Author: Isaac

The Measure of Our Capacity

“The more a mind is empty and without counterpoise, the more easily it gives beneath the weight of the first persuasive argument…. But then, on the other hand, it is foolish presumption to go around disdaining and condemning as false whatever does not seem likely to us; which is an ordinary vice in those who think they have more than common ability. I used to do so once; and if I heard of returning spirits, prognostications of future events, enchantments, sorcery, or some other story that I could not swallow, ‘Dreams, witches, miracles, magic alarms, \ Nocturnal specters, and Thessalian charms,’ [Horace] I felt compassion for the poor people who were taken in by these follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything surpassing my first beliefs, and that through no fault of my curiosity; but reason has taught me that to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the advantage of knowing the bounds and limits of Gods will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our capacity and competence.” (I:27, 161, Frame)

Playing Tennis

“If our soul does not go at a better gait, if we do not have sounder judgment for all our learning, I had just as lief my student had spent his time playing tennis: at least his body would be the blither. See him come back from there, after fifteen or sixteen years put in: there is nothing so unfit for use. All the advantage you recognize is that his Latin and Greek have made him more conceited and arrogant than when he left home. He should have brought back his soul full; he brings it back only swollen; he has only inflated it instead of enlarging it.” (I:25, 123, Frame)

The Ability to Search Not Enough

“We know how to say: ‘Cicero says thus; such are the morals of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle.’ But what do we say ourselves? What do we judge? What do we do? A parrot could well say as much. This habit makes me think of that rich Roman who went to much trouble and very great expense to procure men learned in every field of knowledge, whom he kept continually around him, so that when there should befall among his friends some occasion to speak of one thing or another, they should fill his place and all be ready to furnish him, one with an argument, one with a verse of Homer, each one according to his quarry; and he thought that his knowledge was his own because it was in the heads of his men, as those also do whose ability dwells in their sumptuous libraries. We take the opinions and the knowledge of others into our keeping, and that is all. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, should go and fetch some at his neighbors house, and, having found a fine big fire there, should stop there and warm himself, forgetting to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not make us bigger and stronger?” (I:25, 120, Frame)

Who is Better Learned

“Exclaim to our people about a passer-by: ‘Oh, what a learned man!’ and about another ‘Oh, what a good man!’ They will not fail to turn their eyes and their respect toward the first. There should be a third exclamation: ‘Oh, what blockheads!’ We are eager to inquire: ‘Does he know Greek or Latin? Does he write in verse or in prose?’ But whether he has become better or wiser, which would be the main thing, that is left out. We should have asked who is better learned, not who is more learned.” (I:25, 121, Frame)

William James, The Social Value of the College-Bred:

“Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised — we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him. This is as true of women’s as of men’s colleges; but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I shall now endeavor to show.”

What Do We Do?

“We know how to say: ‘Cicero says thus; such are the morals of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle.’ But what do we say ourselves? How do we judge? What do we do? A parrot could well say as much.” (I:25, 121, Frame)

 

An Accursed Vice

“In truth lying is an accursed vice. We are men, and hold together, only by our word. If we recognized the horror and the gravity of lying, we would persecute it with fire more justly that other crimes. I find that people ordinarily fool around chastising harmless faults in children very inappropriately, and torment them for thoughtless actions that leave neither imprint nor consequences. Only lying, and a little below it obstinacy, seem to me to be the actions whose birth and progress one should combat insistently. They grow with the child. And once the tongue has been put on this wrong track, it cannot be called back without amazing difficulty…. If falsehood, like truth, had only one face, we would be in better shape. For we would take as certain the opposite of what the liar said. But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless field. The Pythagoreans make out the good to be certain and finite, evil infinite and uncertain. A thousand paths miss the target, one goes to it.” (I:9, 23, Frame)

 

Self-Love and Presumption

“Even the best pretext for innovation is very dangerous: so true it is that no change from the ancient ways is to be approved [Livy]. Thus it seems to me, to speak frankly, that it takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals, as civil wars and political changes bring with them in a matter of such weight—and introduce them into one’s own country.” (I:23, 67, Frame)

As For Externals

“It seems to me that all peculiar and out-of-the-way fashions come rather from folly and ambitious affectation than from true reason, and that the wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms. Society in general can do without our thoughts; but the rest—our actions, our work, our fortunes, and our very life—we must lend and abandon to its service and to the common opinions.” (I:23, 86, Frame)