Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

Introduction

Opening Passage:

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father’s house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.

Mr. Campbell, the minister of Essendean, was waiting for me by the garden gate, good man! He asked me if I had breakfasted; and hearing that I lacked for nothing, he took my hand in both of his and clapped it kindly under his arm.

“Well, Davie, lad,” said he, “I will go with you as far as the ford, to set you on the way.” And we began to walk forward in silence.

“Are ye sorry to leave Essendean?” said he, after awhile.

Summary: At the death of his father, David Balfour is sent to the house of an uncle he had never known he had, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws. As he approaches the House of Shaws, he asks for directions, and everyone he talks to says dark things about it. His meeting of his uncle will have significant repercussions as Balfour is nearly killed, then sold into slavery, shipwrecked, and chased across the Highlands of Scotland. Along the way he will meet the Highland hero, Alan Breck Stewart, and with the help of the mercurial man's friendship come into his rightful inheritance.

Structurally, the novel builds itself around an actual historical event, the Appin Murder, which it lightly fictionalizes. The real events, more or less, are these. Campbell was the local Factor collecting rents from Stewart lands that had been seized by the English. He was shot by a sniper on May 14, 1752. The chief suspect was Alan Breck Stewart, who was known to be in Scotland collecting rents from the poor locals, who thus had to pay two rents, and recruiting soldiers for the French Crown; he had also previously threatened Campbell. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he eluded capture, so they arrested his foster father, James Stewart. James was tried, convicted, and hung for accessory to murder by a court that consisted of a Campbell for a judge (the Duke of Argyll) and a jury consisting of eleven members of the Campbell clan and four people dependent on the Duke of Argyll. Alan was tried and convicted in absentia. He vanished without a trace, and nobody knows what happened to him. It has come to be almost universally thought that he was probably innocent of the murder.

This being a major load-bearing element in the tale, it is not surprising, then, that Alan Breck Stewart ends up dominating most of the story. The novel in fact can be seen as a frame-story (David and his uncle) giving a context for a main story (David and Alan). But Stevenson manages to balance this by giving us a very independent-minded David, who is often by himself, and is not just a sidekick. The characterizations are, in fact, universally good; nearly every character is vivid and distinctive. David, too, is well done -- obviously intelligent and capable, but obviously seventeen.

Many of the passages in the work that I enjoyed long ago held up very well -- David on the tower stairs, the defense of the round house, and, in some ways the most masterful scene in the book, the contest between Alan Breck Stewart and Robin Oig. And the Highland atmosphere, sympathetic and yet sometimes frankly rendered, gives the whole tale an enduring charm.

Favorite Passage: This has pretty much always been my favorite passage:

...And presently he sat down upon the table, sword in hand; the air that he was making all the time began to run a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst with a great voice into a Gaelic song.

I have translated it here, not in verse (of which I have no skill) but at least in the king’s English. He sang it often afterwards, and the thing became popular; so that I have heard it and had it explained to me, many’s the time.

“This is the song of the sword of Alan:
The smith made it,
The fire set it;
Now it shines in the hand of Alan Breck.

“Their eyes were many and bright,
Swift were they to behold,
Many the hands they guided:
The sword was alone.

“The dun deer troop over the hill,
They are many, the hill is one;
The dun deer vanish,
The hill remains.

“Come to me from the hills of heather,
Come from the isles of the sea.
O far-beholding eagles,
Here is your meat.”

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

Dashed Off XXVII

causation, signification, reception

"Envy seeks to have good for oneself without any companion, or exclusively; wrath seeks to have good without any opposition, or imperturbably; sloth seeks to have good without any work, or effortlessly." Bonaventure

relics: portable contiguities, naturally linked resemblances,narrative connection in social convention

arguments for abstraction
(1) chiliagon
(2) indifference
(3) ideas with no adequate phantasm
(4) infinites

awareness of external world vs conceptionalization of it as external world

infinite regress argument from material signs to formal signs

Cain sacrificed the fruit of his work; he did not sacrifice his plants or fields. But Abel sacrificed not merely the wool of the lamb but the lamb itself.

