Laudator Temporis Acti

Read Michael Knox Beran's fine essay In Defense of Memorization.

Actor Ben Kingsley chastised a German journalist who called him Mr. Kingsley: "It's Sir Ben. I've not been a Mister for two years."

Sir Ben is a member of that select company that includes such cultural luminaries as Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, and Sir Elton John.

That members of the so-called "Royal Family" continue to receive recognition, respect, and huge amounts of cash in the supposedly enlightened twenty-first century astounds me. "Prince" Charles, "Queen" Elizabeth, and all the rest are nothing but a pack of worthless parasites. The "honors" they bestow deserve contempt. Sir Ben indeed!

And don't ask my opinion of Lady Di, the People's Princess. It might provoke an apoplectic seizure.

Seneca, De Beneficiis 1.10.1:

Our ancestors made this complaint, we make this complaint, our descendants will make this complaint: that morals have been overturned, that wickedness reigns, and that human affairs are going downhill and to hell in a handbasket. But things are standing in the same place and will continue to do so, just shifted a bit in one direction or the other, as waves which the approaching tide has carried further in or the receding tide has held back on the inner part of the shoreline.

hoc maiores questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc posteri nostri querentur: eversos mores, regnare nequitiam, in deterius res humanas et omne nefas labi. at ista eodem stant loco stabuntque, paulum dumtaxat ultra aut citra mota, ut fluctus, quos aestus accedens longius extulit, recedens interiore litorum vestigio tenuit.

Thomas Browne (1605-1682), Religio Medici, I, 13:

The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason wee owe unto God, and the homage wee pay for not being beasts; without this the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixt day when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisedome of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads, that rudely stare about, and with a grosse rusticity admire his workes; those highly magnifie him whose judicious enquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, returne the duty of a devout and learned admiration.

Many people, especially students, are under the impression that typing a few words into Google qualifies as research. A good antidote to this foolish notion is a story about the scientist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) told by Ezra Pound in his ABC of Reading (London: Routledge, 1934):

A post-graduate equipped with honours and diplomas went to Agassiz to receive the final and finishing touches. The great man offered him a small fish and told him to describe it.

Post-graduate student: 'That's only a sunfish.'

Agassiz: 'I know that. Write a description of it.'

After a few minutes the student returned with a description of the Ichthus Heliodiplodokus, or whatever term is used to conceal the common sunfish from vulgar knowledge, family of Heliichtherinkus, etc., as found in textbooks of the subject.

Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish.

The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.

Erasmus, Encomium Moriae (Praise of Folly), 49 (tr. John Wilson):

Add to this that other pleasure of theirs, that if any of them happen to find out who was Anchises' mother, or pick out of some worm-eaten manuscript a word not commonly known -- as suppose it bubsequa for a cowherd, bovinator for a wrangler, manticulator for a cutpurse -- or dig up the ruins of some ancient monument with the letters half eaten out; O Jupiter! what towerings! what triumphs! what commendations! as if they had conquered Africa or taken in Babylon.

iam adde et hoc voluptatis genus, quoties istorum aliquis Anchisae matrem, aut voculam vulgo incognitam, in putri quapiam charta deprehenderit, puta bubsequam, bovinatorem aut manticulatorem, aut si quis vetusti saxi fragmentum, mutilis notatum litteris, alicubi effoderit: O Iupiter, quae tum exsultatio, qui triumphi, quae encomia, perinde quasi vel Africam devicerint, vel Babylonas ceperint.

Seneca, Epistulae Morales 43.4-5:

I'll tell you a way to judge our character -- you'll find hardly anyone who could live with his door open. It's our guilt, not our haughtiness, that has stationed doormen on guard. We live in such a way that to be seen suddenly is to be caught in a crime. But what does it profit a man to conceal himself and avoid the eyes and ears of his fellows? A good conscience invites a crowd, but a guilty one is worried and troubled even in solitude. If the things you do are honorable, let everyone know; if they are shameful, what difference does it make if no one else knows, when you know? How wretched you are if you set a small value on this witness!

rem dicam ex qua mores aestimes nostros: vix quemquam invenies qui possit aperto ostio vivere. ianitores conscientia nostra, non superbia opposuit: sic vivimus ut deprendi sit subito aspici. quid autem prodest recondere se et oculos hominum auresque vitare? bona conscientia turbam advocat, mala etiam in solitudine anxia atque sollicita est. si honesta sunt quae facis, omnes sciant; si turpia, quid refert neminem scire cum tu scias? o te miserum si contemnis hunc testem!

