Fortnightly Book, April 12

 Michael Psellos (or Psellus) was originally named Constantine, Michael being the name he took in later life when he became a monk; 'Psellos' is probably a nickname, and means 'one who stammers'. He spent some time in the Imperial civil service, and eventually became a hypogrammateus, or secretary, and advisor to Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos. He also became involved in the Imperial University of the Palace Hall of Magnaura, which Monomachos was restructuring. He received the formal title of Hypatos ton Philosophon, the Chief of the Philosophers. With a few pauses, he would become a significant figure in the courts of laters Empresses and Emperors, as well. We know very little about his later life, and, in fact, he may not have long survived leaving imperial service at some point in the reign of Michael VII Doukas.

His best known work, which will be the next fortnighly book, is the Chronographia, a historical discussion of the reign of the fourteen emperors and empresses of the Empire from 976, the accession of Basil II Porphyrogenitos (Bulgaroctonos), to around 1076 or so, just before the end of the reign of Michael VII Doukas (Parapinaces). It is famous for its focus on biographical and psychological portraiture, which it uses historical events to illuminate, rather than the more common approach of doing the reverse. I will be reading it in the Penguin Classics edition, which has the title, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, and is translated by E. R. A. Sewter.

Maurice Leblanc, The Secret of Sarek

 Introduction

Opening Passage: Narratively, either the Foreword or Chapter 1 can be treated as the beginning of the book. From the Foreword:

The year was 1902. While strolling in the Bois with his daughter Véronique, the well-known scholar of the megalithic monuments of Brittany, M. Antoine d'Hergemont, was assaulted, and Véronique abducted, by four men. This came to be called the Hergemont scandal.

From Chapter 1:

Into the picturesque village of Le Faouet, situated in the very heart of Brittany, there drove one morning in the month of May a lady whose spreading grey cloak and the thick veil that covered her face failed to hider her remarkable beauty and perfect grace of figure.

The lady took a hurried lunch at the principal inn. Then, at about half-past eleven, she begged the proprietor to look after her bag for her, asked for a few particulars about the neighbourhood and walked through the village into the open country. (p. 1)

Summary: Véronique d'Hergemont was once kidnapped and forced into marriage by a man named Count Alexis Vorski; the marriage led to a son, François. Véronique's father fled with François but they were lost at sea and presumed dead, leading Véronique to withdraw in grief into a Carmelite convent, in 1905. But in 1919, when watching a film about Brittany, 'A Breton Legend', she happened to see a door with the initials V. d'H. in what looked like her own handwriting, despite her not remembering ever having written. She investigates, and begins to find herself in a complicated tangle of mysteries. These mysteries lead her to the island of Sarek, a strange island off the coast of the most superstitious part of Brittany. Sarek is also known as the Island of the Thirty Coffins, the 'thirty coffins' being a complicated series of reefs that surround the island and make it difficult to approach. There are many strange legends associated with it, and Sarek is in fact chock full of Gothic Romance tropes. The island is associated with Druids, and has a lithic structure, the Fairies' Dolmen; it has a ruined Priory from a medieval monastery. There is a cave system on the island. There is a garden on the island, known as the Calvary of Flowers, in which the flowers grow strangely large and vibrant.

Most importantly, the locals are terrified of the island, and it is associated with fragments of prophecy about the thirty coffins having thirty victims and a four women being crucified and a miraculous stone, known as the God-Stone, that can kill and heal. In the course of her investigation, Véronique discovers a drawing by her own father of the illustration in an old manuscript concerned with the prophecy; one of the four crucified women has her own face, and is identified by the initials, V. d'H. And it will only get stranger from here, until Don Luis de Perenna -- better known as Lupin -- arrives to solve the mysteries.

When we look at reviews of this book, it tends to get a love-or-hate response. The first third of the book at least is quite slow-moving; the story is structured so that there are many pieces that have to be put into place. This clearly loses it a lot of readers. Once things begin moving, however, they move quite quickly. Lupin's role in the book is really as a deus ex machina rather than anything else; Lupin ends the book, in fact, reflecting that a novelist could have written a version of the story that did not involve him. (My suspicion, albeit based on very little, is that this is Leblanc commenting sarcastically on the fact that readers keep wanting more Lupin, despite there being so many other stories to tell and hinting at the novel he actually had wanted to write.) Personally, I found the book quite fun, especially once the pieces were all in place. I had no problem with Lupin's being the external resolver. The book is in the genre of apparently supernatural mysteries that turn out to be not so supernatural; these are often not very convincing, but I think this was handled quite well.

