their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of
the blessed, while the punishment of the damned will
cause it indirectly.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 94, 3
42 The disposition of hell will be such as to be adapted to
the utmost unhappiness of the damned.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 97, 4
43 Hell will never lack sufficient room to admit the bodies of
the damned, since hell is accounted one of the three
things that never are satisfied. Nor is it unreasonable that
God’s power should maintain within the bowels of the
earth a hollow great enough to contain all the bodies of
the damned.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ill Suppl., 97, 7
44 The unhappiness of the damned surpasses all
unhappiness of this world.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 98, 3
45 Even as in the blessed in heaven there will be most
perfect charity, so in the damned there wall be the most
perfect hate. Therefore as the saints will rejoice in all
goods, so will the damned grieve for all goods.
Consequently the sight of the happiness of the saints will
give them very great pain.
... Therefore they will wish all the good were damned.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl., 98, 4
46 The appetite is moved by good or evil apprehended. Now
God is apprehended in two ways, namely in Himself, as
by the blessed, who see Him in His essence; and in His
effects, as by us and by the damned. Since, then. He is
goodness by His essence, He cannot in Himself be
displeasing to any will; therefore whoever sees Him in His
essence cannot hate Him. On the other hand, some of His
effects are displeasing to the will in so far as they are
opposed to any one, and accordingly a person may hate
God not in Himself, but by reason of His effects. Therefore
the damned, perceiving God in His punishment, which is
the effect of His justice, hate Him, even as they hate the
punishment inflicted on them.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Il! Suppl., 98, 5
47 After the judgment day there will be neither merit nor
demerit. The reason for this is because merit or demerit is
directed to the attainment of some further good or evil,
and after the day of judgment good and evil will have
reached their ultimate consummation, so that there will
be no further addition to good or evil. Consequently,
good will in the blessed will not be a merit but a reward,
and evil will in the damned will be not a demerit but a
punishment only.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II! Suppl., 98, 6
48 The damned, before the judgment day, will see the
blessed in glory, in such a way as to know, not what that
glory is like, but only that they are in a state of glory that
surpasses all thought. This will trouble them, both
because they will, through envy, grieve for their
happiness, and because they have forfeited that glory...
After the judgment day, however, they will be altogether
deprived of seeing the blessed; nor will this lessen their
punishment, but will increase it, because they will bear in
remembrance the glory of the blessed which they saw at
or before the judgment, and this will torment them.
Moreover they will be tormented by finding themselves
considered unworthy even to see the glory which the
saints merit to have.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III Suppl,, 98, 9
49 [One] reason may be given why the punishment of
mortal sin is eternal, because thereby one offends God
Who is infinite. Therefore since punishment cannot be
infinite in intensity, because the creature is incapable of
an infinite quality, it must be infinite at least in duration.
And again there is a fourth reason for the same, because
guilt remains for ever, since it cannot be remitted without
grace, and men cannot receive grace after death; nor
should punishment cease so long as guilt remains.
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II! Suppl., 99, 1
50 "Through me [the Gate of Hell] is the way into the doleful
city; through me the way into the eternal pain; through
me the way among the people lost.
Justice moved my High Maker; Divine Power made me.
Wisdom Supreme, and Primal Love.
Before me were no things created, but eternal; and
eternal | endure: leave all hope, ye that enter."
These words, of colour obscure, saw | written above a
gate; whereat |: "Master, their meaning to me is hard."
And he [Virgil] to me, as one experienced: "Here must
all distrust be left; all cowardice must here be dead.
We are come to the place where | told thee thou
shouldst see the wretched people, who have lost the
good of the intellect."
Dante, Inferno, III, 1
51 And lo! an old man, white with ancient hair, comes
towards us in a bark, shouting: "Woe to you, depraved
Spirits!
hope not ever to see Heaven: | come to lead you to the
other shore; into the eternal darkness; into fire and into
ice.
And thou who art there, alive, depart thee from these
who are dead." But when he saw that | departed not,
he said: "By other ways, by other ferries, not here shall
thou pass over; a lighter boat must carry thee."
And my guide to him; "Charon, vex not thyself: thus it
is willed there, where what is willed can be done; and ask
no more."...
Then all of them together, sorely weeping, drew to the
accursed shore, which awaits every man that fears not
God.
Charon the demon, with eyes of glowing coal,
beckoning them, collects them all; smites with his oar
whoever lingers.
As the leaves of autumn fall off one after the other, till
the branch sees all its spoils upon the ground:
so one by one the evil seed of Adam cast themselves
from that shore at signals, as the bird at its call.
Thus they depart on the brown water; and ere they
have landed on the other shore, again a fresh crowd
collects on this.
"My son," said the courteous Master [Virgil], "those
who die under God's wrath, all assemble here from every
country;
and they are prompt to pass the river, for Divine
Justice spurs them so, that fear is changed into desire.
By this way no good spirit ever passes; and hence, if
Charon complains of thee, thou easily now mayest know
the import of his words."
Dante, Inferno, I/l, 82
52 "Ah! so may thy seed sometime have rest," | prayed him
[Farinata], "solve the knot which has here involved my
judgment.
It seems that you see beforehand what time brings
with it, if | rightly hear; and have a different manner with
the present."
"Like one who has imperfect vision, we see the things,"
he said, "which are remote from us; so much light the
Supreme Ruler still gives to us;
when they draw nigh, or are, our intellect is altogether
void; and except what others bring us, we know nothing
of your human state.
Therefore thou mayest understand that all our
knowledge shall be dead, from that moment when the
portal of the Future shall be closed."
Dante, Inferno, X, 94
53 "My Son, within these stones," he [Virgil] then began to
say, "are three circlets in gradation, like those thou
leavest.
