Dashed Off XIV

filters as intermediate causes

the Spirit of recollection (Jn 14:26, 15:26,16:13-14) -- anamnesis/reminiscentia

the failure of the historical Jesus project to come to grips with the palaetiological problem

Isaiah 53 & Wis 2

undesigned coincidence as related to multiple attestation

All evidence is evidence only in the context of some kind of causal reasoning.

nobility & the overcoming of oppositions between abstract and concrete (cp immateriality)

manifestation & capability for it -> doing and enduring -> subject/object

corruptible-or-incorruptible as transcendental disjunction

"it is pleasing and enjoyable for one who knows the cause to observe how the likeness of the cause shines forth in the effect." Aquinas CT 1.170

diachronic goods & progressive goods

An adequate epistemology will also have to be a philosophy of education. (Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes all clearly meet at least this bar.)

"We never ascribe twoness or otherness in the absence of any perceived distinction at all." Blanshard
"Numbers themselves are always assumed in application to mark more than numerical differences."

Cheering is not purely emotive. To cheer at least implicates that the occasion of the cheering is something at which to cheer; and if you cheer at something loathsome, I may not only disapprove but disagree.

The category of causation is required for:
(1) an appropriate account of the external world
(2) an appropriate account of control
(3) an account of what it is to understand the world
(4) an account of the use of (2) and (3) with respect to (1) in experimentation and analysis of experiment

"...we reject an antecedent as the cause until it achieves approximate identity with the effect." Blanshard

conservation principles as guides for causal inquiry

As all things subject to divine providence are measured by eternal reason, all things partake in some way in eternal reason, namely, insofar as they are intelligible.

Authority cannot be determined entirely independently of merit, although the connection may be indirect.

A general council may have special eminence in point of unity, in point of sanctity, in point of catholicity, or in point of apostolicity, as long as it is not lacking eminence in the other notes.

Note that Palamas identifies (150ch70) divine energies with the Gifts.

Aquinas Cdn 2.2 on divine energies
"insofar as God is in Himself, He is hidden to us"

sacrament: one principle (Christ), two constituent aspects (matter and form), three qualities (power, wisdom, goodness; or perfection, purity, sanctity), four notes (unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity)

principled tolerations of defects in models

much of temptation consists in distraction from higher good.

interest-constraints on the formulation of positions

The pervasiveness of religion is one of the reasons that freedom of religion must have protections from government intrusion.

distraction : mind :: chance : nature

sensations as natural signs

three-dimensional overlap and permeation
three-dimensional overlap and the principle that two bodies cannot occupy one place

questions as cooperative propositions

"The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue; and if this cannot be inspired into our people in greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty." John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams 21 June 1776

The instrumental goodness of something requires that it have at least some features that are intrinsically good.

philosophy as the epic of the noblest things, the epic of the sublime

apparent good vs real good in Austen's novels

Every experiment builds on a more fundamental set of interactions with the physical world.

Free choice arises from our ability to distinguish real good from merely apparent good.

'good is to be done and sought, bad avoided' as applied to inquiry

What is not understood has not yet been proven.

the formation of arguments around irritants, like pearls

the durability of a claim or argument (its capacity for enduring serious, searching discussion among honest inquirers interested in truth)

Anything compared may be considered insofar as it is a measure or template for other things and thus as quasi-abstract. Anything abstract may be considered in hypothetical instance or example and thus as quasi-concrete.

The sacraments are not mere duties to God but rites in which God takes part.

In Zwingli, the Eucharist is entirely an act we do: "when you comfort yourself thus" "when you do internally what you represent externally".

pelagianism of the sacraments

The Eucharist is not merely a memorial of Christ's death, although it is that; it is a memorial of Christ. We must not merely remember him as a man on a Cross but as the Word made flesh, who died and rose and sits at the right hand of the Father, thence to judge of the livign and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

theories as effects of the world (the causal analysis then looks a lot like that for testimony)

quasi-merit structures in society

the Church as instrument of providence, as instrument of salvation, as bulwark, as moderating influence

Enoch as an inspiration for repentance Sir 44:16
the Minor Prophets and hope Sir 49:10

Theories of reference need to be considere din the context of theories of proof, since the two surely affect each other.

What before/after (temporal) accounts of causation get right is the directionality of act/potency, one particular version of which is measured by time. As Shepherd implicitly recognizes, however, the act/potency of composition is overlooked by these accounts, and thus one kind of real causation.

relics as part of the public prayer of the Church

"the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love" Wojtyla

convergence of evidence vs preponderance of evidence

the tendency to substitute diagnoses for argument

eclecticism -> analogies & aporia -gt; higher abstraction -> systematization

The justification and merit of Christ fully suffice for our ustification because they are not wholly external to us; the justice of Christ is participable, so that we may be made justice in Him. Our merits likewise are the mercy of God, for His justice is ours, by union with Him.

We regularly see subalternation of merit to merit in hierarchical social relation s(e.g., parent-child, ruler-subject, etc.): meriting so that others may merit.
the hierarchy of meritorious causes

promise as a foundation of merit
victory as a foundation of merit
(it seems common good would be relevant to birth)

Jeremiah 38:1-13 // Passion and Resurrection

Note the moral design argument in the Inference Section of the Milinda Panha

the modern tendency to confuse reason with analogues of reason

Sin corrupts loves.

religious painting : religious song :: icon : chant
(& thus thereis an intermediate 'hymn-stage' of painting)

To be an external thing that I can use is to be useful to common good.

'something like this' premises in arguments

Diamond: feasibilty, authority, just cause, [proportional preparation]
Box: last resort, declaration, right intention, proportionality

intelligibility as a "non-natural property"
intelligibility // permissibility
intelligibility intuitionism // moral intuitionism

Reason can do extraordinary things; but it cannot stand against the gates of hell.

the distinction between the really intelligible and the apparently intelligible

The cowardice of external action is sometimes just a matter of weakness; that of internal action is often a terrible corruption.

In a hierarchy, the lesser echoes the greater.

the fantasy genre as an intensification of metaphors

free choice as the structure of inquiry

A pattern is that which a mind can select out, thus the problem with trying to explain the mind entirely by patterns.

principles of church architecture: (1) order and wise planning; (2) reverence due to God; (3) durability; (4) moderation.

the interpenetration of saintly aspirations

Genuine originality derives from the authority of truth.

We all die by parts.

marriage as a participation of providence, as a way of recognizing personhood, as a component of moral society

analogy of our experiences of the sublime in art and in nature -> a sublimity-based design argument

How wholehearted even fully sincere repentance can be varies according to mood; this is why so many saints have asked for the gift of tears.

principles of good lectionary
(1) feasts of Our Lord, Our Lady, and important saints (esp. Apostles and saints with special foundational roles) take precedence over other readings.
(2) Scripture serves sacrament (in the context of the lectionary); while scripture has intrinsic value, its value is instrumental qua lectionary.
(3) The lectionary should assist in preserving and clarifying the articles of the faith.

