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ancestorsofjudah · 6 months

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2 Kings 4: 15-25. "Pregnancy."

In Judaism, men provide the skill, the wit and wisdom, women provide the habit or pattern. The result is a new era. Anyone who has ever been addicted to a substance or a person will realize, first comes the realization life is under duress, then comes the desire for rebirth. Abstinence is the pattern, Shabbat is the transition from an addicted brain to one that is biologically and intellectually able to function at its best.

The intention to end one's relationship to the addictive substance is the male, the period of abstinence is the pregnancy of the woman, Shabbat is the baby. Slavery of any kind requires Grace the greatest of which is Shabbat.

The same is true for the outstanding things we want to accomplish, like learning a new language, saving money in order to buy a house, a job search, these are the male aspects, 9 month period is the work, the Shabbat takes place after is delivery of the exceptional new objective.

We are always undergoing the process of Shabbat. Enlightenment is always taking place, it is the habitually intelligent response to changes in the body, to history, to the urges of the soul as it attempts to make its way to Ha Shem, complete and conclusive knowledge of the Most High.

Governments, like persons undergo impregnation, childbirth and the attainment of Shabbat. The man is the President or the Crown, the woman is the legislature, the new era begins when wars end, civil rights violations are addressed, and food, education, housing shortages are being politically tended to without absurd debates.

The Temple undergoes pregnancy during polemics. Upon examining scripture, one finds ways to argue for the evolution of certain precepts, and then drafts a substantive change to the way the Church views the plight of mankind and applies the new liturgy through the clergy.

Every temple, mosque and church on the planet should be arguing the inferiority of war and the superiority of the Holy Spirit who spake to Noah, and warned of a Great Flood.

In this case, Elisha, the government is dealing with a woman, the Kingdom of Israel, who is in debt to God because of certain malfunctions in the accurate distribution of the details of the Torah.

The story is heavily encrypted. The Values in Gematria which explain, will follow the verses.

15 Then Elisha said, “Call her.” So he called her, and she stood in the doorway. 16 “About this time next year,” Elisha said, “you will hold a son in your arms.”

“No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!”

17 But the woman became pregnant, and the next year about that same time she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

18 The child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers. 19 He said to his father, “My head! My head!”

His father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.” 20 After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. 21 She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and went out.

22 She called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.”

23 “Why go to him today?” he asked. “It’s not the New Moon or the Sabbath.”

“That’s all right,” she said.

24 She saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Lead on; don’t slow down for me unless I tell you.” 25 So she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.

v. 15-16: The Value in Gematria is 9356, טגהו, taghu, "Crown him." This verse means a prince will be born. Princes are heirs to the legal format that keeps the people and the land safe, generation after generation. The widow mentioned in the verse filled the neighborhood jars with the "olive oil" the male contribution to the prince, she provided the jars, the upcoming class of senators and leaders.

Princes, like mayors and governors, Lords and Ladies must be steeped in the traditions and legal expectations of their positions early in life and there must be an echo of their stellar acumen within the kingdom itself= the people mature alongside the prince as he prepares for his eventual coronation.

v. 17: The Value in Gematria is 13214, יגךא‎ד, yagchad. "to moisten the area of suffering, as in a pasture where wild beasts roam."

To moisten implies the Words of Moses, "the water of God."

According to the Gematria, the Prince has to be put out to pasture and get hosed down if the above step "crowning" is to come to fruition. Anyone who goes to church, or temple at any age knows its a headache, in particular if one is younger, but if one is crowned, it is duty and must be done.

Even still, we must keep the mind and the soul sharp, they must be trained to listen to the Spirit of God and remain motivated to do what is needed to reform this teetering world.

This is what is meant by watering the pasture and why laddie's head started to hurt- he realized things could not stay the same, he was going to have to grow up and become fit for the role God assigned him.

v. 18-21: The Value in Gematria is 12249, יבבדט‎, yabbedt. "A dried bed of understanding." [yab= to dry up the land, bed=recliner, dat= data].

We saturated the land with the Lessons, now the Nation is expected to respond by making changes. The changes target strife, unrest, the seeds of revolution, any kind of stressor that might ideologically or physically disturb the peace is removed during the process of wetting and drying the land.

v. 22-23: The Value in Gematria is 9086, ץחו‎ ‎, "jump out." The Hebrew term for this is kefitzat haderech, "to shorten the road" vs. making a leap. The implications of leaping to one's spiritual sojourn are obvious, but as for the world, only the world's governments can lead a process of flawless rapid maturation based on the righteous mutual convictions of their governors:

v.24-25: The Value in Gematria is 8032, חאֶפֶס‎גב‎, hafesgev, "A national brotherhood that observes the Festival of the Passover."

The Russians, all 160 million of them are slaves, fodder for a crazy person who cares about not one hair on their heads. This piece of shit, named Vladimir Putin has been in charge of this planet for decades and now he is proving it.

The Chinese are worse.

America is being run by squamous religious fundamentalists very much in violation of federal, international and spiritual laws and no one in a position of power seems to care much about it.

The Britons are led by an unintelligible child molester who can't bring himself to open his government and provide it with what it needs to function. His son is a mockery of a man who needs to pay a visit to the hangman.

Palestinians, what a bunch of punks, hate gay people and women, and don't want to join the modern world for whatever reason. And it's not the Quran. Their quality of life is therefore not as high as it would be were they to choose to concede to the world's expectations.

The few remaining Jews and the Nation of Israel itself are trying to sustain their pulses and enter a new age of enlightenment and the world hates them for it.

Muslims, the most despised group of people on the planet, bar none are almost one of its most numerous, and they too are trying to keep their noses above a threateningly high levels of threats from climate change, starvation, disease, despotic conditions and anarchy. Their leaders are for the most part just a bunch of devils.

Everyone on this planet is besieged by circumstances that are eminently subject to change. The process above, prescribed for royalty and governors who are ascended from the people is the answer to humanity's cry for help. But a few need to respond, then the Passing Over of this brutal age of mankind will begin.

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wisdomrays · 3 years

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TAFAKKUR: Part 427

THE IMPORTANCE OF BREAST-FEEDING

MOTHERS SHALL SUCKLE CHILDREN FOR TWO WHOLE YEARS, FOR THOSE WHO DESIRE TO COMPLETE THE SUCKLING. IT IS FOR THE FATHER TO PROVIDE FOR THEM AND CLOTHE THEM HONOURABLY. NO SOUL IS CHARGED SAVE TO ITS CAPACITY: NO WOMAN SHOULD SUFFER BECAUSE OF HER CHILD, NOR ANY MAN BECAUSE OF HIS. THE SAME RESPONSIBILITIES ARE INCUMBENT ON THE HEIR. BUT IF (THE COUPLE) DECIDE BY MUTUAL CONSENT TO WEAN (THE CHILD), THERE IS NO BLAME ON THEM. AND IF YOU DESIRE TO SEEK NURSING FOR YOUR CHILDREN (BY HIRING A FOSTER MOTHER), THERE IS NO BLAME ON YOU PROVIDED YOU PAY HER FAIRLY. FEAR GOD, AND KNOW THAT GOD SEES EVERYTHING YOU DO (QUR’AN, 2.205)

Breast-feeding is extremely important for the mother’s own health, as well as that of her baby. The propaganda in the sixties and seventies of some materialistic physicians in cahoots with baby-food manufacturers tried to throw doubt on the value of breast-feeding and to present it, especially in ‘Third World’ countries, as something second-best, unsophisticated. More recently, however, the scientific community has been forced to recognize the irreplaceable value of the mother’s milk, compared to any artificial product, and the World Health Organisation has banned all negative propaganda directed against it.

In what follows, I shall try to answer, from a scientific standpoint, these three questions:

1) What does mother’s milk impart to the baby?

2)What should be the frequency and duration of nursing?

3) What effect does nursing have on the mother?

1- THE NATURE OF MOTHER’S MILK

For nourishment human beings need the three basic foods, and phosphorous and vitamins. All of these substances, namely proteins, sugar, fats, phosphorous and vitamins, are present in the mother’s milk. The special worth of breast milk, however, lies rather in the fact that it contains these substances in very subtly tuned proportions, and the most important secret of its composition is that fatty molecules are dispersed within it in very fine, small particles.

The mother’s own breast milk is prepared more richly than the table of a tycoon. To begin with, the entire vitamin requirement of the baby is present in it for the first six months. Properly informed science can only be amused at the sight of over-anxious parents rushing about with a fruit press in their hands in an effort to provide baby with Vitamin C.

Secondly, there are antibodies in the mother’s milk during the first six months that protect the baby against all infectious diseases. There are even antibodies protecting against measles in the milk of a mother who has never contracted measles, an inexplicable fact in biological terms. This can only be a divine indication of the value God places on the well being of His creatures.

Certain atheistic scientists have put forward an absurd claim that breast milk is deficient in iron. It has been established in recent years, however, that in adults blood is produced in the bone marrow, whereas in babies it is produced in the liver. Iron is stored in the baby’s liver even while it is in the mother’s womb. Attempts to compensate for this supposed deficiency by medicines containing iron may condemn babies to a lifetime of enteritis.

It is a biological imperative that the baby be nursed on breast milk during the first six months, since the liver, normally the centre of digestive activities, is largely occupied with blood production in babies. Furthermore, the baby uses nutrition for the purposes of growth and development rather than energy. For this reason, it is next to impossible to select and balance the required food types and vitamins. We know that there are more than 50 vitamins in addition to the handful known to medicine. The growth and development of the baby is, through the perfect balance of breast milk, brought under perfect control by Divine Omnipotence. To attempt to imitate this divinely managed blessing with imperfect human imitations of it is both arrogant and ridiculous.

2- INTERVALS AND DURATION OF BREAST FEEDING

Another burden atheists have put on breast-feeding is the rule of feeding every four hours, which they have invented by analogy with the normal period of digestion. Recent research has shown that milk is completely digested in 45 minutes. When this period is over, the secretion of milk in the mother’s mummeries increases by a telepathic reflex, and the baby normally begins to cry due to hunger. All these events constitute a biological computer system, and if the feeding periods do not correspond, the baby’s stomach is filled with acid, seriously disrupting its digestive system. It has even been conjectured that this may contribute to ulcers in later life.

Regarding the duration of breast-feeding, modem medicine has imposed a wholly arbitrary period, namely nine months. But the basic logic of suckling is based on two facts:

a) The liver is heavily loaded because it is producing blood, and hence there is a need for milk. It takes about two full years for the liver to recede into the background as regards blood production. For this reason, breast-feeding should last two years.

b) The most important phase of development, the period when basic biological materials are required, is again two years. Medical science definitely recognizes that the first two years of development of the baby are the most significant phase.

Another miracle of the Qur’an’s wisdom is that it specified this period, although, before Islam, the practice in the societies in the Middle East was to breast-feed for four to five years.

A final point in regard to the length of the breast-feeding period: Research on childhood mental disorders has shown that an infant needs to be breast-fed for about two years for mental health to be robust. A study done on a global scale revealed that no child in Indonesia and the Philippines suffered mental problems, and the research committee found that this was due to the sense of security and tenderness imparted to the baby during two years of breast- feeding in those countries.

3-THE BENEFITS FOR THE MOTHER

a) The healthy functioning of the mammary glands:

Health statistics gathered world-wide have shown that cancer of the breast occurs seldom in mothers who breast-feed their infants for one or two-years. Mothers who do not do so, on the other hand, run the greatest risk of contracting this disease. If only for this reason, a one or two-year nursing period should be commended as a cancer preventive.

b) Biological regeneration occurring in the mother’s body during nursing:

The liver functions at full capacity in a mother who breast- feeds. All the chemical problems of the mother’s body come under scrutiny in this way. Further, since all the required substances have to be mixed into the maternal blood, the mother’s cells compensate for their deficiencies during nursing. Again, since the pituitary gland is in full control during nursing, the general hormone processes all function properly, and hence the psychological makeup of the mother is vastly improved. This harmony in the hormone balance of nursing mothers and the period of calm it imposes on the psychological structure is a priceless gift. You may have noted that despite being physically tired, nursing mothers are never ill-tempered. The reason for this is the harmonization of glandular secretions during breast-feeding.

Again thanks to this hormonal balance, the womb and ovaries of the nursing mother are also afforded a period of rest. Although this period is not equal to the nursing period, a repose of two to six months is a very valuable rest in terms of the mother’s sex organs. In the meantime, simple disorders of the womb and ovaries are also cured. Two years is, again, the ideal duration of the nursing period for these benefits to fully manifest themselves.

In sum, the disparagement of mother’s milk and of breast feeding generally by proponents of an atheistic modern medicine must rank as one of the most shameful stains on the history of medicine. Biologically and psychologically, the health of both mother and baby is greatly improved by breast feeding for, ideally, up to two years. Independent scientific studies have confirmed that this is so. We should not be surprised that they have done so. For who would know better what is best for the well-being of mankind than the One who created us.

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begoodstewards · 4 years

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Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everybody. It’s the 50th anniversary, which seems a bit absurd considering Earth was here long before bipedal creatures started walking around naming things. It is flabbergasting to think that in 1970 our relationship with our home planet was so toxic that officially getting a single day to focus on repairing it seemed like a massive victory.

In the 200 years since the First Industrial Revolution we were already doing irreparable damage. Forests were clear cut at alarming rates, mountains were toppled and stripped of their substance, waterways were fished bare or polluted until they were uninhabitable, and the air was choked with smog and fumes. The Industrial Revolution brought more people out of poverty than any other movement in history, but it did so at the expense of our relationship with the earth.

In the last 50 years we have made great strides in mitigating the damage we inflict on the natural world. It’s a constant struggle, the balance between progress and conservation, but the 50-year trend shows we are heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, I cannot help but feel that we are addressing the symptoms and not the underlying root of the problem. The environmental movement is almost entirely about what we as humans do to the earth, and how to protect the planet from the human species. This good vs. evil paradigm leads to the politicization of any issue that hints at environmentalism.

The earth does not need our protection. It was here long before we were, and it will be here long after we are gone. We, as humans, need the earth. Using our ingenuity, we have invented ways to grow our population beyond that which our ecosystem could previously support. We have focused our efforts on technologies that allow us to get more from less so we can continue to become more prosperous. We have also created a bubble of consumption, but at some point, that bubble will collapse. Whether resource shortages, natural disasters, disease, or any of the other myriad disasters nature has up it’s sleeve our way of life is fragile and beginning to crack.

I have spent a lot of time, as I’m sure most of you have, over the last couple of months reflecting on my way of life. I think a lot about my grandparents, part of the Greatest Generation, that grew up in the Great Depression, fought the forces of evil during World War II, saw the moon landing and the development of penicillin, and witnessed the greatest advancement of technology and prosperity in the history of the world. They taught me a lot about life and were massive influences on my worldview.

The stories that keep coming to mind for me right now are the ones from their childhood. They milked cows, worked the cotton fields, sewed their own cloths, cooked their own meals, played in the creek, and took long walks through the forest. These stories wrapped me in a fantasy world, a place similar to the world in which I lived as a child but quainter and in sepia tones. In middle school we were learning about the Great Depression when it dawned on me that they spent their formative years under the cloud of an historic economic downturn. I thought their experiences must be agonizing, like my grandfather’s memories of The War, which is why they hid them from me. When I asked them outright about their experiences during the Great Depression, I found that my assumptions could not be farther from the truth. All the stories about milking cows and jumping in the creeks were from the Depression era. They grew and raised their own food, built their own homes, made their own cloths. They were self-sufficient, and because of this they really had no idea that the Great Depression was even happening.

My grandparents found careers, my grandfather a carpenter and my grandmother a healthcare worker, and they moved to town. They built a modest ranch home in a nice neighborhood and made a decent living and their children grew up never wanting for much. Still, my grandparents tilled up a quarter acre in the back yard and planted a spring and fall garden every year. The flower beds surrounding the house would explode with color every spring, and the sweet gum and poplar trees would provide a glorious shade to cool off in the depths of August in the deep south. My grandmother would wash the disposable plates and put them back in the cabinet, and we ate cereal from re-used cool whip containers. This all seemed ridiculous at the time, and the grandkids would all giggle and poke fun. But, my grandparents knew what it was like to have to make the most of what they had, and the lessons from their childhood were not forgotten well into their nineties.

It’s amazing how a global pandemic can take the most complex aspects of our society and make them seem trivial, while simultaneously making the most basic aspects of human existence seem revolutionary. I think deep down that most of us realize how close we came, and still are, to total collapse. A lot of us are getting more exercise, planting gardens, and seriously reevaluating how we are using our resources. We are strengthening our relationship with the earth.

I started the Good Stewards of the Earth organization to help regular people get involved in outdoor recreation. I hoped maybe to one day lead hikes, give clinics, and possibly have a scout program. With all the goings on in my everyday life I haven’t had the time to make it much more than a title under which I collect pictures of me and the family out in the wild. I have also struggled to find a career that makes me feel that I am having a positive impact on society and nature. I work in the outdoor industry and I love my job, it has honestly gotten me closer to reaching that goal than any of my other careers. Still, I want to do more.

I believe right now is the time to grow the Good Stewards into an organization that truly benefits mankind, and to use my skill and passion to have a positive impact on the world. I want our focus to expand beyond outdoor recreation and to help people foster a relationship with the earth. I want to help people be more self-sufficient using skills I learned from my grandparents. I want to influence lawmakers and businesses to conserve our resources and make decisions that will make us less vulnerable to existential threats. I want to see a society where we benefit from our outstanding technological advances without losing sight of what makes us human.

Over the next few weeks, we will launch our new website, BeGoodStewards.org, and will begin drafting our mission statement and plan of action. We will begin a series of educational videos and blog posts too. We will start our search for a board of directors while filing with our Secretary of State’s office and petitioning the IRS for 501c3 status. We will also begin raising money to fund these endeavors. I’m also going to begin asking for help. If you can make a financial contribution it will be much appreciated, and if you have advice or encouragement that is even better. You can reach me at [email protected]. If you have ideas or constructive criticism, please reach out. If you are inspired by our mission, please follow us on all forms of media and share our posts with your friends and family. Most importantly, join me in trying to be good stewards of the earth.

#earthday #begoodstewards #environmentalism #conservation #nature #self sufficiency #activism

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littlemisssquiggles · 5 years

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Pretty random question, but do you think that RT could wind up killing Ruby or Oscar off? Idk, I feel like if they did it right then it could be really sad. What are your thoughts?

…Uhmm…no?At least not in a permanent way. I’d like tobelieve that Ruby and Oscar both have a strong set of plot armour in theirarsenal. Ruby because she’s our series main protagonist and Oscar because…okayI’ll be blunt here: The CRWBY Writers axing Oscar would honestlybe a rather absurd plot decision given the context of how Oscar wasfirst introduced into the story.

Oscaris meant to more or less replace ProfessorOzpin at some point as the newest incarnation of the Wizard of Light. The CRWBYkilled off Ozpin to bring Oscar in and right now, they’re supposedly integratinghim into the main group and plot indicating that he might have a bigger role inthe story. I mean he certainly does just as much as Ruby given his connectionto the main series antagonist: Salem.

IfOscar dies and it’s a permanent thing then the first question I would ask is: What was the pointof creating his character?

What was thepoint of killing off Ozpin to introduce us to this new child character that wasmeant to replace Ozpin only to kill him off after spending seasons makingaudience members invest in his character and story arc? Why do all of that atall if that was his endgame?

I’msorry. This is mostly my personal Pinehead bias talking but I really do thinkkilling off Oscar for good after killing off Ozpin to get him instead soundreally dumb. Feel free to disagree with me if you will but that’s how Ihonestly feel about that.

Butto really answer your question Momfriend, in the event that the Writers do planon kill either of these two off, I can only see it being done for like the series finale.