They all are filled with spirits accurst; but, that the
sight of these hereafter may of itself suffice thee, hearken
how and wherefore they are pent up.
Of all malice, which gains hatred in Heaven, the end is
injury; and every such end, either by force or by fraud,
aggrieveth others.
But because fraud is a vice peculiar to man, it more
displeases God; and therefore the fraudulent are placed
beneath, and more pain assails them.
All the first circle is for the violent; but as violence
may be done to three persons, it is formed and
distinguished into three rounds.
To God, to one’s self, and to one's neighbour, may
violence be done; | say in them and in their things, as
thou shall hear with evident discourse.
By force, death and painful wounds may be inflicted
upon one’s neighbour; and upon his substance,
devastations, burnings, and injurious extortions;
wherefore the first round torments all homicides and
every one who strikes maliciously, all plunderers and
robbers, in different bands.
A man may lay violent hand upon himself, and upon
his property: and therefore in the second round must
every one repent in vain
who deprives himself of your world, gambles away and
dissipates his wealth, and weeps there where he should
be joyous.
Violence may be done against the Deity, in the heart
denying and blaspheming Him; and disdaining Nature
and her bounty:
and hence the smallest round seals with its mark both
Sodom and Cahors, and all who speak with
disparagement of God in their hearts.
Fraud, which gnaws every conscience, a man may
practise upon who confide in him; and upon who repose
no confidence.
This latter mode seems only to cut off the bond of love
which Nature makes: hence in the second circle nests
hypocrisy, flattery, sorcerers, cheating, theft and
simony, pandars, barrators, and like filth.
In the other mode is forgotten that love which Nature
makes, and also that which afterwards is added, giving
birth to special trust:
hence in the smallest circle, at the centre of the
universe and seat of Dis, every traitor is eternally
consumed."
Dante, Inferno, XI, 16
54 | stood upon the bridge, having risen so to look, that, if |
had not caught a rock, | should have fallen down without
being pushed.
And the Guide [Virgil], who saw' me thus attent, said:
"Within those fires are the spirits; each swathes himself
with that which burns him."
"Master," | replied, "from hearing thee | feel more
certain; but had already discerned it to be so, and
already wished to say to thee:
Who is in that fire, which comes so parted at the top,
as if it rose from the pyre where Eteocles with his brother
was placed?"
He answered me: "Within it there Ulysses is tortured,
and Diomed; and thus they run together in punishment,
as erst in wrath;
and in their flame they groan for the ambush of the
horse, that made the door by which the noble seed of the
Romans came forth;
within it they lament the artifice, whereby Dcidamia in
death still sorrow’s for Achilles; and there for the
Palladium they suffer punishment."
"If they within those sparks can speak," said I, "Master!
| pray thee much, and repray that my prayer may equal a
thousand,
deny me not to wait until the homed flame comes
hither; thou seest how with desire | bend me towards it."
And he to me: "Thy request is worthy of much praise,
and therefore | accept it; but do thou refrain thy tongue.
Let me speak; for | have conceived what thou wishest;
and they, perhaps, because they were Greeks, might
disdain thy words."
After the flame had come where time and place
seemed fitting to my Guide, | heard him speak in this
manner:
"O ye, two in one fire! if | merited of you whilst | lived,
if | merited of you much or little,
when on earth | wrote the High Verses, move ye not;
but let the one of you tell where he, having lost himself,
went to die."
The greater horn of the ancient flame began to shake
itself, murmuring, just like a flame that struggles with the
wind.
Then carrying to and fro the top, as if it were the
tongue that spake, threw forth a voice, and said: "When
| departed from Circe, who beyond a year detained me
there near Gaeta, ere AEneas thus had named it,
neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my
aged father, nor the due love that should have cheered
Penelope,
could conquer in me the ardour that | had to gain
experience of the world, and of human vice and worth;
| put forth on the deep open sea, with but one ship,
and with that small company, which had not deserted
me.
Both the shores | saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco;
and saw Sardinia and the other isles which that sea
bathes round.
| and my companions were old and tardy, when we
came to that narrow pass, where Hercules assigned his
landmarks
to hinder man from venturing farther; on the right
hand, | left Seville; on the other, had already left Ceuta.
‘O brothers!' | said, ‘who through a hundred thousand
dangers have reached the West, deny not, to this the
brief vigil
of your senses that remains, experience of the un-
peopled world behind the Sun.
Consider your origin: ye were not formed to live like
brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge. '
With this brief soeech | made my companions so eager
for the voyage, that | could hardly then have checked
them;
and, turning the poop towards morning, we of our oars
made wings for the foolish flight, always gaining on the
left.
Night already saw the other pole, with all its stars; and
ours so low, that it rose not from the ocean floor.
Five times the light beneath the Moon had been
rekindled and quenched as oft, since we had entered on
the arduous passage,
when there appeared to us a Mountain, dim with
distance; and to me it seemed the highest | had ever
seen.
We joyed, and soon our joy was turned to grief: for a
tempest rose from the new land, and struck the forepart
of our ship.
Three times it made her whirl round with all the
waters; at the fourth, made the poop rise up and prow go
down, as pleased Another, till the sea was closed above
us."
Dante, Inferno, XXVI, 43
55 Now eager to search within and around the divine forest
dense and verdant, which to mine eyes was tempering
the new day,
without waiting more | left the mountain-side, crossing
the plain with lingering step, over the ground which gives
forth fragrance on every side.
