Freethought Friday: the Measure of a Man

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833-1899)

From "Civil Rights", since we in the United States observed Martin Luther King's birthday this week. 

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

Freethought Friday #29

From Will Durant's The Age of Reason Begins, "The Summons to Reason", quoting Francis Bacon:

And as Descartes seventeen years later in the Discourse on Method, would propose to begin philosophy by doubting everything, so Bacon here demands an 'expurgation of the intellect' as the first step in the Renewal. 'Human knowledge as we have it is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which are at first imbibed.' Therefore we must, at the start, clear our minds, so far as we can, of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, and theories; we must turn away even from Plato and Aristotle; we must sweep out of our thought the 'idols', or time-honored illusions and fallacies, born of our personal idiosyncrasies of judgment or the traditional beliefs and dogmas of our group; we must banish all logical tricks of wishful thinking, all verbal absurdities of obscure thought. We must put behind us all those majestic deductive systems of philosophy, which proposed to draw a thousand eternal verities out of a few axioms and principles.  There is no magic hat in science; everything taken from the hat in works must first be put into it by observation by experiment. And not by mere casual observation, nor by "simple enumeration" of data", but by "experience....sought for, experiment." 

Freethought Friday #28: Beauty of Understanding

View a picture of a rainbow at sunset here.

To those who value the vision of the human mind organizing observations into natural law and then using natural law to grasp the workings of what had until then been mysterious, the rainbow has gained added significance and beauty through Newton's discovery, because, to a far greater extent than before, it can be understood and truly appreciated. To those of a more limited fancy, who prefer mindless staring to understanding, and simple-minded fairy tales of gods crossing bridges to the dancing changes of light in accordance with a system that can be written as an elegant mathematical expression, I suppose it is a loss.

Isaac Asimov, "The Bridge of the Gods".

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.

Sinews

Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? "What sinews are those?" - A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised, careful resolutions; unerring decisions.

(Epictetus; the Discourses, book two.)

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?

(Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, book five.)


Such were the words that compelled me to rise from my bed a few weeks ago and, after dressing, make my way outside to begin walking my way toward a healthier lifestyle. Throughout the summer I thought to myself that I would like to begin such a morning exercise, but  I never engaged in "zerizus*": I never converted that will into action.  Even though I began studying Stoicism in 2008, up until now I have only applied discipline toward the easy things, matters of the mind -- emotions, thoughts. As an introspective person,  maintaining control over mind comes naturally. My lifestyle has been sedentary since middle school, though, and pushing myself to be physically active is much more difficult. I am unpracticed at it: my commands are weak. But I must develop the physical sinews of a philosopher:  not only does my future health demand it, but I need those sinews to continue growing into the person I want to be -- 'a man in full'.

A bit over a month ago, I was taken to the doctor's office after weeks of deteriorating health: my appetite had dwindled, I often went days without sleeping, and I could not walk more than short distances without being reduced to gagging and retching. I tend to take a "this, too, shall pass" attitude toward illness, but my family members were not quite as content to watch me circle the drain. At their urging, I grudgingly visited the doctor -- who diagnosed me with high blood pressure, hypertension enough to threaten stroke.  I walked out of the doctor's office with pills and orders to avoid pork and minimize salt intake.  The medicine had an immediate effect: my restless legs quietened and gave me sleep, and I began breathing much easier. Determined to make the most of this opportunity I'd been given to reclaim my life,  I walked out of the door that brisk morning a few weeks ago and I have been exercising the muscles of physical discipline ever since. I have been ever-more mindful of my eating habits, and increased the length of my morning walk steadily to two miles (at present). It is my hope that a healthier diet and a daily habit of exercise will eventually make medication unnecessary, for what Stoic wants to be dependent on an external like that?

Just as a stalled train is an opportunity to practice patience, and a broken friendship a time to meditate on grace and learn serenity, so to was this medical crisis  an impetus for me to put into effect something I had wanted to do  for a while. I do not wish to be sedentary: I have worked this month not to help lower my blood pressure, or to lose wight, but to begin a habit which will flower into an active lifestyle.  For me, sitting for hours at a time reading a thick book and musing and writing on ideas is a joy -- but I also know the pleasures to be had in prolonged physical exertion, the joy of action, of movement. I enjoy activities like basketball and hiking, and I wish to do them all the more. I never feel better all day than I do in the moments after that morning walk, when the steady sound of my shoes on the pavement stops dominating my mind and I realize how good I feel.

