Houyhnhnm Land

So up, and to the Office till noon, and then home to a little dinner, and thither again till night, mighty busy, to my great content, doing a great deal of business, and so home to supper, and to bed; I finding this day that I may be able to do a great deal of business by dictating, if I do not read myself, or write, without spoiling my eyes, I being very well in my eyes after a great day's work.

• Jane Harris, Gillespie and I: A Novel (Harper, 2012).  Woman reminisces about her experiences with an (ultimately unsuccessful) artist and his family in late-Victorian Scotland.  (Lift Bridge)
• Richard Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650-1950 (Cambridge, 2009).  The late Maxwell's attempt to produce an alternative genealogy of the historical novel's emergence; I posted about  it a couple of years ago.  (Now would be a good time to thank CUP for having a "hardbacks for $20" sale.)  (CUP)
• Heidi Kaufman, English Origins, Jewish Discourse, and the Nineteenth-Century British Novel: Reflections on a Nested Nation (Penn, 2009).  Analyzes how British fiction approriates narratives and concepts from Judaism in order to think about the nature of Englishness; discusses both obvious novels (Tancred) and not-so-obvious novels (Middlemarch).  (Amazon [secondhand])

In the stories we tell about teaching and research, we generally cast teaching as the beneficiary of burning  the midnight oil over, say, obscure Reformation polemics or the works of the Bollandists.  Scholarship keeps us attuned to "what's going on," keeps us energized, keeps us from eternally lecturing from the proverbial yellowed sheet of paper.  (Whether, in this age of iPads, anyone lectures from yellowed sheets of paper is, of course, open to question.)  And scholarship does do these things, even if the scholar in question never teaches the subject of his or her own research.  (Bad religious poetry from The Protestant Magazine? Probably not going to be attractive to undergrads.)  My work on anti-Catholicism, for example, is proving awfully handy in the Gothic course; I gave a down-and-dirty brief lecture on anti-Catholic tropes just this week, as it happens.

But we rarely talk about how teaching provokes or affects our research.  This evening, while prepping tomorrow's class on Horace Walpole's The Mysterious Mother, I suddenly found myself working out how to talk about the White Lady of Avenel as a non-problem in Walter Scott's The Monastery and The Abbot duology.    (Why she's usually treated as a problem: supernatural figure wandering about loose in the otherwise realist first novel, who then gets the delete-key treatment in the second. See also the history of critical unhappiness with The Bride of Lammermoor.)  Or, more directly, an article I have coming out in just a few weeks emerged from a "wait, haven't I seen this before?" moment while rereading Vanity Fair for a seminar.  Both instances, you'll note, were very spur-of-the-moment, very unexpected--something that's also important for scholarship.  How can we ever know what will help us to learn some new thing or break through some old mental block?     

Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and home to dinner at noon, where I find Mr. Sheres; and there made a short dinner, and carried him with us to the King's playhouse, where "The Heyresse," not- withstanding Kinaston's being beaten, is acted; and they say the King is very angry with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But his part is done by Beeston, who is fain to read it out of a book all the while, and thereby spoils the part, and almost the play, it being one of the best parts in it; and though the design is, in the first conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play, wrote, they say, by my Lord Newcastle. But it was pleasant to see Beeston come in with others, supposing it to be dark, and yet he is forced to read his part by the light of the candles: and this I observing to a gentleman that sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith, and spread it up and down. But that, that pleased me most in the play is, the first song that Knepp sings, she singing three or four; and, indeed, it was very finely sung, so as to make the whole house clap her. Thence carried Sheres to White Hall, and there I stepped in, and looked out Mr. May, who tells me that he and his company cannot come to dine with me to- morrow, whom I expected only to come to see the manner of our Office and books, at which I was not very much displeased, having much business at the Office, and so away home, and there to the office about my letters, and then home to supper and to bed, my wife being in mighty ill humour all night, and in the morning I found it to be from her observing Knepp to wink and smile on me; and she says I smiled on her; and, poor wretch! I did perceive that she did, and do on all such occasions, mind my eyes. I did, with much difficulty, pacify her, and were friends, she desiring that hereafter, at that house, we might always sit either above in a box, or, if there be [no] room, close up to the lower boxes.

Millwood’s character might be the hardest to read in the play, but the Storm Theatre’s production offered a successful interpretation.  In the opening of this performance, Millwood (played brilliantly by Jessica Myhr) appears on one side and Thorowgood on the other.  While Thorowgood instructs his apprentices on the higher purpose of the merchant, Lucy transforms Millwood, through dress, hair, and makeup, into a fashionable beauty with (I think significantly) no obvious markers of her profession.  Thus Thorowgood and Millwood are set off against each other from the beginning.