ForRuby, I can only picture the Writers’ writing her final swan song as hersacrificing herself for the fate of humanity. While I technically don’t believethe CRWBY would actually kill Ruby, this is one way I can see them doing it ifthe thought ever crossed their minds.

Maybethey can even pull a River Song in Doctor Who where Ruby dies bravely to stop Salem and Oscar useswhat bit of the God’s light he had left in him to bring her back with a literalkiss of life.

Imagine if…in the end, the Writerspull a bit where Oscar is able to share his immortality with Ruby Rose so theyboth become immortalbeings whose love ends up shaping Remnant and its history for many,many generations.

Theycould become the epitome of soul mates wherethey’re attached at the soul and if one of them dies, the other dies as well.So they die together but are reborn separated with their memories intact. Butno matter where they respawn they always find each other again and relive theirlove.

That could be sweet.But I doubt the Writers will do something like this. Makes for a kickass AUthough.

ForOscar I can more picture him dying temporarily onlyto be revived later. Not as a new character but as himself. His true self. Hiscomplete self. I’ve been repeating this theory for the longest time where Ibelieve Oscar is truly Ozma---the reincarnation of his original form reborn inModern Remnant.

Ihave this picture in my head where Salem captures Oscar and takes him to her Dark Domainwhere she performs some kind of dark crucifixion ofsome kind. I’m not sure if you’re an Avatar fan as well but in its sequelseries, the Legendof Korra, it is revealed that the Avatar is in fact a combination ofa spirit and a human soul.

InKorra’s second book, the Avatar spirit---Raava is ripped out ofKorra---the current Avatar and whipped right before Korra’s eyes.And with each beating, Korra loses his connection to her past lives going downthe lineage until the Avatar cycle is reset and Korrabecomes the first and last Avatar.

Somehow I’ve picturedOscar suffering a similar fate like that where the reincarnation cycle is reset with him as theLast Wizard of Light. The last life. In my vision, Salem uses her dark magicto force Ozma or what she believes to be Ozma’s soul out of Oscar’s body. Ozpindescribed himself not just as one man but a culmination of them. So it’s my assumption thatwhen the Merge occurs, the souls of the other Wizards don’t truly die ordisappear but become a part of something I dubbed the Wizard Persona which they share with their current successor.

Ithink all thesouls of the past Wizards live within Oscar.He just hasn’t done anything to really connect withthose differing souls beyond Professor Ozpin. However I do think they are allthere with him. My Pinehead headcanon is that Salem will strip Oscar of his connection tothe other Wizards, killing them one by one until all that remains isOscar’s feeble soul.

Similarto Korra’s experience, picture…Salem extracting the souls of each of theWizards before Oscar who are a part of him. Picture Salemkilling each and every one of them for good, right before Oscar’s very eyes andwith each disconnection, Oscar feels his soul suffer as if he’s being torn in two.

Salemdoes this because she’s trying to get to Ozma who she’s trying to find amongthis mess of men. Unfortunately for Salem, she never finds Ozma and it isrevealed later that Oscar has been Ozma all along---his true reincarnation of him as the younger revived version of hisoriginal self. So Oscar technically dies but he’s brought back one last time tocomplete the mission he promised to fulfil all those years ago in his firstlife as Ozma.

Mytheory is that Oscarwill meet the God of Light or at least one of the Gods in the Realm BetweenRealms again. Since Ozma met the Godof Light, I think it’d be a cool contrast if Oscar met the God of Darkness and it would fit with the theory I have where Ibelieve the Godseach contribute to the creation of life inspite their differences.

My theory is thatBrother Godsdon’t just represent light and darkness but also body and soul. Dark represents the body while light represents the soul.

Mytheory is that through a consult with the God of Darkness, Oscar will learnthat he has been Ozma all along. He is the original form---the body ofOzma---that the God of Darkness brought back with his power. But when questionedof why the God of Darkness would do such a thing, he informsOscar that he did it in aid of his brother. The Brothers may differ in theirsentiments and levels of mercy shown towards mankind and while the God ofDarkness might not share much what fate befalls his so-called greatest creation,he does care and believe in his brother; even if he might never say that to hisface.

Let’s say, the God of Darknesshad a hunch that his brother’s experiment with Ozma’s soul mightfail at some point. There was no way he could keep doing this forever and atsome point, humanity would fall again by Dark’s premonition. So as one lastfailsafe, in addition to reviving the God’s Champion: Ozma, each Brothercontributed an additional trump cardto aid Ozma in the event that he failed to see through with his mission.

TheGod of Light’strump card were the Silver EyedWarriors---beings he blessed with his eyes to destroy the Creaturesof Grimm. The finaltrump card, the one Darkness had a hand in, was the creation of Oscar.

Godof Light was never able to revive Ozma’s old body. It was a feat out of hispower. But not Dark’s. While the God of Light revived Ozma’s soul, Ozma’s old body wasreborn and granted a new life and a new nameuntil his truepurpose will be realized. Destiny has a way of trailing back to where it’s supposed tofall after all and eventually Ozma’s revived soul would ultimately merge withhis revived body, reviving the hero---the champion known as Ozma completely. Ozma was theChampion of the Gods. The Wizard of Light andOscar is Ozma.

Thisis why I’m standing with the Merge not killing Oscar. It’s supposed to make himcomplete.Ozma will be made whole again. Oscar will be made whole again. That’s my headcanon and boy do I love it.

Do you knowwhat would be interesting?

What if… the Gods being gods foresaw their greatest creation bringing abouttheir own damnation? What if…the Godsalready knew Salem was going to bring about humanity’s destruction but wereunaware on how to stop it.

Sothey introduced players and trump cards intheir game of Fate against Humanity. It’d be funny if RWBY is revealed to be one big game that theBrother Gods have been playing this entire time alongside another known God.

Possibly a third God---A higher being who warnedthe brothers that their greatest creation would fall and rise to destroy themboth and themselves. Picture…this third Godbeing the Creator of the Brother Gods. Perhaps there isa female Goddess---AMother of theCosmos who is the mother of the Brothers of Light and Darkness.

AlrightI think this is where my headcanons needto stop since I’m getting ahead of myself here. But it’s cool to think about,right? Hope I actually answered your question fam.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #rwby theories #rwby ozma #pinehead headcanons #squiggles pinehead headcanons #theultimatemomfriend

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handeaux · 6 years

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More Than Bumps On Your Head: Cincinnati’s Famed Phrenologist

For most of two decades in the 1880s and 1890s, Cincinnati had our own resident phrenologist and it turns out he was somewhat famous. Among the heads whose bumps he analyzed were Sarah Bernhardt, Mark Twain, Lilly Langtry, Henry Ward Beecher and other celebrities of the era.

Today, we think of phrenology as a classic pseudoscience, concerned with reading personality through the contours of the head. But Beall was a true believer, and had his own definition, which he outlined in an advertisement in the Cincinnati Post [30 July 1886]:

“Phrenology means mental science, and includes all systematized knowledge pertaining to character and intelligence. As an art, it enables us to read the mind by the diameter of the head, or the distance upward, forward and backward from the ear, taking into account the temperament, quality of the organization, &c., &c. It is not, as many suppose, a science of cranial ‘hills and hollows,’ but a subject of infinite dignity and practical value.”

Born just outside Cincinnati in Lockland, Beall invested years in the study of phrenology, but he was a lifelong seeker of essential truths in many fields. He achieved certification from the American Institute of Phrenology in New York, then moved back to the Cincinnati area and enrolled at the Medical College of Ohio, while simultaneously studying theology on the side. His investigations resulted in an explosively controversial critique of religion. The Cincinnati Enquirer predicted a stormy reception:

“Edgar C. Beall, the well-known phrenologist of this city, has written a book called ‘The Brain and the Bible,’ which is the latest addition to the infidel literature of the day and at the same time is an exposition of the principles and philosophy of phrenology applied to religion. The book is written in good, terse, clear English, and will, doubtless, be the cause of much comment and controversy.”

Beall summarizes his controversial “infidel” thesis in the book’s final chapter:

“In opposing Christianity, therefore, as a religious system, we denounce simply its pernicious doctrines and absurd dogmas which are contradicted by science and plainly inimical to the highest happiness of mankind. Among these are chiefly the existence of a personal God and a personal Devil, the fall of man, the scheme of salvation by faith, and endless torment to those who reject Christ as a divine savior.”

Despite his controversial writings and association with known agnostics, Beall remained popular in Cincinnati. He regularly lectured on phrenology to packed auditoriums and the newspapers hired him to provide character studies of people in the news, locally and nationally.

These newspaper analyses indicate the fundamental weakness of phrenology – it is a classic example of the fallacy known as “post hoc, ergo propter hoc.” In other words, because some factor existed before a particular result, that factor must be the cause of the result. Beall knew quite a bit about the people he analyzed – Admiral George Dewey, George B. “Boss” Cox, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise – and so his “phrenographs” essentially reinforced popular opinion.

In addition to phrenology, Beall was a lifelong advocate of hygiene. Today, we think of hygiene as basic cleanliness. Back in the day, hygiene covered a lot of behaviors including diet, exercise, clothing and even mental and moral habits.

Beall took his commitment to “moral fiber” literally, devising his own recipe for whole wheat bread and persuading the Cincinnati Women’s Exchange to make and sell loaves using his recipe. The Cincinnati Post [6 October 1898] was a fan:

“All the mineral richness is in this bread. The brand gives mechanical aid to the chemical process of digestion. It gives the teeth a purpose in life and excites the stomach to action. This bread is designed to prevent the use of the tons of purgative pills used by Cincinnatians.”

This interest in hygiene led Beall to write another controversial book. For once, Cincinnati’s prudery had nothing to do with it. By 1900, Beall had moved to New York City to assume editorship of The Phrenological Journal, official publication of the Phrenological Institute. In 1905, he published a volume titled “The Life Sexual: A Study of the Philosophy, Physiology, Science, Art, and Hygiene of Love.” In other words, Beall published a sex manual, although a sex manual of its time, with lots of advice about good habits and very few revelations about the actual mechanics involved. Still, it was salacious enough to get banned by the Post Office. Theodore Schroeder, in a 1911 book supporting freedom of the press, specifically highlights the censorship of Beall’s book as an ill-considered act:

“I have read much of this book and can not for the life of me conceive why it should be deemed offensive, because the book is written in a refined style and is instructive. The opening chapter is devoted to a strong criticism of ‘The Ban upon Sexual Science,’ and maybe therein lies the cause of complaint.”

Interestingly, Beall never married, although his “Life Sexual” book was emphatic in support of marriage:

“Considered from the most practical point of view, for the majority of men, marriage is by all means to be preferred. Men who remain unmarried, but who are unable to resist the fascinations of the opposite sex, are almost certain to suffer at least from irregularity in their associations with women.”

Perhaps it was to offer some researcher an opportunity to solve this conundrum that Beall made his final and greatest contribution to phrenology – his own brain. A few years before he died, Beall telephoned the medical school of Cornell University and informed the doctors there that he had willed his body to be dissected and studied for scientific research. “When you get it,” he told the faculty, “pay particular attention to a study of my brain.”

The body arrived at Cornell’s medical campus in New York City after Beall’s death in 1930. According to the Omaha World Herald [29 January 1930], “His is said to have been a very abnormal brain.”

#Edgar C. Beall #phrenology #medical college of ohio #boss cox

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maybeyoumissthisf-kingpost · 3 years

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Donald Trump: 4 years, 1 clown, and 25 achievements for the American circus

America has a clown. The guy is good at comedy. Daft. Freaky sometimes. But he is the voice, in the middle of society is a big circus. I'm not talking about the famous Joker Arthur Fleck in Gotham City, but I'm talking about a president of a democratic America. Donald Trump. For years, people called him "the clown" in the White House. Never before has the image of an American president been so indiscriminately spread hate by the media. They use the most disgusting words to describe Trump. They cursed like delirium over his every word and action. But it is he who, despite the ridicule, is the clown who rips through American politics, unmasks all politicians hiding in the guise of democracy, and exposes the monsters lurking in the swamp. So he was hated, even hated. But if you ignore the blind love and hate, what remains in you about the things Agent Orange has done in the past four years?

What the clown Donald Trump has done for America and the world in the past four years

1. America's "aggressive" clown has brought home four (04) Peace Agreements in the Middle East, which no one has been able to do in the past 71 years, despite all efforts to intervene in politics and constant warfare. Still no results. This achievement, so much so that US Defense Secretary Mark Esper had to say that "this is really a great success for Trump".

2. The clown who "doesn't know anything about politics" silenced the world's cynical name, North Korea, without spending a single bullet, helping the United States and the world escape a devastating nuclear war, promoting inter-Korean peace and bring safety to ally Japan and the entire West Coast of the United States - something that made Obama headache unable to find a solution after 8 long years.

3. America's "warlike" clown is the first President in the White House who has not brought the United States into a new war, since Eisenhower's time.

4. The "stupid" clown has rearranged the NATO order, forcing allies to fulfill their responsibility for contributing to their defense budgets, not relying on the US forever.

5. The "cowardly" clown eliminated the world terrorist - Iranian Islamic general Qasem Soleimani of the Quds Force, even though he knew that he would have to face retaliation from the enemy, without Specifically, a reward of $ 80 million for those who successfully assassinate Trump.

6. The "incompetent" clown (according to a survey by ABC News) single-handedly rebuilt the US military's strength to re-establish world order, curbing China's aggression in the East Sea, as well as protecting small countries from threats and invasions from big countries. Who remembers what a crippled U.S. military was under Obama, when 214 key generals and admirals were fired in just his first year in office? Who else remembers how China grew and thrived in the South China Sea under Obama's 8 years? Does anyone remember the president of the world's number one power being sent to the alley after visiting China?

7. The "rogue" clown was the first president to visit and pray at the Wailing Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. He was also the first head of the White House to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy to this city.

8. The "dangerous" clown is the only president who has successfully destroyed the terror named ISIS - the world's largest Islamic terrorist organization to bring peace to mankind. Fulfill his greatest promise to the American people and the people of the world.

9. The clown "religious oppression" is the one who called for an end to religious persecution and signed an executive order promoting international religious freedom, calling for $50 million for programs to quell the violence. religion and persecution abroad, as well as to protect religious minorities.

10. The clown "ruining the US economy" has turned the tide of US-China relations to bring hundreds of businesses back to the US, reduce taxes and protect them from the scheme to steal intellectual property and technology. of China, recovering the ups and downs of the economy from the Obama era, setting a historic record high on the stock exchange, making the economy vibrant again, bringing interest rates to near zero and income per capita highest (since 1967).

11. This "cruel" clown helped Americans pay less in taxes, increasing the tax deduction from $12,700 to nearly double $24,000 per couple, and from $6,350 to $12,000 for singles, with a positive impact. up tens of millions of American pension accounts.

12. The "greedy" clown only received a salary of 1 USD a year during the presidency, in support of cutting government spending and the tax burden of the people.

13. That "racist" clown is the president that provides the most jobs for blacks and Latinos, making their unemployment rates the lowest of all lifetimes. US president. Again, ALL.

14. The "ignorant" clown is the one who sees the lies and injustice in the Paris Agreement (or Climate Change Agreement), pulling the US out of the plot to destroy the coal - oil industry and the risk of widespread unemployment for the United States.

15. The "tricky" clown is the one who stands up to oppose the absurd COVID-19 relief package of the leftist politician, to return the correct amount of support of 2000 USD for each citizen, instead of only 600 USD and the share The rest are distributed to irrelevant useless items.

16. The clown who often creates "hate speech" is the recipient of the most attacks, insults and reproaches from the left (supporters of Socialism in the US). Ironically, he was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

17. The clown or "disgusting woman" is the President of the Republic who appoints the most female Federal Appellate judges since Ronald Reagan, losing only 1 person compared to the Obama era. If you count the single-term presidents alone, no one appoints as many female judges as Trump.

18. The "liar" clown has exposed the face of hypocrisy in the rest of the world, exposing the entire corrupt swamp of Democrats, and Republicans, FBI, CIA, NSA and Big Tech . The clown tells you things the media wants to keep hidden. He criticized all the bureaucracy in the government. He, simply, just raised the voice of an ordinary citizen in front of the current state of the country.

19. The clown who "failed to fight the Wuhan virus" was the first to call for a closure with China while the left was still struggling about racism and xenophobia. He successfully promoted the process of preparing and producing the Chinese flu vaccine in just ONE YEAR, helping America once again affirm its leading role on the world's scientific and technical map. Don't forget that the world still has no vaccines for SARS, Ebola, bird flu and other diseases under the previous president.

20. The clown who is labeled "dictator", "fascist" or "second Hitler of the world" is the one who gets hit the most by the media. He wants to protect Americans, they call it Populism. He wants America great again, they call it White supremacy.

21. The "perverted" clown has a well-ordered and warm family, a good wife and all children are talented and human; rather than smoke marijuana and join the antifa rebel organization like someone's black daughter; not like the Hunter who was addicted, corrupt and kicked out of someone else's army.

22. The clown who "smashes American democracy" is the one who is most tragically suppressed by that democracy, permanently banned from speaking on social networks and behind the cheers of the left. (including Michelle Obama) – who always preach about democracy and human rights, oppose censorship of authoritarian regimes in the world. When he was in office, he did not forbid anyone to speak. When he was about to leave the White House, they tried to silence him.

23. The Clown DOES NOT "Make America Divide". That division has existed as a smoldering cancer in the heart of America for a long time. The lovable people I know, the respected professors, suddenly defiantly insulting those who do not share their views as stupid, are a disgrace. It's all at Trump? Are not. It is by themselves. Deep down they absolutely disagree with different opinions, whether Trump-Trump or not-Trump, they themselves have divided themselves from those who do not think the same. Trump is not an angel of healing, but tearing down the hypocritical veil of false political correctness and oppressing the true inner thoughts of each person.

24. The "loser" and seemingly "most hated" clown is the most respected man in America according to a Gallup survey, taking the position that Obama has occupied for the past 12 years. While the president-elect with the highest popular vote in history, Joe Biden received only 6% of the support (one-third of Trump), reflecting the exact opposite of the presidential election results.

25. Finally, the clown that everyone considers "arrogant" is a man who bows to God, to the American flag, to prayers for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, to his promise to make America. great again. He does not mock God. He did not burn the flag. He does not stand on the rule of law. He does not consider himself to be the truth. He also did not ordain anything as orthodox. He was not complacent, he just wanted to continue writing the American dream. Therefore, he never let America be threatened and had to kneel before any force.

In just two days, the clown Donald Trump will leave the White House in the joy and ecstasy of vengeful souls. The hatred for Trump is so deep that it doesn't matter who will give his inaugural address on January 20, as long as #NoTrump, the other replacement is anyone, even a person all the time. 47 years of no political achievements. Perhaps, the emotion of love and hate has completely obscured human reason. They are unable to view Trump's legacy fairly, their prisms clouded by overwhelming hatred of an individual. Although they talk about democracy all the time, they are willing to trample on their long-held values to eliminate the opposition from the game. We say, look inside from the outside and see yourself from others, what kind of person you are, you will think others are like that.Life is like a mirror. When you look at people, you can't see people, only you. Now you laugh at the clown, tomorrow you will see your mind reflected there.

Honestly, are you fair to Trump?

All credit goes to trantuansang.com.

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the-tailor-retailored · 3 years

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The French Revolution: A History Volume 1 Excepts

it is a summing-up of Life; a final settling, and giving-in the “account of the deeds done in the body:” they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and do bear their fruits, long as Eternity shall last

that praying Duke of Orleans, Egalité’s grandfather, who honesty believed that there was no Death! He, if the Court Newsmen can be believed, started up once on a time, glowing with sulphurous contempt and indignation on his poor Secretary, who had stumbled on the words, feu roi d’Espagne (the late King of Spain): ‘Feu roi, Monsieur?' (the *late* king?) —‘Monseigneur,’ (My Lord) hastily answered the trembling but adroit man of business, ‘c’est une titre qu’ils prennent (’tis a title they take)

Man, “Symbol of Eternity imprisoned into Time!” it is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least, but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance.

