There's a Smile on the Fruit, and a Smile on the Flower

 The Gladness of Nature
by William Cullen Bryant 

 Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around;
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? 

 There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, 
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;
The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by. 

 The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,
And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale. 

 There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,
There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. 

 And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

Last of the Fathers

 Today was the feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church. From a letter to the Cardinal Deacon Peter:

From this blindness, then, it follows that we frequently love and approve that which is not for that which is; since while we are in this body we are wandering from Him who is the Fulness of Existence. And what is man, O God, except that Thou hast taken knowledge of Him? If the knowledge of God is the cause that man is anything, the want of this makes him nothing. But He who calls those things which are not as though they were, pitying those reduced in a manner to nothing, and not yet able to contemplate in its reality, and to embrace by love that hidden manna, concerning which the Apostle says: Your life is hidden with Christ in God (Cor. iii. 3). But in the meantime He has given us to taste it by faith and to seek for by strong desire. By these two we are brought for the second time from not being, to begin to be that His (new) creature, which one day shall pass into a perfect man, into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. That, without doubt, shall take place, when righteousness shall be turned into judgment, that is, faith into knowledge, the righteousness which is of faith into the righteousness of full knowledge, and also the hope of this state of exile shall be changed into the fulness of love. For if faith and love begin during the exile, knowledge and love render perfect those in the Presence of God. For as faith leads to full knowledge, so hope leads to perfect love, and, as it is said, If ye will not believe ye shall not understand (Is. vii. 9, acc. to lxx.), so it may equally be said with fitness, if you have not hoped, you will not perfectly love. Knowledge then is the fruit of faith, perfect charity of hope. In the meantime the just lives by faith (Hab. ii. 4), but he is not happy except by knowledge; and he aspires towards God as the hart desires the water-brooks; but the blessed drinks with joy from the fountain of the Saviour, that is, he delights in the fulness of love.

Method and Common Sense

 I've recently needed a new pair of eyeglasses. My glass lenses had been (very slightly) scratched a while ago, and what this ultimately began leading to was for the protective film on the lens to begin a slow process of infinitesimal flaking and cracking. Because the process was so slow, it wasn't generally noticeable. However, not long ago I was finding myself a bit bothered as to how my lenses were catching the light, and I remembered that I had an old pair of back-up glasses from a previous prescription and dug them out to see how they would work, and it was extraordinary. I had been seeing through what was effectively a cloud; now, everything was much clearer.

The interesting thing, of course, is that the prescription on the back-up glasses is an older, less adequate prescription. The lenses I had been using are a somewhat better fit for my eyes than these older glasses, and under very specific circumstances (the lighting just right) this can be seen. But in general, the cloudiness created by the deterioration of the lenses makes the better-prescription glasses worse than the glasses with a less adequate prescription.

This strikes me as an analogy for how methods of inquiry often work in practice. Just as the more defective lenses with more adequate prescription can be less effective than the less defective lenses with less adequate prescription, so too a more adequate method that is used in a way involving inadequate understanding can be worse than a less adequate method that is used with good understanding. In fact, I think that, when people talk about 'common sense' in arguing and reasoning, they are often talking about this phenomenon. A method might be very powerful, but used badly might be worse than a much simpler, more modest method used well. Many people obviously go wrong by applying methods they only poorly understand, and in many fields you get people who develop elaborate structures on sophisticated methods that are less adequate than simpler structures built on less sophisticated methods, even where the methods used in the elaborate case are, considered in themselves, better methods. 

There are obvious constraints about how this would work, some of which can be seen in the analogy. For instance, it's obvious that one reason you can have this result in the eyeglass case is that the eyeglasses are doing the same thing and have the same purpose, so they can be directly compared. In appealing to 'common sense', people sometimes err by directly comparing things that in fact have different ends in inquiry; this is not an error exclusive to common sense (people do it with massively more sophisticated and expertise-requiring methods, as well), but it's a possible error that has to be kept in mind.

Another condition is that we are dealing with a matter in which approximation, in a broad sense, can be practically useful. That is, in fact, what we are talking about, really; lacking a perfectly understood perfect method, we are comparing methods that have imperfections, or at least limitations, and that are therefore already might not be adequate for high-precision, high-accuracy work. Neither the defective better-prescription glasses nor the effective worse-prescription glasses get me out of having to get an eye exam and new glasses; it's just that in comparing these two glasses, neither of which is perfect, the unclouded weaker prescription is an improvement over the clouded better prescription. Likewise with methods of argument and reasoning.

A third condition is that the difference cannot be very extreme, as measured by its relation to the end in view. Obviously glasses that are so scratched up nothing can be seen are bad glasses whatever the prescription; obviously glasses whose prescription is so off that they are useless are bad glasses whatever the condition of the glasses themselves. As we approach either, we are getting worse; it's just that the approach to each is distinct, and therefore one is not always worse than the other. Of course, if you have a method used with complete incompetence, it does not matter how good the method itself is; and if you have a method too simplistic to get even in the neighborhood of the right kind of answer, it does not matter how competently you use it. Examples of failures on each score are easy to find in almost any intellectual field; you can go on internet forums and find examples of each with remarkably little difficulty. How things go down in between these is the more interesting and less straightforward matter.

