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Features

March 2002

Archimedes and Math
Ian G. Barbour: "When Science meets Religion"
Thomas Carlyle on life the universe and everything
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) "The French Revolution"
Bart D. Ehrman "Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium"
Kant's "First Antinomy"
Thomas Love Peacock: "The Four Ages of Poetry"
"realism" versus "nominalism"
Thucydides: "The Peloponnesian War I: Archaeology"

how come that math actually works?

The Riemann metrics and the tensor calculus had been axioms of non-euclidean geometry and pure mathematics for some time, before in Bern a young official by the name of Albert Einstein thought to employ its powers as a vehicle for his own ideas. On that score then, he predicted new observations, which turned out to be true. Such feats of science, have made philosophers speculate, how and why math is actually working so well. Being not different from the human lot, philosophers too love mystique and a good story. So do their publishers.

No wonder then, that Plato and many likeminded spirits ever since, have dreamed up a cosmology which is supposed to embody the immaterial and eternal archetypes of mathematical axioms. Accordingly Plutarch in his "Marcellus," mentions Plato's indignation at mathematicians like Eudoxus and Archytas who took recourse to the aid of instruments to

"illustrate geometrical truths to the satisfaction of the senses and sustain conclusions experimentally which otherwise turned out to be too intricate for proof by words and diagrams."

Archimedes' (287-212 BC) is today remembered as the finest brain in all of antiquity. We owe him the number p ("pi"), if nothing else. However, if there is any truth to the following anecdote, then the young Professor Archimedes' brilliant career had started on the wrong foot. It was in 265 BC, the first year of his appointment at the university of Alexandria. Archimedes had set himself the problem to establish the proportions of a cylinder, if related to orbs and cones and all of of these bodies have the same diameter and the same height.

Pi still waited to be rediscovered - the ancient Egyptians already knew a crude approximation - and Archimedes had not a clue how to tackle the problem algebraically. But his intuition suggested him the right solution and he just knew the man who could help him to prove it. Archimedes went to a silver smith. He ordered four cones, one orb and a cylinder to be made to his specifications. Then he went to the vegetable market and borrowed a pair of scales.

The next week he announced a lecture on his discovery. The auditorium was packed, Archimedes, young as he was, had already a reputation to burn, and professors and students bated their breath when he wrote on the blackboard a simple equation. Now he would be proving it. He did, but not as expected. His audience couldn't believe their eyes as he calmly produced a pair of scales and simply weighed the bodies against one another and thus established the proportions of his formula.

The silence was deafening. Then a boy rose from his seat. Despite of his youth he was not a student. He already held a chair for his book on the "Conics." It still exists, it is a very comprehensive treatise on how to calculate the different curves and surfaces if you cut into a cone. Incredible stuff for a 14 year old. His name was Apollonius of Perge. And what did he say? He moved to relegate Archimedes from the University,

"because the pure spirit of mathematics had been soiled by filthy matter."

The motion was granted. Archimedes packed his duffel bag and sought employment in Sicily.

There he finally produced an algebraic solution to his problem, and along the way he calculated the properties of p, discovered volumetric weight and specific gravity, counted, in an absolutely stunning essay, how many grains of sand the entire Universe contains (if anybody cares to know: 10 to the power of 63, which is also Eddington's figure for all the nucleons in the entire Universe) and still found the time to develop new weapons for his employer's armory, to improve the pulley and introduce a more effective version of the water wheel.

What few people cared to notice is the hidden point behind Archimedes' flop in the lecture hall. His actually very elegant demonstration had revealed something about the true nature of math itself. Its formalism is basically nothing else than a pair of scales. The sign "=" represents the centre-point of a balance. The transformation rules may require a great deal of wizardry, but in the master-equation always comes down to an act of measuring, i.e. "weighing" the entities, regardless whether they are purely fictional or "real" terms, taken from the physical world.

Math works not because its concepts relate to anything real, but because the formalism is the representation of a physical function. I suspect, when Archimedes fiddled with his scales from the vegetable market, the boy-genius had seen right through this, and Apollonius didn't like the un-edifying looks of it. Nor would have Plato, or Professor Hawking, but I'm afraid, this is the simple truth. Most philosophers and some scientists try telling us that math is just a language. But as a language, math is as descriptive as my coffee grinder.