So far I have kept my practice up for a month: I do not anticipate changing it for the seasons or weather, although I suppose if there is a tornado meandering through the neighborhood I would wait in safety, and give the cyclone its privacy. I see this physical activity as contributing to the whole of my life -- not just in allowing me to enjoy more activities, but in other areas as well. I delight in seeing my neighborhood so early in the morning; the sun is still rising, and often there's a mist that hangs over the road and lawns. I've seen sublimely beautiful scenes while out and about. I've talked more with my neighbors in the past two weeks than I have for the past ten years of my life preceding them. Further, in addition to losing weight and strengthening my limbs, I am strengthening those philosopher's sinews:  there are mornings when I am tired, and wish to stop early -- but I take command, and I push myself to keep walking. My body tires, and slows down -- I push it to regain its productive pace.  My feet ache; I walk through them. Day by day, I strengthen my mind's command over the body:  with every step, my will gains mastery:  I  have learned from Buddha and Epictetus that great results lie in consistently taking the right actions, small as they may be -- just as as a steady supply of water drops eventually fills a pot. It is no accident to that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus often made allusions to physical training when counseling themselves and others. I found the walk to be a way to practice meditation: indeed, it seems the best way to make it to the end, as when I am meditating I am not mindful of any aches, and the time slips by quickly so that I have gone half and mile and cannot recall walking it.  Yet walk it I did, and walk I will continue to do. I am growing in the direction of my ideals: not only growing in my ability to be physically active, but assuming total (mental and physical) command of myself.



* A word I heard from a rabbi named Zelig Pliskin, who teaches mindfulness in a Jewish context and describes it as "the joyful art of taking action".

Freethought Friday #27: The High Road

Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

From "Individuality".

In my judgment, every human being should take a road of his own. Every mind should be true to itself -- should think, investigate and conclude for itself. This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince. Every soul should repel dictation and tyranny no matter from what source they come -- from earth or heaven from men or gods. Besides, every traveler upon this vast plain should give to every other traveler his best idea as to the road that should be taken. Each is entitled to the honest opinion of all. And there is but one way to get an honest opinion upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion must be free from fear. The merchant must not fear to lose his custom, the doctor his practice, nor the preacher his pulpit. There can he no advance without liberty. Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression, and must end in intellectual night.

Freethought Friday #26: Worth Fighting For

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

(East of Eden)

Strictly speaking, I don't know anything about John Steinbeck's approach to truth and values. He could have been a skeptic or the devoutest of Christians. Regardless of what he believed, though,  what has been quoted is certainly a statement worthy of any healthy individual, and perfectly in line with skeptical values.  It has been seen at this blog before, as part of "My Worldview in Quotations".

Bernard Cornwell on Thinking for One's Self

Increasingly, one of my favorite authors is Bernard Cornwell, creator of several historical fiction series and a scattering of standalone novels. He boasts many strengths, among them irreverence toward politics and religion. I often search YouTube for interviews with authors I enjoy reading, and tonight I found this commencement address with message that will be appreciated by the kind of people whom I assume constitute this blog's audience.  A partial transcription follows: I omitted some asides and (regrettably) a somewhat humorous but lengthy aside in the interests of reducing the 'wall of text' as much as possible.

"I asked those same friends, and I said -- 'You all graduated, some of you a long time ago; what advice did you get at your graduation?' Eighty-seven percent could not remember. They had absolutely no idea, which suggests that my presence here is as of much use as an ashtray on a motorbike, but -- we have to push on, don't we?  [...] "But anyway, I thought to give you useful advice. Something really concrete, something that will keep you out of trouble -- something that will really stand you in  good stead. Never play poker with a man called 'Doc'.  It works! But my wife, who knows about these things, tell me I have got to be more useful than that. I've got to 'uplift you', she says, and so I shall try.  

It's quite possible that one of this graduating class will fail; you'll become a politician. And maybe what you have learned here will equip you to such an extent that you'll become President of the United States. I hope when that happens she will come back to Emerson College, but even if she does, or whatever you do, whatever success you have -- I wish you all success - -whatever dreams you have that come true, none of that is going to guarantee your happiness. Success doesn't guarantee happiness.  Selling thirty-seven million books doesn't guarantee happiness. It helps! -- but it doesn't guarantee it.

