Book Excerpts

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Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:40 pm

The commonest question is whether I really "believe in the Devil."

Now, if by "the Devil" you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the answer is certainly No. There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No being could attain a "perfect badness" opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself) there would be none of him left.

The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man. Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael....

It should be ( but it is not) unnecessary to add that a belief in angels, whether good or evil, does not mean a belief in either as they are represented in art and literature. Devils are depicted with bats' wings and good angels with birds' wings, not because anyone holds that moral deterioration would be likely to turn feathers into membrane, but because most men like birds better than bats. They are given wings at all in order to suggest the swiftness of unimpeded intellectual energy. They are given human form because man is the only rational creature we know. Creatures higher in the natural order than ourselves, either incorporeal or animating bodies of a sort we cannot experience, must be represented symbolically if they are to be represented at all.

These forms are not only symbolical but were always known to be symbolical by reflective people. The Greeks did not believe that the gods were really like the beautiful human shapes their sculptors gave them. In their poetry a god who wishes to "appear" to a mortal temporarily assumes the likeness of a man. Christian theology has nearly always explained the "appearance" of an angel in the same way. It is only the ignorant, said Dionysius in the fifth century, who dream that spirits are really winged men.

In the plastic arts these symbols have steadily degenerated. Fra Angelico's angels carry in their face and gesture the peace and authority of Heaven. Later come the chubby infantile nudes of Raphael; finally the soft, slim, girlish, and consolatory angels of nineteenth century art, shapes so feminine that they avoid being voluptuous only by their total insipidity - the frigid houris of a tea table paradise. They are a pernicious symbol. In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying "Fear not." The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, "There, there."

The literary symbols are more dangerous because they are not so easily recognized as symbolical. Those of Dante are the best. Before his angels we sink in awe. His devils, as Ruskin rightly remarked, in their rage, spite, and obscenity, are far more like what the reality must be than anything in Milton. Milton's devils, by their grandeur and high poetry, have done great harm, and his angels owe too much to Homer and Raphael. But the really pernicious image is Goethe's Mephistopheles. It is Faust, not he, who really exhibits the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of Hell. The humorous, civilized, sensible, adaptable Mephistopheles has helped to strengthen the illusion that evil is liberating.

A little man may sometimes avoid some single error made by a great one, and I was determined that my own symbolism should at least not err in Goethe's way. For humor involves a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside. Whatever else we attribute to beings who sinned through pride, we must not attribute this. Satan, said Chesterton, fell through force of gravity. We must picture Hell as a state where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment. This, to begin with. For the rest, my own choice of symbols depended, I suppose, on temperament and on the age.

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid " dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

Milton has told us that "devil with devil damned Firm concord holds." But how? Certainly not by friendship. A being which can still love is not yet a devil Here again my symbol seemed to me useful. It enabled me, by earthly parallels, to picture an official society held together entirely by fear and greed.. On the surface, manners are normally suave. Rudeness to one's superiors would obviously be suicidal; rudeness to one's equals might put them on their guard before you were ready to spring your mine. For of course "Dog eat dog" is the principle of the whole organization. Everyone wishes everyone else's discrediting, demotion, and ruin; everyone is an expert in the confidential report, the pretended alliance, the stab in the back. Over all this their good manners, their expressions of grave respect, their "tributes" to one another's invaluable services, form a thin crust. Every now an then it gets punctured, and the scalding lava of their hatred spurts out.

This symbol also enabled me to get rid of the absurd fantasy that devils are engaged in the disinterested pursuit of something called Evil (the capital is essential). Mine have no use for any such turnip ghost. Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. The first is fear of punishment: for as totalitarian countries have their camps for torture, so my Hell contains deeper Hells, its "houses of correction." Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one's fellow; to make his whole intellectual and emotional life merely an extension of one's own - to hate one's hatreds and resent one's grievances and indulge one's egoism through him as well as through oneself. His own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being very selfish.