Despite the fact that its operations can be verbalized and despite Webster's definitions and Bertrand Russell's contention in his "Principia," math is not a descriptive "code." It does not

"assign content-meaning to code-terms and develops a formal system of relationships among sets of terms, with the full array of set theory defining every aspect of this process for any language."

Instead, like Turing's machine, math simulates a physical operation. It crunches figures in order to establish ratios between borderline values.

To say that

"mathematics is no different than any other language but for the exclusion of ambiguity, which is why logicians can translate any English sentence into a mathematical symbol notation, and vice versa,"

misses out on the predictive power of mathematical equations to establish hitherto unknown figures and functions. In fact the difference between math and language can be expressed in terms of different levels of computer code. To operate any computer we need an interface. This would be the equivalent for language, which is the zone of contact, that allows us to interface, operate and pigeonhole the surrounding world in sets of commands and nests of descriptive icons.

Math, on the other hand, is core code, it belongs to a different world of functionality. It makes things happen, it doesn't describe them. Language is all about meaning, math is strictly functional. A correct mathematical argument, will yield a solution regardless of empirical referents, because the formalism itself is the empirical element in the procedure. A verbal statement without empirical referent on the other hand, should be in trouble to mean anything. (However, very much to Wittgensteins despair, this seems not to impair the operational powers of language.)

Incorrect grammar can be an embarrassment, it may garble the message, it can expose a speakers ignorance, but it still is in no way indicative for the veracity or significance of the message as such. Mess up the formalism of a mathematical transformation, and the damage is beyond repair. In some cases, math can be employed (or should I say abused?) to clarify ambiguities of meaning, but this is not its primary function. Meaning always has an element of arbitrary designation, which makes it what it is, but math is not at liberty to acknowledge this.

life, the universe and everything

... How true that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order! 'The leaf that lies rotting in moist winds,' says one, 'has still force; else how could it rot?' Our whole Universe is but an infinite Complex of Forces; thousandfold, from Gravitation up to Thought and Will; man's Freedom environed with Necessity of Nature: in all which nothing at any moment slumbers, but all is for ever awake and busy. The thing that lies isolated inactive thou shalt nowhere discover; seek every where from the granite mountain, slow-mouldering since Creation, to the passing cloud-vapour, to the living man; to the action, to the spoken word of man. The word that is spoken, as we know, flies-irrevocable: not less, but more, the action that is done. 'The gods themselves,' sings Pindar, 'cannot annihilate the action that is done.'

No: this, once done, is done always; cast forth into endless Time; and, long conspicuous or soon hidden, must verily work and grow for ever there, an indestructible new element in the Infinite of Things. Or, indeed, what is this Infinite of Things itself, which men name Universe, but an action, a sum-total of Actions and Activities? ... This is what man names Existence and Universe; this thousand-tinted Flame-image, at once veil and revelation, reflex such as he, in his poor brain and heart, can paint, of One Unnameable dwelling in inaccessible light! From beyond the Star-galaxies, from before the Beginning of Days, it billows and rolls,--round thee, nay thyself art of it, in this point of Space where thou now standest, in this moment which thy clock measures. ...

from Carlyle - "The French Revolution," Introduction to Part II - Book 3

inspirational pedigrees
"The French Revolution: A History" by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges once said that every author creates his own pedigree. In other words I can't chose my family, but as a writer I do have a choice over who is influencing my outlook and style. (I wonder to whom the author of the Universe was looking up.) However this is not such a cut and dry thing. After a brief fling with more baroque modes of expression, Borges developed his characteristically lucid and deceptively simple style that puts the most unusual things in ordinary words. Borges himself pointed to the Norse sagas as his source of inspiration. And almost in the same breath he denounced the mannerisms of Carlyle, which he had relished in his youth, but now claimed utterly to detest.