These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an hour, but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.

As victory is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing forces the weaker has resigned itself; the stronger marches on, noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable: the fall and overturn will not be noiseless.

If when the oak stands proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its heart is sound, it is not so with the man; how much less with the Society, with the Nation of men! Of such it may be affirmed even that the superficial aspect, that the inward feeling of full health, is generally ominous. For indeed it is of apoplexy, so to speak, and a plethoric lazy habit of body, that Churches, Kingships, Social Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such Institution plethorically says to itself, Take thy ease, thou hast goods laid up;—like the fool of the Gospel, to whom it was answered, Fool, this night thy life shall be required of thee!

Intelligence so abounds; irradiated by wit and the art of conversation. Philosophism sits joyful in her glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of Opulence grown ingenuous, the very nobles proud to sit by her; and preaches, lifted up over all Bastilles, a coming millennium.

let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever. It is Truth and Astræa Redux that (in the shape of Philosophism) henceforth reign. For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be “happy”? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species, happiness enough now awaits him.

With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them.

the masses consist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own heart and sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick him he will bleed.

what a thought: that every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for his infinite Kingdom

For them, in this world, rises no Era of Hope; hardly now in the other,—if it be not hope in the gloomy rest of Death, for their faith too is failing. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed! A dumb generation; their voice only an inarticulate cry: spokesman, in the King’s Council, in the world’s forum, they have none that finds credence.

At rare intervals they will fling down their hoes and hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind, flock hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length even of Versailles.

The Château gates have to be shut; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to them. They have seen the King’s face; their Petition of Grievances has been, if not read, looked at. For answer, two of them are hanged, on a “new gallows forty feet high;” and the rest driven back to their dens,—for a time.

Clearly a difficult “point” for Government, that of dealing with these masses;—if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem of Government

the masses count to so many millions of units; made, to all appearance, by God,—whose Earth this is declared to be. Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews and indignation.

governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its cold dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with impunity; always till the catastrophe come!—Ah Madame, such Government by Blindman’s-buff, stumbling along too far, will end in the General Overturn

trouble us not with thy prophecies, O croaking Friend of Men: ’tis long that we have heard such; and still the old world keeps wagging, in its old way.

For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the inward spiritual, and the outward economical; head or heart, there is no soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are more or less of kin, and do usually go together: especially it is an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil is, there, as the parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a proportionate extent been.

—what unspeakable, nigh infinite Dishonesty ... must there not, through long ages, have gone on accumulating! It will accumulate: moreover, it will reach a head; for the first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.

Their King has become a King Popinjay; with his Maurepas Government, gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about by every wind. Above them they see no God; or they even do not look above, except with astronomical glasses. The Church indeed still is; but in the most submissive state; quite tamed by Philosophism; in a singularly short time; for the hour was come.

Peace? O Philosophe-Sentimentalism, what hast thou to do with peace, when thy mother’s name is Jezebel? Foul Product of still fouler Corruption, thou with the corruption art doomed!

it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly.

On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with headlong selfish violence; but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not replace such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of thy own were; the parent of still other Lies? Whereby the latter end of that business were worse than the beginning.

It has been well said: “Man is based on Hope; he has properly no other possession but Hope; this habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.”

Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which did our young Prince, Duke de Chartres, “hide in the hold;” or did he materially, by active heroism, contribute to the victory? Alas, by a second edition, we learn that there was no victory; or that English Keppel had it.

Brave Suffren must return from Hyder Ally and the Indian Waters; with small result; yet with great glory for “six” non-defeats;—which indeed, with such seconding as he had, one may reckon heroic.

Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written: The wages of sin is death?

The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English; as the thing also fancies that it does. Our Anglomania, in fact , is grown considerable; prophetic of much. If France is to be free, why shall she not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring Freedom? Cultivated men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la Rochefoucault admire the English Constitution, the English National Character; would import what of it they can.

Of what is lighter, especially if it be light as wind, how much easier the freightage! Non-Admiral Duke de Chartres (not yet d’Orléans or Egalité) flies to and fro across the Strait; importing English Fashions; this he, as hand-and-glove with an English Prince of Wales, is surely qualified to do. Carriages and saddles; top-boots and rédingotes, as we call riding-coats. Nay the very mode of riding: for now no man on a level with his age but will trot à l’Anglaise, rising in the stirrups; scornful of the old sitfast method, in which, according to Shakspeare, “butter and eggs” go to market.

Elf jokeis, we have seen; but see now real Yorkshire jockeys, and what they ride on, and train: English racers for French Races.

A problematic Chevalier d’Eon, now in petticoats, now in breeches, is no less problematic in London than in Paris; and causes bets and lawsuits. Beautiful days of international communion! Swindlery and Blackguardism have stretched hands across the Channel, and saluted mutually: on the racecourse of Vincennes or Sablons, behold in English curricle-and-four, wafted glorious among the principalities and rascalities, an English Dr. Dodd,[43]—for whom also the too early gallows gapes.

Duke de Chartres was a young Prince of great promise, as young Princes often are; which promise unfortunately has belied itself. With the huge Orléans Property, with Duke de Penthievre for Father-in-law (and now the young Brother-in-law Lamballe killed by excesses),—he will one day be the richest man in France. Meanwhile, “his hair is all falling out, his blood is quite spoiled,”—by early transcendentalism of debauchery. Carbuncles stud his face; dark studs on a ground of burnished copper. A most signal failure, this young Prince! The stuff prematurely burnt out of him: little left but foul smoke and ashes of expiring sensualities: what might have been Thought, Insight, and even Conduct, gone now, or fast going,—to confused darkness, broken by bewildering dazzlements; to obstreperous crotchets; to activities which you may call semi-delirious, or even semi-galvanic!

the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each circle a living circular Passion-Flower: expecting the magnetic afflatus, and new-manufactured Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men, great is your infidel-faith!

under the strangest new vesture, the old great truth (since no vesture can hide it) begins again to be revealed: That man is what we call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power over men; and, on the whole, with such a Life in him, and such a World round him, as victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies, Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely name, to say nothing of explaining. Wherein also the Quack shall, in all ages, come in for his share.

Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the parent of misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has crosses and cathedrals; but its High-priest is some Roche-Aymon, some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor, through long years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqueries, meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan: unheeded of the Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last. Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast of chase for the mighty hunters of this world to bait, and cut slices from,—cries passionately to these its well-paid guides and watchers, not, Guide me; but, Laissez faire, Leave me alone of your guidance! What market has Industry in this France? For two things there may be market and demand: for the coarser kind of field-fruits, since the Millions will live: for the fine kinds of luxury and spicery,—of multiform taste, from opera-melodies down to racers and courtesans; since the Units will be amused. It is at bottom but a mad state of things.

and now has not Jean Jacques promulgated his new Evangel of a Contrat Social; explaining the whole mystery of Government, and how it is contracted and bargained for,—to universal satisfaction? Theories of Government! Such have been, and will be; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as steps in her great process. Meanwhile, what theory is so certain as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of them, must be incomplete, questionable, and even false? Thou shalt know that this Universe is, what it professes to be, an infinite one. Attempt not to swallow it, for thy logical digestion; be thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee.

Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was some Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is notable) never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful Supply.

Man is not what one calls a happy animal; his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild Universe, which storms in on him, infinite, vague-menacing, shall poor man find, say not happiness, but existence, and footing to stand on, if it be not by girding himself together for continual endeavour and endurance? Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no devout Faith; if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him!

For life is no cunningly-devised deception or self-deception: it is a great truth that thou art alive, that thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and satisfy themselves on delusions, but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we shall come back: to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for.

let the theory of Perfectibility say what it will, discontents cannot be wanting: your promised Reformation is so indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin it—with himself?

How, beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence and Astræa Redux, is the sanctuary of Home so often a dreary void, or a dark contentious Hell-on-Earth! The old Friend of Men has his own divorce case too; and at times, “his whole family but one” under lock and key: he writes much about reforming and enfranchising the world; and for his own private behoof he has needed sixty Lettres-de-Cachet. A man of insight too, with resolution, even with manful principle: but in such an element, inward and outward; which he could not rule, but only madden. Edacity, rapacity;—quite contrary to the finer sensibilities of the heart! Fools, that expect your verdant Millennium, and nothing but Love and Abundance, brooks running wine, winds whispering music,—with the whole ground and basis of your existence champed into a mud of Sensuality; which, daily growing deeper, will soon have no bottom but the Abyss!

It is a doomed world: gone all “obedience that made men free;” fast going the obedience that made men slaves,—at least to one another. Slaves only of their own lusts they now are, and will be. Slaves of sin; inevitably also of sorrow.

Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed Religion, what it called “extinguishing the abomination (écraser l’infâme)”? Wo rather to those that made the Holy an abomination, and extinguishable; wo at all men that live in such a time of world-abomination and world-destruction! Nay, answer the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was Necker, with their mad innovating; it was the Queen’s want of etiquette; it was he, it was she, it was that. Friends! it was every scoundrel that had lived, and quack-like pretended to be doing, and been only eating and misdoing, in all provinces of life, as Shoeblack or as Sovereign Lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne and earlier. All this (for be sure no falsehood perishes, but is as seed sown out to grow) has been storing itself for thousands of years; and now the account-day has come.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable, and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation through all its wild destinies. For we shall still find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes sent out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,—when there is nothing left but Hope.

If the soliloquising Barber ask: ‘What has your Lordship done to earn all this?’ and can only answer: ‘You took the trouble to be born (Vous vous êtes donné la peine de naître),’ all men must laugh: and a gay horse-racing Anglomaniac Noblesse loudest of all.

Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not inaccessible to the influences of their time; especially men whose life is business;

There are Duports of deep scheme; Fréteaus, Sabatiers, of incontinent tongue: all nursed more or less on the milk of the Contrat Social.

and now nothing but a solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of fact, like some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was); admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will. In him is no remedy; only clerklike “despatch of business” according to routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin governing; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright Queen, with her quick clear glances and impulses; clear, and even noble; but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work!

Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet not luckier: ‘We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I,’ said King Louis; ‘but if he had even struck me, I could not have blamed him.’

Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it is frightful (affreux); ‘you go to bed, and are not sure but you shall rise impoverished on the morrow: one might as well be in Turkey.’ It is indeed a dog’s life.

How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury! And yet it is a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing mournfully true: the stumbling-block on which all Ministers successively stumble, and fall. Be it “want of fiscal genius,” or some far other want, there is the palpablest discrepancy between Revenue and Expenditure; a Deficit of the Revenue: you must “choke (combler) the Deficit,” or else it will swallow you!

Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily filled up; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of clamour and discontent.

Vain seems human ingenuity.

Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature’s Reality, and be presented there for payment,—with the answer, No effects. Pity only that it often had so long a circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.

Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie with its burden (in this confused whirlpool of Society) sinks and is shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of it rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pining and demi-starvation of those Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny and his Majesty come also to have their “real quarrel.” Such is the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long intervals, and were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.

Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.

anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to sing “this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is preparing.”[53] Preparing indeed; and a matter to be sung,—only not till we have seen it, and what the issue of it is.

with spoiled blood and prospects; half-weary of a world which is more than half-weary of him, Monseigneur’s future is most questionable. Not in illumination and insight, not even in conflagration; but, as was said, “in dull smoke and ashes of outburnt sensualities,” does he live and digest.

These Privileged Classes have been used to tax; levying toll, tribute and custom, at all hands, while a penny was left: but to be themselves taxed? Of such Privileged persons, meanwhile, do these Notables, all but the merest fraction, consist. Headlong Calonne had given no heed to the “composition,” or judicious packing of them; but chosen such Notables as were really notable; trusting for the issue to off-hand ingenuity, good fortune, and eloquence that never yet failed. Headlong Controller-General! Eloquence can do much, but not all. Orpheus, with eloquence grown rhythmic, musical (what we call Poetry), drew iron tears from the cheek of Pluto: but by what witchery of rhyme or prose wilt thou from the pocket of Plutus draw gold?

The force of private intrigue, and then also the force of public opinion, grows so dangerous, confused!

a Rustic is represented convoking the poultry of his barnyard, with this opening address: ‘Dear animals, I have assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you with;’ to which a Cock responding, ‘We don’t want to be eaten,’ is checked by ‘You wander from the point (Vous vous écartez de la question).’

worse men there have been, and better; but to thee also was allotted a task,—of raising the wind, and the winds; and thou hast done it.

Unhappy only that it took such talent and industry to gain the place; that to qualify for it hardly any talent or industry was left disposable! Looking now into his inner man, what qualification he may have, Loménie beholds, not without astonishment, next to nothing but vacuity and possibility. Principles or methods, acquirement outward or inward (for his very body is wasted, by hard tear and wear) he finds none; not so much as a plan, even an unwise one. Lucky, in these circumstances, that Calonne has had a plan! Calonne’s plan was gathered from Turgot’s and Necker’s by compilation; shall become Loménie’s by adoption. Not in vain has Loménie studied the working of the British Constitution; for he professes to have some Anglomania, of a sort.

There are things, as we said, which should not be dwelt on with minute close scrutiny: over hot coals you cannot glide too fast.

‘Tithe, that free-will offering of the piety of Christians’—‘Tithe,’ interrupted Duke la Rochefoucault, with the cold business-manner he has learned from the English, ‘that free-will offering of the piety of Christians; on which there are now forty-thousand lawsuits in this realm.’

The unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, declaiming; vain jangling of thought, word and deed. It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated; verging now towards Economical Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has spread upwards. In every man is some obscure feeling that his position, oppressive or else oppressed, is a false one: all men, in one or the other acrid dialect, as assaulters or as defenders, must give vent to the unrest that is in them. Of such stuff national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not made.

Loménie’s first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of Provincial Assemblies, “for apportioning the imposts,” when we get any; suppression of Corvées or statute-labour; alleviation of Gabelle. Soothing measures, recommended by the Notables; long clamoured for by all liberal men. Oil cast on the waters has been known to produce a good effect.

The lower classes, in this duel of Authority with Authority, Greek throttling Greek, have ceased to respect the City-Watch: Police-satellites are marked on the back with chalk (the M signifies mouchard, spy); they are hustled, hunted like feræ naturæ. Subordinate rural Tribunals send messengers of congratulation, of adherence. Their Fountain of Justice is becoming a Fountain of Revolt.

What will not people bless; in their extreme need?

The evil is considerable; but can he not remove it, can he not attack it? At lowest, he can attack the symptom of it: these rebellious Parlements he can attack, and perhaps remove. Much is dim to Loménie, but two things are clear: that such Parlementary duel with Royalty is growing perilous, nay internecine; above all, that money must be had.

But apart from exile, or other violent methods, is there not one method, whereby all things are tamed, even lions? The method of hunger! What if the Parlement’s supplies were cut off; namely its Lawsuits!

In a victorious Parlement, Counsellor Goeslard de Monsabert even denounces that “levying of the Second Twentieth on strict valuation;” and gets decree that the valuation shall not be strict,—not on the privileged classes.

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.

For the rest, in such circumstances, the Successive Loan, very naturally, remains unfilled; neither, indeed, can that impost of the Second Twentieth, at least not on “strict valuation,” be levied to good purpose: “Lenders,” says Weber, in his hysterical vehement manner, “are afraid of ruin; tax-gatherers of hanging.” The very Clergy turn away their face: convoked in Extraordinary Assembly, they afford no gratuitous gift (don gratuit),—if it be not that of advice; here too instead of cash is clamour for States-General.

During all that hatching of the Plenary Court, while Lamoignon looked so mysterious, Besenval had kept asking him one question: Whether they had cash? To which as Lamoignon always answered (on the faith of Loménie) that the cash was safe, judicious Besenval rejoined that then all was safe. Nevertheless, the melancholy fact is, that the royal coffers are almost getting literally void of coin. Indeed, apart from all other things this “invitation to thinkers,” and the great change now at hand are enough to “arrest the circulation of capital,” and forward only that of pamphlets. A few thousand gold louis are now all of money or money’s worth that remains in the King’s Treasury.

an Edict concerning Payments (such was the soft title Rivarol had contrived for it): all payments at the Royal Treasury shall be made henceforth, three-fifths in Cash, and the remaining two-fifths—in Paper bearing interest!

But the effect on Paris, on the world generally? From the dens of Stock-brokerage, from the heights of Political Economy, of Neckerism and Philosophism; from all articulate and inarticulate throats, rise hootings and howlings, such as ear had not yet heard. Sedition itself may be imminent!

Flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief; to have a life as despicable-envied, an exit as frightful. Fired, as the phrase is, with ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine,—which he kindled! Let us pity the hapless Loménie; and forgive him; and, as soon as possible, forget him.

The City-watch can do nothing; hardly save its own skin: for the last twelve-month, as we have sometimes seen, it has been a kind of pastime to hunt the Watch. Besenval indeed is at hand with soldiers; but they have orders to avoid firing, and are not prompt to stir.

On Monday morning the explosion of petards began: and now it is near midnight of Wednesday; and the “wicker Mannequin” is to be buried,—apparently in the Antique fashion.

and there are soldiers come. Gloomy Lamoignon is not to die by conflagration, or this night; not yet for a year, and then by gunshot (suicidal or accidental is unknown).[105] Foiled Rascality burns its “Mannikin of osier,” under his windows; “tears up the sentry-box,” and rolls off: to try Brienne; to try Dubois Captain of the Watch. Now, however, all is bestirring itself; Gardes Françaises, Invalides, Horse-patrol: the Torch Procession is met with sharp shot, with the thrusting of bayonets, the slashing of sabres. Even Dubois makes a charge, with that Cavalry of his, and the cruelest charge of all: “there are a great many killed and wounded.” Not without clangour, complaint; subsequent criminal trials, and official persons dying of heartbreak![106] So, however, with steel-besom, Rascality is brushed back into its dim depths, and the streets are swept clear. Not for a century and half had Rascality ventured to step forth in this fashion; not for so long, showed its huge rude lineaments in the light of day. A Wonder and new Thing: as yet gamboling merely, in awkward Brobdingnag sport, not without quaintness; hardly in anger: yet in its huge half-vacant laugh lurks a shade of grimness,—which could unfold itself! However, the thinkers invited by Loménie are now far on with their pamphlets: States-General, on one plan or another, will infallibly meet; if not in January, as was once hoped, yet at latest in May. Old Duke de Richelieu, moribund in these autumn days, opens his eyes once more, murmuring, ‘What would Louis Fourteenth’ (whom he remembers) ‘have said!’—then closes them again, forever, before the evil time.

As good Archbishop Loménie was wont to say: ‘There are so many accidents; and it needs but one to save us.’—How many to destroy us?

What! To us also has hope reached; down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The bread we extorted from the rugged glebe, and, with the toil of our sinews, reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not wholly for another, then; but we also shall eat of it, and be filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders), but all-too unlikely!

To which political phenomena add this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and also Bread getting dear; for before the rigorous winter there was, as we said, a rigorous summer, with drought, and on the 13th of July with destructive hail. What a fearful day! all cried while that tempest fell. Alas, the next anniversary of it will be a worse.[118] Under such aspects is France electing National Representatives.

The incidents and specialties of these Elections belong not to Universal, but to Local or Parish History: for which reason let not the new troubles of Grenoble or Besancon; the bloodshed on the streets of Rennes, and consequent march thither of the Breton “Young Men” with Manifesto by their “Mothers, Sisters and Sweethearts;”[119] nor suchlike, detain us here. It is the same sad history everywhere; with superficial variations.

for the new popular force can use not only arguments but brickbats!