What will guarantee your happiness is that you think for yourselves, and become decent, honorable people.  And that's my second piece of advice, the one you're going to forget -- think for yourself.  Think for a moment what people have believed in the past. Astrology was reckoned to control our fates! -- some people still believe that. [...]  In the 12th century, they thought that celery was poisonous!  (I think that may well be true; I'm not sure...) We all know that Galileo -- what trouble he incurred when he suggested that the Earth went round the sun and not the other way around: did you also know that Murillo, the painter, was arrested by the Inquisition for daring to suggest that the Madonna had toes?  In the 19th century, at the beginning, it was believed that traveling greater than 30 miles per hour could be dangerous to your health; it could even kill you! ...I must say the Chatham police on Cape Cod still believe that.

Less than a hundred years ago, a textbook that was widely used in colleges throughout  the United States and for all I know, Europe, too...it was called Applied Eugenics.  It sold hundreds of thousands. It claimed that educating girls at college was tending towards 'race suicide'.  And why? I want you to listen to this, girls. 'Many a college girl of the finest innate qualities, who sincerely desires to enter matrimony, is unable to find a husband of her own class, simply because she has been rendered so cold and so unattractive, so overstuffed intellectually, and starved emotionally, that a typical man does not wish to spend the rest of his life in her company. " 

And if you think that eugenics was a crank science, that people didn't really believe in it, then consider that in 1927, the Supreme Court of the United States by a vote of eight to one, found it constitutional to sterilize people who were deemed mentally subnormal. In the name of eugenics. We have held beliefs -- I don't need to tell you of the more egregious ones -- but we have all been guilty. We have all held beliefs we assumed were true. Your job is to challenge everything, to think for yourself.  All those ideas and thousands more were preposterous, were reprehensible -- they were not held because our ancestors were evil. Women were not burned as witches because man is intrinsically bad, but because man wanted to do good. Those ideas were the accepted ideas of their times, and all I am trying to suggest to you is, think for yourself. Think for yourself. I don't care what your opinion is, but think it through. [...]

I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to advice -- you should listen to advice! [...] Listen to advice, but think for yourself. There are horrible dangers out there -- there are even....lawyers waiting for you.  Well done, all of you. Really, well done. You've been to one of the great colleges in one of the most blessed states in what is certainly the most blessed country in the world; you are well-launched. I leave you with this advice from somebody who knew how to give it:  "This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night  the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!"* Thank you; good luck.

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* http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=1&Scene=3&Scope=scene

Freethought Friday #12: The Measure of Wealth

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1890)

From "The Liberty of All".

Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about loving, and wives, and all that, is splendid for the rich, but it won't do for the poor." I tell you to-night there is more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich. The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. That is my doctrine! You cannot be so poor that you cannot help somebody. Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; and love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent to borrower and lender both. Do not tell me that you have got to be rich! We have a false standard of greatness in the United States. We think here that a man must be great, that he must be notorious; that he must be extremely wealthy, or that his name must be upon the putrid lips of rumor. It is all a mistake. It is not necessary to be rich or to be great, or to be powerful, to be happy. The happy man is the successful man.

Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.

Freethought Friday #9: The Paradox of Wealth

(Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1890)

Usually I share a quotation regarding skepticism, 'the good life', or other such things...but tonight a bit of societal observation from "A Lay Sermon" caught my eye.

And now there is another trouble. Just as life becomes complex and as everyone is trying to accomplish certain objects, all the ingenuity of the brain is at work to get there by a shorter way, and, in consequence, this has become an age of invention. Myriads of machines have been invented -- every one of them to save labor. If these machines helped the laborer, what a blessing they would be! But the laborer does not own the machine; the machine owns him. That is the trouble. In the olden time, when I was a boy, even, you know how it was in the little towns. There was a shoemaker -- two of them -- a tailor or two, a blacksmith, a wheelwright. I remember just how the shops used to look. I used to go to the blacksmith shop at night, get up on the forge, and hear them talk about turning horse-shoes. Many a night have I seen the sparks fly and heard the stories that were told. There was a great deal of human nature in those days! Everybody was known. If times got hard, the poor little shoemakers made a living mending, half-soling, straightening up the heels. The same with the blacksmith; the same with the tailor. They could get credit -- they did not have to pay till the next January, and if they could not pay then, they took another year, and they were happy enough. Now one man is not a shoemaker. There is a great building -- several hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery, three or four thousand people -- not a single mechanic in the whole building. One sews on straps, another greases the machines, cuts out soles, waxes threads. And what is the result? When the machines stop, three thousand men are out of employment, credit goes. Then come want and famine, and if they happen to have a little child die, it would take them years to save enough of their earnings to pay the expense of putting away that little sacred piece of flesh. And yet, by this machinery we can produce enough to flood the world. By the inventions in agricultural machinery the United States can feed all the mouths upon the earth. There is not a thing that man uses that can not instantly be over-produced to such an extent as to become almost worthless; and yet, with all this production, with all this power to create, there are millions and millions in abject want. Granaries bursting, and famine looking into the doors of the poor! Millions of everything, and yet millions wanting everything and having substantially nothing!