Musonius, fragment 51 Hense, quoted by Aulus Gellius 16.1.2:

If you do something good with suffering, the suffering passes away, but the good remains. If you do something shameful with pleasure, the sweetness passes away, but the shame remains.

John Burnet (1863-1928), Humanism in Education, in Essays and Addresses (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929), p. 109:

I would not give two straw for anyone's opinion on the criticism or interpretation of Plato's text unless he can write tolerable Greek prose.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Penitent (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983):

I bought a newspaper, and as I turned the pages I found everything there that I wanted to escape from: wars, glorification of revolution, murders, rapes, politicians' cynical promises, lying editorials, acclaim of stupid books, dirty plays and films. The newspaper paid tribute to every possible kind of idolatry and spat at truth. (p. 37)

One of modern man's most insane passions is reading newspapers in order to keep up with the latest news. The news is always bad and it poisons your life, but modern man can't live without this poison. He must know about all the murders, all the rapes. He must know about all the insanities and false theories. The newspaper isn't enough for him. He seeks additional news on the radio or on television. Magazines are published that sum up all the news of the week, and the people reread what crime this or that evildoer has committed and what every idiot has said. (p. 160)

Excerpts from William Hazlitt's essay The Shyness of Scholars, first published in The New Monthly Magazine, December 1827:

That a life of privacy and obscurity should render its votaries bashful and awkward, or unfit them for the routine of society, from the want both of a habit of going into society and from ignorance of its usages, is obvious to remark.

*****
The scholar having to encounter doubts and difficulties on all hands, and indeed to apply by way of preference to those subjects which are most beset with mystery, becomes hesitating, sceptical, irresolute, absent, dull. All the processes of his mind are slow, cautious, circuitous, instead of being prompt, heedless, straightforward.

*****
The inquirer after truth learns to take nothing for granted; least of all, to make an assumption of his own superior merits. He would have nothing proceed without proper proofs and an exact scrutiny; and would neither be imposed upon himself, nor impose upon others by shallow and hasty appearances. It takes years of patient toil and devoted enthusiasm to master any art or science; and after all, the success is doubtful. He infers that other triumphs must be prepared in like manner at an humble distance: he cannot conceive that any object worth seizing on or deserving of regard, can be carried by a coup de main. So far from being proud or puffed up by them, he would be ashamed and degraded in his own opinion by any advantages that were to be obtained by such cheap and vulgar means as putting a good face on the matter, as strutting and vapouring about his own pretensions.

*****
It never once enters his head (till it is too late) that impudence is the current coin in the affairs of life; that he who doubts his own merit, never has credit given him by others; that Fortune does not stay to have her overtures canvassed; that he who neglects opportunity, can seldom command it a second time; that the world judge by appearances, not by realities; and that they sympathize more readily with those who are prompt to do themselves justice, and to show off their various qualifications or enforce their pretensions to the utmost, than those who wait for others to award their claims, and carry their fastidious refinement into helplessness and imbecility.

*****
He who has spent the best part of his time and wasted his best powers in endeavouring to answer the question -- 'What is truth?' -- scorns a lie, and every thing making the smallest approach to one. His mind by habit has become tenacious of, devoted to the truth. The grossness and vulgarity of falsehood shock the delicacy of his perceptions, as much as it would shock the finest artist to be obliged to daub in a sign-post, or scrawl a caricature. He cannot make up his mind to derive any benefit from so pitiful and disgusting a source.

Pundit Mark Shields said early last evening that in his speech to the Democratic Convention Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy would serve as a "character witness" for presidential candidate John Kerry. This was a singularly unfortunate choice of words.

First, a character witness is usually summoned by the defense to testify on behalf of someone accused of a crime. Second, if I were on trial, I would want my character witnesses themselves to be individuals of sterling character, something which Kennedy manifestly is not.

Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette. Reflections in Cultural History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), pp. 171-172:

In a tract of 1795, J.G. Heinzmann listed the physical consequences of excessive reading: "susceptibility to colds, headaches, weakening of the eyes, heat rashes, gout, arthritis, hemorrhoids, asthma, apoplexy, pulmonary disease, indigestion, blocking of the bowels, nervous disorder, migraines, epilepsy, hypochondria, and melancholy."

Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. 41 (tr. T.G. Rosenmeyer):

We find it difficult to understand how the gods of one's faith could be subjected to Aristophanic jests. But laughter is part of the meaning, the fruitfulness, the positive side of life, and it is therefore, in the eyes of the Greeks, more godlike than the sour solemnity which we associate with piety.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus, 2nd edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 133:

The occasional fun poked at the gods in comedy is no evidence against the religious conservatism of the common man; it is when religion is sure of itself that such amusement is permitted.

David Kovacs, The Heroic Muse (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1987), p. 75:

Archaic Greek paganism is by no means a contemptible religion. There are, to be sure, some comforts available to Jews and Christians which it does not provide. But the reverse is true as well.

The issue of education standards in Minnesota is a political landmine. The state's Profile of Learning, adopted in 1998, was jettisoned in 2003, and the legislature rejected the governor's choice for education commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, in 2004.

It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I offer my own controversial proposal for educational reform in Minnesota -- all students should be required to demonstrate proficiency in accordion playing and polka dancing before they are allowed to graduate from high school.

If this rule had been in effect earlier, perhaps the Gibbon Ballroom in Gibbon, Minnesota, home to polka lovers for decades, would not now be closing its doors.

For connoisseurs of the inimitable Theodore Dalrymple, here are some recent essays:

• Multiculturalism Starts Losing Its Luster
  
• Leftist of Privilege
  
• Selective Memory
  
• Addicted to Self
  
• Who Killed Childhood?
  
• London's Bonfire of the Vanities
  
• When Islam Breaks Down
  

Tolstoy's wife Sonya did not approve of his study of ancient languages. Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, tr. N. Amphoux (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), quotes her as follows:

"It's not for nothing that Greek is a dead language; it puts the mind in a coma." (p. 345)

He had become infatuated with Hebrew, which was to help him to a better understanding of the Gospels, and was taking lessons from Rabbi Minor. "Leo is learning the Hebraic language, to my intense regret," said Sonya. "He is wasting his energy on foolishness." (p. 451)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, October 1842:

Thou shalt read Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, Proclus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Aristotle, Virgil, Plutarch, Apuleius, Chaucer, Dante, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Jonson, Ford, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Bacon, Marvell, More, Milton, Molière, Swedenborg, Goethe.

Cronaca reports on the Heritage Lottery Fund's decision not to assist Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum in acquiring the Macclesfield Psalter ("the most important medieval illuminated manuscript found in Britain in living memory") at a Sotheby's auction:

Even worse, my source reports that the Lottery Fund's decision not to give the grant was ultimately based on reasons of extreme political correctness. To wit, that the Psalter would not be meaningful to non-Christians, and that its small size would make it too difficult to view by the wheelchair-bound (not to mention, one supposes, the blind -- or would that be, "differently sighted"?).

Apparently, the decision last year to fund the acquisition of Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks was "in part because [it was felt that] young single mothers could relate to the experience of suddenly finding themselves pregnant like the Virgin Mary".

England's loss is America's gain. The John P. Getty Museum of Los Angeles successfully bid for the Psalter.

Pliny, Letters 7.9.2-3 (tr. William Melmoth):

In the first place, then, I look upon it as a very advantageous practice (and it is what many recommend) to translate either from Greek into Latin or from Latin into Greek. By this means you acquire propriety and dignity of expression, and a variety of beautiful figures, and an ease and strength of exposition, and in the imitation of the best models a facility of creating such models for yourself. Besides, those things which you may possibly have overlooked in an ordinary reading over cannot escape you in translating: and this method will also enlarge your knowledge, and improve your judgment.

utile in primis, et multi praecipiunt, vel ex Graeco in Latinum vel ex Latino vertere in Graecum. quo genere exercitationis proprietas splendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi, praeterea imitatione optimorum similia inveniendi facultas paratur; simul quae legentem fefellissent, transferentem fugere non possunt. intellegentia ex hoc et iudicium acquiritur.