There are many mysteries to the Isle of Sarek, but I think it does not give away too much of the story to remark that the book is the book it is because it was written in 1919.  In 1898, the Curies discovered radium, and were able to isolate the pure form in 1910. A few things were known about it, but radioactivity was (for obvious reasons) difficult to study, and radium in particular is difficult to gather together in large amounts. And the early bits and pieces that anyone could put together made radium, although already known to be potentially dangerous, seem to have immense potential for a large number of things, if you just used it correctly or in the right doses. In 1918, for instance, you have the development of the patent medicine, Radithor, which claimed to cure a number of illnesses with a solution that included traces of radium. This was the one of the early entries into what later became known as the Radium Fad, in which radium showed up in all sorts of medicines and cosmetics, extraordinary effects being attributed to its radioactive powers, which, after all, were not any kind of superstitious miracles, but were scientific facts. It wasn't until the 1930s that the Radium Fad began to crash. This happens to be historically important in the United States, because Radithor's demise in a scandal in which one of its major advocates died of radiation poisoning led to a massive expansion of powers in the Food and Drug Administration and a great deal more regulatory caution about medicines and cosmetics. 

All of this is to say that the story was written in that exciting time when radium was seen as having limitless potential, near the very beginning of the Radium Fad. Scientific magic, scientific miracle, sweeping away superstition. It's not magic, it's vita-rays! Of course, we know now that it was all a sort of superstition itself (although we have certainly not in general learned the lesson that what we replace superstition with is often just a new kind of superstition). But that was in the future. The romantic possibilities of it had not yet crashed into disillusionment, and I think it works well as a science fiction thriller for its day. And frankly, I like how it meshes with the Gothic atmosphere and folkloric elements.

Favorite Passage:

"They are very complicated legends," said Stéphane, "very obscure traditions in which we must abandon any attempt to distinguish between what is superstition and what might be truth. Out of this jumble of old wives' tales, the most that we can disentangle is two sets of ideas, those referring to the prophecy of the thirty coffins and those relating to the existence of a treasure, or rather of a miraculous stone."

"Then they take as a prophecy," said Véronique, "the words which I read on Maguennoc's drawing and again on the Fairies' Dolmen."

"Yes, a prophecy which dates back to an indeterminate period and which for centuries has governed the whole history and the whole life of Sarek. The belief has always prevailed that a day would come when, within a space of twelve months, the thirty principal reefs which surround the island and which are called the thirty coffins would recieve their thirty victims, who were to die a violent death, and that those thirty victims would include four women who were to die crucified. It is an established and undisputed tradition, handed down from father to son: and everybody believes in it. It is expressed in the line and part of a line inscribed on the Fairies' Dolmen: 'Four women crucified,' and 'For thirty coffins victims thirty times!'" (pp. 122-123)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended, although, as noted above, mileage may vary. The book is explicitly a sequel to The Golden Triangle, and I think parts of the story work better if you have already read that book.

Two Poem Re-Drafts

  Exclusion 

I suppose we can say, if nothing else will do,
that all things have a measure, some accounted span,
that limits make the thing and keep its focus true,
that all things spread their being in just the ways they can.
Yet still it seems absurd, improper, even rude,
that we, like some strange gods, with reason hold full sway,
yet with a sword-kept Eden, the world dares exclude
such as us from endless life, imposing a final day.
We stamp our feet, demand the Manager give His time,
insist that we are deserving, our merit known to all,
weep at the unfairness, in anger scream and rant,
and are firmly turned away, no matter how sublime.
We feel, deep inside, that immortal regions call,
but no matter -- we try to evade death, and we can't.

Stranger in This World

God is found in a thousand clues,
lure and ruse,
through mists and in tides,
hints preparing for good news. 

The sea upon the rocks may crash and foam
but I am unencumbered by their rage,
and though I stood alone,
as the world may think alone,
with God's help I will conquer this and every age. 

Every thought that does not follow
the world's staff like foolish sheep,
every prayer that I make that it will never hear,
is a wall against the sea,
is a battle's victory;
though the wind may blow,
the waters fall in sheets,
yet nothing shall I fear,
for nothing need I fear,
and I need never fall to dark defeat. 