A sweet breeze, itself invariable, was striking on my
brow with no greater force than a gentle wand,
before which the branches, responsively trembling,
were all bending toward that quarter, where the holy
mount casts its first shadow;
yet not so far bent aside from their erect state, that
the little birds in the tops ceased to practise their every
art;
but, singing, with full gladness they welcomed the first
breezes within the leaves, which were murmuring the
burden to their songs;
even such as from bough to bough is gathered
through the pine wood on Chiassi’s shore, when Aeolus
looses Sirocco forth.
Dante, Purgatorio, XXVIII, 1
56 "In the world | was a virgin sister, and if thy memory be
rightly searched, my greater beauty will not hide me from
thee,
but thou wilt know me again for Piccarda, who, placed
here with these other blessed ones, am blessed in the
sphere that moveth slowest.
Our affections, which are aflame only in the pleasure
of the Holy Spirit, rejoice to be informed after his order.
And this lot, which seemeth so far down, therefore is
given us because our vows were slighted, and on some
certain side were not filled in."
Whereon | to her: "In your wondrous aspects a divine
somewhat regloweth that doth transmute you from
conceits of former times.
Wherefore | lagged in calling thee to mind; now what
thou tellest me giveth such help that more articulately |
retrace thee.
But tell me, ye whose blessedness is here, do ye desire
a more lofty place, to see more, or to make yourselves
more dear?"
With those other shades first she smiled a little, then
answered me so joyous that she seemed to burn in love’s
first flame:
"Brother, the quality of love stilleth our will, and
maketh us long only for what we have, and giveth us no
other thirst.
Did we desire to be more aloft, our longings were
discordant from his will who here assorteth us,
and for that, thou wilt see, there is no room within
these circles, if of necessity we have our being here in
love, and if thou think again what is love’s nature.
Nay, ‘tis the essence of this blessed being to hold
ourselves within the divine will, whereby our own wills
are themselves made one.
So that our being thus, from threshold unto threshold
throughout the realm, is a joy to all the realm as to the
king, who draweth our wills to what he willeth;
and his will is our peace; it is that sea to which all
moves that it createth and that nature maketh."
Dante, Paradiso, Ill, 46
57 Aucassin. In Paradise what have | to do? | care not to
enter, but only to have Nicolette, my very sweet friend,
whom 1 love so dearly well. For into Paradise go none but
such people as | will tell you of. There go those aged
priests and those old cripples, and the maimed, who all
day long and all night cough before the altars, and in the
crypts beneath the churches; those who go in worn old
mantles and old tattered habits; who are naked, and
barefoot, and full of sores; who are dying of hunger and of
thirst, of cold and of wretchedness. Such as these enter in
Paradise, and with them have | nought to do. But in Hell
will | go. For to Hell go the fair clerks and the fair knights
who are slain in the tourney and the great wars, and the
stout archer and the loyal man. With them will | go. And
there go the fair and courteous ladies who have friends,
two or three, together with their wedded lords. And there
pass the gold and the silver, the ermine and all rich furs,
harpers and minstrels, and the happy of the world. With
these will | go, so only that | have Nicolette, my very
sweet friend, by my side.
Anon., Aucassin and Nicolette
58 This friar he boasts he knows somewhat of Hell,
And God He knows that it is little wonder;
Friars and fiends are never far asunder.
For, by gad, you have oftentimes heard tell
How such a friar was snatched down into Hell
In spirit, once, and by a vision blown;
And as an angel led him up and down
To show the pains and torments that there were,
In all the place he saw no friar there.
Of other folk he saw enough in woe;
And to the angel then he questioned so:
" “Now, sir,' said he, ‘have friars such a grace
That none of them shall come into this place?’
" ‘Nay,’ said the angel, ‘millions here are thrown!’
And unto Sathanas he led him down.
" ‘And now has Sathanas,’ said he, ‘a tail
Broader than of a galleon is the sail.
Hold up thy tail, thou Sathanas'!' said he,
" “Show forth thine arse and let the friar see
Where is the nest of friars in this place!’
And ere one might go half a furlong’s space.
Just as the bees come swarming from a hive,
Out of the Devil’s arse-hole there did drive
Full twenty thousand friars in a rout,
And through all Hell they swarmed and ran about,
And came again, as fast as they could run,
And in his arse they crept back, every one.
He clapped his tail to and then lay right still.
This friar, when he’d looked at length his fill
Upon the torments of that sorr>' place,
His spirit God restored, of His high grace,
Into his body, and he did awake;
Nevertheless for terror did he quake
So was the Devil’s arse-hole in his mind,
Which is his future home, and like in kind.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Summoner’s Prologue
59 Truly the dark light that shall come out of the fire that
burns for ever shall turn him all to pain who is in Hell; for
it shall show unto him the horrible devils that torment
him.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Parson’s Tale
60 Certainly a shadow has the likeness of that whereof it is
the shadow, but the shadow is not the substance. Just so
it is with the pain of Hell; it is like unto death because of
the horrible anguish. And why? Because it pains for ever,
and as if they should die at every moment; but indeed
they shall not die.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Parson’s Talc
61 A thousand tymes have | herd men telle
That ther ys joy in hevene and peyne in helle,
And | acorde wel that it ys so;
But, natheles, yet wot | wel also
That ther nis noon dwellyng in this contree,
That eyther hath in hevene or helle ybe,
Ne may of hit noon other weyes witen,
But as he hath herd seyd, or founde it writen.
Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women: Prologue
62 | desire to go to Hell, not to Heaven. In Hell | shall enjoy
the company of popes, kings and princes, but in Heaven
are only beggars, monks, hermits and apostles.
Machiavelli, On his deathbed
63 | hold the gnashing of teeth of the damned to be an
external pain following upon evil conscience, that is,
despair, when men see themselves abandoned by God.
