When All the Stars Become a Memory

 When all the Stars become a Memory
by Joseph Mary Plunkett 

When all the stars become a memory
Hid in the heart of heaven: when the sun
At last is resting from his weary run
Sinking to glorious silence in the sea
Of God’s own glory: when the immensity
Of Nature’s universe its fate has won
And its reward: when death to death is done
And deathless Being’s all that is to be --

 Your praise shall ’scape the grinding of the mills:
My songs shall live to drive their blinding cars
Through fiery apocalypse to Heaven’s bars!
When God’s loosed might the prophet’s word fulfils,
My songs shall see the ruin of the hills,
My songs shall sing the dirges of the stars.

Dashed Off XXVIII

 Scientific evidence depending on the likeness of the universe to design (i.e., the experiment) and on the likeness of the universe to abstract intelligibles (i.e., theory), no scientific evidence could ever be such as to rule out an intelligent cause of the universe.

covenant as exemplate of Trinitarian procession

Everything truly personal is to some extent timeless.

A theory of modality can only be fully unified through positing necessary being, ie.., a case in which necessity, actuality, and possibility are mutually implying.

symbolic delomic legisign as communicable imitation of incommunicable person

Human beings use symbolic delomic legisigns to construct other signs.

"Son of God and of a human being, incapable of being violated by reason of the one state, capable of suffering by reason of the other, he renewed our mortal essence through his immortal one." Leo I (Sermon 65)
"We possess the sign of circumcision, the sanctification of anointing, the consecration of priests. We possess the purity of sacrifice, the truth of Baptism, the honor of the temple. Rightly should the messengers have ceased after the message had come to pass. Yet our reverence for these promises should not be diminished just because the fullness of grace has been shown."
"Rational souls should cling especially to those thoughts from which they gain an increase of faith."
"A double remedy has been prepared for us miserable people by the Almighty Physician, one of which is in the mystery, the other in his example. Through the one, divine grace is conferred, by virtue of the other, human response is required. As God is the author of justification so human beings are debtors of devotion."

"Christ, the primordial mystery, the primordial sacrament and the source of all sacramentality, gives to the Church the quality of being a sacrament." Dumitrus Staniloae
"The Church is constituted through sacraments, is nourished by and extends itself through them."

"El Derecho es una especial normatividad que descansa sobre dos nociones: La titularidad, y la de capacitación o potestad." (Leonardo Polo)
"La mentira destruye la organizazión, porque la organizació se basa en la communicación y la mentira la anula. Si el conectivo social es el lenguaje, corromper el lenguaje es disolvenete."
"Lo malo de la mentira es la incommunicación que introduce."

The human race has always lived in an age of wonders.

One thing that must be understood about progress is that an undeniable improvement may create an insoluble problem.

The saintly intrigues us but is also just out of reach; we find it only in reflections and flashes.

It is easy to assume that our task is to attain mature adulthood, and in the long run it is, but our primary task here and now is to be born.

Salt brings out the flavor of everything, and we are the salt of the world. Light brings out the color of everything, and we are the light of the world.

"Magic is the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will." John Michael Greer
"A symbol held in one mind, charged with will and desire, can affect another even when there's no obvious way for the effect to take place; that's the central thesis of magic."
"You win a magical struggle by formulating an ideal, as strongly, precisely, and vividly as possible, while completely ignoring the other guy."

Listening goes beyond letting people speak; one cannot listen without communicating.

Title to rights is always membership in a class (sometimes a class with no or one member).

reasons for the eminence of Shakespearean plays
-- development in an era of fruitful interchange between 'high brow' and 'low brow' culture
-- competent reworking of material already proven popular
-- balance in guiding and in giving freedom to the actors
-- richness of tehcnique used, suitable for teaching various aspects of dramatic art
-- balance in actability and in readability on the page
-- flood of memorable metaphors and expressions

Spatial and temporal coincidence should derive from constitution, not vice versa.

Visiblity plays a larger role in successful law enforcement than is usually recognized.

All bodies are located in various places at once; it's just that these places are usually overlapping. However, since place depends on boundary, and boundary can be relative, it does not seem absolutely imposssible for one body to be in two places that are from a particular perspective not overlapping.

The modern world has increased the extent to which people become entangled in prisons of words.

The degree to which one uses profanity is in general the degree to which one uses language primarily as an expressive medium rather than an instrument of reason.

Language rules us unless we domesticate it for ourselves.