 Now, there is something wrong there. We have got into that contest between machines and men, and if extravagance does not keep pace with ingenuity, it is going to be the most terrible question that man has ever settled. I tell you, to-night, that these things are worth thinking about. Nothing that touches the future of our race, nothing that touches the happiness of ourselves or our children, should be beneath our notice. We should think of these things -- must think of them -- and we should endeavor to see that justice is finally done between man and man.

If you read the 'sermon' in full, you'll see Ingersoll condemn strikes and attempts at collectivization:  I don't know if I've used the description before, but he's a man living in the 19th century and who tries to realize the "24th century" through 18th century means. Though a raging liberal for his time, Ingersoll was cut from the same clothe as Thomas Jefferson and so on -- he believed the Republic was best served by a nation of family farmers and small business owners, curious given that much of his living came from drawing documents for corporations -- including the railroads that took advantage of all those family farmers and led to the Grange movement.  He seems to want people to behave and accomplish change in an orderly manner, through the ballot box....but even in his era machine politics had already taken over.

Freethought Friday #7: The Corruption of the Multitude

(Emma Goldman, 1869-1940)

From "Minorities Versus Majorities".

The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, as long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome, led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and Luther, was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night. But so soon as Luther and Calvin turned politicians and began catering to the small potentates, the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardized the great possibilities of the Reformation., They won success and the majority, but that majority proved no less cruel and bloodthirsty in the persecution of thought and reason that was the Catholic monster. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta.  After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. Compiled and edited by Alix Kates Shulman.

Freethought Friday #6: Spirituality

Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

From "Spirituality", which I would recommend reading -- it pained me to post only part of Ingersoll's description of what he or I might call authentically human spirituality. The full text is rather short in comparison to the longer speeches and essays.

It may be well enough to ask: What is it to be really spiritual?

The spiritual man lives to his ideal. He endeavors to make others happy. He does not despise the passions that have filled the world with art and glory. He loves his wife and children -- home and fireside. He cultivates the amenities and refinements of life. He is the friend and champion of the oppressed. His sympathies are with the poor and the suffering. He attacks what he believes to be wrong, though defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for the right against the world. He enjoys the beautiful. In the presence of the highest creations of Art his eyes are suffused with tears. When he listens to the great melodies, the divine harmonies,he feels the sorrows and the raptures of death and love. He is intensely human*. He carries in his heart the burdens of the world. He searches for the deeper meanings. He appreciates the harmonies of conduct, the melody of a perfect life.

 He loves his wife and children better than any god. He cares more for the world he lives in than for any other. He tries to discharge the duties of this life, to help those that he can reach. He believes in being useful -- in making money to feed and clothe and educate the ones he loves -- to assist the deserving and to support himself. He does not wish to be a burden on others. He is just, generous and sincere.

Spirituality is all of this world. It is a child of this earth, born and cradled here. It comes from no heaven, but it makes a heaven where it is.

* Emphasis added by me.

Freethought Friday #2: From "A Lay Sermon"

If you want to be happy yourself, if you are truly civilized, you want others to be happy. Every man ought, to the extent of his ability, to increase the happiness of mankind, for the reason that that will increase his own. No one can be really prosperous unless those with whom he lives share the sunshine and the joy.

