The Virtual Stoa

Jasper Milvain buys the Saturday edition of the Guardian, and has very kindly forwarded to me a discussion of hair that appeared there yesterday, and which was curiously suppressed from the online edition. John Mullan was reviewing Alastair Fowler’s new edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Here’s Mullan:

“So if the longer notes at first appear digressive, they return you to the poem convinced that the editorial digression showed you the very by-ways of Milton’s imagination. Take the long paragraph of Fowler’s small print excited by Milton’s first description of Adam and Eve’s hairstyles — of Adam’s “hyacinthine locks” and Eve’s “wanton ringlets”. We start with Saint Paul’s strictures on when women should cover their hair, then wander through a mini-essay on the significance of hair in epic poetry, a parenthesis on Milton’s own hairstyle and hair-colouring, suggestive examples of the depiction of women’s hair in 17th-century painting and some speculation about Milton’s “special sexual interest in hair”. You might think this is like listening to an engagingly eccentric professor, free-associating, in the library of his mind, yet soon the clinching references to the ways the poem fixes on Eve’s “golden tresses” convince you otherwise. Her “dishevelled” hair signifies what is both lovely and vulnerable about here, and the poet is as fascinated as the devil who gazes at her from his hiding place.”

Here’s what Fowler wrote in the 1971 edition of his book (I think I’ve got a later edition at home, so I’ll post any of Fowler’s subsequent thoughts on hair before too long):

“iv.301-8. The hair-length proper for each sex follows directly from the statement of their hierarchic relation; for, according to St Paul, ‘a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man: for her hair is given her for a covering’ (1 Cor. xi 7, 15; cp. the A. V. marginal glass on 10, which explains the covering is a ’sign that she is under the power of her husband’). hyacinthine locks] When Athene ’shed grace about his head and shoulders’, Odysseus’ hair flower ‘like the hyacinth flower’ (Homer, Od. vi 231). If a colour were implied, it might be either blue, the colour of the hyacinth flower or gem (i.e., the sapphire; cp. l. 237n), or just possibly tawny (the hyacinth of heraldry, near to the colour of M.’s own hair), or black (Eustathius’ gloss on the Homeric passage) or very dark brown (Suidas’ gloss); in fact, almost any colour at all. But it is just as likely that a shape is meant (the idealized treatment accorded to hair in antique sculpture?), or an allusion to the beautiful youth Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo but doomed to die. The elaborateness of the present passage lends some support to the theory that M. had a special sexual interest in hair. (In this connection cp. 496f, Lycidas 69, 175.)”

And here’s John Milton, Paradise Lost, iv.300-311:

“His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She as a veil down to her slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.”

Welcome to the latest Early Modern instalment of Carnivalesque, hosted for the first time at the Virtual Stoa, and with apologies for appearing a little later than I think I said it would.

Kicking off in Tudor England, we’ve got another entry in the Dead King Watch, conceivably inspired by a regular feature on this blog, who knows?, with this one devoted to Edward VI.

Something Earmarks saw on telly brought Thomas Wright�s 1604 The Passions of the Minde in Generall to mind.

Misteraitch over at Spamula has been considering the artist Jacques de Gheyn, 1565-1629.

And while we’re thinking about artists in the Low Countries, the Interesting Thing of the Day a few days ago was a discussion of the possible use of a camera obscura by Johannes Vermeer.

Crossing back over the Channel, Escalus is advertising the Early Modern English Ballad Archive and shares a favourite ballad, “A Looking-Glass for Lascivious Young Men: OR, THE Prodigal Son SIFTED”, together with a bit of discussion and an attempt to date it to the 1680s.

And it’s ballads ballads ballads at the Carnivalesque, with Blogging the Renaissance telling us all about “My Bird is a Round-head”, a fine ballad from 1642.

Continuing the Puritan theme for a short while, at least, Early Modern Whale interested in face patches, and in what puritans thought about them (not keen).

And moving towards the broad sunny uplands of the eighteenth century, David Davisson has helpfully reproduced the text of a 1773 Connecticut law against mountebanks and told us a bit about his proposed research on itinerancy in colonial America…

… Brandon Watson has some valuable words and links about Moses Mendelssohn…

… and we end over at The Skwib with its presentation of lost power point slides of the Marquis de Sade…

The next Carnivalesque for Early Modern History (Loosely Defined) is going to take place here at the Virtual Stoa some time in the middle of June, so do send in your candidates for inclusion using the Official Submission Form, which will probably make its way back to me in the fullness of time. More over here.