Luther, Table Talk, H800
64 Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother
departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth
to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain
hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our
Lord Jesus Christ; at whose coming in glorious majesty to
judge the world, the earth and sea shall give up their
dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in
him shall be changed, and made like unto his own
glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby
he is able to subdue all things unto himself.
Book of Common Prayer
65 Brakenbury. Why looks your Grace so heavily today?
Clarence. O, | have pass’d a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as |am a Christian faithful man,
| would not spend another such a night,
Though ‘twere to buy a world of happy days,
So full of dismal terror was the time!
Brak. What was your dream? | long to hear you tell it.
Clar. Methoughts that | had broken from the Tower,
And was embark’d to cross to Burgundy;
And, in my company, my brother Gloucester,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence we look’d toward England
And cited up a thousand fearful times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster
That had befall’n us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
Lord, Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought | saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As ‘twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep
And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.
Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death
To gaze upon the secrets of the deep?
Clar. Methought | had; and often did | strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smother’d it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony?
Clar.O, no, my dream was lengthen’d after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul,
Who pass’d, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger soul
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy. afford false Clarence?"
And so he vanish’'d: then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he squeak’d out aloud,
"Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabb’d me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!"
With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends
Environ’d me about, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries that with the very noise
| trembling waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that | was in hell,
Such terrible impression made the dream.
Shakespeare, Richard Ill, I, iv, 1
66 Ophelia. Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, |, iii, 47
67 Ghost. | am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night.
And for the day confined to fast in fires.
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that | am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
| could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v, 9
68 Well, well, Madam, quoth Sancho, | don’t understand your
Parts and Wholes! | saw it, and there’s an End of the
Story. Only you must think, that as we flew by
Inchantment, so we saw by Inchantment; and thus |
might see the Earth, and all the Men, which Way soever |
look’d. I’ll warrant, you won’t believe me neither when |
tell you, that when | thrust up the Kerchief above my
Brows, | saw my self so near Heaven, that between the
Top of my Cap and the main Sky, there was not a Span
and a half. And, Heaven bless us! forsooth, what a
hugeous great Place it is! And we happen’d to travel that
Road where the seven She-Goatstars were: And Faith and
Troth, | had such a Mind to play with ’em (having been
once a Goatherd my self) that | fancy I’d have cry’d my
self to Death, had | not done it. So soon as | spy’d ’em,
what does me |, but sneaks down very soberly from
behind my Master, without telling any living Soul, and
play’d, and leap’d about for three quarters of an Hour by
the Clock, with the pretty Nanny-Goats, who are as sweet
and fine as so many Marigolds or Gilly-flowers; and
honest Wooden Peg stirr’d not one Step all the while. And
while Sancho employ’d himself with the Goats, ask’d the
Duke, how was Don Quixote employ’d? Truly, answer’d
the Knight, | am sensible all Things were alter’d from their
natural Course; therefore what Sancho says, seems the
less strange to me. But for my own Part, | neither saw
Heaven nor Hell, Sea nor Shore. | perceiv’d indeed we
pass’d through the middle Region of the Air, and were
pretty near that of Fire, but that we came so near Heaven,
as Sancho says, is altogether incredible; because we then
must have pass’d quite through the fiery Region, which
lies between the Sphere of the Moon and the upper
Region of the Air. Now it was impossible for us to reach
that Part, where are the Pleiades, or the Seven Goats, as
Sancho calls ’em, without being consum’d in the
elemental Fire; and therefore since we escaped those
Flames, certainly we did not soar so high, and Sancho
either lies or dreams. | neither lie nor dream, reply’d
Sancho. Uds Precious! 1 can tell you the Marks and
Colour of every Goat among ‘em. If you don’t believe me,
do but ask and try me. You'll easily see whether | speak
Truth or no. Well, said the Dutchess, prithee tell them me,
Sancho. Look you, answer’d Sancho, there were two of
"em green, two carnation, two blue, and one party-
colour’d. Truly, said the Duke, that’s a new Kind of Goats
you have found out, Sancho, we have none of those
Colours upon Earth. Sure, Sir, reply’d Sancho, you'll make
some Sort of Difference between heavenly She-Goats,
and the Goats of this World? But Sancho, said the Duke,
among those She-Goats did you see never a He? not one
horn’d Beast of the masculine Gender? Not one. Sir, | saw
no other horn’d Thing but the Moon; and | have been
told, that neither He-Goats nor any other cornuted Tups
are suffer’d to lift their Horns beyond those of the Moon.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, II, 41
69 When God’s hand is bent to strike, "it is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God"; but to fall out of the
hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression,
beyond our imagination. That God should let my soul fall
out of his hand into a bottomless pit and roll an
unremovable stone upon it and leave it to that which it
finds there (and it shall find that there which it never
imagined till it came thither) and never think more of
that soul, never have more to do with it; that of that
providence of God that studies the life of every weed and
worm and ant and spider and toad and viper there should
never, never any beam flow out upon me; that that God
who looked upon me when | was nothing and called me
when | was not, as though | had been, out of the womb
and depth of darkness, will not look upon me now, when
though a miserable and a banished and a damned
creature, yet | am his creature still and contribute
something to his glory even in my damnation; that that
God who hath often looked upon me in my foulest
uncleanness and when | had shut out the eye of the day,
the sun, and the eye of the night, the taper, and the eyes
of all the world with curtains and windows and doors, did
yet see me and see me in mercy by making me see that
he saw me and sometimes brought me to a present
remorse and (for that time) to a forbearing of that sin,
should so turn himself from me to his glorious saints and
angels as that no saint nor angel nor Christ Jesus himself
should ever pray him to look towards me, never
remember him that such a soul there is; that that God
who hath so often said to my soul, Quare morieris? why
wilt thou die? and so often sworn to my soul, Vivit
Dominus, as the Lord liveth, | would not have thee die but
live, will neither let me die nor let me live, but die an
everlasting life and live an everlasting death; that that
God who, when he could not get into me by standing and
Knocking, by his ordinary means of entering, by his word,
his mercies, hath applied his judgments and hath shaked
the house, this body, with agues and palsies, and set this
house on fire with fevers and calentures, and frighted the
master of the house, my soul, with horrors and heavy
apprehensions and so made an entrance into me; that
that God should frustrate all his own purposes and
practices upon me and leave me and cast me away as
though | had cost him nothing; that this God at last
should let this soul go away as a smoke, aS a vapor, aS a
bubble; and that then this soul cannot be a smoke, a
vapor, nor a bubble, but must lie in darkness as long as
the Lord of light is light itself, and never spark of that
light reach to my soul; what Tophet is not paradise, what
brimstone is not amber, what gnashing is not a comfort,
what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment
is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded
eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?
