Tag: wisdom

A Pithy Quote from Spinoza … and a Deep Rabbit Hole.

Always being suspicious of pithy quotes attributed to famous dead people when the quotes do not cite a source, I had occasion to go down a rabbit hole this afternoon. I was underground for several hours.

Yesterday, I received two issues of The New York Review of Books in the post. The first issue I reviewed was delightful and quickly devoured. It also had a pithy quote at the end of the review entitled Piety & Power (written by David A. Bell). The book under review was about the life of the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, while the quote at issue was attributed to Spinoza. The quote was recorded at the very end of the review as: “Smile not, lament not, nor condemn, but understand.“

Finding the quote intriguing, I marked it for research, which I conducted today. I found multiple variations on the quote but no citation as to its source online. Thus, I became more creative in my online research, and searched for fragments of the quote, and found a variation of the quote which departed more significantly from the usual versions, which had a citation to Spinoza’s Tractatus Politicus, an unfinished work exploring forms of government. He was writing the work in the year of his death. With that citation I was able to locate a copy of the manuscript, in Latin, and translate the entire text, which allowed me to see a most wonderful, robust quote in context, which is most certainly applicable to the dispassionate study of politics (the subject of the manuscript) as well as history.

I was also able to later find, on the Hathitrust.org website, an English translation from the 19th century, with which I will later compare the entirety of my translation. But overall, the comparisons I have made thus far show that my translation is able and where clunky, the older translation is also clunky — thus, the original Latin was clunky in places.

In any event, here is the original source for the quote above – which shows how transmuted the original words have become in the interest of pithy.

“Therefore, when I applied my mind to politics, I intended to demonstrate or deduce only those things which best agree with practice, are certain and indubitable, and to inquire into matters pertaining to this science with the same freedom of mind as we are accustomed to investigate mathematical subjects, but I diligently endeavored not to ridicule, mourn, nor detest human actions, but rather sought to understand them; and so I contemplated human emotions such as love, hatred, anger, envy, glory, mercy, and other movements of the mind, not as vices of human nature, but as properties which belong to it in such a way that they pertain to its nature as the movements of the air pertain to it, such as heat, cold, storms, thunder, and other such things which, although inconvenient, are necessary and have certain causes by which we try to understand their nature, and the mind rejoices equally in the true contemplation of knowing these things which are pleasing to the senses.” [Chapter I, IV]

The Virtue of Silence

“He who does not know how to be silent also does not know how to speak”

 Qui nescit tacere, nescit et loqui.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Guidance for Life from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1857)

In an earlier post, I described how, while in junior high school I had written on a piece of paper those quotes which had mightily impressed me and, after folding that paper multiple times, placed it in my wallet and carried it with me faithfully for many years. The quote above, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, is one of the quotes that I scratched in my barely legible adolescent handwriting onto that piece of paper. Those who had the misfortune to work with me over the years, know well that I took the import of that quote to heart.

In truth, as I oft explained to my colleagues, it was my duty, when articulating an idea or position, to defend it with vigorous rationality until reason and evidence had persuaded me of the error of my position. It was also my duty, I advised, to listen carefully to the construct of their opposing arguments, and to present their arguments to myself even more ably than they had, if I were able, so as to ensure the integrity of my position. But, until I was ultimately persuaded of the error of my position, there would be no hint that I was considering the abandonment of my position and I continued to defend it in “hard words.”

My approach to case discussions, in conformity with the quote above, sometimes resulted in what would appear to colleagues as a sudden and inexplicable change in my position on cases: suddenly I was in agreement with them whereas I appeared solidly opposed the day before and unpersuaded by all arguments and reason. Friends, hard words do not mean one is deaf to reason, persuasion, and commitment to duty (e.g., to search for truth). Regardless of my hard words in articulation of my position, I am always listening, persuadable, and picking up the arguments of my interlocutors to make their arguments better than even they so that I may determine if their position should prevail over mine. And if their position, based on reason, should prevail, it will prevail, and I will embrace it without being fearful of the seeming contradiction. For the seeming contradiction is no contradiction at all, in my mind. And this observation leads nicely to the final paragraph.

Some may recognize that the quote above comes from the paragraph in the essay which begins with an even more famous quote – a quote that did not make much of an impression upon me when I first read it over five decades ago: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Indeed.

Guidance for Life from T.S. Eliot

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

When I was in junior high school, I read voraciously whatever interesting tomes I was able to get my hands on at garage sales, from the library, or from discount bins at the stores. There was no particular rhyme nor reason to what would make its way into my hands, but I was fortunate that some fine books occasionally did. I do remember that at one point I wrote down on a piece of paper a number of lines from several of the books that I considered most instructive to me as a budding young man. I folded that paper many times and placed it carefully in my wallet so that it could accompany me through life. And it did as it remained in that wallet, which became quite battered, for many, many years. If I recall correctly, that battered piece of paper remained in my wallet through law school and into the first years of my employment as a federal civil rights attorney. One of the quotes included on that paper, and which made the greatest impression upon me throughout my life, was the line quoted above, which is from T.S. Elliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. In the play the line was spoken by St. Thomas Becket.

T.S. Elliot (1934)

Because I read Murder in the Cathedral, over the many decades of my life, I have often paused to reflect upon my motivations before performing deeds for which I might be credited by others to ensure that I was appropriately and well-motivated. And, in truth, when I have found that I was “ill-motivated,” in whole or in part, I have sought to purge, as well as I could, the treason from my soul.

Upon reflection, I consider myself fortunate that I stumbled – for surely it was happenstance itself –upon this lesson at so early an age to guide me through life. For virtuous actions stained by improper motive would be weighed deficient, indeed, in the final accounting.

The Joy of Wonder

A Wondrous Cleveland Sunrise by Matt Sexton (Follow him on Twitter @thatsexton)

There is much I do not understand. And the little I do understand is inconsequential. So, I accept the joy of wonder … wondering what it is all about and knowing that I will never know.

From My Facebook Post on August 18, 2011