As moonlight falls around us
like a darker shade of pale,
a white found in the night
when the stars the heavens sail,
as breezes softly murmur beneath the vestments white
of a moon that ever wanders,
but never falters with its light,
I think a little hope is merited;
in all that we have inherited,
the little things that matter are the things that conquer most. 

The sea upon the rocks may crash and foam,
but always am I safe at home,
for if I hold my homeland in my heart, 
no one can my inside-myself from my possession part. 

A pilgrim in the world,
a seashell on my staff,
at frowning faces of the world
I am free to laugh;
and if the storms that stir the world
rise against me in a gale,
yet, though I may be weak,
I know I will prevail;
there is a promise given
that withstands the gates of hell. 

And you, yes, you, can have all the worldly things you sought,
for I will cast them all aside to see the face of God.

Welcome Home, Artemis II

 The splashdown of the Integrity module of the Artemis mission occurred in the Pacific, not too far from San Diego, I believe, at about 5:07pm today, after a picture-perfect re-entry and descent. As I write this, the US Navy is doing the work of retrieving the astronauts, who report that their condition is Green, i.e., very good. The descent was great to watch. Some things should be done just because they're wonderful.

Dashed Off XII

 rightful authority acting in an appropriately human way according to natural law for just end

The flaws of fan fiction often arise from treating a story as if it were a playable game.

Nobody in practice treats their pleasures as fungible or as all on a level.

A universe capable of being the habitation of what has dignity, itself has dignity.

The worry that immortality would be boring is the worry that thymos depends on (the possibility of) death.

"Coincidences obvious, explicit, direct, might result from truth, but would be compatible also with forgery. But oblique allusions, wherein the coincidence has to be pointed out, and does not lie on the surface, are just such as nature and truth would produce, and which no forger would ever insert." Fausset

"Coincidence consists in the concurrence or consistency of evidence. If testimony coming from two different sources perfectly agrees, and though touching upon different points harmonises in the end, we have a coincidence.---If that coincidence is manifestly undesigned, unintentional, the proof arising therefrom is proportionably stronger. The *minuteness* of a coincidence bestows greater value upon the argument founded on it; the more circuitous it is, the more difficult would it have been to fabricate; and again, if a narrative and a recapitulation of it at first sight, seem to contradict one another, but upon further investigation are ascertained to agree, then the proof of the truth and reality of the whole is augmented." George W. Hill

Becoming convinced by an argument is not an instantaneous process; where conclusions touch on matters central to a person's perspective, they can take very long to have a stable effect.

Our actual conversations with people often have very little to do with our interests and motivations.

The tendency to think of mana as a force or energy rather than a status or dignity seems reflective of late-19th and 20th century prejudices rather than of its actual roles in Polynesian and Melanesian society.

All good taste begins with insight.

Either we have human rights from the very beginning or we never really do.

Events may be by chance so as to be for the sake of something, like shuffling a deck of cards and dealing in order to play a game. Chance may itself have no particular end, but something's being by chance may have an end.

As rationality with sympathy makes us civic animals, so rationality with sexuality makes us marital animals.

Passions enable us to act even when we lack knowledge; a life of giving in to the passions is a life that can be improved but little by knowledge.

Evolution is possible because the laws of nature have greater intelligibility than what is evolved according to them; the apparent rise of order comes from the order inherent in the cosmos.

Probabilities for something being inscrutable do not rule out reasons for and against, because not all reasons are associated with definable probabilities.

Communal personal relationship is a greater good than individual personal relationship.

All authority is either bestowed, or acquired, or adjoined.

They who claim to know all God's purposes will always find themselves surprised.

Wheter 'good' or 'right' are thick or thin terms depends on context.

Every prayer requires a warrant, establishing our standing and our reason for that kind of prayer.

the interpenetration of Faith, Writ, and Church, each as an aspect of divine revelation

rumor as a mechanism for our general sense of the human community

The first step of catechizing is familiarizing with the vocabulary that makes further communication possible.

a definition of 'cringe':
-- a kind of failure
-- such as to provoke a negative aesthetic response
-- which would still allow for possible sympathetic response
-- except that the doer lacks awareness of the failure
-- in a way that is itself a social failure
-- that itself provokes a response of disapproval

Human beings think in metaphors, and the biggest divides are between people who know they are thinking in metaphors and people who think they are not doing so.

