Dream of the Rood

'Rood', of course, is a synonym for 'cross'. The Dream of the Rood is one of the classics of Old English literature. It transfers the typical images and verbal associations of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry to the Crucifixion, thus treating Christ and the Cross (which is personified and from whose view we see the events of the Crucifixion) as warriors who heroically transform death into victory. The author of the poem is unknown; it has in the past been attributed to Caedmon and to Cynewulf, both great poets, but this seems to be little more than scholarly guessing. The poem itself is notable for being a beautiful and unusual expression of orthodox Christology.

Lo! I will tell of the best of dreams,
what I dreamed in the middle of the night,
after the speech-bearers were in bed.
It seemed to me that I saw a very wondrous tree
lifted into the air, enveloped by light,
the brightest of trees. That beacon was all
covered with gold. Gems stood
beautiful at the surface of the earth, there were five also
up on the central joint of the cross. All those fair through eternal decree gazed
[on] the angel of the Lord. [It] was certainly not a wicked person’s gallows there,
but holy spirits, men over the earth,
and all this famous creation gazed on him....

The most excellent tree then began to speak the words:
It was years ago (that, I still remember),
that I was cut down from the edge of the forest,
removed from my foundation. Strong enemies seized me there,
they made me into a spectacle for themselves, commanded me to lift up their criminals.
Men carried me there on their shoulders, until they set me on a hill,
many enemies secured me there. Then I saw mankind’s Lord
hasten with great zeal, that he wished to climb upon me.
There, I did not dare break to pieces or bow down
against the Lord’s words, when I saw the surface
of the earth tremble. I was able to destroy
all the enemies, nevertheless, I stood firmly.
The young hero stripped himself then (that was God Almighty),
strong and resolute. He ascended onto the high gallows,
brave in the sight of many, there, [since] he wished to release mankind.
I trembled when the man embraced me. However, I dared not bow down to the earth,
fall to the surface of the earth, but I had to stand fast.
I was raised [as a] cross. I lifted up the mighty king,
the lord of the heavens; I dared not bend down.
They pierced me with dark nails. On me, the scars are visible,
open malicious wounds. I did not dare injure any of them.
They mocked both of us, together. I was all drenched with blood,
covered from the man’s side, after he had sent forth his spirit.
I endured many cruel events
on that hill. I saw the Lord of Hosts
severely stretched out. Darkness
had covered the bright radiance
of the Lord’s corpse with clouds, a shadow went forth,
dark under the sky. All of creation wept,
they lamented the king’s death. Christ was on the cross.

You can read the rest of the poem at this fascinating site, run by Mary Rambaran-Olm, from whose translation the above excerpt was taken, in the hope that you might be intrigued enough to explore some of what she has put up.

The Road to San Jose

John Haugeland, Having Thought, Harvard UP (Cambridge, MA: 1998) 234:

Now let me tell you how I get to San Jose: I pick the right road (Interstate 880 south), stay on it, and get off at the end. Can we say that the road knows the way to San Jose, or perhaps that the road and I collaborate? I don't think this is as crazy as it may first sound. The complexity of the road (its shape) is comparable to that of the task and highly specific thereto; moreover, staying on the road requires constant high-bandwidth interaction with this very complexity. In other words, the internal guidance systems and the road itself must be closely coupled, in part because much of the "information" upon which the ability depends is "encoded" in the road. Thus, just as an internal map or program, learned and stored in memory, would (pace Simon) have to be deemed part of an intelligent system that used it to get to San Jose, so I suggest that the road should be considered integral to my ability.

In effect, we can say that the road to San Jose is a set of directions to San Jose laid down in the real world rather than on a map. Thus, to the extent there is an analogy between the road and the roadmap; and between the roadmap and the internal map in the memory of the person who knows the way to San Jose, such that any one of these three has the potential to serve exactly the same function in my ability to get to San Jose in the manner of an intelligent person.