On Earth this desire is often called "love." In Hell I feign that they recognize it as hunger. But there the hunger is more ravenous, and a fuller satisfaction is possible. There, I suggest, the stronger spirit - there are perhaps no bodies to impede the operation - can really and irrevocably suck the weaker into itself and permanently gorge its own being on the weaker's outraged individuality. It is (I feign) for this that devils desire human souls and the souls of one another. It is for this that Satan desires all his own followers and all the sons of Eve and all the host of Heaven. His dream is of the day when all shall be inside him and all that says "I" can say it only through him. This, I surmise, is the bloated-spider parody, the only imitation he can understand, of that un-fathomed bounty whereby God turns tools into servants and servants into sons, so that they may be at last reunited to Him in the perfect freedom of a love offered from the height of the utter individualities which he has liberated them to be.

But, as in Grimm's story, * des traumte mir nur, this is all only myth and symbol. That is why the question of my own opinion about devils, ...is really of very minor importance.... To those who share that opinion, my devils will be symbols of a concrete reality: to others, they will be personifications of abstractions, and the book will be an allegory. But it makes little difference which way you read it. For of course its purpose was not to speculate about diabolical life but to throw light from a new angle on the life of men.
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:59 pm

When we got into London we had eight hours to kill before the lodging-houses opened. It is curious how one does not notice things. I had been in London innumerable times, and yet till that day I had never noticed one of the worst things about London - the fact that it costs money even to sit down. In Paris, if you had no money and could not find a public bench, you would sit on the pavement. Heaven knows what sitting on the pavement would lead to in London - prison, probably. By four we had stood five hours, and our feet seemed red-hot from the hardness of the stones. We were hungry, having eaten our ration as soon as we left the spike, and I was out of tobacco - it mattered less to Paddy, who picked up cigarette ends. We tried two churches and found them locked. Then we tried a public library, but there were no seats in it. As a last hope Paddy suggested trying a Rowton House; by the rules they would not let us in before seven, but we might slip in unnoticed. We walked up to the magnificent doorway ( the Rowton Houses really are magnificent) and very casually, trying to look like regular lodgers, began to stroll in. Instantly a man lounging in the doorway, a sharp-faced fellow, evidently in some position of authority, barred the way.
"You men sleep 'ere last night?"
"No."
"Then -------- off."

We obeyed, and stood two more hours on the street corner. It was unpleasant, but it taught me not to use the expression "street corner loafer," so I gained something from it.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:44 am

......This is the real importance of the book: that a man who stood solidly on the soil of Bavaria looked on as millions of his fellow countrymen became automatons, moving and yelling and salivating to order, and set down what it was to be a full human being among these walking machines.

He set this down so well that we can feel it now, his horror and loneliness, and we know that his feeling is a feeling we ourselves have had, because it belongs to our time - it is the feeling of our time that Reck-Malleczewen is describing.

Fritz Reck-.............. was a prophet. He belongs with his great hero, Dostoyevsky, and with Kafka, and with George Orwell, of whom he probably never heard, among that vision-afflicted little band who saw, with Dostoyevsky, that "the end of the world is at hand," because men and women no longer knew they had a center, could no longer hear what it said, could now only continue to move about the earth by various tricks of the mind or body.

............

Very simply, the problem Reck-Malleczewen faced is our problem - the problem of mass man.

"Suppose they go on," he wrote, "clinging like grapes to the trolleys morning and evening," and "charging into the restaurants after ration-free food like the apes at feeding time at the zoo." He was describing the Munich version of mass man circa 1944.... But mass man has gone on. He is with us today.

Of course, Reck could hardly have conceived this possibility. Mass man had come to ascendancy in Nazi Germany in such instability, in such conditions of chaos and upheaval that he would certainly, Reck felt, burst like a boil or a bullfrog together with his Nazi state. Fritz Reck could not imagine that any world was fit for inhabiting, in which any form of the mass species, fascist or democratic, was dominant. All the hope, the immense passion that underlie this book were based on this: that mass man would go as the Nazis went.

It did not happen. The physical destruction happened, as he expected. He tells about some of it - the bombing of Hamburg, and of Munich, ..the burning, and the destruction. But the Nazi mass men never lost their heads. They killed to the end, ferociously, coldly, unbelievably. They remained incredible, and neither then nor afterward did they ever lose their tight hold on themselves.

And so we did not have that emptying of a boil of corruption that Rec looked to with such dread and with such hope to save his beloved Germany, and with it the rest of us. Germany lost the war, but mass man remained.

