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Today is the anniversary of the birth of the Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch de Spinoza, in 1632.
I tell you truly that I know next to nothing about Spinoza’s philosophies. According to Wikipedia, he believed:
God exists only philosophically and that God was abstract and impersonal. Spinoza’s system imparted order and unity to the tradition of radical thought, offering powerful weapons for prevailing against “received authority.” As a youth he first subscribed to Descartes’s dualistic belief that body and mind are two separate substances, but later changed his view and asserted that they were not separate, being a single identity. He contended that everything that exists in Nature (i.e., everything in the Universe) is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning “that which stands beneath” rather than “matter”) that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser “entities” are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part.
Well, that’s as may be. But here’s my question: In P. G. Wodehouse, the great gentleman’s personal gentleman Jeeves makes reference more than once to his own partiality to Spinoza. (Indeed, it is Bertie’s kind-hearted but hapless attempt to buy a collection of Spinoza’s works for Jeeves that lands him in a fearful misunderstanding with Florence Cray.) In this emphasis, is Plum trying to make some kind of philosophical point? Or is he just tagging his character with a partiality to a particular intellectual fad of the day?
I strongly suspect the latter. On the other hand, Plum could be pretty egg-headed when he wanted, so I am not yet prepared to dismiss the former out of hand.
(Now that I come to think of it, many books have been written analyzing Plum’s writing, but I cannot remember coming across one examining Jeeves’ philosophical make-up. As I say, he is obviously fond of Spinoza. Marcus Aurelius, too. Perhaps there’s room for another study here. (Copyright note to potential scholars – Dibs!))
Well, today is the sixth birthday of that crazy corner corral of the blogsphere known as the Llama Butchers.
I’d been planning a special surprise party for my fellow bloggers there – Mr. LMC, Gary the Ex-Donk and, of course. Steve-O (aka “El Jeffe Con La Little Debbie“). Unfortunately, due to a recent tendency of the Moo-Knew homeworld to burst its bandwidth breeches before the end of the month, we’re all closed out of the shop for the moment.
As you can see, the pièce de résistance was to be Melissa Theuriau singing us the traditional birthday salute. I may as well tell you that this pic is just a still taken from the rehearsal. What you can’t see from it is that the actual plan is for her to serenade us while bursting out of a large cake wearing a naughty French maid rig.
Pity my comrades will will miss that. Guess it’s just me and Meliss, then.
Oh, and what do you know? I see it’s actually time for the party to start.
Well….sorry fellahs. Gotta go. Love that cake, y’know.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Oh, and Yip! Yip! Yip!
I was both delighted and appalled to read this article:
Children as young as five are simulating sex acts at school because they are exposed to pornography on satellite television and the internet, a senior MP has warned.
Barry Sheerman, chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, said he had been told recently of the “disgusting” behaviour seen by teachers in primary schools.
The Labour MP for Huddersfield complained that Britain is “awash” with material promoting sexual activity too early in life.
Mr Sheerman called for tougher measures to protect youngsters’ from the “disturbing” amounts of pornography available on satellite television and the internet.
He also launched a withering attack on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which he said was the biggest carrier of pornography in the world.
Addressing a Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech, Mr Sheerman told MPs: “We are a country awash with focus on early sexual activity.
“I think it is very serious the access to pornography to children … you go to infant schools now and teachers say to me: ‘Children come here at five and six simulating sexual behaviour that they should know nothing about.’
“That is something pretty disgusting.”
Mr Sheerman said he was angered to read that Mr Murdoch and his son James Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia, wanted to see BSkyB become more trusted than the BBC.
He added: “I had only read two days previously that not only is the Murdoch empire the biggest carrier of pornography in the world but have now bought a major supplier, maker of pornography in the US.
“I don’t know what trusted and loved is but a company that puts that sort of filth, makes it available to children, does not impress me.
“Our children should be protected from that sort of pornography whether it is on BSkyB or whether it is on the internet. I believe that childhood ought to be protected.”