The plebeian heart too has red life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of you; and “the six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for seventy-two hours, in the Cordeliers’ Cloister, at Rennes,”—have to come out again, wiser than they entered.

the Noblesse, with equal goodwill, finds it better to stick to Protests, to well-redacted “Cahiers of grievances,” and satirical writings and speeches.

“In all countries, in all times,” exclaims he departing, “the Aristocrats have implacably pursued every friend of the People; and with tenfold implacability, if such a one were himself born of the Aristocracy. It was thus that the last of the Gracchi perished, by the hands of the Patricians. But he, being struck with the mortal stab, flung dust towards heaven, and called on the Avenging Deities; and from this dust there was born Marius,—Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri, as for overturning in Rome the tyranny of the Nobles.”[121] Casting up which new curious handful of dust (through the Printing-press), to breed what it can and may, Mirabeau stalks forth into the Third Estate.

But indeed, if Achilles, in the heroic ages, killed mutton, why should not Mirabeau, in the unheroic ones, measure broadcloth?

More authentic are his triumph-progresses through that disturbed district, with mob jubilee, flaming torches, “windows hired for two louis,” and voluntary guard of a hundred men... He has opened his far-sounding voice, the depths of his far-sounding soul; he can quell (such virtue is in a spoken word) the pride-tumults of the rich, the hunger-tumults of the poor; and wild multitudes move under him, as under the moon do billows of the sea: he has become a world compeller, and ruler over men.

Meanwhile such things, cheering as they are, tend little to cheer the national creditor, or indeed the creditor of any kind. In the midst of universal portentous doubt, what certainty can seem so certain as money in the purse, and the wisdom of keeping it there? Trading Speculation, Commerce of all kinds, has as far as possible come to a dead pause; and the hand of the industrious lies idle in his bosom. Frightful enough, when now the rigour of seasons has also done its part, and to scarcity of work is added scarcity of food!

actual existing quotity of persons: who, long reflected and reverberated through so many millions of heads, as in concave multiplying mirrors, become a whole Brigand World; and, like a kind of Supernatural Machinery wondrously move the Epos of the Revolution. The Brigands are here: the Brigands are there; the Brigands are coming! Not otherwise sounded the clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver bow, scattering pestilence and pale terror; for this clang too was of the imagination; preternatural; and it too walked in formless immeasurability, having made itself like to the Night (νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.)!

These Brigands (as Turgot’s also were, fourteen years ago) have all been set on; enlisted, though without tuck of drum,—by Aristocrats, by Democrats, by D’Orléans, D’Artois, and enemies of the public weal.

the Brigands are clearly got to Paris, in considerable multitudes:[126] with sallow faces, lank hair (the true enthusiast complexion), with sooty rags; and also with large clubs, which they smite angrily against the pavement! These mingle in the Election tumult; would fain sign Guillotin’s Cahier, or any Cahier or Petition whatsoever, could they but write. Their enthusiast complexion, the smiting of their sticks bodes little good to any one; least of all to rich master-manufacturers of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, with whose workmen they consort.

Or was he only thought, and believed, to be heard saying it? By this long chafing and friction it would appear the National temper has got electric.

grim individuals, soon waxing to grim multitudes, and other multitudes crowding to see, beset that Paper-Warehouse; demonstrate, in loud ungrammatical language (addressed to the passions too), the insufficiency of sevenpence halfpenny a-day. The City-watch cannot dissipate them; broils arise and bellowings; Réveillon, at his wits’ end, entreats the Populace, entreats the authorities. Besenval, now in active command, Commandant of Paris, does, towards evening, to Réveillon’s earnest prayer, send some thirty Gardes Françaises. These clear the street, happily without firing; and take post there for the night in hope that it may be all over.[127]

Not so: on the morrow it is far worse.

two cartloads of paving-stones, that happened to pass that way” have been seized as a visible godsend. Another detachment of Gardes Françaises must be sent; Besenval and the Colonel taking earnest counsel. Then still another; they hardly, with bayonets and menace of bullets, penetrate to the spot. What a sight! A street choked up, with lumber, tumult and the endless press of men. A Paper-Warehouse eviscerated by axe and fire: mad din of Revolt; musket-volleys responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles; by tiles raining from roof and window,—tiles, execrations and slain men!

The Gardes Françaises like it not, but have to persevere. All day it continues, slackening and rallying; the sun is sinking, and Saint-Antoine has not yielded. The City flies hither and thither: alas, the sound of that musket-volleying booms into the far dining-rooms of the Chaussée d’Antin; alters the tone of the dinner-gossip there. Captain Dampmartin leaves his wine; goes out with a friend or two, to see the fighting. Unwashed men growl on him, with murmurs of ‘À bas les Aristocrates (Down with the Aristocrats);’ and insult the cross of St. Louis? They elbow him, and hustle him; but do not pick his pocket;—as indeed at Réveillon’s too there was not the slightest stealing.[128]

At fall of night, as the thing will not end, Besenval takes his resolution: orders out the Gardes Suisses with two pieces of artillery. The Swiss Guards shall proceed thither; summon that rabble to depart, in the King’s name. If disobeyed, they shall load their artillery with grape-shot, visibly to the general eye; shall again summon; if again disobeyed, fire,—and keep firing “till the last man” be in this manner blasted off, and the street clear. With which spirited resolution, as might have been hoped, the business is got ended. At sight of the lit matches, of the foreign red-coated Switzers, Saint-Antoine dissipates; hastily, in the shades of dusk. There is an encumbered street; there are “from four to five hundred” dead men. Unfortunate Réveillon has found shelter in the Bastille; does therefrom, safe behind stone bulwarks, issue, plaint, protestation, explanation, for the next month. Bold Besenval has thanks from all the respectable Parisian classes; but finds no special notice taken of him at Versailles,—a thing the man of true worth is used to.[

Poor Lackalls, all betoiled, besoiled, encrusted into dim defacement; into whom nevertheless the breath of the Almighty has breathed a living soul! To them it is clear only that eleutheromaniac Philosophism has yet baked no bread; that Patrioti Committee-men will level down to their own level, and no lower. Brigands, or whatever they might be, it was bitter earnest with them. They bury their dead with the title of Défenseurs de la Patrie, Martyrs of the good Cause.

Oh, one might weep like Xerxes:—So many serried rows sit perched there; like winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven: all these, and so many more that follow them, shall have wholly fled aloft again, vanishing into the blue Deep; and the memory of this day still be fresh.

and from this present date, if one might prophesy, some two centuries of it still to fight! Two centuries; hardly less; before Democracy go through its due, most baleful, stages of Quackocracy; and a pestilential World be burnt up, and have begun to grow green and young again.

This day, sentence of death is pronounced on Shams; judgment of resuscitation, were it but far off, is pronounced on Realities. This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie is unbelievable. Believe that, stand by that, if more there be not; and let what thing or things soever will follow it follow. “Ye can no other; God be your help!” So spake a greater than any of you; opening his Chapter of World-History.

No symbolic Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear: yet with them too is a Covenant; they too preside at a new Era in the History of Men. The whole Future is there, and Destiny dim-brooding over it; in the hearts and unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to think: they have it in them; yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye above can read it,—as it shall unfold itself, in fire and thunder, of siege, and field-artillery; in the rustling of battle-banners, the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the shriek of strangled nations!

for is not every meanest Day “the conflux of two Eternities!”

A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour; one of the sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong lightly-sparkling man!

Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have: be their work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest.

One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfilment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains together; and the chain, with its “iron star of five rays,” is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it drifting,—which also shall be seen?

The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man himself he can make his. ‘All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)!’ snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of all for him. In that forty-years “struggle against despotism,” he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union! This man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him: a born king of men!

This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it: for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles; but with an eye! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there: a Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled “forty years against despotism,” and “made away with all formulas,” shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism; to make away with her old formulas,—having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with such formulas;—and even go bare, if need be, till she have found new ones.

Forty years of that smouldering, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough, then victory over that;—and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and, for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of an amazed Europe;—and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest of them all: in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none second to thee.

Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green.[132] That greenish-coloured (verdâtre) individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre.

But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favour of a younger brother.

With a strict painful mind, an understanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius.

of business, happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese; and he faithfully does justice to the people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions?

His hair is grizzled, though he is still young: convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself.

There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such! The old to heal up rents; the young to remove rubbish:—which latter, is it not, indeed, the task here?

Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion!

This is the product of Guillotin’s endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! ‘With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais sauter la tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;’—whereat they all laugh.[135] Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar’s.

Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful Philosophising, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends in foul thick confusion—of Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic Officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlasting Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Galaxy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that last hell-day, thou must “tremble,” though only with cold, “de froid.”

Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so miserable; but to be weaker than our task.

Wo the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogriff of a Democracy; which, spurning the firm earth, nay lashing at the very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have ridden!

In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers;[136] and at least one Clergyman:

passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him.

The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes

this question, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God’s fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!

There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal Anglomaniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a “formula” has this Lafayette too made away with; yet not all formulas. He sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;—and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging. Happy for him; be it glorious or not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea.

it is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of strong liquor he contains.

There then walks our French Noblesse. All in the old pomp of chivalry: and yet, alas, how changed from the old position; drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually lead the world,—were it only towards battle-spoil, where lay the world’s best wages then: moreover, being the ablest Leaders going, they had their lion’s share, those Duces; which none could grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Ploughshares, Steam-Engines and Bills of Exchange have been invented; and, for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eighteen-pence a-day,—what mean these goldmantled Chivalry Figures, walking there “in black-velvet cloaks,” in high-plumed “hats of a feudal cut”? Reeds shaken in the wind!

nay thou shalt have a Cardinal’s Hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the longrun—mere oblivion, like the rest of us; and six feet of earth!

He will do and suffer strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in falsehood, and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man: there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one may hope: hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was possible only for this age of ours,—Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper.

has not this unfortunate Clergy also drifted in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude? An anomalous mass of men; of whom the whole world has already a dim understanding that it can understand nothing. They were once a Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy that is in Man: a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth): but now?—They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have been able to redact; and none cries, God bless them.

Instead of Vive la Reine, voices insult her with Vive d’Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little remains except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick noble instincts; vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee; bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial Theresa’s Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the future!—

And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all towards Eternity!

Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand.

To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky.

Man is without Duty round him; except it be “to make the Constitution.” He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.

What further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in heraldic scutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief; or worst of all, mere Macchiavellic pretence-of-belief,—in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New Life discernible: the deep fixed Determination to have done with Shams.

How has the Heaven’s light, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder and electric murkiness; and descend as molten lightning, blasting, if purifying! Nay is it not rather the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?

We remark only that, as his Majesty, on finishing the speech, put on his plumed hat, and the Noblesse according to custom imitated him, our Tiers-Etat Deputies did mostly, not without a shade of fierceness, in like manner clap-on, and even crush on their slouched hats; and stand there awaiting the issue.[141] Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority of Couvrezvous, Décrouvrez-vous (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his Majesty puts end, by taking off his own royal hat again.

“France, in this same National Assembly of hers, has got something, nay something great, momentous, indispensable, cannot be doubted; yet still the question were: Specially what?

The States-General, created and conflated by the passionate effort of the whole nation, is there as a thing high and lifted up. Hope, jubilating, cries aloud that it will prove a miraculous Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness; whereon whosoever looks, with faith and obedience, shall be healed of all woes and serpent-bites.

We may answer, it will at least prove a symbolic Banner; round which the exasperating complaining Twenty-Five Millions, otherwise isolated and without power, may rally, and work—what it is in them to work. If battle must be the work, as one cannot help expecting, then shall it be a battle-banner (say, an Italian Gonfalon, in its old Republican Carroccio); and shall tower up, car-borne, shining in the wind: and with iron tongue peal forth many a signal.

For what is Majesty but the Delegate of the Nation; delegated, and bargained with (even rather tightly),—in some very singular posture of affairs, which Jean Jacques has not fixed the date of?

But the Noblesse and Clergy, it would seem, have retired to their two separate Apartments, or Halls; and are there “verifying their powers,” not in a conjoint but in a separate capacity.

Double representation, and all else hitherto gained, were otherwise futile, null. Doubtless, the “powers must be verified;”—doubtless, the Commission, the electoral Documents of your Deputy must be inspected by his brother Deputies, and found valid: it is the preliminary of all.

It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist the beginnings! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous, yet surely pause is very natural: pause, with Twenty-five Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.—

The inorganic mass of Commons Deputies will restrict itself to a “system of inertia,” and for the present remain inorganic.

For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren; which indeed, as Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of all.

These were their still creation-days; wherein they sat incubating! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles; regrets that they cannot get organisation, “verification of powers in common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once unpunishable and unconquerable.

Six Hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there, on their elliptic benches, longing passionately towards life; in painful durance; like souls waiting to be born.

At times shall come an inspiration from royal Mirabeau: he is nowise yet recognised as royal; nay he was “groaned at,” when his name was first mentioned: but he is struggling towards recognition

the Commons having called their Eldest to the chair, and furnished him with young stronger-lunged assistants,—can speak articulately; and, in audible lamentable words, declare, as we said, that they are an inorganic body, longing to become organic. Letters arrive; but an inorganic body cannot open letters; they lie on the table unopened.

the poor man looks desolately towards a nameless lot. And this States-General, that could make us an age of gold, is forced to stand motionless; cannot get its powers verified! All industry necessarily languishes, if it be not that of making motions.

In the Palais Royal there has been erected, apparently by subscription, a kind of Wooden Tent (en planches de bois);[144]—most convenient; where select Patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the weather but as it will.

Lively is that Satan-at-Home! On his table, on his chair, in every café, stands a patriotic orator; a crowd round him within; a crowd listening from without, open-mouthed, through open door and window; with “thunders of applause for every sentiment of more than common hardiness.”

Finally, on the 27th day of May, Mirabeau, judging the time now nearly come, proposes that “the inertia cease;” that, leaving the Noblesse to their own stiff ways, the Clergy be summoned, “in the name of the God of Peace,” to join the Commons, and begin.

This Third Estate will get in motion, with the force of all France in it; Clergy-machinery with Noblesse-machinery, which were to serve as beautiful counter-balances and drags, will be shamefully dragged after it,—and take fire along with it.

we meanwhile getting forward Swiss Regiments, and a “hundred pieces of field-artillery.” This is what the Œil-de-Bœuf, for its part, resolves on.

they have now, on this 17th day of June, determined that their name is not Third Estate, but—National Assembly!They, then, are the Nation? Triumvirate of Princes, Queen, refractory Noblesse and Clergy, what, then, are you? A most deep question;—scarcely answerable in living political dialects.

Now surely were the time for a “god from the machine;” there is a nodus worthy of one. The only question is, Which god? Shall it be Mars de Broglie, with his hundred pieces of cannon?—Not yet, answers prudence; so soft, irresolute is King Louis. Let it be Messenger Mercury, our Supreme Usher de Brézé.

Your Third Estate, self-styled “National Assembly,” shall suddenly see itself extruded from its Hall, by carpenters, in this dexterous way; and reduced to do nothing, not even to meet, or articulately lament,—till Majesty, with Séance Royale and new miracles, be ready! In this manner shall De Brézé, as Mercury ex machinâ, intervene;

Before supper, this night, he writes to President Bailly, a new Letter, to be delivered shortly after dawn tomorrow, in the King’s name. Which Letter, however, Bailly in the pride of office, will merely crush together into his pocket, like a bill he does not mean to pay.

It is shut, this Salle; occupied by Gardes Françaises. ‘Where is your Captain?’ The Captain shows his royal order: workmen, he is grieved to say, are all busy setting up the platform for his Majesty’s Séance; most unfortunately, no admission; admission, at furthest, for President and Secretaries to bring away papers, which the joiners might destroy!—President Bailly enters with Secretaries; and returns bearing papers: alas, within doors, instead of patriotic eloquence, there is now no noise but hammering, sawing, and operative screeching and rumbling! A profanation without parallel.

Six hundred right-hands rise with President Bailly’s, to take God above to witness that they will not separate for man below, but will meet in all places, under all circumstances, wheresoever two or three can get together, till they have made the Constitution. Made the Constitution, Friends! That is a long task.

Barndoor poultry fly cackling: but National Deputies turn round, lion-faced; and, with uplifted right-hand, swear an Oath that makes the four corners of France tremble.

President Bailly has covered himself with honour; which shall become rewards. The National Assembly is now doubly and trebly the Nation’s Assembly; not militant, martyred only, but triumphant; insulted, and which could not be insulted. Paris disembogues itself once more, to witness, “with grim looks,” the Séance Royale:[150] which, by a new felicity, is postponed till Tuesday. The Hundred and Forty-nine, and even with Bishops among them, all in processional mass, have had free leisure to march off, and solemnly join the Commons sitting waiting in their Church. The Commons welcomed them with shouts, with embracings, nay with tears;[151] for it is growing a life-and-death matter now.

Which Five-and-Thirty Articles, adds his Majesty again rising, if the Three Orders most unfortunately cannot agree together to effect them, I myself will effect: ‘seul je ferai le bien de mes peuples,’—which being interpreted may signify, You, contentious Deputies of the States-General, have probably not long to be here!

This is the determination of the royal breast: pithy and clear. And herewith King, retinue, Noblesse, majority of Clergy file out, as if the whole matter were satisfactorily completed.

These file out; through grim-silent seas of people. Only the Commons Deputies file not out; but stand there in gloomy silence, uncertain what they shall do. One man of them is certain; one man of them discerns and dares! It is now that King Mirabeau starts to the Tribune, and lifts up his lion-voice. Verily a word in season; for, in such scenes, the moment is the mother of ages! Had not Gabriel Honoré been there,—one can well fancy, how the Commons Deputies, affrighted at the perils which now yawned dim all round them, and waxing ever paler in each other’s paleness, might very naturally, one after one, have glided off; and the whole course of European History have been different!

But he is there. List to the brool of that royal forest-voice; sorrowful, low; fast swelling to a roar! Eyes kindle at the glance of his eye:—National Deputies were missioned by a Nation; they have sworn an Oath; they—but lo! while the lion’s voice roars loudest, what Apparition is this?

Apparition of Mercurius de Brézé, muttering somewhat!—‘Speak out,’ cry several.—‘Messieurs,’ shrills De Brézé, repeating himself, ‘You have heard the King’s orders!’—Mirabeau glares on him with fire-flashing face; shakes the black lion’s mane: ‘Yes, Monsieur, we have heard what the King was advised to say: and you who cannot be the interpreter of his orders to the States-General; you, who have neither place nor right of speech here; you are not the man to remind us of it. Go, Monsieur, tell these who sent you that we are here by the will of the People, and that nothing shall send us hence but the force of bayonets!’

But what does the Œil-de-Bœuf, now when De Brézé shivers back thither? Despatch that same force of bayonets? Not so: the seas of people still hang multitudinous, intent on what is passing; nay rush and roll, loud-billowing, into the Courts of the Château itself; for a report has risen that Necker is to be dismissed. Worst of all, the Gardes Françaises seem indisposed to act: “two Companies of them do not fire when ordered!”[

Instead of soldiers, the Œil-de-Bœuf sends—carpenters, to take down the platform. Ineffectual shift! In few instants, the very carpenters cease wrenching and knocking at their platform; stand on it, hammer in hand, and listen open-mouthed.[157] The Third Estate is decreeing that it is, was, and will be, nothing but a National Assembly; and now, moreover, an inviolable one, all members of it inviolable: “infamous, traitorous, towards the Nation, and guilty of capital crime, is any person, body-corporate, tribunal, court or commission that now or henceforth, during the present session or after it, shall dare to pursue, interrogate, arrest, or cause to be arrested, detain or cause to be detained, any,” &c. &c. “on whose part soever the same be commanded.”[158] Which done, one can wind up with this comfortable reflection from Abbé Sieyes: ‘Messieurs, you are today what you were yesterday.’

Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand.