Formal Logic and Good Reasoning

Richard Chappell has a good post on formal logic and philosophy. An excerpt:

My tentative (and admittedly under-informed) opinion is that logical formalisms are rarely indispensible, and often well dispensed with. As a rule of thumb, I'd be wary of using formalisms as the central means of making your case. Their best use may instead be to provide a bare-bones outline of the argument's structure, as a supplement to the argument given in prose. Formalism may prove helpful, but it shouldn't be considered sufficient, since there is more to good reasoning than logic alone.

Good Friday

Good Friday

He is despised and rejected of men. Isaiah liii. 3.

Is it not strange, the darkest hour
That ever dawn’d on sinful earth
Should touch the heart with softer power
For comfort, than an angel’s mirth?
That to the Cross the mourner’s eye should turn
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn?

Sooner than where the Easter sun
Shines glorious on you open grave,
And to and fro the tidings run,
"Who died to heal, is ris’n to save."
Sooner than where upon the Saviour’s friends
The very Comforter in light and love descends.

Yet so it is: for duly there
The bitter herbs of earth are set,
Till temper’d by the Saviour’s prayer,
And with the Saviour’s life-blood wet,
They turn to sweetness, and drop holy balm,
Soft as imprison’d martyr’s deathbed calm.

All turn to sweet—but most of all
That bitterest to the lip of pride,
When hopes presumptuous fade and fall,
Or Friendship scorns us, duly tried,
Or Love, the flower that closes up for fear
When rude and selfish spirits breathe too near.

Then like a long-forgotten strain
Comes sweeping o’er the heart forlorn
What sunshine hours had taught in vain
Of JESUS suffering shame and scorn,
As in all lowly hearts he suffers still,
While we triumphant ride and have the world at will.

His pierced hands in vain would hide
His face from rude reproachful gaze,
His ears are open to abide
The wildest storm the tongue can raise,
He who with one rough word, some early day,
Their idol world and them shall sweep for aye away.

But we by Fancy may assuage
The festering sore by Fancy made,
Down in some lonely hermitage
Like wounded pilgrims safely laid.
Where gentlest breezes whisper souls distress’d,
That Love yet lives, and Patience shall find rest.

O shame beyond the bitterest thought
That evil spirit ever fram’d,
That sinners know what Jesus wrought,
Yet feel their haughty hearts untam’d—
That souls in refuge, holding by the Cross,
Should wince and fret at this world’s little loss.

Lord of my heart, by thy last cry,
Let not thy blood on earth be spent—
Lo, at thy feet I fainting lie,
Mine eyes upon thy wounds are bent,
Upon thy streaming wounds my weary eyes
Wait like the parched earth on April skies.

Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,
O let my heart no further roam,
‘Tis thine by vows, and hopes, and fears,
Long since—O call thy wanderer home;
To that dear home, safe in thy wounded side,
Where only broken hearts their sin and shame may hide.

John Keble, The Christian Year.

On Molinism and Scripture

In response to one of my old posts about Molinism, Will R. Huysman asks:

Dear Brandon,
Since Christ is truth itself [Jn 14:6], everything He says must be true. So any counterfactuals He states must be grounded. How is the non-Molinist to respond to the following scientia media prooftexts; i.e. what grounds these counterfactuals such that they belong only to natural knowledge, free knowledge, or some combo of the two and not middle knowledge?

Jeremiah 23:21-22: "I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, then they would have proclaimed My words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings."

Matthew 11:21-24: "Woe to you, Chora'zin! woe to you, Beth-sa'ida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Caper'na-um, will you be exalted to Heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you."

1 Corinthians 2:8: "None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

Happy St. Patrick's Day and God bless!