The first thing a man wants to know and be sure of is when he has got enough. Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule, it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York with genius enough, with brains enough, to own five millions of dollars. Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. No one is happier in a palace than in a cabin. I love to see a log house. It is associated in my mind always with pure, unalloyed happiness. It is the only house in the world that looks as though it had no mortgage on it. It looks as if you could spend there long, tranquil autumn days; the air filled with serenity; no trouble, no thoughts about notes, about interest -- nothing of the kind; just breathing free air, watching the hollyhocks, listening to the birds and to the music of the spring that comes like a poem from the earth.

It is an insanity to get more than you want. Imagine a man in this city, an intelligent man, say with two or three millions of coats, eight or ten millions of hats, vast warehouses full of shoes, billions of neckties, and imagine that man getting up at four o'clock in the morning, in the rain and snow and sleet, working like a dog all day to get another necktie! Is not that exactly what the man of twenty or thirty millions, or of five millions, does to-day? Wearing his life out that somebody may say, "How rich he is!" What can he do with the surplus? Nothing. Can he eat it? No. Make friends? No. Purchase flattery and lies? Yes. Make all his poor relations hate him? Yes. And then, what worry! Annoyed, nervous, tormented, until his poor little brain becomes inflamed, and you see in the morning paper, "Died of apoplexy." This man finally began to worry for fear he would not have enough neckties to last him through.


So we ought to teach our children that great wealth is a curse.

Augustine and Astrology

I asked [Hippocrates] why it was then that the future was often correctly foretold by means of astrology. He gave me the only possible answer, that it was all due to the power of chance, a force that must always be reckoned with in the natural order. He said that people sometimes opened a book of poetry at random, and although the poet had been thinking, as he wrote, of some quite different manner, if often happened that the reader placed his finger on a verse which had a remarkable bearing on his problem. It was not surprising then, that the mind of man, quite unconsciously, through some instinct not within under his own control, should hit upon some thing that answered to his circumstances and the facts of a particular question. If so, it would be due to chance not to skill.

Book four of The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo. Section three. This amusingly follows a section in which Augustine claimed his mother's dreams were a sign to her from God that he would seek salvation in Christianity.  Superstition is always another person's sin, isn't it?

Geek Quickie

Recently I spotted this quotation at a message board and thought it worth sharing. For context,  readers in Trek literature have spent the better part of twenty pages arguing discussing with great enthusiasm the meaning of the Destiny series. 

Humanism doesn't mean humans are perfect. It means we're flawed but are capable of striving to improve. And it means that just because we have setbacks and failures, it doesn't negate the fact that we're capable of bettering ourselves. It means that even if individual humans fail, other humans can redeem them. Here, we had one human, Picard, pushed to the point of failure, but another human, Geordi, brought him back from the brink and kept him on the path toward betterment, and other humans including Riker and Hernandez helped bring about a triumph for humanity and its fellow sophonts over the ultimate anti-humanistic force.

So I'm with Thrawn. Destiny is very much a humanistic work.

The poster is Christopher L. Bennett, a Trek author. If you're interested in Trek books, he's one of the better authors I've read. He incorporates more science than the usual Trek author.

Will Durant on History

I recently read Heroes of History by Will Durant as a way of introducing myself to the author, and it satisfied to the point that I'll be reading more of his work; particularly, his Story of Civilization series. Judging from this book, Durant truly adores his subject and looks at humanity in an optimistic light: believing we can prevail over difficulties if we continue to work. The following passage ends his introductory chapter, "What is Civilization?"

"I will not subscribe to the depressing conclusion of Voltaire and Gibbon that history is 'the record of crimes and follies of mankind'. Of course, it is partly that, and contains a hundred million tragedies -- but it also the saving sanity of the average family, the labor and love of men and women bearing the stream of life over a thousand obstacles. It is the wisdom and courage of statesmen like Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, the latter dying exhausted but fulfilled; it is the indiscouragable effort of scientists and philosophers to understand the world that envelops them; it is the patience and skill of artists and poets giving lasting form to transient beauty, or an illuminating clarity to subtle influence; it is the vision of prophets and saints challenging us to nobility.

 On this turbulent and sullied river, hidden amid absurdity and suffering, there is a veritable City of God, in which the creative spirits of the past, by the miracles of memory and tradition, still live and work, carve and build and sing. Plato is there, playing philosophy with Socrates; Shakespeare is there, bringing new treasures every day; Keats is still listening to his nightingale, and Shelley is borne on the west wind; Nietzsche is there, raving and revealing; Christ is there, calling to us to come and share his bread. These and a thousand more, and the gifts they gave, are the Incredible Legacy of the race, the golden strain in the web of history.

