And they found the details of their moral code in sacred texts and history, as well as custom

From Neil Postman's Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

What we may learn from these two great philosophes, Einstein and Mill, is what they learned from their predecessors - that it is necessary to live as if there is a transcendental authority. "One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is," Einstein wrote, "and yet not be able to deduce from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievement of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source." The other source is religion. Neither Mill nor Einstein believed in the stories that give form and inspiration to traditional religious systems, what Mill called the "supernatural religions." But both understood that we require a story that provides a basis for moral conduct and has a transcendent character. They found it in "natural law," and in the capacities of "human nature." In their stories, human beings have innate feelings for the general good and the unity of mankind. Mill called his story The Religion of Humanity. Einstein spoke of Cosmic Religious feeling. And they found the details of their moral code in sacred texts and history, as well as custom; that is to say, in our obligations to those whom we have judged to have acted in accord with the principles of human solidarity. Mill wrote:

. . . the thought that our dead parents or friends would have approved our conduct is scarcely less powerful motive than the knowledge that our living ones do approve it; and the idea that Socrates, or Howard, or Washington, or Antonius, or Christ would have sympathized with us, or that we are attempting to do our part in the spirit in which they did theirs, has operated on the very best minds as a strong incentive to act up to their highest feelings and convictions.

That there is a tendency as part of our nature toward our being "moral" - detesting wanton killing, honoring parents, caring for children, speaking truthfully, loving mercy, overcoming egotism, and all the other exhortations we find shared by sacred texts - is a legacy of the Enlightenment. And that this tendency cannot be proven in a scientific manner but must be taken on faith is also a feature of that legacy, provided that one does not claim absolute certainty for one's belief. For it is clear that most Enlightenment philosophes understood that absolute certainty is an evil that chokes reason and perverts faith; it is, in fact, the opposite of the religious spirit. They did not, therefore, find it necessary to have it "proved" that their narrative is certain, or superior to all others, or logically unassailable. Their narrative had only to be sufficient to guide them to a path of righteousness as defined by reason and historical agreement. The modern Christian apologist C.S. Lewis refers to "historical agreement" as the Tao, the summary of commands and prohibitions found in all collections of moral discourse from ancient Egypt to Babylonia to the Chinese analects to Homer's Iliad to the Old and New Testaments. The eighteenth century could not have used the term "Tao," but this is what eighteenth-century thinkers meant. This is what was "self-evident." And this is what provided courage and optimism.

The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose

J.B.S. Haldane in Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around.

I never realized that Mark Twain took such offense at James Fennimore Cooper's Deerslayer. I know people that have read it and enjoyed it but certainly not Mark Twain to judge by his essay, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses. Agree with his criticism or not, this has got to be one of the most sustained attacks of slicing wit on a book.

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now -- all dead but Lounsbury. I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still he makes it, for he says that "Deerslayer" is a "pure work of art." Pure, in that connection, means faultless -- faultless in all details -- and language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's English with the English he writes himself -- but it is plain that he didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English of "Deerslayer" is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote.

I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that "Deerslayer" is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that "Deerslayer" is just simply a literary delirium tremens.

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are -- oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

Inputs affect outputs

Thomas Sowell is a conservative scholar at the Hoover Institute in California. I find him attractive for his predisposition to argue from evidence as illustrated in his many books including Conquests and Cultures, and his very ascerbic The Vision of the Anointed. In addition to being a prolific author, he is also a productive essayist. Education & The Fallacy of "Fairness" is a brief observation on how we sometimes get all tangled up in our language and lose sight of our real objectives.

What they need are the attitudes, priorities and behavior which produce the outcomes desired.

But changing anyone's attitudes, priorities and behavior is a lot harder than taking a stance as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.

To the extent that doing the latter misdiagnoses the problem, it makes solving the problem even harder. That does no good for those who are lagging, however much it exalts those who pose as their defenders. "Fairness" indeed!

This is not dissimilar to the situation in reading where differences in performance are ascribed to issues of access or instruction rather than to issues of personal practices and values which is what the data points towards.

Sound like the blogoshpere of today?

From Neil Postman's Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

Some scholars attribute the first "newspaper," and therefore an early example of modern exposition, to the work of the Italian Pietro Aretino, who was born in 1451, only a few years before the invention of printing with movable type. Aretino saw earlier than anyone the value of the printing press as an instrument of publicity, and produced a regular series of anticlerical obscenities, libelous stories, public accusations, and personal opinion, all of which became part of our journalistic tradition and are to be found thriving in the present day.

Inhaling the sweet odors of fruits, spices and gums

From Jack Corbett Mariner by A.S. Hatch and obtainable through www.jackcorbett.com with all proceeds going to the New York City Rescue Mission. Here Hatch recounts how he and three other junior sailors would spend their days while waiting for their ship to be readied for the return voyage to America. This occurred in Liverpool in 1849 - a funny time when the world was still very small and local and yet was at the doorstep of exploding; when countries and peoples and ideas were just beginning to connect on a massive scale.