Few months ago these Thirty-five Concessions had filled France with a rejoicing, which might have lasted for several years. Now it is unavailing, the very mention of it slighted; Majesty’s express orders set at nought.

All France is in a roar; a sea of persons, estimated at “ten thousand,” whirls “all this day in the Palais Royal.”[159] The remaining Clergy, and likewise some Forty-eight Noblesse, D’Orléans among them, have now forthwith gone over to the victorious Commons; by whom, as is natural, they are received “with acclamation.”

The Third Estate triumphs; Versailles Town shouting round it; ten thousand whirling all day in the Palais Royal; and all France standing a-tiptoe, not unlike whirling! Let the Œil-de-Bœuf look to it. As for King Louis, he will swallow his injuries; will temporise, keep silence; will at all costs have present peace. It was Tuesday the 23d of June, when he spoke that peremptory royal mandate; and the week is not done till he has written to the remaining obstinate Noblesse, that they also must oblige him, and give in. D’Espréménil rages his last; Barrel Mirabeau “breaks his sword,” making a vow,—which he might as well have kept. The “Triple Family” is now therefore complete; the third erring brother, the Noblesse, having joined it;—erring but pardonable; soothed, so far as possible, by sweet eloquence from President Bailly.

So triumphs the Third Estate; and States-General are become National Assembly; and all France may sing Te Deum.

By wise inertia, and wise cessation of inertia, great victory has been gained.

It is the last night of June: all night you meet nothing on the streets of Versailles but “men running with torches” with shouts of jubilation. From the 2nd of May when they kissed the hand of Majesty, to this 30th of June when men run with torches, we count seven weeks complete. For seven weeks the National Carroccio has stood far-seen, ringing many a signal; and, so much having now gathered round it, may hope to stand.

Mercury descended in vain; now has the time come for Mars.

But now, above all, while the hungry food-year, which runs from August to August, is getting older; becoming more and more a famine-year?

Frightful enough to look upon; but what to hear of, reverberated through Twenty-five Millions of suspicious minds!

At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the Townsmen have taken arms; for “suppressing of Brigands,” and other purposes: the military commandant may make of it what he will. Elsewhere, everywhere, could not the like be done?

Your National Assembly, stopped short in its Constitutional labours, may fatigue the royal ear with addresses and remonstrances: those cannon of ours stand duly levelled; those troops are here.

The Parisians resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob may! They have sat quiet, these five generations, submitting to all. Their Mercier declared, in these very years, that a Parisian revolt was henceforth “impossible.”[162] Stand by the royal Declaration, of the Twenty-third of June. The Nobles of France, valorous, chivalrous as of old, will rally round us with one heart;—and as for this which you call Third Estate, and which we call canaille of unwashed Sansculottes, of Patelins, Scribblers, factious Spouters,—brave Broglie, “with a whiff of grapeshot (salve de canons),” if need be, will give quick account of it. Thus reason they: on their cloudy Ida; hidden from men,—men also hidden from them.

Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition: that the shooter also were made of metal! But unfortunately he is made of flesh;

your hired shooter has instincts, feelings, even a kind of thought. It is his kindred, bone of his bone, this same canaille that shall be whiffed; he has brothers in it, a father and mother,—

The soldier, who has seen his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promotion shut inexorably on him if he were not born noble,—is himself not without griefs against you. Your cause is not the soldier’s cause; but, as would seem, your own only, and no other god’s nor man’s.

Neither have the Gardes Françaises, the best regiment of the line, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately. They returned grumbling from Réveillon’s; and have not burnt a single cartridge since; nay, as we saw, not even when bid.

Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes Françaises do but form a “Secret Association,” an Engagement not to act against the National Assembly. Debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean; debauched by money and women! cry Besenval and innumerable others. Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauching, behold them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive, headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais Royal! Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of patriot liquor; embracing and embraced; declaring in words that the cause of France is their cause! Next day and the following days the like. What is singular too, except this patriot humour, and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise with “the most rigorous accuracy.”

Why new military force was not called out? New military force was called out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with drawn sabre: but the people gently “laid hold of their bridles;” the dragoons sheathed their swords; lifted their caps by way of salute, and sat like mere statues of dragoons,—except indeed that a drop of liquor being brought them, they “drank to the King and Nation with the greatest cordiality.”

And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some other course, any other course?

Pride, which goes before a fall; wrath, if not reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural, had hardened their hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and violence (ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their hour.

The twelfth July morning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded with an enormous-sized De par le Roi, “inviting peaceable citizens to remain within doors,” to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd.

Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in the Champs Elysées, with four pieces of artillery.

Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the Bridge of Sèvres to utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis to the Champ-de-Mars, we are begirt! Alarm, of the vague unknown, is in every heart. The Palais Royal has become a place of awestruck interjections, silent shakings of the head:

Are these troops verily come out “against Brigands”? Where are the Brigands? What mystery is in the wind?—Hark! a human voice reporting articulately the Job’s-news: Necker, People’s Minister, Saviour of France, is dismissed. Impossible; incredible! Treasonous to the public peace! Such a voice ought to be choked in the water-works;[171]—had not the news-bringer quickly fled

We have a new Ministry: Broglie the War-god; Aristocrat Bréteuil; Foulon who said the people might eat grass!

Rumour, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and in broad France. Paleness sits on every face; confused tremor and fremescence; waxing into thunder-peals, of Fury stirred on by Fear.

But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Café de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:—Friends, shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is come; the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever. Let such hour be well-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits: To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!—‘To arms!’ yell responsive the innumerable voices: like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words,[172] does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great moment.—Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign! Cockades; green ones;—the colour of hope!—As with the flight of locusts, these green tree leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring shops; all green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille descends from his table, “stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;” has a bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat.

France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the right inflammable point.—

In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increasing multitude; armed with axes, staves and miscellanea; grim, many-sounding, through the streets. Be all Theatres shut; let all dancing, on planked floor, or on the natural greensward, cease! Instead of a Christian Sabbath, and feast of guinguette tabernacles, it shall be a Sorcerer’s Sabbath; and Paris, gone rabid, dance,—with the Fiend for piper!

Victorious Lambesc, in this his second or Tuileries charge, succeeds but in overturning (call it not slashing, for he struck with the flat of his sword) one man, a poor old schoolmaster, most pacifically tottering there; and is driven out, by barricade of chairs, by flights of “bottles and glasses,” by execrations in bass voice and treble. Most delicate is the mob-queller’s vocation; wherein Too-much may be as bad as Not-enough.

Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat.

The Six-and-twenty Town-Councillors, with their long gowns, have ducked under (into the raging chaos);—shall never emerge more. Besenval is painfully wriggling himself out, to the Champ-de-Mars; he must sit there “in the cruelest uncertainty:” courier after courier may dash off for Versailles; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the roads are all blocked with batteries and pickets, with floods of carriages arrested for examination: such was Broglie’s one sole order; the Œil-de-Bœuf, hearing in the distance such mad din, which sounded almost like invasion, will before all things keep its own head whole. A new Ministry, with, as it were, but one foot in the stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to itself.

Use and wont will now no longer direct any man; each man, with what of originality he has, must begin thinking; or following those that think. Seven hundred thousand individuals, on the sudden, find all their old paths, old ways of acting and deciding, vanish from under their feet. And so there go they, with clangour and terror, they know not as yet whether running, swimming or flying,—headlong into the New Era.

The working man has become a fighting man; has one want only: that of arms. The industry of all crafts has paused;—except it be the smith’s, fiercely hammering pikes;

“on les pendit, they hanged them.”[175] Brief is the word; not without significance, be it true or untrue!

Our Parisian Militia,—which some think it were better to name National Guard,—is prospering as heart could wish. It promised to be forty-eight thousand; but will in few hours double and quadruple that number: invincible, if we had only arms!

O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other; this fearful and wonderful Life fearful and horrible; and Satan has his place in all hearts! Such agonies and ragings and wailings ye have, and have had, in all times:—to be buried all, in so deep silence; and the salt sea is not swoln with your tears.

Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach us; when the long-enthralled soul, from amid its chains and squalid stagnancy, arises, were it still only in blindness and bewilderment, and swears by Him that made it, that it will be free! Free? Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man’s struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme is such a moment (if thou have known it): first vision as of a flame-girt Sinai, in this our waste Pilgrimage,—which thenceforth wants not its pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night! Something it is even,—nay, something considerable, when the chains have grown corrosive, poisonous, to be free “from oppression by our fellow-man.” Forward, ye maddened sons of France; be it towards this destiny or towards that! Around you is but starvation, falsehood, corruption and the clam of death. Where ye are is no abiding.

Commandant Besenval, in the Champ-de-Mars, has worn out these sorrowful hours Insurrection all round; his men melting away! From Versailles, to the most pressing messages, comes no answer; or once only some vague word of answer which is worse than none. A Council of Officers can decide merely that there is no decision: Colonels inform him, “weeping,” that they do not think their men will fight.

war-god Broglie sits yonder, inaccessible in his Olympus; does not descend terror-clad, does not produce his whiff of grapeshot; sends no orders.

Truly, in the Château of Versailles all seems mystery: in the Town of Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm and indignation.

It has sent solemn Deputation over to the Château, with entreaty to have these troops withdrawn. In vain: his Majesty, with a singular composure, invites us to be busy rather with our own duty, making the Constitution!

with an eye too probably to the Salle des Menus,—were it not for the “grim-looking countenances” that crowd all avenues there.[177] Be firm, ye National Senators; the cynosure of a firm, grim-looking people!

He is the Brother of that Pompignan who meditated lamentably on the Book of Lamentations:

Saves-voux pourquoi Jérémie

Se lamentait toute sa vie?

C’est qu’il prévoyait

Que Pompignan le traduirait!

If ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn their cannon against himself.

Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of glory! Old Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up his drawbridges long since, “and retired into his interior;” with sentries walking on his battlements, under the midnight sky, aloft over the glare of illuminated Paris;—whom a National Patrol, passing that way, takes the liberty of firing at; “seven shots towards twelve at night,” which do not take effect.[178] This was the 13th day of July, 1789; a worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when only hail fell out of Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining worse than crops!

hot old Marquis Mirabeau lies stricken down, at Argenteuil,—not within sound of these alarm-guns; for heproperly is not there, and only the body of him now lies, deaf and cold forever.

Upwards from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry,—without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through portholes, shew the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression!

Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted “Peruke-maker with two fiery torches” is for burning “the saltpetres of the Arsenal;”—had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be de Launay’s daughter, shall be burnt in de Launay’s sight; she lies swooned on a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemere the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke: almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart; and Reole the “gigantic haberdasher” another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom!

Blood flows, the aliment of new madness.

The Firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides’ cannon, to wet the touchholes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a “mixture of phosphorous and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing pumps:” O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer!

Hast thou considered how each man’s heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the Populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: Bread! Bread! Great is the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows, which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing some where beyond Time. De Launay could not do it.

As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes Françaises, in their cool military way, “wheeled round with arms levelled,” it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.

Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Grève, and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back de Launay from the Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris.

And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing uncontrollable, firing from windows—on itself: in hot frenzy of triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain.

Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, felled down; Hulin sinks exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable de Launay! He shall never enter the Hotel de Ville: only his “bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody hand;” that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps there; the head is off through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a pike.

Rigorous de Launay has died; crying out, ‘O friends, kill me fast!’

Your Place de Grève is become a Throat of the Tiger; full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron: with difficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Françaises will save the rest. Provost Flesselles stricken long since with the paleness of death, must descend from his seat, “to be judged at the Palais Royal:”—alas, to be shot dead, by an unknown hand, at the turning of the first street!—

O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main;

It was the Titans warring with Olympus; and they scarcely crediting it, have conquered: prodigy of prodigies; delirious,—as it could not but be. Denunciation, vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror: all outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of madness!

Electoral Committee? Had it a thousand throats of brass, it would not suffice.

Last night, a Patriot, in liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the Powder-barrels; there smoked he, independent of the world,—till the Abbé “purchased his pipe for three francs,” and pitched it far.

Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee looking on, sits “with drawn sword bent in three places;” with battered helm, for he was of the Queen’s Regiment, Cavalry; with torn regimentals, face singed and soiled; comparable, some think, to “an antique warrior;”—judging the people; forming a list of Bastille Heroes. O Friends, stain not with blood the greenest laurels ever gained in this world: such is the burden of Elie’s song; could it but be listened to. Courage, Elie! Courage, ye Municipal Electors! A declining sun; the need of victuals, and of telling news, will bring assuagement, dispersion: all earthly things must end.

Along the streets of Paris circulate Seven Bastille Prisoners, borne shoulder-high: seven Heads on pikes;

See also the Garde Françaises, in their steadfast military way, marching home to their barracks, with the Invalides and Swiss kindly enclosed in hollow square.

and now they have participated; and will participate. Not Gardes Françaises henceforth, but Centre Grenadiers of the National Guard: men of iron discipline and humour,—not without a kind of thought in them!

His Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of double-barrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his constitutional way, the Job’s-news. ‘Mais,’ said poor Louis, ‘c’est une révolte, Why, that is a revolt!’—‘Sire,’ answered Liancourt, ‘It is not a revolt, it is a revolution.’

when lo, his Majesty himself attended only by his two Brothers, step in; quite in the paternal manner; announces that the troops, and all causes of offence, are gone, and henceforth there shall be nothing but trust, reconcilement, good-will; whereof he “permits and even requests,” a National Assembly to assure Paris in his name! Acclamation, as of men suddenly delivered from death, gives answer. The whole Assembly spontaneously rises to escort his Majesty back; “interlacing their arms to keep off the excessive pressure from him;” for all Versailles is crowding and shouting.

As for old Foulon, one learns that he is dead; at least a “sumptuous funeral” is going on; the undertakers honouring him, if no other will.

that in Henri Quatre’s case, the King had to make conquest of his People, but in this happier case, the People makes conquest of its King (a conquis son Roi). The King, so happily conquered, drives forward, slowly, through a steel people, all silent, or shouting only Vive la Nation;

[Louis] knows not what to think of it, or say of it; learns that he is “Restorer of French Liberty,”—as a Statue of him, to be raised on the site of the Bastille, shall testify to all men.

It was Sunday when the red-hot balls hung over us, in mid air: it is now but Friday, and “the Revolution is sanctioned.” An August National Assembly shall make the Constitution;

Already in most Towns, Electoral Committees were met; to regret Necker, in harangue and resolution. In many a Town, as Rennes, Caen, Lyons, an ebullient people was already regretting him in brickbats and musketry. But now, at every Town’s-end in France, there do arrive, in these days of terror,—“men,” as men will arrive; nay, “men on horseback,” since Rumour oftenest travels riding. These men declare, with alarmed countenance, The BRIGANDS to be coming, to be just at hand; and do then—ride on, about their further business, be what it might! Whereupon the whole population of such Town, defensively flies to arms. Petition is soon thereafter forwarded to National Assembly; in such peril and terror of peril, leave to organise yourself cannot be withheld: the armed population becomes everywhere an enrolled National Guard. Thus rides Rumour, careering along all radii, from Paris outwards, to such purpose: in few days, some say in not many hours, all France to the utmost borders bristles with bayonets. Singular, but undeniable,—miraculous or not!—But thus may any chemical liquid; though cooled to the freezing-point, or far lower, still continue liquid; and then, on the slightest stroke or shake, it at once rushes wholly into ice. Thus has France, for long months and even years, been chemically dealt with; brought below zero; and now, shaken by the Fall of a Bastille, it instantaneously congeals: into one crystallised mass, of sharp-cutting steel! Guai a chi la tocca; ’Ware who touches it!

Some living domestic or dependant, for none loves Foulon, has betrayed him to the Village. Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him; pounce on him, like hell-hounds: Westward, old Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at the Hôtel-de-Ville! His old head, which seventy-four years have bleached, is bare; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck: in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men.

Foulon must not only be judged righteously; but judged there where he stands, without any delay. Appoint seven judges, ye Municipals, or seventy-and-seven; name them yourselves, or we will name them: but judge him![193] Electoral rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted explaining the beauty of the Law’s delay. Delay, and still delay! Behold, O Mayor of the People, the morning has worn itself into noon; and he is still unjudged!—Lafayette, pressingly sent for, arrives; gives voice: This Foulon, a known man, is guilty almost beyond doubt; but may he not have accomplices? Ought not the truth to be cunningly pumped out of him,—in the Abbaye Prison? It is a new light! Sansculottism claps hands;—at which hand-clapping, Foulon (in his fainness, as his Destiny would have it) also claps. ‘See! they understand one another!’ cries dark Sansculottism, blazing into fury of suspicion.—‘Friends,’ said “a person in good clothes,” stepping forward, ‘what is the use of judging this man? Has he not been judged these thirty years?’ With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled across the Place de Grève, to the “Lanterne,” Lamp-iron which there is at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie; pleading bitterly for life,—to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people.

Surely if Revenge is a “kind of Justice,” it is a “wild” kind!

Nevertheless, be the man’s conscience what it may, his nerves are of iron. At the Hôtel-de-Ville, he will answer nothing. He says, he obeyed superior order; they have his papers; they may judge and determine: as for himself, not having closed an eye these two nights, he demands, before all things, to have sleep. Leaden sleep, thou miserable Berthier! Guards rise with him, in motion towards the Abbaye. At the very door of the Hôtel-de-Ville, they are clutched; flung asunder, as by a vortex of mad arms; Berthier whirls towards the Lanterne. He snatches a musket; fells and strikes, defending himself like a mad lion; is borne down, trampled, hanged, mangled: his Head too, and even his Heart, flies over the City on a pike.

Horrible, in Lands that had known equal justice! Not so unnatural in Lands that had never known it.

The halcyon weather returns, though of a grayer complexion; of a character more and more evidently notsupernatural.

Thus, in any case, with what rubs soever, shall the Bastille be abolished from our Earth; and with it, Feudalism, Despotism; and, one hopes, Scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of man by his brother man. Alas, the Scoundrelism and hard usage are not so easy of abolition!

Vanished is the Bastille, what we call vanished: the body, or sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come, over the Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize;[197] the soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the memories of men.

‘And yet think, Messieurs,’ as the Petitioner justly urged, ‘you who were our saviours, did yourselves need saviours,’—the brave Bastillers, namely; workmen of Paris; many of them in straightened pecuniary circumstances! [198] Subscriptions are opened; Lists are formed, more accurate than Elie’s; harangues are delivered. A Body of Bastille Heroes, tolerably complete, did get together;—comparable to the Argonauts; hoping to endure like them. But in little more than a year, the whirlpool of things threw them asunder again, and they sank.

So many highest superlatives achieved by man are followed by new higher; and dwindle into comparatives and positives!

The Siege of the Bastille, weighed with which, in the Historical balance, most other sieges, including that of Troy Town, are gossamer, cost, as we find, in killed and mortally wounded, on the part of the Besiegers, some Eighty-three persons: on the part of the Besieged, after all that straw-burning, fire-pumping, and deluge of musketry, One poor solitary invalid, shot stone-dead (roide-mort) on the battlements;[199]

The Bastille Fortress, like the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous sound.

All things are in revolution; in change from moment to moment, which becomes sensible from epoch to epoch: in this Time-World of ours there is properly nothing else but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable. Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to ask: How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what particular points of this variable course, which varies in velocity, but can never stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end; cease to be ordinary mutation, and again become such? It is a thing that will depend on definition more or less arbitrary.

Seeing which course of things, Messeigneurs of the Court Triumvirate, Messieurs of the dead-born Broglie-Ministry, and others such, consider that their part also is clear: to mount and ride. Off, ye too-loyal Broglies, Polignacs, and Princes of the Blood; off while it is yet time! Did not the Palais-Royal in its late nocturnal “violent motions,” set a specific price (place of payment not mentioned) on each of your heads?

