Bonaventure for Lent XXXIV

 Charity itself is the root, form, and end of the virtues, relating them all to the final end and binding them all to one another simultaneously and in orderly fashion. Hence charity is the weight of a properly ordered attraction and the bond of perfect union. It maintains order as regards the different objects of love, in our desire for them and their effect on us. At the same time it possesses oneness in the habit [of the infused virtue] by having only one end and one object which is most to be loved....

[St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium (5.8.5), Monti, tr., Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005), pp. 202-203.]

Dashed Off VII

This begins the notebook that was started in April 2023.

**********

 There are really only two plausible accounts of multiple discovery:
(1) the possible soultions are highly constrained by the problems themselves, so that insightful individuals working the same problems can come up with very similar solutions;
(2) there are really no multiple discoveries; what we call 'multiple discoveries' are really distributed parts ofa  diffused single discovery by the whole community.

Even where discoveries are made by reasoning (dialectic), uptake is always developed by means more broadly political (rhetoric) and popularized by means more imaginative and even fictional (poetics).

Promissory obligations are an appartus by which human beings attempt to imitate a divine reliability; indeed, in oaths and vows, traditionally speaking, they are a means to participate in a system grounded in divine reliability.

Explicit promises in general tend to obligate more than implicit promises.

In a promise to oneself, one represents oneself as two moral persons.

As regularity, especially among many things, is an effect, the regularlity theory of laws of nature requires something like a God.

Laws of nature may be
(1) necessary
(2) evolved
(3) freely chosen
--> (2) runs into the problem of Smolin's 'meta-laws dilemma', thus (2) has to reduce to (1), (3), or some combination of both. What is true of (2) covers all cases in which they are taken to arise by chance.
--> Given how laws of nature function in explanation, (1) seems to require that laws of nature have some kind of causal efficacy.

Biological parents have obligations to their children and therefore rights associated with fulfilling those obligations.

human species -> functional roles in surviving and thriving of species -> distinction of male and female -> need to support male & female in their species-function roles -> closest-fit sorting according to male and female

We cannot demonstrate wholly revealed doctrines, but we can sometimes demonstrate the intellectual attractions of such doctrines.

In the confessional we become officers of the court of mercy.

the primary modalities of genuine love
(1) amor gratuitus
(2) amor debitus
(3) amor ex utroque permixtus
-- love originating, love mediating, love returning

The notion that you can have  good homily, fulfilling the actual purpose of homilies, in ten minutes, is usually absurd; it requires rhetorical skills most people cannot be expected to have. One sees this problem in Evangelii Gaudium, which requires a standard of preaching for priests that cannot possibly admit of general implementation, in which priests are expected to give text-anchored short sermons that capture the unifying insights of profound texts in a clear and accessible way so as to be relevant to the particular needs of their parishioners, using vivid images with strong emotional effect, at every Mass. Professional orators with teams of support could not achieve this. It may be an ideal at the limit, but it is not an actionable guide; good homilies will have highly variable relations to such an ideal, and trying to stuff every homily this way is a recipe for bad and confusing homilies. Better achieved basic expectations than bungled impossibilities. A good homily, content-wise, should do one or two of the following:
(1) proclaim the central truth of the gospel
(2) explain the sacraments
(3) address a problem or concern in the parish in light of the gospel
(4) explain the Scriptures
It should always be done in a way mindful that it is a discourse specifically preparing for communion, which is what distinguishes homily from other speeches on these subjects. Everything else --length, style, structure, particular aims, rhetorical apparatus of effect -- should simply be appropriate to its being a homily with that content.

Because of the configuration of rods and cones in the eye, we all approximate color blindness in our peripheral vision.

Whether one is speaking of dogs or of people, one trains *not* to do something by training to do something else. This is an important truth for self-improvement.

The common good of a community can be 'read' in an 'instrumentalist' way, an 'aggregative' way, or a 'distinctive' way; it is the same common good, and any limitations are in relying on only one reading.