One surprising possibility that this production brought out but that is less obvious in reading is the comic potential of the first half of the play.  Millwood could have been Helena from The Rover, flirting impishly with George.  She is manipulative, but performs these scenes with a light touch.  While readers of the play know what will happen and critics pause over her ominous lines about treating men like the Spaniards treated the native Americans, in this production Millwood seduces the audience along with George.  Even when she returns with the story about the rapacious guardian, the scene has a more comic than ominous effect, like a Restoration play in which a husband needs to be manipulated so that a lover can sneak out the back door.

Millwood’s character takes a darker turn in the second half of the play.  Interesting, though, her most truly nefarious demands take place off stage, reported by Lucy.  This, one the one hand, makes the play a bit talky.  On the other hand, it seems actually to preserve Millwood’s character in certain ways.  Lillo seems to be leading us toward maintaining some sympathy for Millwood by leaving the murder request off stage. We don’t actually know exactly what transpired between her and George.  If this scene were staged, it would clearly occupy the center of the play, as George would be choosing between his passion and his sense of humanity.  It is worth thinking about, then, that Lillo didn’t want this decision to displace other tensions in the play.

Critics have often read Millwood as simply evil.  Feminists have alternatively pointed to the ways that Lillo builds sympathy for her position through her sense of her own victimization.  But this production did not take either of these routes.  Myhr’s Millwood is instead a Hobbesian, a rationalist, and a skeptic.  In the hanging scene at the end (included in this production), George and Millwood stand side by side awaiting their death.  George prays, then prays for Millwood; the performance compares her panic to his resignation.  Thorowgood observes that while the laws of man cannot distinguish them, a higher law will recognize the difference.  Nevertheless, we see them dramatically meet the identical fate, walking in coordinated rhythm to the same gallows.

Myhr’s powerful Millwood, then, does not assert female victimization, but instead demands that we consider the possibility that nothing exists beyond the material world as she and Barnwell sink into the same abyss.

In several place, most notably Alciphron 7, Berkeley seems to think that the meanings of many, if not all, terms are given by the rules for correctly applying them. He doesn't seem to mean the conditions under which they are true. Rather, he seems to mean the rules actual speakers apply in deciding to use the word. We're not talking about mere disquotation; we have to give conditions that speakers can actually use when deciding whether to utter sentences. So, to use one of Berkeley's favorite examples, the meaning of the symbol 'i' in algebra is given by the formula...

This month is crunch time for the final revisions to Book Two, which is why I'm not talking about offbeat Victorian religious fiction very much--I'm writing about it!   However, I'm also not shelving.   Things are not looking pretty:

The situation is just as bad in the main library.  As the books are usually the only things I manage to keep truly organized, I fear matters are getting into a perilous state. 

Up, and by water from the Tower to White Hall, the first time that I have gone to that end of the town by water, for two or three months, I think, since I kept a coach, which God send propitious to me; but it is a very great convenience. I went to a Committee of Tangier, but it did not meet, and so I meeting Mr. Povy, he and I away to Dancre's, to speak something touching the pictures I am getting him to make for me. And thence he carried me to Mr. Streeter's, the famous history-painter over the way, whom I have often heard of, but did never see him before; and there I found him, and Dr. Wren, and several Virtuosos, looking upon the paintings which he is making for the new Theatre at Oxford: and, indeed, they look as if they would be very fine, and the rest think better than those of Rubens in the Banqueting-house at White Hall, but I do not so fully think so. But they will certainly be very noble; and I am mightily pleased to have the fortune to see this man and his work, which is very famous; and he a very civil little man, and lame, but lives very handsomely. So thence to my Lord Bellassis, and met him within: my business only to see a chimney-piece of Dancre's doing, in distemper, with egg to keep off the glaring of the light, which I must have done for my room: and indeed it is pretty, but, I must confess, I do think it is not altogether so beautiful as the oyle pictures; but I will have some of one, and some of another. Thence set him down at Little Turnstile, and so I home, and there eat a little dinner, and away with my wife by coach to the King's playhouse, thinking to have seen "The Heyresse," first acted on Saturday last; but when we come thither, we find no play there; Kinaston, that did act a part therein, in abuse to Sir Charles Sedley, being last night exceedingly beaten with sticks, by two or three that assaulted him, so as he is mightily bruised, and forced to keep his bed. So we to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw "She Would if She Could," and so home and to my office to business, and then to supper and to bed. This day, going to the play, The. Turner met us, and carried us to her mother, at my Lady Mordaunt's; and I did carry both mother and daughter with us to the Duke of York's playhouse, at next door.

