on a whole range of issues and behaviors people simply follow the consensus of their self-identified group
from a proximate (game-theoretic rational actor) and ultimate (evolutionary fitness) perspective ditching reason is often quite reasonable
Calculus and mechanics is included in the curriculum not because all of the individuals who decide the curriculum understand these two topics in detail, but because individuals whom they trust and believe are worthy of emulation and deference, as well as past empirical history, tell them that this is the “reasonable” way to go.
The basic model is that you offload the task of reasoning about issues which you are not familiar with, or do not understand in detail, to the collective with which you identify, and give weight to specialists if they exist within that collective.
Why do we do X and not Y? Because in the past our collective unit did X, not Y
Traditional conservatives argue that the past has wisdom through its organic evolution, and the trial and error of customs and traditions
Liberal utopians....rely on their reason in the here and now, more or less, to “solve” the problems which they believe are amenable to decomposition via their rational faculties
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/05/reason-the-god-that-fails-but-we-keep-socially-promoting/
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
Religion and Empire in the Axial Age
Religion and Empire in the Axial Age
A review of Robert Bellah Religion in Human Revolution
Peter Turchin
http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Bellah_RBB.pdf
‘U-shaped curve of despotism' in human evolution (p. 178) – from highly inegalitarian great apes (whose social arrangements, presumably, also characterized direct human ancestors) to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale hierarchical societies with their great inequities in the distribution of power, status, and wealth
equality requires active maintenance. People living in small-scale societies possess numerous norms and institutions designed to control ‘upstarts,' those individuals who attempt to dominate others in order to control an unfair share of resources.
strong pull of social solidarity, especially as expressed in ritual, that rewards renunciation of dominance with a sense of full social acceptance
the invention of agriculture c.10,000 years ago enabled evolution of large-scale societies. Once the size of cooperating group increased beyond 100–200 people, even gigantic human brains were overwhelmed by the computational demands of face-to-face sociality (Dunbar and Shultz 2007). The solution that social evolution found was hierarchical organization, with large human groups integrated by chains of command.
The group size grows by adding additional hierarchical levels; a process that has no physical limit. The great downside of hierarchical organization, however, is that it inevitably leads to inequality.
the opening wedge for a successful upstart is most often militarization. … In a situation of endemic warfare, the successful warrior emanates a sense of mana or charisma, and can use it to establish a following.
the primary selection pressure for the evolution of large-scale societies is endemic warfare itself (as the French military proverb goes, “God is on the side of big battalions”).
the state of endemic warfare selects for more effective (which means centralized) military organizations.
In order to ensure a greater degree of permanence, large-scale societies needed to make the transition from the domination by military chiefs to “a new form of authority, of legitimate hierarchy … which involves a new relation between gods and humans, a new way of organizing society, one that finds a significant place for the disposition to nurture as well as the disposition to dominate” (p. 261). In other words, the central argument in Bellah's book is that a major driver in the evolution of religion was the need to reconcile the tension between the need for hierarchy and the need for legitimacy and equity
The first, archaic phase was characterized by enormous fusion of power in the person of the ruler (p. 207). Archaic states invariably were characterized by some sort of divine kingship, and usually practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale
we also observe the appearance of ‘gods,' who are distinguished from other powerful supernatural beings in that they are worshipped
Then, something happened during the first millennium BCE, which resulted in the rise of qualitatively new forms of social organization – the larger and more durable axial empires that employed new forms of legitimation of political power. One aspect of this change was the first appearance of a universally egalitarian ethic, which was largely due to the emergence of “prophet-like figures who, at great peril to themselves, held the existing power structures to a moral standard that they clearly did not meet”
Bellah connects these developments to the “legitimation crisis of the early state”
It seems apparent that some degree of unease about the state of the world must have been relatively widespread
destabilizing social consequences of considerable economic growth
wide-spread use of iron was “more important in increasing the efficiency of warfare than in transforming the means of production
an even more important development, as I have argued elsewhere (Turchin 2009), was the invention of mounted warfare by Iranian pastoralists c. 1000 BCE. Putting together horse riding with sophisticated and powerful compound bows that shot iron-tipped arrows created a ‘weapon of mass destruction' that enabled the nomads to put an enormous amount of pressure on the neighboring agrarian societies.
all axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development
there is another common factor shared by all axial cases, including Persia and China, – they all experienced pressure from the mounted archers originating from the Great Eurasian Steppe
the first axial states, such as the Median-Persian Empire and later Hellenistic empires, served as conduits of steppe influences, because they used mounted warfare against their neighbors
As new forms of warfare diffused out from the Eurasian steppe, they dramatically increased the role of warfare as a force of cultural group selection. More intense selection for large size resulted in the early and recurrent pattern of imperial development in the steppe-frontier belt stretching from Anatolia to North China.
the new scale of larger empires, whose rulers had even more resources to aggrandize themselves, that precipitated the legitimation crisis of the early axial state.
a key axial innovation was the universalistic nature of religion that allowed axial empires to integrate ethnically diverse populations on a very large scale.
First, the rulers have been increasingly constrained to act in ways promoting the public good, rather than their own interests (most recently, as a result of the introduction of democratic forms of governance). Second, structural forms of human inequality have been gradually disappearing: most notably, the abolition of human sacrifice, slavery, and distinctions in the legal status (e.g., between nobles and commoners; although some would argue that our track record in reducing economic inequality has not been as impressive). Third, gods evolved from anthropomorphic to transcendental supernatural beings, and some religions/ideologies even dispensed with gods altogether.
A review of Robert Bellah Religion in Human Revolution
Peter Turchin
http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Bellah_RBB.pdf
‘U-shaped curve of despotism' in human evolution (p. 178) – from highly inegalitarian great apes (whose social arrangements, presumably, also characterized direct human ancestors) to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale hierarchical societies with their great inequities in the distribution of power, status, and wealth
equality requires active maintenance. People living in small-scale societies possess numerous norms and institutions designed to control ‘upstarts,' those individuals who attempt to dominate others in order to control an unfair share of resources.
strong pull of social solidarity, especially as expressed in ritual, that rewards renunciation of dominance with a sense of full social acceptance
the invention of agriculture c.10,000 years ago enabled evolution of large-scale societies. Once the size of cooperating group increased beyond 100–200 people, even gigantic human brains were overwhelmed by the computational demands of face-to-face sociality (Dunbar and Shultz 2007). The solution that social evolution found was hierarchical organization, with large human groups integrated by chains of command.