He is still with us. Look around you. Look into yourself.

A few sections in this book seem inordinately difficult to follow. The phrasing - which could not, I felt, be rendered into simpler English without losing some of the quality of the original - becomes difficult at times. There are references to people and events immediately recognizable only to the highly educated German. When a feeling of overwhelming helplessness strikes a man, as it must often have struck Reck-Malleczewen, he is likely to vent his rage - if he has the vast culture of this man - in turgid phrasing, in obscure and nearly private references. These matters have been explained wherever it was possible to do so, and when this was impossible - the obscurity was left as it is. The book, and therefore Reck-Malleczewen, and therefore Germany and what happened to it, can be understood only as a whole, with all the contrarieties, confusions, and even spitefulness of the living organism.

Reference to this journal - first published in 1947 in Germany and reissued there in 1966 - by Hannah Arendt in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil brought me to read, and then to translate into English for the fist time, this book. I felt that in his special terms, and for his own time and place, Reck was saying what applies to our lives today, however different the setting and the details. I felt, and still feel, that the parallels between that time and this one are more sharply expressed, etched more clearly by the heat of this mans's passion in this volume than in any other that I know.

I thank....etcetcetc

PAUL RUBENS
New York City
January, 1970
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Fri May 15, 2015 7:27 am

STAUNTON

From Manassas our train moved on to Staunton, Virginia. Here we again went into camp, overhauled kettles, pots, buckets, jugs and tents, and found everything so tangled up and mixed that we could not tell tother from which.

We stretched our tents, and the soldiers once again felt that restraint and discipline which we had almost forgotten en route to this place. But, as the war was over now, our Captains, Colonels, and Generals were not "hard on the boys"; in fact, had begun to electioneer a little for the Legislature and for Congress. In fact, some wanted, and were looking forward to the time, to run for Governor of Tennessee.

Staunton was a big place; whisky was cheap, and good Virginia tobacco was plentiful, and the currency of the country was gold and silver.

The State Asylums for the blind and insane were here, and we visited all the places of interest.

Here is where we first saw the game called "chuck-a-luck," afterward so popular in the army. But, I always noticed that chuck won, and luck always lost.

Faro and roulette were in full blast; in fact, the skum had begun to come to the surface, and shoddy was the gentleman. By this, I mean that civil law had been suspended; the ermine of the Judges had been overridden by the sword and the bayonet. In other words the military had absorbed the civil. Hence the gambler was in his glory.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:51 pm

SOMEWHERE or other—I think it is in the preface to Saint Joan—Bernard Shaw remarks that we are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and as an example of modern credulity he cites the widespread belief that the earth is round. The average man, says Shaw, can advance not a single reason for thinking that the earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth-century mentality.

Now, Shaw is exaggerating, but there is something in what he says, and the question is worth following up, for the sake of the light it throws on modern knowledge. Just why do we believe that the earth is round? I am not speaking of the few thousand astronomers, geographers and so forth who could give ocular proof, or have a theoretical knowledge of the proof, but of the ordinary newspaper-reading citizen, such as you or me.


As for the Flat Earth theory, I believe I could refute it. If you stand by the seashore on a clear day, you can see the masts and funnels of invisible ships passing along the horizons. This phenomenon can only be explained by assuming that the earth’s surface is curved. But it does not follow that the earth is spherical. Imagine another theory called the Oval Earth theory, which claims that the earth is shaped like an egg. What can I say against it?

Against the Oval Earth man, the first card I can play is the analogy of the sun and moon. The Oval Earth man promptly answers that I don’t know, by my own observation, that those bodies are spherical. I only know that they are round, and they may perfectly well be flat discs. I have no answer to that one. Besides, he goes on, what reason have I for thinking that the earth must be the same shape as the sun and moon? I can’t answer that one either.

My second card is the earth’s shadow: when cast on the moon during eclipses, it appears to be the shadow of a round object. But how do I know, demands the Oval Earth man, that eclipses of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth? The answer is that I don’t know, but have taken this piece of information blindly from newspaper articles and science booklets.