Having just submitted an article in which oral histories conducted by Charles Weiner play a major role, I was surprised and saddened this morning to learn of his death a few days ago at the age of 80.  I did not know Weiner personally — for an overview of his life, and personal recollections of him, please see this very good post written by his son-in-law, Scott Underwood.  I would, however, like to take a moment to reflect on his work in the oral history of physics.

Weiner was the director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics from 1965 to 1974, before moving to MIT where he spent the rest of his career.  I was a postdoctoral historian at the Center from 2007 to 2010 (albeit at a new facility in College Park, Maryland; not the New York City offices where Weiner worked).  During my time there, the co-located Niels Bohr Library and Archives began putting its oral history collections online, and I was asked to pick out some audio samples to complement these.  Spencer Weart, Weiner’s successor and still the director of the Center at that time, suggested that Weiner’s interviews were engaging, and would certainly provide good material.  And indeed they were, and they did.

Looking through these oral histories drove home for me something that had been lurking in my mind for some time: how poorly the written history of science is able to reflect and present the sum total of knowledge that historians of science acquire in order to write articles and books.  To prepare for his interviews, Weiner had clearly done a massive amount of homework.

Unfortunately, much of this work had been buried in AIP’s files for decades.  It was, of course, readily available to scholars who visited the Niels Bohr Library and Archives, but even they could only make partial use of it, and, in any event, would be forced to condense it down into fragments in their own published writings.  Now that archives are increasingly putting their oral history transcripts online, the interviews can themselves become a part of the historiography, and the work put into conducting them can be put to more thorough use.  AIP is currently working toward a goal to put up 500 oral history interviews, and many of Weiner’s are already available.

(Here is a link to the AIP catalog’s references to Weiner’s oral histories.  Individual entries will have links to online transcripts where available.  Even if you don’t have research use for them, they are good reading.)

Weiner’s interviews are a marvel in the historiography of physics.  They surely rival the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics (AHQP) project headed by Thomas Kuhn, which is itself now largely online.  (AHQP should be considered at least as important as Structure among Kuhn’s contributions to the history of science.)  But, where AHQP has formed much of the basis for the truly intensive historiography of the quantum revolution, Weiner’s interviews remain lamentably unexploited by comparison.  Although, as his son-in-law notes, his interviews of Richard Feynman — not online — were a resource exploited in James Gleick’s popular biography, Genius.

Ultimately, we are fortunate that oral histories constitute a significant way to preserve the fruits of historians’ preparatory research.  In general, this research is simply lost.  Historians can either repeat others’ research, or they need to have some way of knowing which historians are likely to know about what portions of the record, what exactly they are likely to know about it, and then they need to be able to track those people down and know what questions to ask them about it.

But, even this, it turns out, may not be a practical way of proceeding.  When I was at AIP, as I was preparing to put my ACAP project online, I sought out feedback from historians of physics.  This led to the only conversation with Charlie Weiner I’ve had the pleasure of having.  He wanted to talk on the phone rather than email me comments.  He was extremely friendly, and offered easily the most substantive comments on the project I received.  But I also got the chance to ask him about his oral histories, and — and this impressed itself upon me greatly — he said that he had himself been rereading some of his old oral histories now that they were online, and that it was like reading someone else’s words.

Naturally enough, he had forgotten much of the massive amount of history he had investigated in the intervening decades as he moved on to other projects.  Even had one known to track Weiner down and ask him about all these things he had studied back then, he wouldn’t have actually been able to tell you about them in much detail.  Thankfully, his work was preserved in the oral history program he led as director of the Center for History of Physics (and after), and this work can now be appreciated by all and sundry.

Now historians are presented with a more luxurious problem that already plagues the more formal literature: how to organize and synthesize this material so that it is navigable and cumulative.  One reason I designed ACAP for AIP was to attempt to lend some formalization and navigability to what we actually do (or should) know about a massive scientific community, where the historical writing on it is usually limited to a mere handful of its members.  Unquestionably, much of what we now might be able to claim to “know” about this broader community was found out by Charlie Weiner, and I hope we can honor his diligent work by continuing to promote it, use it, and build on it.

[This post is a rearranged version of one posted slightly earlier.]

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Writing purported or speculative biographies of Adam had gone on since Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend in the 13th century. I’ve been reading a late example, by Gian Francesco Loredan, published in Venice in 1640, and appearing in England, translated by ‘J.S.’ in 1659.