I know that I’m supposed to be a sort-of kind-of early modernist, and really ought to know the answer to this, but I’m stumped. Why did people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries think that the Egyptians worshipped vegetables in general and leeks in particular? (Perhaps they did?)

Here’s Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, ch.44:

For if it be enough to excuse it of idolatry to say it is no more bread, but God; why should not the same excuse serve the Egyptians, in case they had the faces to say the leeks and onions they worshipped were not very leeks and onions, but a divinity under their species or likeness?

Here’s Blaise Pascal, in the Pens�es (and I’ve quoted this passage before:

He alone [ = God] is our true good. From the time we have forsaken him, it is a curious thing that nothing in nature has been capable of taking his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, snakes, fever, plague, war famine, vice, adultery, incest. From the time he lost his true good, man can see it everywhere, even in his own destruction, though it is so contrary to God, reason, and nature, all at once.

And here’s David Hume, in the Natural History of Religion, �12:

How can you worship leeks and onions? we shall suppose a Sorbonnist to say to a priest of Sais. If we worship them, replies the latter; at least, we do not, at the same time, eat them. But what strange objects of adoration are cats and monkeys? says the learned doctor. They are at least as good as the relics or rotten bones of martyrs, answers his no less learned antagonist. Are you not mad, insists the Catholic, to cut one another’s throat about the preference of a cabbage or a cucumber? Yes, says the pagan; I allow it, if you will confess, that those are still madder, who fight about the preference among volumes of sophistry, ten thousand of which are not equal in value to one cabbage or cucumber.”

So where does this trope come from? And does anyone know of any other examples? (And let’s hope this doesn’t turn into another bout of furious beaver-blogging…)[Thanks.]

UPDATE [12.20pm]: This page might provide a clue or two, and points us towards Numbers 11:5: “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick.” But nothing about worshipping.

There’s also Malebranche, from The Search after Truth, with a reference to this bit of the Bible:

“It is true that reason does not tell us that we ought to worship, for example, leeks and onions as the sovereign divinity, because they cannot make us entirely happy when we have them, or entirely wretched when we do not. Thus the pagans never honoured them as much as the great Jupiter, on whom all their deities depended. Nor as much as the sun, which our senses represent to us [200] as the universal cause, which gives life and movement to everything, and which you could not help regarding as a divinity if you assumed (like the pagan philosophers) that it included in its being the genuine causes of what it seems to bring about, not only in our body and in our spirit, but also in all the beings around us.”But even if you should not render sovereign honour to leeks and onions, you could still offer them some sort of restricted worship � I mean think about them, and love them in a certain way. If it is true that they can give us a certain sort of happiness, then we should honour them in proportion to the good they can do. And it is certainly the case that people who accept the evidence of their senses think that these vegetables are capable of doing them good. For example, the Israelites would not have missed them so deeply in the desert, and they would not have considered themselves wretched for lack of them, if they had not imagined that they would in some way be made happy by having them.”

And here’s John Wesley, in Sermon 102, which really doesn’t make me warm to the man:

But that the generality of men were not one jot wiser in ancient times than they are at the present time we may easily gather from the most authentic records. One of the most ancient nations concerning whom we have any certain account is the Egyptian. And what conception can we have of their understanding and learning when we reflect upon the objects of their worship? These were not only the vilest of animals, as dogs and cats, but the leeks and onions that grew in their own gardens. Indeed, I knew a great man (whose manner was to treat with the foulest abuse all that dared to differ from him: I do not mean Dr. Johnson — he was a mere courtier compared to Mr. Hutchinson) who scurrilously abused all those who are so void of common sense as to believe any such thing concerning them. He peremptorily affirms, (but without condescending to give us any proof) that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt had a deep hidden meaning in all this. Let him believe it who can. I cannot believe it on any man bare assertion. I believe they had no deeper meaning in worshipping cats than our schoolboys have in baiting them. And I apprehend, the common Egyptians were just as wise three thousand years ago as the common ploughmen in England and Wales are at this day. I suppose their natural understanding like their stature, was on a level with ours, and their learning, their acquired knowledge, many degrees inferior to that of persons of the same rank either in France, Holland, or Germany.