This is what they call the First Emigration; determined on, as appears, in full Court-conclave; his Majesty assisting; prompt he, for his share of it, to follow any counsel whatsoever. “Three Sons of France, and four Princes of the blood of Saint Louis,” says Weber, “could not more effectually humble the Burghers of Paris than by appearing to withdraw in fear of their life.” Alas, the Burghers of Paris bear it with unexpected Stoicism!

The Emigration is not gone many miles, Prince Condé hardly across the Oise, when his Majesty, according to arrangement, for the Emigration also thought it might do good,—undertakes a rather daring enterprise: that of visiting Paris in person.

The King, so happily conquered, drives forward, slowly, through a steel people, all silent, or shouting only Vive la Nation; is harangued at the Townhall, by Moreau of the three-thousand orders, by King’s Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, by Lally Tollendal, and others; knows not what to think of it, or say of it; learns that he is “Restorer of French Liberty,”—as a Statue of him, to be raised on the site of the Bastille, shall testify to all men. Finally, he is shewn at the Balcony, with a Tricolor cockade in his hat; is greeted now, with vehement acclamation, from Square and Street, from all windows and roofs:—and so drives home again amid glad mingled and, as it were, intermarried shouts, of Vive le Roi and Vive la Nation; wearied but safe.

Surely a great Phenomenon: nay it is a transcendental one, overstepping all rules and experience; the crowning Phenomenon of our Modern Time. For here again, most unexpectedly, comes antique Fanaticism in new and newest vesture; miraculous, as all Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism of “making away with formulas, de humer les formules.” The world of formulas, the formed regulated world, which all habitable world is,—must needs hate such Fanaticism like death; and be at deadly variance with it. The world of formulas must conquer it; or failing that, must die execrating it, anathematising it;—can nevertheless in nowise prevent its being and its having been. The Anathemas are there, and the miraculous Thing is there.

When the age of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible tradition, and even the age of Conventionalities was now old; and Man’s Existence had for long generations rested on mere formulas which were grown hollow by course of time; and it seemed as if no Reality any longer existed but only Phantasms of realities, and God’s Universe were the work of the Tailor and Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing there,—on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises SANSCULOTTISM, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks: What think ye of me?

The age of Miracles has come back! “Behold the World-Phoenix, in fire-consummation and fire-creation; wide are her fanning wings; loud is her death-melody, of battle-thunders and falling towns; skyward lashes the funeral flame, enveloping all things: it is the Death-Birth of a World!”

Whereby, however, as we often say, shall one unspeakable blessing seem attainable. This, namely: that Man and his Life rest no more on hollowness and a Lie, but on solidity and some kind of Truth. Welcome, the beggarliest truth, so it be one, in exchange for the royallest sham! Truth of any kind breeds ever new and better truth; thus hard granite rock will crumble down into soil, under the blessed skyey influences; and cover itself with verdure, with fruitage and umbrage. But as for Falsehood, which in like contrary manner, grows ever falser,—what can it, or what should it do but decease, being ripe; decompose itself, gently or even violently, and return to the Father of it,—too probably in flames of fire?

Sansculottism will burn much; but what is incombustible it will not burn. Fear not Sansculottism; recognise it for what it is, the portentous, inevitable end of much, the miraculous beginning of much.

and the wrath of men is made to praise Him.—But to gauge and measure this immeasurable Thing, and what is called account for it, and reduce it to a dead logic-formula, attempt not!

How the Twenty-five Millions of such, in their perplexed combination, acting and counter-acting may give birth to events; which event successively is the cardinal one; and from what point of vision it may best be surveyed

A Constitution can be built, Constitutions enough à la Sieyes: but the frightful difficulty is that of getting men to come and live in them!

Nay, strictly considered, is it not still true that without some such celestial sanction, given visibly in thunder or invisibly otherwise, no Constitution can in the long run be worth much more than the waste-paper it is written on? The Constitution, the set of Laws, or prescribed Habits of Acting, that men will live under, is the one which images their Convictions,—their Faith as to this wondrous Universe, and what rights, duties, capabilities they have there; which stands sanctioned therefore, by Necessity itself, if not by a seen Deity, then by an unseen one. Other laws, whereof there are always enough ready-made, are usurpations; which men do not obey, but rebel against, and abolish, by their earliest convenience.

Who is it that especially for rebellers and abolishers, can make a Constitution? He that can image forth the general Belief when there is one; that can impart one when, as here, there is none. A most rare man; ever as of old a god-missioned man!

Or is it the nature of National Assemblies generally to do, with endless labour and clangour, Nothing? Are Representative Governments mostly at bottom Tyrannies too! Shall we say, the Tyrants, the ambitious contentious Persons, from all corners of the country do, in this manner, get gathered into one place; and there, with motion and counter-motion, with jargon and hubbub, cancel one another, like the fabulous Kilkenny Cats; and produce, for net-result, zero;—the country meanwhile governing or guiding itself, by such wisdom, recognised or for most part unrecognised, as may exist in individual heads here and there?—Nay, even that were a great improvement: for, of old, with their Guelf Factions and Ghibelline Factions, with their Red Roses and White Roses, they were wont to cancel the whole country as well.

One thing an elected Assembly of Twelve Hundred is fit for: Destroying. Which indeed is but a more decided exercise of its natural talent for Doing Nothing. Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

It is the cynosure of revolutionary France, this National Assembly. All work of Government has fallen into its hands, or under its control; all men look to it for guidance. In the middle of that huge Revolt of Twenty-five millions, it hovers always aloft as Carroccio or Battle-Standard, impelling and impelled, in the most confused way; if it cannot give much guidance, it will still seem to give some.

With endless debating, we get the Rights of Man written down and promulgated: true paper basis of all paper Constitutions. Neglecting, cry the opponents, to declare the Duties of Man! Forgetting, answer we, to ascertain the Mights of Man;—one of the fatalest omissions!—Nay, sometimes, as on the Fourth of August, our National Assembly, fired suddenly by an almost preternatural enthusiasm, will get through whole masses of work in one night.

Such night, unforeseen but for ever memorable, was this of the Fourth of August 1789. Miraculous, or semi-miraculous, some seem to think it. A new Night of Pentecost, shall we say, shaped according to the new Time, and new Church of Jean Jacques Rousseau? It had its causes; also its effects.

For the present, if we glance into that Assembly Hall of theirs, it will be found, as is natural, “most irregular.” As many as “a hundred members are on their feet at once;” no rule in making motions, or only commencements of a rule; Spectators’ Gallery allowed to applaud, and even to hiss;[200] President, appointed once a fortnight, raising many times no serene head above the waves.

There likewise sits seagreen Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian; he would make away with formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly in formulas, of another sort. “Peuple,” such according to Robespierre ought to be the Royal method of promulgating laws, “Peuple, this is the Law I have framed for thee; dost thou accept it?”—answered from Right Side, from Centre and Left, by inextinguishable laughter.[203] Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen may by chance go far: ‘this man,’ observes Mirabeau, ‘will do somewhat; he believes every word he says.’

As we often say, he has an eye, he is a reality; while others are formulas and eye-glasses. In the Transient he will detect the Perennial, find some firm footing even among Paper-vortexes. His fame is gone forth to all lands; it gladdened the heart of the crabbed old Friend of Men himself before he died. The very Postilions of inns have heard of Mirabeau

Twelve Hundred brother men are there, in the centre of Twenty-five Millions; fighting so fiercely with Fate and with one another; struggling their lives out, as most sons of Adam do, for that which profiteth not.

But figure Twelve Hundred pamphleteers; droning forth perpetual pamphlets: and no man to gag them! Neither, as in the American Congress, do the arrangements seem perfect. A Senator has not his own Desk and Newspaper here; of Tobacco (much less of Pipes) there is not the slightest provision. Conversation itself must be transacted in a low tone, with continual interruption: only “pencil Notes” circulate freely; “in incredible numbers to the foot of the very tribune.”[206]—Such work is it, regenerating a Nation; perfecting one’s Theory of Irregular Verbs!

Of the King’s Court, for the present, there is almost nothing whatever to be said. Silent, deserted are these halls; Royalty languishes forsaken of its war-god and all its hopes, till once the Œil-de-Bœuf rally again. The sceptre is departed from King Louis; is gone over to the Salles des Menus, to the Paris Townhall, or one knows not whither.

Poor King; for French Kings also are men!

The Queen sits weeping in her inner apartments, surrounded by weak women: she is “at the height of unpopularity;” universally regarded as the evil genius of France. Her friends and familiar counsellors have all fled; and fled, surely, on the foolishest errand.

That France should see her Nobles resist the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men, was unhappy, not unexpected: but with the face and sense of pettish children? This was her peculiarity. They understood nothing; would understand nothing.

Volition, determination is not in this man: only innocence, indolence; dependence on all persons but himself, on all circumstances but the circumstances he were lord of. So troublous internally is our Versailles and its work.

So many millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with formulas; whose Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and hunger of it, was real enough! Heaven has at length sent an abundant harvest; but what profits it the poor man, when Earth with her formulas interposes? Industry, in these times of Insurrection, must needs lie dormant; capital, as usual, not circulating, but stagnating timorously in nooks. The poor man is short of work, is therefore short of money; nay even had he money, bread is not to be bought for it. Were it plotting of Aristocrats, plotting of d’Orléans; were it Brigands, preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver bow,—enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh;—being either “bribed;” or needing no bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent itself no longer so pressing. Neither, what is singular, do municipal enactments, “That along with so many measures of wheat you shall sell so many of rye,” and other the like, much mend the matter. Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked among the corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks.[211] Meal-mobs abound; growing into mobs of a still darker quality.

Starvation has been known among the French Commonalty before this; known and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775, presenting, in sallow faces, in wretchedness and raggedness, their Petition of Grievances; and, for answer, getting a brand-new Gallows forty feet high? Hunger and Darkness, through long years! For look back on that earlier Paris Riot, when a Great Personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in want of Blood-baths; and Mothers, in worn raiment, yet with living hearts under it, “filled the public places” with their wild Rachel-cries,—stilled also by the Gallows. Twenty years ago, the Friend of Men (preaching to the deaf) described the Limousin Peasants as wearing a pain-stricken (souffre-douleur) look, a look past complaint, “as if the oppression of the great were like the hail and the thunder, a thing irremediable, the ordinance of Nature.”[212] And now, if in some great hour, the shock of a falling Bastille should awaken you; and it were found to be the ordinance of Art merely; and remediable, reversible!

Or has the Reader forgotten that “flood of savages,” which, in sight of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at Mont d’Or? Lank-haired haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high sabots; in woollen jupes, with leather girdles studded with copper-nails! They rocked from foot to foot, and beat time with their elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was not long in beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men; of “clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.” It was the fixed prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that “such Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along too far, would end by the General Overturn, the Culbute Générale!”

No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;—and Time and Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it. Dull Drudgery, driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt of their pen, has been driven—into a Communion of Drudges! For now, moreover, there have come the strangest confused tidings; by Paris Journals with their paper wings; or still more portentous, where no Journals are,[213] by rumour and conjecture: Oppression not inevitable; a Bastille prostrate, and the Constitution fast getting ready! Which Constitution, if it be something and not nothing, what can it be but bread to eat?

The harvest is reaped and garnered; yet still we have no bread. Urged by despair and by hope, what can Drudgery do, but rise, as predicted, and produce the General Overturn?

Fancy, then, some Five full-grown Millions of such gaunt figures, with their haggard faces (figures hâves); in woollen jupes, with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots,—starting up to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper-Classes, after long unreviewed centuries, virtually this question: How have ye treated us; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames, over the nightly summer sky. This is the feeding and leading we have had of you: EMPTINESS,—of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart. Behold there is nothing in us; nothing but what Nature gives her wild children of the desert: Ferocity and Appetite; Strength grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by him? It is among the Mights of Man.

Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven’s Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.

To some it is a matter of wonder that the Seigneurs did not do something to help themselves; say, combine, and arm: for there were a “hundred and fifty thousand of them,” all violent enough. Unhappily, a hundred and fifty thousand, scattered over wide Provinces, divided by mutual ill-will, cannot combine. The highest Seigneurs, as we have seen, had already emigrated,—with a view of putting France to the blush. Neither are arms now the peculiar property of Seigneurs; but of every mortal who has ten shillings, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock.

The Seigneurs did what they could; enrolled in National Guards; fled, with shrieks, complaining to Heaven and Earth. One Seigneur, famed Memmay of Quincey, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his neighbourhood to a banquet; blew up his Château and them with gunpowder; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows whither.[218] Some half dozen years after, he came back; and demonstrated that it was by accident.

Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe bright Year defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of Châteaus, black bodies of gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in it; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, whither one knows not;—breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there tyrannous. National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose; Soldiers are inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may quarrel, danger that they may agree. Strasburg has seen riots: a Townhall torn to shreds, its archives scattered white on the winds; drunk soldiers embracing drunk citizens for three days, and Mayor Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced nigh to desperation.

But consider, while work itself is so scarce, how a man must not only realise money; but stand waiting (if his wife is too weak to wait and struggle) for half days in the Tail, till he get it changed for dear bad bread!

The Mayor of Saint-Denis, so black was his bread, has, by a dyspeptic populace, been hanged on the Lanterne there. National Guards protect the Paris Corn-Market: first ten suffice; then six hundred.[225] Busy are ye, Bailly, Brissot de Warville, Condorcet, and ye others!

The old Bastille Electors, after some ten days of psalmodying over their glorious victory, began to hear it asked, in a splenetic tone, Who put you there?

Unhappy friends of Freedom; consolidating a Revolution! They must sit at work there, their pavilion spread on very Chaos; between two hostile worlds, the Upper Court-world, the Nether Sansculottic one; and, beaten on by both, toil painfully, perilously,—doing, in sad literal earnest, “the impossible.”

Pamphleteering opens its abysmal throat wider and wider: never to close more. Our Philosophes, indeed, rather withdraw; after the manner of Marmontel, “retiring in disgust the first day.”

Camille Desmoulins has appointed himself Procureur-Général de la Lanterne, Attorney-General of the Lamp-iron; and pleads, not with atrocity, under an atrocious title; editing weekly his brilliant Revolutions of Paris and Brabant. Brilliant, we say: for if, in that thick murk of Journalism, with its dull blustering, with its fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius greet thee, be sure it is Camille’s. The thing that Camille teaches he, with his light finger, adorns: brightness plays, gentle, unexpected, amid horrible confusions; often is the word of Camille worth reading, when no other’s is. Questionable Camille, how thou glitterest with a fallen, rebellious, yet still semi-celestial light; as is the star-light on the brow of Lucifer! Son of the Morning, into what times and what lands, art thou fallen!

Unhappy mortals: such tugging and lugging, and throttling of one another, to divide, in some not intolerable way, the joint Felicity of man in this Earth; when the whole lot to be divided is such a “feast of shells!”—Diligent are the Three Hundred; none equals Scipio Americanus in dealing with mobs. But surely all these things bode ill for the consolidating of a Revolution.

No, Friends, this Revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Do not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events; all embodiments of Force that work in this miraculous Complex of Forces, named Universe,—go on growing, through their natural phases and developments, each according to its kind; reach their height, reach their visible decline; finally sink under, vanishing, and what we call die? They all grow; there is nothing but what grows, and shoots forth into its special expansion,—once give it leave to spring.

Observe too that each grows with a rapidity proportioned, in general, to the madness and unhealthiness there is in it: slow regular growth, though this also ends in death, is what we name health and sanity.

Seventy-two Châteaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone: this seems the centre of the conflagration; but it has spread over Dauphiné, Alsace, the Lyonnais; the whole South-East is in a blaze. All over the North, from Rouen to Metz, disorder is abroad: smugglers of salt go openly in armed bands: the barriers of towns are burnt; toll-gatherers, tax-gatherers, official persons put to flight. “It was thought,” says Young, “the people, from hunger, would revolt;” and we see they have done it.

Many things too, especially all diseased things, grow by shoots and fits.

Barriers and Customhouses burnt; the Tax-gatherer hunted, not hunting; his Majesty’s Exchequer all but empty. The remedy is a Loan of thirty millions; then, on still more enticing terms, a Loan of eighty millions: neither of which Loans, unhappily, will the Stockjobbers venture to lend. The Stockjobber has no country, except his own black pool of Agio.

And yet, in those days, for men that have a country, what a glow of patriotism burns in many a heart; penetrating inwards to the very purse! So early as the 7th of August, a Don Patriotique, “a Patriotic Gift of jewels to a considerable extent,” has been solemnly made by certain Parisian women; and solemnly accepted, with honourable mention. Whom forthwith all the world takes to imitating and emulating. Patriotic Gifts, always with some heroic eloquence, which the President must answer and the Assembly listen to, flow in from far and near: in such number that the honourable mention can only be performed in “lists published at stated epochs.” Each gives what he can: the very cordwainers have behaved munificently; one landed proprietor gives a forest; fashionable society gives its shoebuckles, takes cheerfully to shoe-ties. Unfortunate females give what they “have amassed in loving.”[227] The smell of all cash, as Vespasian thought, is good.

Beautiful, and yet inadequate!

They flung themselves before him; conjuring him with tears in their eyes not to suffer the Veto Absolu. They were in a frenzy: ‘Monsieur le Comte, you are the people’s father; you must save us; you must defend us against those villains who are bringing back Despotism. If the King get this Veto, what is the use of National Assembly? We are slaves, all is done.’”[228] Friends, if the sky fall, there will be catching of larks! Mirabeau, adds Dumont, was eminent on such occasions: he answered vaguely, with a Patrician imperturbability, and bound himself to nothing.

To the Parisian common man, meanwhile, one thing remains inconceivable: that now when the Bastille is down, and French Liberty restored, grain should continue so dear. Our Rights of Man are voted, Feudalism and all Tyranny abolished; yet behold we stand in queue! Is it Aristocrat forestallers; a Court still bent on intrigues? Something is rotten, somewhere.

O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating in tricolor ceremonies, and complimentary harangues! Of which latter, as Loustalot acridly calculates, “upwards of two thousand have been delivered within the last month, at the Townhall alone.”[229] And our mouths, unfilled with bread, are to be shut, under penalties?

Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation. Realities themselves, in this Paris, have grown unreal: preternatural. Phantasms once more stalk through the brain of hungry France. O ye laggards and dastards, cry shrill voices from the Queues, if ye had the hearts of men, ye would take your pikes and secondhand firelocks, and look into it; not leave your wives and daughters to be starved, murdered, and worse!—Peace, women! The heart of man is bitter and heavy; Patriotism, driven out by Patrollotism, knows not what to resolve on.

Dinners are defined as “the ultimate act of communion;” men that can have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine.

Suppose the customary loyal toasts drunk; the King’s health, the Queen’s with deafening vivats;—that of the Nation “omitted,” or even “rejected.” Suppose champagne flowing; with pot-valorous speech, with instrumental music; empty feathered heads growing ever the noisier, in their own emptiness, in each other’s noise! Her Majesty, who looks unusually sad tonight (his Majesty sitting dulled with the day’s hunting), is told that the sight of it would cheer her. Behold! She enters there, issuing from her State-rooms, like the Moon from the clouds, this fairest unhappy Queen of Hearts; royal Husband by her side, young Dauphin in her arms! She descends from the Boxes, amid splendour and acclaim; walks queen-like, round the Tables; gracefully escorted, gracefully nodding; her looks full of sorrow, yet of gratitude and daring, with the hope of France on her mother-bosom! And now, the band striking up, O Richard, O mon Roi, l’univers t’abandonne (O Richard, O my King, and world is all forsaking thee)—could man do other than rise to height of pity, of loyal valour?

A natural Repast, in ordinary times, a harmless one: now fatal, as that of Thyestes; as that of Job’s Sons, when a strong wind smote the four corners of their banquet-house! Poor ill-advised Marie-Antoinette; with a woman’s vehemence, not with a sovereign’s foresight! It was so natural, yet so unwise.