Loredan was widely translated into English, with five different works appearing between 1654 and 1682. As for The life of Adam, it’s hard to define what the original appeal was: was it, beneath its ostensible subject, actually enjoyed as a wittily anti-feminist account of that age-old target, Eve? Maybe in a work like this we get some sense of how many pictures of Adam and Eve (or some of the manifold other depictions of them) were received, in a mixture of salacity and moralization. If you think of Loredan himself as accustomed to seeing the two Tintoretto paintings of the Fall of Man in Venice (in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and that in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, above), well, they are both Eve-centered versions. Adam has his back to us in both paintings, provoking us to our own incriminating reaction to the temptation offered by Eve.

Loredan was born into a minor branch of the Venetian clan who provided three Doges. He was founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti, noblemen who were in their way free-thinkers (and promoters of opera). Loredan’s writings emerge from that group: novellas, collections of witty essays, a romance, and a ‘scala sancta’, an ascent of the soul based on fifteen psalms.

The tone of ‘The Life of Adam’ - at least in English - is of bland moralization, as God’s intentions behind each detail of that scanty narrative in Genesis are speculated upon in a series of ‘because’ / ‘or else…’ extrapolations. Like the medieval example, the work is utterly anti-feminist, an aspect it has in common with other parts of Loredan’s writings. His view of women seems to compound an exaggerated sense of the persuasive power of female beauty with an extreme view of female moral frailty - nothing very novel about that, of course. He was himself forced into marriage (apparently).

‘The Life of Adam’ deals with Adam’s fall after some general scene-setting which seems to have been derived as much from Ovid’s Metamorphoses as from the Bible: “God had, with Ideas suitable to his own omnipotence, compiled the machine of Heaven and of the World. The Chaos retained no longer either confusion, or darkness. The Elements, though proud of their variety of qualities, united themselves for the conservation of the Whole …”

After a speech of suitable gratitude for having been created, Adam names the animals: “His Divine Majesty made all Birds and other Animals of the earth to come before Adam, that from him (who had received from God the knowledge of their Natures) they should receive their Names. The Lord did this, to make Adam see by comparison how much he was obliged, in seeing himself so different, and so upright above all other Creatures. Or, because God having created Man Prince of all creatures, would have him know his vassalls and the Animals reverence him as their Prince…” Again, the detail about the distinct human erectness among the animal creation is Ovidian, though it was a common enough observation about humankind. (Obviously, there are lots of animals you have to ignore: plenty of flightless birds are upright in stance.) Milton makes much of it.

But we progress rapidly to the nemesis of this grateful and knowledgeable Adam, his wife. Loredan has a speculation about why Adam was made to fall asleep prior to the removal of his rib: Adam had after all been granted a prophetic spirit by God, and so, if he had been awake, he might well have objected:

“Or else it might be, that he cast Adam into a sleep, as if he feared that he would contradict him; whilst with the spirit of prophesy given him, he might foresee the mischiefs accruing to mankind in the making of Eve.”

Loredan wonders why God, wanting his new world populated, didn’t create multiple humans. As answers to his own idle question, he produces both a democratic and an anti-feminist speculation: “God for the more expeditious population of the World, could have made many men, & many Women, but would, that all should descend from one Father, and one Mother, to the end Men should conserve Love, peace, and concord amongst themselves. And who knows … he would not permit Adam multiplicity of Wives for that he might not thereby multiply his miseries…”

Eve once created, and Adam revived (with his opportunity for prophetic objection missed), Loredan now turns to the dangerous and total allure of women, which he expresses in Petrarchan or Marinist cliches: “Adam stood stupefied in contemplating two Suns under one pair of eyebrows, whilst he saw no more but one in Heaven … The by-Nature-plaited tresses, so nearly resembled Gold in tincture, and purity, that they pleaded Adams excuse, if he did not refuse so honourable a prison … Her flesh appearing like a lovely composure of scarlet and milk, although at the touch it would be taken for marble. Her age was about the fourth lustre, (accompting five years to a Lustre) proper for a woman in reference to Procreation and Love.”

Adam nearly idolizes her: “Adam was about to have adored her as a Goddess. For but only that it was infused into him by revelation, that the woman was a part of himself, doubtless disobedience should not have been the first of his sins.”

Once acquainted, Adam duly informs Eve about the one prohibition under which they are to live. Eve immediately sets off, on her own, in quest to see the forbidden fruit. The novelisation of Genesis treats this as yet unfallen Eve as though all post-lapsarian accusations of women apply to her: “The Woman became at those prohibitions the more curious. To forbid a woman, is to increase her appetite … The Woman therefore, transported by those impatiencies, that interposed between them and their felicity, left Adam; desiring to enjoy … the sight of that fruit, which being forbidden, was to be supposed the more exquisite.”