Oh dear, it’s beaver-blogging all over again. Must. Stop. This. Now.

You can read up on the story of the Gunpowder Plot over here, at Wikipedia, or use the Guardian’s nice little graphics show; the BBC has a sensible-looking “what if it had succeeded?” page or two; there seems to be quite a lot over at gunpowder-plot.org, the people at spartacus.net have their own telling of the tale, and the busy bees at the Parliamentary Archives, no less, have produced two versions of the story, for children and for adults. If I’ve missed any other good links, please add them in Comments.

As I reported three years ago, which is a long time in the World of Blogs, there used to be a theory floating around a subsection of my mother’s family that we were descended from one of the Gunpowder Plotters - two of whom were called Wintour, with my Catholic maternal grandmother’s maiden name being Winter - but this page makes me think it’s probably not true.

Here we go, to end this mini-serial, broken up into a number of shorter paras for ease-of-reading convenience.

We may go one step farther. The property of labour, you say, overbalances the community of land: because the value of it, when compared with the value of land, is worth ninety nine parts in a hundred. Now if, by saying, that the property of labour overbalances the community of land, you only mean, that labour is worth much more than uncultivated land, we might allow it. But if you mean, that, because the value of labour is so much greater than the value of land, the labour of one man will overrule or set aside the common claim of all mankind, we must deny it.For suppose the labour of him, who cultivates the land, to be worth ninety nine parts in a hundred of the whole value of the land, after it is cultivated; all that could be due to the labourer, upon this supposition, would be no more than the produce of his own labour: the ninety nine parts, which belong to him, would not swallow up the hundreth part, which he had originally no exclusive right to. This hundreth part, that is, the land itself, must therefore still remain in common, as it was before; he might labour in it again, if he pleased, as one of the joynt commoners; but he would have no property in it.

Let us try this reasoning in another instance. The landlord, as we call him, or the owner of the soil, after property has been introduced, has an exclusive right to some certain quantity of land, suppose for instance, to an acre which bears twenty bushels of wheat: the tenant ploughs and sows this land; and besides the mere personal act of labour, he uses his own materials in cultivating the land. Now the labour of the occupyer puts the chief value upon the land, and without this labour it would be worth little; for it is to [p.61] this, that we owe all its useful production. For whatever the straw, bran, bread, &c. of that acre of wheat is worth more than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effects of labour.

You see then how much the property of labour overbalances the property of land. But no one will be led to conclude from hence, that, because, according to this reckoning, in the value of an acre of land ninety nine parts in a hundred are owing to the labour of the occupyer, the property, which he has in his own labour, will swallow up the property, which the landlord has in the soil; and that the land, because he has cultivated it, will for the future become his own.

But if the right of property in the soil, which in estimating the value of land, is but one part in a hundred, is not overruled or set aside by the overbalance in the value of labour; I can see no reason why the same overbalance should be supposed to set aside the common claims of mankind to land, which was never appropriated. Let the right be what it will, whether it is a right of property, or of common claim, if an overbalance in the value of the labour, which is joyned to it, will not swallow up one of them, no good reason can be given, why it should swallow up the other.

And that’s your lot.

I’ve broken up the inordinately long final para., to help bring this epic to a digestible conclusion:

To strengthen this opinion concerning the introduction of property, and to answer an objection, which has been hinted at already, Mr. Lock compares the value of labour with the value of the land, with which it is so mixed.

“Nor is it, says he, so strange, as perhaps before consideration may appear, that the property of labour should be able to balance the community of land. For it is labour indeed, that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco, or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think, as he goes on, it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth, useful to the life of man, nine [p.59] tenths are the effects of labour: nay if we will rightly estimate things, as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety nine parts in a hundred are wholly to be put on the account of labour.”