Hoping for good involves preparing against evil that opposes it.

definite descriptions and the notion of a limit

The copy principle cannot be based on an induction of successful empirical analyses, because there is no reason to regard the empirical analyses as complete successes without the copy principle.

Material objects are substances known through sensible experience.

The more one presses a 'bundle' account of objects, the harder it is to see how it is anything other than a substance account under a different metaphor. The sole difference of metaphor seems to be about unity, and yet to apply either requires attributing to things the unity they have in reality.

accounts of salvation // accounts of truth as end

modalities arising from causal potential
modalities arising from uncertainty (incompleteness)

Newman's Notes and liturgical change and degeneration

Human civilization is formed by human beings and various secondary species organized to serve human ends.

The entire liturgy of the Church proclaims divine love. All in it is a divine caress. The history of our friendship with god is always linked to the particular cultural contexts in which we pray. From great feasts to the least sacramentalia, the liturgy is a constant source of wonder and awe.
The ecclesial liturgy as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, exhibits the inexhaustible riches of God. Its multiplicity and variety come from the intention of the first agent, who willed that what was lacking to one representation of divine things might be supplied by another, inasmuch as no creaturely expression on its own could fittingly represent divine things.
This liturgy as a whole not only manifests God but is indwelt by His presence. The Spirit of Life moves in the living activity of the liturgy and divinizes us in doing so, like the heart sending out life to all parts of the body.
Because of this, the whole Church in all its members is linked together by unseen bonds and forms a kind of divine family, a sublime communion that is infused, from beyond itself, with divine charity. The full treasury of the liturgy cannot be opent to any of us if our hearts lack the love for others that is implicated in love for God. For the living Body of Christ has only one Heart, joining and unifying us all.
The liturgy is a common good, the patrimony of the whole Church, and the responsibility of everyone. If we take special interest in any one form of it, it is only to care for it for the good of all.

liturgy and the natural method of learning theology

the three modes of instruction in morals
(1) preceptive
(2) admonitory, hortatory, promissory
(3) narrative (examples)

Cynicism does not tend to wit, for it does not tend to the playful reasoning that is wit's most natural form. It may stumble on to the witty, the thing that could be said with play, but it never comes to it as being said with play.

analogical cascade from argument to argument
analogy as a method of conceptual analysis

prayers as prehensive

To have Fortune for a friend,
always think upon the end.

deacon : priest : bishop :: baptized : confirmed : ordained

Presiding in charity is necessarily an act of universal scope.

For mental intentionality to be explicable, there must be either a broader genus of intentionality or a genus broader than intentionality, of which intentionality is a species. And it seems that this would have to be causal disposition.
Note, incidentally, that Hume's account of causation takes intentionality to be primitive and makes causation a species of it.

God grants aridity that we might not merely think and act as Christians but settled down to be Christians.

bishop	priest	deacon
love	knowledge	worship
command	execute	defend
rule	reveal	assist

Communion is at once an act of love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self: of self, for it refreshes us; of neighbor, for it is communing in a single sacrament; of God, for it is a sacrifice offered for union with God.

the aridities and consolations of the Church herself

Where it is not simply caused by the pressure of the moment, anxiety is most often a sign of misplaced priorities.

Peter and Paul as representing two aspects of Catholicity (for all and to all)

Gregory of Narek reads the Song of Songs as an allegorical presentation of salvation history, beginning with Adam in Paradise, and his fall, then passing to the coming of Christ, then to the spread of the faith through the world, and ending with the second coming.

Scripture as icon, sacramental, canon, and common prayer

God gave even to Himself the destiny of being a sign of God.

the six days of creation and the structure of conversions

sola scriptura // copy principle
(cp Feyerabend)

Every opportunity is an opportunity for the gospel; for good news for all is good news always.