Secular consciousness attempts to subjugate religious consciousness, treating itself as existing for itself, and religious consciousness as also existing for secular consciousness. Religious consciousness must take this into account, but it does this only by translating or transfiguring its secular labors into a holy work; and in the holy work the religious consciousness recognizes something that does not exist for secular consciousness, cannot exist for secular consciousness, transcends it in value and fundamentality entirely. And in this recognition lies the recognition that religious consciousness, at least in performing the holy work, does not exist for secular consciousness.

HoP and contingent approximation of necessary relations between arguments

Comfort is like sweet syrup: its value is great in small doses at the right time, but beyond a certain point it does not scale well.

shared beauty // common good

In natural languages in normal circumstances we work with genera of arguments, neighborhoods or families of arguments taken in functional terms.

the corporal works of mercy understood allegorically, tropologically, and anagogically

inference to the best explanation as quasi-aesthetic

enjoyment of tragedy // enjoyment of challenge (enjoyable difficulty)

Melikogamy

Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I could never have lov’d you? I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love after my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, though to my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try elsewhere its Power.

You say you are afraid I shall think you do not love me—in saying this you make me ache the more to be near you. I am at the diligent use of my faculties here, I do not pass a day without sprawling some blank verse or tagging some rhymes; and here I must confess, that, (since I am on that subject,) I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel....

John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne, 8 July 1819. I confess I've met more than a few of them myself; it's a very human failing, I think, to confuse the attraction of an idea with attraction to a person.

Music on My Mind

Light in Babylon, "Hinech Yafa". A loose rendition of part of Song of Songs 3.

Elements of Modal Logic, Part XI

Part X

Let's suppose that we have a number of books on a library table, and that these are special books. When we read them, we find that they are books that talk about themselves and each other. For instance, we open up Book 1 and read on one page:

Every book mentions strawberries.
Apples are pleasant fruits.
Every book has the sentence, "There's a book that talks about apples."
There's a book that talks about apples.
There's a book that does not mention oranges.
Strawberries are full of Vitamin C.
There's a book that has the sentence, "Every book has the sentence, 'There's a book that has the sentence, "Every book has at least one sentence."'"
There's a book that has the sentence, "Every book as at least one sentence."

Book 1 is functioning as the Reference Table for the books on the library table, and it is one of the books it is talking about, so this works like 1234DM so far. But we pick up Book 2 and read on one page:

Every book has the sentence, "There's a book that has the sentence, 'Every book has at least one sentence'."
There's a book that has the sentence, "Every book has at least one sentence."
Strawberries are usually red.
There's a book that talks about apples.
Every book mentions strawberries.
Every book has the sentence, "Every book mentions strawberries."

Exactly the same things we said about Book 1 are true, too: it is a Reference Table for the books on the library table, and it is one of the books that it is talking about. This is something new, and something that we have not seen before -- we can have multiple Reference Tables that talk about other Reference Tables.

What this means in practice is that we can have strings of Boxes and/or Diamonds. For instance, we can have ◇◇X. The Diamonds don't work any differently. What ◇◇X tells us is that there's a table on which we can find ◇X; and then ◇X on that table tells us that there's a table on which we can find X.

This can be tricky. In our example, every book is talking about every book, but this might not be the case. When you have more than one Reference Table, nothing requires that the tables that Reference Table 1 talks about are the same as the tables that Reference Table 2 talks about. Some of them might be, or all of them might be, or none of them might be. This is something we have to learn from the universe of discourse: what are we actually talking about?

Suppose we are talking about moments in time. Every table describes a moment in a time, but from each moment in time we learn something about other times -- for instance, what moments in time come after it. This is basically a Diamond: At Some Time in the Future. If I have a given moment, its future is different from some other moment in time. Compared to now, dawn tomorrow is at some time in the future, but once we get to dawn tomorrow, now is not in the future. Thus some of the tables describing future moments are shared when we take the table for now as our Reference Table and when we take the table for dawn tomorrow as our Reference Table, but the table of future moments for now makes comments on moments that the table for dawn tomorrow cannot.

This gives our analysis more flexibility, but does not introduce any fundamental changes. But sometimes we want to do more. For instance, if we have 'a moment that is at some time in the future from some time in the future from some time in the future from some time in the future', we would usually want to say that we can just collapse this into 'a moment that is at some time in the future'. This makes ◇◇◇◇ work as if it were just the same as ◇. And what about more complicated mixtures of Box and Diamond? Do we sometimes want to collapse them as well? These require new rules.

Part XII

McDonnell on Antifa

The Blog for the APA has a remarkable apologia for domestic terrorism by Sean McDonnell:

When we criticize antifa violence we criticize violence that attempts to stop racism and racists. Similarly, when we criticize anarchist violence we criticize violence that attempts to stop intolerance; that attempts to disrupt the capitalist system; that is used in self-defence against police brutality; and that ultimately protects rights. By labeling each side as bad as the other we neglect the danger the Alt-Right and these spin-off groups pose.

Antifa is a violence-focused approach to politics that spun off of the Communist Party in the 1930s; various flavors of imitators have been springing up in recent years. As their name implies, they basically try to excuse everything they do as 'anti-fascist' action. In reality, nothing they do actually opposes fascism; fascism is opposed by deliberative politics insisting on reason rather than force, not by smashing windows and burning cars. When we criticize antifa, we criticize the attempt to replace real opposition to fascism with people who think they can engage in low-level domestic terrorism just by calling it 'anti-fascism'. Nobody is fooled. No one is just because of what they claim to oppose, only because of what they themselves do or do not do.

The entire argument is somewhat astounding. 'Group A is bad, very bad, so if you criticize Group B's response to it, you are neglecting the danger that Group A poses.' This is errant nonsense, deserving of nothing but contemptuous dismissal. Group B may also be bad. Nor is it any kind of defense that Group A is worse than Group B, as McDonnell tries to argue. That a poison is not as horrifying as another poison does not make it more palatable; the only thing that matters is that it is a poison. There is no forced choice here; one does not say, "Oh, since nerve gas is worse than cyanide, I must tolerate cyanide in my diet to avoid dying of nerve gas."

I'll pass on both, and regard people like McDonnell, Antifa apologists, as being contemptible for the same reason I regard Nazi apologists as contemptible: they are poison to all efforts to build a just society.

The Anthem of the Destinies

Thy Will Be Done
by John Greenleaf Whittier

We see not, know not; all our way
Is night, — with Thee alone is day
From out the torrent's troubled drift,
Above the storm our prayers we lift,
Thy will be done!

The flesh may fail, the heart may faint,
But who are we to make complaint,
Or dare to plead, in times like these,
The weakness of our love of ease?
Thy will be done!

We take with solemn thankfulness
Our burden up, nor ask it less,
And count it joy that even we
May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee,
Whose will be done!

Though dim as yet in tint and line,
We trace Thy picture's wise design,
And thank Thee that our age supplies
Its dark relief of sacrifice.
Thy will be done!