Donne, Sermon LXXVI
70 Though Theologians commonly affirm that the damned
are tortured by hell fire, they do not therefore believe
that they are deceived by a false idea of a tormenting fire
which God has implanted in them, but rather that they
are tortured by real fire, for the reason that, just as the
incorporeal spirit of the living man is naturally confined
in the body, so by the divine power it is easily after death
confined in corporeal fire.
Descartes, Objections and Replies, VI
71 Surely though we place Hell under Earth, the Devil’s walk
and purlue is about it: men speak too popularly who
place it in those flaming mountains, which to grosser
apprehensions represent Hell. The heart of man is the
place the Devils dwell in; | feel sometimes a Hell within
my self; Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast; Legion is
revived in me. There are as many Hells, as Anaxagoras
conceited worlds; there was more than one Hell in
Magdalene, when there were seven Devils; for every Devil
is an Hell unto himself; he holds enough of torture in his
own ubi, and needs not the misery of circumference to
afflict him. And thus a distracted Conscience here, is a
Shadow or introduction unto Hell hereafter. Who can but
pity the merciful intention of those hands that do destroy
themselves? the Devil, were it in his power, would do the
like; which being impossible, his miseries are endless,
and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he is
impassible, his immortality.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 51
72 | thank God that with joy | mention it, | was never afraid
of Hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that
place; | have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that
| have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather
to lose the Joys of the one, than endure the misery of the
other: to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs
methinks no addition to compleat our afflictions; that
terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do |
owe any good action to the name thereof; | fear God, yet
am not afraid of him; his mercies make me ashamed of
my sins, before his Judgements afraid thereof: these are
the forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which
he useth but as the last remedy, and upon provocation; a
course rather to deter the wicked, than incite the virtuous
to his worship. | can hardly think there was ever any
scared into Heaven; they go the fairest way to Heaven
that would serve God without a Hell; other Mercenaries,
that crouch into him in fear of Hell, though they term
themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves of the
Almighty.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, |, 52
73 And since there is something of us that will still live on,
join both lives together, and live in one but for the other.
He who thus ordereth the purposes of this Life will never
be far from the next, and is in some manner already in it,
by a happy conformity, and close apprehension of it. And
if, as we have elsewhere declared, any have been so
happy as personally to understand Christian Annihilation,
Extasy, Exolution, Transformation, the Kiss of the Spouse,
and Ingression into the Divine Shadow, according to
Mystical Theology, they have already had an handsome
Anticipation of Heaven; the World is in a manner over,
and the Earth in Ashes unto them.
Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, III, 30
74 Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar.
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves
Where other groves, and other streams along,
With Nectar pure his oozy Lock’s he laves.
And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,
In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet Societies
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Milton, Lycidas, 165
75 Him [Satan] the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous mine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv’d him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness’d huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde,
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv’d only to discover sights of woe.
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar’d
For those rebellious, here their Prison ordain’d
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far remov’d from God and light of Heav’n
As from the Center thrice to th’ utmost Pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 44
76 Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch Angel [Satan], this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since hee
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor; One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 242
77 Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best
Deserve the pretious bane.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 690
78 Men call him [Satan] Mulciber, and how he fell
From Heav'n, they fabl’d, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’re the Chrystal Battlements; from Morn
To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,
A Summers day; and with the setting Sun
Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star,
On Lemnos th’ AEgaean He: thus they relate,
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout
Fell long before; nor aught avail’d him now
To have built in Heav’n high Towrs; nor did he scape
By all his Engins, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
Milton, Paradise Lost, |, 740
79 Thus roving on
In confus’d march forlorn, th’ adventrous Bands
With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
View’d first thir lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile
They pass’d, and many a Region dolorous,
O’re many a Frozen, many a Fierie Alpe,
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of
death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feign’d, or fear conceiv’d,
Gorgons and Hydra’s, and Chimera’s dire.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 614
80 From her side the fatal Key,
Sad instrument of all our woe, she [the Portress of Hell
Gate] took;
And towards the Gate rouling her bestial train,
Forthwith the huge Portcullis high up drew,
Which but her self not all the Stygian powers
Could once have mov’d; then in the key-hole turns
Th’ intricate wards, and every Bolt and Bar
Of massie Iron or sollid Rock with ease
Unfast’ns: on a sudden op’n flie
With impetuous recoile and jarring sound
Th’ infernal dores and on thir hinges grate
Harsh Thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She op’nd, but to shut
Excel’d her power; the Gates wide op’n stood,
That with extended wings a Bannerd Host
Under spread Ensigns marching might pass through
With Horse and Chariots rankt in loose array;
So wide they stood, and like a Furnace mouth
Cast forth redounding smoak and ruddy flame.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Il, 871
81 While God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill’d
All Heav’n, and in the blessed Spirits elect
Sense of new Joy ineffable diffus’d:
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious, in him all his Father shon
Substantially express’d, and in his face
Divine compassion visibly appeerd,
Love without end, and without measure Grace.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 135
82 All the multitude of Angels with a shout
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heav’n rung
With Jubilee, and loud Hosannaas fill’d
Th’ eternal Regions: lowly reverent
Towards either Throne they bow, & to the ground
With solemn adoration down they cast
Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold,
Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life
Began to bloom, but soon for mans offence
To Heav’n remov’d where first it grew, there grows.