Defeated in the minor exchanges, I now play my queen of trumps: the opinion of the experts. The Astronomer Royal, who ought to know, tells me that the earth is round. The Oval Earth man covers the queen with his king. Have I tested the Astronomer Royal’s statement, and would I even know a way of testing it? Here I bring out my ace. Yes, I do know one test. The astronomers can foretell eclipses, and this suggests that their opinions about the solar system are pretty sound. I am therefore justified in accepting their say-so about the shape of the earth.

If the Oval Earth man answers—what I believe is true—that the ancient Egyptians, who thought the sun goes round the earth, could also predict eclipses, then bang goes my ace. I have only one card left: navigation. People can sail ships round the world, and reach the places they aim at, by calculations which assume that the earth is spherical. I believe that finishes the Oval Earth man, though even then he may possibly have some kind of counter.

It will be seen that my reasons for thinking that the earth is round are rather precarious ones. Yet this is an exceptionally elementary piece of information. On most other questions I should have to fall back on the expert much earlier, and would be less able to test his pronouncements. And much the greater part of our knowledge is at this level. It does not rest on reasoning or on experiment, but on authority. And how can it be otherwise, when the range of knowledge is so vast that the expert himself is an ignoramous as soon as he strays away from his own speciality? Most people, if asked to prove that the earth is round, would not even bother to produce the rather weak arguments I have outlined above. They would start off by saying that ‘everyone knows’ the earth to be round, and if pressed further, would become angry. In a way Shaw is right. This is a credulous age, and the burden of knowledge which we now have to carry is partly responsible.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby KUAN » Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:47 am

.

'With one bound, he was by her side. Nora felt his hot breath on her cheek, as he ripped the thin silk from......'

Frank Muir
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Thu Nov 12, 2015 8:48 pm

20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.
21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)
22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
33 So Paul departed from among them.
34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:52 pm