“Great Heavens, Robbo!” you are no doubt saying to yourself, “Why would you be delighted by such an article?”
Well, the simple reason is that it’s one for the Home Team: In the year between my graduation from college and my entry into law school in the late 80’s, I worked for Sheerman as a research assistant. Yup, spent the year living in a house in Wandsworth (shared with an American crackpot and a French babe), commuting into Westminster and occassionally getting up to Yorkshire for some constituent work. (And I will tell you that there is nothing scarier than a hall full of socialist Brit union shop stewards. ”Keep your mouth shut and try not to look American,” was Barry’s advice as we went in.)
As for the appalling part? Well, I heartily agree that children should be protected, but what word is missing from this article? Begins with a “P”. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? How about……..PARENTS!!!!
Nice going, Barry, but if you leave Rupert in loco parentis, don’t be so shocked and surprized at what you get.
In the comments to my post below on the different assertions of G.K. Chesterton and Francis Parkman regarding Native American religious beliefs before the arrival of European Christians, regular port-swiller BNS writes:
[W]hile Parkman may be more an expert on Native American culture than Chesterton, I wonder how accepted this particular assertion of his is, or if it is disputed, and I also wonder how he reached that conclusion.
In my post, I had said that at the moment I was too lazy to look up Parkman’s assertions. Well, my friends, in an attempt to be a proper host (and a fair commentator), this evening I hunted up the quotes.
First off is Parkman’s assertion itself. It is to be found in the first chapter of his The Jesuits In North America, the second book of the first volume of his masterwork France and England in North America. I won’t quote the entire discussion of the various rites, rituals and superstitions, because it’s too much to type. Instead, I’ll simply give you Parkman’s concluding paragraph on the matter. (Warning – He is being his least Rousseauian. No Noble Savage for him! If this kind of non-p.c. language offends you, either skip it or brace yourself.):
To sum up the results of this examination, the primitive Indian was as savage in his religion as in his life. He was divided between fetish-worship and that next degree of religious development which consists of the worship of deities embodied in the human form. His conception of their attributes was such as might have been expected. His gods were no whit better than himself. Even when he borrows from Christianity the idea of a Supreme and Universal Spirit, his tendency is to reduce Him to a local habitation and a bodily shape; and this tendency disappears only in tribes that have been long in contact with civilized white men. The primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to One All-pervading and Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians, and sentimentalists.
As I say, pretty strong meat.
But what of Parkman’s sources? Well, he has something to say about that in the preface to the same volume:
The sources of information concerning the early Jesuits of New France are very copious. During a period of forty years, the Superior of the Mission sent, every summer, long and detailed reports, embodying or accompanied by the reports of his subordinates, to the Provincial of the Order at Paris, where they were annually published, in duodecimo volumes, forming the remarkable series known as the Jesuit Relations. Though the productions of men of scholastic training, they are simple and often crude in style, as might be expected of narratives hastily written in Indian lodges or rude mission-houses in the forest, amid annoyances and interruptions of all kinds. In respect to the value of their contents, they are exceedingly unequal. Modest records of marvellous adventures and sacrifices, and vivid pictures of forest-life, alternate with prolix and monotonous details of the conversion of individual savages, and the praiseworthy deportment of some exemplary neophyte. With regard to the condition and character of the primitive inhabitants of North America, it is impossibleto exaggerate their value as an authority. I should add, that the closest examination has left me no doubt that these missionaries wrote in perfect good faith, and that the Relations hold a high place as authentic and trustworthy historical documents.
“Ah!” you will say, ”Parkman is just relying on Jesuit bias! And we all know what that means!” Well, there are two responses to this. First, Parkman himself was a staunch Protestant. Throughout his work, he gives Rome a pretty fair treatment, but on the whole it is quite plain that he has no love for Her.
Second, if those insanely brave Jesuits at the sharp end of the Faith had discovered that their new flock already worshipped some Great Spirit that ruled over all, surely they would have trumpeted this finding? A barbarian people who practice genuine monotheism are already three quarters of the way to accepting Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and I find it hard to believe that such a phenomenon would not have made it into the Relations.