The group size grows by adding additional hierarchical levels; a process that has no physical limit. The great downside of hierarchical organization, however, is that it inevitably leads to inequality.
the opening wedge for a successful upstart is most often militarization. … In a situation of endemic warfare, the successful warrior emanates a sense of mana or charisma, and can use it to establish a following.
the primary selection pressure for the evolution of large-scale societies is endemic warfare itself (as the French military proverb goes, “God is on the side of big battalions”).
the state of endemic warfare selects for more effective (which means centralized) military organizations.
In order to ensure a greater degree of permanence, large-scale societies needed to make the transition from the domination by military chiefs to “a new form of authority, of legitimate hierarchy … which involves a new relation between gods and humans, a new way of organizing society, one that finds a significant place for the disposition to nurture as well as the disposition to dominate” (p. 261). In other words, the central argument in Bellah's book is that a major driver in the evolution of religion was the need to reconcile the tension between the need for hierarchy and the need for legitimacy and equity
The first, archaic phase was characterized by enormous fusion of power in the person of the ruler (p. 207). Archaic states invariably were characterized by some sort of divine kingship, and usually practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale
we also observe the appearance of ‘gods,' who are distinguished from other powerful supernatural beings in that they are worshipped
Then, something happened during the first millennium BCE, which resulted in the rise of qualitatively new forms of social organization – the larger and more durable axial empires that employed new forms of legitimation of political power. One aspect of this change was the first appearance of a universally egalitarian ethic, which was largely due to the emergence of “prophet-like figures who, at great peril to themselves, held the existing power structures to a moral standard that they clearly did not meet”
Bellah connects these developments to the “legitimation crisis of the early state”
It seems apparent that some degree of unease about the state of the world must have been relatively widespread
destabilizing social consequences of considerable economic growth
wide-spread use of iron was “more important in increasing the efficiency of warfare than in transforming the means of production
an even more important development, as I have argued elsewhere (Turchin 2009), was the invention of mounted warfare by Iranian pastoralists c. 1000 BCE. Putting together horse riding with sophisticated and powerful compound bows that shot iron-tipped arrows created a ‘weapon of mass destruction' that enabled the nomads to put an enormous amount of pressure on the neighboring agrarian societies.
all axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development
there is another common factor shared by all axial cases, including Persia and China, – they all experienced pressure from the mounted archers originating from the Great Eurasian Steppe
the first axial states, such as the Median-Persian Empire and later Hellenistic empires, served as conduits of steppe influences, because they used mounted warfare against their neighbors
As new forms of warfare diffused out from the Eurasian steppe, they dramatically increased the role of warfare as a force of cultural group selection. More intense selection for large size resulted in the early and recurrent pattern of imperial development in the steppe-frontier belt stretching from Anatolia to North China.
the new scale of larger empires, whose rulers had even more resources to aggrandize themselves, that precipitated the legitimation crisis of the early axial state.
a key axial innovation was the universalistic nature of religion that allowed axial empires to integrate ethnically diverse populations on a very large scale.
First, the rulers have been increasingly constrained to act in ways promoting the public good, rather than their own interests (most recently, as a result of the introduction of democratic forms of governance). Second, structural forms of human inequality have been gradually disappearing: most notably, the abolition of human sacrifice, slavery, and distinctions in the legal status (e.g., between nobles and commoners; although some would argue that our track record in reducing economic inequality has not been as impressive). Third, gods evolved from anthropomorphic to transcendental supernatural beings, and some religions/ideologies even dispensed with gods altogether.
What is Axial About the Axial Age?
What is Axial About the Axial Age?
Robert Bellah
Arch.europ.sociol., XLVI, 2005
http://genealogyreligion.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Axial-Age-Bellah.pdf
Ritual in tribal societies involves the participation of all or most of the members of the group in classic Durkheimian fashion, if the ritual goes well, it leaves the group filled with energy and solidarity
In stark contrast, ritual in archaic societies focuses above all on one person, the divine or quasi-divine king, and only a few people, priests or members of the royal lineage, participate. The rest of society acts sometimes as audience, but sometimes knows only of the great rituals by hearsay, since their presence would profane the high mysteries.
It would seem that maintaining the coherence of such large and extensive societies required that the attention and energy that tribal ritual focused on the whole society now be concentrated on the ruler, elevated beyond normal human status, in relation to beings who were now not only powerful, but required worship. The elevation of rulers into a status unknown in tribal societies went hand in hand with the elevation of gods into a status higher in authority than the powerful beings they were gradually replacing.
A dramatic symbolism that combined dominance and nurturance produced a new sense of divine power combined with social power, enacted in entirely new forms of ritual, involving, centrally, sacrifice ¢ even human sacrifice as a concrete expression of radical status difference.
Intermittent periods of state breakdown raised serious questions about the cosmological order: Where is the king? Where is the god? Why are we hungry? Why are we being killed by attackers and no one is defending us?
a central principle that has governed all my work on religious evolution: Nothing is ever lost. Just as the face-to-face rituals of tribal society continue in disguised form among us, so the unity of political and religious power, the archaic ‘‘mortgage'', as Voegelin called it, reappears continually in societies that have experienced the axial ‘‘breakthrough''
two aspects of the axial age that we will have to consider in more detail. One refers to the background features of societies that are in several ways ‘‘more developed'' than the societies that preceded them. The other refers to new developments in the realm of thought ¢ political, ethical, religious, philosophical ¢ that he sums up with the significant term ‘‘criticism''
The Origin and Goal of History implies. His dates are slightly different: He finds that the ‘‘axis of history is to be found in the period around 500 B.C., in the spiritual process that occurred between 800 and 200 B.C.'' It is there, he writes, that ‘‘Man, as we know him today, came into being
none of what he calls the axial ‘‘breakthroughs'', a term we will need to consider further below , occurred in the centers of great empires. Rather, in all cases, ‘‘There were a multitude of small States and cities, a struggle of all against all, which to begin with nevertheless permitted an astonishing prosperity, an unfolding of vigour and wealth''
the competition between small states created the possibility for the emergence of itinerant intellectuals not functioning within cen-tralized priesthoods or bureaucracies, and therefore more structurally capable of the criticism that Momigliano found central to the axial age, and that Jaspers defined as the capacity for ‘‘questioning all human activity and conferring upon it a new meaning''
it is only in the axial age that coinage became widespread trade was increasing all across the old world market relations tend to destabilize long-established kinship and status relationships incessant warfare between small states rise of large territorial states militarily more efficient than their Bronze Age predecessors,
all the axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development.
basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders'', and on ‘‘the new type of intellectual elite'' concerned with the possible restructuring of the world in accordance with the transcendental vision
Johann Arnason has pointed out that Jaspers's ‘‘most condensed statement'' of the axial age, describing it as the moment when ‘‘man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations'', and ‘‘experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence'', is remarkably similar to Jaspers's own version of existential philosophy
mythic culture, which Donald describes as ‘‘a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors. The mind has expanded its reach beyond the episodic perception of events, beyond the mimetic reconstruction of episodes, to a comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
episodic culture, with which humans along with all higher mammals learn to understand and respond to the immediate situation they are in.
mimetic culture, the pre-linguistic, but not necessarily pre-vocal, use of the body both to imaginatively enact events and to communicate with others through expressive gesture
Theoretic culture is the fourth and most recent of Donald's stages. Since it will be my argument that the axial breakthrough was essentially the breakthrough of theoretic culture in dialogue with mythic culture as a means for the ‘‘comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
The key elements of theoretic culture developed gradually; they consisted in graphic invention, external memory, and theory construction
External memory is a critical feature of modern human cognition, if we are trying to build an evolutionary bridge from Neolithic to modern cognitive capabilities or a structural bridge from mythic to theoretic culture. The brain may not have changed recently in it genetic makeup, but its link to an accumulating external memory network affords it cognitive powers that would not have been possible in isolation. This is more than a metaphor; each time the brain carries out an operation in concert with the external symbolic storage system, it becomes part of a network.
theoretic culture, which is the ability to think analytically rather than narratively, to construct theories that can be criticized logically and empirically .
What made first millennium Greece unique in Donald's eyes was ‘‘reflection for its own sake'', going ‘‘beyond pragmatic or opportunistic science'', and eventuating in ‘‘what might be called the theoretic attitude''
Second-order thinking is ‘‘thinking about thinking'', that is, it attempts to understand how the rational exposition is possible and can be defended. One of the earliest examples is geometric proof, associated with Pythagoras in early Greece.
it is precisely the emergence of second-order thinking, the idea that there are alternatives that have to be argued for, that marks the axial age.
New models of reality, either mystically or prophetically or rationally apprehended, are propounded as a criticism of, and alternative to, the prevailing models''
second-order think-ing about cosmology, which for societies just emerging from the archaic age meant thinking about the religio-political premises of society itself.
‘‘Transcendental breakthrough occurred when in the wake of second-order weighing of clashing alternatives there followed an almost unbearable tension threatening to break up the fabric of society, and the resolution of the tension was found by creating a transcendental realm and then finding a soteriological bridge between the mundane world and the transcendental''
Because transcendental realms are not subject to disproof the way scientific theories are, they inevitably require a new form of narrative, that is, a new form of myth, myth with an element of reflective theory in it,
The way to change a mythic culture is to tell a different story, usually only a somewhat different story, which does not involve denying any previous story .
The monotheistic revolution of Akhenaten was not only the first but also the most radical and violent eruption of a counter-religion in the history of humankind.
The Aten, the sun disk, is the source of light, and light is the source of life and of time itself. Ritual and myth are not abandoned, but they focus exclusively on Aten.
But though Akhenaten cut to the root of traditional myth, he did not leave the mythic mode in finding light to be the fundamental reality of the cosmos, Akhenaten was more a ‘‘natural philosopher'', a precursor of the pre-Socratics
Akhenaten's religion reaffirmed the archaic unity of god and king, and however much a precursor of the axial age, it failed to raise the critical question of the relation between god and king, the very hallmark of the axial transformation.
Theoretic culture is added to mythic and mimetic culture which are reorganized in the process but they remain in their respective spheres indispensable. Theoretic culture is a remarkable achievement, but always a specialized one, usually involving written language in fields inaccessible to ordinary people. Everyday life continues to be lived in the face-to-face interaction of individuals and groups and in the patient activities of making a living in the physical world. It is first of all mimetic
daily life consists in endless ‘‘interaction ritual chains''. ‘‘Ritual'', he says, ‘‘is essentially a bodily process''. He argues that ritual requires bodily presence, mimetic (enactive, embodied) culture does not just continue to exist alongside theoretic culture: it reclaims, so to speak, some of the achievements of theoretic culture. Hubert Dreyfus has shown in detail how skills learned with painstaking attention to explicit rules, through becoming embodied and largely unavailable to consciousness, are in the end far more efficient
If mimetic culture has interacted vigorously with theoretic culture once the latter has appeared, such is also the case with narrative culture. There are things that narrative does that theory cannot do. The psychologist, Jerome Bruner, has noted that narrative actually constitutes the self, ‘‘the self is a telling''. Not only do we get to know persons by sharing our stories, we understand our membership in groups to the extent that we understand the story that defines the group
Note: Self as narrative and show group membership. So, is abandonment of self abandonment of both narrative and membership? That would certainly be the case for sanyasin
in important spheres of life stories cannot be replaced by theories. when utilitarians say that ethics should be based on the consideration of the greatest good for the greatest number, they require a substantive account of the good to get started: they still need a story about the good.
Efforts to create a ‘‘religion within the bounds of reason alone'' run up against the same problem: they end up replacing old stories with new ones.
Note:
So what Bellah calls narrative, Karen Armstrong calls mythos
Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities; it is the source of our ethics, our politics and our religion.
Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world.
The earliest writing seems to have been largely utilitarian, keeping accounts of income and outgo in temple and palace economies. However, when writing was used for extended texts, those texts were apt to be narrative not theoretic. They recorded, but did not replace, spoken language.
The oral word, as we have noted, never exists in a simply verbal context, as a written word does. Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential, situation, which always engages the body . Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable.
Breakthroughs involve not only a critical reassessment of what has been handed down, but also a new understanding of the nature of reality, a conception of truth against which the falsity of the world can be judged, and a claim that that truth is universal, not merely local
periods of severe social stress which raise doubts about the adequacy of the existing understanding of reality,
He suggests it was the threat of the Persians to the kind of city that the Greeks thought necessary for human life that may have stimulated the Greek breakthrough; the pressure of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia on the ancient Israelites that made them seek a transcendent cause; and possibly similar disruptions in ancient China and India that lay behind the axial innovations there.
second-order thinking is, by its very nature, limited to an intellectual elite
Formal theoretic developments seem virtually absent in ancient Israel. Compared to the other three cases, Israel approaches theoretic culture only asymptotically, yet it was there, perhaps, that the revolution in mythospeculation was most profound.
those responsible for the most radical innovations were seldom successful. In the short run they usually failed
The Axial Period too ended in failure. History went on''
The insights, however, at least the ones we know of, survived.
