Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc. – Page 3

Study Everything, Join Nothing

What does my masthead motto mean? I have been asked. One correspondent opined that it is "inhuman."

Do I live up to this admonition? Or am I posturing? Is my posture perhaps a slouch towards hypocrisy?

It depends on how broadly one takes 'join.' A while back I joined a neighbor and some of his friends in helping him move furniture. Reasonably construed, the motto does not rule out that sort of thing. And what if I join you for lunch, or join in a discussion?

Human life is obviously a cooperative venture, and the good life involves a certain amount of free association. You will improve your chess if you join the local chess club. Examples are easily multiplied.

Note also that to convey an important truth in four words is not easy. The punch comes from the pith, but the latter excludes qualification.

I borrow the motto from a man little read these days. In the context of Paul Brunton's thought, "Study everything, join nothing" means that one ought to beware of institutions and organizations with their tendency toward self-corruption and the corruption of their members. (The Catholic Church is a good recent example, and not just a recent one.)

"Join nothing" means avoid group-think; avoid associations which will limit one's ability to think critically and independently; be your own man or woman; draw your identity from your own resources, and not from group membership. Be an individual, and not in the manner of those who want to be treated as individuals but expect to gain special privileges from membership in certain 'oppressed' or 'victimized' or 'disadvantaged' groups. Most despicable are those who fake membership in, say, the Cherokee tribe, to gain an undeserved benefit.

"Join nothing" is quintessentially American. Be Emersonian, as Brunton was Emersonian:

"Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one one of its members."

"We must go alone."

"But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation."

(All from Emerson's great essay, "Self-Reliance.")

In Brunton's mouth, the injunction means: study all the religions and political parties, but don't join any of them, on pain of losing one's independence.

Note finally, that the motto is mine by acceptance, not by origin; it does not follow that it ought to be yours.

Two Measures of Personal Success

One measure of success is how far you've gotten, and the other is how far you've come.

The second is the better measure.

On the occasions when you feel you haven't gotten very far in life, tell yourself, "But look where you started from, and what you had to work with, and the obstacles you had to overcome."

Age Quod Agis

Age quod agis is a well-known saying which is a sort of Latin call to mindfulness: do what you are doing. Be here now in the activity at hand.

Legend has it that Johnny Ringo was an educated man. (Not so: a story for later.) But so he is depicted over and over. In this scene from Tombstone, the best of the movies about Doc Holliday and the shoot-out at the O. K. Corral, Ringo trades Latinisms with the gun-totin' dentist, who was indeed an educated man and a fearless and deadly gunslinger to boot, his fearlessness a function of his 'consumption.'

I don't mean his consumption of spirits, but his tuberculosis. His was the courage of an embittered man, close to death.

The translations in the video clip leave something to be desired. Age quod agis gets translated as 'do what you do best'; the literal meaning, however, is do what you are doing. Age is in the imperative mood; quod is 'what'; agis is the second person singular present tense of agere and means: 'you do' or 'you are doing.'

Curiously, Doc Holliday did not die with his boots on. He died in bed.

Every Day . . .

. . . throw something away. That is one of my self-admonitions. A truly radical approach to de-cluttering, however, is Swedish Death Cleaning.

Curiously, I came across the just embedded hyperlink while doing a search on the question whether Swedes have a death wish, given their foolishly warm embrace of Muslim immigrants.

This embrace makes Swedish Death Cleaning all the more advisable for Swedes, especially for Jewish Swedes who are having a hard time of it, especially given the invasion of Muslims who for some strange reason are not instantly accepting the ultra-liberal attitudes of their hosts.

The Near Occasion of Annoyance

If you want to be annoyed, life supplies the materials. But if you value peace of mind, you are free to sweep the irritant dust right out of your mind. Even better is to not let it in. A good maxim:

Avoid the near occasion of annoyance.

And that implies:

Avoid unnecessary socializing.

Meglio l’uovo oggi . . .

. . . che la gallina domani.

Better the egg today than the chicken tomorrow.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Epitaph

Too obscure
To be forgot
Here lies one real
Enough to rot.

Epitaph on a Pessimist

I'm Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,

I've lived without a dame

From youth-time on: and would to God

My dad had done the same.

Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928. The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, ed. Grigson, 1977, p. 186.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea: Bad Medieval Latin?

No day without a line. Should it be nullus dies sine linea? I don't know. The maxim in the form nulla dies sine linea entered my vocabulary circa 1970 from my study of Kierkegaard. The Dane had taken it as the motto for his prodigious journals in the sense of 'No day without a written line.' I made the maxim my own, and long has she presided over my rather less distinguished scribbling.

Edward the Nominalist, whose Latin is better than mine, writes,

I spotted your post today, and wondered about the gender of ‘dies’. It is one of the only fourth declension nouns to have masculine gender, at least in the singular, which has caused misery to generations of Latin students. Technically it should be ‘nullus dies’, e.g. Nullus dies omnino malus / no day is altogether evil, unus dies apud Dominum sicut mille anni et mille anni sicut dies unus / one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day etc.

But the formulation is quite common, so I did some digging. It originates with a story by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 35.36) about the Greek painter Apelles, who apparently was steadfast in practicing his art. Pliny writes ‘It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other; a practice which has now passed into a proverb’. Note that this is not about writing, but painting!