And if, in our unworthiness,
Thy sacrificial wine we press
If from Thy ordeal's heated bars
Our feet are seamed with crimson scars,
Thy will be done!

If, for the age to come, this hour
Of trial hath vicarious power,
And, blest by Thee, our present pain
Be Liberty's eternal gain,
Thy will be done!

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys,
The anthem of the destinies!
The minor of Thy loftier strain,
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain
Thy will be done!

Feigning in Hume's Treatise

It's increasingly been recognized that the notion of 'feigning' something (which something is then a 'fiction') plays an important role in early modern philosophy. 'Feign' is not a straightforward word. In the early modern period, it can bear the senses it does today (thus one sometimes sees a distinction between real and feigned), but in general it's actually broader than this, because then it still retains its connection to the original Latin, fingere, and that word's association with making and constructing. Thus even at an earlier stage it is probably accurate to take George Crabbe's nineteenth century definition that it expresses "the production of something out of its own mind, by means of its own efforts" and that, in particular, it tends to be used to describe objects that have no existence except in the mind. The word also is often, although not always, associated with supposition-making, as in Newton's phrase about the reason for gravity, hypotheses non fingo; a hypothesis in this sense is not taken from the experienced phenomena but constructed as a supposition for them.

Here, mostly for my own benefit, are the major passages on feigning and fiction in Hume's Treatise; it shows the importance of it for some of Hume's key theses. (It does not include every passage; there are quite a few mentions of fictions in 1.3.10, for instance, but the word is usually used in a way very much like the ordinary way we would use it, since Hume is there talking about the fictions of poets in particular.)

Treatise 1.1.5:

Since therefore the memory, is known, neither by the order of its complex ideas, nor the nature of its simple ones; it follows, that the difference betwixt it and the imagination lies in its superior force and vivacity. A man may indulge his fancy in feigning any past scene of adventures; nor would there be any possibility of distinguishing this from a remembrance of a like kind, were not the ideas of the imagination fainter and more obscure.

Treatise 1.3.9:

It is evident, that whatever is present to the memory, striking upon the mind with a vivacity, which resembles an immediate impression, must become of considerable moment in all the operations of the mind, and must easily distinguish itself above the mere fictions of the imagination. Of these impressions or ideas of the memory we form a kind of system, comprehending whatever we remember to have been present, either to our internal perception or senses; and every particular of that system, joined to the present impressions, we are pleased to call a reality.

[...]

Mean while I shall carry my observation a step farther, and assert, that even where the related object is but feigned, the relation will serve to enliven the idea, and encrease its influence. A poet, no doubt, will be the better able to form a strong description of the Elysian fields, that he prompts his imagination by the view of a beautiful meadow or garden; as at another time he may by his fancy place himself in the midst of these fabulous regions, that by the feigned contiguity he may enliven his imagination.

But though I cannot altogether exclude the relations of resemblance and contiguity from operating on the fancy in this manner, it is observable that, when single, their influence is very feeble and uncertain. As the relation of cause and effect is requisite to persuade us of any real existence, so is this persuasion requisite to give force to these other relations. For where upon the appearance of an impression we not only feign another object, but likewise arbitrarily, and of our mere good-will and pleasure give it a particular relation to the impression, this can have but a small effect upon the mind; nor is there any reason, why, upon the return of the same impression, we should be determined to place the same object in the same relation to it. There is no manner of necessity for the mind to feign any resembling and contiguous objects; and if it feigns such, there is as little necessity for it always to confine itself to the same, without any difference or variation. And indeed such a fiction is founded on so little reason, that nothing but pure caprice can determine the mind to form it; and that principle being fluctuating and uncertain, it is impossible it can ever operate with any considerable degree of force and constancy. The mind forsees and anticipates the change; and even from the very first instant feels the looseness of its actions, and the weak hold it has of its objects. And as this imperfection is very sensible in every single instance, it still encreases by experience and observation, when we compare the several instances we may remember, and form a general rule against the reposing any assurance in those momentary glimpses of light, which arise in the imagination from a feigned resemblance and contiguity.

Treatise 1.4.2:

I have already observd, that time, in a strict sense, implies succession, and that when we apply its idea to any unchangeable object, it is only by a fiction of the imagination, by which the unchangeable object is supposd to participate of the changes of the co-existent objects, and in particular of that of our perceptions. This fiction of the imagination almost universally takes place; and it is by means of it, that a single object, placd before us, and surveyd for any time without our discovering in it any interruption or variation, is able to give us a notion of identity.

[...]

The smooth passage of the imagination along the ideas of the resembling perceptions makes us ascribe to them a perfect identity. The interrupted manner of their appearance makes us consider them as so many resembling, but still distinct beings, which appear after certain intervals. The perplexity arising from this contradiction produces a propension to unite these broken appearances by the fiction of a continued existence

[...]

The supposition of the continued existence of sensible objects or perceptions involves no contradiction. We may easily indulge our inclination to that supposition. When the exact resemblance of our perceptions makes us ascribe to them an identity, we may remove the seeming interruption by feigning a continued being, which may fill those intervals, and preserve a perfect and entire identity to our perceptions.

But as we here not only feign but believe this continued existence, the question is, from whence arises such a belief...

[...]

Our memory presents us with a vast number of instances of perceptions perfectly resembling each other, that return at different distances of time, and after considerable interruptions. This resemblance gives us a propension to consider these interrupted perceptions as the same; and also a propension to connect them by a continued existence, in order to justify this identity, and avoid the contradiction, in which the interrupted appearance of these perceptions seems necessarily to involve us. Here then we have a propensity to feign the continued existence of all sensible objects; and as this propensity arises from some lively impressions of the memory, it bestows a vivacity on that fiction: or in other words, makes us believe the continued existence of body.

[...]

It is indeed evident, that as the vulgar suppose their perceptions to be their only objects, and at the same time believe the continued existence of matter, we must account for the origin of the belief upon that supposition. Now upon that supposition, it is a false opinion that any of our objects, or perceptions, are identically the same after an interruption; and consequently the opinion of their identity can never arise from reason, but must arise from the imagination. The imagination is seduced into such an opinion only by means of the resemblance of certain perceptions; since we find they are only our resembling perceptions, which we have a propension to suppose the same. This propension to bestow an identity on our resembling perceptions, produces the fiction of a continued existence; since that fiction, as well as the identity, is really false, as is acknowledged by all philosophers, and has no other effect than to remedy the interruption of our perceptions, which is the only circumstance that is contrary to their identity.

[...]

The imagination tells us, that our resembling perceptions have a continued and uninterrupted existence, and are not annihilated by their absence. Reflection tells us, that even our resembling perceptions are interrupted in their existence, and different from each other. The contradiction betwixt these opinions we elude by a new fiction, which is conformable to the hypotheses both of reflection and fancy, by ascribing these contrary qualities to different existences; the interruption to perceptions, and the continuance to objects. Nature is obstinate, and will not quit the field, however strongly attacked by reason; and at the same time reason is so clear in the point, that there is no possibility of disguising her. Not being able to reconcile these two enemies, we endeavour to set ourselves at ease as much as possible, by successively granting to each whatever it demands, and by feigning a double existence, where each may find something, that has all the conditions it desires.