And flours aloft shading the Fount of Life,
And where the river of Bliss through midst of Heav’n
Rowls o’re Elisian Flours her Amber stream;
With these that never fade the Spirits Elect
Bind thir resplendent locks inwreath’d with beams.
Now in loose Garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement that like a Sea of Jasper shon
Impurpl’d with Celestial Roses smil’d.
Then Crown’d again thir gold’n Harps they took,
Harps ever tun’d, that glittering by thir side
Like Quivers hung, and with Praeamble sweet
Of charming symphonic they introduce
Thir sacred Song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could joine
Melodious part, such concord is in Heav’n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Ill, 344
83 Now while | was gazing upon all these things [within the
Gates of Heaven], | turned my head to look back, and saw
Ignorance come up to the River side; but he soon got
over, and that without half that difficulty which the other
two men met with. For it happened that there was then in
that place one Vain-hope a Ferry-man, that with his Boat
helped him over: so he, as the other | saw, did ascend the
Hill to come up to the Gate, only he came alone; neither
did any man meet him with the least encouragement.
When he was come up to the Gate, he looked up to the
writing that was above; and then began to knock,
Supposing that entrance should have been quickly
administered to him. But he was asked by the men that
lookt over the top of the Gate, Whence came you? and
what would you have? He answered, | have eat and drank
in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our
Streets. Then they asked him for his Certificate, that they
might go in and shew it to the King. So he fumbled in his
bosom for one, and found none. Then said they, Have you
none? But the man answered never a word. So they told
the King, but he would not come down to see him, but
commanded the two shining Ones that con-ducted
Christian and Hopeful to the City, to go out and take
Ignorance and bind him hand and foot, and have him
away. Then they took him up, and carried him through
the air to the door that | saw in the side of the Hill, and
put him in there. Then | saw that there was a way to Hell,
even from the Gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of
Destruction. So | awoke, and behold it was a Dream.
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, |
84 As from the pow'r of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator’s praise
To all the blest above;
So, when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The Trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.
Dryden, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day
85 Hell was built on spite, and heav’n on pride.
Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle III, 262
86 Finding him in a very good humour, | ventured to lead
him to the subject of our situation in a future state,
having much curiosity to know his notions on that point.
Johnson. "Why, Sir, the happiness of an unembodied
Spirit wall consist in a consciousness of the favour of God,
in the contemplation of truth, and in the possession of
felicitating ideas."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Mar. 1772)
87 No saint ... in the course of his religious warfare, was
more sensible of the unhappy failure of pious resolves,
than Johnson. He said one day, talking to an
acquaintance on this subject, "Sir, Hell is paved with
good intentions."
Boswell, Life of Johnson (Apr. 14, 1775)
88 It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the
kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit,
and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of
mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future
happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are
satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise
abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of
reason and knowledge.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, XV
89 The doctrine of the resurrection was first entertained by
the Egyptians; and their mummies were embalmed, their
pyramids were constructed, to preserve the ancient
mansion of the soul during a period of three thousand
years. But the attempt is partial and unavailing; and it is
with a more philosophic spirit that Mohammed relies on
the omnipotence of the Creator, whose word can
reanimate the breathless clay, and collect the
innumerable atoms that no longer retain their form or
substance. The intermediate state of the soul it is hard to
decide; and those who most firmly believe her immaterial
nature, are at a loss to understand how she can think or
act without the agency of the organs of sense.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, L
90 The human fancy can paint with more energy the misery
than the bliss of a future life. With the two simple
elements of darkness and fire we create a sensation of
pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by
the idea of endless duration. But the same idea operates
with an opposite effect on the continuity of pleasure; and
too much of our present enjoyments is obtained from the
relief, or the comparison, of evil.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, L
91 Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have
curbed & governd their Passions or have No Passions but
because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The
Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but
Realities of Intellect from which AH the Passions Emanate
Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. The Fool shall not enter
into Heaven let him be ever so Holy. Holiness is not The
Price of Enterance into Heaven. Those who are cast out
Are All Those who, having no Passions of their own
because No Intellect, Have spent their lives in Curbing &
Governing other People’s by the Various arts of Poverty &
Cruelty of all kinds. Wo Wo Wo to you Hypocrites. Even
Murder the Courts of Justice, more merciful than the
Church, are compelld to allow is not done in Passion but
in Cold Blooded Design & Intention.
Blake, A Vision of The Last Judgment
92 Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are
necessary to Human existence. From these contraries
spring what the religious call Good and Evil, Good is the
passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 3
93 Faust. Does Hell itself have its laws then?
That’s fine! A compact in that case might be
Concluded safely with you gentlemen?
Mephistopheles. What's promised, you'll enjoy with
naught subtracted,
With naught unduly snipped off or exacted.
Goethe, Faust, |, 1413
94 Chorus Mysticus. All earth comprises
Is symbol alone;
What there ne’er suffices
As fact here is known;
All past the humanly
Wrought here in love;
The Eternal-Womanly
Draws us above.