"Love is a force of limitless expansiveness, and the church, founded upon love, must permeate the entire life of human society, all its relations and activity, descending into everythign an delevating everything to itself." Soloviev
"All that is good in man an in humanity is protected against distortion and perversion only in unity with Divinity."
"The intrinsic unity of the ecclesiastical hierarchy depends on its divine origin, and ecumenical councils and poples have served as the visible expression of this unity in the life of the church."
"Logic, historical experience, and the word of God teach us that the chief condition of *lasting power is truth*, that is, faithfulness to oneself, the absence of internal contradiction and bifurcation."
"The church, as an ecumenical or universal entity, that is, as the unity of everything with God, can only actually be realized through universal history -- in the entire aggregate of nations and times."

Beings of reason are the intellect drawing out what is virtually or eminently in causes (sometimes itself) so that they are actual objects.

translated being -- being understood on the model of other being, due to some structural or functional similairity (object seen through guise)
-- could perhaps also be called figurate being

A mode is said with regard to measure, either formally or effectively. Wherever something is received, it is received in some mode.

the magnanimity that 'dares to forgive' (Gibbon)

Parenthood is one of the fundamental modes of participating in any civil society.

Divine creation as the first substrate of all human communication, the primal making-common

"A verbum is nothing other than an expressed and expressive likeness conceived by the power of an intelligent spirit by which it knows itself or another." Bonaventure

Rabbi Hama b. R. Hanina (Sotah 14a) -- God is a consuming fire (Dt 4:24) therefore to walk with Shekhinah (Dt 13:5) requires walking after the middot, not His direct presence: clothe the naked (Gn 3:21), visit the sick (Gn 18:1), console mourners (Gn 25:11), bury the dead (Dt 34:6).

The end of the state is the common good of the civil society, but the state is not the exclusive means to that good, and it fails as means if it chokes out other means to the common good of civil society.

the work of art as practical instrumental conventional sign

"One cannot teach a truth clearly if one is actually thinking about the teaching and not about the truth." Chesterton
"It is impossible to ahve spiritual equality, just as it is impossible to have legal equality without a legal authority. For equality is not a chaos, it is a rank."

Peirce's Firstness is an availability, Secondness a response, Thirdness a coordination. (Cf. Peirce's own discriptions -- spontaneity, dependence, mediation.)

A symbol has relations to its components (universal grammar), to its objects (universal logic), and to other symbols in the same system of symbols (universal rhetoric).

practical signs that are episodic (stop sign) vs. those that are  narrative (recipe)

Computer programs are systems of narratives.

Caring for others can mostly be done only sporadically when not supported by a community of carers who can provide assistance, temporarily sub in, divide up labor,, facilitate fulfilling preconditions for care, etc.

Our inner circles of caring cannot be arbitrarily formed; they are often simply received, and even when formed are formed cooperatively.

Caring requires recognizing connections that already exist.

All covenants presuppose an aspect of the order of creation.

natural impression arguments for God's existence (cf. Bonaventure: desire for wisdom, desire for happiness, desire for peace, love of truth)

"...it is possible that something repugnant to fallen reason is consonant with innocent or elevated reason." Bonaventure

Church architecture should teach the imagination.

The ancient Church, as shown by its behavior, treated statements of neither council nor pope as definitive, but it did treat both as major anchoring points in a broader clarification, and as theose statements radicated, they became central pillars with respect to which others had to be assessed.

"A topos is a premise arising from a precept." Alexander of Aphrodisias

It is always a mistake to begin one's account of causation with assumptions about causation in general rather than with why an account of causation is needed.

(1) Natural selection guarantees the existence of a general functionality toward enduring.
(2) General functionalities are expressed through particular functions.
(3) Particular functions are specified by role in a system with general functionality.
(4) Particular functions are not wholly explained by general functionalities, and not reducible entirely to them.
(5) The systems within which particular functions may be defined are many; for instance, there are particular functions within organisms and particular functions within populations of organisms.
(6) Life functions through interaction with the environment may guarantee the existence of general functionalities toward contributing to the life of the organism, insofar as the relevant parts of the environment are in relation to the life function.
(7) Reason is a life function that guarantees the existence of the general functionality of contributing to rational roles in human life.