 We need not close our eyes to the evils that challenge us -- we should work undiscouragingly to lessen them -- but we may take strength from the achievements of the past; the splendor of our inheritance. Let us, varying Shakespeare's unhappy king, sit down and tell brave stories of noble women and great men." 

Sand and Foam

 A few weeks back I enjoyed Kahlil Gibran's Sand and Foam for the first time, and thought I'd share some of my favorite lines here.
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I am forever walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam.
The high tide will erase my foot-prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam.
But the sea and the shore will remain
Forever.

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is part of my pain.

I am ignorant of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.

The significance of man is not in what he attains, but rather than what he longs to attain.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

When you reach the heart of life, you will shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.

Pity is but half justice.

If the other person laughs at you, you can pity him; but if you laugh at him you may never forgive your self. If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.In truth the other person is your most sensitive self given another body.

Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?

The tribune of humanity is in its silent heart, never its talkative mind.

You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge.

I would not listen to a conqueror preaching to the conquered.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Turtles can tell more about the roads than hares.

Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.


Should you sit upon a cloud you would not see the boundary line between one country and another, nor the boundary stone between a farm and a farm.  It is a pity you cannot sit upon a cloud.

Quotations of the Week

A year or so after I began this blog, I thought I might expand it to include critical reviews of books relating to philosophy, science, and religion. I had already started an enjoyable hobby at that point -- making informal comments about the books I read on a weekly basis at a social network site -- and decided instead to make blogspot "This Week at the Library"'s home.  Often, weekly comments have a "Quotation of the Week" section, typically chosen for point-making or humor value. Since it's the end of the year, I thought I would share the quotations with a point to make here.
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"It's always easy to avoid other people's vices, isn't it?".  This is a paraphrase of a comment made in a Star Wars novel, but it struck home for me. My brain sometimes insists on chattering about other people's failings, even though I know good and well their behavior isn't really my business, and when I feel tempted to compare my behavior to theirs for reasons that are not for my own edification -- that is, learning from other people's examples -- I shut that part of my brain up with Sean Stewart's quotation in Yoda, Dark Rendezvous.

"The television commercial is about products only in the sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales, which is to say it isn't. Which is to say further , it is about how one ought to live one's life." (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death) Television commercials not only sell products, they sell the idea that we should be interested in this product and its presentation.

"There is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter what or who they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practiced these in our daily lives, [...] there is no doubt we will be happy. "- Tenzin Gyatso, Ethics for a New Millenium.   Gyatso, better known as the Dalai Lama, has a very humanistic religion of happiness at heart.

"What Camus is saying is that there is reason to be hopeful, that man must understand his condition and must struggle, fight, and rebel against the absurdity of life. There is hope, and hope is to be found in man and in man only. Man defines himself, gives himself an identity through his actions. Even though the futility of our condition leads us all to the same end, we must and can dignify life through our needs and behavior." - Jacques Pepin, commenting on Camus' Myth of Sisyphus in The Book that Changed my Life.

By ourselves is evil done;
By ourselves we pain endure.
By ourselves we cease from ill;
By ourselves become we pure.
No one can save us but ourselves;
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path,
Buddhas only point the way.   - repeated in Taming the Mind, an introduction to Buddhism. I find its lines very humanistic.


"Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. It is a way of of skeptically interrogating the universe with an eye for human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those of authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan -- political or religious -- who comes ambling along." - Carl Sagan, echoing a comment he made also in The Demon-Haunted World, which I re-read this year.


 "All men are created equal, endowed with reason sufficient to manage their own affairs and even to get to the heart of abstract and philosophical matters. The miracles attributed to the greatest prophets and religious leaders are tricks, no more real than the illusions of street-corner fakirs. People do not need rules handed down and enforced from one high to form orderly societies. In contrast, blind belief in the absolute truths of religions inspires fanaticism and hatred. All authorities and accepted knowledge need to be questioned. Each generation has the opportunity to move science forward through new observations and experimentation and because of such progress, society itself often advances." - Abu Bakr al-Razi, as quoted-in-paraphrase in Medical Firsts by Robert Adler.