Goethe, Faust, Il, 5, 12104
95 Hell is a city much like London—
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity,
Shelley, Peter Bell the Third, III, 1
96 Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of mere
nature, is the Fall, which is no casual conception, but the
eternal history of spirit. For the state of innocence, the
paradisaical condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a
park, where only brutes, not men, can remain.
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Pt. Ill, Ill, 2
97 | sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, "| Myself am Heav’n and Hell"—
Heaven but the Vision of fulfilled Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
FitzGerald, Rubdiyat, LXVI-LXVII
98 My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson, My Life Closed Twice
99 Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
Browning, Andrea Del Sarto
100 In our English popular religion, for instance, the
common conception of a future state of bliss is just that
of the Vision of Mirza: "Persons dressed in glorious habits
with garlands on their heads, passing among the trees,
lying down by the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers,
amid a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters,
human voices, and musical instruments." Or, even, with
many, it is that of a kind of perfected middle-class home,
with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around,
the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant... . That this
conception of immortality cannot possibly be true, we
feel, the moment we consider it seriously. And yet who
can devise any conception of a future state of bliss, which
Shall bear close examination better?
Arnold, Literature and Dogma, XII
101 "I don’t believe in a future life," said Raskolnikov.
Svidrigailov sat lost in thought,
"And what if there are only spiders there, or something
of that sort," he said suddenly.
"He is a madman," thought Raskolnikov,
"We always imagine eternity as something beyond our
conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be
vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a
bathhouse in the country, black and grimy and spiders in
every corner, and that’s all eternity is? | sometimes fancy’
it like that."
"Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more
comforting than that?" Raskolnikov cried, with a feeling
of anguish.
“Juster? And how’ can we tell, perhaps that is just, and
do you know’ it’s what | would certainly have made it,"
answered Svidrigailov, with a vague smile.
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, IV, 1
102 Captain Stormfield. Sandy, out with it. Come—no
secrets among friends. | notice you don’t ever wear wings
—and plenty others don’t. I’ve been making as ass of
myself—is that it?
Sandy. That is about the size of it. But it is no harm.
We all do it at first. It’s perfectly natural. You see, on earth
we jump to such foolish conclusions as to things up here.
In the pictures we always saw the angels with wings on—
and that was all right; but we jumped to the conclusion
that that was their way of getting around—and that was
all wrong. The wings ain’t anything but a uniform, that’s
all. When they are in the field—so to soeak—they always
wear them; you never see an angel going with a message
anywhere without his wings, anymore than you would see
a military officer presiding at a court-martial without his
uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman
walking his beat in plain clothes. But they ain’t to fly
with! The wings are for show, not for use.
Mark Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to
Heaven
103 Captain Stormfiel/d. But what was it you was saying
about unsacrilegious things, which people expect to get,
and will be disappointed about?
Sandy. Oh, there are a lot of such things that people
expect and don't get. For instance, there's a Brooklyn
preacher by the name of Talmage, who is laying up a
considerable disappointment for himself. He says, every
now and then in his sermons, that the first thing he does
when he gets to heaven will be to fling his arms around
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and kiss them and weep on
them. There's millions of people down there on earth that
are promising themselves the same thing. As many as
sixty thousand people arrive here every single day that
want to run straight to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
hug them and weep on them. Now mind you, sixty
thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old
people. If they were a mind to allow it, they wouldn't ever
have anything to do, year in and year out but stand up
and be hugged and wept on thirty-two hours in the
twenty-four. They would be tired out and as wet as
muskrats all the time.
What would heaven be, to them? It would be a mighty
good place to get out of—you know that, yourself. Those
are kind and gentle old Jews, but they ain’t any fonder of
kissing the emotional highlights of Brooklyn than you be.
You mark my words, Mr. T.’s endearments are going to be
declined, with thanks. There are limits to the privileges of
the elect, even in heaven. Why, if Adam was to show
himself to every newcomer that wants to call and gaze at
him and strike him for his autograph, he would never
have time to do anything else but just that.
Mark Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to
Heaven
104 Sandy. Down there they talk of the heavenly King—and
that is right—but then they go right on speaking as if this
was a republic and everybody was on a dead level with
everybody else, and privileged to fling his arms around
anybody he comes across, and be hail-fellow-well-met
with all the elect, from the highest down. How tangled up
and absurd that is! How are you going to have a republic
under a king? How are you going to have a republic at all,
where the head of the government is absolute, holds his
place forever, and has no parliament, no council to
meddle or make in his affairs, nobody voted for, nobody
elected, nobody in the whole universe with a voice in the
government, nobody asked to take a hand in its matters,
and nobody a//lowed to do it? Fine republic, ain’t it?
Mark Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to
Heaven
105 Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of
Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in
heaven.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, X
106 The Preacher. Last and crowning torture of all the
tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell.
Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of
man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity
of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible
as they are yet they would become infinite as they are
destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting
they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably
intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of
an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment.
What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of
hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or
for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning
of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore.
How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny
little grains go to make up the small handful which a
child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that
sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the
farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to
remotest space, and a million miles in thickness: and
imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of
sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest,
drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds,
scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast
expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every
million years a little bird came to that mountain and
carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How
many millions upon million of centuries would pass
before that bird had carried away even a square foot of
that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before
it had carried away all. Yet at the end of that immense
stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be
said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and
trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And
if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried
away and if the bird came again and carried it all away
again grain by grain: and if it so rose and sank as many
times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops
of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon
birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of
all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that
immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of
eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the
end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere
thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily,
eternity would have scarcely begun.
Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, III
107 Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.
About my path there flits a Fair,
Who throws me not a word or sign;
I'll charm me with her ignoring air,
And laud the lips not meant for mine.
