“I am not really the helpless type, but I have never been very fond of the sort of aggressive scholarship that is now encountered everywhere, trying to sell to humanity brand-new laws of nature as if they were used cars. A feeling of tentativeness; an appreciation of the provisional and fragmentary character of human insight into nature; a consideration of how much arrogance and rashness must attend even the deepest understanding before generalizing statements can be made about life: all this will be part of the inheritance with which the many years have burdened the scientist as he grows older. If he is any good, he will become more modest.” (Erwin Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire)
Author: Isaac
Master Kung’s Gentleman
“Twenty-five hundred years ago Master Kung recognized clearly that it is the disorder of the language that produces the disorder of the state. It is written in The Analects of Confucius (Waley translation):
If language is incorrect, then what is said does not concord with what was meant; and if what is said does not concord with what was meant, what is to be done cannot be effected. If what is to be done cannot be effected, then rites and music will not flourish. If rites and music do not flourish, then punishments will go astray. And if punishments go astray, then the people have nowhere to put hand and foot. Therefore the gentleman uses only such language as is proper for speech, and only speaks of what it would be proper to carry into effect. The gentleman, in what he says, leaves nothing to mere chance.
I should be sorry if these words led to the conclusion that all that Master Kung’s gentleman lacked was a word processor.” (Erwin Chargaff, 1986, Serious Questions)
Eloquence
“Eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way (1) that those to whom we speak are able to hear them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel their self-interest involved, so that self-love leads them the more willingly to think over what has been said. It consists, then, in a correspondence which we try to establish, on the one hand, between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions that we use. This presupposes that we have studied the heart of man in order to know all its workings and that we find the right arrangement of the remarks that we wish to make suitable. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and try out on our own heart the appeal we make in what we say, so as to see whether the one is rightly made for the other, and whether we can feel confident that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is small or diminish that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject and there must be in it nothing excessive or lacking.” (Pascal, tr. Jacques Barzun, 2003)
To Be Surprised, To Wonder
“To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man. The gesture characteristic of his tribe consists in looking at the world with eyes wide open in wonder. Everything in the world is strange and marvellous to well-open eyes. This faculty of wonder is the delight refused to your football ‘fan,’ and, on the other hand, is the one which leads the intellectual man through life in the perpetual ecstasy of the visionary. His special attribute is the wonder of the eyes. Hence it was that the ancients gave Minerva her owl, the bird with ever-dazzled eyes.” (Ortega y Gasset, 1930, The Revolt of the Masses)
Two Classes of Creatures
“For there is no doubt that the most radical division that is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.” (Ortega y Gasset, 1930, The Revolt of the Masses)
Horace’s Vitas Hinnuleo
Translated by Edward Marsh, 1941:
You shun me, Chloe, like a fawn
That on the wild untrodden screes
Seeks her shy mother, startled if a breeze
Rustles among the trees;
For if the first faint shivering dawn
Of earliest spring
Sets the young leaves a-whispering,
Or the green lizards shake
A bramble in the brake,
She stands with knocking heart and trembling kees.Yet no fierce tiger I, dear child,
No lion from the Libyan wild
In hot pursuit to seize
And crunch you — quit at last your mother’s side!
‘Tis time you were a bride.
Translated by J. S. Blake-Reed, 1944:
Even as the frightened fawn that flees
With fluttering heart and trembling knees,
O’er pathless hills and in the trees
The breeze doth hear, —Seeking her anxious dam, doth quake
When winds of spring the branches shake
Or darting lizards stir the brake
And checks in fear; —So, Chloe, you my footsteps fly;
But leave your mother; be not shy;
No ravening beast of prey am I
To eat you, dear.
Drop the Classics from Education?