For a nominalist to talk of 'spacetime regions' is already to have stopped being a nominalist.

evidence as a function within general rational functionality

(1) Start with coherences in the world.
(2) These coherences verify some propositions, falsify others, and leave others neither verified or falsified.
(3) In these coherences, there can be relations of supposed coherence to presupposed coherences.
(4) If a is presupposed by b, b is not at-least-part of a.
(5) If a is presupposed by b and c is part of b, a is presupposed by c.
(6) If a is presupposed by b and b is presupposed by c, a is presupposed by c.
(7) If b is wholly contingent, there is an a such that a is presupposed by b.
(8) All parts of a necessary coherence are necessary.
(9) Every contingent coherence has a wholly contingent part.
(10) If there are any contingent coherences, the aggregate of all wholly contingent coherences is wholly contingent.
(11) If there are any contingent coherences, the aggregate of all wholly contingent coherences presupposes some necessary coherence.
(12) Any non-empty set of coherences can be aggregated into one coherence.
(13) A historical persistence is a series of coherence of a give type related by presupposition.

Bonaventure for Lent XXXIII

 ...God, the supreme good, is above us; our soul, an intrinsic good, is within us; our neighbor, a kindred good, next to us; and our body, a lesser good, below us. Therefore the proper order of loving is to love God first, more than all else and for his own sake; our soul second, less than God but more than any temporal good; our neighbor third, as much as ourselves, as a good on the same level; our body fourth, less than our soul, as a good of lesser degree. It is here also we should place our neighbor's body that, like our own, is a lesser good than our soul.

[St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium (5.8.3), Monti, tr., Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005), pp. 201-202.]

Bonaventure for Lent XXXII

 First of all, the soul must direct the beam of contemplation upon what is WITHIN itself, and behold how it was formed in the state of nature, deformed in the state of sin, and reformed in the state of grace. Next, the soul must turn the beam of contemplation upon what is WITHOUT itself, and recognize the transiency of worldly riches, the inconstancy of worldly honors, and the poverty of worldly glory. Then, the soul must turn the beam of contemplation upon what is BELOW itself and understand the inevitability of death for man, the awful severity of final judgment, and the intolerable cruelty of the pains of hell. Finally, the soul must turn the beam of contemplation upon what is ABOVE itself, and know and taste the priceless worth of heavenly joys, their inexpressible delightfulness, and their everlasting duration.

This, indeed, is the blessed cross with its branches pointing in four directions....

[St. Bonaventure, "On the Retracing of the Arts to Theology", in The Works of Bonaventure: Opuscula, Second Series (Volume III), de Vinck, tr., St. Anthony Guild Press (Paterson, NJ: 1966) pp. 36-37.

Which Majority Should Rule?

Daniel Wodak has a very interesting paper, Which Majority Should Rule? (PDF), in which he argues for the following position:

 POPULAR MAJORITARIANISM If the majority should rule, the option that won the most votes should win, as the popular majority must control how they are governed.

This is, as Wodak notes a position that is often said to be true, but often not defended and often implicitly or explicitly attacked; it is also not strictly true of most national election systems. Most legislatures in the free world, for instance, are elected on the basis of districts or ridings or wards, which often are divisions of even larger constitutional units like states or provinces. The U. S. House of Representatives, for instance, is elected not on the basis of pure majority in a popular vote but on the basis of districts of states, and a party controls the House (and therefore actually controls legislative powers of governance) not on the basis of votes but on the basis of districts won across all the states. The major opposing position to Popular Majoritarianism, and the one that Wodak primarily argues against, is Electoral Majoritarianism. 

Wodak unfortunately does not give any strict statement of Electoral Majoritarianism, but he associates it with Mill's description of common electoral systems as based not on rule by majority but rule by the majority of the majority. In effect, the idea is that if the majority should rule, the option that won the most districts on the basis of the most votes in each should win. An important aspect of this, which will be relevant to my comments, is that Electoral Majoritarianism can be seen as two-tier Popular Majoritarianism. You can in fact characterize many forms of Electoral Majoritarianism in the terms that Wodak uses to characterize Popular Majoritarianism, but for Electoral Majoritarianism, there are two kinds of voters in two kinds of elections: the individual voters (what we normally call voters) and the districts. The individual voters decide the vote of their district, and then the option that won the most district-votes wins. (It's less clear whether all forms of Electoral Majoritarianism can be characterized as such.)