In a particularly breathtaking piece of misogyny, Loredan manages to imply that Eve provokes her own temptation: “Having found the tree, she beheld the fruits with so much curiosity, that it induced the Devil to tempt her.”

The serpent itself is in the shape of that familiar monster, the serpentine female: “Amongst the infinite forms of animals there was a Serpent with the face of a Damsel, which God had replenished with all subtility.” I think this notion goes all the way back to the Venerable Bede. It set off, no doubt, in a mixture of anti-feminism and crack-brained rationalization: for it provides an answer of sorts to questions about why Eve wasn’t alarmed by a serpent that spoke to her: the serpent-tempter had in part assumed her shape. As Loredan puts it: “She started not at the sight of a Serpent; for seeing it resemble her self in countenance she rather rejoiced then feared”. It seems nobody dared to suggest either to the Venerable Bede, or any of those who repeated him, that this half-human serpent would in fact be a far more alarming sight.

The serpent-maiden flatters Eve. Eve repeats the terms of the prohibition, and Loredan does not fail to score a point against women by exploiting the disparity between Genesis 2, 17 and Genesis 3,3: “His Divine Majesty had commanded only that they should not eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but the Woman moreover adds the Touching it: because as a Woman she could not discourse without aggravating or over-reaching.”

The narrative briefly pauses to suggest the more perceptive things Eve might have said to refute her tempter (“How came I to merit so much of thy affection that thou shouldst desire, that I should first obtain a benefit so great, a prerogative so rare, as to be divine?”) before noting her precipitate belief: “The unfortunate woman believed all for truth, because she desired all to be true.”

When Eve eats the fruit, Loredan introduces another piece of anti-woman needling, now taking offence that “She called not Adam to eat of the Apple before her, as was the duty of her subjection; because believing divinity to be reposed in that fruit, she would not admit any to have the precedence of her.”

When Eve, having failed in her duty to give the fruit first to her husband, eventually gets back to Adam with her story, Loredan gives Adam a firmly reasoned refusal to join her in disobedience:

“Content your self with having your self alone transgressed the commands of God’s law. Desire not company in evil. Lead not others into your precipices. I am your companion, I am your Lover; but will know how to be your Enemy.”

But Eve resorts (what else?) to “sighs and tears, the wonted artifices with which women betray the honour, liberty, and safety of men”, and to allurement: “Casting therefore her arms about the neck of Adam, she so besieged his constancy, with her glances, caresses, and kisses that, after some small resistance, he yielded himself overcome …What cannot women do in an amorous soul!”

As soon as Adam has a morsel of the fruit going down his throat, he repents, and he sees their nakedness. Loredan makes a firmly Augustinian point about how, previously, “lust had not ability to suscitate sensual affects, without the consent of Man”. Adam now knows his, and his wife’s, nakedness, and doesn’t like the effect it has.

God appears in the Garden, and finds Adam, in his fig-leaves, hiding with all the self-exculpatory wiles of, say, Captain Francesco Schettino, beneath the forbidden tree itself. Adam stoutly blames God for making Eve too alluring: “Who can resist the power of beauty? The commands of her, that thou gavest me for a Companion, hath in such manner tyrannized over my reason, and intellectuals, that I have not power to dispose of my self … He that can withstand the importunate solicitude of the fairest piece that ever came out of thy hands, either knows not how to Love or deserves not to be Beloved. Alone I should not have known sin, for bad-company is a fomenter of the greatest sins. Lord, turn against her thy reproofs and chastisements.”

Eve perhaps makes a rather better job of self-exculpation “I could not persuade my self that there were treacheries in Paradise, nor deceits in the face of a Damsel. Thunder therefore, O Lord, thy punishments upon the Serpent, as upon the author of all evil.”

God passes his curses on the serpent, the earth, Eve and Adam (“With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days”), and expels them, addressing Adam in particular: “Get thee packing therefore out of the Paradise of delights, and fix thine abode where thou wast formed, cultivating that earth from whence thou hast derived thy being.”

Loredan asserts that the expulsion counts as one of God’s acts of mercy: “It was one of the wonted effects of God’s benignity to drive Adam out of Paradise, because, if he had continued amongst those delights without enjoying them, he would have received too much torment; there being no greater punishment to be found then to be in the midst of felicities and to be denied the fruition.”

He then proceeds to sum up. There’s the usual notion that Adam and Eve were only in Paradise for a few hours: “Poor Adam! that didst not scarce one whole day enjoy the gifts of Gods favour. His felicity being shorter then that of an Ephemeris [a mayfly]. About three of clock he was brought into the Garden; at six a clock, he sinned; and in the Evening, was expulsed.”