“When science shall have assumed her true relation to the field of human culture we shall all be happier. To-day science knows that the silkworm must be fed on the leaves of the mulberry tree, but does not know that the soul of man must be fed on the Bible and the Greek classics. Science knows that a queen bee can be produced by care and feeding, but does not as yet know that every man who has had a little Greek and Latin in his youth belongs to a different species from the ignorant man. No matter how little it may have been, it reclassifies him. There is more kinship between that man and a great scholar than there is between the same man and some one who has had no classics at all: he breathes from a different part of his anatomy. Drop the classics from education? Ask rather, Why not drop education? For the classics are education. We cannot draw a line and say, ‘Here we start.’ The facts are the other way. We started long ago, and our very life depends upon keeping alive all that we have thought and felt during our history. If the continuity is taken from us, we shall relapse.” (John Jay Chapman, 1910, Learning and Other Essays )
Most Truly a Friend
“…the man of the Renaissance who made him most truly a friend, perhaps the most Horatian of all the literary figures that we know, was Montaigne. He quotes him, perhaps, no more than he quotes other great Classical writers, but it was from Horace that he received the stimulus to write about himself, and blessed like him with a country estate and a love of good literature, he achieved the same calm, sane, detached outlook on life, and the self-knowledge that can be derived from the observation of others.” (L. P. Wilkinson, 1945, Horace and His Lyric Poetry)
Horace’s Odi Profanum Vulgus
(“Rudely Imitated” by Abraham Cowley, 1656)
I
Hence, ye Profane; I hate ye all;
Both the Great Vulgar, and the small.
To Virgin Minds, which yet their Native whiteness hold,
Not yet Discolour’d with the Love of Gold
(That Jaundice of the Soul,
Which makes it look so Gilded and so Foul),
To you, ye very Few, these truths I tell;
The Muse inspires my Song, Hark, and observe it well.II
We look on Men, and wonder at such odds
‘Twixt things that were the same by Birth;
We look on Kings as Giants of the Earth,
These Giants are but Pigmeys to the Gods.
The humblest Bush and proudest Oak
Are but of equal proof against the Thunder-stroke.
Beauty and Strength, and Wit, and Wealth, and Power
Have their short flourishing hour,
And love to see themselves, and smile,
And joy in their Preeminence a while;
Even so in the same Land,
Poor Weeds, rich Corn, gay Flowers together stand;
Alas, Death Mowes down all with an impartial Hand.III
And all you Men, whom Greatness does so please,
Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles.
If you your eyes could upwards move,
(But you, I fear, think nothing is above)
You would perceive by what a little thread
The Sword still hangs over your head.
No Tide of Wine would drown your cares,
No Mirth or Musick over-noise your fears;
The fear of Death would you so watchful keep,
As not t’ admit the Image of it, sleep.IV
Sleep is a God too proud to wait in Palaces;
And yet so humble, too, as not to scorn
The meanest Country Cottages;
His Poppey grows among the Corn.
The Halcyon sleep will never build his nest
In any stormy breast.
’Tis not enough that he does find
Clouds and Darkness in their mind;
Darkness but half his work will do,
’Tis not enough; he must find Quiet too.V
The man who, in all wishes he does make,
Does only Nature’s Counsel take,
That wise and happy man will never fear
The evil Aspects of the Year,
Nor tremble, though two Comets should appear.
He does not look in Almanacks to see,
Whether he Fortunate shall be;
Let Mars and Saturn in th’ Heavens conjoin,
And what they please against the World design,
So Jupiter within him shine.VI
If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;
God to their Cares and Fears will set no bound.
What would content you? Who can tell?
Ye fear so much to lose what you have got
As if ye lik’d it well.
Ye strive for more, as if ye lik’d it not.
Go, level Hills, and fill up Seas,
Spare nought that may your wanton Fancy please;
But trust Me, when you ‘have done all this,
Much will be Missing still, and much will be Amiss.
Ordinary Men
“…ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness and intellectual rivalry to advise your people against our real opinions.” (The History of the Peloponnesian War, tr. Richard Crawley)
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