I do not think that any of the arguments for Popular Majoritarianism are sound. It is particularly impossible, I think, to affirm Popular Majoritarianism on gounds of 'self-governance of the people' while also accepting the principle of representative government, because representative government is like Electoral Majoritarianism two-tier in a way that makes almost all, and perhaps all, of the arguments for Popular Majoritarianism easily adaptable into arguments against representative government; this is particularly true in a federal system. Representative government might not be logically inconsistent with Popular Majoritarianism as a general system, but I think it is practically inconsistent. 

One argument sometimes brought against Electoral Majoritarianism is that it violates what is sometimes called anonymity, the principle that the outcome of the election should not depend on which voters vote for or against. This is very important, because in fact most people who accept Electoral Majoritarianism do so precisely because they reject anonymity. For instance, in the United States our electoral system is at several different levels set up to obtain spread-around majority. In the United States, elections are run by states, with each state running its election its own way; the President Elect is the candidate who wins the majority of elections, as weighted by the Congressional Representation (and thus partly by the population) of the states that run them. The entire purpose of this is to guarantee that the President of the United States is not put into power entirely by the citizens of a few states. Virginia was the state that specifically worried the Founding Fathers: Virginia at the time the Constitution was ratified was approaching one-fifth of the entire population of the United States, with the next most populous states, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, each around 10%. (As a comparison, today California has about one-eighth of the U. S. population.) In any pure majority election, the interests specific to Virginia residents would pack around twice the weight of the interests of even a very populous state; and more than ten times the weight of the interests of the smallest states. For the Founders, it did matter which voters were voting, because voter interests mattered; a system in which large-state interests could swamp small-state interests was regarded as intolerable. But while the U. S. system is particularly devoted to the principle of a spread-around majority, other election systems do in fact tend to get divided up on principles that at least make a spread-around majority more likely (for at least some offices) than it would be under Popular Majoritarianism. Large-state and small-state, urban and rural, traditional ethnic and subnational groupings: there are lots of reasons why one would prefer that at least some offices are manned by people with broadly distributed support, and all of those reasons are reasons why one would reject anonymity. 

This is relevant to other arguments that Wodak considers, utilitarian and epistemic arguments. In fact, almost all utilitarian arguments for Popular Majoritarianism make the elementary mistake of assuming that successful-vote-in-a-single-election maximization is utility maximization; this is not a sense of 'utility' than anyone uses in any other context, and there is no reason why one would accept it unless one were already a Popular Majoritarian. Other, more natural conceptions of utility maximizations could, depending on the circumstances, just as easily conclude for a spread-around majority as a bare popular majority. Epistemic arguments usually run into analogous problems, since a concern that voter outcomes be not merely based on strongly shared judgment but also on well-rounded judgment might lead one to the spread-around majority conclusion -- if your interest is informed judgment, you want governing authorities who aren't merely judged by a lot of voters to be the preferable governing authorities, but are judged to be the preferable governing authorities by a lot of voters in a lot of different contexts with a lot of different backgrounds. Contrary to the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the probabilities of voters being right vary wildly and these probabilities are not independent of each other; you therefore want to dampen the extent to which a single very large group's biases could be biasing the whole result, and prefer a system that considers a lot of groups with different biases. (Wodak later considers something like this point, but claims that larger groups are more likely to be diverse, but (1) this is obviously not something that can just be accepted, because it depends on how the larger group forms, and large majorities do not form randomly; and (2) it is not likeliness of diversity but of politically relevant diversity that matters. This is what people mean when they say they don't want to be ruled from Los Angeles County; people in Idaho don't want their voice on farming policy to be swamped out by Californians thinking mostly about California, for instance. Indeed, I can guarantee you that you can get an anti-California popular majority by asking voters in every other state whether they want a system in which they can be consistently outvoted by Californians; they will, I am certain by a large majority, say no. We are already grouped politically by states, and this affects our interests on agriculture, industry, immigration, housing, and many other things, in a thousand different ways.)