Treatise 1.4.3:

In order to reconcile which contradictions the imagination is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it supposes to continue the same under all these variations; and this unintelligible something it calls a substance, or original and first matter.

[...]

But the mind rests not here. Whenever it views the object in another light, it finds that all these qualities are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other; which view of things being destructive of its primary and more natural notions, obliges the imagination to feign an unknown something, or original substance and matter, as a principle of union or cohesion among these qualities, and as what may give the compound object a title to be called one thing, notwithstanding its diversity and composition.

Treatise 1.4.5:

In our arrangement of bodies we never fail to place such as are resembling, in contiguity to each other, or at least in correspondent points of view: Why? but because we feel a satisfaction in joining the relation of contiguity to that of resemblance, or the resemblance of situation to that of qualities. The effects this propensity have been already observed in that resemblance, which we so readily suppose betwixt particular impressions and their external causes. But we shall not find a more evident effect of it, than in the present instance, where from the relations of causation and contiguity in time betwixt two objects, we feign likewise that of a conjunction in place, in order to strengthen the connexion.

Treatise 1.4.6:

Our propensity to this mistake is so great from the resemblance above-mentioned, that we fall into it before we are aware; and though we incessantly correct ourselves by reflection, and return to a more accurate method of thinking, yet we cannot long sustain our philosophy, or take off this biass from the imagination. Our last resource is to yield to it, and boldly assert that these different related objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and variable. In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption or variation. Thus we feign the continued existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption: and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation. But we may farther observe, that where we do not give rise to such a fiction, our propension to confound identity with relation is so great, that we are apt to imagine something unknown and mysterious, connecting the parts, beside their relation; and this I take to be the case with regard to the identity we ascribe to plants and vegetables.

[...]

What I have said concerning the first origin and uncertainty of our notion of identity, as applied to the human mind, may be extended with little or no variation to that of simplicity. An object, whose different co-existent parts are bound together by a close relation, operates upon the imagination after much the same manner as one perfectly simple and indivisible and requires not a much greater stretch of thought in order to its conception. From this similarity of operation we attribute a simplicity to it, and feign a principle of union as the support of this simplicity, and the center of all the different parts and qualities of the object.

Treatise 2.2.3 (footnote):

It is a quality, which I have already observed in human nature, that when two objects appear in a close relation to each other, the mind is apt to ascribe to them any additional relation, in order to compleat the union; and this inclination is so strong, as often to make us run into errors (such as that of the conjunction of thought and matter) if we find that they can serve to that purpose. Many of our impressions are incapable of place or local position; and yet those very impressions we suppose to have a local conjunction with the impressions of sight and touch, merely because they are conjoined by causation, and are already united in the imagination. Since, therefore, we can feign a new relation, and even an absurd one, in order to compleat any union, it will easily be imagined, that if there be any relations, which depend on the mind, it will readily conjoin them to any preceding relation, and unite, by a new bond, such objects as have already an union in the fancy. Thus for instance, we never fail, in our arrangement of bodies, to place those which are resembling in contiguity to each other, or at least in correspondent points of view; because we feel a satisfaction in joining the relation of contiguity to that of resemblance, or the resemblance of situation to that of qualities. And this is easily accounted for from the known propertes of human nature.

Treatise 2.3.5:

The difficulties, that occur to us, in supposing a moral obligation to attend promises, we either surmount or elude. For instance; the expression of a resolution is not commonly supposed to be obligatory; and we cannot readily conceive how the making use of a certain form of words should be able to cause any material difference. Here, therefore, we feign a new act of the mind, which we call the willing an obligation; and on this we suppose the morality to depend. But we have proved already, that there is no such act of the mind, and consequently that promises impose no natural obligation.

Fortnightly Books, July 2

From 1942 to 1950, Isaac Asimov published a number of short stories in Astounding Magazine inspired by the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -- a little bit of cribbin' from the works of Edward Gibbon. These were collected into volumes from 1951 to 1953, forming the Foundation Trilogy. Asimov returned to Foundation in the 1980's with a set of sequels and prequels.

The series chunks into very easily recognizable groups:

The Core Three

Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation

The Sequels (The Quest for Earth)

Foundation's Edge
Foundation and Earth

The Prequels

Prelude to Foundation
Forward the Foundation

The first three are universally recognized as better than the later works, although I personally have always liked Prelude quite a bit as well. In any case, I'll be reading them all for the fortnightly book, in the narrative order.



Deep Purple, "The Mule", which was inspired by a reading of Second Foundation.

Miguel de Unamuno, San Manuel Bueno, Mártir

Introduction

Opening Passage:

Ahora que el obispo de la diócesis de Renada, a la que pertence esta mi querida aldea de Valverde de Lucerna, anda, a lo que se dice, promoviendo el proceso para la beatificación de nuestro Don Mauel, o, mejor, San Manuel Bueno, que vue en ésta párroco, quiero dejar aqui consignado , a modo de confesión y sólo Dios sabe, que no yo, con qué destino, todo lo que sé y recuerdo de aquel varón matrarcal que llenó toda la más entrañada vida de mi alma, que fue mi verdadero padre espiritual, el padre de mi espíritu, del mío, el de Ángela Carballino.

My translation:

Now that the bishop of the diocese of Renada, to which belongs this, my village of Valverde de Lucerna, has begun to promote the cause of beatification of our Don Manuel, or, better, San Manuel Bueno, which is what he was for our parish, I wish to leave here written, as a confession, and only God, not I, knows what its end will be, all that I know and remember of that matriarchal man, who filled all the depths of my soul, who was my true spiritual father, the father of my spirit, of the spirit of me, Angela Carballino.

Summary: The picturesque little village of Valverde de Lucerna sits beside a lake that reflects the nearby mountain. Close by is the ruin of an old monastery. According to local legend, there is a medieval town submerged beneath the waters, and if you listen carefully on St. John's Day, you can hear its church bells ringing. Rustic and pastoral, the townspeople quietly continue on their way as they have done for long years past.

The priest of the town is Don Manuel, and he is everything one could possibly want in a priest. He spends his days tending the sick and helping the poor, comforting the brokenhearted and encouraging the anxious, healing divisions and bringing peace to families, administering the sacraments and encouraging the people to pray. He is a fount of joy and consolation for his parishioners. He works incessantly, always putting the needs of others above his own, never pausing in his work, always driven to do more. And the source of the drive, the thing that pushes him to do so much for the good of others, is that he has lost his faith. Death has come to seem to him merely an end, nothing more, with nothing beyond, and that sense of things haunts everything he does.