To treat material objects as constituted in terms of space and time is to treat them as being relative to measurement.

proper semi-parts: like proper parts, but imperfectly distinguishable from other proper parts; thus supplementation does not strictly apply, because a whole may consist of one proper part and at least one proper semi-part. --> borders/boundaries may be an example

procrastination as a sign of boredom

'Whatever is moved is moved by another' as required for linking dreaming and waking

Moralizing is often not the moral course of action.

The Eucharist exhibits the maximum unity of sign, i.e., the maximal unity of representamen, object, and interpretant, that a sign can have and still be a genuine sign having all three.

Dreaming is arguably several distinct phenomena that are loosely grouped together.

-- the question of how much of what we call 'the dream' is actually the interpretation of a chaos, like an internal pareidolia, or story-association over a gibberish process

dreams as having only relative coherence

Some things are changed in a regular way; what is changed in a regular way has a separate cause of its being changed in a regular way; an infinite regress of such causes is not psosible; therefore we reach a first cause of regular change.

Empathy does not easily generalize.

The abstract specification of an experiment, being the relating of boundary values by experimental means, is in itself temporally and spatially indifferent. (This is important for replicability.)

the making of an artifact as selection of contingent possibilities of natural things

A legal system requires not merely laws but institutions (which may or may not have their origin in laws). 

The immediate object of a sign is that to which it refers in use. This use is always part of a broader process, whether inquisitive or practical, within which the sign reaches toward the object as it is at the end of the progress; this is the dynamic object. Every such process is part of an intellectual life whose end is the Beatific Vision, and the sign has in this context the relevant divine ideas as its final object.

dividing the representamen
Diamond: immediate representamen : what we primarily think of as the sign-vehicle 'itself'
Null: dynamic representamen : what the sign-vehicle is in its relevant context
Box: final representamen : what the sign-vehicle is in context of all creation

"Signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit." Augustine (De dial.)
"Loqui est articulata voce signum dare."
"Omnis doctrina vel rerum est vel signorum, sed res per signa disuntur." (De doct.)

"Figures came first so that their fulfillment could follow." Leo I

Human societies have a tendency to fracture along lines of stress, but some such societies have compensating elements.

People often underestimate the extent to which interpretation of our sensory epxeriences is affected and refined by testimony.

Vices shut us into the prison of our own character; virtues, on the other hand, open toward the fullness of human potential.

Maxims of Taste

 The following maxims of common human understanding do not properly come in here, as parts of the Critique of Taste, but yet they may serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They are: (1) to think for oneself; (2) to put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third of consecutive thought. The first is the maxim of a never passive reason. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of the reason, is called prejudice.... As regards the second maxim of the mind, we are otherwise wont to call him limited (borné, the opposite of enlarged) whose talents attain to no great use (especially as regards intensity). But here we are not speaking of the faculty of cognition, but of the mode of thought which makes a purposive use thereof. However small may be the area or the degree to which a man's natural gifts reach, yet it indicates a man of enlarged thought if he disregards the subjective private conditions of his own judgment, by which so many others are confined, and reflects upon it from a universal standpoint (which he can only determine by placing himself at the standpoint of others). The third maxim, viz. that of consecutive thought, is the most difficult to attain, and can only be attained by the combination of both the former and after the constant observance of them has grown into a habit. We may say that the first of these maxims is the maxim of understanding, the second of judgment, and the third of reason. 

[Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, J. H. Bernard, tr. Hafner Publishing Co. (New York: 1964), pp. 136-137.]

Admin Note

 The last few weeks have been fairly grueling, and the end of term even more grueling, and frankly my brain is a bit fried at this point. Things will continue to be light, for the most part.

The Fortnightly Book (Diu Crone, or The Crown) is mostly done, but the circumstances under which it had to be done were less than ideal, and I actually want to refresh my memory about parts. Given holiday scheduling, it therefore makes sense just to make it the first Fortnightly Book of 2025, so I should have it up January 4. That's the longest delay ever for a Fortnightly Book, but it was not practically avoidable.

Music on My Mind

 

We Are Messengers, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel".

One Hope, One End, All Others Sacrificed

 The Martyrs
by Archibald Lampman

Oh ye, who found in men's brief ways no sign
Of strength or help, so cast them forth, and threw
Your whole souls up to one ye deemed most true,
Nor failed nor doubted but held fast your line,
Seeing before you that divine face shine;
Shall we not mourn, when yours are now so few,
Those sterner days, when all men yearned to you,
White souls whose beauty made their world divine:
Yet still across life's tangled storms we see,
Following the cross, your pale procession led,
One hope, one end, all others sacrificed,
Self-abnegation, love, humility,
Your faces shining toward the bended head,
The wounded hands and patient feet of Christ.