The only arguments for Popular Majoritarianism really worth taking seriously -- and in practice, I think the ones that are most often actual reasons for accepting it, as opposed to an argument one could make in its favor -- are egalitarian arguments. Utilitarian and epistemic arguments about majority rule, I've suggested, only get Popular Majoritarianism as a conclusion if you are assuming something very much like Popular Majoritarianism to being with, and procedural arguments against Electoral Majoritarianism, like those based on anonymity, are the same. Although I will not go into it, I think Wodak's major negative argument against Electoral Majoritarianism, that it creates arbitrary or perverse results, is also question-begging; besides the fact that there are no unique solutions in electoral systems (even popular majority systems are affected by things like distance to polling station and ballot order), the 'arbitrariness' and 'perversity' classifications are based on the assumption that an electoral system should have the shape that results if you assume something like Popular Majoritarianism. However, I do think that people have independent reasons for accepting principles like "one person, one vote" and "every vote counts equally", reasons that do not necessarily depend on anything like Popular Majoritarianism. My view is that this is not necessarily a problem for Electoral Majoritarianism, which does not reject these ideas outright, but holds that they are true in being applied to particular contexts rather than universally, and most Electoral Majoritarianism has at least some concern with diachronic issues, which allows for the argument that while in any given election 'electoral influence' may be unequal, this is not a problem as long as the inequalities are transient rather than stable. But Wodak is right, I think, that at least many people's understanding of "every vote counts equally" directly implies something like Popular Majoritarianism, so that if your understanding of 'majority rule' is egalitarian in these ways, it does require that the most votes win.

Despite my disagreements, it is all in all a very nice paper, with the arguments mostly laid out very well. And more important than that, I think he has the stick by the right end, which is uncommon in these discussions. "Which majority should rule?" is indeed the key question of democracy; the correct answer, which is not Wodak's answer, is that it is the majority that, in the first and most important place, most likely avoids political breakdown and civil war, and, after that, gets us as close to the kinds of campaigns and compromises that give us some kind of general consensus on major policy issues, as far as possible. Numbers are going to be important to that, but mere numbers are not always going to be enough. But to see that we first need to be asking the right question.

Bonaventure for Lent XXXI

 The First Principle, being first, is supreme; being supreme, it is supremely good; being supremely good, it is supremely happy and supremely delighting; being supremely delightful, it is supremely to be enjoyed. Therefore, because it is to be supremely enjoyed, we must totally cling to it with love and rest in it as our final end.

[St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium (5.8.1), Monti, tr., Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005), p. 201.]

Links of Note

 * Roberta Ballerin, Ruth Barcan Marcus, at the SEP

* Gabriele Gava, Peirce on Kant's Refutation of Idealism (PDF)

* Christopher Byrne, Aristotle on Plato's Forms as Causes (PDF)

* David Polansky, The battles over beginnings, on Machiavelli, at "Aeon"

* Matthew Pianalto, Patience and Practical Wisdom (PDF)

* John Robson and Rebecca Wallbank, Aesthetic Testimony, at the SEP

* David A. Ciepley, The Juridical Person of the State: Origins and Implications (PDF)

* Daniel Neumann, Descartes' Experience of Freedom (PDF)

* Jennifer Ouellette and Sean Carroll, The Ars Technica guide to time travel in the movies

* Rachel Cohon, The Moral Sentiments in Hume and Adam Smith (PDF)

* Nathan Salmón, Fictitious Existence versus Nonexistence (PDF)

* Elizabeth VanKammen and Michael Rea, A Dilemma for Conferralism (PDF)

* Last Positivist, Facts vs. Opinions, at "The Sooty Empiric":

The American educational system teaches children to distinguish between "facts" and "opinions". A recent paper in Misinformation Review has even made mastery of this distinction a marker of civic political competence. Per this paper facts are those statements that "can be proved or disproved with objective evidence" whereas opinions are those statements that "depend on personal values and preferences". I think this is a bogus distinction and should not have any role as a marker of political competence or as part of children's education.

Bonaventure for Lent XXX

 ...a truth that is above or beyond reason is not a truth that is actually seen or apparent, but one that is hidden and extremely difficult to belive. Therefore, for our faith in such a truth to be firm, our soul must be lifted up by the light of truth and fortified by the testimony of authority. The first is realized through infused faith, the second by the weight of Scripture; both of these derive from the supreme truth: through Jesus Christ, who is Splendor and Word, and through the Holy Spirit, who manifests and teaches the truth, and also leads us to believe it. Authority, then, gives support to faith, and faith gives assent to authority.

[St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium (5.7.5), Monti, tr., Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005), p. 198.]

Music on My Mind

 

Vienna Teng, "My Medea".