This kind of sapped faith has led many a mind into progressivism of one sort or another, but Don Manuel will have none of it. We learn the story of Don Manuel through the narration of Ángela Carballino, who is writing her memories of him long afterward because the bishop has opened the cause of Don Manuel's beatification. Her brother, Lázaro, had left the village and gone off to the New World, and has become cosmopolitan and freethinking and anti-clerical, full of the latest progressive ideas. But when he returns to the village, he finds himself baffled by Don Manuel, and is converted by him from progressivism to -- not quite Catholicism but -- the nurturing of the Catholic faith of the village. Progressivism is just the same story; it is dreams of future glory in a reality in which everything simply dies. And its proselytizing excuse -- that truth matters above all -- is in reality just a way to disparage people like the villagers for having a different version of the same story. All of Lázaro's talk of truth as the most important thing can be seen, when set beside Don Manuel, to be just a pretty way to express contempt for other people. Lázaro the progressive was as much in the spell of an illusion as the people he dismissed as parochial and rustic, taken in by illusions; he too had been following dreams in order to live without looking at the harsh truth. Hay que vivir -- one must live; and in the meantime there is little to be done if you lack the support of illusions except to distract yourself by helping people to live -- which means, among other things, helping them to maintain their own illusions in a way that makes people happy. That is the source of the intensity of Don Manuel's drive to do good for others, the anguish of trying to help people to live while believing that everything will just die.

This summary makes things sound more simple than they are. We learn, for instance, that Don Manuel comes from a family with a history of depression; that he is tempted by suicide; that he has lost someone important to him. But these come across as incidental; there is a sort of timelessness to Don Manuel, the semper nunc of one who has no time to do good except now.

In Tragic Sense of Life, Unamuno gives his own existentialist characterization of what it is to live as a Spaniard. It is to be Catholic in sensibility even if one is no longer Catholic of head, to have something medieval submerged within, echoes or legends, so to speak, of a feudal town. It is to be driven by life and by reason, and to find that they are not companionate but are instead enemies bound together, needing each other yet tending to oppose each other. And this, the immortality of the soul, is the clinching point: one reasons as a mortal; one lives as though one can never really die. Thus the Spanish sense of life, Unamuno thinks, is a tragic sense; it is a sense that one must do the thing that will certainly fail. One may laugh at Don Quixote; but the only way to live is by a sort of quijotismo. Genuinely to live is to be quixotic.

Given this one might think that San Manuel Bueno, mártir is just a straightforward narrative depiction of the ideas, but this, too, is not so simple. Storytelling is already a sort of illusion-weaving; it conveys a suggestion of Something Beyond. To believe in immortality, in heaven, even in the future worker's paradise, is to read history as a story, with the events as words that allude to so much that they never actually say. And this tale in particular is not told by Don Manuel, but by Ángela, who is a believer even if she sometimes has doubts. Her own view -- perhaps a bit of illusion-weaving of its own -- is that perhaps Don Manuel and Lázaro really did believe in the immortality of the soul, and that God by His grace made it so that they did not believe that they believed it, for precisely the result that came about: a lifetime of service here and now, doing good here and now, sacrificing for others here and now, reflecting the faith they did not seem to share and a starry heaven they did not think existed. An illusory view, perhaps -- but life is a network of dreams. If reason and life are really in conflict, it is all well and good to exclaim pompously that one is on the side of reason -- but hay que vivir.

It was interesting to (re-)read the work, as well as the more philosophical elaboration of the same themes, given that I have no natural or temperamental inclination to Unamuno's ideas. Unamuno represents a Spain that is Catholic in its blood but has gone Protestant in the head, or perhaps better, caught a Protestant head-cold. It is a modernity that is haunted by feudal and medieval echoes, a city of concrete and steel that cannot shake the sense that it should be painted in the colors of chivalry with Baroque and Gothic at every corner. The depictions are all somewhat analogous to those that we find in Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, in which a lush and beautiful view of the world is just out of reach, visible across an impassible channel in the realm of yesterday. My roots are Northern European, not Mediterranean; for Unamuno and Eco it seems that the anxious picture of an unmeaning world is a modern thing, but for anyone of Scandinavian background, it is worn and mythological and pagan-ancient, for sooner or later, the wolves will devour the gods. With such roots, the path to reason only lies, as Chesterton saw, as the Anglo-Saxon poets insisted, in something that can be victory over death.

This is all a very florid way of saying that while I can admire the picture painted, it seems very clear to me that it is a picture, whatever its claims to realism; to treat realism as reality is the most basic form of delusion. Look around you, and you will see no immortality, no resurrection, no future glory, no better world in the future, just walls and trees and walking bodies of flesh and blood in a fleeting space of time, and to treat everything as that is the most straightforward kind of realism. But nobody understands the world just by looking around them, and the world we recognize must be cannot really fit into that kind of realism. Unamuno gets a contradiction between reason and life because he sets them up to contradict each other.

But, of course, this is not just a claim about my own sympathies or lack thereof, which would be a thoroughly uninteresting topic. The point is that what Unamuno is doing is not giving a rigorous analysis of the world; he is telling a story about it. And a story, as I said above, consists of words suggesting much more than they ever say on the page, and suggesting something that has a kind of timelessness. Sense is immortality writ small; meaning is like Sunday in Ordinary Time, a sort of Easter out of season. To tell a story is already to suggest what Unamuno says cannot be. Unamuno tells this particular tale about Don Manuel well, because so much of it was the story he was already used to telling himself and others about life; but someone who is not already immersed in that kind of story can only look at it and see not as capturing the world itslef, but as itself a sort of fantasy fiction, lovely in its way, but more realistic than real. For such a person, that difference in sympathies makes the tale of Don Manuel seem in some ways, I think, a different story than Unamuno intended to tell. But he himself, I think, would accept such an ambiguity without much protest.

Favorite Passage:

--Es un hombre maravilloso -- me decía Lázaro--. Ya sabes que dicen que en el fondo de este lago hay una villa sumergida y que en la noche de San Juan, a las doce, se oyen las companadas de su iglesia.

--Sí --le contestaba yo--, una villa feudal y medieaval...

--Y creo --añadía él-- que en el fondo del alma de nuestro Don Manuel hay también sumergida, ahogada, una villa y que alguna vez se oyen sus campanadas.

--Sí --le dije--, esa villa sumergida en el alma de Don Manuel, ¿y por qué no también en la tuay?, es el cementerio de las almas de nuestros abuelos, los de esta nuestra Valverde de Lucerna... ¡feudal y medieval!

My translation:

"He is a marvelous man," Lázaro told me. "You know that they say that at the bottom of this lake there is a submerged town, and that on St. John's night, at midnight, one hears the bells of its church."

"Yes," I answered, "a feudal and medieval town...."

"And I believe," he added, "that at the bottom of the soul of our Don Manuel there is also submerged, drowned, a town, and that sometimes one hears its bells."

"Yes," I said, "that town submerged in the soul of Don Manuel -- and why not also in yours? -- is the cemetery of the souls of our ancestors, those of our Valverde de Lucerna...feudal and medieval!"

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

Evening Notes Index, 2017a

Here are the Evening Note posts for the first half of 2017.