Robert Bellah
Arch.europ.sociol., XLVI, 2005
http://genealogyreligion.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Axial-Age-Bellah.pdf
Ritual in tribal societies involves the participation of all or most of the members of the group in classic Durkheimian fashion, if the ritual goes well, it leaves the group filled with energy and solidarity
In stark contrast, ritual in archaic societies focuses above all on one person, the divine or quasi-divine king, and only a few people, priests or members of the royal lineage, participate. The rest of society acts sometimes as audience, but sometimes knows only of the great rituals by hearsay, since their presence would profane the high mysteries.
It would seem that maintaining the coherence of such large and extensive societies required that the attention and energy that tribal ritual focused on the whole society now be concentrated on the ruler, elevated beyond normal human status, in relation to beings who were now not only powerful, but required worship. The elevation of rulers into a status unknown in tribal societies went hand in hand with the elevation of gods into a status higher in authority than the powerful beings they were gradually replacing.
A dramatic symbolism that combined dominance and nurturance produced a new sense of divine power combined with social power, enacted in entirely new forms of ritual, involving, centrally, sacrifice ¢ even human sacrifice as a concrete expression of radical status difference.
Intermittent periods of state breakdown raised serious questions about the cosmological order: Where is the king? Where is the god? Why are we hungry? Why are we being killed by attackers and no one is defending us?
a central principle that has governed all my work on religious evolution: Nothing is ever lost. Just as the face-to-face rituals of tribal society continue in disguised form among us, so the unity of political and religious power, the archaic ‘‘mortgage'', as Voegelin called it, reappears continually in societies that have experienced the axial ‘‘breakthrough''
two aspects of the axial age that we will have to consider in more detail. One refers to the background features of societies that are in several ways ‘‘more developed'' than the societies that preceded them. The other refers to new developments in the realm of thought ¢ political, ethical, religious, philosophical ¢ that he sums up with the significant term ‘‘criticism''
The Origin and Goal of History implies. His dates are slightly different: He finds that the ‘‘axis of history is to be found in the period around 500 B.C., in the spiritual process that occurred between 800 and 200 B.C.'' It is there, he writes, that ‘‘Man, as we know him today, came into being
none of what he calls the axial ‘‘breakthroughs'', a term we will need to consider further below , occurred in the centers of great empires. Rather, in all cases, ‘‘There were a multitude of small States and cities, a struggle of all against all, which to begin with nevertheless permitted an astonishing prosperity, an unfolding of vigour and wealth''
the competition between small states created the possibility for the emergence of itinerant intellectuals not functioning within cen-tralized priesthoods or bureaucracies, and therefore more structurally capable of the criticism that Momigliano found central to the axial age, and that Jaspers defined as the capacity for ‘‘questioning all human activity and conferring upon it a new meaning''
it is only in the axial age that coinage became widespread trade was increasing all across the old world market relations tend to destabilize long-established kinship and status relationships incessant warfare between small states rise of large territorial states militarily more efficient than their Bronze Age predecessors,
all the axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development.
basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders'', and on ‘‘the new type of intellectual elite'' concerned with the possible restructuring of the world in accordance with the transcendental vision
Johann Arnason has pointed out that Jaspers's ‘‘most condensed statement'' of the axial age, describing it as the moment when ‘‘man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations'', and ‘‘experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence'', is remarkably similar to Jaspers's own version of existential philosophy
mythic culture, which Donald describes as ‘‘a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors. The mind has expanded its reach beyond the episodic perception of events, beyond the mimetic reconstruction of episodes, to a comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
episodic culture, with which humans along with all higher mammals learn to understand and respond to the immediate situation they are in.
mimetic culture, the pre-linguistic, but not necessarily pre-vocal, use of the body both to imaginatively enact events and to communicate with others through expressive gesture
Theoretic culture is the fourth and most recent of Donald's stages. Since it will be my argument that the axial breakthrough was essentially the breakthrough of theoretic culture in dialogue with mythic culture as a means for the ‘‘comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
The key elements of theoretic culture developed gradually; they consisted in graphic invention, external memory, and theory construction
External memory is a critical feature of modern human cognition, if we are trying to build an evolutionary bridge from Neolithic to modern cognitive capabilities or a structural bridge from mythic to theoretic culture. The brain may not have changed recently in it genetic makeup, but its link to an accumulating external memory network affords it cognitive powers that would not have been possible in isolation. This is more than a metaphor; each time the brain carries out an operation in concert with the external symbolic storage system, it becomes part of a network.
theoretic culture, which is the ability to think analytically rather than narratively, to construct theories that can be criticized logically and empirically .
What made first millennium Greece unique in Donald's eyes was ‘‘reflection for its own sake'', going ‘‘beyond pragmatic or opportunistic science'', and eventuating in ‘‘what might be called the theoretic attitude''
Second-order thinking is ‘‘thinking about thinking'', that is, it attempts to understand how the rational exposition is possible and can be defended. One of the earliest examples is geometric proof, associated with Pythagoras in early Greece.
it is precisely the emergence of second-order thinking, the idea that there are alternatives that have to be argued for, that marks the axial age.
New models of reality, either mystically or prophetically or rationally apprehended, are propounded as a criticism of, and alternative to, the prevailing models''
second-order think-ing about cosmology, which for societies just emerging from the archaic age meant thinking about the religio-political premises of society itself.
‘‘Transcendental breakthrough occurred when in the wake of second-order weighing of clashing alternatives there followed an almost unbearable tension threatening to break up the fabric of society, and the resolution of the tension was found by creating a transcendental realm and then finding a soteriological bridge between the mundane world and the transcendental''
Because transcendental realms are not subject to disproof the way scientific theories are, they inevitably require a new form of narrative, that is, a new form of myth, myth with an element of reflective theory in it,
The way to change a mythic culture is to tell a different story, usually only a somewhat different story, which does not involve denying any previous story .
The monotheistic revolution of Akhenaten was not only the first but also the most radical and violent eruption of a counter-religion in the history of humankind.
The Aten, the sun disk, is the source of light, and light is the source of life and of time itself. Ritual and myth are not abandoned, but they focus exclusively on Aten.