Bonaventure for Lent XXIX

 ...the integrity of perfection necessarily requires a complete withdrawal from evil, a perfect progress in good, and a total repose in what is best. Now, evil may stem from the swelling of pride, the rancor of malice, or from the weakness due to concupiscence. And so, if the soul is to be removed completedly from these three types of evil, three beatitudes are necessary: poverty of spirit, to deliver it from self-inflation; meekness, to deliver it from rancor; and mourning, to deliver it from lust and the weakness due to concupiscence. Now perfect progress in good consists in following the divine example; since all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, there are two beatitudes corresponding to these two ways: hunger or zeal for justice and the desire for mercy. Finally, perfect repose in what is best may be achieved either through a clear knowledge or through a tranquil love. Hence, there are two final beatitudes, namely, cleanness of heart, for the vision of God, and peace of soul, for the perfect enjoyment of God.

[Bonaventure, Breviloquium (5.6.3), Monti, tr., Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005) p. 192. I've bolded the beatitudes.]

Fortnightly Book, March 17

 One of the most popular works of the Renaissance was Marco Girolamo Vida's Christiad. It was originally commissioned by Pope Leo X, whose support was continued by Pope Clement VII; Vida spent some years working on it, reading parts aloud to friends and friends of friends when they would stop by, so that a very large number of people in Renaissance Italy were looking forward to its completion. When it was published in 1535, it received resounding acclaim, and continued to do so for an entire generation and more. Vida was proclaimed the Christian Virgil. It did indeed hit the pool of the literary world like a large stone, on its own invigorating the Latin epic and influencing the entire course of Renaissance poetry, the ripples continuing well into the early modern period. Many had been trying to adapt revived Classical Latin to the interests of Renaissance humanism, but it is with Vida, more than anyone else, that this was widely seen to have been achieved. Proof of possibility in hand, other great, occasionally perhaps greater, poets were encouraged to try the epic themselves, the most famous, but neither the only nor the first, being John Milton, whose Paradise Lost shows many similarities to the Christiad.

Of Vida himself, we know remarkably little, and he would prefer it that way, often avoiding the public eye and refusing to provide information about his life to the curious. He was born in Cremona at some point in the 1480s as Marcantonio; he took the name Marco Girolamo when he joined the Canons Regular of St. John Lateran. He wrote a number of poems prior to Christiad that were very well received, and were the reason Pope Leo originally commissioned him, but as often happens, at the success of Christiad they stopped being merely well received and became must-reads for literati all over Europe; his poem De arte poetica, in particular, became a major text for the neoclassical movement.

I will be reading it in James Gardner's prose translation for the I Tatti Renaissance Library; it has the Latin and English facing, which will be useful. It's perhaps worth noting that, while I had it on my list eventually to do for the fortnightly book, I decided to do it now partly because it is Lent, but also partly because I recently came across Adam Roberts's Christiad blog, written in the Days of COVID, in which he worked out a draft of a verse translation, and provides commentary on various aspects of the passages translated; it made me even more interested to get into the text.

Three Poem Drafts

 Ravidas

Knower and known are one!
Who needs any testimony
when the Lord is known,

the Lord in all, all in the Lord.--
Who can give a wound
to those who meet the Lord

in inenarrable union,
the experience of the One?--
Self and the Self are melded.

Can it even be proclaimed?
My singing is already defeated.
Of that, what can I sing?

Guinevere

Out of York went Guinevere,
weeping deeply,
in cover of darkest night
sighing and crying;
she wept with sorrow
in the shadow of death.

She came to dark Caerleon,
speeding, heedless,
with two knights her way guarding,
lordly and sworded.
The land was mourning
in the shadow of death.

On her head they set a veil,
pride's sin hiding,
the conversion of a crown,
walling the fallen,
on path through the realm
of the shadow of death.

Then none knew the queen, none heard,
piling silence,
whether she lived or was gone,
crown in wave drowning;
she was veiled from the world
by the shadow of death.

Inauguration

At the start,
when God whittled the skies and the land,
the land was wild waste,
with shadow on the surface of the ocean,
while the wind of God
was soothing over the surface of the seas.
Then God said, Be, light!
So light was,
while God beheld the light for sweetness.
Then God chopped between
the light and the shadow,
and God named the light day,
and the shadow He named night.
So dusk was,
so dawn was,
first day.