But we may ask in return, what the value of pure labour is, when considered merely as the personal act of the labourer? If neither the timber of his plough, nor the horses that draw it, nor the meat, which they eat, nor the manure, which he lays upon his land, nor the grain, with which he sows it, are his own, what will you rate his labour at? Certainly you rate it much too high, if upon comparing it with the value of the land, you set it at ninety nine parts in a hundred, or even at nine parts in ten. But you will suppose all these materials to be his own. I ask therefore how he gained property in them? You answer, by his labour, and explane this labour to be only the act of taking them or separating them from the common stock. Now this labour is of little or no value at all; and consequently you cannot say, in this instance, that the common right of mankind is overbalanced by the labour of the occupant. And if, in one instance, a labour, which is worth nothing, when compared with the thing acquired, will give the occupant property; then we can have no reason to imagine, that it is the high rate of labour, when compared with the value of land, which so overbalances to the common right of mankind to the land, as to give the labourer an exclusive right to it. You have only dazzled our eyes with this high account of the value of labour; since you must, in order to give it so high a value, suppose property to have been introduced before- [p.60] hand by a labour, which is of little or no value at all.

The end is nigh…

Here’s a bit more, with similar editing principles as in earlier instalments.

[p.57] “In Mr. Locks opinion, property in immoveable goods, such as the earth or soil, is acquired in the same manner and is governed by the same measure, as property in moveable goods.

“As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.”

But what is this again, but the exercise of a common right, instead of such an exclusive right as property is. For not to insist here upon the limitation of having property only in so much land, as we can use; let us try the effects of this right, and see whether they are the same with the effects of property. Suppose then, that the man, after he has for some time tilled the land, and cultivated it, was either by age or sickness to become incapable of tilling and cultivating it any longer: if the mixing his labour with it was his whole title to it; when his labour ceases, his title to the land must cease with it; the land can be his no longer, than he can cultivate it; and when he is disabled for labouring, he cannot sell or let it to any other person: that is, it was his to labour in, but not his to dispose of as he pleases: and consequently his right could only be a right to use, and not an exclusive right of property. This Mr. Lock might have been sensible of, if he had attended [to] his own reasoning.

“He, say this author, that in obedience to the command of God, to improve the earth to the benefit of life, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something, that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could, without injury, take from him. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of [p.58] land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided for could use.”

If then his title to the land, which he occupies, rests upon this principle, that there was enough for others, besides what he had taken for his own use; it is plane that, unless there had been enough for others, his title would not have been a good one: and from hence it follows, that all his title is no more than a common right to use what he wants, and no an exclusive right of property: because the right of property does not at all depend upon the convenience of others.

Just one more paragraph to go — but it’s a long ‘un.

A bit more, carrying on from where we left off. I’ve indented the quotes from Locke, to break up the long paragraphs somewhat.

That it is this common right which a man exercises, when he separates a thing for his own use, and claims to use it, because he has so separated it, will appear [p.54] from the limitation, which Mr. Lock himself puts upon what he calls property, when it is thus acquired.

“God has given us all things richly, is the voice of reason, confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of, to any advantage of life, before it spoils, so much he may, by his labour, fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.”

But certainly, to take no more than we want, or no more than we can make use of, before it will be spoiled, is a limitation unknown to property: it belongs only to the exercise of a common right in a joynt stock; where no one of the commoners has an exclusive right to keep, but all and each of them have a joint right to use.But Mr. Lock endeavours to take off this limitation, and to shew us by what means, upon the same principles, property might be accumulated.

“The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such, as if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver, and diamonds, are things, that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things, which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right to as much as he could use, and property in all he could effect with his labour; all, that his [p.55] industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns, or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods, as soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession, then he made use of it. And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts, that would last good for his eating a while year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; he destroyed no part of the portion of goods, that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells or wool, for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep them by him all his life, he invaded not the rights of others; he might heap up as much of these durable things, as he pleased; the exceeding the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of any thing uselessly in it.”