Once outside Eden, Eve is given a speech of thorough contrition, which is undermined by Adam turning lustful: “ ‘The sorrow for my sin shall die with my heart, which I believe shall be the last part of me alive’ … Adam, with a smile begot by the stimulations of sensuality, thus replied, ‘I need no longer now to fear your company (my Eve) since you become to me an incentive to good’ …Thus saying & with glances, and kisses having thrown his arms about his wife’s neck they gave themselves wholly up to delight, which peradventure for the time begot in them an oblivion of all the accidents past.”

Loredan then spells out the underlying belief, the prejudice that constrained the duration of man’s unfallen state to less than a day. You had to get them out of Paradise before they can have sex, and beget any offspring without the taint of original sin: “Till this instant Adam had been kept a Virgin, to intimate unto us that Matrimony fills the earth, but Virginity Paradise.”

After sex, Eve has an instant awareness that she is pregnant: “Scarce had Eve satisfied the instinct of nature, and appeased in part the allurements of sense, when with the signs of pregnancy, she was assaulted by repentance, the indivisible companion of fleshly delights.”

Loredan lobs in another of his quite appalling misogynistic observations. The pregnancy proves to be a difficult one: “Here I will not mention the extremes of her passions, in loathing, and longing for every thing; in the burden of her belly, in her vigils, and in the acerbity of those pangs, the more grievous, by how much the more strange: because the most that I can speak, would be the least part of what they were. Much less will I speak of the sufferance of Adam; because it is known that to have a wife, and a wife pregnant, is a species of martyrdom.”

Poor Eve gives birth to a boy and a girl. In these quotations, I suppose the daughters’ names are derived from Rabbinical lore: “Eve brought forth two births, Cain was the name of the male, and Calamana that of the female … Eve afterwards bore Abel, and Delbora, whereby she increased the joy of Adam.”

Meanwhile, Adam emerges as well worth a place on the radio show ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’: “Adam, not content with what the Earth repaid him with interest for the seed received, employed himself also in continual grafting. He transplants wild trees into the meliorated, makes the sterile fructiferous, and dulcorates the insipid … He transmutes one species into another, and inoculates many species upon one sole stock.” And he progresses from living in caves to mud huts: “Poor Adam sheltered himself (necessity constraining him) in certain Caverns, the palaces of Nature … He learnt, for his greater shame [his] first Architecture from the Swallow.”

After Cain slays Abel, Adam vows to give up being fruitful and multiplying, but God releases him from his vow, and so Seth is born, from whom Christ will descend.

Adam finally dies aged 930, and we get a specific day for his death: “It is the opinion of many that he dyed on Friday the 3d of March, being the day on which he was created, to hint that misery comes in the very instant of our felicity.” We also are told where he was buried, and subsequently re-buried: “He was buried in Hebron, in a Sepulcher of Marble, and was afterwards transported to Calvary, to the very place where Christ died.”

Of Eve’s death, Loredan makes the following typically hostile remarks: “Of Eve’s age the Scriptures make no mention; perhaps because we ought not to know the death of her, that deserved to die before she was born; all the miseries of mankind taking rise from her. It’s probable that she was oppressed by age, and passion, for Adam’s death. It pleased his Divine Majesty, perhaps, that she should survive Adam to double her punishment, in beholding the death of the dearest part of herself.”

This suavely nasty work was, as I say, translated into English, and dedicated to the ‘Lady S.B.’, the translator affirming that the first of men made a suitable subject for the ‘best of women’. I suppose one should never be surprised at the crassness of 17th century men, and their view of what women might want to read.

The next conference of the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society will be held from October 18th to 21st, 2012 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. [follow link for CFP & info] pnrs.org. Filed under: CFP

Gist: The consciences of Romney and Gingrich are beholden to external spiritual Authorities with regard to their expected personal and enduring happiness (after death). These Authorities have made it clear that the rights of some Americans (homosexuals) should be curtailed for the good of the American people as a whole. Today the homosexual; tomorrow perhaps the left-hander; after that the Hispanic or eventually even the European American? The conscience of Obama is (apparently!) free of subjugation to any such external spiritual authority. Consequently, with regard to the sanctity of American rights, an American should feel safer with Obama than with either Romney or Gingrich.

 

I want to muse on the binding of the conscience, especially with regard to the process presently taking place in the election of the next President.

