(Y1 W43) Beware silver bullets and your own conscience

Okay, as promised I'm posting earlier this week.  So be of good cheer.  I hope you're having as happy a time reading as I am.  Personally, I find the variety of reading each week to be a joy in itself. 

The Emperor Jones - Eugene O'Neill: Setting is a Caribbean island "dictatorship" run by former U.S. prisoner Brutus Jones - "Emperor" Jones. His black "subjects" have run off into the hills (a gesture of rebellion) and Jones is informed of it by white cockney trader, Smithers. The two dialog about the thugish situation of the island, Jones' "rule", and how he came to have it through an earlier rebellion. Jones makes his escape through the woods for the island's far shore, relying on his preplanned escape path and gun and silver bullet - both a luck charm and the "one thing" that can kill him. He enters the imposing forest at dusk, can't find his buried food cans and starts seeing haunting visions: a man he killed, a prison chain gang forcing him to work, an old-time slave auctioneer trying to sell him. He disperses them with shots of his lead bullets while his subjects' distant beating drum gets louder and louder. His last vision is a witch doctor who calls up the crocodile and motions for Jones to serve as its sacrifice. Jones fires his last bullet (silver one) at it. Both disappear images. The next morning, the rebels walk just inside the woods and shoot Jones dead with silver bullets of their own that they made the previous night as they cast spells. This was probably one of the strangest things we've read so far. It read less like a story than a philosophical treatise put to fictional events. Yet, it was a great display of the evil and stubbornness man is capable of, and how when pushed, an evil man is willing to use any means to meet his own ends, while still being undone in the end by his own guilt. On another note, it was a great display of written accents.

A Plea for Captain John Brown - Henry David Thoreau: Followup statement on behalf of John Brown after his failed attempt to start a slave uprising at Harper's Ferry in 1859. Thoreau knows John Brown only a little, but wants to defend him against the condemning opinions of newspapers. He had courage greater than a soldier - he was willing to face his own country when she was wrong. He had so few compatriots because he had such high standards. His plan was a good one, but people criticized it because it failed, wouldn't have if it succeeded. He is the seed of heroism; "when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up". So many who call themselves Christian are lazy and cowardly, unlike him. Newspapers omitted any noble statements about him and replaced them with insults. Unjust government shows itself to be mere "brute force": "a government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!" Brown teaches us how to die because he teaches us how to live. His "insanity" so-called was more like a "spark of divinity". He pleads not for Brown's life, but his character..."so it becomes your cause wholly". Thoreau seems to display the full vent of a passion for justice that we can feel at various times in life, but it seems unlivable in reality. Lincoln distanced himself from Brown, unapologetically. But was Brown at least a kind of inspiration for men like Lincoln, as Thoreau suggested he could be? Were Brown and Thoreau wrong? Did Lincoln only distance himself from them for because he thought the political avenue was the only way to lasting change on the issue of slavery?

Letter to Herodotus - Epicurus: Writing to friend (no, not that Herodotus) and giving a basic distilling of his overall system. We must "keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations". The universe is an external, boundless "closed box" composed of only "atoms" and space, outside of which is nothing. Basic bodies are indivisible, can form limitless numbers of compounds but are themselves limited in number. They're always moving and form infinite worlds like ours. "Idols" (images) are emitted from them, stored as memories that can be confused together in people's minds causing error. Space is infinite. The soul is the material force driving the body. The heavens are not controlled or ordained by any gods. Science facts lead to our happiness because they dispel fear of the natural world. Man's main problem is believing in gods that are malevolent towards us, "but peace of mind is being delivered from all this." Learn and memorize these facts and they'll do you good. Boy, now I'm even less impressed with Lucretius. I knew he was drawing on Epicurus for his source material, but I didn't know he was just copying him jot and tittle like that. On a whole, it does seem that his (Epicurus') "atomistic"/naturalistic view of the world is a kind of logical solution to the problems presented by ancient Greco-Roman paganism in the way that Buddhism is the solution to the problems of Hinduism. That is, it makes most sense as a reaction, and not so much as a stand-alone system. Just an observation.