2 Sam 12:20 as type of sacrametns (baptism and eucharist, especially)

Money derives from abstractions of want.

Empiricists often confuse the beginner state and the expert state; that is, the kinds of inferences/associations of experience to which empiricists appeal are often themselves things that can only be learned over time, and are more associated with the highly experienced than originary. We do not, for instance, begin with atomistic impressions, ideas, or intuitions, but learn to analyze them out; nor kinds of association but with huge tangled masses of associated things; we learn over time different ways to develop stable expectations; etc.

Empiricism has always struggled to account for our experience of experiencing.

Brilliance and education both often founder on unexamined assumptions.

Literature grows out of ritual.

The history of the Church is a history of struggle over authority.

To understand the causal relation between grace and free will, one must first begin with the causal relations between creation and free will; the temptation is always to start somewhere else.

Since the fourth century, the clergy have not taken with adequate seriousness the problem laity face of trying to treat the Eucharist with adequate reverence while being stuck with living lives in the world that can easily erode this. Attempts by the laity to solve this problem have historically included things like rare communion, or seeking communion outside of Mass, or paraliturgical devotions, in and out of Mass, that bridge the liturgical and the more secular (like common devotional rosary prayers, adoration, etc.). In encouraging *frequent communion within a Mass in which the congregation has a direct active role*, modern bishops have, whatever the undoubted and undeniable benefits of such a policy, made the problem worse and provided nothing at all to help deal with it -- have not, in fact, even seriously acknowledged it.

We never start with clarity; we always muddle through until we clarify.

sacramentals & holy metonymy

Church Militant: the Church as sacrifice on the altar
Church Patient: the Church as sweet aroma of sacrifice
Church Triumphant: the Church as sacrifice received by God

the point of a game vs. the point of playing a game

For two probability assessments to be compared, they have to be calibrated in terms of the same field of possibilities.

When we consider our debt, we find a hierarchy: private benefactors, public benefactors, ancestors; but there seems an overplus beyond these, obligations more general even than parental/ancestral onese, and ignoring these gives our ethics a chopped-off feel. We have debts as wide as the universe itself and as deep as our existence itself. But even before those limits, we discover debts broader and deeper than the private, public, and ancestral ones we generally find in our human relations, e.g., recognizing that we owe something in some way to our broader environment.

the feeling of owing something to the beautiful or the sublime

Jn 20:22 and exsufflation rites (also Gn 2:7, Wis 15:11, Job 33:4, Ezk 37:9)

Propositions do not probabilize other propositions (outside of the analytic cases) in isolation; the links between propositions are always in light of all other relevant propositions.

An important question in Christian theology: Do you say that, or do Christ's prayerful faithful suggest that?

'the natural effects of exceptional causes'

A very large portion of human thinking is backwards -- that is, when we compare it to how it is naturally presented, it actually went in reverse from how it is presented.

mutuation: the act of borrowing or exchanging

"The contract of usury is nothing else but illiberal mutuation." Blaxton

Most major American cities are near a river and mountain fall line; riverheads of navigation and early railroad/trade-travel prominence also helps (making the place a default hub). A secondary factor is having unusually good weather for a region (e.g., shelter from storm, agricultural eminence, tourism potential). 

Theatrical performances are ritually demarcated.

sources of possible injustice in contract: direct loss, indirect loss, direct risk, indirect risk, uncompensated broader service, direct coercion, indirect coercion

assertion and denial --> domains of discourse --> manifold of domains --> world as limit

We describe the world with layers of kinds of assertion and denial.

principle of noncontradiction --> being ut primum cognitum --> being as primary and secondary --> creative being and creature being

ancestral piety as a bridge to religious piety

the extrinsic quasi-intrinsic and the intrinsic quasi-extrinsic

'quod quis vehementer desiderat, facile credit' Aquinas (2-2.162.3ad2), of the proud man

Green and grue imply different causal claims about the world.

Real grue-like classifications imply intelligence. (It's because we sometimes organize the world in grue-like ways that grue classifications seem possible.)

Induction is related to expectation not from bare series but to expectation from established possibilities.

Fiction/Nonfiction is a functional distinction, based on the kinds of function a thing affords in broader discourse.

fiction vs. mistaken nonfiction

durability of analogy

One of the functions of obligations in reasoning is to distinguish the morally stupid from the merely nonideal.