This might very well be, but cutting off an unwanted uncle from your family doesn't change the genes in your blood. He still is your kin. Carlyle and Borges have more in common than Borges would like us to believe. Both have the same uncanny suggestiveness, the ability to synthesize a variety of perspectives and open wide spaces into a labyrinthine imagination. Borges always liked to refer to Thomas DeQuincey as his spiritual father, and he certainly quotes extensively from DeQuincey, but it might very well be a red herring. One of the many veils between the reader and Al-Mu'tasim. But then I read the introduction to Part II - Book 3 and I knew Borges's true spiritual ancestor. It must be Carlyle.

This doesn't mean that Borges actually did share any of Carlyle's opinions, but what they have in common (and what keeps them apart) is more a matter of artistic temperament. Differences of style and rhetorics. Similarities of uniting the diverse and manifold. Because that's what Carlyle is to us: a rhetorical phenomenon rather than a historian. Should one consult his "French Revolution" for quick orientation on the subject, this is not the place to go. But it helps to expose yourself to the great con-men of that period, to Rousseau and Hegel, and to absorb the essentials of Kant's philosophy, to better appreciate Carlyle's references and where he is coming from.

And if you have an opportunity to check out English translations of the German novelist Jean Paul Friedrich Richter - preferably Carlyle's own - then you have found what influenced the Scotsman most profoundly. I don't know whether Richter did live to read Carlyle, but there was an undeniable kinship of temperaments in which the Teutonic counterpart, surprisingly, was the more liberal twin. Richter himself confessed to the lifelong influence of Lawrence Sterne on his work (through translations) an author which Carlyle quite deliberately preferred to ignore, if not to treat with disdain. But his own work became a conduit for Richter's humoristic spirit that inspired Charles Dickens who otherwise barely knew Richter.

In fact this is possibly the most important aspect of Carlyle's "French Revolution" and partly explains the overwhelming popularity of its reception: for the modern reader it is something like a sample book for Dickens style - without the humor. The great novelist had learned from Carlyle, who in this way became the rejected great-grandfather of the Symbolism in "Bleak House." And like some of the symbolists, Carlyle at times can teeter precariously close on obscurity for obscurities sake, though he never felt completely comfortable with it. After all, his language was a sort of English, a language unforgiving enough to mark any attempt at obscurity, as the writer's ineptness - and Carlyle was anything but inept.

In fact he shares with Melville the gift of the word before creation's first move, although he lacks the American's feel for rhythm and harmony of vowels. Carlyle was an opinionated sourpuss, his attempts at humor are no success - even his beloved Richter was of no help. If Kipling had been something of an honorably sensible jingoist, then Carlyle must be judged as openly suprematist and a forerunner of modern fascism. In the end his work went against the grain of English and American traditions, and the public rejected him, and not without reason.

Thucydides (471/455-c.399 BC): "The History of the Peloponnesian War"
The State of Greece from the earliest Times to the Commencement of the Peloponnesian War

... it is evident that the country now called Hellas had in ancient times no settled population; on the contrary, migrations were of frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning their homes under the pressure of superior numbers. Without commerce, without freedom of communication either by land or sea, cultivating no more of their territory than the exigencies of life required, destitute of capital, never planting their land (for they could not tell when an invader might not come and take it all away, and when he did come they had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of daily sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as another, they cared little for shifting their habitation, and consequently neither built large cities nor attained to any other form of greatness. The richest soils were always most subject to this change of masters; such as the district now called Thessaly, Boeotia, most of the Peloponnese, Arcadia excepted, and the most fertile parts of the rest of Hellas. The goodness of the land favoured the aggrandizement of particular individuals, and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion. Accordingly Attica, from the poverty of its soil enjoying from a very remote period freedom from faction, never changed its inhabitants. And here is no inconsiderable exemplification of my assertion that the migrations were the cause of there being no correspondent growth in other parts. The most powerful victims of war or faction from the rest of Hellas took refuge with the Athenians as a safe retreat; and at an early period, becoming naturalized, swelled the already large population of the city to such a height that Attica became at last too small to hold them, and they had to send out colonies to Ionia.