On Sundays we usually went to church in the forenoon, in compliance with the captain's advice. In the afternoon we strolled about Liverpool, visiting the public gardens, looking at the fine buildings, and indulging in many boyish visions of some day becoming ourselves great merchants, ship owners or bankers. Sometimes we strayed out into the country where there were groves of trees, and picturesque lanes and pretty villas, and, even in this late autumnal season, many sweet sights and sounds of country life, with the busy city lying in the distance half-revealed under the veil of haze and smoke that seemed always spread over it. Occasionally we stopped at little wayside dairies and regaled ourselves with bread and cheese and milk. At other times we wandered along the docks, looking with curious interest at the strange craft from many lands, with their odd rigs, quaint models, and unpronounceable names, and listening to the queer speech and noting the fantastic attire of some of the crews, and inhaling the sweet odors of fruits, spices and gums, or the vile ones of hides and guano and oil, that gave hints of the different climes from which they had come. These were happy, careless days of freedom and of the unrestrained enjoyment of scenes and sights and sounds that were strange and full of interest.

Justice, fairness and privilege

As parents we are always seeking to inform our children about rules and justice and fairness. Our children's stories, particularly our more traditional tales, often also build these concepts (see our booklist Fairness, Justice and the Legal System). No matter how hard we try though, it seems as if sometimes some of the more prominent, or at least news-attracting, members of our society undermine those lessons by their behavior and the headlines they draw: politicians, sportsmen, prominent business people. Why should this be?

This article, Absolutely: Power corrupts but it only corrupts those who think they deserve it, from the January 23rd, 2010 Economist sheds some light. Interesting.

They argue, therefore, that people with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. This sense of entitlement is crucial to understanding why people misbehave in high office. In its absence, abuses will be less likely. The word "privilege" translates as "private law". If Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.

The things you never knew . . .

I must have walked by Liberty's of London hundreds of times in my life. I've even been in a few times to buy Christmas presents and the like. What I never knew, and this fact comes courtesy of Candida Lycett Green in Unwrecked England, is that the mock Tudor face of the building is built from the timbers of the HMS Hindustan and the HMS Impregnable, respectively 80 and 98 gun ships-of-the-line built in the first half of the nineteenth century. There are stories all around us that we never know about.

Happiness II

There is another article, Even in Tough Times, Happiness is its Own Reward, from Laura Rowland in Money & Happiness, January 23, 2008, on happiness research. She summarizes the key findings from the book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approaching to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky.

I find it interesting that the conclusions they draw from their research on happiness parallels those of our research on reading: Genes play a role as does luck (circumstances of privilege, health, etc.) but ultimately happiness is substantially a product of concious or intuitive decisions on the part of individuals to be happy or to pursue actions that will predispose themselves to be happy.

The good news, Lyubomirsky says, is that we can manipulate 40 percent of our happiness level by consciously adopting the behaviors of happy people. She's the first to admit that some of these strategies -- such as "act like a happy person" -- sound a little corny. "I'm the most reluctant user of self-help literature," she says. "That's why there's an emphasis on science -- to look at what is effective, what works, how it works, and why it works."

Lyubomirsky outlines specific techniques that have been found to boost happiness, and different ways to employ them. They include practicing gratitude and optimistic thinking, nurturing relationships, committing to goals, developing coping strategies, learning to forgive, increasing flow experiences, practicing spirituality and meditation, and being physically active.

She emphasizes that creating happiness requires sustained effort, commitment, discipline, and self-control -- similar to staying in physical shape. "I think it is work, but it's very fulfilling, enjoyable work," she says. "You have to be motivated. The good news is that some of the practices become habitual with time, and, like exercise, do get easier."

This is not dissimilar to what we have found vis-a-vis reading. Life circumstances and native ability are influential but the ultimate determinant of whether a child becomes an enthusiastic and habitual reader is much more closely related to a set of personal actions and activities that predispose them to this desirable outcome.

Addle-pated modernist

Philip Hensher in the January 9, 2010 edition of The Spectator, reviewing Sarah Bakewell's How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Answers.

Eight years later, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne began to write his Essays, a book which still seems to speak to us directly with all the force of rational understanding and an identifiable human personality. If Montaigne marks the beginning of modernity, it is because he tells us exactly what he is like; how he sees the world, fallibly and yet honestly; and because there was no book in the world like it before, and we are still writing books rather like it today.

Montaigne, in common with all great authors, has continued to be infinitely applicable. Centuries of academic readers have found a 17th-century sceptical writer, a rambling Romantic, a Victorian moralist, a modernist experimenting with perception and free association, and, alas, a post-modernist, playing with the random associations and hidden structures of words. Nietzsche was fascinated by Montaigne. Proust is steeped in him; the final image of A La Recherche, of lives extending far into the past and into the future, of men suspended above long tracts of time and memory as if on giant stilts, is taken as if in homage from the Essays.

I guess he passes Edith Wharton's plasticity test.