Every deed corrosive to society that is widely accepted is so because it is supported by an appeal to faith, an appeal to consistency, and an appeal to consequences; for corrupt moral reasoning follows the most powerfully affecting lines of good moral reasoning.

the consensus of primary liturgies as infallible teaching (near-consensus of major liturgies as authoritative teaching)
- the complication is movable and variable parts, which are clearly important but make it harder to determine exactly what counts as agreement
- there are also the usual comparative problems arising from different force in translation, variations that obscure rather than eliminate the consensus, and liturgical corruptions and confusions
- the safest thing is perhaps to start with basic elements and general structure, but even there much of the consensus will be implied or implicated
- an interesting question is how genealogy of liturgy enters into this

sacramental character as a form of participation, in some way, in the Magisterium

teaching acts of the whole Church
(1) the people receiving their inheritance (e.g., in respecting our predecessors)
(2) the people acting together (e.g., praying together as Church)
(3) the bishops acting together as bishops, properly speaking
(3a) informally (e.g., in the harmony of their everyday episcopal acts)
(3b) formally (e.g., in ecumenical council)
(4) the Pope acting from the chair of Peter

Never spend more time complaining about something that you spend praying.

the Catholic unfaithful

docetism // sola scriptura
(they are basically both sola positions motivated by a concern for purity, of Christ in one and of Scripture in the other)

The simple summative account of group intentionality cannot distinguish accidental from important unities; this is a problem more complex summative accounts do not seem to avoid.

An account of group intentionality should begin with an account of group causation.

collective intentionality // emergence // organismic activity

married love as a sort of conversion

baptism/confirmation : wedding
unction : supprot in sickness and in death
eucharist : shared life
penance : forgiveness of fault and acts of mercy
orders : domestic church
matrimony : parenthood

the ostiarial ministry of priests and deacons
the ostiary as the seal of the scroll and the material affects of the Church

the infinite regress objection to the immaculate conception (e.g., Bernard Ep 174)

meals of fish in the gospel as representing proclamation of Scripture

"When people submit to force, they do so unwillingly because they are not strong enough. When people submit to the transforming influence of morality they do so sincerely, with admiration in their hearts." Mencius IIB3

three forms of necessary truth
(1) A is quasi-integral part of what it is to be a world (truths about world-ness)
(2) A is subjective part of being a world (truths about kinds of worlds)
(3) A is potential part of being a world (truths about what follows given a world)

The wrong kind of victory is the beginning of the worst kind of defeat.

OGE Scandal

It sometimes seems these days like the world has contracted some form of insanity. According to this ThinkProgress article, someone at the U.S. Office of Government Ethics was making mocking tweets, on the USOGE twitter account, about Donald Trump:

The Office of Government Ethics, which is responsible for ensuring executive branch personnel don’t run afoul of conflict of interest laws, has been pressuring Trump to place his fortune in a blind trust, like virtually every president before him. But Trump has thus far refused — and in his Wednesday tweetstorm, he purposefully did not say he plans on actually divesting from his own company.

That omission was not lost on whomever manages the OGE’s official Twitter account. Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the OGE shot off a series of tweets mock-congratulating Trump for putting his conflicts of interest to rest by divesting from his company, which Trump very much did not do....

The tweets first appeared Wednesday morning, but were initially deleted before being re-posted shortly before 1:00pm, according to The Washington Post. There were nine similarly flippant tweets in all from the OGE, an uncharacteristic departure from its usual social media strategy of sharing such pressing updates as “OGE launches new Confidential Financial Disclosure Guide for OGE Form 450.”

The full tweets were (I've only been able to find seven, though):

.@realDonaldTrump OGE applauds the "total" divestiture decision. Bravo!
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

.@realDonalTrump As we discussed with your counsel, divestiture is the way to resolve these conflicts.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump OGE is delighted that you've decided to divest your businesses. Right decision!
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest . Good call!
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump this aligns with OGE opinion that POTUS should act as if 18 USC 208 applies. https://t.co/T6nNUPxFwp
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump this divestiture does what handing over control could never have done.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump - we told your counsel we'd sing your praises if you divested, we meant it.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) November 30, 2016

The USOGE later confirmed that the tweets, which struck people as bizarre, were authentic:

Like everyone else, we were excited this morning to read the President-elect's twitter feed indicating that he wants to be free of conflicts of interest. OGE applauds that goal, which is consistent with an opinion OGE issued in 1983. Divestiture resolves conflicts of interest in a way that transferring control does not. We don't know the details of their plan, but we are willing and eager to help them with it.