There is also another circumstance that contributes not a little to my conviction of the weakness of ancient times. Before the Trojan war there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor indeed of the universal prevalence of the name; on the contrary, before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion, no such appellation existed, but the country went by the names of the different tribes, in particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all. The best proof of this is furnished by Homer. Born long after the Trojan War, he nowhere calls all of them by that name, nor indeed any of them except the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes: in his poems they are called Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans. He does not even use the term barbarian, probably because the Hellenes had not yet been marked off from the rest of the world by one distinctive appellation. It appears therefore that the several Hellenic communities, comprising not only those who first acquired the name, city by city, as they came to understand each other, but also those who assumed it afterwards as the name of the whole people, were before the Trojan war prevented by their want of strength and the absence of mutual intercourse from displaying any collective action.

Indeed, they could not unite for this expedition till they had gained increased familiarity with the sea. And the first person known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use.

For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and islands, as communication by sea became more common, were tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men; the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy. They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and consisting of a mere collection of villages, and would plunder it; indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory. An illustration of this is furnished by the honour with which some of the inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful marauder, and by the question we find the old poets everywhere representing the people as asking of voyagers- "Are they pirates?"- as if those who are asked the question would have no idea of disclaiming the imputation, or their interrogators of reproaching them for it. The same rapine prevailed also by land.

And even at the present day many of Hellas still follow the old fashion, the Ozolian Locrians for instance, the Aetolians, the Acarnanians, and that region of the continent; and the custom of carrying arms is still kept up among these continentals, from the old piratical habits. The whole of Hellas used once to carry arms, their habitations being unprotected and their communication with each other unsafe; indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday life with them as with the barbarians. And the fact that the people in these parts of Hellas are still living in the old way points to a time when the same mode of life was once equally common to all. The Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and more luxurious mode of life; indeed, it is only lately that their rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of linen, and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden grasshoppers, a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred and long prevailed among the old men there. On the contrary, a modest style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across their middles; and it is but a few years since that the practice ceased. To this day among some of the barbarians, especially in Asia, when prizes for boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn by the combatants. And there are many other points in which a likeness might be shown between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the barbarian of to-day.

With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a neighbour. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether seafaring or not.

The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow. But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches. For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.

What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus, which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that, stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids. Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus, when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by fear of the Heraclids- besides, his power seemed considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favour of the populace- and assumed the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus. And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his account of the transmission of the sceptre, he calls him "Of many an isle, and of all Argos king." Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be many), but through the possession of a fleet.

And from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier enterprises. Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the armament. For I suppose if Lacedaemon were to become desolate, and the temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left, that as time went on there would be a strong disposition with posterity to refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power. And yet they occupy two-fifths of Peloponnese and lead the whole, not to speak of their numerous allies without. Still, as the city is neither built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to have been twice as great as it is. We have therefore no right to be sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may safely conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept the testimony of Homer's poems, in which, without allowing for the exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we can see that it was far from equalling ours. He has represented it as consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of each ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of Philoctetes fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum and the minimum complement: at any rate, he does not specify the amount of any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all rowers as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we except the kings and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were equipped in the old piratical fashion. So that if we strike the average of the largest and smallest ships, the number of those who sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the whole force of Hellas. And this was due not so much to scarcity of men as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country during the prosecution of the war. Even after the victory they obtained on their arrival- and a victory there must have been, or the fortifications of the naval camp could never have been built- there is no indication of their whole force having been employed; on the contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of the Chersonese and to piracy from want of supplies. This was what really enabled the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them; the dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the field, since they could hold their own against them with the division on service. In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the capture of Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble. But as want of money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so from the same cause even the one in question, more famous than its predecessors, may be pronounced on the evidence of what it effected to have been inferior to its renown and to the current opinion about it formed under the tuition of the poets.

Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before, some of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded subsequently to the war with Troy.

But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an object, the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere- the old form of government being hereditary monarchy with definite prerogatives- and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself more closely to the sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys were built; and we have Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest sea-fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans; this was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time. Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a commercial emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled. She had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet "wealthy" bestowed by the old poets on the place, and this enabled her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her navy and put down piracy; and as she could offer a mart for both branches of the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a large revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former commanded for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of Samos, had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he reduced many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he consecrated to the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans, while they were founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea-fight. These were the most powerful navies. And even these, although so many generations had elapsed since the Trojan war, seem to have been principally composed of the old fifty-oars and long-boats, and to have counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed it was only shortly the Persian war, and the death of Darius the successor of Cambyses, that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyraeans acquired any large number of galleys. For after these there were no navies of any account in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes; Aegina, Athens, and others may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally fifty-oars. It was quite at the end of this period that the war with Aegina and the prospect of the barbarian invasion enabled Themistocles to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at Salamis; and even these vessels had not complete decks.