Will,

I wouldn't presume to speak for all non-Molinists, but there are a number of different ways these can be understood. For instance, the claim about Capernaum can be easily understood as a figure of speech about how hard-hearted Capernaum is. That is, it's a vivid way of saying that Capernaum is even more hard-hearted than Sodom, because it lacks the excuse Sodom had that it did not see the great wonders that Jesus performed in Capernaum. Similarly with Tyre and Sidon (indeed, note that the conclusion drawn from it is that Tyre and Sidon will be better off in the day of judgment, namely, they will have more excuse). Jesus does use a great many figures of speech, so there is nothing untoward about this; moreover, we ourselves regularly use counterfactuals as figures of speech, i.e., indirect ways of making non-counterfactual points. No doubt preferences will differ, but this strikes me as easily the most plausible interpretation of these claims.

In Jeremiah 23, I think it's pretty clear from the whole context that vv. 21-22 are not making a counterfactual prediction but simply reiterating a point that is made elsewhere in the chapter in many different ways using many different images: namely, that these false prophets are not doing Israel any good, precisely because they are false prophets. If they were true prophets, they would be doing God's people good by doing the sorts of things and saying the sorts of things that generally lead people to turn away from evil. Further, given that the lead-up to the passage is about how the false prophets have led the people astray, it is possible to interpret the verses as saying that if they were true prophets they would lead people away from the things that they led them to.

In 1 Corinthians 2, it must be understood that this is a negative claim, and thus it does not tell us what the rulers of the age would have done. Rather, what it tells us is that crucifying Christ is inconsistent with understanding the message of wisdom; which makes sense, because to understand the message of wisdom (as the chapter fairly clearly suggests) requires having the Spirit of God. You can think of it in terms of a parallel. A person who truly has the virtue of courage will not act cowardly; acting cowardly is inconsistent with having that virtue. But it does not follow that there is any particular fact of the matter about what that person will do: he can do anything consistent with the virtue of courage. If there is one and only one thing consistent with the virtue of courage, there is no choice, just consent following from his nature and disposition. Then the need for middle knowledge collapses; we are just dealing with natural knowledge. Similarly, if a person has the Spirit of God, there would be an inconsistency in doing anything that could only be done if they didn't have the Spirit; but it does not follow that there is any particular fact of the matter about the many things they can do that are consistent with having the Spirit.

Cheers,
Brandon

Martha Farah on Neuroethics and Other Minds

Martha J. Farah, Neuroethics and the Problem of Other Minds:

The problem of other minds is a consequence of mind–body dualism, specifically the idea that there is no necessary relation between physical bodies and their behavior, on the one hand, and mental processes, on the other. Descartes’ famous “I think therefore I am” expresses a basis for certainty concerning the existence of our own mental life. But on what basis can we infer that other people have minds? Descartes invoked the benevolence of God as a reason to trust our inferences regarding other minds. Why would God have given us such a clear and distinct apprehension of other minds if they did not exist [13]?

Non-theological attempts to justify our belief that other people have minds have generally rested on a kind of analogy, also discussed by Descartes and emphasized by Locke [26] and other British empiricists such as J.S. Mill [29]. The analogy uses the known relation between physical and mental events in oneself to infer the mental events that accompany the observable physical events for someone else. For example, as shown in Fig. 1, when I stub my toe, this causes me to feel pain, which in turn causes me to say “ouch!” When I see Joe stub his toe and say “ouch,” I infer by analogy that he feels pain.

The problem with this analogy is that it begs the question. Why should I assume that same behavioral–mental relations that hold in my case also hold in Joe’s? Joe could be acting and not really feel pain. He could even be a robot without thoughts or sensations at all. The assumption that analogous behavior–mental state relations hold for other people is essentially what the analogy is supposed to help us infer.

Two points:

(1) Descartes doesn't hold that we have a clear and distinct apprehension of other minds. He holds instead (in the Discourse) that we infer that people have minds from their flexible use of language and their rational behavior. He doesn't tell us in the Discourse what the status of this inference is; but (e.g.) Arnauld in his book on true and false ideas is easily able to adapt them into God-is-not-a-deceiver arguments, and that is reasonably plausible given other things Descartes says. But if we had a clear and distinct apprehension of other minds, we wouldn't need such arguments.

