Morning Read: Common Sense
¶ In another densely rich letter, Lord Chesterfield writes about good Latin, just warfare, and, not inaptly, letters. The just-warfare issue comes up when Chesterfield objects to a line in Philip Stanhope’s Latin essay that advocates the use of poisons in dealing with intractable enemies. Then he enlarges on the importance of relying on one’s own good sense to tell right from wrong.
Pray let no quibbles of Lawyers, no refinements of Casuists, break into the plain notions of right and wrong; which every man’s right reason, and plain common sense, suggest to him. To do as you would be done by, is the plain, sure and undisputed rule of morality and justice. Stick to that; and be convinced, that whatever breaks into it, in any degree, however speciously it may be turned, and however puzzling it may be to answer it, is, notwithstanding, false in itself, unjust, and criminal.
(How nice it would be to have Chesterfield’s excoriation of the Bush régime.)
It’s bracing to read, a few paragraphs later, Chesterfield’s opinion of Bishop Berkeley’s skepticism. For us, Berkeley is a philosopher from the early Enlightenment. Chesterfield makes him a contemporary.
His arguments are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am so far from being convinced by them, that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that matter, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible.
Chesterfield’s exhortation about letter-writing is more than a little heart-breaking for me. How many times have I conveyed similar sentiments to correspondents:
When you write to me, suppose yourself conversing freely with me, by the fireside. In that case, you would naturally mention the incidents of the day; as where you had been, whom you had seen, what you thought of them, etc. Do this in your letters: acquaint me sometimes with your studies, sometimes with your diversions; tell me of any new persons and characters that you meet with in company, and add your own observations upon them; in short, let me see more of You in your letters.
This is hard enough for friends, but impossible, I should think, for most children. In any case, Chesterfield makes the amateur writer’s besetting mistake: unlike the professional, who preens himself upon the distinctiveness bestowed by his skills with a pen, the amateur completely forgets how hard it is to learn to write well, and supposes that inertia alone explains his friends’ “laconic” communications.
¶ In Moby-Dick, a lecture on rope, for which I am none the wiser.
… but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope’s durability or strenggth, however much it may give in compactness or gloss.
Good to know.
¶ Cervantes makes me laugh out loud. When Don Quixote instructs him to prepare to resume his campaign to restore the Queen of Micomicón to her throne, Sancho shrugs and gurgles something about “wickedness in the village.” Pressed to explain, he blurts out,
“It’s just that I’m absolutely certain and positive that this lady who says she’s the queen of the great kingdom of Micomicón is no more a queen than my mother, because if she was who she says she is, she wouldn’t go around hugging and kissing one of the men here at the inn, beyind ever door and every chance she gets.”
Dorotea turned bright red at Sancho’s words, because it was true that her husband, Don Fernando, had, on occasion, taken with his lips part of the prize his love had won, which Sancho had witnessed, and such boldness had seemed to him more appropriate to a courtesan than to the queen of so great a kingdom…
Again, a heuristic about opera. The kings and queens, heroes and damsels in opera do not behave altogether like ladies and gentlemen, and we wouldn’t be able to sit through operas if they did. An early audience for opera would have had to learn not to react to hugs and kisses as Sancho does, by mistaking the figures on the stage for strumpets and libertines (except where indicated).
¶ In Squillions, Coward tours Australia; his letters home are enthusiastic both about Australians, who are neither “common nor social,” and about his own efforts at raising war spirit (and filling war coffers). To Duff Cooper, he writes,
When I have done that, this particular job will be finished and some other plans will have to be made. If it really turns out to have been successful, perhaps you would help over this. As I told you in my last letter, I have been naturally upset about some of the dirty cracks in the English press about my activities, and I would like in the Spring to come back and deal with some of this.
But “this” had already dealt with him, as he would discover when he got home.
¶ In La Rochefoucauld, a much less blasphemous expression of the idea that “God helps those who help themselves.”
Il n’y a point d’accidents si malheureux dont les habiles gens ne tirent quelque avantage, ni de si heureux que les imprudents ne puissent tourner à leur préjudice.
There are no events so adverse that clever people can’t draw some advantage from them, nor any so propitious that fools cannot put them to their own disadvantage.