The navies, then, of the Hellenes during the period we have traversed were what I have described. All their insignificance did not prevent their being an element of the greatest power to those who cultivated them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest area falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object we hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for confederate expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of local warfare between rival neighbours. The nearest approach to a coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria; this was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to some extent take sides.

Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia, under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.

Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would each have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very great power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find causes which make the states alike incapable of combination for great and national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.

But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians, having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people. This coalition, after repulsing the barbarian, soon afterwards split into two sections, which included the Hellenes who had revolted from the King, as well as those who had aided him in the war. At the end of the one stood Athens, at the head of the other Lacedaemon, one the first naval, the other the first military power in Hellas. For a short time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and Athenians quarrelled and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn, though some might at first remain neutral. So that the whole period from the Median war to this, with some peaceful intervals, was spent by each power in war, either with its rival, or with its own revolted allies, and consequently afforded them constant practice in military matters, and that experience which is learnt in the school of danger.

The policy of Lacedaemon was not to exact tribute from her allies, but merely to secure their subservience to her interests by establishing oligarchies among them; Athens, on the contrary, had by degrees deprived hers of their ships, and imposed instead contributions in money on all except Chios and Lesbos. Both found their resources for this war separately to exceed the sum of their strength when the alliance flourished intact.

Having now given the result of my inquiries into early times, I grant that there will be a difficulty in believing every particular detail. The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever. The general Athenian public fancy that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by the hands of Harmodius and Aristogiton, not knowing that Hippias, the eldest of the sons of Pisistratus, was really supreme, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were his brothers; and that Harmodius and Aristogiton suspecting, on the very day, nay at the very moment fixed on for the deed, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by their accomplices, concluded that he had been warned, and did not attack him, yet, not liking to be apprehended and risk their lives for nothing, fell upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters of Leos, and slew him as he was arranging the Panathenaic procession.

There are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history, which have not been obscured by time. ... The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. ...

The Median War, the greatest achievement of past times, yet found a speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as it was, it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it brought upon Hellas. Never had so many cities been taken and laid desolate, here by the barbarians, here by the parties contending (the old inhabitants being sometimes removed to make room for others); never was there so much banishing and blood-shedding, now on the field of battle, now in the strife of faction. Old stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years' truce made after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the treaty, ... the real cause I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable. ...

by Thucydides (c.474-c.400 BC), translated by Richard Crawley

"The Four Ages of Poetry"

"Qui inter hæc nutriuntur non magis sapere possunt, quam bene olere qui in culinâ habitant."
Petronius

¶1 POETRY, like the world, may be said to have four ages, but in a different order: the first age of poetry being the age of iron; the second, of gold; the third, of silver; and the fourth, of brass.

¶2 The first, or iron age of poetry, is that in which rude bards celebrate in rough numbers the exploits of ruder chiefs, in days when every man is a warrior, and when the great practical maxim of every form of society, "to keep what we have and to catch what we can," is not yet disguised under names of justice and forms of law, but is the naked motto of the naked sword, which is the only judge and jury in every question of meum and tuum. In these days, the only three trades flourishing (besides that of priest which flourishes always) are those of king, thief, and beggar: the beggar being for the most part a king deject, and the thief a king expectant. The first question asked of a stranger is, whether he is a beggar or a thief *: the stranger, in reply, usually assumes the first, and awaits a convenient opportunity to prove his claim to the second appellation.

* See the Odyssey, passim: and Thucydides, I. 5.