Nonetheless, these conditions are not especially difficult to achieve. There are lots of intellectual situations in which you will get farther with a simpler approach than a more adequate approach, as long as the simpler approach is still adequate enough, simply because the simpler approach is less 'in the way' and fiddly than the more adequate approach. Sophisticated methods often come with the weakness of having hidden restrictions, hidden limitations, hidden assumptions that have to be satisfied, like cracks and flakes in the protective coating of a lens, which cannot really be seen but make the whole thing give a clouded result -- and, indeed, the clouded result might not even usually be noticeable despite always being there. How many analytic philosophers have gone wrong simply by mistranslating things into and out of the predicate calculus, making mistakes they would have avoided entirely just by using basic syllogisms or natural-language rules of thumb? More than a few. This is not an indictment of the best methods of analysis used well; but the best methods of analysis can in various ways be harder to use well than simpler methods that will get you close enough. What's more, even in using the stronger method, you might need to check your results using the weaker method; this is a common thing in fields like mathematics, and there have been times, like the early development of the calculus, when entire subfields operated entirely under this regime of always checking the more powerful and precise approach by looser or less rigorous or more approximate means.

The Heat Is Like Some Drowsy Drug

 Reverie in August
by Clark Ashton Smith

The heat is like some drowsy drug
Laden with honey-foundered dreams. . . .
Again the pagan forest seems
To couch and roof our pagan love, 

 Alone I wait . . . but not alone:
For something of you lingers yet,
Something returns, and subtly tells
Of all the beauty made our own. 

 Across the days that intervene
I breathe the fragrance of your hair,
One with the pine-embalsamed air:
Its warm oblivion covers me. 

 Again some gently murmured word
Lights the great fire in my blood . . .
Till rapture like a singing sun
Is in the riven spirit stirred. 

 And leaning thirstily and fain
On earth and air that burn with drouth,
I find again your pagan mouth --
Half-palpable, like dreams that fade.

Reasonable Self-Love and Just Benevolence

 As human nature is not one simple uniform thing, but a composition of various parts, body, spirit, appetites, particular passions, and affections; for each of which reasonable self-love would lead men to have due regard, and make suitable provision: so society consists of various parts, to which we stand in different respects and relations; and just benevolence would as surely lead us to have due regard to each of these, and behave as the respective relations require. Reasonable good will, and right behaviour towards our fellow creatures, are in a manner the same: only that the former expresseth the principle as it is in the mind; the latter, the principle as it were, become external, i. e. exerted in actions. 

 And so far as temperance, sobriety, and moderation in sensual pleasures, and the contrary vices, have any respect to our fellow creatures, any influences upon their quiet, welfare, and happiness; as they always have a real, and often a near, influence upon it; so far it is manifest those virtues may be produced by the love of our neighbor, and that the contrary vices would be prevented by it. Indeed, if men's regard to themselves will not restrain them from excess, it may be thought little probable, that their love to others will he sufficient: but the reason is, that their love to other's is not, any more than their regard to themselves, just, and in its due degree. There are, however, manifest instances of persons kept sober and temperate from regard to their affairs, and the welfare of those who depend upon them. And it is obvious to every one, that habitual excess, a dissolute course of life, implies a general neglect of the duties we owe towards our friends, our families, and our country.

Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, Sermon XIII, "Upon the Love of Our Neighbour".

Two Poem Drafts

The second one, of course, is a version of a passage from Song of Songs, chapter 6. It occurs to me that the Bannered is arguably the starry host, to go with the White (which we know from elsewhere is a synonym of the moon) and the Hot (which is a synonym of the sun), which gives a nice layer to the passage. The she-goats, ewes, queens, concubines, and virgins could also very well be figures of speech for the starry sky. It's remarkable how much sense you can make of the passage in this way; for instance, the bathing place or 'washing' could very well be the Milky Way, the three similes at the beginning could be a different way of expressing the three celestial similes at the end, etc. And, of course, that interacts interestingly with readings of the Fair One as Israel, the Church, and the soul. Truly the Song of Songs.

About a Poem

Word drew well,
lines sketched cheerfully;
hope painted deftly
hues suitable;--
life sought truly
as, sail slung neatly,
peace sailed dreamily
pure, restless seas.

Like the Many-Bannered

Bright are you, my nearest,
like the Delightful Place,
comely like the Peaceful Place,
sublime like the Many-Bannered!

Remove from me your presence,
for it overwhelms:--
your hair like a flock of she-goats
capering from the empty place;
your teeth like a flock of ewes,
springing up from the Bathing Place,
each one twin-bearing and none barren;
your temple like a pomegranate slice
behind your veil.
Sixty are the queens
and eighty the concubines,
with virgins numberless,
but one is my dove,
one my perfect one,
she of her mother,
she the pure one of the one who bore her.
The daughters saw her and blessed her;
the queens and concubines praised her.

Who is this leaning out like the dawn,
bright like the White,
pure like the Burning,
sublime like the Many-Bannered?

Nor Never Spell Their 'Taters with a P

 Sonnet Wrote on the Fly-Leaf of My Grammar Durin' School Hours
by Nixon Waterman

O Education! Maybe thou art all
 Our teachers tell us, but just let me say
 That if my folks wouldst let me have my way,
 From early Spring till frost comes in the Fall
 I 'dst be outdoors, you bet! a-playin' ball
 Or otherwise enjoyin' each fine day. 

 It seem'st a shame for boys to have to stay
Like culprits shut in by a prison wall!
 I guess if you get rich folks wilt not care
 If you don'tst know your grammar to a T,
For baby boys, you'llst find 'most everywhere,
Art named for uncles who hast money, see?
Though they hain'tst got no learnin' they canst spare
Nor never spell their 'taters with a p.