But though Akhenaten cut to the root of traditional myth, he did not leave the mythic mode in finding light to be the fundamental reality of the cosmos, Akhenaten was more a ‘‘natural philosopher'', a precursor of the pre-Socratics
Akhenaten's religion reaffirmed the archaic unity of god and king, and however much a precursor of the axial age, it failed to raise the critical question of the relation between god and king, the very hallmark of the axial transformation.
Theoretic culture is added to mythic and mimetic culture which are reorganized in the process but they remain in their respective spheres indispensable. Theoretic culture is a remarkable achievement, but always a specialized one, usually involving written language in fields inaccessible to ordinary people. Everyday life continues to be lived in the face-to-face interaction of individuals and groups and in the patient activities of making a living in the physical world. It is first of all mimetic
daily life consists in endless ‘‘interaction ritual chains''. ‘‘Ritual'', he says, ‘‘is essentially a bodily process''. He argues that ritual requires bodily presence, mimetic (enactive, embodied) culture does not just continue to exist alongside theoretic culture: it reclaims, so to speak, some of the achievements of theoretic culture. Hubert Dreyfus has shown in detail how skills learned with painstaking attention to explicit rules, through becoming embodied and largely unavailable to consciousness, are in the end far more efficient
If mimetic culture has interacted vigorously with theoretic culture once the latter has appeared, such is also the case with narrative culture. There are things that narrative does that theory cannot do. The psychologist, Jerome Bruner, has noted that narrative actually constitutes the self, ‘‘the self is a telling''. Not only do we get to know persons by sharing our stories, we understand our membership in groups to the extent that we understand the story that defines the group
Note: Self as narrative and show group membership. So, is abandonment of self abandonment of both narrative and membership? That would certainly be the case for sanyasin
in important spheres of life stories cannot be replaced by theories. when utilitarians say that ethics should be based on the consideration of the greatest good for the greatest number, they require a substantive account of the good to get started: they still need a story about the good.
Efforts to create a ‘‘religion within the bounds of reason alone'' run up against the same problem: they end up replacing old stories with new ones.
Note:
So what Bellah calls narrative, Karen Armstrong calls mythos
Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities; it is the source of our ethics, our politics and our religion.
Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world.
The earliest writing seems to have been largely utilitarian, keeping accounts of income and outgo in temple and palace economies. However, when writing was used for extended texts, those texts were apt to be narrative not theoretic. They recorded, but did not replace, spoken language.
The oral word, as we have noted, never exists in a simply verbal context, as a written word does. Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential, situation, which always engages the body . Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable.
Breakthroughs involve not only a critical reassessment of what has been handed down, but also a new understanding of the nature of reality, a conception of truth against which the falsity of the world can be judged, and a claim that that truth is universal, not merely local
periods of severe social stress which raise doubts about the adequacy of the existing understanding of reality,
He suggests it was the threat of the Persians to the kind of city that the Greeks thought necessary for human life that may have stimulated the Greek breakthrough; the pressure of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia on the ancient Israelites that made them seek a transcendent cause; and possibly similar disruptions in ancient China and India that lay behind the axial innovations there.
second-order thinking is, by its very nature, limited to an intellectual elite
Formal theoretic developments seem virtually absent in ancient Israel. Compared to the other three cases, Israel approaches theoretic culture only asymptotically, yet it was there, perhaps, that the revolution in mythospeculation was most profound.
those responsible for the most radical innovations were seldom successful. In the short run they usually failed
The Axial Period too ended in failure. History went on''
The insights, however, at least the ones we know of, survived.
Where Does Religion Come From?
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- the beginnings of drama, of plays, were so close to ritual that the difference between the actors and the audience was minimal
- The idea of utopia is always a kind of play, because we know it's not real--it's just what we can imagine. But it has the serious possibility of saying, "Look, the world the way it is didn't have to be that way. It could be different."
- dealing with a complex band of people you don't know if you can trust or not, and you love some of them and you hate some of them—that's a pretty high demand on your cognitive growth. I think the brain grows fast when groups get larger and more complicated and maneuvering yourself in a social world starts to be at the heart of what your life is all about. Since our intelligence grew above all in relating to other people, it is natural that we think of the world in general in interpersonal terms
- The world is full of questions and we can't take anything for granted, because the more we know, the more questions are raised
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- A vote of thanks to the bacteria is surely in order” because, as Bellah explains, “The Age of Bacteria transformed the earth from a cratered moonlike terrain of volcanic glassy rocks into the fertile planet in which we make our home
- The DNA in cells presaged a fundamental trait of biological life—an ability to conserve its past and to introduce change into the past. Indeed, in evolution, something like “agency” comes into the world, an ability of a cell not only to adapt to its environment but to shape and respond to its environment.
- Thanks to these prophets, we humans are free to think and act in terms of “universals.” Prompted by revelations unique to the human scene, religion provides its believers with a platform for understanding truth and duty that cannot be reduced to genetic origins or the commands of the powerful.
- From the Big Bang to an Einstein and the Internet, there intervened a lot of unpredictable evolution of atoms into self-conscious organisms. Strangest of all, came human creatures who could describe and take account of this universal history, who have been freed to be in direct, living relation to the world
- Bellah liberates us to live more consciously in a home affirmed for us in Psalm 8: “all the earth.” In their accounts of our common humanity, Isaiah, Socrates, the Buddha, and Confucius freed us, in mind, spirit, and heart, for caring about each other and also a universe. We are part of this universe. We have been equipped to study, love, and know gratitude for the whole of it
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- Life is a bastard, and then you are dead: this is a basic philosophy of religion available to all of us.
- So systems of religion flourish: they reveal their inadequacies, and in their collapse, leave behind a residue for some new experiment in imagination: in turn that collapses, and so on, until often all that is left is a profound and rueful silence. But human beings still feel the wonder
- in all statements about God there must be paradox and silence - a sense of the absurdity of us poor mortals talking at all about such things
- The Jaspers thesis is a baggy monster, which tries to bundle up all sorts of diversities over four very different civilisations, only two of which had much contact with each other during the six centuries
- I suggest (hardly originally) that we are seeing an optical illusion in the apparent start of the axial age
- scepticism or mysticism don't generally require or leave much infrastructure. Only gradually did the sceptics and mystics usurp the aristocrats, hierarchical priests and bureaucrats who had invented writing, got their hands on the new technology and recorded their thoughts. Over the previous millennia all is now silence, because we cannot now hear the cacophony. Human beings have been physically much the same and have enjoyed the same brain capacity for around 150,000 years. It is to exercise the worst sort of condescension of posterity to think that only in the last 3,000 of those long years did humankind jack itself up to think creatively and variously about the tragedy of existence
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Monday, May 21, 2012
History
History loc: 7005
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. loc: 7020
Of the works of this mind history is the record. loc: 7024
all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. loc: 7027
If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. loc: 7031
The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. loc: 7038
is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. loc: 7045
We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us loc: 7053
all that is said of the wise man by Stoic, or oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. loc: 7059
world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. loc: 7070
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. loc: 7082
All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, — must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. loc: 7085
Note: This certainly gives new and wider meaning to background knowledge.
must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. loc: 7090
inquiry into antiquity, — all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, — is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. loc: 7096
The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. loc: 7111
Note: Does there have to be a metaphysic to this beyond that of Spinoza? Does Emerson have to repeat Deacartes' error?