As to the broader question of the acceptance of Parkman’s and/or Chesterton’s positions, I confess that this beats the heck out of me. For all I know, there may well be dozens of books thoroughly debunking both positions! I only offered the comparison because it was triggered in my mind after reading GKC’s take (which, btw, contains no citations or references). They obviously have incompatible views on the subject of monotheism among North American peoples prior to European contact, and one of them, just as obviously, must be mistaken. I have not done research any farther to determine who was right, simply noted the difference because I find it interesting.
Recently I have been reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, his refutation of evolutionary materlialism in general, and the writings of Chesterton’s contemporary H.G. Wells in particular.
Well, trying to read it, anyway. My copy, issued this year by the Feather Trail Press, is printed in such small typeface as to make study of it extremely difficult.
Anyhoo, I was interested to read this passage in GKC’s discussion of paganism, and his sense that pagans have always focused their conscious thought on a kind of lower strata of deities, while tacitly acknowledging a general guiding force above such characters:
“They [i.e., primative pagan belief systems] all testify to the unmistakable psychology of a thing taken for granted, as distinct from talked about. There is a striking example in a tale taken down word for word from a Red Indian in California which starts out with hearty legendary and literary relish: “The sun is the father and ruler of the heavens. He is the big chief. The moon is his wife and the stars are their children”; and so on through a most ingenious and complicated story, in the middle of which is a sudden parenthesis saying that the sun and moon have to do something because “It is ordered that way by the Great Spirit Who lives above the place of all.” That is exactly the attitude of most paganism towards God. He is something assumed and forgotten and remembered by accident; a habit possibly not peculiar to pagans. Sometimes the higher deity is remembered in the highest moral grades and is sort of mystery. But always, it has been truly said, the savage is talkative about his mythology and taciturn about his religion.
In all this, I understand that GKC is setting up a kind of stratified awareness, a suggestion that pagans, for whatever reason, have always acknowledged monotheism as such without, well, embracing it, as it were, preferring to live their lives in accordance with a set of much homier local deities.
Well, fine. For all I know of the various pagan cults of the savages, GKC may be right. Except that his mention of Indians in particular reminded me of something I had read elsewhere. Specifically, and although I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment, I distinctly remember the assertion of Francis Parkman, that great recorder of early North American exploration and colonization, that the natives, in fact, possessed no concept of an overarching, unifying deity until after their contact with Europeans in general, and the Jesuit missionaries in particular. In other words, the “Great Spirit” referenced by Chesterton and many others is nothing more than a hazy interpretation of Christian doctrine and is not native to the, er, native view of spirituality in North America.
Now I am neither a historian nor a theologian. But I’d be willing to bet dollars against doughnuts that Parkman has a better bead on the thoughts of Indians than does Chesterton. Whether this hinders or actually emphasizes Chesterton’s general point about the human approach to God, I don’t know. But I thought it interesting nonetheless.
The seven year old apparently watched one of the Jurassic Park movies at one of her little friends’ houses the other day. This morning she was explaining the plot to me when all of a sudden she asked, “Dad, why did they call it Jurassic Park? T-Rexes and Tricerotops were Cretaceous!”
Startled, I looked it up. The gel’s perfectly right.
Perhaps just by chance, but last evening I happened to reread George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, his account of his service in the ranks in Burma during WWII. Here is his summation:
Glad I was there; I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. A good thing to have done, and to have been, as Samuel Johnson so wisely observed. No regrets about it, and much gratitude. I can almost hear an interviewer saying: “What about guilt?”, to which I could only reply: “What’s to be guilty about? I didn’t ask for the bloody war.” He might speculate, because it seems to be the fashion nowadays, on guilt for having survived where others did not – which is one of the silliest notions I have ever heard. If you feel someone got killed because you let them down, that’s a reason for guilt, no question – but to feel guilty because the man next to you caught it when you didn’t, that’s pointless. Remember him, revere him, but don’t feel guilty.
It’s terribly trite, no doubt, but like most trite things it’s absolutely true: the best comment on infantry war, the best philosophy, and above all the best advice, was written in four lines by Rudyard Kipling. It isn’t jingoistic, it’s realistic; it has nothing to do with the higher questions of morality, but it has deep meaning for anyone who finds himself, as so many have done and will continue to do, facing the moment.
When first under fire and you’re wishful to duck,
Don’t look nor take heed at the man that is struck,
Be thankful you’re living, and trust to your luck,
And march to your front like a soldier.
Seems quite fitting to the day to me. So pray charge your glasses in salute to all the brave men and women who have done so in the past – both those who made it and those who didn’t – and continue to do so today.
As regular port-swillers will recall, I mentioned a few weeks back that I was rereading my Herodotus and enjoying every word of his accounts of the wide world in general and the rise of the Persian Empire in particular. In Book III, Herodotus relays a chilling story of an army send by the mad ruler Cambyses (son of Cyrus the Great) to sack and destroy the oracle of Zeus Ammon, far out in the western part of Egypt in about the middle of the 6th Century B.C. According to this account:
The force which was sent against the Ammonians started from Thebes with guides, and can be traced as far as the town of Oasis, which belongs to Samians supposed to be of the Aescrionian tribe, and is seven days’ journey across the sand from Thebes. The place is known in Greek as the Island of the Blessed. General report has it that the army got as far as this, but of its subsequent fate there is no news whatever. It never reached the Ammonians and it never returned to Egypt. There is, however, a story told by the Ammonians themselves and by others who heard it from them, that when the men had left Oasis, and in their march across the desert had reached a point about mid-way between the town and the Ammonian border, a southerly wind of extreme violence drove the sand over them in heaps as they were taking their mid-day meal, so that they disappeared forever.
What a way to go. I’ve always had a mental picture of this lost legion being swallowed up by the sands, obliterated by the Sahara and lost to all human knowledge.
Well, apparently not any more, for in one of those articles that just makes my day, it is reported that this long-lost Persian army may have been found again.
The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.
Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.
Go and read the rest. It seems from the article that many of the men tried to take shelter behind a large rock formation, the only one in the area. Apparently, their bones only recently have come back to the surface where they were buried for so long.
Happy Guy Fawkes Day!
Now there are those of you two or three together who may wonder how Robbo’s swimming of the Tiber has affected his attitude toward this anniversary of the discovery of a plot among English Catholics to blow up Parliament and the King?
My response? Not a’tall.
You see, in part I am still a dedicated Anglophile. As much as I detest the early Hanovarians, I still believe the ‘45 was a ridiculous undertaking. Ditto the plots to undo the earlier Stuart monarchy, however dismal its record. I am no great fan of James I. But I remain a devotee of Good Queen Bess and the footing on which she placed This Sceptre’d Isle, and I loathe the machinations of those who sought to bring it down.
Our Maximum Leader’s tribute to Trafalgar Day earlier this week has put me in something of a nautical mood. So it was especially pleasant to stumble across this little ditty whilst skimming through the Bab Ballads of W.S. Gilbert:
THE MYSTIC SELVAGEE
Perhaps already you may know
SIR BLENNERHASSET PORTICO?
A Captain in the Navy, he -
A Baronet and K.C.B.
You do? I thought so!
It was that Captain’s favourite whim
(A notion not confined to him)
That RODNEY was the greatest tar
Who ever wielded capstan-bar.
He had been taught so.
“BENBOW! CORNWALLIS! HOOD! – Belay!
Compared with RODNEY” – he would say -
“No other tar is worth a rap!
The great LORD RODNEY was the chap
The French to polish!
“Though, mind you, I respect LORD HOOD;
CORNWALLIS, too, was rather good;
BENBOW could enemies repel,
LORD NELSON, too, was pretty well -
That is, tol-lol-ish!”
SIR BLENNERHASSET spent his days
In learning RODNEY’S little ways,
And closely imitated, too,
His mode of talking to his crew -
His port and paces.
An ancient tar he tried to catch
Who’d served in RODNEY’S famous batch;
But since his time long years have fled,
And RODNEY’S tars are mostly dead:
EHEU FUGACES!
But after searching near and far,
At last he found an ancient tar
Who served with RODNEY and his crew
Against the French in ‘Eighty-two,
(That gained the peerage).
He gave him fifty pounds a year,
His rum, his baccy, and his beer;
And had a comfortable den
Rigged up in what, by merchantmen,
Is called the steerage.
“Now, JASPER” – ‘t was that sailor’s name -
“Don’t fear that you’ll incur my blame
By saying, when it seems to you,
That there is anything I do
That RODNEY wouldn’t.”
The ancient sailor turned his quid,
Prepared to do as he was bid:
“Ay, ay, yer honour; to begin,
You’ve done away with ’swifting in’ -
Well, sir, you shouldn’t!
“Upon your spars I see you’ve clapped
Peak halliard blocks, all iron-capped.
I would not christen that a crime,
But ’twas not done in RODNEY’S time.
It looks half-witted!
Upon your maintop-stay, I see,
You always clap a selvagee!
Your stays, I see, are equalized -
No vessel, such as RODNEY prized,
Would thus be fitted!
“And RODNEY, honoured sir, would grin
To see you turning deadeyes in,
Not UP, as in the ancient way,
But downwards, like a cutter’s stay -
You didn’t oughter;
Besides, in seizing shrouds on board,
Breast backstays you have quite ignored;
Great RODNEY kept unto the last
Breast backstays on topgallant mast -
They make it tauter.”
SIR BLENNERHASSET “swifted in,”
Turned deadeyes up, and lent a fin
To strip (as told by JASPER KNOX)
The iron capping from his blocks,
Where there was any.
SIR BLENNERHASSET does away,
With selvagees from maintop-stay;
And though it makes his sailors stare,
He rigs breast backstays everywhere -
In fact, too many.
One morning, when the saucy craft
Lay calmed, old JASPER toddled aft.
“My mind misgives me, sir, that we
Were wrong about that selvagee -
I should restore it.”
“Good,” said the Captain, and that day
Restored it to the maintop-stay.
Well-practised sailors often make
A much more serious mistake,
And then ignore it.
Next day old JASPER came once more:
“I think, sir, I was right before.”
Well, up the mast the sailors skipped,
The selvagee was soon unshipped,
And all were merry.
Again a day, and JASPER came:
“I p’r'aps deserve your honour’s blame,
I can’t make up my mind,” said he,
“About that cursed selvagee -
It’s foolish – very.
“On Monday night I could have sworn
That maintop-stay it should adorn,
On Tuesday morning I could swear
That selvagee should not be there.
The knot’s a rasper!”
“Oh, you be hanged,” said CAPTAIN P.,
“Here, go ashore at Caribbee.
Get out – good bye – shove off – all right!”
Old JASPER soon was out of sight -
Farewell, old JASPER!
Heh. I’m sure my fellow port-swilling fans of Patrick O’Brian will find the plethora of nautical terms and naval references here as amusing as I do. And for those of you who don’t recognize the name, Admiral George Rodney was probably England’s most famous naval commander prior to the outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. He certainly was amongst the most successful, crowning his career by thumping the Comte de Grasse in 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes.
I mention this to follow up on a comment that I dropped in response to Maxy’s post pointing out that Nelson was able to crush Villeneuve at Trafalgar in large part because by then the superiority of the Royal Navy in terms of both seamanship and aggressiveness had been thoroughly stamped on the psyches of both the British and the French. It is arguable that this ascendancy can be traced directly back to Rodney’s triumph at the Saintes – prior to then the Royal Navy had had a pretty lackluster record in the American Revolution and had been given as good as it gave the French during the Seven Years’ War.
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