1784-1789

So, with his little daughter and his violin, Mr. Jefferson
set out. His journey up from his home to Boston,
where his ship lay, was a matter of nearly two months,
because he wished to get acquainted with the principal
interests of the Eastern States, "informing myself of the
state of commerce of each." Heretofore he had only a
hearsay acquaintance with these matters, no more than
would come in the way of any intelligent Virginian planter.
He made a leisurely progress through New Jersey, New
York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, wrestling valiantly
with the different State currencies as he went along. His
pocket account-book shows a reasonable ground for gratitude
that in all his wide range of early studies, mathematics
was "ever my favorite one." With "New York currency,
Dollars 8/" and "Connecticut, Dollars 6/" and "Rhode
Island State" currency at still another rate of sterling exchange,
paying for a dinner or a night's lodging was an
appalling business. He reached Boston on the eighteenth
of June, deposited his heavy luggage, and then left for
a side trip of two weeks in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The voyage from Boston to the English port of Cowes
was uncommonly fast—twenty-one days. Mr. Jefferson
made his usual thrifty use of it by studying navigation.
He had nothing else to do, and one can never know by
what off-chance new learning will some day come handy.
He calculated courses, read charts, took the sun, and kept
a workmanlike log, becoming a pretty fair theoretical
navigator by the end of the voyage. On landing at Cowes,
he got on as far as Portsmouth, where his poor little daughter,
seasick and bored, having had no special interest in
navigation to sustain her against ship's fare, discomfort
and tedium, took to her bed. After looking out for her
as best he could for three days, Mr. Jefferson capitulated
to the distrusted profession by calling in a physician, a
Dr. Meek, who charged him two guineas sterling for two
visits. Towards the end of July, Patsy had picked herself
up enough to face the last leg of her journey, and on
the thirtieth she and her father set out on the wretched
crossing from Portsmouth to Havre.
Like all green travellers, Mr. Jefferson learned by experience
as he went along. Practically a vegetarian, fond
of fruit and nuts, he invested heavily in these luxuries
during his first few days on land, welcoming the change
from the restricted diet of the ship. He bought a couple
of shillings worth of nuts and a good deal of fruit as soon
^ a s he landed in England, and he did the same at Havre.
Then, in about the time it would normally take for a
brisk run of tourist's summer-complaint to set in, these
entries in his account-book abruptly cease, and he seems
hardly to have eaten another nut or piece of fruit for five
years.
The entries for charity run a like course. Mr. Jefferson
was always so open-handed that, in Philadelphia especially,
his easiness became known and he was greatly pestered by
beggars. When he had no money with him, he would
borrow for the purpose. An item put down in 1784, for
instance, records a joint investment with Monroe in an
opportunity of this kind, which probably turned up as
they were walking together on the street. "March 7.
Borrowed Colo. Monroe 4/2—gave in charity 4/2, remember
to credit him half." But although American
cities spawned a measure of distress in those days, there
was hardly such a thing known as hopeless involuntary
poverty. In 1782, when Mr. Jefferson had already seen
a good deal of American town life, he wrote in reply to
the queries of the Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, "From
Savannah to Portsmouth you will seldom meet a beggar.
In the larger towns, indeed, they sometimes present themselves.
These are usually foreigners who have never obtained
a settlement in any parish. I never yet saw a native
American begging in the streets or highways." There was
always the land for them to turn to, and with a little
temporary tiding-over they would soon be on their own
feet. "We have no paupers," Mr. Jefferson wrote Thomas
Cooper as late as 1814, "the old and crippled among us
who possess nothing and have no families to take care of
them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section
of society or to affect a general estimate."
But as soon as he set foot in France, Mr. Jefferson
faced the real thing in involuntary poverty. After a year,
he writes despondently to an American correspondent that
"of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France,
I am of the opinion there are nineteen millions more
wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of human
existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual
of the whole United States." The people had been ex-
proprîated from the land, and huddled into vast exploitable
masses. "The property [i.e., the land] of this country
is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having
revenues of from half a million guineas a year downward"
5 and the consequence was that the majority lived
merely on sufferance. Involuntary poverty, one might
say, was so highly integrated as to erect mendicancy into
an institution. This was new to Mr. Jefferson. "I asked
myself what could be the reason that so many should be
permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country
where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated
lands," and his conclusion was that "whenever there
is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor,
it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended
as to violate natural rights. The earth is given as
a common stock for man to labour and live on."
However, this was France's problem, not his and not
America's—thank Heaven. He writes in a fervent strain
to Monroe, "My God! how little do my countrymen
know what precious blessings they are in possession of,
and which no other people on earth enjoy. I confess I
had no idea of it myself." America had no end of land,
and hence no problem of poverty. Nevertheless, he was
just now in France, and France's swarming paupers were
nagging him at every turn. What could one do? Out of
habit, he did for a while as he had always done 5 he gave
away small amounts here and there on the moment, without
question, as he happened to be importuned. This
worked well in America; it really did some good, and at
worst it was only an occasional matter. But here it did
no good and was a matter of every hour in the day. Aside
from its doing no good, moreover, one was so often swindled.
The economic system that bred mendicancy also
bred roguery, and there were many rogues among the
mendicants. They too were very much to be pitied, no
doubt, but to be taken in by them only encouraged them,
and they were an incessant pest. The "hackneyed rascals"
of France were even waiting at the wharf at Havre j the
account-book takes note of the demands of a swindling
commissionaire: "Broker attend2 me to Commandant 6 f."
The upshot was that after a couple of weeks of indiscriminate
giving, he shut down on charity, save where he knew
something about the applicant, as when he records giving
"the poor woman at Têtebout 12 f."