Genius studies the causal thought, and, far back in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. loc: 7117
Note: Could he be talking about the big bang here?
Genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. loc: 7118
Note: Obviously reference to Liebniz
Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. loc: 7119
Note: What would E. O. Wilson think about this?
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. loc: 7145
the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. loc: 7149
Note: I think that this is built into the neuroscience of perception, that we see similarities because that is the way we perceive things--cf Gazzaniga on edge perception or facial recognition or the orders of magnitude and rhythm that underlie our perceptions of beauty
like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and sublime. loc: 7200
The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, — of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. loc: 7228
The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. loc: 7250
Note: Is this true? Are our natures and our concerns really so similar, or are the Greeks really different enough from us that we wouldn't even have the same values. How much does time and place and circumstance and culture shape who we are, how we think, and how we feel so as to make us possibly totally alien and foreign to each other? In other words, how much of this essay is total bullshit?
in that protest which each considerate person makes against the superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old reformers, and in the search after truth finds like them new perils to virtue. loc: 7278
beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. loc: 7289
Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages. loc: 7290
so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. loc: 7344
every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. loc: 7387
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. loc: 7020
Of the works of this mind history is the record. loc: 7024
all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. loc: 7027
If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. loc: 7031
The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. loc: 7038
is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. loc: 7045
We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us loc: 7053
all that is said of the wise man by Stoic, or oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. loc: 7059
world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. loc: 7070
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. loc: 7082
All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, — must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. loc: 7085
Note: This certainly gives new and wider meaning to background knowledge.
must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. loc: 7090
inquiry into antiquity, — all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, — is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. loc: 7096
The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. loc: 7111
Note: Does there have to be a metaphysic to this beyond that of Spinoza? Does Emerson have to repeat Deacartes' error?
Genius studies the causal thought, and, far back in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. loc: 7117
Note: Could he be talking about the big bang here?
Genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. loc: 7118
Note: Obviously reference to Liebniz
Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. loc: 7119
Note: What would E. O. Wilson think about this?
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. loc: 7145
the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. loc: 7149
Note: I think that this is built into the neuroscience of perception, that we see similarities because that is the way we perceive things--cf Gazzaniga on edge perception or facial recognition or the orders of magnitude and rhythm that underlie our perceptions of beauty
like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and sublime. loc: 7200
The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, — of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. loc: 7228
The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. loc: 7250
Note: Is this true? Are our natures and our concerns really so similar, or are the Greeks really different enough from us that we wouldn't even have the same values. How much does time and place and circumstance and culture shape who we are, how we think, and how we feel so as to make us possibly totally alien and foreign to each other? In other words, how much of this essay is total bullshit?
in that protest which each considerate person makes against the superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old reformers, and in the search after truth finds like them new perils to virtue. loc: 7278
beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. loc: 7289
Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages. loc: 7290
so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. loc: 7344
every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. loc: 7387
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Literary Ethics
Ethics
An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 loc: 1724
Hence the historical failure, on which Europe and America have so freely commented. This country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expectation of mankind. loc: 1741
men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought. loc: 1749
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. loc: 1777
To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and provocation, you must come to know, that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. loc: 1794
ask it of the enveloping Now; the more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so much the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books. loc: 1806
All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual loc: 1821
The hero is great by means of the predominance of the universal nature; loc: 1824
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. loc: 1826
The vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. loc: 1826
The man who stands on the seashore, or who rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man that ever stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. loc: 1850
Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be compelled, in any mechanical manner. But the first observation you make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new view of nature and of man, loc: 1880
thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations. loc: 1895
why must the student be solitary and silent? That he may become acquainted with his thoughts. loc: 1901
But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; loc: 1903
Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. loc: 1909
Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. loc: 1924
Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. loc: 1928
He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. From one, he must draw his strength; to the other, he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the real; the other, to the apparent. At one pole, is Reason; at the other, Common Sense. If he be defective at either extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low and utilitarian; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life. loc: 1980
Note: Ironically, it's Emerson who appears vague and indefinite, too lacking in common sense. Edit
When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;’ — then dies the man in you; loc: 2009
Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. loc: 2015
Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? loc: 2017
An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 loc: 1724
Hence the historical failure, on which Europe and America have so freely commented. This country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expectation of mankind. loc: 1741
men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought. loc: 1749
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. loc: 1777
To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and provocation, you must come to know, that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. loc: 1794
ask it of the enveloping Now; the more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so much the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books. loc: 1806
All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual loc: 1821
The hero is great by means of the predominance of the universal nature; loc: 1824
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. loc: 1826
The vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. loc: 1826
The man who stands on the seashore, or who rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man that ever stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. loc: 1850
Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be compelled, in any mechanical manner. But the first observation you make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new view of nature and of man, loc: 1880
thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations. loc: 1895
why must the student be solitary and silent? That he may become acquainted with his thoughts. loc: 1901
But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; loc: 1903
Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. loc: 1909
Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. loc: 1924
Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. loc: 1928
He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. From one, he must draw his strength; to the other, he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the real; the other, to the apparent. At one pole, is Reason; at the other, Common Sense. If he be defective at either extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low and utilitarian; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life. loc: 1980
Note: Ironically, it's Emerson who appears vague and indefinite, too lacking in common sense. Edit
When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;’ — then dies the man in you; loc: 2009
Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. loc: 2015
Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? loc: 2017
Divinity School Address
College Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838 loc: 1416
One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! loc: 1424
But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. loc: 1429
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, loc: 1434
The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. loc: 1448
These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, loc: 1463
The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. loc: 1472
the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. loc: 1480
the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. loc: 1492
What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; loc: 1494
The doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now he is an appendage, a nuisance. And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry; the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; loc: 1497
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. loc: 1509
He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. loc: 1511
But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! loc: 1513
Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. loc: 1524
That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. loc: 1540
To aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation of the soul. loc: 1546
The second defect of the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of Christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. loc: 1559
Note: Is this w here Nietzsche conceives the idea that god is dead? Edit
It is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to others the same knowledge and love. If utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told: loc: 1563
The man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or poet. loc: 1568
The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. loc: 1570
the need was never greater of new revelation than now. loc: 1575
The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, — life passed through the fire of thought. loc: 1601
thus, historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. loc: 1629
Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. loc: 1672