June 29: Learning Urdu

June 9: Invented Traditions

May 22: Moral Testimony and Problems with the Asymmetry Thesis

May 19: Saint Teresa of Avila and Rene Descartes

May 12: Incipit and Desinit

April 24: Progymnasmata and Language-Learning

April 17: Developing a Treasury of Ideas

April 10: John Quincy Adams on Tropes

April 3: Analogical Predication and Veneration of Icons

March 27: David Braine on the Nature of Knowledge

March 16: Of Just Protest

March 7: Of the Russian Byzantine Catholic Church

February 22: Interpreting Fitch's Knowability Paradox

February 14: Of Public Sculpture

February 5: Moral Evil and Natural Evil

January 25: The Conversion of Saint Paul and Rabban Gamaliel

January 11: Of Conflicts of Interest

Poem a Day 30

And so ends the month of June.

A Poet's Final Bow

I cannot write at all
and therefore I must write.
When civilization falls
each man must be a knight;
when nothing can be said,
a man must seek to speak;
when all the world is dead,
the last must not be weak.
When drought brings famine's need,
and plants begin to die,
the farmer nurtures seed.
He does not sit down to cry.
When arid is the soul,
the soul must start to pray.
When hopes are swallowed whole,
the traveler must make his way --
those problems must be solved
that leagues and miles span.
And the one who cannot write
must write so that he can.

Evening Note for Thursday, June 29

Thought for the Evening: Learning Urdu

This summer I have been taking a Continuing Education course on basic Urdu. (I had hoped to find a way to start learning Malayalam in a classroom setting, but that turned out not to be possible, so I looked around to see what languages were possible.) Urdu is a language found chiefly in Pakistan and Northern India. It has a close, but rather tangled and weird, relationship with Hindi. If you ask people whether Urdu and Hindi are the same language or different languages, the answer you get will literally depend on who you ask. Some people will tell you that they are exactly the same language, and they will point to the fact that the basic grammar is the same, the basic vocabulary is the same, that the primary reason we distinguish them is not linguistic but political (due to the oppositions between India and Pakistan), and that it's not uncommon for them both to be treated as one language, Hindustani. Others will tell you that they are obviously different languages, pointing to the fact that the literary and technical vocabularies (where the two don't simply share an English-based technical vocabulary) are very different, that Urdu writing system is Persian and the Hindi writing system is Devanagari, that Hindi is far more Sanskritized and Urdu is far more Persianized and (to some extent) Arabicized, and that they are often treated as two languages. And the reasons for both answers are completely right. Part of the difficulty is just that India is a language melting-pot. Urdu speakers in a context in which there are many Hindi speakers speak an Urdu that emphasizes the Sanskrit influence and shared Hindi vocabulary; Urdu speakers outside that context often speak an Urdu with a far greater Persian and Arabic content. The situation is complicated further by shared English influence (which, of course, is very extensive) and by the fact that a very large percentage of Urdu speakers speak it as a second language.

From that little summary you can already begin to see some of the interesting facets of trying to learn Urdu, both the facilities and the complexities. Urdu is in one sense very easy to learn -- it is even more flexible for communication than English, which is saying a lot. Its weird demographics guarantees that pronunciation is not particularly important. Yes, there's better and worse pronunciation -- but Urdu speakers, just by the nature of the thing, aren't fussy about pronunciation in ordinary contexts. Likewise, you can make yourself intelligible in at least a pidgin-Urdu way very easily. Just some very basic vocabulary and basic grammar, and you can go far.

At the same time, Urdu combines its easiness for basic communication with extraordinary barriers to sophisticated communication. There are often many ways to say the same thing, some of which are better than others. Part of this is just melting-pot vocabulary -- on some things there is a Persian-based word, a Sanskrit-based word, and an English-based word, and maybe even an Arabic-based word. Khudah hafiz, God go with you, is purer Urdu; Allah hafiz is increasingly common, especially for Pakistanis; using the English is not unheard of. Part of it is the nature of the language influences that are involved. I've mentioned before, with Vietnamese, that etiquette is actually a major part of how languages work, a part of their very structure, and this is quite obvious with Urdu. Pretty much every verb in Urdu literally has five different forms that mean exactly the same thing. If you want to say, "Listen!", for instance, you can say it in any of these ways:

Soun!
Sunoo!
Suneyn!
Sunieye!
Sunlijey!

The sense of these is all entirely the same. But they're not equally appropriate to every situation, since each one is a more formal and polite way of saying "Listen!" than the one before. If you say, Soun!, this claims such a degree of informality that it's only used in prayer, in very special literary situations, and when you are being very, very rude. The second is more common; it is appropriate to talking to very close friends and family in a very close setting or when addressing young children. The third is the kind of thing you would use with your family while at home. The fourth, the most polite in ordinary use, you might use with strangers, or at times with family when among strangers. Sunlijey! is hyperformal -- it is more than polite, so that it tends to be an emphatic form, as in 'please be very sure to listen'.

(This intricacy of etiquette forms is a reason for an interesting feature of Urdu -- it has no native vocabulary for Please, Thank You, You're Welcome and the like. There are phrases for them, and they do sometimes get used -- to say "You're welcome", for instance, you can say, Koiin baat nahiin, which literally translates as "Don't mention it," unsurprisingly, because it is a direct translation from English. The natural way Urdu handles politeness is by the form of the words you are using -- so, for instance, if you wanted to convey your thanks, you would temporarily increase your politeness. Specific vocabulary for it only arose in interaction with English, usually, although sometimes Persian or Arabic, especially with religiously-toned vocabulary.)

The single most difficult thing about learning Urdu, though, is the detachment of the spoken language from the writing. Despite English's weird spelling conventions, spoken English and written English are very closely interlinked, and the link is even greater for most Romance languages. If you come from these languages, it is easy to overlook that this is actually an artificial development; it is not the normal state of things. For most of history, writing and speaking a language operate as effectively as if they were two languages that were closely intertranslatable. Written versions of languages usually are more formal, have older vocabulary, and retain old grammatical forms longer. One of the (many) difficulties in learning Finnish, for instance, is that the colloquial form diverges in some rather extensive ways from what you usually find in reading and writing. There have been languages where there is no standardized spelling at all -- indeed, to some extent English itself was this way up to the spread of the printing press, which is why its spelling conventions are all mixed up. And, most seriously still, speaking is a common act, while writing is a fairly specialized skill. This can have significant effects.

Written Urdu, using Persian script, is a calligraphic language; the standard way of writing is Nasta'liq calligraphy. It is literally not designed for common people to use, and it takes a lot of work even for fluent Urdu speakers to get to the point of finding it consistently quick and easy. It does not use discrete letters the way the Roman alphabet does; when you write, you scrunch the letters together in a sort of calligraphic shorthand. This means that each of the nearly forty letters changes what it looks like depending on where it is in the word. It is so difficult to typeset that it is only within living memory that newspapers in Urdu started not being handwritten. It is not uncommon for people to use Devanagari or the Roman alphabet instead -- but there is no standard romanization. Everybody spells things in whatever way they think works best. If you wanted to establish complete writing chaos, you could not design a better way.