From manuscripts of moving song
Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown
I'll pour out raptures that belong
To others, as they were my own.
And some day hence, towards Paradise
And all its blest—if such should be—
| will lift glad, afar-off eyes,
Though it contain no place for me.
Hardy, Let Me Enjoy
108 That night your great guns, unawares.
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment Day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let (all the altar-crumb.
The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:
"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more lor Christes sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
"That this is not the judgment hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening,..,
"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
| blow the trumpet (if indeed
| ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need),"
Hardy, Channel Firing
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 MAN
1.1 Man in the Universe The Grandeur and Misery of
Man
1.2 The Human Condition
1.3 The Ages of Man YOUNG AND OLD
1.4 Self-Knowledge and Self-Love
1.5 Honor, Reputation, and Fame or Glory
1.6 Human Greatness THE HERO
1.7 Woman and Man
1.8 Life and Death THE FEAR OF DEATH
1.9 Suicide
Chapter 2 FAMILY
2.1 The Institution of the Family
2.2 Parents and Children
2.3 Marriage
Chapter 3 LOVE
3.1 The Nature, Kinds, and Power of Love
3.2 Hate
3.3 Sexual Love
3.4 Friendship
3.5 Charity and Mercy
3.6 Love of Country PATRIOTISM
Chapter 4 EMOTION
4.1 The Passions THE RANGE OF THE EMOTIONS
4.2 Fear
4.3 Anger
4.4 Desire
4.5 Hope and Despair
4.6 Joy and Sorrow
4.7 Pleasure and Pain
4.8 Pity and Envy
4.9 Greed and Avarice
4.10 Jealousy
4.11 Pride and Humility
Chapter 5 MIND
5.1 Intelligence and Understanding
5.2 The Senses and Sense Perception
5.3 Memory
5.4 Imagination
5.5 Dreams
5.6 Madness
5.7 Will Free Choice
Chapter 6 KNOWLEDGE
6.1 The Characteristics and Conditions of Human
Knowledge
6.2 Experience
6.3 Truth
6.4 Error, Ignorance, and the Limits of Human
Knowledge
6.5 Opinion, Belief, and Faith
6.6 Doubt and Skepticism
6.7 Reasoning, Demonstration, and Disputation
Chapter 7 LANGUAGE
7.1 The Nature of Language
7.2 The Arts of Language
Chapter 8 EDUCATION
8.1 The Ends and Means of Education
8.2 Habit
8.3 The Arts of Teaching and Learning
Chapter 9 ETHICS
9.1 Moral Philosophy and Morality
9.2 Custom
9.3 Moral Law
9.4 Moral Freedom
9.5 Conscience
9.6 Good and Evil
9.7 Right and Wrong
9.8 Happiness
9.9 Duty MORAL OBLIGATION
9.10 Virtue and Vice
9.11 Courage and Cowardice
9.12 Temperance and Intemperance
9.13 Prudence
9.14 Honesty
9.15 Wisdom and Folly
Chapter 10 POLITICS
10.1 Society and the State
10.2 The Realm of Politics
10.3 Government ITS NATURE, NECESSITY, AND
FORMS
10.4 Government of and by the People REPUBLIC
AND DEMOCRACY
10.5 Citizenship
10.6 Despotism and Tyranny
10.7 Slavery
10.8 Classes and Class Conflict
10.9 Revolution
Chapter 11 ECONOMICS
11.1 Property
11.2 Wealth and Poverty
11.3 Labor
11.4 Money
11.5 Trade, Commerce, and Industry
11.6 Taxation
Chapter 12 LAW and JUSTICE
12.1 Law and Lawyers
12.2 Justice and Injustice
12.3 Rights—Natural and Civil
12.4 Crime and Punishment
Chapter 13 LIBERTY and EQUALITY
13.1 Freedom in Society
13.2 Freedom of Thought and Expression
CENSORSHIP
13.3 Equality
Chapter 14 WAR and PEACE
14.1 Warfare and the State of War
14.2 The Instrumentalities of War THE MILITARY
14.3 The Conditions of Peace
Chapter 15 HISTORY
15.1 History: The Record of Events
15.2 Progress, Regress, and Cycles in History
15.3 Fate, Fortune, and Destiny
Chapter 16 ART and AESTHETICS
16.1 The Realm of Art
16.2 Books and Reading
16.3 Poetry and Poets
16.4 Tragedy and Comedy
16.5 Music
16.6 Beauty and the Beautiful
16.7 Criticism and the Standards of Taste
Chapter 17 PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, and MATHEMATICS
17.1 Philosophy and Philosophers
17.2 Science and Scientific Method
17.3 The Discipline of Mathematics
Chapter 18 MEDICINE and HEALTH
18.1 The Art and Science of Medicine
18.2 The Practice of Medicine PHYSICIANS AND
PATIENTS
18.3 Health and Disease
Chapter 19 NATURE and the COSMOS
19.1 Nature and the Natural
19.2 The Nature of Life
19.3 Cause
19.4 Chance
19.5 Motion and Change
19.6 Space
19.7 Time
19.8 The Universe or Cosmos
Chapter 20 RELIGION
20.1 The Distinguishing Features of Religion
20.2 Judaism
20.3 Christianity
20.4 Church
20.5 God
20.6 Gods and Goddesses
20.7 Angels and Devils
20.8 Worship and Service
20.9 Heresy and Unbelief
20.10 Prophecy
20.11 Miracles
20.12 Superstition
20.13 Sin and Temptation
20.14 Redemption and Salvation
20.15 Heaven and Hell
|
Skinny mature skank sucks her agemates thick boner with appetite
Copyright © 2024 ShotOnMac Inc.