This statement, of course, doesn't clarify anything at all, and looks very much like a bad attempt to save face over someone's stupid decision.

It shouldn't have to be said, but unfortunately in this political environment apparently does, that such an action is obviously a serious violation of basic principles of government ethics. The USOGE exists to give guidelines to civil servants on conflicts of interest and to assist Congress and the President in reducing and eliminating conflicts of interest for appointees. It only has authority to advise, train, and provide information; it does not have authority to enforce the guidelines it gives nor to pressure anyone to follow them -- that is under the authority of other agencies. What is more, the President is not subject to normal conflict of interest statutes (which govern civil servants and political appointees), nor normal ethical guidelines (which emanate from the Office of the President itself and thus are not superior to it). As noted in the opinion the tweets reference, the President is not in any way bound by anything that the OGE's province covers, even though it is a good idea in general for the President to lead by example on these matters. The OGE thus does not have any authority at all in this matter except to advise. Likewise, it is not an agency which has the authority to investigate, and therefore to evaluate, the ethical situation of the Presidency; it is an advisory body that should be giving advice to Trump and to the White House and to Congress, and not mouthing off in public.

What is more, while a President-Elect will soon be President, he is not yet; he is still a private citizen, not the holder of a constitutional or statutory office. It is utterly inappropriate for the USOGE to discuss a private citizen's affairs in public in this way, without full authorization to do so. Not only that, but this kind of evaluation is entirely unprofessional, because the USGOE has not seen anything of Trump's actual plan, and it is utterly unprofessional to use an official medium of government communication to pronounce on a matter that has not undergone an appropriate and official process of evaluation. Nor is the tone of these tweets professionally appropriate to the situation. Nothing whatsoever about this behavior is in any way acceptable, especially in an agency serving such an essential function in the preserving the ethical integrity of the civil service itself.

The election of Trump was not a holiday from sanity. The obligations of citizens and civil servants are as they ever were. Honor is still honor, virtue is still virtue, moral law is still moral law. As they always have been, reason is reason and truth is truth. There is no excuse for such failures of good sense.

A New Poem Draft

Autumns

The oak leaves now cover browning grass,
brown upon brown mixed with green,
but the verdure too will soon pass,
and the oak leaves crumble, and not be seen.

And the path I now walk will fade away,
the paving devoured by rain and wind,
and my companions will soon be yesterdays
as I walk without kin and without friend.

And my skin will be weathered in the storm,
and my eyes dimmed by wear of time;
my bones to dry dust will be reformed
and blown on the breeze to better clime.

The oak leaves that curl upon the ground
are the dust of the paths on which we tread;
and our mission in life cannot be found
except by walking the road laid by the dead.

Nor can seeking hearts find lasting peace
as they rumble like drums or motor cars,
but only when quietly they cease,
to pave future paths beneath the stars.

To Be What They Seemed

Sonnet XXVI from the Portuguese
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then thou didst come---to be,
Belovèd, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendours (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants:
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

The Most Basic Element of Guarding Democracy

A nice post by MrD:

We talk about the importance of guarding democracy, and it is important, but the first and most basic element of that is wanting democracy in the first place.

The Tendency of Popular Governments

We speak not lightly of the people; we have no disposition to depreciate their intelligence or the general correctness of their motives; but they are almost always the dupes of unprincipled demagogues. If the good sense, if the practical wisdom, if the moral honesty of the people could always be rendered available, - if the appeal could always be made to their reason instead of their passions, to their judgments instead of their caprices,- our estimate of their capacity for self-government would be as fa­vorable as that professed by our democratic friends. But we must always bear in mind that man has fallen, that his nature has been corrupted, and that, collectively as well as individually, the people are prone to evil, and that continually. When they resist their inclinations, silence the clamor of their appetites and passions, and listen only to the voice of reason, which, though obscured by the fall, yet survives in every man, they in general take correct views and come to safe conclusions; but they listen far more readily to appetite and passion, and follow with far greater facility the suggestions of corrupt desires than the sober lessons of reason. To do evil demands no violence to natural inclination; to practise virtue always demands an effort. This is true of every one of the people individually, and therefore must be true of the whole collectively. Hence it follows that the demagogues, though but small men themselves, have always more power with the people than have wise and virtuous statesmen, and all popular governments have a tendency to become the exponents of popular corruption instead of popular reason and virtue.