¶3 The natural desire of every man to engross to himself as much power and property as he can acquire by any of the means which might makes right, is accompanied by the no less natural desire of making known to as many people as possible the extent to which he has been a winner in this universal game. The successful warrior becomes a chief; the successful chief becomes a king: his next want is an organ to disseminate the fame of his achievements and the extent of his possessions; and this organ he finds in a bard, who is always ready to celebrate the strength of his arm, being first duly inspired by that of his liquor. This is the origin of poetry, which, like all other trades, takes its rise in the demand for the commodity, and flourishes in proportion to the extent of the market.

¶4 Poetry is thus in its origin panegyrical. The first rude songs of all nations appear to be a sort of brief historical notices, in a strain of tumid hyperbole, of the exploits and possessions of a few pre-eminent individuals. They tell us how many battles such an one has fought, how many helmets he has cleft, how many breastplates he has pierced, how many widows he has made, how much land he has appropriated, how many houses he has demolished for other people, what a large one he has built for himself, how much gold he has stowed away in it, and how liberally and plentifully he pays, feeds, and intoxicates the divine and immortal bards, the sons of Jupiter, but for whose everlasting songs the names of heroes would perish.

¶5 This is the first stage of poetry before the invention of written letters. The numerical modulation is at once useful as a help to memory, and pleasant to the ears of uncultured men, who are easily caught by sound: and from the exceeding flexibility of the yet unformed language, the poet does no violence to his ideas in subjecting them to the fetters of number. The savage indeed lisps in numbers, and all rude and uncivilized people express themselves in the manner which we call poetical.

¶6 The scenery by which he is surrounded, and the superstitions which are the creed of his age, form the poet's mind. Rocks, mountains, seas, unsubdued forests, unnavigable rivers, surround him with forms of power and mystery, which ignorance and fear have peopled with spirits, under multifarious names of gods, goddesses, nymphs, genii, and dæmons. Of all these personages marvellous tales are in existence: the nymphs are not indifferent to handsome young men, and the gentlemen-genii are much troubled and very troublesome with a propensity to be rude to pretty maidens: the bard therefore finds no difficulty in tracing the genealogy of his chief to any of the deities in his neighbourhood with whom the said chief may be most desirous of claiming relationship.

¶7 In this pursuit, as in all others, some of course will attain a very marked pre-eminence; and these will be held in high honour, like Demodocus in the Odyssey, and will be consequently inflated with boundless vanity, like Thamyris in the Iliad. Poets are as yet the only historians and chroniclers of their time, and the sole depositories of all the knowledge of their age; and though this knowledge is rather a crude congeries of traditional phantasies than a collection of useful truths, yet, such as it is, they have it to themselves. They are observing and thinking, while others are robbing and fighting: and though their object be nothing more than to secure a share of the spoil, yet they accomplish this end by intellectual, not by physical, power: their success excites emulation to the attainment of intellectual eminence: thus they sharpen their own wits and awaken those of others, at the same time that they gratify vanity and amuse curiosity. A skilful display of the little knowledge they have gains them credit for the possession of much more which they have not. Their familiarity with the secret history of gods and genii obtains for them, without much difficulty, the reputation of inspiration; thus they are not only historians but theologians, moralists, and legislators: delivering their oracles ex cathedra, and being indeed often themselves (as Orpheus and Amphion) regarded as portions and emanations of divinity: building cities with a song, and leading brutes with a symphony; which are only metaphors for the faculty of leading multitudes by the nose.

¶8 The golden age of poetry finds its materials in the age of iron. This age begins when poetry begins to be retrospective; when something like a more extended system of civil polity is established; when personal strength and courage avail less to the aggrandizing of their possessor and to the making and marring of kings and kingdoms, and are checked by organized bodies, social institutions, and hereditary successions. Men also live more in the light of truth and within the interchange of observation; and thus perceive that the agency of gods and genii is not so frequent among themselves as, to judge from the songs and legends of the past time, it was among their ancestors. From these two circumstances, really diminished personal power, and apparently diminished familiarity with gods and genii, they very easily and naturally deduce two conclusions: 1st, That men are degenerated, and 2nd, That they are less in favour with the gods. The people of the petty states and colonies, which have now acquired stability and form, which owed their origin and first prosperity to the talents and courage of a single chief, magnify their founder through the mists of distance and tradition, and perceive him achieving wonders with a god or goddess always at his elbow. They find his name and his exploits thus magnified and accompanied in their traditionary songs, which are their only memorials. All that is said of him is in this character. There is nothing to contradict it. The man and his exploits and his tutelary deities are mixed and blended in one invariable association. The marvellous too is very much like a snowball: it grows as it rolls downward, till the little nucleus of truth which began its descent from the summit is hidden in the accumulation of superinduced hyperbole.