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause. loc: 1696
The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. loc: 1709
One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man! loc: 1424
But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. loc: 1429
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, loc: 1434
The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. loc: 1448
These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere active, loc: 1463
The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. loc: 1472
the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. loc: 1480
the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. loc: 1492
What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; loc: 1494
The doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now he is an appendage, a nuisance. And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry; the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; loc: 1497
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. loc: 1509
He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. loc: 1511
But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! loc: 1513
Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. loc: 1524
That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. loc: 1540
To aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation of the soul. loc: 1546
The second defect of the traditionary and limited way of using the mind of Christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. loc: 1559
Note: Is this w here Nietzsche conceives the idea that god is dead? Edit
It is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to others the same knowledge and love. If utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told: loc: 1563
The man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or poet. loc: 1568
The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. loc: 1570
the need was never greater of new revelation than now. loc: 1575
The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, — life passed through the fire of thought. loc: 1601
thus, historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. loc: 1629
Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. loc: 1672
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause. loc: 1696
The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. loc: 1709
The American Scholar
American Scholar An Oration
delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 loc: 1078
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, — present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. loc: 1099
Note: Could this be what E O Wilson discusses inThe Social Conquest of Earth? Edit
The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. loc: 1105
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. loc: 1107
In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking. loc: 1111
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. loc: 1154
The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. loc: 1159
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. loc: 1164
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. loc: 1167
They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. loc: 1168
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; loc: 1169
The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. loc: 1172
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. loc: 1181
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. loc: 1214
The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. loc: 1216
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town, — in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. loc: 1245
But the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is, that it is a resource. loc: 1251
The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness, — he has always the resource to live loc: 1255
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. loc: 1257
A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. loc: 1258
The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. loc: 1271
He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. loc: 1281
These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. loc: 1287
In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and bide his own time, — happy enough, if he can satisfy himself alone, that this day he has seen something truly. loc: 1291
In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. loc: 1301
I believe man has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light, that can lead him back to his prerogatives. loc: 1322
Men in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are called ‘the mass’ and ‘the herd.’ In a century, in a millennium, one or two men; that is to say, — one or two approximations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in the hero or the poet their own green and crude being, — ripened; loc: 1324
Note: Is Emerson talking the Overman? Edit
For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. loc: 1338
show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; loc: 1374
the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench. loc: 1376
Note: The world in a grain of sand; eternity in an hour Edit
If there be one lesson more than another, which should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. loc: 1396
Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, — but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, loc: 1402
Note: I certainly felt this at 19 and 20 or so. Why am I so cynical about it now? Edit
if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. loc: 1405
We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. loc: 1411
delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 loc: 1078
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, — present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. loc: 1099
Note: Could this be what E O Wilson discusses inThe Social Conquest of Earth? Edit
The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. loc: 1105
Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. loc: 1107
In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking. loc: 1111
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. loc: 1154
The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. loc: 1159
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. loc: 1164
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. loc: 1167
They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. loc: 1168
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; loc: 1169
The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. loc: 1172
Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. loc: 1181
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. loc: 1214
The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. loc: 1216
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town, — in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. loc: 1245
But the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is, that it is a resource. loc: 1251
The mind now thinks; now acts; and each fit reproduces the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and books are a weariness, — he has always the resource to live loc: 1255
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. loc: 1257
A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. loc: 1258
The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. loc: 1271
He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. loc: 1281
These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. loc: 1287
In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and bide his own time, — happy enough, if he can satisfy himself alone, that this day he has seen something truly. loc: 1291
In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. loc: 1301
I believe man has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light, that can lead him back to his prerogatives. loc: 1322
Men in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are called ‘the mass’ and ‘the herd.’ In a century, in a millennium, one or two men; that is to say, — one or two approximations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in the hero or the poet their own green and crude being, — ripened; loc: 1324
Note: Is Emerson talking the Overman? Edit
For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. loc: 1338
show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; loc: 1374
the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench. loc: 1376
Note: The world in a grain of sand; eternity in an hour Edit
If there be one lesson more than another, which should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. loc: 1396
Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, — but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, loc: 1402
Note: I certainly felt this at 19 and 20 or so. Why am I so cynical about it now? Edit
if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. loc: 1405
We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. loc: 1411
Nature
Nature loc: 308
Introduction loc: 319
Note: Lear, the old buffer, the old chough, the old chuffer! Emerson, the old fluffer, the old puffer. Edit
The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? loc: 321
We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. loc: 327
Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. loc: 328
Let us inquire, to what end is nature? loc: 330
But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. loc: 334
Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. loc: 335
I Nature loc: 346
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. loc: 349
stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. loc: 354
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. loc: 365
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. loc: 368
There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. loc: 375
I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. loc: 377
greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. loc: 382
II Commodity loc: 391
the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. loc: 396
it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. loc: 397
in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. loc: 404
useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. loc: 408
III Beauty loc: 419
Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves loc: 423
First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. loc: 436
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. loc: 439
Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. loc: 445
this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. loc: 463
The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. loc: 469
Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. loc: 470
There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it become s an object of the intellect. loc: 492
The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, loc: 494
Therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect; and then again, in its turn, of the active power. loc: 497
This love of beauty is Taste. loc: 501
The creation of beauty is Art. loc: 502
world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. loc: 512
IV Language loc: 517
The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. loc: 525
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. loc: 549
Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property loc: 555
That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. loc: 558
All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life. loc: 564
man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. loc: 581
When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. loc: 582
facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence. loc: 597
A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. loc: 631
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. loc: 638
That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge, loc: 643
V Discipline loc: 645
the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new loc: 647
Note: A new fact, that Nature is a discipline. Edit
he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time. loc: 753
Note: I didn't understand the vast majority of what this chapter said. It was so general, so abstract, that it was just a bunch of words on the page. And what little I could understand seemed like a lot of horse shit. Edit
VI Idealism loc: 755
Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. loc: 766
it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses. loc: 767