Romney and Gingrich are subject in conscience to an external Authority (either a Prophet or else a Pope). As religious people they will believe that they will have to have the favor of God in order to expect to enter into a heaven. They will consider their service to the American people as a service to God, and will most earnestly seek to promote the interests of the American people and then through that, through that example, they will promote the interests of all people. They will consider themselves as bound professionally to the best interests of the Americans, and of this there is no reason to doubt. Each will be bound by his own conscience to follow his best understanding of the situation and of the American interests and to act always and only for that best interest and in accordance with their vision for American happiness.

Now a great question arises here. We have tied each to his own conscience. Now both the Mormons and the Roman Catholics insist that every person is bound before God according to their conscience (see Romans 14:4). That is a given. Now in addition to this the Prophet and the Pope have the capacity to bind the conscience, i.e., to authoritatively inform each follower that such and such must be done or that person will lose much happiness (now or eventually). In other words, no matter how either might think that such a command is unreasonable or even wrong (and here considering right and wrong from the standpoint of common understanding [and per Kant]), his future happiness is at least partially a function of his compliance with this dictation.

So suppose that a Pope or a Prophet should inform the Roman Catholic or Mormon President that homosexuality is to be wiped from the face of this nation, e.g., beginning a gradually elimination of the visible presence of the  homosexual through the political process, and starting with a curtailment of their rights and their status as full citizens. Since the President will believe that the command of God is also in the best interest of the American people, when God indicates that a given minority is to be suppressed, then ipso facto this will be in the best interests of the Americans (and oddly enough even of those whose rights are being curtailed).

I can even imagine each, the Pope and the Prophet, being sincerely convinced that this condemnation of homosexuality is a message from God.*

[* The Muslims, I think, speak of Satan as a trickster who might even seek to impersonate the divinity.]

As each candidate is a person who believes in a heaven and a hell, we would naturally expect that that candidate must do what he knows for a fact (in faith) that if he does not do he will suffer significantly, perhaps even be burned forever in the flames of hell. This is the concern that Americans in general can have with religious candidates.

So, ramblingly on, what would happen if the President of the United States got it into his head to rid the nation of human beings who are queer or different, say left handed people? And the only defense he has is that he sincerely believes and is convinced that this is the will of his God of punishment and reward? In other words he doesn’t think it is right on his own, but is willing, and even perhaps compelled by his faith, to take the alleged, divine communication as superior to his own thinking and knowledge.*

[* How can any one determine that a communication is divine? See Discerning the Divine.]

Here is now an important question, and I present this is in a sort of Stephen Cobert style. Suppose the President learned that his external Authority had revealed that left handed behavior were to be eliminated from the world, as fast as possible, as fast as the President can convince others to go along. He could appeal to biblical suggestions that the left hand is sinister. “Look”, as I imagine him saying, ” if left-handedness were natural, then about half the people would be left handed. Or if it is a function of God, then it would one hundred percent the one or the other. But it is ten percent left and ninety percent right. Well, doesn’t that tell you that it is sinister? It is deliberate. It is rebellious. This is where all rebellion comes from. This has got to go. Let’s at least make a law which says that the marriage contract must be signed only with the right hand. Before the law the left hand is not acceptable. It is not up to par in the eyes of the world. God is right handed and so are all decent people, and this rebellion needs to stop.”*

[* A dream. If two left handers marry they can’t have children. Just an odd quirk of science. So in an overcrowded world you rationally would want to encourage left-handedness, to the extent possible, beyond the 10% up to maybe the 20% level to encourage some wonderful relationships among people who love each other so much they are willing to go without being able to give birth.**]

[** This thinking is not far fetched with regard to sexuality, of course, for it is becoming increasingly clear that bisexuality is a phenomenon.]

I think it would be worthwhile for both of these candidates to justify why it is that rights of marriage should be limited by either sexual orientation or hand orientation. Tradition is not the answer. Tradition cannot trump human rights, for 99% of us would still be serfs. And the justification cannot be based on Divine decree, for the American people will not trust their interests to a President whose best judgment (concerning justice and equality) could be trumped by a religious edict which that President could easily view as binding on him, and whether he liked it or not.

We Americans need to know the sanctity of the universality of rights (in the eyes of these candidates) before we can be assured that there is no possibility of any divine intervention through them restricting the rights of some of us.*

[* As I understand, Romney once supported equal rights for homosexuals. Since he has changed his mind he owes the country an explanation of the factors that led to this change of mind. I don't think Gingrich has ever been for gay marriage, either as a bible-beholden protestant or as a Roman Catholic.]