He found much to please him, however, in his new surroundings
he was especially attracted by the people's
natural sense, so much in accord with his own, of social
life and manners. "The roughnesses of the human mind
are so thoroughly rubbed off with them that it seems as
if one might glide through a whole life among them
without a jostle." He had little trouble, even, with the
degeneration of this quality into the official folitesse sterile
et ram†antey the defensive formalism of the diplomat
and statesman. The case-hardened old Foreign Minister,
Vergennes, infirm and tired but clear-headed, could still
match protective coloration with any diplomat put up
against him. The diplomatic corps warned Mr. Jefferson
that he was a formidable old fellow, "wary and slippery
in his diplomatic intercourse." All this might be true, no
doubt, when he was playing the game by the rules "with
those whom he knew to be slippery and double-faced
themselves." But Mr. Jefferson had no axe to grind, in
the diplomatic sense. He was not a propagandist, as
Franklin had been he was an honest broker, not in crowns,
colonies and protectorates, but in sound commodities like
salt codfish, tobacco and potash. As soon therefore as
Vergennes "saw that I had no indirect views, practiced no
subtleties, meddled in no intrigues, pursued no concealed
object, I found him as frank, as honourable, as easy of
access to reason, as any man with whom I had ever done
business; and I must say the same of his successor, Montmorin,
one of the most honest and; worthy of human
beings."
His enthusiasm was kindled at once by the contemplation
of French proficiency in the arts and sciences. The
music of Paris, which at that time was perhaps at the
height of an unmusical people's possibilities, was so much
better than anything he had ever heard that he was delighted
by it as "an enjoyment the deprivation of which
with us [he writes this to an American correspondent]
cannot be calculated. I am almost ready to say it is the
only thing which from my heart I envy them, and which
in spite of all the authority of the Decalogue I do covet."
He is without words to tell how much he enjoys their
architecture, sculpture and painting. In science, he discovers
that their literati "are half a dozen years before
us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that
time, and so become known to us and communicate to us
all their advances in knowledge." America, however,
really misses nothing by being behindhand. Having few
publishers and presses, American intelligence is saved the
chance of suffocation under huge masses of garbage, such
as are shot from the many presses of France. "Is not this
delay compensated to us by our being placed out of reach
of that swarm of nonsensical publications which issues
daily from a thousand presses and perishes almost in
issuing?"
Yet, making the most of all that was good in French
life, admiring its virtues, delighting oneself in its amenities,
one could not feel oneself properly compensated for
the missing sense of freedom. There was no freedom in
France, and therefore there was no real happiness. The
immense majority was in bondage to its masters•} the masters
were in bondage to vices which were the natural fruit
of irresponsibility, and which kept them in a condition
really worse and more hopeless than that of those whom
they exploited. "I find the general fate of humanity
here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation
offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be
either the hammer or the anvil." Even the sense of taste
and manners, so admirable, so interesting and prepossessing,
is superficial and ineffectual in the absence of liberty.
It controlled polite usages; it made imperative "all those
little sacrifices of self which really render European manners
amiable and relieve society from the disagreeable
scenes to which rudeness often subjects it." It held the
minor routine of life in a generally agreeable course. "In
the pleasures of the table they are far before us," temperate,
fastidious, discriminating. "I have never yet seen
a man drunk in France, even among the lowest of the
people." All this was much to the good, and "a savage
of the mountains of America" might well look on it with
the keenest envy, perceiving how profoundly the fresh
and simple charms of his native society might be enhanced
by even this limited play of the sense of taste and
manners.
But it was not enough. Good taste did not see eye to
eye with justice in viewing the social structure of France
as "a true picture of that country to which they say we
shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his
angels in splendour, and crowds of the damned trampled
under their feet." Such a civilization was not only iniquitous,
but essentially low. Good taste did not ennoble
the pursuits of the privileged minority. "Intrigues of
love occupy the younger, and those of ambition the elder
part of the great." This was not only vicious, but vulgar.
To a man for whom conduct was three-fourths of life
and good taste nine-tenths of conduct, this failure in the
primary sanctions of taste was peculiarly repulsive. The
rough society of America was more hopeful. "I would
wish my countrymen to adopt just as much of European
politeness" as might sweeten and temper their wholesomeness,
and mould them into a nation of Fauquiers.
But however far from realization that millennial dream