¶9 When tradition, thus adorned and exaggerated, has surrounded the founders of families and states with so much adventitious power and magnificence, there is no praise which a living poet can, without fear of being kicked for clumsy flattery, address to a living chief, that will not still leave the impression that the latter is not so great a man as his ancestors. The man must in this case be praised through his ancestors. Their greatness must be established, and he must be shown to be their worthy descendant. All the people of a state are interested in the founder of their state. All states that have harmonized into a common form of society, are interested in their respective founders. All men are interested in their ancestors.All men love to look back into the days that are past. In these circumstances traditional national poetry is reconstructed and brought like chaos into order and form. The interest is more universal: understanding is enlarged: passion still has scope and play: character is still various and strong: nature is still unsubdued and existing in all her beauty and magnificence, and men are not yet excluded from her observation by the magnitude of cities or the daily confinement of civic life: poetry is more an art: it requires greater skill in numbers, greater command of language, more extensive and various knowledge, and greater comprehensiveness of mind. It still exists without rivals in any other department of literature; and even the arts, painting and sculpture certainly, and music probably, are comparatively rude and imperfect. The whole field of intellect is its own. It has no rivals in history, nor in philosophy, nor in science.It is cultivated by the greatest intellects of the age, and listened to by all the rest. This is the age of Homer, the golden age of poetry. Poetry has now attained its perfection: it has attained the point which it cannot pass: genius therefore seeks new forms for the treatment of the same subjects: hence the lyric poetry of Pindar and Alcæus, and the tragic poetry of æschylus and Sophocles. The favour of kings, the honour of the Olympic crown, the applause of present multitudes, all that can feed vanity and stimulate rivalry, await the successful cultivator of this art, till its forms become exhausted, and new rivals arise around it in new fields of literature, which gradually acquire more influence as, with the progress of reason and civilization, facts become more interesting than fiction: indeed the maturity of poetry may be considered the infancy of history. The transition from Homer to Herodotus is scarcely more remarkable than that from Herodotus to Thucydides: in the gradual dereliction of fabulous incident and ornamented language, Herodotus is as much a poet in relation to Thucydides as Homer is in relation to Herodotus. The history of Herodotus is half a poem: it was written while the whole field of literature yet belonged to the Muses, and the nine books of which it was composed were therefore of right, as well as of courtesy, superinscribed with their nine names.

¶10 Speculations, too, and disputes, on the nature of man and of mind; on moral duties and on good and evil; on the animate and inanimate components of the visible world; begin to share attention with the eggs of Leda and the horns of Io, and to draw off from poetry a portion of its once undivided audience.

¶11 Then comes the silver age, or the poetry of civilized life. This poetry is of two kinds, imitative and original. The imitative consists in recasting, and giving an exquisite polish to, the poetry of the age of gold: of this Virgil is the most obvious and striking example. The original is chiefly comic, didactic, or satiric: as in Menander, Aristophanes, Horace, and Juvenal. The poetry of this age is characterized by an exquisite and fastidious selection of words, and a laboured and somewhat monotonous harmony of expression: but its monotony consists in this, that experience having exhausted all the varieties of modulation, the civilized poetry selects the most beautiful, and prefers the repetition of these to ranging through the variety of all. But the best expression being that into which the idea naturally falls, it requires the utmost labour and care so to reconcile the inflexibility of civilized language and the laboured polish of versification with the idea intended to be expressed, that sense may not appear to be sacrificed to sound. Hence numerous efforts and rare success.