the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. loc: 770
Note: This his proof? That God never jests with us? I'm starting to lose respect for Emerson big time right now. Edit
Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is perfect. loc: 770
are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. loc: 772
Note: Yeah, it's called evolution. Edit
whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. loc: 775
Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. “The problem of philosophy,” according to Plato, “is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute.” It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. loc: 846
The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. loc: 850
Note: Is Emerson channwling Keats? Edit
of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula. loc: 855
Note: What a sentence! Edit
Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter. loc: 859
It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon Ideas; and in their presence, we feel that the outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. loc: 861
As objects of science, they are accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable of being raised by piety or by passion, into their region. And no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. loc: 867
Note: Emerson is equating piety, passion and knowledge as ways of knowing truth? Edit
We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, we exist. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity. loc: 871
Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called, — the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life, — have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not. They are one to our present design. They both put nature under foot. loc: 875
advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to the mind. loc: 893
Note: Desirable to the mind determines the doctrines worth Edit
Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. loc: 896
Note: This is starting to veer off into the realm of fairy tale. Edit
VII Spirit loc: 904
all the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin. It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us. loc: 908
problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. loc: 921
the mind is a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. loc: 924
the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, loc: 934
Note: I guess you could make a case that Emerson could be neurologically correct, that the world as we know it and understand it and act on it is built upthrough our minds. It's how we survived and evolved as a species. So why all the metaphysical claptrap? I don't think he has Spinoza's God in mind here. Edit
Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. loc: 939
Note: No wonder that so many self help gurus like and quote Emerson. Edit
it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul. loc: 946
world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious. loc: 948
It is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. loc: 949
Note: Do these last two statements contradict one another? Edit
VIII Prospects loc: 956
Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. loc: 960
Note: What a phrase: "manly contemplation of the whole." Edit
the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments. loc: 961
Note: Intuition is as good as knowledge? Edit
perception of this class of truths makes the attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, “poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.” loc: 1001
is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; loc: 1019
Meantime, in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light, — occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with his entire force, — with reason as well as understanding. Such examples are; the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations; the history of Jesus Christ; the achievements of a principle, as in religious and political revolutions, and in the abolition of the Slave-trade; the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. loc: 1033
Note: Waldo sounds a lot like a Christian Scientist, here. Edit
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. loc: 1045
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. loc: 1054
shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. loc: 1062
Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. loc: 1068
Note: Reframing? Edit
Introduction loc: 319
Note: Lear, the old buffer, the old chough, the old chuffer! Emerson, the old fluffer, the old puffer. Edit
The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? loc: 321
We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. loc: 327
Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. loc: 328
Let us inquire, to what end is nature? loc: 330
But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. loc: 334
Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. loc: 335
I Nature loc: 346
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. loc: 349
stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. loc: 354
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. loc: 365
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. loc: 368
There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. loc: 375
I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. loc: 377
greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. loc: 382
II Commodity loc: 391
the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. loc: 396
it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. loc: 397
in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. loc: 404
useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. loc: 408
III Beauty loc: 419
Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves loc: 423
First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. loc: 436
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. loc: 439
Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. loc: 445
this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. loc: 463
The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. loc: 469
Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. loc: 470
There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it become s an object of the intellect. loc: 492
The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, loc: 494
Therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect; and then again, in its turn, of the active power. loc: 497
This love of beauty is Taste. loc: 501
The creation of beauty is Art. loc: 502
world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. loc: 512
IV Language loc: 517
The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. loc: 525
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. loc: 549
Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property loc: 555
That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. loc: 558
All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life. loc: 564
man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. loc: 581
When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. loc: 582
facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence. loc: 597
A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. loc: 631
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. loc: 638
That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge, loc: 643
V Discipline loc: 645
the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new loc: 647
Note: A new fact, that Nature is a discipline. Edit
he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time. loc: 753
Note: I didn't understand the vast majority of what this chapter said. It was so general, so abstract, that it was just a bunch of words on the page. And what little I could understand seemed like a lot of horse shit. Edit
VI Idealism loc: 755
Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. loc: 766
it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses. loc: 767
the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. loc: 770
Note: This his proof? That God never jests with us? I'm starting to lose respect for Emerson big time right now. Edit
Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is perfect. loc: 770
are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. loc: 772
Note: Yeah, it's called evolution. Edit
whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. loc: 775
Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. “The problem of philosophy,” according to Plato, “is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute.” It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. loc: 846
The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. loc: 850
Note: Is Emerson channwling Keats? Edit
of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula. loc: 855
Note: What a sentence! Edit
Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter. loc: 859
It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon Ideas; and in their presence, we feel that the outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. loc: 861
As objects of science, they are accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable of being raised by piety or by passion, into their region. And no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. loc: 867
Note: Emerson is equating piety, passion and knowledge as ways of knowing truth? Edit
We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, we exist. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity. loc: 871
Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called, — the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life, — have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not. They are one to our present design. They both put nature under foot. loc: 875
advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to the mind. loc: 893
Note: Desirable to the mind determines the doctrines worth Edit
Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. loc: 896
Note: This is starting to veer off into the realm of fairy tale. Edit
VII Spirit loc: 904
all the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin. It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us. loc: 908
problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. loc: 921
the mind is a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. loc: 924
the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, loc: 934
Note: I guess you could make a case that Emerson could be neurologically correct, that the world as we know it and understand it and act on it is built upthrough our minds. It's how we survived and evolved as a species. So why all the metaphysical claptrap? I don't think he has Spinoza's God in mind here. Edit
Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. loc: 939
Note: No wonder that so many self help gurus like and quote Emerson. Edit
it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul. loc: 946
world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious. loc: 948
It is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. loc: 949
Note: Do these last two statements contradict one another? Edit
VIII Prospects loc: 956
Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. loc: 960
Note: What a phrase: "manly contemplation of the whole." Edit
the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments. loc: 961
Note: Intuition is as good as knowledge? Edit
perception of this class of truths makes the attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, “poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.” loc: 1001
is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; loc: 1019
Meantime, in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light, — occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with his entire force, — with reason as well as understanding. Such examples are; the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations; the history of Jesus Christ; the achievements of a principle, as in religious and political revolutions, and in the abolition of the Slave-trade; the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. loc: 1033
Note: Waldo sounds a lot like a Christian Scientist, here. Edit
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. loc: 1045
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. loc: 1054
shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. loc: 1062
Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. loc: 1068
Note: Reframing? Edit
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