Orestes Brownson, "The Republic of the United States", Brownson's Quarterly Review, April 1849.

Constitutions and Majorities

In my theory of government, the constitution is itself ultimate: for it is not the written instrument, but is the actual constitution or organization of the state. It is the sovereign, and, when wisely adapted to the real character of the country, the genius and pursuits of the people, it is always self-sufficing. But my Democratic friends who oppose me seem to me to regard the constitution merely as a written instrument drawn up by the people, and alterable at their pleasure, and, as some of them have contended in the case of Rhode Island, alterable at the pleasure of a bare majority ; and this bare majority coming together informally, and acting with out any regard to its provisions. If this be so, what restraint can the constitution impose on the will of the majority? A constitution that cannot govern the people as well as the individual, the city as well as the citizen, obviously is no restraint on the sovereign power; but, whatever its provisions, does in reality leave the sovereign power absolute, and therefore is, as I have said, as good as no constitution at all. The will of the people, not the constitution, nor the will of the people expressed only through the constitution, but the will of the people unorganized, independent of the constitution, is in this case the true sovereign, and therefore may at any time rightfully override the constitution itself. This is to bring us under absolute government, from which nothing but a constitution in the other sense, a constitution or organization of the body politic, can relieve us.

Orestes Brownson, "Popular Government", Democratic Review, May 1843.

Music on My Mind

"Guantanamera", The Sandpipers. The lyrics, of course, are culled from various poems by José Martí, arguably the greatest Cuban poet. This version skips the third verse, which is the first stanza of what is actually the most famous poem, and a gem worth recording in its own right:

Cultivo una rosa blanca
(Versos sencillos XXXIX)
by José Martí

Cultivo una rosa blanca
en junio como enero
para el amigo sincero
que me da su mano franca.

Y para el cruel que me arranca
el corazón con que vivo,
cardo ni ortiga cultivo;
cultivo la rosa blanca.

My rough translation:

I grow a white rose
in June and January alike
for the sincere friend
who gives me his open hand.

And for the cruel one who rips out
the heart with which I live,
neither thistle nor nettle do I grow;
I grow the white rose.

Saint James Cut-in-Pieces

Although it's liturgically superseded because of Sunday, today is the memorial of an interesting saint: St. James the Mutilated, usually known in the West as St. James Intercisus. Intercisus is Latin for 'severed', i.e., cut into separate pieces.

According to legend, St. James Intercisus was a Persian soldier in the army of Yazdegerd I. Yazdegerd was a fairly peaceful king, all told, but completely incapable of handling the rising religious tensions in the Sassanid Empire. The result was that while he was fairly generous to Christians at first, he began cracking down on them very hard late in his reign. St. James was from a Christian family, but he apostatized when Yazdegerd began taking harsher measures against Christians.

Yazdegerd eventually died (possibly assassinated, but nobody knows for sure), and he was succeeded by Bahram V, who intensified the persecutions of Christians. In the meantime, St. James returned to the faith (his family had always been constant), and when interrogated about it, insisted that he was Christian. He was therefore executed, and the form of the execution gives him his name: he was cut into twenty-eight pieces, starting from the extremities. He survived the loss of his limbs, and was killed by the final cut, which beheaded him.

The persecutions under Bahram were very severe, as one might expect from St. James's case, and a number of people who were marked for execution escaped and fled to the Roman Empire, which had been engaged in a series of diplomatic spats with the Sasanians. When the Persians came to demand that they be returned, Theodosius II decided it was better just to go to war. Thus began the Roman–Sassanid war of 421–422. The Romans had the upper hand throughout most of the war, but invasions by the Huns forced them to fall back and settle for a peace treaty guaranteeing freedom of worship.