The chief difficulty for a beginner is that it is very, very difficult to look up words. A full Urdu dictionary will be in Nasta'liq, which is difficult to read unless you are very used to it. Spelling in Nasta'liq is fairly regular, but because the script is borrowed from a different language, there are letters that are silent, and if you are not native it can be difficult always to catch the difference between soft dal and hard dal, soft rey and hard rey, and so forth; thus if you are trying to look up a word you've heard, it's usually not straightforward. Online resources allow you to use the romanized alphabet -- but, again, there is no standard romanization, so you may have to spend quite some time guessing the spelling.

It's very interesting, though, and a good example of how a new language allows you to stretch your mind a bit.

Various Links of Intesrest

* Kenny Pearce on Newton's Rationalism

* An illuminated manuscript depicting Aristotle, Averroes, and Ramon Llull going to war against the Tower of Falsehood.

* Fr. James Bradley, What Is Canon Law?

* Kathleen Vail reconstructs the Shield of Achilles from its description in the Iliad.

* Matthew Schmitz, Why Cardinal Sarah Terrifies His Critics

* Elizabeth Dunn, The Myth of 'Easy' Cooking

Currently Reading

Miguel de Unamuno, San Manuel Bueno, Martír
Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life
John of St. Thomas, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Kenneth L. Pearce, Language and the Structure of Berkeley's World
Nicholas Phillipson, David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian
J. R. R. Tolkien (Christopher Tolkien, ed.), Beren and Lúthien
Stephen R. Lawhead, Dream Thief

Poem a Day 29

Snow Picture

Her hair is flecked with flakes of snow
and this I know,
that time, a bird now tame,
has given up its game,
and by her hand is held.

A flicker on a snowflake bright,
a gleam of glowing light,
sparks and sparkles pure and white,
just behind her ear
like a frosted giant's tear
in suspension held.

A gist of ghostly whisper-breath,
as deeply still as death,
has played across a lash of eye,
light as lie,
but clean and honest as the sky,
and by the picture frame is held.

A whirling whorl of wind is still,
bereft of will
and frozen in a phase,
and plays around her face,
in instant held.

Irenaeus

Today is the memorial for St. Irenaeus, who was born at some point in the first half, and probably the first quarter, of the second century. He had been a student of St. Polycarp, and from there went to Lugdunum (present day Lyon), to assist the new bishop. In 177 or so, while still a priest, he was sent to Rome on a mission and met Pope Eleutherius. This was during the time of Marcus Aurelius, in which the laws were pressed against the Christians a bit more strictly, although not with complete consistency anywhere. While Irenaeus was in Rome, a crackdown on Christians occurred in Lyon. The bishop of Lyon, St. Pothinus was imprisoned; when Irenaeus returned, and St. Pothinus had died in prison, Irenaeus became bishop. After that, almost no information about him has survived, except his works, the most important of which is Adversus Haereses, a polemic against Gnosticism. From Adversus Haeresus, Book V, Chapter 2

By His own blood he redeemed us, as also His apostle declares, "In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the remission of sins." And as we are His members, we are also nourished by means of the creation (and He Himself grants the creation to us, for He causes His sun to rise, and sends rain when He wills). He has acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as His own blood, from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has established as His own body, from which He gives increase to our bodies.

When, therefore, the mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God, and the Eucharist of the blood and the body of Christ is made, from which things the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they affirm that the flesh is incapable of receiving the gift of God, which is life eternal, which [flesh] is nourished from the body and blood of the Lord, and is a member of Him?— even as the blessed Paul declares in his Epistle to the Ephesians, that "we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones."

Poem a Day 28

Silk and Blood

A wild soldier in a wilder war
waved his sword in shining sun;
"Sword!" he cried, "What do you want?"
In a voice of steel the sword exclaimed:
  "No drink is better than drink of blood."

A young maiden fair, with hair like silk
  (No string is stronger than string of silk)
out to the mill at sunrise went,
dreaming of times in future tense,
dreaming of dresses of finest sheen
  (No string is stronger than string of silk),
washing the wool with arms laid bare.

Up from the war a soldier comes,
catching a sight of the pretty maid.
  (No drink is better than drink of blood.)
Trinkets he gave her; she went away crying.
  No drink is better than drink of blood!
  No string is stronger than string of silk!
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
Crying she went home, seeking her mother;
"Child!" cried her mother, "it may be made right!
Take out your dress; your father will journey;
take out a silk dress, to be a bride!"
  (No string is stronger than string of silk.)

But out to the barn went the maid, teary-eyed
  (No string is stronger than string of silk).
A long silken cord she wound and wound
  (No string is stronger than string of silk).
Up she strung it, swinging upon it:
  No string is stronger than string of silk.

The fires are dampened; the mourners are crying.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
Perhaps the bear will lumber along,
speaking the word fashioned by tears.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
Perhaps the wolf will lope, long and lean,
speaking the word formed from a curse.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
Perhaps the fox will glide through the bushes,
speaking the word of death and despair.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
The hare will! The hare, the rabbiting coney,
will jump through the woods spreading the word.

The soldier caught the jumping hare
  (No drink is better than drink of blood).
The soldier shook the hare, speaking with laughter,
"Nice, tasty dinner to put in the stewpot!"
  (No drink is better than drink of blood).
Up spoke the long-ear, trembling in whisker:
"Not for the stewpot today am I destined!
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
I carry the word through the dark woods:
The maiden you knew wound silken cord
  (No string is stronger than string of silk);
she swung herself upon it in sorrow;
No more will she laugh in the warm summer sun."

The wild soldier seized his sword,
looking at it as it glinted in firelight.
A day he honed it to razor's edge
  (No drink is better than drink of blood),
a second day he honed it to part at a touch
  (No drink is better than drink of blood),
a third day he honed it to thinnest edge
  (No drink is better than drink of blood),
and went to the field and took out his sword
  (No drink is better than drink of blood).
His hand did not hold it; the earth held the sword
  (No drink is better than drink of blood),
hilt in the ground and point to the sky
  (No drink is better than drink of blood).
The sword's aim was true; the point went through:
  No drink is better than drink of blood.

The blood drips on earth, the ravens are cawing.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
Perhaps the honey-thief will lumber along,
speaking the word fashioned by edge.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
Perhaps the fox will streak through the trees,
speaking the word fashioned by sword.
  Who will carry the word through the woods?
The wolf will! His jaws are red with blood,
fresh from a soldier, and a hare for chaser:
  No drink is better than drink of blood.

The Islands of Miranda, Part III

This is the third part of a short story draft. Part I. Part II.

Having little to do, Diego called up an old friend; they met at a soda for a quick meal and, as the friend even at this stage in life was something of a party animal, they hit the bars until three in the morning, reminiscing about old times and trying, as such people do, to stay in that ideal gray area between staying clear-headed and sliding toward unconsciousness. He saw the friend off in a taxi, then walked home through the deserted streets beneath the streetlamps and a moonless sky.