But this writer seems here to take for granted the point in question. We contend, and he allows, that the right of him, who gathered acorns or plums, extends no farther than to such a quantity of them, as he can use before they are spoiled: and in shewing how this limitation may be removed, he reasons as if there was no such limitation. How else should he, who had collected more plums, than he could use before they were [p.56] spoiled, or more sheep than he wanted to cloath or to feed himself, barter away the plums for nuts, which would keep the year round, or for metal, that would keep as long as he lived? The very notion of bartering implys property. Our author therefore must suppose the man to have property in what would spoil before he can use it; or else he could not suppose him to barter it away: that is, since this contrivance of bartering was introduced, to shew how property might be accumulated, or to take off the limitation of appropriating no more than can be used, whilst it is good; in order to apply this contrivance, he must suppose the limitation to be taken off already, and the man to have property in plums, or sheep, which he does not want, and which he could not use, before they would perish in his hands. Indeed in mankind would consent and submit thus to barter one with another; this consent would be sufficient to take off the limitation, and to introduce a true right of property. For if I knowingly and willingly bargain with another about my own goods, which are in his possession, as if they were his; this act of mine may well be construed as a tacit consent to make them his. And if in like manner mankind would bargain with one another about goods, which belonged to all in common, as if they were the property of the possessor, they tacitly give up their claim to those goods, and so they become his property. But property, when introduced after this manner, is introduced by consent of parties, and not by the labour, which the possessor, or occupant, has employed in separating the things, which he possesses, from the common stock.

More to come…

OK, let’s fill up some empty space with a bit more of this, continuing from where we left off last time. For convenient reading, I’ve broken this up into three chunks, although it’s one continuous paragraph in the original 1754 edition of the Institutes of Natural Law:

“Mr. Lock has applied these principles to explane the introduction of property both in moveable and immoveable goods. And if we go on to examine what he says upon the subject, we shall find, that he has mistaken the exercise of a common right for the exclusive right of property.

“He that is nourished, says this writer, by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself, no body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, When did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? And ’tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them, more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it robbery, thus to assume to him- [p.53] self what belonged to all in common?”

The answer here is obvious. When those acorns or apples are become a part of his body, we may, if we please, say, that they are his: but the right, which he then has in them, is the same, which he has in his whole person; and is no more to be called a right of property, in the sense that we use this word, when we apply it either to moveable or immoveable goods, than the right, which a man has in his leg or his arm, cam be called by this name. When he gathered them, or when he boyled them, he had likewise a right in them; but it was just such a right as any one else might have had: a right, as one of the joint commoners, to use as much out of the general stock, as he had occasion for. It is by no means necessary either to allow on the one hand, that he had an exclusive right of property in them, or on the other hand to contend, that it was robbery, thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common. There is a middle opinion between these two, which is the opinion already mentioned; that when he gathered them, and was eating them, he exercised his common right of using and enjoying, out of the joynt stock, what his occasions called for. Though therefore we contend, that he could not acquire an exclusive right of property in them, or in any thing else, without the consent of mankind, either express or tacit; yet there is no fear of his being starved, whilst he is waiting for this consent; because in the mean time the exercise of his common right will sufficiently provide for his subsistence.

More soon, maybe.

At least half-a-dozen at least semi-regular readers of the Stoa are interested in this kind of thing, so here’s a chunk of something I’ve been reading in the Bodleian just now. It’s Thomas Rutherforth of St John’s College, Cambridge, lecturing on Locke’s account of property acquisition, and published as his Institutes of Natural Law, 1754, vol.1, chapter 3, §X, pp.50-2, and with the obvious typo silently corrected:

[p.50] “Mr. Lock agrees with Grotius, that occupancy is the foundation of private property. But then he does not consider occupancy in the same light, that Grotius considers it, as a tacit agreement between the joynt owners of the common stock and the future proprietor. In his opinion things, which originally belonged to all mankind in common, became the property of the first occupant; because, as he has a property in his own person, and consequently in the labour of his body, or in the work of his hands, by removing any thing out of the state, in which nature placed it, he has mixed his own labour or a personal act of his own with it; and by thus joyning to it something, which is his own, he makes it his property. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer; no man, but he, can have a right to what that is once joyned to; at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. Thus, whilst he agrees with Grotius, in words, they differ widely from one another, when the sense of their words is explaned.”I design to examine at large his application of what is here advanced. But before we do that, let us stop a while, and enquire, whether his first principles are true. - As every man has a property in his own person; the labour of his body and the work of his hands [p.51] are properly his. - Now the labour of a mans body, or the work of his hands, may mean either the personal act of working, or the effect which is produced by that act. In the first sense it must be allowed, that a mans labour is properly his own; he has a right to exert his strength in what manner he pleases, where he is under no restraint of law. But it does not follow from hence, that the effect of his labouring, or that the work of his hands, in the other sense of these words, must likewise be properly his own. He has, you may say, mixed his own labour with what he removes out of that state, in which nature had left it: but will you conclude, that by thus joyning to it his act of working, he has made it his own? In order to strengthen such a conclusion it would be necessary to shew, that the labour of one man can overrule or set aside the right of others. If I knowingly employ myself, in working upon the materials of my neighbour; however I may have mixed a personal act, which is my own, with his property; this will never give me a reasonable claim to his materials. You may urge, that the cases are not parallel; because the materials, now in question, are not the property of any one; and consequently, that, by working in such materials, we may gain property in them; though we could not gain it, by the like act, where the materials were appropriated before. But the cases are parallel, as far as the point before us requires. It is allowed, that the materials do not belong to any person by an exclusive right of property; but then they belong to all mankind of common right. And if mixing my labour with the materials of an individual will not make these materials mine, in opposition to his exclusive right, I know not [p.52] how any act of the same kind, or the mixing my labour with materials, which belong to all mankind, should make them mine, in opposition to their common right. As setting aside the right of an individual, without his consent, is an injury to him; so setting aside the common claim of mankind, without their consent, is an injury to them: and if an injury cannot be the foundation of a right in one case; it will not be very easy to prove, that a like injury may be the foundation of a right in the other case.”