(2) Whatever problems the argument from analogy may have, question-begging is not one. "Why should I assume that same behavioral–mental relations that hold in my case also hold in Joe’s?" But, of course, you aren't assuming it; you are concluding it on the basis that they do hold in your case. The reasoning is causal (as Farah recognizes):

this kind of behavior : this kind of cause :: that extremely similar kind of behavior : X

Given that similars are similar, it is not unreasonable to conclude that X is an extremely similar kind of cause, particularly where there is no evidence of another cause of such behavior. That the inference is non-monotonic -- which is all the acting and thoughtless robot cases show -- is not to the point.

It's also worth pointing out that the analogical argument for other minds is not based on single bits of evidence (like Joe's saying 'ouch'), but on vast amounts of evidence (all our experience of ourselves and other people), and this same vast pool of evidence allows you to make the analogy much more sophisticated than can be done if you are considering only one brief instance. (Whether there is any plausibility to the claim that Joe is acting or that he's really a thoughtless robot, i.e., whether these are live possibilities, is determined from the same pool of evidence. For that matter, so is the plausibility of the claim that the brain has something to do with mental function, which plays such a key role in Farah's argument later in the paper.)

But the paper is worth reading, and makes some interesting arguments.

Three Poem Drafts

Holy Wednesday

How gently falls the stroke of doom,
how swift the sprout of vice;
how quiet is the tread of gloom:
a man but asks the price --
the silver gained for traitor's guilt.
And what a paltry price!

The price for which to sell the world,
the price of devastation,
the price that soon a man will hurl
away in desolation:
but a little bag of coin
for the hope of every nation!

Yet are you any better here,
or, for that matter, I?
Too good to sell hope out of fear,
betray love lest we die?
Too wise to trade the deepest things
and some small pleasure buy?

And if someone were to catch your theft,
might they catch you in a lie,
a false heart asking, sly and deft:
"How could it be I?"
Knowing well your deepest guilt:
"Lord, I ask you, is it I?"

Ties that Bind
Cons. III m. 6

But one mortal earth-born race
springing from a single source;
but one Father for the world,
guiding all, each in its course,
giving rays to beaming sun,
giving horns to moon's soft light,
giving earth to mortal men,
giving stars to silky night.
In limbs of flesh he clothes the soul
that shimmers down from heaven's land,
giving noble issue forth
when a woman knows a man.
Can you boast of noble blood?
Look to where you first began,
you find the God who made all things
by word and will and secret plan;
and none there are who are not found
to be of sacred kin and line,
flowing from the single fount,
joined to all with ties that bind.

Hendiadys

The world, by some strange hendiadys,
split in two, though born as one,
is reflected as in a mirror
in the wave and glass of mind,
like two words conjoined in meaning,
one echoing in different from
the selfsame meaning of the other
with subtle, variant suggestion,
like argent silver of the moon.

Nemo and Outis Revisited

One of the most famous and influential logical puzzles of the past hundred and fifty years is Lewis Carroll's Barber-Shop Paradox. The puzzle is one about hypothetical propositions. The most general form of the puzzle is this:

Suppose these to be true:
(1) If C is true, then, if A is true, B is not true.
(2) If A is true, Bis true.
Can C be true?

This is often called the Barber-Shop Paradox because Carroll imagines Uncle Joe on the way to the barber-shop, where there are three barbers, named, Allen, Brown, and Carr, and where instead of 'true' we say 'out' and instead of "in" we say "out":

(1) If Carr is out, then, if Allen is out, Brown is in.
(2) If Allen is out, Brown is out.
Is Carr out?