It was still dark when he stumbled through his doorway. He made his way through the house to his bedroom, planning on just falling on his bed to sleep. He did not quite make it that far. Just as he entered the room, something cool and flexible and plastic suddenly seized upon his face, held in place by someone behind him, and he could not breathe. A flurry burst through his brain and down to his heart, whose every beat he could not feel. It was almost impossible to think.

But Diego had been saved by an accident of timing; just the moment before, he had reached up to scratch his face, and as the plastic descended, it caught his thumb. It was only by a tiny bit, and was not on its own enough to make a difference. But as he struggled, the thumb stretched the plastic and it broke. The feel of the snap broke through, one moment, to Diego's panicking brain, and he moved his other hand, which had been scratching futilely at the edge of the plastic on the other side of his face, up to his mouth. He pressed inward as hard as he could and tore a small hole in the plastic around his mouth. With his other hand he opened the whole as wide as he could, and at the same time pivoted and ran his assailant as hard as he could into the corner of his dresser.

From that moment it became a scrambling struggle between Diego and his assailant, who had not yet registered that Diego could breathe, even if only with difficulty, and thus was no prepared for an ongoing fight. The assailant pushed forward to the bed; Diego pushed as hard as he could back toward the dresser, and back they went, both slipping. The assailant's head caught the edge of the dresser with a thud Diego himself felt, and the arms slackened. Diego tore the plastic off his face and stood a moment, huffing and puffing, before turning on the light and calling the police.

It was a long early morning from that point, answering questions with his brain still half-scrambled. The assailant was unconscious, rather than dead, and was carted off by ambulance and police. Diego was sitting on the doorstep trying to minimize the throbbing in his head when a woman came up to him and handed him a handkerchief.

"Pura vida," he said gratefully, wiping his face.

"I am Carlota Pacelli, Mirandan security," she said. She looked him over frankly. "You look like you need to sleep, Señor Páez. The embassy has reserved a hotel room for you."

He dozed in the car on the way to the hotel, which was on the other side of San Jose, and, after Pacelli had checked the room, curled up into the bed and fell asleep.

It was not, however, a peaceful sleep, and he woke after two hours with a sudden start, his heart racing as if from a nightmare. It was impossible to get back to sleep, so he went down to the lobby and found Pacelli there reading a magazine.

"You didn't sleep long," she said.

"I really find the need for a breakfast, I think," he replied.

She took him to a nearby soda, and while waiting for his meal, he raised a steaming cup of strong, black coffee to her. "May the Islands return."

She smiled slightly but did not reciprocate. "The Islands will never return," she said gravely.

It was such an unexpected response that he almost burned his lips on his coffee. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. When the Islands were invaded, the Venezuelans removed all of the population that failed to evacuate and replaced it with a new one. The Commemorative Obelisk was smashed to pieces. Los Ángeles..."

"...has been converted to an office building," said Diego, remembering his conversation with Tovar. The association nagged at him, for some reason.

"Yes," Pacelli replied. "San Francisco on Gran Roque is still there, but the Left-Populists nationalized it and converted it to an 'ecumenical chapel', whatever that is. The electric ferry system is gone. The posadas and people and restaurants of the Gran Roque of our grandparents' day are all vanished, never to return. Even the old lighthouse is barely maintained, and that only because it predated us. There are no Islands to return, not really. The Left-Populists didn't just set out to invade; they set out to erase us. They could not reach to Costa Rica, or any of the other places that provided refuge after the Invasion, but on the Islands, it is all gone, as if we never were. And so I say that the Islands will never return. The past is gone."

Diego's gallo pinto arrived and he tucked into it hungrily. Pacelli let him eat in peace.

After a few minutes, he said, "After this, I will need to go back to the embassy; I am expecting message there. If what's I've been told it is, I will need to fly out in the next week or so. Do you think the police would have a problem with this."

"To be honest," she replied, "this is my first time dealing with a murder attempt. We should ask them explicitly, but if it's important, I am certain that the embassy can smooth out any problems."

When they reached the embassy, Pacelli went to make some calls, and Diego found his message waiting. The envelope was an ornate heavy parchment tied with string, and it included, with elaborate calligraphy and an old-fashioned red wax seal, a Certificate of Appointment to the Board of the Miranda Organization, conditional on the approval of Augustine Cardinal Binaisa, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Insular State of Miranda.

"So I will finally get to see something of Italy," Diego said to himself.

to be continued

Seal of All the Fathers

Today is the feast of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church. From his work on the Unity of Christ:

That the Nature of God the Word has been filled with true glory, Royalty and Lordship, how can one doubt? and that He is firmly to be conceived of as being in heights the most God-befitting? but since He appeared as man to whom all things are a gift and imparted: therefore He, Full and giving to all from out His own fulness, in human wise receives, making our poverty His own: and in Christ was an unwonted and strange marvel, in servant's form Lordship, in human mean estate God-befitting glory, that which is under the yoke (as to the measure of manhood) crowned with the dignities of Royalty, and in Supremest Excellences that which is low. For the Only-Begotten hath been made man, not in order that He might remain in the measure of the emptying, but in order that taking along therewith what is its, He might thus too be known to be God by Nature and might ennoble because of Himself the nature of man, rendering it participate of holy and Divine dignities.

Poem a Day 27

Mockingbird

The mockingbird warbles with trills and with bells;
my ears are enchanted by touch of its grace.
All disturbance of soul its canticle quells.

Varied repetition a narrative tells,
with artful rendition and mimicry plays;
the mockingbird warbles with trills and with bells.

A cat's meow, a babe's cry, the tinker compels
to do a new task and to work in new ways;
the mockingbird warbles with trills and with bells.

Endless music from spirit endlessly wells,
conturbation, ring-echo, squirl interlaced;
the mockingbird warbles with rings and with bells.
My ears are enchanted by touch of its grace.

The Two Factors of Education

Even the conventional everyday morality demands that man should hand down to his children not only the goods he has acquired, but also the capacity to work for the further maintenance of their lives. The supreme and unconditional morality also requires that the present generation should leave a twofold legacy to the next,--in the first place all the positive acquisitions of the past, all the savings of history; and, secondly, the capacity and the readiness to use this capital for the common good, for a nearer approach to the supreme goal.

This is the essential purpose of true education, which must be at once both traditional and progressive. The division and opposition between these two factors of the true life--between the ground and that which is built upon it, between the root and that which grows out of it--is absurd and detrimental to both sides.

[Vladimir Soloviev, The Justification of the Good, von Peters, ed. Catholic Resources (Chattanooga, TN: 2015), p. 445.]

Whewell also makes this point, calling the two aspects the 'permanent' and 'progressive'; although arguably Whewell takes them to be more detachable from each other than Soloviev does.

Poem a Day 26

Heat

The sidewalks burn with light.
The sun is rising high; its heat
burns our innocent feet.
All things shine that we see, and eyes
ache from the burning skies.
May we see, ere we die, the night.