Although Pliny mentions the proverb, he never formulates it. The modern formulation seems to originate with the Latin of Erasmus and other late medieval writers, e.g. ‘Nulla dies abeat, quin linea ducta supersit.’ ‘Let no day pass by, without an outline being drawn, and left to remain.’ So the formulation may just be bad medieval Latin. Nikitinski (‘Zum Ursprung des Spruches nulla dies sine linea’,Rheinisches Museum 142: 430-431, 1999) has argued that if Pliny had formulated it, he would have written ‘nullus dies sine linea’

Very interesting: the maxim pertained to painting before its use in connection with writing. Other extensions are possible. One can imagine an erudite cokehead abusing the phrase along with his nostrils.

Dr. Michael Gilleland is a bona fide classicist besides being an "antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon." He offers a wealth of details and variant maxims here, but unless I missed it, finds no fault with the grammar of the nulla dies sine linea formulation.

Memo to Pope Francis the Foolish

First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.

Nescit Vox Missa Reverti

The once hooked ever lives in lack,
And the once said never finds its way back.

(The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1971, p. 104)

Ambition Beyond Ability

He who is ambitious beyond his abilities courts unhappiness.

The ‘Liberal’ Speaks

If it ain't totalitarian, then it ain't government!

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good." The idea is that one should not allow the pursuit of an unattainable perfection to impede progress toward an attainable goal which, while not perfect, is better than the outcome that is likely to result if one seeks the unattainable.

Here is another formulation, not as accurate, but pithier and replete with trademark MavPhil alliteration: Permit not the pursuit of the perfect to preempt the possible.

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Barack Obama, who has proven to be a disaster for the country and for the world, was elected in 2008 in part because of conservatives who could not abide John McCain. And he was re-elected in 2012 in part because of disgusted conservatives who fail to heed Voltaire's principle and refused to vote for the milquetoast conservative, Mitt Romney. But surely it is obvious in hindsight that the milquetoast would have been preferable to the radical?

And now we face another ugly choice, this time between the vulgarian Trump and the hard-leftist Hillary. Some will vote for neither or throw away their vote on a third-party candidate. If you are a liberal, I warmly recommend that you vote for Jill Stein.

But if you are a conservative, you must vote for Trump. What is the force of the 'must'? It is at least prudential, if not moral. It is surely not legal. You are not legally obliged to vote in these United States. This is the way it should be.

Politics is a practical business conducted in a far from perfect world. While it is not always about the lesser of evils, in most situations it is, including the one before us. But perhaps we should avoid the word 'evil,' which I have found confuses people. Let's just say that in the real world political choices are not between the good and the bad, but between the better and the worse. Real-world politics is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses nolens volens, willy-nilly. Not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

Now maybe that is too strong a way of putting it if precision is at a premium. After all, if you refuse to vote for Trump, that is not a vote for Hillary since you may vote for neither. But by not voting for Trump, you aid Hillary inasmuch as you fail to do something that you can very easily do that will have the admittedly tiny effect of impeding her in her Obaminable quest to "fundamentally transform America."

I am of course assuming that Trump is better than Hillary. That is easily shown by the SCOTUS argument which has been elaborated by any number of distiguished commentators including William J. Bennett, Dennis Prager, and Hugh Hewitt, not to mention your humble correspondent. The responses to the SCOTUS argument that I have seen are breathtakingly lame. I am not in the mood to go over this ground again. In any case it is time for lunch.

Don't be a fool. Don't let the best or the better become the enemy of the good. Try to achieve something achievable. Don't pine after the unattainable. Impossible dreams are for liberals, not reality-anchored conservatives. It did not surprise me when I learned that Ted Kennedy's favorite song was The Impossible Dream. Figures!

Unsuccessful in Love

The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Chicago, The Swallow Press, 1971.

Epigram 57

Here lies my wife. Eternal peace
Be to us both with her decease.

Epigram 59

I married in my youth a wife.
She was my own, my very first.
She gave the best years of her life.
I hope nobody gets the worst.

J. V. Cunningham is the model for John Williams' 1965 novel Stoner. An underappreciated and unfortunately titled masterpiece, it is about one William Stoner, an obscure professor of English at the University of Missouri, Columbia. At its publication in '65 it pretty much fell still-born from the press, but the years have been kind to it and it is now valued as the great novel that it is. Unfortunately, Williams, who died in 1994, did not live to see its success.

In Five Books of Professors, the late D. G. Myers describes it like this:

(4.) John Williams, Stoner (1965). Based on the life of J. V. Cunningham and especially his disastrous marriage to Barbara Gibbs. Easily the best novel ever written about the determined renunciations and quiet joys of the scholarly life. Stoner suffers reversal after reversal—a bad marriage, persecution at the hands of his department chair, the forced breakup of a brief and fulfilling love affair with a younger scholar—but he endures because of two things: his love for his daughter, who wants nothing more than to spend time with her father while he writes his scholarship, and his work on the English Renaissance. His end is tragic, but Stoner does not experience it that way. A genuinely unforgettable reading experience.

"Genuinely unforgettable" sounds like hype, but this is one novel I, for one, will not forget. For more by Myers on Stoner, see here.

My copy of the novel sports a blurb by Myers: "It will remind you of why you started reading novels: to get inside the mystery of other people's lives." Yes.

Companion post: A is A: Monism Refuted