There’s more of this kind of thing if people want it, but I doubt you do.

Is it just me, or does this week’s Onion article, “Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory” present an argument eerily similar to everyone’s favourite Augustinian Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche’s metaphyisics of “occasionalism”?

From the splendid, every-home-should-have-one Cambridge History of C17th Philosophy [vol.1, pp.538-9]:

“The occasionalist conclusion drawn by Malebranche and Cordemoy is that an explanation of any natural effect which refers only to matter and motion - that is, which specifies only the shapes and sizes of material particles moving with given directions and velocities in accordance with certain laws - will ultimately fail to account fully for the phenomenon, since physical bodies have no causal efficacy. In fact, there is and can be only one true cause of any phenomenon, namely, the infinitely powerful will of God. God alone has a power to act, and there is a necessary connexion only between God’s will and its effects. All events in the natural world, all motions, collisions, separations, changes, and other effects in bodies have God as their direct and immediate author. Thus, any metaphysically complete explanation of a phenomenon must refer at least to the divine volition which is its efficient cause (although, as we shall see, in physics one need not take explanation to this high a level).”

OK, it is just me. It’s the last, parenthetical clause that gives M. the get-out.

Yesterday in one of the comments threads, Michael suggested naming a cat after the Manichees, and Jamie followed it up by observing (rightly) that Tertullian was a good name for a cat.

By complete coincidence, I was in the Bodleian later that afternoon reading about the early responses to Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and came across this passage from Alexander Rosse’s Leviathan Drawn Out With A Hook, which also mentions the Manichees and Tertullian side by side:

“Such and much more like stuff and smoke, doth this Leviathan send out of his nostrils. This is the spermacaetae or spawn which the whale casteth out… a whale that hath vomited up the condemned opinion of the hereticks, and chiefly the Anthropomorphits, Sabellians, Nestorians, Saduceans, Arabeans, Tacians or Eucratits, Manichies, Mahumetans, and others; for in holding life eternal to be only on earth, he is a Cerinthian and a Mahumetan; in giving God corporeity he is an Anthropomorphit, a Manichean, a Tertullianist and an Andean: in holding the Three Persons to be distinct names and essences… he is a Sabellian, a Montanist, an Aetian, and a Priscillianist. In saying that Christ personated God the Son, he is a Nestorian, giving him two personalities, and in denying spirits he is a Saducean: in making the soul to rest with the body till the resurrection he is an Arabian; in making the soul of man corporal he is a Luciferan, by putting a period to Hell he is an Origenist: in teaching dissimulation in religion he is a Tacian or Eucratit, in making God the cause of injustice or sin he is a Manichee; in slighting Christ’s miracles he is a Jew; and in making our natural reason the word of God he is a Socinian.”

I don’t think I know what a Priscillianist is, but I’m sure it’s not a good thing to be.UPDATE [noon]: I’m reading Culverwell this morning, and he’s being rude about Priscillianists, too, grouping them with the Gnosticks and the Manichees. But this is helpful.