Carroll argued this out with John Cook Wilson for nearly two years; Cook Wilson arguing that Carr can't be out (C can't be true), while Carroll claimed that he could be (C can be true). Carroll published some things on it in Mind; Venn wrote about it in Symbolic Logic, both Alfred Sidgwick and W.E. Johnson wrote articles about it in Mind, Bertrand Russell discussed it in The Principles of Mathematics. The standard view, which was Carroll's view (although he worried about certain aspects of it) and Russell's view, and the one everyone has taught to them these days, is that hypothetical propositions are material implications, and from this it follows fairly easily that Carr can be out of the shop. Cook Wilson eventually did come around to Carroll's view; after Carroll's death he wrote an article for Mind arguing that Carr could leave the shop.

In a number of Carroll's works he presents the dispute as a dispute between Nemo (who holds Cook Wilson's view) and Outis (who holds Carroll's view).

Nemo's argument is that (1) amounts to "If C is true then (2) is not true"; but (2) is true ex hypothesi. By modus tollens, C is not true.

Not so, says Outis. The two propositions, "If A is true, B is true," and "If A is true, B is not true" are compatible. What (1) and (2) together require is not that C not be true but that A and C not be true together because "B is true and "B is not true" are incompatible.

On the contrary, says Nemo, Outis is dividing the proposition incorrectly. The absurdity arises not from "B is not true" but from "If A is true, B is not true," and only the assumption that C is true creates the absurdity. Outis is illicitly interpreting (1) as "If C is true [and if A is true], then if A is true, B is not true."

One fun thing to do, if you like logical games, is to extend the debate out as far as you can -- keep the back-and-forth between Nemo and Outis going on as long as you can, making the arguments as plausible as you can.

Of course, on any decent interpretation of hypothetical or conditional propositions, Outis is right. The reason often put forward for this, as noted above, is that "If p, q" is to be interpreted as a material conditional (i.e., as just saying "it's not the case that both p and not-q are true"). But it turns out that Outis's position does not require that interpretation. It's the right position for strict implication, as well, for instance. I have played a lot of Nemo-and-Outis, toying with different interpretations of conditionals, and in every single variation that I have considered Outis wins. The reason appears to be this: Nemo's position requires two different interpretations of the conditional, one for the larger conditionals (1) and (2), and a different one for the embedded conditional ("if A is true, B is not true" in (1)). So if you have a single consistent interpretation for indicative conditionals, Outis is always right. Even for some double interpretations (where embedded conditionals are interpreted in a completely different way than non-embedded conditionals) Nemo's position collapses. But the real question, one to which I don't have an answer, is: are there any double interpretations of conditionals that are not ad hoc (i.e., that could be applied plausibly to at least a small collection of real examples other than Barber Shop problems) on which Nemo's position would beat Outis's?

That Were a Present Far Too Small

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God.
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o'er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Isaac Watts (1707). This is one of my favorite hymns. The Northern Irish singer Kathryn Scott has a good version of it.

Notes and Links

* There has been a lot of fuss over the remarks of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr. recently. I don't really approve of pastors using shock rhetoric to make points; I think it usually unwise, and I think pastors who use it need to take responsibility for the fact that their using it will reflect on others besides themselves (and I don't think most do). But my view of the fuss over the "God damn America" comment is pretty well summarized by Ralph Luker's post on the subject. Obama's response is here. I didn't listen to the speech at all; reading the transcript, it's pretty, but I actually don't think it particularly good, considered as a response to the issue. If (unlike me)you take the issue seriously, I don't think the speech really addresses it adequately; if you never thought it was a serious problem in the first place, you'll probably like it. But it's not my view that matters in this case, and the speech seems generally to have gone over well.

* Currently Reading:

Colwell-Chanthanphonh and Ferguson, Virtue Ethics and the Practice of History: Native Americans and Archaeologists along the San Pedro Valley of Arizona (PDF)
Joseph Alan Jackson, Democracy, Tradition, and the Local Community (PDF)
Jack Russell Weinstein, Adam Smith and the Problem of Neutrality in Contemporary Liberal Theory
Arto Laitinen, Rationality and Evaluative Frameworks
Andrew Aberdein, The Uses of Argument in Mathematics (PDF)
Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties (PDF)

* Fr. Michael J. McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, was made Venerable recently.