Federalist Papers #66 - Hamilton: Review of objections against the Senate performing impeachments. 1) It "confounds legislative and judiciary authorities in the same body." But separation of powers maxim is compatible with special case intermixing, and necessary for securing branches against each other. 2) "It contributes to an undue accumulation of power in that body". Vague objection. House is a proper counterweight for it anyway. 3) They would be too lenient on those they've helped appoint. But, president chooses, they only ratify. 4) They wouldn't condemn themselves in cases of ruinous treaties they helped create. Security against this "is to be sought for in the numbers and characters of those who are to make them," it being a joint venture with the executive. It's "essential to the freedom and to the necessary independence of the deliberations of the body that the members of it be exempt from punishment for acts done in a collective capacity." I wonder about the point on collective guilt. Should there be no recourse to address the collective guilt of a political body like the Senate no matter how egregious the consequences of their actions?

An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals - William Harvey, Intro-Ch. V: Flowery introduction to King Charles I, then a more sober intro to his colleagues at the Royal College of Physicians. He starts by discussing previous opinions on the function of the heart. People think, with Galen, that the pulse and respiration have the same object, but this is wrong since one is related to the heart, the other to the lungs. Blood alone is carried in the arteries. I) He, like others, once thought only God could comprehend the issue, but then his experiments suggested an answer. II) Heart moves at one time and is still at another. This is an aid to pushing blood through when it contracts. III) All arteries of body pulsate via the contraction of the left ventricle. IV) Four motions involved: two auricles moving together, two ventricles doing the same afterwards. The first moves the blood into the ventricles. It's the auricles that are "first to live, last to die". V) After blood exits auricles, it enters ventricles. Contraction of right ventricle pushes blood into the lungs, left pushes blood into the aorta and the rest of the body - all performed harmoniously. Pulse is pushing of blood from the heart. The great point of confusion here is the fact that the heart and lungs are connected. Masterful experimental/observational reasoning, especially given their misunderstanding of how the air in the lungs could be connected with the blood (i.e. having no concept of modern chemical theory yet). It makes one wonder what such a person could do with more robust methods/background knowledge to draw from. Then again, it's folks like this that brought such advances around in the first place!

On the Nature of Things - Lucretius, Book V: He wants now to show the mortality of the world. Sun, moon, stars, etc. aren't divine bodies. Again, the world wasn't designed because it's not perfect. Both the heavens and the earth had a beginning and will have an end. Earth must have had a recent beginning, the brief history of man shows this. It came about by first-beginnings (particles) massing together. Streams of air cause the motions of the stars in the sky. Things in the sky are actually the size they appear to be. After the earth came plants, animals, then humans. Man used to be much stronger in constitution, but became weaker because of civilization. Before, we were like wild beasts and spoke language like animal sounds that later became more advanced. Fire first came from lightening. Men settled and made common laws because "grew sick of a life of brute force". We imagined the gods because the world was a scary place. Metals discovered, animals tamed. Clothing, farming, music learned from imitating nature. When better things came along, the earlier tools were cast aside. Development was inevitable for man. It's actually pretty impressive that he came up with an early version of the nebular hypothesis. It's ironic though that he's the naturalist defending a young earth against the supernaturalists that believed in an old earth. The progressivism of man seems to be spot on with current naturalism, though. I just had a random thought: this is a poem and all poems were sung (supposedly). It kind of cracks me up imagining Lucretius up on some stage stringing a harp and singing all this.


Here's this week's readings:

1. “The Lifted Veil” by George Eliot  (GGB Vol. 3, pp. 157-193)
2. “Pericles” by Plutarch (GBWW Vol. 13, pp. 121-141)
3. “A Letter Concerning Toleration” by John Locke (GBWW Vol. 33, pp. 1-22)
4. Federalist #67-69 (GBWW Vol. 40, pp. 203-210)
5. An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals by William Harvey, Chapters VI-XI (GBWW Vol. 26, pp. 280-292)
6. The Way Things Are (or On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius, Book VI (GBWW Vol. 11, pp. 77-91)