might be, "I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the
wilds and the independence of Monticello to all the brilliant
pleasures of this gay capital. I shall therefore rejoin
myself to my native country with new attachments
and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages."
Europe, especially, was no place for young Americans
they were sure to go bad under its influence. Sending a
youth to Europe for an education was utter futility. "If
he goes to England, he learns drinking, horse-racing and
boxing. These are the peculiarities of English education.
. . . He is fascinated with the privileges of the
European aristocrats, and sees with abhorrence the lovely
equality which the poor enjoy with the rich in his own
country. . . . He recollects the voluptuary dress and arts
of the European women, and pities and despises the chaste
affections and simplicity of those of his own country."
Summing up a long and earnest disquisition on this topic
he declares that "the consequences of foreign education
are alarming to me as an American." Thinking of the
Wythes, Franklins, Rittenhouses, Adamses, Pendletons
and Madisons of his acquaintance, urging his correspondent
to cast an eye over America to see "who are the men of
most learning, of most eloquence, most beloved by their
countrymen, and most trusted and promoted by them,"
he assures him that they are "those who have been educated
among them, and whose manners, morals and habits
are perfectly homogeneous with those of the country."
IV
Mr. Jefferson regarded with profound distrust and
disfavour the phenomenon of the political woman, which
he here confronted for the first time. After four years'
experience he writes to President Washington that without
the evidence of one's own eyes one could hardly "believe
in the desperate state to which things are reduced
in this country from the omnipotence of an influence which,
fortunately for the happiness of the sex itself, does not
endeavour to extend itself in our country beyond the domestic
line." He was continually shocked by the coarseness
and vulgarity, let alone the scandalousness, of the
custom which permitted women in search of favours not
only to visit public officials, but to visit them alone, without
the presence of a third person to guard the proprieties
and he was outraged to observe that "their solicitations bid
defiance to laws and regulations." The easy-going Franklin
had been enough of an opportunist to accept this custom
and turn it to the profit of his country. In a good
cause he was not above doing some things that neither
John Adams nor Mr. Jefferson would do, Adams, as
result of a "process of moral reasoning," and Mr. Jeffer
son out of sheer repugnance. Mr. Jefferson was little
tempted; he was not the type that women set their cap
for. Besides, even a riggish French noblewoman could
hardly throw a glamour of romance over so prosaic an
interest as the Franco-American trade in fish-oil and salt
cod. Still, he could not quite avoid these women; he
owed them civility, and he punctiliously paid the debt
He disliked Mme. de Staël, but having been kind to him
she was not to be snubbed j nor yet was she to be courted
for her youthful charms—she was then twenty-one—0r
for being the daughter of Neckar. He moved in her so
cial circle with the high step and arched back of feline cir
cumspection, and it does not appear that she ever took his
attitude as a challenge to her hankering for conquest
After his return to America he wrote a kind of bread-and
butter letter to several French ladies who had made some
thing of him in a social way; and in these, at the safe dis
tance of three thousand miles, he risks a^few ceremonious
compliments. He assures Mme. de Corny, whom he
really liked, that her civilities were "greatly more than
I had a right to expect, and they have excited in me
warmth of esteem which it was imprudent in me to have
given way to for a person whom I was one day to be sep
arated from." In the Duchesse d'Auville's character "
saw but one error; it was that of treating me with a de
gree of favour I did not merit." Corking down his ef
fervescent horror of the bas-bleu, he declares to the Duchesse
de la Rochef oucault, with a touch of irony, that if
her system of ethics and of government were generally
adopted, "we should have no occasion for government at
all" and he expresses to the Comtesse d'Houdetot his
rather attenuated gratitude for lionizing him in her salon,
and begs her to accept "the homage of those sentiments
of respect and attachment with which I have the honour
to be, Madame la Comtesse, your most obedient and most
humble servant." This was all very well; the language
of compliment and ceremony was always acceptable at its
face value. It was good, one might say, for this day and
train only. His reservations were well understood. Still,
if French women must go in for politics, it was at least
something that the younger ones coming on after Calonne's
regime were beginning to go in on the right side. "All
the handsome young women of Paris are for the Tiers
Etat" he writes David Humphreys in 1789, on the outbreak
of the revolution, "and this is an army more powerful
in France than the 200,000 men of the King." In an
emergency any stick will do to beat a dog and a reflective
American might hold his nose and survey the prospect
with equanimity, since it concerned another country than
his own.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Sat Jul 02, 2016 10:12 am

