{"id":9623,"date":"2012-06-20T11:07:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T11:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/20\/milton-praises-the-strenuous-life\/"},"modified":"2012-06-20T11:07:19","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T11:07:19","slug":"milton-praises-the-strenuous-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/20\/milton-praises-the-strenuous-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Milton Praises the Strenuous Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near the end of Richard Weaver's essay<\/a>, "Life Without Prejudice,"  he quotes Milton:<\/span><\/p>\n

     I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and<\/span>
     unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but<\/span>
     slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run<\/span>
     for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence<\/span>
     into the world; we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies<\/span>
     us is trial, and trial is by that which is contrary.<\/span><\/p>\n

The passage bears comparison with Theodore Roosevelt's remarks about being in the arena<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I like especially the last sentence of the Milton quotation.  We are born corrupt, not innocent.  We are not here (mainly) to improve the world, but (mainly) to be improved by it.  The world's a vale of soul-making.  Since this world is a vanishing quantity, it makes little sense to expend energy trying to improve it: when your house is burning down, you don't spruce up the facade.  You don't swab the decks of a sinking ship.  It makes more sense to spend time and effort  on what has a chance of outlasting the transitory.  This world's use is to build something that outlasts it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this will, pace<\/em> Milton, require some flight from the world into the cloister where perhaps alone the virtues can be developed that will need testing later in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Near the end of Richard Weaver's essay, "Life Without Prejudice,"  he quotes Milton:      I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and     unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but     slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run     for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we … Continue reading “Milton Praises the Strenuous Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,496,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-literary-matters","category-original-sin","category-virtues-and-vices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}