Now I want to turn by attention to Obama. This candidate, I think, is the embodiment of the Free Christian (known in the Christian scriptures as “Gentile Christian”), only he doesn’t know it yet because he hasn’t read my treatise on this (ha ha). This Free Christian is, according to Immanuel Kant, the most revolutionary creature in the history of religions, for this follower of Jesus has only a single rule for all his practice. Nothing else is needed. This single rule is the law of universal neighborly love. The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) made it clear once and for all (and by unanimous acclamation [for the Holy Spirit also concurred]) that the follower of Jesus needed no practical guidance beyond this his marvelous embodiment of Kant’s Moral Law. This moral law is supreme for all actions of the Free Christians (as expressed by the Law of Love). The only question has to do with expediency, i.e., how best to implement this great Law of Universal Love. And this will be a function of one’s best and most sincere understanding of what enhances human personality. Accordingly the spirit gives us love, and the understanding gives us our knowledge of medicine and poison, of what is helpful and what is hurtful. The spirit is constant, the understanding can change and improve with the progress of science.

This liberty of the Free Christian from external Authorities goes beyond simply Pope and Prophet and includes also the Christians’ sacred text. For in John 15 of those texts we find the icon of Christian liberty, for here the Christian, following Jesus, refuses to acknowledge as binding on his conscience any alleged communication of God Himself which would inhibit an immediate act of love.

Thus in the process of scanning the sacred texts in search of rules and regulations for his living, the Free Christian comes to realize that he is bound only by the Law of Love.

So Obama can declare himself a Free Christian and thereby show that he could never recognize as authentically from God any communication, no matter how delivered, that would call for him to deny any left hander or homosexual or anyone else their rights both as a human and as an American.

The upshot of all this in reference to these three possible candidates seems to be as follow: concerning the security of the rights of the Americans I would be much more at ease with Obama than with the other two.

 

Now as an after thought we might consider the security of our rights if the President were an atheist. Of course we would not have to worry about alleged communications from any God calling for the restriction of rights with an atheist. There are instead other concerns such lack of moral restraint* against utilization of the office to further the personal interests of the President, either while in office or in retirement.

[* A totally rational and consistent atheist must reject the moral law as inane and absurd (as Kant has shown**), and then he must decide whether he will simply disregard it in his pursuit of personal happiness, or whether he will just be moral anyway (and give up his happiness). The former can be called the rational and immoral atheist, and the latter the moral and irrational atheist. And so if an atheist is a candidate for President, he should declare if he is rational, where then we can count on him to be immoral if it seems safe and profitable to him. And if instead he admits to being irrational, then we certainly wouldn’t want him running the country.]

[** For example: " . . .  without a God and a world not visible for us now, but hoped for, the splendid ideas of morality are indeed objects of acclaim and amazement, but not motives for resolution and execution . . .  "***]

[*** The Critique of Pure Reason, Canon, 2rd Section, 17th paragraph.]

 

Note 1. The reason that Kant thought it was so important to come upon the fact of God first through common, moral reasoning (and not through speculative arguments and proofs) was because it would always temper our understanding of any alleged communications from that God, i.e., we would know in advance that God’s communication could never be understood as calling for what we in our common understanding recognize to be an immoral act, e.g., denying rights to some. In interpretation leading to that conclusion would have to be rejected as incorrect, and indeed a priori.

Note 2. Regarding the possibility of three or more people joining in a marriage, while that can not be totally excluded as a legal possibility in the future, prudence would suggest to refrain any such arrangement until we had gained considerable experience with keeping even two people married for life. And such a three way marriage would also not be one man marrying each of two or more wives, as Muslims and some Mormons might have it, but would entail all three being married to each other, e.g., each Mormon wife would have both a husband and a wife, while the husband would have two wives.

Carnivalesque 81 (ancient/medieval) has been posted at In Pursuit of History.

I set up some Twitter archives for the American Historical Association 2012 meeting. Now the meeting is finished and the Twitter streams are dying down, I thought I’d shove the data into a spreadsheet and get a snapshot for some stats (all counts at time of snapshot, 12 January). #AHA2012 or #AHA12 Number of tweets: [...]

Call for Papers: Transforming Objects

28-29 May 2012, Northumbria University

This two-day conference invites papers that consider the transformation of objects and the transformations effected by objects from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Approaches to this theme are welcomed from established scholars and especially from postgraduate research students.

Object theory and discourses of materiality largely engage with objects as stable items of a permanent nature; this conference seeks to address those moments which slip through the gaps of such readings. We wish to explore the method and process of transformation, the between-ness or not fully realised state of an object or discipline, and to consider its effect upon the culture. …

http://transformingobjects.blogspot.com/p/call-for-papers.html