Captains of horse and foot go swashing with “enormous white cockades;” nay one Versailles National Captain had mounted the like, so witching were the words and glances; and laid aside his tricolor! Well may Major Lecointre shake his head with a look of severity; and speak audible resentful words. But now a swashbuckler, with enormous white cockade, overhearing the Major, invites him insolently, once and then again elsewhere, to recant; and failing that, to duel. Which latter feat Major Lecointre declares that he will not perform, not at least by any known laws of fence; that he nevertheless will, according to mere law of Nature, by dirk and blade, “exterminate” any “vile gladiator,” who may insult him or the Nation;—whereupon (for the Major is actually drawing his implement) “they are parted,” and no weasands slit.[231]

But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the National Cockade, must have had in the Salle des Menus; in the famishing Bakers’-queues at Paris! Nay such Thyestes Repasts, it would seem, continue. Flandre has given its Counter-Dinner to the Swiss and Hundred Swiss; then on Saturday there has been another.

Yes, here with us is famine; but yonder at Versailles is food; enough and to spare! Patriotism stands in queue, shivering hungerstruck, insulted by Patrollotism; while bloodyminded Aristocrats, heated with excess of high living, trample on the National Cockade. Can the atrocity be true? Nay, look: green uniforms faced with red; black cockades,—the colour of Night! Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation? For behold the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice a-day, with its Plaster-of-Paris meal, now comes only once.

Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish. Them Patrollotism itself will not protect. Nay, sharp-tempered “M. Tassin,” at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military rule; starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which is swashing ominous there; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of France. Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury.

Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is the female, irrepressible. The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal was not the only speaking one:—Men know not what the pantry is, when it grows empty, only house-mothers know. O women, wives of men that will only calculate and not act! Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by starvation and military onfall, is stronger. Patrollotism represses male Patriotism: but female Patriotism? Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets into the bosoms of women? Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under the female night-cap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will explode.

If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asked his countrymen: ‘But you, Gualches, what have you invented?’ they can now answer: The Art of Insurrection. It was an art needed in these last singular times: an art, for which the French nature, so full of vehemence, so free from depth, was perhaps of all others the fittest.

Let the Reader confess too that, taking one thing with another, perhaps few terrestrial Appearances are better worth considering than mobs. Your mob is a genuine outburst of Nature; issuing from, or communicating with, the deepest deep of Nature. When so much goes grinning and grimacing as a lifeless Formality, and under the stiff buckram no heart can be felt beating, here once more, if nowhere else, is a Sincerity and Reality. Shudder at it; or even shriek over it, if thou must; nevertheless consider it. Such a Complex of human Forces and Individualities hurled forth, in their transcendental mood, to act and react, on circumstances and on one another; to work out what it is in them to work. The thing they will do is known to no man; least of all to themselves. It is the inflammablest immeasurable Fire-work, generating, consuming itself. With what phases, to what extent, with what results it will burn off, Philosophy and Perspicacity conjecture in vain.

“Man,” as has been written, “is for ever interesting to man; nay properly there is nothing else interesting.” In which light also, may we not discern why most Battles have become so wearisome? Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible developement of human individuality or spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner. Battles ever since Homer’s time, when they were Fighting Mobs, have mostly ceased to be worth looking at, worth reading of, or remembering. How many wearisome bloody Battles does History strive to represent; or even, in a husky way, to sing:—and she would omit or carelessly slur-over this one Insurrection of Women?

In squalid garret, on Monday morning, Maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread. Maternity must forth to the streets, to the herb-markets and Bakers’—queues; meets there with hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exasperative. O we unhappy women! But, instead of Bakers’-queues, why not to Aristocrats’ palaces, the root of the matter? Allons! Let us assemble. To the Hôtel-de-Ville; to Versailles; to the Lanterne!

All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs, force out all women: the female Insurrectionary Force, according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal “Press of women.”

Fly back, thou shifty Maillard; seek the Bastille Company; and O return fast with it; above all, with thy own shifty head! For, behold, the Judiths can find no Mayor or Municipal; scarcely, in the topmost belfry, can they find poor Abbé Lefevre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want of a better, they suspend there; in the pale morning light; over the top of all Paris, which swims in one’s failing eyes:—a horrible end? Nay, the rope broke, as French ropes often did; or else an Amazon cut it.

And now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the Armoury; have seized guns and cannons, three money-bags, paper-heaps; torches flare: in few minutes, our brave Hôtel-de-Ville which dates from the Fourth Henry, will, with all that it holds, be in flames!

#The French Revolution #Carlyle

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didanawisgi · 7 years

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Life through the Eyes of a Mason

by V.W. Bob Walker

What you see in life depends upon where you stand, or what you bring to your point of vision. William Blake was standing on the shore one morning watching the sunrise. He turned to a friend who was standing nearby and asked "What do you see when you see the sun rise?" I see a big round golden coin, his friend replied. There was an embarrassed silence. Then the friend said to Blake, "What, Sir, do you see?" And Blake replied "I see an innumerable company of angels, crying Holy, Holy, Holy, the whole earth is filled with the Glory of God." What made the difference?

The difference was what each man brought to his point of vision.

A lumberman eyeing a stand of timber would probably estimate the average height and diameter of the trees, the number of logs to produce a thousand feet of lumber, and at the current market price would produce so much money. Joyce Kilmer would look at the same trees and say "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree; a tree that looks at God all day and lifts her leafy arms to pray... Poems are made by fools like me but only God can make a tree." What makes the difference? The difference was what each person brought to his point of vision.

Freemasonry creates a point of view, or a point of vision, or a scale of observations, that enables us to see things to which others are blind. The great artist Turner would not let a visitor go directly from the street into his gallery where his paintings were on exhibition. They first had to spend some time in a darkened room for he said that people could not see the beauty of his work with the glare of the street in their eyes. Freemasonry gives us a new perspective of life as well and takes from our eyes the glare of a harsh, materialistic world and enables us to see life from the viewpoint of Brotherhood. I have been a Mason for almost 33 years and I want you to reflect with me on some of the things I have learned as I have looked upon life through the eyes of a Mason.

PROLOGUE

There is a common notion that Masonry is a secret society which notion is based presumedly on secret rites used in its initiations and the signs and grips by which its members recognize each other. Thus, it has come to pass that the main aims of the order are assumed to be a secret policy or teaching, whereas its one great secret is that it has no secret. Its principles are published abroad in its writing; its purposes and laws are known as are the times and places of its meetings. It has come down from the dark days of persecution, when all the finer things in life sought the protection of seclusion. If it still adheres to secret rites it is not to hide the truth but the better to teach its principles more impressively, to train men in its proper service and to promote union and harmony with all mankind. Its signs and grips serve as a kind of universal language, and still more as a gracious cover for the practice of charity - making it easier to help a fellow man in dire plight without hurting his self respect.

The few that are attracted to Masonry by curiosity all remain to pray, finding themselves members of a great historic fellowship of the seekers and finders of God. It is old because it is true; had it been false it would have perished long ago. When all men practice its simple precepts the innocent secrets of Masonry will be laid bare, its mission accomplished and its labour done.

When I first moved through the door of the preparation room which opened up into Masonry,I learned one of life's greatest lessons, that as dependence is one of the strongest bonds of society, Masons were made dependent upon one another whereby they are afforded better opportunities to form their bonds of love and friendship.

Up to that moment I had heard much of those who professed to be self made men, and I felt that I had as good a claim to be regarded as such as any of them. Like the others, I wanted to be "beholden to no person." I was on my own and proud of it. Then I discovered in Freemasonry I was not going anywhere on my own. My boasted independence was torn to shreds as I felt a comforting hand under my arm to provide me the guidance without which I would have been completely lost.

My first experience in Freemasonry taught me the universal fact of dependence. All over the land there are men who are referred to as "self-made-men." Probably they had little when they started out in life but have since become more successful and quite wealthy. They claim to have done t all by themselves. Such a claim is absurd.

Economics teaches us that the factors which provide wealth are land, labour and capital. One day a member of the craft enabled me to see these factors of wealth in human terms. Land is not just the earth. It is all the physical resources of the planet: the fertility of the soil, the minerals in the ground, the fish in the sea, the air we breathe. Your self-made-man was absolutely dependent upon these things for his wealth, but he produced none of them.

The second factor in the provision of wealth is labour.

Labour is not just men who work with their hands nor the energy which they expend upon production. Labour is the society of man.

There is the group which produces what the self-made-man has to sell, and the group which buys what the self-made-man has caused to be made. He did not create these groups but without them he could not succeed.

The third factor in the provision of wealth is capital.

Capital is much more than that ordinarily identified as money. Capital is the brains and personality with which a man is born. Capital is the potential executive ability which is developed. Without capital there can be no wealth. Your self-made-man did not create this capital.

Take away from the self-made-man all those things which have been factors in the provision of his wealth and what have you left? Not an independent man, certainly; and not a self-made-man in any sense of the word. Without the things upon which he has to depend, not figuratively but literally, not relatively but absolutely, there would be no wealth.

Freemasonry makes a great contribution to us, and to the world, in its dramatization of the fundamental principle of dependence. No man is able to live a constructive life until he realizes the debt he owes to others. There is a story in the Bible, the book we refer to as the Great Light in Masonry, that is appropriate here. King David was beleaguered in the Cave of Adullam by the Philistines. From the mouth of the cave he could look across the valley to the town of Bethlehem where he was born, but at that time in the hands of the Philistines. A strange longing came over him and he said "O that one would give me to drink of the water of the well that is near the gate in Bethlehem." Three of his mighty men heard him, broke through the host of the Philistines, got the water and brought it to him. David must have taken the gourd of water eagerly and lifted it to his lips to satisfy his longing and thirst. Not so, his eyes fell upon the three mighty men, their faces streaked with sweat and blood, their clothes torn from the struggle with the Philistines, and he said "I cannot drink it for it is the blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives." And he poured the water out as a libation, as a drink offering to the Lord. For one brief moment in his life David was a complete human being.

The hallmark of the civilized man is the ability to see in terms of its human costs, that which he uses. This life of ours that we take for granted and in nonchalant fashion permit it to be absorbed in trivialities; this education that has greatened our abilities and enriched our lives; this liberty, which in a real sense, makes possible all that we enjoy in life; a religion that gives us faith and hope for time and eternity, were not created by ourselves alone. They are the work and sometimes the sweat, blood and tears and sacrifice of those who went in jeopardy of their lives; and should be used, not selfishly, but in the interest of building a world in which all men may seek and find fulfilment in life.

As I have seen life through the eyes of a Mason, I have been impressed with the necessity of emphasizing reality in life.

We seem to have an inborn aversion to facing life realistically. Yet nothing is needed more desperately. Governments legalize gambling and its iniquitous results. TV advertisements plead with their viewers to drive safely and then blithely urge them to partake of the commodity being advertised that would make it impossible for them to drive safely. We who are interested in a united church find it more tragic than amusing to hear ecumenically minded men plead for a united church only to insist on a theology that could only result in a divided church. There will be no united church until we are willing to face reality and to formulate a theology for a united church.

Freemasonry demonstrated that it is realistic when it places in our hands the working tools of the different degrees. Just as it is true that you cannot build a cathedral without working tools, so is it true that you cannot build a life without working tools, that is, you cannot build a life without fulfilling the conditions for the building of a life. There is no use wishing for ends if we are not ready to will the means to achieve those ends. It is impossible for me to believe that Russia and the United States have the brains to put a man in space, calculate his orbit and keep him in it; arrange for his return and bring him back within a few seconds of the calculated time but have not the brains to work out an international agreement that will assure peace and security for the world. Therefore we are compelled to conclude that we do not have the character power equal to the demands of the world in which we live, in other words, we do not have the working tools of character which we so greatly need.

As I have seen life through he eyes of a Mason, I have become more conscious of the fact and the importance of an obligation in life. I mention this subject in spite of the fact that we all know some people who are trying to find ways to rid themselves of their obligations. We are constantly looking for some way to quality our obligations, but Freemasonry teaches us that there is no qualifications of equivation, reservation or evasion.

There, at the centre of the Lodge, I learned that at the centre of life there is obligation. But the nerve centre of obligation is responsibility. Obligation is predicated upon a sense of responsibility. Our Masonic obligation is more than an engagement into which we enter with our Brethren in Freemasonry. It symbolizes the fact that every relationship we form compels some new obligation. Our relationship to Freemasonry brings to us a great privilege but with it a corresponding obligation, just as every cherished right, whether political, religious or social, carries with it a corresponding duty.

Our Masonic obligation demands that our lives be the pledge of our fidelity. We should never forget that in the figurative language we use there are no broken obligations without penalties. There is nothing strange or peculiar about this. There is not a law on the statute books of any country whose violation does not carry a penalty of some sort. Go back to 1914 when the treaty obligation of Germany, to respect the neutrality of Belgium, was denounced by Germany as a "scrap of paper". The whole world suffered the penalty of that broken obligation. World War II was the penalty of Hitler's broken obligations. All the difficulties we have had with Russia over East and West Berlin have been the result of broken obligations. We have all seen many heartbreaking situations. In every case the heartbreak has been the penalty of a broken obligation. It is not always the one who breaks the obligation who suffers the penalty, but some one pays the price. There is no principle that Freemasonry could drive more forcibly into the consciousness of the world than this, there can be no broken obligations without penalties.

These things that I have seen through the eyes of a Mason clearly illustrate that Freemasonry has a message for the world. It is the message that because of our interdependence we must learn to live together - recognize the inherent worth of all men, and the ability of every race to bring enrichment to the lives of all men. It is the message that we must emphasize reality in life, cleaving to the truth in scorn of consequence. It is the message that at the centre of life there is obligation, from which neither man nor nation can escape and in obedience to which, each shall serve the interest of all and all shall serve the interest of each.

Such are the ideals of Masonry and fidelity to all that is holy demands that we given ourselves to it, trusting the power of truth, the reality of love and the sovereign worth of character.

For only as we incarnate that ideal in actual life and activity does it become real, tangible and effective. God works for man through man and seldom, if at all, in any other way. He asks for our voices to speak His truth, for our hands to do His work here below - sweet voices and clean hands to make liberty and love prevail over injustice and hate. Not all of us can be learned or famous, but each of us can be loyal and true at heart, undefiled by evil, undaunted by error, faithful and helpful to our fellow souls. Life is a capacity for the highest things. Let us make it a pursuit of the highest - an eager, incessant search of truth that through us the Spirit of Masonry may grow and be glorified.

When, then, is a man a Mason? He is a Mason when he can look over the rivers, the hills and the far horizons with a profound sense of his own littleness in the vast scheme of things, and yet have faith and hope and courage - which is the root of every virtue. When he knows that down in his heart every man is as noble, as vile, as divine, as diabolic and lonely as himself and seeks to know, to forgive and to love his fellow-man. When he knows how to sympathize with men in their sorrows knowing that each man fights a hard battle against many odds. When he has learned how to make friends and to keep them and above all how to keep friends with himself. When he loves flowers, can hunt birds without a gun, and feels the thrill of an old forgotten joy at the sound of the laugher of a child. When he can be happy and high-minded amid the meaner drudgeries of life. When the glint of the sunlight on flowing waters subdue him like the thought of one much loved and one long dead. When no voice of distress reaches his ears in vain and no hand seeks his aid without response. When he finds good in every faith that helps any man lay hold of divine things and sees majestic meanings in life, whatever the name of the faith may be.

This paper was prepared by VW Bob Walker, Eastern Star Lodge #51 and was donated to the Board of Masonic Education, Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia, Feb. 10, 1990.

#Freemasonry #freemason #freemasons #philosophy #spirituality #Bob Walker #lost keys of freemasonry #wisdom

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brianestine · 5 years

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Paley's Natural Theology in Contrast to John Henry Newman

Paley is a natural theologian who died shortly after John Henry Newman was born. His beliefs regarding theology take a rather practical approach in which certain matters of faith are reduced to reason or logic. To him, the external evidence is a large portion for the basis of faith. Newman references him frequently, yet finds fault in his arguments, and is convinced that his proofs are either not sufficient or in some manner irrelevant in regards to most people’s reasons for believing. Rather Newman feels that faith involves a sort acceptance beyond man’s rational faculties that Paley does not acknowledge. For this reason, Newman sees a danger in Paley’s beliefs, for they are not only insufficient for faith, but also misleading. Paley’s practical understanding of faith and reason due to external evidence is in conflict with Newman’s understanding of faith and reason, which is based much less on the evidence for religion.

In order for one to properly understand the relationship between Newman and Paley, one must first understand that Newman does not entirely dismiss Paley as being irrelevant; Newman does admit that there is some usage in his external proofs for faith. Newman finds them to be “consoling.” In his Lecture, Ecclesiastical History No Prejudice to the Apostolicity of the Church he mentions that he has an assortment of shrewd reasoning. 1 That is to say while Newman does not feel that anyone is convinced based on Paley’s proofs nor should they be convinced on Paley’s proofs they do offer a certain bit of stability. A good example would be Paley’s watchmaker theory. If one finds a watch, it is presumable that someone must have made that watch. Paley insists that if a person also finds a rock, it is also presumable for the same reason that someone must have made it as well.2 One can recognize intelligence when he sees it, and to

suppose that something comes from nothing seems somewhat absurd. Newman, does not dismiss this, rather he only suggests that this is not the same as a belief in Christianity. While Paley’s watchmaker analogy is in some ways similar to Aquinas’s proof through causality, Newman still does not feel that this is the most significant matter regarding faith. These kinds of proofs in general are lacking what really inspires one to believe.

The reason there is a difference between Paley and Newman must be first understood in the context that Newman, unlike Paley, is not a natural theologian. Natural theology is known to observe arguments for Christianity from a priori reasoning. Rather than studying what revelation teaches directly( looking at the life of Jesus) natural theology observes the exterior evidences for Christianity using reason and ordinary experience, and then moves towards the interior doctrine. A good example would be looking towards the world around oneself for answers, such as, God exists, as opposed to observing the existence of God by looking at the Bible. The watchmaker analogy fits the same description since it does not depend on revelation or any sort testimony given by Christ. The general approach to natural theology seems to take observations that are distinctly secular regarding the natural world and apply them to Christianity. This is not the approach Newman generally seems to take.

Newman’s critique of Paley’s natural theology is ultimately defined in his approach towards its genus inductive theology. Newman notices that there are three different types of inductive theology including history, revelation, and nature, of which Paley’s natural theology is the one he views with the "greatest suspicion." 3 Inductive theology by its very definition, however, is limited for it moves from particular premises to general conclusions. He finds that inductive theology will find things that only explain partial aspects of Christianity, never regarding Christianity in its entirety. What inductive theology suggests is "a strong probability,

not to a certainty, or again, proving only some things out of the whole number which are true." 4 Newman does not consider this to be the best basis for faith for it depends on every single premise being proven before Christianity can be accepted on a whole. When inductive theology is the approach, one can find himself doubting nearly every aspect in the way Descartes doubted his senses. Newman rather argues that theology is deductive, and that physical science is, "just the reverse," viz. inductive. For one to actually accept Christianity on a basis of particular premises is faulty. There is not enough time for anyone in the world to accept Christianity in this manner for every single premise must first be proven.