Positive law presupposes language already having legal force.

The notion that illocutionary force is 'suspended' when an actor says something on stage, is obviously absurd, and shows a complete philistinism about drama. Stage utterance shifts perlocutionary force in aiming at aesthetic effect in the audience; but it cannot do this if illocutionary force changes much.

In the Incarnation, theology became fully philosophical while not reducing to philosophy.

Much of political discourse is argument over the best metaphors.

inference from the best metaphor

We develop foresight out of hindsight.

There is vast power in the death of a good person.

Hallowed Be Thy Name: faith
Thy Kingdom Come: hope
Thy Will Be Done: love

A remarkable amount of the Industrial Revolution is due to northwest England happening to find low-sulfur coal deposits near iron deposits.

What is one's right is an offshoot of what is prudent.

tantundem
In irregular deposit, one gives the depository money to create a custody of the tantundem (the equivalent quantiity), with the tantundem to be returned on demand.

"...while all God's actions manifest both, justice is less causative than mercy, and explains less about a divine action." James Chastek

Dante's depictions of infernal punishment are somewhat limited by the fact that his means can only represent sins qua principal or dominating vices.

People do not evaluate debates logically but rhetorically.

Institutions within and under law can be artifacts; this is different from saying that law itself, or the legal system itself, is an artifact.

Law is more often used to simplify coordination problems than to solve them.

All legal systems get their primary unity from reason. 

Tamanaha's "The Problems with Artifact Legal Theory" -- very good

Prices pre-exist money, being measurements in exchange.

forms of deontic causation
(1) imposed (e.g., on pets)
(2) delegated (e.g., soldiers, servants)
(3) dispositive/framework (e.g., citizens)
(4) contractual

The yir'ah of the Lord: fear, awe, reverence, respect
Ps 55:5 yir'ah = horror/fear/terror

ga'on Micah 5:$, Pr 16:18
=highness, overness (ga'avah works similarly)

Rationally coming to know presupposes the falsehood of determinism with respect to coming to know, because rationally coming to know precludes the conclusion and the inquiry being set in advance.

Human beings are constantly deriving physical conclusions from moral and a priori conclusions; it's why, ofr instance, we characterize alleged physical situations as absurd or obvious, impossible or necessary, explicable or inexplicable, conceivable or inconceivable.

The things that matter most cannot be deserved.

The distinction between a priori and a posteriori has to be teased out of our reasoning, which almost always intertwines both.

Ps 4:5 penance
Ps 4:6 eucharist
Ps 4:7 baptism (lumen) and confirmation (laetitia)
Ps 4:8 orders
Ps 4:9 unction
[these verses are numbered slightly differently depending on the version]

first principles as signate light

"Virtue is more precise and better than every art, as is nature as well." Aristotle NE 1106b

ordered structures that replace the need for particular trust with the need for only general trust

A population of living things often works somewhat like a living thing (herding, flocking, territorial defense, pack hunting, etc.).

Hope in a Morning Blighted

 April Sonnet II: April Cruel
by Francis Bennoch

April, ah me! how swiftly changes come,
How soon the month we love we learn to hate,
When boughs deflowered hang down disconsolate,
And clouds of grief make dark our garden home,
Where genial shunshine lingering loved to wait;
With joy we grafted in thy wounded rind
The fairest branch that ever blossom bore;
Clasped close, incorporate as one combined,
A newborn rapture trembled in thy core
As budding life expanded, more and more
We longed to reap the fruit; but woke to find
Hope in a morning blighted; from the shore
A ruthless wind stole with untimely frost,
And all thy cherished bloom was shrivelled, loosed, and lost.

April, 1855

Birthtime of Beauty and of Poesy

 April Sonnet I: April Kind
by Francis Bennoch 

April, though treacherous and changeling named,
Wanton and wayward in thy nature, still
Revealest thou those mysteries that fill
All hearts with love's deep sympathy, and famed
For blooms that odorous balm distil.
Birthtime of beauty and of poesy:
When birds betrothed melodious from the hill
Rain down their morning song of ecstasy.
When amorous bees toy fondly with the flower,
And drain its humid sweets deliriously,
Faint with excess, in love's delicious bower
Softly infolded, blossom-couched he lies:
Whilst draughts of fragrant dew oblivious sleep supplies. 

 April, 1855.