* A discussion of the "generic naked public square" thesis -- i.e., the claim that in the public square we should only use reasons that are public, in some sense or other of the term:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Discussion at "What's Wrong with the World?"

* American views on sin, according to a poll.

* Michael Liccione has an excellent post on moral theology.

Light to the Eye of the Intellect

With this light that is given to the eye of the intellect, Thomas Aquinas saw Me, wherefore he acquired the light of much science; also Augustine, Jerome, and the doctors, and my saints. They were illuminated by My Truth to know and understand My Truth in darkness. By My Truth I mean the Holy Scripture, which seemed dark because it was not understood; not through any defect of the Scriptures, but of them who heard them, and did not understand them. Wherefore I sent this light to illuminate the blind and coarse understanding, uplifting the eye of the intellect to know the Truth.

from The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena

Holy Monday

Beneath Thy Cross

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Christina Rossetti.

Palm Sunday

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

But here it is we, and not the martyr, who face the temptation. In the region of dissimilitude it is always Palm Sunday.

The Feast of Reason and the Flow of the Soul

From Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, II.1:

What? arm'd for Virtue when I point the pen,
Brand the bold front of shameless, guilty men,
Dash the proud Gamester in his gilded car,
Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a Star;
Can there be wanting, to defend Her cause,
Lights of the Church, or Guardians of the Laws?
Could pension'd Boileau lash in honest strain
Flatt'rers and bigots ev'n in Louis' reign?
Could Laureate Dryden Pimp and Fry'r engage,
Yet neither Charles nor James be in a rage?
And I not strip the gilding off a Knave,
Unplac'd, unpension'd, no man's heir, or slave?
I will, or perish in the gen'rous cause:
Hear this and tremble! you who 'scape the laws.
Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave
Shall walk in peace, and credit, to his grave.
To Virtue only and her friends a friend,
The World beside may murmur, or commend.
Know, all the distant din that world can keep
Rolls o'er my Grotto, and but sooths my sleep.
There, my retreat the best companions grace,
Chiefs out of war, and Statesmen out of place.
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
The Feast of Reason and the Flow of soul:
And He, whose lightning pierc'd th'Iberian lines,
Now forms my Quincunx, and now ranks my Vines,
Or tames the Genius of the stubborn plain,
Almost as quickly, as he conquer'd Spain.

Envy must own, I live among the Great,
No Pimp of pleasure, and no Spy of state,
With eyes that pry not, tongue that ne'er repeats,
Fond to spread friendships, but to cover heats,
To help who want, to forward who excel;
This, all who know me, know; who love me, tell;
And who unknown defame me, let them be
Scriblers or Peers, alike are Mob to me.
This is my plea, on this I rest my cause —
What saith my Council learned in the laws?

The corresponding passage in Horace (John Conington's translation):

What? when Lucilius first with dauntless brow
Addressed him to his task, as I do now,
And from each hypocrite stripped off the skin
He flaunted to the world, though foul within,
Did Laelius, or the chief who took his name
Prom conquered Carthage, grudge him his fair game?

Felt they for Lupus or Metellus, when
Whole floods of satire drenched the wretched men?
He took no count of persons: man by man
He scourged the proudest chiefs of each proud clan,
Nor spared delinquents of a humbler birth,
Kind but to worth and to the friends of worth.
And yet, when Scipio brave and Laelius sage
Stepped down awhile like actors from the stage,
They would unbend with him, and laugh and joke
While his pot boiled, like other simple folk.
Well, rate me at my lowest, far below
Lucilius' rank and talent, yet e'en so
Envy herself shall own that to the end
I lived with men of mark as friend with friend,
And, when she fain on living flesh and bone
Would try her teeth, shall close them on a stone;
That is, if grave Trebatius will concur--