Newman considers natural theology to be even more suspect than the other branches of inductive theology because he does not feel that it contributes anything to the Christian faith. While Newman clearly does not have any objection to physicists he does recognize their studies as being separate from that of theology. Natural theology connects theology with nature, but fails to truly prove Christian doctrine with the kind of certainty that it seems to suggest. Rather, Newman states that "it cannot tell us anything of Christianity at all."5 This is because the two have entirely separate ends. Newman noted that

The Physical Philosopher, contemplates the facts before him; the Theologian gives the reasons of these facts. The physicist treats of efficient causes; the Theologian of final. The physicist tells us of laws; the Theologian of the Author, Maintainer, and Controller of them; of their scope, of their suspension, if so be; of their beginning and their end. 6

Newman does not feel that science is a means in order to reach theological truths. For the physical scientist, "a vast and omnigeneous mass of information lies before the inquirer, all in a confused litter, and needing arrangement and analysis." 7 This is not the sort of material that can be used to find truth regarding the trinity. Elsewhere Newman states that: "The material world, indeed, is infinitely more wonderful than any human contrivance; but wonder is not religion, or we should be worshiping our railroads." 8 Here Newman expresses his main disappointment with natural theology

Because natural theology, views theology from outside a Christian revelation, Newman notes that it therefore must also not be original. It is all "pretty much what it was two thousand years ago." 9 Newman makes note when quoting Thomas Macaulay's words that according to Xenophon’s writings Socrates used the exact argument against Aristodemus, as that of Paley’s watchmaker. 10 While Paley may find answers that may suffice in response to certain claims made by atheist, Newman notices that these answers are nothing more than what the Ancient Greeks proposed. While the conclusions they possesses are powerful, good, and wise, they do not possess divine justice, mercy, and providence. Newman considers this approach to be borderline idolatry if it "occupies the mind." 11 Based on these attributes there is very little that would separate the Christian God from the pantheist God.12 Therefore natural theology by not being original is also not Christian, for in order for a doctrine to be Christian it must actually be dependent on some aspect of Christ’s life. Many of Paley’s arguments do not fit this description since they are not actually trying to prove the existence of a Christian reality. He feels the need to separate himself from revelation when arguing. Paley’s description of a watch cannot account for the countless miracles found in revelation. Likewise Paley’s other arguments can also not account for God’s gift of mercy to mankind. Newman does not insist it is heretical to just simply give credit to Paley’s watch theory, only he does not seem to really care if God’s existence has been revealed through the natural world in such a vague manner. While he acknowledges the

truth in Paley’s arguments, he does not allow for it to become the basis for anything distinctly Christian. From observing a rock, one may know there is a creator, but from what Newman seems to be insisting is that while one may know there is a creator, he does not actually know who that Creator is or anything about Him. To omit the later, and be completely content with accepting his existence is to miss the entire point of Christianity. Pagans who worshiped false idols were able to come to similar conclusions. If their conclusions had been enough, then God would have no need to send his Son. Only through Christ and revelation can a person really know who God truly is. What Newman says on behalf of Paley is that Paley almost seems bizarre. “Can alliance more ill-matched and strange be imagined than this, which sheer necessity has brought about, between pseudo-spiritualism and the evidential method?” 13

Newman’s disapproval of Paley’s mentality does not simply just apply to his approach with natural theology. Likewise, Newman also feels that there were certain things amongst faith that just simply cannot be proven. Paley, on the other hand, seems to try to prove everything regarding Christianity. Paley actually seems want to reduce faith to a syllogism. Paley feels that there is no religious love of truth where there is fear of error. For this reason, he insists on proving as many aspects of Christianity he can. Newman, on the contrary maintains that the fear of error is simply necessary for the genuine love of truth. 14 Rather he feels that faith should be an act of the will. While Paley insists that there cannot be love without doubt, Newman actually suggests that doubt is part of faith. Otherwise there is no merit to believing in a certain matter. When a man trusts his friend it is viewed as a virtuous action, or at least a sign of a good friendship. Nothing is different when regarding Christ as one’s friend. One must actually accept Him as their friend,

and trust in His mercy. Doubt is there in order for us to overcome its deceptive abilities. To Paley to believe without a concrete law like process for determining matters of faith is unethical for it is against one’s conscience. However, there does not seem to be a concrete law like process that can be applied to faith without having it lose its merits.

Because Paley is looking for proofs regarding faith, he feels there has to be a logical basis for everything. For this reason Paley feels entitled to Revelation based on his own observation that man needs it. While Paley knows there is a God it would only make sense that He would reveal Himself to mankind in some manner or another. 15 His arguments is that God would acknowledge man’s state of being and thus show himself obligingly. How can person be expected to believe in God if God does not even reveal Himself? This is Paley’s justification for revelation, saying he could expect no less from a divine being, but Newman, however, does not feel quite as deserving. Rather to him revelation is to be considered a gift. God could have left everyone in ignorance like the lives of many individuals. Newman feels that Paley was ungrateful in this regard. Who is man to say that he deserves revelation, or that it is only reasonable that God would do such? God’s ways have never been reasonable by man’s standards. Likewise, people simply sit a home judging evidence based on what they hear making no effort to go and find out the truth for themselves. They make judgments regardless of their own laziness and constantly demand more evidence. What God’s Revelation is is a gift at man’s own convenience. People should not view it as something that’s just simply evidence; rather it is God making Himself known to us. For people not to appreciate this is obscene. 16

Within revelation Newman also found fault in the way that Paley dismissed certain important aspects of the Christian faith. Newman most dominantly did not think that Paley rested

enough of his proofs based on the life of Christ itself. Newman states in his Discussions and Arguments “Paley, for instance—show their sense of this difficulty when they place the argument drawn from the Lord's character only among the auxiliary Evidences of Christianity.” 17 To Newman the way in which Christ lived was much more significant than that of the external evidence that Paley dealt with. The way in which a man lives his life may be the best sign that what he says is correct. Charismatic leaders are often followed for exactly this reason. What they state is just easier to believe, and when you have a character that is as morally upright as Christ was, very little can be said against believing what he states. 18 His wisdom speaks for itself. The arguments made by Paley, Newman could only view as a transitional views. Real faith is found in Christ himself. Paley’s external evidences did not give a man any real reason to believe in Christ. Newman noted that most men agree with the reasoning, however they disagree with the premises. 19

When observing Revelation, Newman and Paley would disagree on their stance regarding miracles, though they do agree with the basic evidence for miracles. A miracle according to Newman is an event that is inconsistent with the natural order or constitution of nature. Paley would agree upon this for he stated that to expect a miracle, “that it should succeed upon a repetition, is to expect that which would make it cease to be a miracle, which is contrary to its nature as such, and would totally destroy the use and purpose for which it was wrought.” 20 A miracle must actually be distinct. Newman did insist that miracles are a matter of evidence. People rely on the evidence for miracles in the same way people rely on the evidence for any

other historical account since they depend on a testimony. Due to the extraordinary nature of miracles a fuller investigation is needed, but the basic principal for miracles is testimony. In the description given in Newman’s sermon on Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind21 Paley mentions that matters of faith such as miracles just merely have to be considered not violently improbable in order to be believed. This is where Newman and Paley would differ most strongly, for a miracle can not be judged in the same manner as any other occurrence. Newman would disagree with Paley for he does not think that the evidence can be believed in such a manner. Paley actually mentions judging miracles in the manner in which one would judge a court case or some other matter that was up for debate. While Newman does mention that one should judge a miracle as either true or false based on the testimony, he sees a huge problem in supposing that it could convince someone already held against them. Newman agreed with the statement “miracles are not wrought to convince Atheists,” while Paley seemed to think the exact opposite. In response to Paley he stated

This acute and ingenious writer here asks leave to do only what the Utilitarian writer mentioned in a former place demands should be done, namely, to bring his case (as it were) into court; as if trusting to the strength of his evidence, dispensing with moral and religious considerations on one side or the other, and arguing from the mere phenomena of the human mind, that is, the inducements, motives, and habits according to which man acts. I will not say more of such a procedure than that it seems to me dangerous. 22

Newman notices that there is a rather subjective tone to Paley’s argument. While Paley claims that a court would be an objective place to view a miracle, the exact opposite would occur. In the case of a court house the evidence for miracles would be placed in the hands of a Judge and Jury to decide whether or not it is legitimate. This approach rather only subjects miracles to the same treatment as anything else in a way that actually degrades what they are. Some may be

persuaded while others would dismiss it given the exact same evidence. 23Likewise Paley would also seem to argue that miracles are evidence for religion in so far as that when they occur that atheist should be converted based on testimony. It seems while Paley and Newman may both agree that a miracle should be believed on the basis of testimony the result of such a miracle should be convincing to two different types of people. Neither argues in the way Hume would since Paley states that in order for a Miracle to be consistent it would cease to be a miracle. Newman would insist that miracles are to encourage the faithful, while Paley would seem to insist that miracles are to convince the atheist.

Newman notes that while Paley uses miracles to supposedly argue on behalf of faith, the early apostles never used such in order to persuade anyone. 24 Paley was aware of the fact the early apostles did not use such arguments to try to convince people, yet he did not truly understand why. Paley felt that since the minds of people in times of apostles were so indulged in expressions of magic, it must not have been particularly convincing, therefore they chose not to do such on practical grounds. After all, there were other magicians at the time. Therefore Paley presumed they must have used other methods, not because they were superior, but more appropriate for the time period.

It was their lot to contend with notions of magical agency, against which the mere production of the facts was not sufficient for the convincing of their adversaries; I do not know whether they themselves thought it quite decisive of the controversy. 25

Newman however insisted that the apostles did not try to persuade people through argument. The Apostles were not void of reason, yet the tried to persuade people through their hearts. 26 They used arguments, but on behalf of something that was beyond argument. They appealed to miracles, as signs of divine power, but the method of Paley, as Paley, Newman, and the Bible testifies was not the method on

the Apostles. 27 Rather than accept that his approach was perhaps inappropriate, Paley just simply acknowledges that the Apostles did not use these particular arguments and continues to insist that Miracles are proofs that must be used.

But since it is proved, I conceive with certainty, that the sparingness with which they appealed to miracles was owing neither to their ignorance nor their doubt of the facts, it is at any rate an objection, not to the truth of the history, but to the judgment of its defenders. 28

Newman noted fault with this for the early church leaders in his mind as an Anglican also did not need a pope or plenty of the other arguments placed before them.

One point in which Paley and Newman seem to mostly agree upon however is the appeal to history. Here Paley did not act as natural theologian, but just merely as an inductive theologian. While Newman was critical of all inductive theology he agreed with Paley to an extent on this matter. Newman agrees with Paley in regards to testimony and notes his difficulty in regards to a need to prove testimony. How can a person assert that what Christ says is true, if he cannot even assert that Gospels are a reliable source? Here Paley notes that if a person omits one, there are still three other gospels and plenty of epistles that affirm the same thing. Likewise, Newman also insists that because there are no other claims regarding different events in Christ’s life, the testimony seems to be in favor of the accounts given by Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. The main argument made was that there are no conflicting testimonies to the ones given in which we are to believe the ones handed down. The various authors of the Bible are not inconsistent in their depiction of Christ like Xenophanes and Plato’s depiction of Socrates. This seems logical as even those that were not Christian, such as Piley, seemed to confirm exactly what Christianity taught by their statements. 29 Paley affirms the exact idental notices of the affair, which are found in heathen writers, so far as they do go, go along with us."30

There does however appear to be a difference in the tone of Newman’s arguments for faith then Paley’s. This is because Newman views Christianity before he views individual testimonies. While Paley does not seem to contrast with Newman’s opinion, as an inductive theologian, Paley seems to approach each individual testimony and use them to support the Bible on a whole. When prophets spoke they revealed new information but it was not as though their revelation could make sense without context. “Admiration of its singular simplicity and directness, both as to object and work. Such of course ought to be its character, if it was to be the fulfillment of the ancient, long-expected promise; and such it was, as our Lord proclaimed it.” This seems to be what Paley does, while Newman tries to consider history on a whole.31

Newman observing Paley decades later feels that Paley was not really a Christian Apologist. While Newman does acknowledge what Paley proves, he finds the results inconclusive. There is little no use proving that God exists if God is merely the God pantheism or deism. Unfortunately this was Paley’s arguments from Natural Theology. In regards to historical and revelation, Newman simple thought that Paley as Inductive Theologian viewed it backwards. Rather than trying to Prove Christianity in several pieces, then come to the conclusion that Christianity is real, one must first accept that Christianity is real and argue for it from that perspective. Paley omits what Newman considers to be most crucial in regards to the testimony of Christianity. This would matters such as the incredibly virtuous lie of Christ or the sheer amazement of Revelation. While Newman’s argument is very intelligent, it can be reduced to a very humble, unscientific, simple expression of belief.

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hallsp · 7 years

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Now in earlier times the world’s history had consisted, so to speak, of a series of unrelated episodes, the origins and results of each being as widely separated as their localities, but from this point onwards history becomes an organic whole: the affairs of Italy and Africa are connected with those of Asia and of Greece, and all events bear a relationship and contribute to a single end.

This was Polybius, writing 150 years before Christ, on the rise of Rome from the fertilising ashes of previous civilisations. The history of the world would continue to converge inexorably for the next two millenia and more.

The eighteenth-century was witness to the zenith of the Enlightenment in England, the hohepunkt of the Aufklarung in Germany, and the culmine of the Illuminismo in Italy, but Paris, the city of Lights, was real the centre of the Enlightenment.

In France, the eighteenth-century became known as le siecle des lumieres, the century of lights, the peak of enlightenment luminescence. One need only cite Diderot’s Encyclopedie, Voltaire’s Dictionnaire Philosophique, Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social ou Principes du Droit Politique, or Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Lois. This was centred on France, of course, but the enlightenment tradition belongs to us all.

It began, of course, in Golden Age Greece, before passing to the Arabs and Persians, then to Renaissance Italy, and to wider Europe, but it includes major contributions from China, India, and elsewhere. The enlightenment is not a Western phenomenon. It is the greatest achievement of all mankind.

And even if it wasn’t a pan-human contribution, it shouldn’t matter a jot. Some universal principles of good conduct were bound to be discovered by some tribes ahead of others, but they apply to us all nevertheless. My own little tribe, the Irish, made only a modest contribution to the preservation of knowledge during the Dark Ages, but I adopt the precepts of the enlightenment without hesitation.

It’s important to remind ourselves of this fact in the face of opposition from fanatics in the Muslim world, who view the enlightenment as foreign and depraved.

It’s worth recalling the contributions of Voltaire:

We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and cruel…But when an ardent man of strong imagination addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, “The eye of God is at this moment upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the battles of the Lord”— and they rush to the fight.

Here he was writing on the subject of fanaticism is his celebrated Dictionnaire Philosophique, published in 1764.

Voltaire had much more to say about fanaticism, much of it quite relevant today:

Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne’s “Old Man of the Mountain,” who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them.

All religions, so the great man says, have been susceptible to fanaticism. All except those of China. However, religious extremism is not enough on its own:

But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and supported by the spirit of the times.

Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper time.

I went to the Panthéon, formerly a Church, now a monument to Human achievement: AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE. To Great Men, the Grateful Homeland.

On Voltaire’s tomb it reads: Il combattit les athées et les fanatiques, il inspira la tolérance, il réclama les droits de l’homme contre la servitude de la féodalité.

Or, in English: He fought atheists and fanatics, he inspired tolerance, he demanded human rights against the servitude of feudalism.

Naturally he was wrong about atheism, even twisting the words of the great Jean Meslier to make him appear to be a deist, but then:- you can’t be right about everything. He was certainly right about religious fanaticism, though. And he was incisive enough to get to the heart of the matter:

A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick. “But, gentlemen,” modestly observes a stranger passing by, “does the giant you are disputing about really exist?” “What a horrible doubt!” all the disputants cry out together. “What blasphemy! What absurdity!” A short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little finger.

#paris

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ophelia-thinks · 1 year

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survival lessons from farscape: 1) anything you say can and will be used against you; 2) someone wants to cut a hole in you and fuck you through it, buddy; 3) love will always betray and corrupt you, and it's the only thing worth having in the entire world; 4) the secret at the heart of the universe is a torture chamber, but inside of that it's a field of flowers, and inside of that it's a bomb.

#'you ruined my life'#flip a coin!#mankind's greatest contribution to the absurd

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theattainer · 7 years

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July 20, 1969: The Eagle Has Landed

http://img.youtube.com/vi/p7c-PbfnQuw/0.jpg

http://theattainer.com/july-20-1969-the-eagle-has-landed/

July 20, 1969: The Eagle Has Landed

July 20, 1969 marks the greatest day in human history.

On that day, a lone figure descended a small ladder and stepped onto a world never before touched by a human being.

That man was Neil Armstrong.

The world he touched was the Moon.

For eons, since they could bend their necks and wonder at the lights that shined at night, humans have held the Moon in awe. Tales were told. Legends were formed. The human mind imagined and speculated and, yes, even feared.

What was it? From where did it come? Of what was it made? Was there anybody or anything there?

The questions were endless.

The answers were limited.

The fascination grew.

Then, in Houston, Texas in 1962, President John F. Kennedy threw down the gauntlet.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

The decision was made.

The challenge was accepted.

The goal was set.

We would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to his earthly home. This would be done because it would marshall the best within us.

Because it was hard.

Because it was a seemingly insurmountable task.

It wasn’t merely crazy. It was absurd.

Yet, less than ten years later, video images were transmitted from a craft that had recently alit upon a barren landscape 238,900 miles from our blue Earth. The grey images showed an almost ghostly figure slowly exit the safety of his vehicle.

For the first time in history, a man would truly become a spaceman.

“One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

Even forty years later those words continue to stir the soul. They evince the hopes and feelings and desires of every person about the human experience, how even the highest of peaks can be climbed and attained.

One small step.

One giant leap.

With every small step we as individuals take, we move not only ourselves forward, we also move each other. The poet John Donne wrote

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.

The actions we take, the goals we attain, the peaks we climb and surpass, they are all done by individuals — and we all benefit from them.

The men and women, the thousands of individuals who worked on the Apollo program, each contributed his or her best to make the dreams of our furthest ancestors manifest into reality.

From the wicked mind of Wehner von Braun who designed the rocket that would propel the three astronauts beyond Earth’s grasp …

… to the chain-smoking technicians who manned the consoles in Houston …

… to the workmen who lathed each part of the ship and its components …

… each delivered the best they had.

And each small part composed a giant whole.

A whole that would mark mankind’s greatest triumph.

What are your goals and dreams and aspirations?

What is the best that you have to offer?

Whatever they are, reach for them. As those three men — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins — escaped the bounds of Earth and did what many thought impossible, you too can achieve your dreams.

On this July 20th, take a few moments to watch a video of the historic Moon landing. Let it sink in that humans did this.

From thoughts and ideas …

… to actions and deeds …

… to steps and giant leaps.

Be inspired.

Know that whatever it is, so long as you set your mind to it and apply yourself, you can achieve it.

—

You will love these books because they would weigh less on the Moon.

What do you think?

#All #Neat-o

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wisdomrays · 4 years

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TAFAKKUR: Part 108

The Importance of Breast-Feeding

Mothers shall suckle children for two whole years, for those who desire to complete the suckling. It is for the father to provide for them and clothe them honourably. No soul is charged save to its capacity: no woman should suffer because of her child, nor any man because of his. The same responsibilities are incumbent on the heir. But if (the couple) decide by mutual consent to wean (the child), there is no blame on them. And if you desire to seek nursing for your children (by hiring a foster mother), there is no blame on you provided you pay her fairly. Fear God, and know that God sees everything you do (Qur’an, 2.205).

In what follows, I shall try to answer, from a scientific standpoint, these three questions:

1) What does mother’s milk impart to the baby?

2)What should be the frequency and duration of nursing?

3) What effect does nursing have on the mother?

1- The nature of mother’s milk

2- Intervals and duration of breast feeding

Regarding the duration of breast-feeding, modem medicine has imposed a wholly arbitrary period, namely nine months. But the basic logic of suckling is based on two facts:

Another miracle of the Qur’an’s wisdom is that it specified this period, although, before Islam, the practice in the societies in the Middle East was to breast-feed for four to five years.

3-The benefits for the mother

a) The healthy functioning of the mammary glands:

b) Biological regeneration occurring in the mother’s body during nursing: