Laudator Temporis Acti

I was pleased to find that many of the writings of Richard Mitchell (1929-2002), otherwise known as the Underground Grammarian, are available on the Web.

In his biography of Thomas More (1935; rpt, London: Jonathan Cape, 1976), p. 164, R.W. Chambers writes:

But the English long-bow was still a terrible weapon in the hands of men long trained to use it from childhood; and Englishmen, from the King downward, were so trained. Everyone learned 'how to lay his body in his bow, and not to draw with strength of arms as other nations do, but with strength of the body'. Scholars like Ascham, lawyers like Rastell, preachers like Latimer -- they were all expert bowmen. Archery was a fashion and a passion; the modern craze for golf affords only a faint parallel.

I've been reading Roger Ascham's treatise on archery, Toxophilus (1545). The title comes from Greek roots (toxon, philos) and means 'Bow Lover', but the book itself is in English. Although I haven't read all of it yet, one odd thing struck me -- the words 'arrow' and 'target' don't seem to appear anywhere. Ascham uses 'shaft' instead of 'arrow', 'mark' or 'prick' instead of 'target'. I don't have a historical English dictionary available, but I'm curious about when the modern terms replaced the older ones.

C.S. Lewis, letter to Ruth Pitter:

What is the point of keeping in touch with the contemporary scene? Why should one read authors one doesn't like because they happen to be alive at the same time as oneself? One might as well read everyone who had the same job or the same coloured hair or the same income or the same chest measurement, so far as I can see.

From an article by Sandro Magister in L'Espresso:

On January 6, 2001, at the concluding mass of the Jubilee, John Paul II personally gave communion to Francesco Rutelli, a practicing Catholic and a premier center-left candidate for this year's planned elections in Italy.

Rutelli had been, as a member of the Radical Party, one of the most active supporters of Italy's abortion law, which is among the most permissive in the world. And he continued, as a Catholic, to maintain publicly "pro-choice" positions.

In Italy during the 1970's, other left-wing politicians even more closely connected than Rutelli with the Catholic sector, such as Piero Pratesi and Raniero La Valle, had given strong support to the introduction of the abortion law. But they were never denied communion. It was never even discussed.

Like a few other bloggers, I've disabled the blog comments feature. In English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 168, C.S. Lewis wrote: "Every man is a dictator in his own book." So too every man is a dictator in his own blog.

This month I'm peeved about college students who disfigure their text books with sophomoric jottings in ink, or with those hideous yellow highlighter markers, then sell the books back to bookstores.

I recently bought William Langland's Piers the Plowman with notes by W.W. Skeat. It's a good, sturdy copy, and I got it for only two dollars, but the first eighty lines have interlinear and marginal notes in ink. Obviously the original owner didn't read more than three pages of the text before giving up. I find this very often with secondhand school editions of Greek and Latin texts -- English definitions of practically every word, scrawled all over the first few pages, then nothing.

If you're going to mark up a book, do it lightly, in pencil. The next owner of the book will thank you for it.

Many students are quick to discard their college text books. Sometimes it's understandable. One of my college buddies, after two frustrating semesters of calculus, went home, balanced his calculus book on top of a fence post in his back yard, then blew the book to smithereens with a shotgun. But here's what Thoreau has to say on the subject in his journal (February 19, 1854):

Many college text books, which were a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little in with pleasure and profit.

William Vallicella quotes an entry in Edward Abbey's journal (January 11, 1968) to make the point that worship of nature is ultimately unsatisfying.

Simone Weil says something similar in Waiting for God (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 171:

The love we feel for the splendor of the heavens, the plains, the seas, and the mountains, for the silence of nature which is borne in upon us by thousands of tiny sounds, for the breath of the winds or the warmth of the sun, this love of which every human being has at least an inkling, is an incomplete, painful love, because it is felt for things incapable of responding, that is to say for matter. Men want to turn this same love toward a being who is like themselves and capable of answering to their love.

Like ourselves, in that He shared fully in our human nature, but infinitely greater than us in His divine nature. St. Augustine sums it up at the beginning of his Confessions: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee" (fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te).