Chris, in the comments below, points me towards the text of a splendid act of Parliament, which was passed in 1649, and which would give us a much more sensible constitutional framework than the rubbish nonsense we have at present:

Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament and by the Authoritie of the same That the People of England and of all the Dominions and Territoryes thereunto belonging are and shall be and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed to be a Commonwealth and free State And shall from henceforth be Governed as a Commonwealth and Free State by the supreame Authoritie of this Nation, the Representatives of the People in Parliam[ent] and by such as they shall appoint and constitute as Officers and Ministers under them for the good of the People and that without any King or House of Lords.

We’ve done it before, we can do it again.

In the 24 September 2001 edition of the New Statesman, John Gray wrote that “The Enlightenment thinking that found expression int he era of globalisation will not be much use in its dangerous aftermath. Even Hobbes cannot tell us how to deal with fundamentalist warriors who choose certain death in order to humble their enemies” (p.27).

Now this always struck me as a weird verdict, as of all the classic works of political philosophy, Leviathan seems to be obviously the one most concerned with the dangers to peace and security posed by religious fanatics, both to themselves and to other people. Throughout the book, therefore, Hobbes develops various strategies both for undermining the characteristic arguments that religious extremists make (e.g., the chapter on martyrs) and for making them appear ridiculous (e.g., the opinion that those who claim they have their own conversations with God are possessed of a “vile and unmanly disposition”). (Leviathan is also, of course, the funniest classic of political philosophy, by quite a long way, and we make a mistake when, as with the game theorists’ interpretations of Hobbes, we choose to ignore the rhetoric and the wit of the text in order to make our way through to what we might think is the meat of the analytical arguments.)

Someone else clearly shares a version of my opinion, anyway, as one of the few good political theory websites out there is American Leviathan, whose highlight is the gallery of soundclips from Hobbes experts around the world (including John Gray!, also Noel Malcolm, Quentin Skinner, Michael Hardt, Richard Tuck, etc.).

(Thanks to JMcD for drawing this to my attention.)

It’s a longer extract than usual from a Classic Text, but here’s the bit about the parrot from John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

8. Same man. An animal is a living organized body; andconsequently the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenious observation puts it past doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the sound man in our mouths is the sign, is nothing else but of an animal of such a certain form. Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a man; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot.His words are: “I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice’s own mouth, the account of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and asked, and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature: so that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never from that time endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it. He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a great deal false of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first. He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it: that it was a very great and a very old one; and when it came first into the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, What a company of white men are here! They asked it, what it thought that man was, pointing to the prince. It answered, Some General or other. When they brought it close to him, he asked it, D’ou venez-vous? It answered, De Marinnan. The Prince, A qui estes-vous? The Parrot, A un Portugais. The Prince, Que fais-tu la? Parrot, Je garde les poulles. The Prince laughed, and said, Vous gardez les poulles? The Parrot answered, Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in what language the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian. I asked whether he understood Brazilian; he said No, but he had taken care to have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say this Prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man: I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it; however, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no.”

I have taken care that the reader should have the story at large in the author’s own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a Prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous. The Prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot: and I ask any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this parrot, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince’s word for it this one did,- whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational animals; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be men, and not parrots? For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people’s sense: but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea of a man, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man.

And with all that in mind, here’s the News for Parrots…

I was very pleased to see this, over at Labour MP Tom Watson’s blog. It’s the death warrant for Charles I, which he has posted in order to publicise the parliamentary contribution to Archives Awareness Month, which, apparently, is this month, so there’s not too much of it left.

I’ve said it before, and, no doubt, I’ll say it again: People in this country aren’t nearly as aware of our regicide past as we ought to be, except for the loons over at the Society of King Charles the Martyr (patron, Lord St John of Fawsley, no surprise there). Long before the Jacobins executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, or the Bolsheviks gunned down the Tsar and his family, the political authorities in London in January 1649 organised the trial and execution of the man of blood, Charles Stuart. It was a great moment in these islands’ story.

Things didn’t work out terribly well for the regicides in the long run, but it’s certainly high time we had another go at republican self-government. Who knows? It might be more durable this time around.

There’s some thoughtful revisionism by my friend Ted Vallance, now at Liverpool University, over here, which was written to mark last year’s wretched jubilee. He seems to think that if we are going to get rid of Brenda, lopping off her head probably isn’t the best way forward, and not just because killing people is wrong.

UPDATE [22.9.03]: Roll on the Jamaican Republic!

