Chesterton for March X

The conception of a patron saint had carried from the Middle Ages one very unique and as yet unreplaced idea. It was the idea of variation without antagonism. The Seven Champions of Christendom were multiplied by seventy times seven in the patrons of towns, trades and social types; but the very idea that they were all saints excluded the possibility of ultimate rivalry in the fact that they were all patrons.

Source: A Short History of England

Shepherd on Beginning to Exist

This isn't really meant to stand alone, but I've been meaning for a while to post something on Lady Mary Shepherd's account of how we know the external world as well as Whewell's account of science. Both of those I'll probably have time to do in the next few days, but for the former, since Shepherd's account depends on her prior account of causation, I wanted to post a brief post laying out, in rough and summary form, her primary argument for a key claim, so I can refer back to it in the post to come.

To be proved: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

1. Beginning to exist is the introduction of a difference. (premise)

2. The introduction of a difference is an action. (premise)

3. An action is an exercised capability that belongs to the nature of an existing thing. (premise)

4. An existing thing cannot be a thing that does not yet exist. (premise)

5. What has a beginning to its existence did not yet exist before a difference was introduced. (premise)

6. The beginning to exist of what begins to exist is not the action of what has a beginning to its existence, but rather the action of an existing thing distinct from it. (from (1)-(5) combined)

7. Therefore everything that has a beginning to its existence does so as the action of something that exists and is not itself. (from (6) directly)

And (7) is equivalent to what was to be proved. Shepherd regards (1)-(5) as all necessary truths; anyone who denies them simply doesn't understand what an action is, or what we mean when we say something begins to exist.

In actuality, different routes are possible, and we find such different routes in Shepherd's discussions. But they are all similar in recognizing that nothing begins to exist unless a difference is introduced, that the introduction of a difference is an action, and that actual actions cannot be the actions of something that is itself not actual.

It's this line of thought that leads Shepherd to reject unequivocally the claim that cause and effect is simply a regularity or invariable succession, and especially to reject Hume's claim that we infer causes wholly on the basis of custom and not reasoning.

Partition of Cares

But it is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into states, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor. Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread. It is by this partition of cares, descending in gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be best managed, for the good and prosperity of all.

Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography. In this passage Jefferson is discussing the danger of judges trying to increase their jurisdiction, and the consequent pooling of power into a few hands. It's this streak of Jeffersonianism, incidentally, that makes so many conservatively inclined American Catholics sympathetic with it, since this is a Jeffersonian version of what Catholics call subsidiarity. Joshua P. Hochschild has an interesting paper discussing subsidiarity in precisely this light. It's also the reason for the very different turns discussions of subsidiarity tend to take in Europe and in America; Americans are faced with Jeffersonian issues and worries in direct ways that Europeans are not.

Scorn Not the Sonnet

Scorn not the Sonnet
by William Wordsworth

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

I actually had to look up who Camöens was supposed to be; it turns out to be an Anglicization of the last name of Luís Vaz de Camões, the great Portuguese poet who wrote The Lusiads, and I had indeed heard of him -- The Lusiads is the great Portuguese national epic. He wrote sonnets, too, of course, and had an extraordinary influence on the Portuguese language.

Chesterton for March IX

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Source: A Short History of England

Chesterton for March VIII

A paradox is a fantastic thing that is said once: a fashion is a more fantastic thing that is said a sufficient number of times.

Source: The Crimes of England

Calm Regard

What is commonly, in a popular sense, called reason, and is so much recommended in moral discourses, is nothing but a general and a calm passion, which takes a comprehensive and distant view of its object, and actuates the will, without exciting any sensible emotion. A man, we say, is diligent in his profession from reason; that is, from a calm desire of riches and a fortune. A man adheres to justice from reason; that is, from a calm regard to a character with himself and others.

Hume, A Dissertation on the Passions, Section V. This is very important for understanding Hume's view that reason only serves the passions: part of what makes the view plausible on his account is that much that other people attribute to reason he attributes to the passions: calm passions are a sort of emotional fixing on a general view of the situation, rather than simply a knee-jerk reaction, and thus influence action by a steady and constant pressure.