20That thou dost go in the way of the good, And the paths of the righteous dost keep.

21For the upright do inhabit the earth, And the perfect are left in it,

22And the wicked from the earth are cut off, And treacherous dealers plucked out of it!
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Sat Jul 02, 2016 10:15 am

33The curse of Jehovah [is] in the house of the wicked. And the habitation of the righteous He blesseth.

34If the scorners He doth scorn, Yet to the humble He doth give grace.

35Honour do the wise inherit, And fools are bearing away shame!
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Sat Aug 27, 2016 5:48 pm

Youngs' Literal translation Genesis 11

1And the whole earth is of one pronunciation, and of the same words, 2and it cometh to pass, in their journeying from the east, that they find a valley in the land of Shinar, and dwell there; 3and they say each one to his neighbour, ‘Give help, let us make bricks, and burn [them] thoroughly:’ and the brick is to them for stone, and the bitumen hath been to them for mortar. 4And they say, ‘Give help, let us build for ourselves a city and tower, and its head in the heavens, and make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of all the earth.’ 5And Jehovah cometh down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men have builded; 6and Jehovah saith, ‘Lo, the people [is] one, and one pronunciation [is] to them all, and this it hath dreamed of doing; and now, nothing is restrained from them of that which they have purposed to do. 7Give help, let us go down, and mingle there their pronunciation, so that a man doth not understand the pronunciation of his companion.’ 8And Jehovah doth scatter them from thence over the face of all the earth, and they cease to build the city; 9therefore hath [one] called its name Babel, for there hath Jehovah mingled the pronunciation of all the earth, and from thence hath Jehovah scattered them over the face of all the earth

Genealogy
10These [are] births of Shem: Shem [is] a son of an hundred years, and begetteth Arphaxad two years after the deluge. 11And Shem liveth after his begetting Arphaxad five hundred years, and begetteth sons and daughters.

12And Arphaxad hath lived five and thirty years, and begetteth Salah. 13And Arphaxad liveth after his begetting Salah four hundred and three years, and begetteth sons and daughters.

14And Salah hath lived thirty years, and begetteth Eber. 15And Salah liveth after his begetting Eber four hundred and three years, and begetteth sons and daughters.

16And Eber liveth four and thirty years, and begetteth Peleg.

1 CHRONICLES
1:19And to Eber have been born two sons, the name of the one [is] Peleg, for in his days hath the land been divided, and the name of his brother is Joktan.. 20And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah, 21and Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah, 22and Ebal, and Abimael, and Sheba, 23and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab; all these [are] sons of Joktan.

24Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, 25Eber, Peleg, Reu, 26Serug, Nahor, Terah, 27Abram — he [is] Abraham.
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Re: Book Excerpts

Postby Elihu » Wed May 10, 2017 9:56 am

"I don't mean to be offensive,... But -damn-it-all- look at it from my point of view."

"No good Sonny... You don't know enough facts yet for your point of view to be worth six pence. You haven't yet realized what you're in on. You're being offered a chance of something far bigger.... And there are only two alternatives, you know. Either to be in ... or to be out... And I know better than you which is going to be most fun."

" I do understand that,... But anything is better than being nominally in and having nothing to do. Give me a real place in the Sociological Department and I'll..."

"Rats! That whole Department is going to be scrapped. It had to be there at the beginning for propaganda purposes. But they're all going to be weeded out."

"But what assurance have I that I'm going to be one of their successors?"

"You aren't. They're not going to have any successors. The real work has nothing to do with all these departments. The kind of Sociology we're interested in will be done by my people - the Police."....

...

"Then I've come here under a misunderstanding,... "I've no notion of spending my life writing newspaper articles,.. And if I had, I'd want to know a good deal more about the politics ... before I went in for that sort of thing."

"Haven't you been told that it's strictly non-political?"

"I've been told so many things that I don't know whether I'm on my head for my heels, ... But I don't see how one's going to start a newspaper stunt (which is about what this comes to) without being political. Is it Left or Right papers that are going to print all this rot...?"

"Both, honey, both,... Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition ... is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us--- to refute the enemy slanders. Of course w're non-political. The real power always is."

"I don't believe you can do that... Not with the papers that are read by educated people."

"That shows you're still in the nursery, lovey,... Haven't you yet realized that it's the other way round?"

"How do you mean?"

"Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything."

"As one of the class you mention, ... I just don't believe it."

"Good Lord! ... where are your eyes? Look at what the weeklies have got away with!.... Did they drop a single reader? Don't you see that the educated reader cant' stop reading the high-brow weeklies whatever they do? He can't. He's been conditioned."
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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