One of the excellent things about working on seventeenth-century authors, is that they said such excellent things. Here, for example, is Pascal, who knew a thing or two about absolute, terrifying silences:

He alone [ = God] is our true good. From the time we have forsaken him, it is a curious thing that nothing in nature has been capable of taking his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, snakes, fever, plague, war famine, vice, adultery, incest. From the time he lost his true good, man can see it everywhere, even in his own destruction, though it is so contrary to God, reason, and nature, all at once.�

Leeks?

Being the kind of person who, rather than using my own mind, prefers to follow authority, I thought it was time to revisit the great seventeenth-century philosopher and Oratorian Nicolas Malebranche’s list of eleven reasons why we prefer to follow authority, rather than to use our own minds:

First, the natural laziness of men, who do not want to take the trouble to meditate.Second, the lack of a capacity for meditating, into which we have fallen for lack of application to it during youth, when the fibres of the brain were capable of all kinds of inflections.

Third, our lack of love for abstract truths, which are the foundation of everything we can know in this lower world.

Fourth, the satisfaction one receives from the knowledge of probabilities, which are very agreeable and very moving, because they are founded upon sensible notions.

Fifth, the stupid vanity that makes us hope to be esteemed as scholars, for we call scholars those who have read the most.

Sixth, because we imagine without reason that the ancients were more enlightened than we can be, and that there is nothing to do at which they have not already succeeded.

Seventh, becuase a false respect mixed with a stupid curiosity makes us admire those things farthest removed from us, the oldest things, those from the farthest or most unknown countries, and even the most obscure books.

Eighth, when we esteem a new opinion, or a contemporary author, it seems their glory effaces our own because we are too near to it; but we have no comparable fear of the honour rendered to the ancients.

Ninth, truth and novelty cannot be found together in things of the faith. Because men do not wish to make the distinction between truths that depend upon reason and those that depend upon tradition, they do not consider that one should learn them in completely different ways. They confused novelty with error and antiquity with truth.

Ten, we are in an age when the knowledge of ancient opinions is still in vogue, and hardly anyone who uses his mind can be placed above evil customs by the strength of his reason.

Eleven, because men act only for interest, and this is what causes even those who have disabused themselves and recognise the vanity of such studies nevertheless to continue applying themselves to them; because honours, dignities, and even benefices are attached to them, and those who excel in such studies always have more of these than those who are unaware of them.

Lightly adapted and abridged from Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp, Ohio State University Press, 1980, pp.138-9.

Job 41: 1-34 (KJV):

1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
2 Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?
3 Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?
4 Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
6 Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?
8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.
9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me? 11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.
12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.
13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?
14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.
15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.
18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.
20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.
21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.
22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.
23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.
24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.
26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.
27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.
29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.
30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.
31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.
33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

“Neesings” is a very good word indeed, and not one I think I have encountered before. The OED rises to the occasion, defining it as “Sneezing; a sneeze” and giving us these useful attestations:

1382 WYCLIF Job xli. 9 His nesing [is] shynyng of fyr, and his eyen as eyelidis of morutid. 1432-50 tr. Higden (Rolls) V. 389 A mervellous pestilence folowede.., pereschynge moche peple in yoskenge or nesynge. 1530 PALSGR. 247/2 Nesyng with the nose, esternuement. 1543 TRAHERON Vigo’s Chirurg. IV. 148 Nysynge also, provoked by arte, is convenient in thys case. 1578 LYTE Dodoens 194 The same roote… put into the nose causeth Sternutation or niesing. 1609 B. JONSON Sil. Wom. IV. i, The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neesing. 1663 J. SPENCER Prodigies (1665) 61 That..usage of praying for a Person upon neezing. 1676 Gentleman’s Jockey 286 There be two other excellent helps for sick Horses, as Frictions and Neesings.

This is very helpful.

Chris adds [6.2.2002]: I was discussing “neesings” earlier today with a colleague, who told me that the shift from “neesing” to “sneezing” is probably a phonesthemic change — I think that’s the right word — in which a word which makes a great deal of sense on its own (through its connection to “nez”, “nose”, etc.) gets an “s” stuck on the front of it, which brings it into the family of “sn-” words with general family resemblances, including “sniffle”, “snuffle”, “sniff”, “snort”, and so on.