"There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumblings of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, [and] kindness. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many where people have behaved magnificently -- this gives us the energy to act. Hope is the energy for change. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live in defiance of the worst of everything around us is a marvelous victory." - Howard Zinn, The People's History of American Empire.  Although my cynical mood has lifted in the last week, Zinn's thoughts -- and Jacques Pepin's -- should be taken more to heart by me, I think.

The general theme of these quotations, I think, is of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

Reclaiming Virtue

Recently I read John Bradshaw's Reclaiming Virtue. Each chapter began with several quotations, and I thought I would pass them on to you just as Bradshaw did to me.

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"All virtues are the qualities that make up our humanity, and in the virtuous man, humanity and virtue inevitably converge. It is man's virtue that makes him human." - Aristotle

"To know what is good for man we have to know his nature." - Erich Fromm

"Among people, cooperation is just as pronounced among primitive tribes as it is among civilized citizens....The more people helped each other, the more the community thrived....It is literally in our nature." - Matt Ridley

"Men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed." - Heraclitus

"Hatred never ceases by hatred;

But by love alone is healed.

This is an ancient and eternal law." - Buddhist scripture

"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations....do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Siddhartha Gautama

"History, despite its wrenching pain

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again." - Maya Angelou

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people...and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Often people say, 'I would like to do some good in the world. But with so many responsibilities at home and in business....there is no chance for my life to mean anything.' This is a common and dangerous error....No matter how busy one is, any human being can assert his personality by seizing every opportunity for spiritual activity." - Albert Schweitzer

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common." - John Locke

"All beings are owner of their karma. Whatever volitional actions they do, good or evil, of those they shall become the heir." - Siddhartha Gautama

"There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible, as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every human being." - Polybius

"We must give a certain character to our activities...the habits we form in childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference." - Aristotle

"Character is a completely fashioned will." - John Stuart Mill

Abounding Grace

Recently I read through a book of quotations compiled by M. Scott Peck, a social critic of sorts who combined his practice of psychology with spirituality. Here are a few favorites from the collection.
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"Look solely for happiness ,and I doubt you'll find it. Forget about happiness, seek wisdom and goodness, and probably happiness will find you. Happiness is usually indirect, a side effect or by-product of something else." - M. Scott Peck

"Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it, as it is, is the only way of being happy." - Jennie Jerome Churchill

"Happy the man, of mortals happiest he,

Whose quiet mind from vain desires is free;

Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment,

But lives at peace, within himself content." - George Granville

"The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp." - John Berry

"Happiness is a habit -- cultivate it." - Elbert Hubbard

"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?" - Charles Schultz

"So many gods, so many creeds,

So many paths that wind and wind,

While just the art of being kind

Is all the sad world needs." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve." - Joseph Joubert

"Why stand we here trembling around

Calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells,

Stretching a hand to save the falling man.?" - William Blake

"Spiritual energy brings compassion into the real world. With compassion, we see benevolence in our own human condition and condition of our fellow beings. We drop prejudice. We withhold judgment." - Christina Baldwin

"Make a rule, and pray to God to help you keep it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say 'I have made one human being at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or at least a little better this day." - Charles Kingsley

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." - Alfred Adler

"You will fetter my leg, but not Zeus himself can get the better of my free will." - Epictetus

"To be happy, drop the words if only and substitute instead the words next time." - Smiley Blanton

"I define love thus: the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or anther's spiritual growth." - M. Scott Peck

"Love is the only god.", Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Life is an attitude. Have a good one." - Eric Lungaard

"People need loving the most when they deserve it the least." - Mary Crowley

"The opportunity to practice brotherhood presents itself every time you mean a human being being." - Jane Whynman

"The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it." - Mark Twain

"We must not only affirm the brotherhood of man: we must live by it." - Henry Codman Potter

"Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on some religious power." - Harvey Cox

The Words of Martin Luther King Jr.

I recently read through a book of quotations drawn from the work of Martin Luther King Jr, compiled by his now-late wife Coretta Scott King. While reading I wrote down a few quotations I found interesting, inspiring, or otherwise worthy of returning to in the future.
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"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

"Life's most persistent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend."

"We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity."

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude."

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up."

"There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance."

"It is pretty difficult to like some people. Like is sentimental and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatened your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like."

"When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men was build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of Justice."

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concerns of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."

"Compassion and nonviolence help us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the oppressors."

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of Justice."

"Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens live, love illumines it."