Charles Lamb, A Quaker's Meeting:

What is so pleasant as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by -- say a wife -- he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another, without interruption, or oral communication? -- can there be no sympathy without the gabble of words?

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, chapter 14:

"He is a nice-looking boy, is he not?" inquired Mr. Brownlow.

"I don't know, said Mr. Grimwig, pettishly.

"Don't know?"

"No. I don't know. I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys."

Charles Lamb, The Old and the New Schoolmaster:

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

Likewise, grownups are capital people in their own way, among their own kind; but they are unwholesome companions for boys.

In The Four Loves C.S. Lewis called Ovid "that cheery old reprobate." He was cheery enough in his younger days when he wrote Amores, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, etc. But his tone changed when he was exiled. Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto show us the opposite of a cheery man.

Heather and Don Whelan, of Toronto, Ontario, discuss their feelings about the United States of America over breakfast at McDonald's:

"Exactly," said Heather. "The scariest part for me about him [Conservative Party candidate Stephen Harper] is that he wanted to cosy up to the Americans. Can you believe it? The bloody Americans. I hate the Americans."

What do you hate about them?

"They're warmongers," said Don. "They're out to take over the world. They remind me of the Germans in World War II."

"They're not our best friends, they're our worst enemies," said Heather. "You can't trust them. I wish we had some other country as our neighbour, not those bullies. They're ignorant. They don't know anything about any other country. They'd just love to take us over if they could."

This is a real interview, not a caricature. Read more in this column by Earl McRae. Sentiments like these (and they are widespread among Canadians) don't exactly make me eager to go spend my tourist dollars north of the border.

Whenever I visit the blog The Joy of Knitting, I find food for thought, and so it is with the series of posts dated July 1, 2004, where the word 'Islamophobia-phobia' is defined as "fear of saying or doing anything that might be construed as an insult to the most hypersensitive bunch of people that ever walked the earth." Joy goes on to discuss "the disgust of whites felt by whites," for which she considers, but rejects, the word 'leukophobia' (fear of the color white), because it refers primarily to objects rather than people.

The tendency to hate one's own race is of course not restricted to whites, and a more general term might be useful. I have seen the word 'auto-racism' used in this connection, but it does not strike me as satisfactory. The usual dictionary definition of 'racism' is "the notion that one's own racial stock is superior" (The American Heritage Dictionary). Therefore 'auto-racism' is little more than a tautology, since the prefix 'auto' comes from the Greek pronoun 'autos,' meaning 'one's self,' and adds nothing to the meaning of 'racism.'

In attempting to coin a word meaning "hatred of one's own race," we might instead start out with the prefix 'miso,' from the Greek verb meaning 'hate.' English words incorporating this root are 'misogyny' (hatred of women), 'misanthropy' (hatred of humankind), 'misology' (hatred of reason), 'misogamy' (hatred of marriage), 'misoneism' (hatred of change or innovation), etc.

For 'one's own,' the root 'auto' is good. It appears in many English words, for example 'automobile,' which is a self-propelled vehicle.

Since 'miso' and 'auto' are Greek roots, let's pick another classical root meaning 'race.' Greek 'genos' and Latin 'gens' are related, and they are familiar to English speakers from their presence in words like 'genetics,' 'genotype,' 'progeny,' etc.

Putting these three roots all together, we arrive at the neologism 'misautogeny' as a possible word meaning "hatred of one's own race." I'm not entirely happy with it, because 'autogeny' is already a technical term in biology, but I offer it as one possibility. The phenomenon is a widespread one nowadays, and it calls for its own word.

In an interview, Natan Sharansky talks about his interrogation by the KGB in prison:

It's very important not to take anything seriously, to be able to laugh at everything, at the absurdity of this regime, at this KGB prison, and even at yourself. That's what helps you to stand aside and to enjoy this play. I remember how I loved to tell to my interrogators anti-Soviet jokes, because there were many anti-Soviet jokes, which, of course, were all underground, and telling them openly. And they're so funny that you are laughing. They would almost explode from desire to laugh, but they could not, they had to be angry. They had to show one another how loyal they were. And you're laughing, and so you say, "You see, you are saying to me that you are free and I am a prisoner. You can't even afford to laugh when you want to laugh! So you're the real prisoner."

Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV:

The learning Greek and Latin, I am told, is going into disuse in Europe. I know not what their manners and occupations may call for: but it would be very ill-judged in us to follow their example in this instance. There is a certain period of life, say from eight to fifteen or sixteen years of age, when the mind, like the body, is not yet firm enough for laborious and close operations. If applied to such, it falls an early victim to premature exertion; exhibiting indeed at first, in these young and tender subjects, the flattering appearance of their being men while they are yet children, but ending in reducing them to be children when they should be men. The memory is then most susceptible and tenacious of impressions; and the learning of languages being chiefly a work of memory, it seems precisely fitted to the powers of this period, which is long enough too for acquiring the most useful languages antient and modern.

Letter to John Brazier, August 24, 1819:

Among the values of classical learning, I estimate the luxury of reading the Greek and Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals. And why should not this innocent and elegant luxury take its preeminent stand ahead of all those addressed merely to the senses? I think myself more indebted to my father for this than for all the other luxuries his cares and affections have placed within my reach; and more now than when younger, and more susceptible of delights from other sources. When the decays of age have enfeebled the useful energies of the mind, the classic pages fill up the vacuum of ennui, and become sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are all sooner or later to descend.

In The Pirke Avos Treasury. Ethics of the Fathers. Chapters 1-2 by Rabbi Moshe Lieber, edited by Rabbi Nosson Scherman (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 1996), p. 44, there are some practical tips on Torah study by the 19th century Rabbi Yisrael Lifshitz of Danzig. They are really applicable to any type of study. Here is an abridgement:

1. One should not study while lying down nor in a very warm place, for this induces drowsiness and disturbs concentration. Nor should one eat or involve oneself in any other activity while studying.
   
2. One should avoid intellectual distraction. By studying out loud, one can concentrate and implant the ideas firmly in one's mind.
   
3. A comfortable and quiet learning atmosphere provides the proper state of mind for learning. One should study in a well-lit airy room, using books printed on fine paper.
   
4. Too much variety of subject matter tends to leave one's mind unfocused.
   
5. One should make efforts to reach a firm and clear understanding of what he studies. Then, through careful review, he will remember what he learns. Young people especially should be encouraged to memorize their studies.

In the second circle of Hell, Francesca da Rimini laments (Dante, Inferno 5.121-123), "There is no greater pain than remembering past happiness in the midst of present misery" (nessun maggiore dolore / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / nella miseria), especially when there is no prospect of any future happiness on the horizon.

The commentators on this passage cite Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae (On the Consolation of Philosophy) 2.4.2: "But this is what especially vexes me when I remember. For in every adversity of fortune it is the most unhappy kind of misfortune to have been happy once upon a time." (sed hoc est quod recolentem vehementius coquit. nam in omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii fuisse felicem.)

We might turn Francesca's statement on its head and say, "There is no greater pain than remembering past misery in the midst of present happiness". It makes your sunny day suddenly overcast. In Vergil's Aeneid, Dido asks Aeneas to describe the fall of Troy, and Aeneas says (2.3), "You're asking me, Queen, to renew an unspeakable sorrow" (infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem).

The ability to forget is a powerful medicine for our psychological health. In Funes, the Memorious, a story by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), the hero remembers everything, and it is a curse for him rather than a blessing.

Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 28:

Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the knee-pad conservative, always grovelling before the rich and the powerful.

Thoreau, letter to Parker Pillsbury, April 1861:

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and, through her, God.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows 34 (tr. Walter Kaufmann):

The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.

Das Sitzfleisch ist gerade die Sünde wider den heiligen Geist. Nur die ergangenen Gedanken haben Werth.

Another idea for a Hallmark birthday card, this one from Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, chapter 11:

Why a man with any feeling ought to be ashamed of being eighty, let alone more. Where's his religion, I should like to know, when he goes flying in the face of the Bible like that? Three-score-and-ten's the mark; and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what's expected of him, has any business to live longer.