¶12 This state of poetry is however a step towards its extinction. Feeling and passion are best painted in, and roused by, ornamental and figurative language; but the reason and the understanding are best addressed in the simplest and most unvarnished phrase. Pure reason and dispassionate truth would be perfectly ridiculous in verse, as we may judge by versifying one of Euclid's demonstrations. This will be found true of all dispassionate reasoning whatever, and all reasoning that requires comprehensive views and enlarged combinations. It is only the more tangible points of morality, those which command assent at once, those which have a mirror in every mind, and in which the severity of reason is warmed and rendered palatable by being mixed up with feeling and imagination, that are applicable even to what is called moral poetry: and as the sciences of morals and of mind advance towards perfection, as they become more enlarged and comprehensive in their views, as reason gains the ascendancy in them over imagination and feeling, poetry can no longer accompany them in their progress, but drops into the back ground, and leaves them to advance alone.

¶13 Thus the empire of thought is withdrawn from poetry, as the empire of facts had been before. In respect of the latter, the poet of the age of iron celebrates the achievements of his contemporaries; the poet of the age of gold celebrates the heroes of the age of iron; the poet of the age of silver re-casts the poems of the age of gold: we may here see how very slight a ray of historical truth is sufficient to dissipate all the illusions of poetry. We know no more of the men than of the gods of the Iliad; no more of Achilles than we do of Thetis; no more of Hector and Andromache than we do of Vulcan and Venus: these belong altogether to poetry; history has no share in them: but Virgil knew better than to write an epic about Cæsar; he left him to Livy; and travelled out of the confines of truth and history into the old regions of poetry and fiction.

¶14 Good sense and elegant learning, conveyed in polished and somewhat monotonous verse, are the perfection of the original and imitative poetry of civilized life. Its range is limited, and when exhausted, nothing remains but the crambe repetita of common-place, which at length becomes thoroughly wearisome, even to the most indefatigable readers of the newest new nothings.

¶15 It is now evident that poetry must either cease to be cultivated, or strike into a new path. The poets of the age of gold have been imitated and repeated till no new imitation will attract notice: the limited range of ethical and didactic poetry is exhausted: the associations of daily life in an advanced state of society are of very dry, methodical, unpoetical matters-of-fact: but there is always a multitude of listless idlers, yawning for amusement, and gaping for novelty: and the poet makes it his glory to be foremost among their purveyors.

¶16 Then comes the age of brass, which, by rejecting the polish and the learning of the age of silver, and taking a retrograde stride to the barbarisms and erude traditions of the age of iron, professes to return to nature and revive the age of gold. This is the second childhood of poetry. To the comprehensive energy of the Homeric Muse, which, by giving at once the grand outline of things, presented to the mind a vivid picture in one or two verses, inimitable alike in simplicity and magnificence, is substituted a verbose and minutely-detailed description of thoughts, passions, actions, persons, and things, in that loose rambling style of verse, which any one may write, stans pede in uno, at the rate of two hundred lines in an hour. To this age may be referred all the poets who flourished in the decline of the Roman Empire. The best specimen of it, though not the most generally known, is the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, which contains many passages of exceeding beauty in the midst of masses of amplification and repetition.

¶17 The iron age of classical poetry may be called the bardic; the golden, the Homeric; the silver, the Virgilian; and the brass, the Nonnic.

¶18 Modern poetry has also its four ages: but "it wears its rue with a difference."

¶19 To the age of brass in the ancient world succeeded the dark ages, in which the light of the Gospel began to spread over Europe, and in which, by a mysterious and inscrutable dispensation, the darkness thickened with the progress of the light. The tribes that overran the Roman Empire brought back the days of barbarism, but with this difference, that there were many books in the world, many places in which they were preserved, and occasionally some one by whom they were read, who indeed (if he escaped being burned pour l'amour de Dieu,) generally lived an object of mysterious fear, with the reputation of magician, alchymist, and astrologer. The emerging of the nations of Europe from this superinduced barbarism, and their settling into new forms of polity, was accompanied, as the first ages of Greece had been, with a wild spirit of adventure, which, co-operating with new manners and new superstitions, raised up a fresh crop of chimæras, not less fruitful, though far less beautiful, than those of Greece. The semi- deification of women by the maxims of the age of chivalry, combining with these new fables, produced the romance of the middle ages. The founders of the new line of heroes took the place of the demi-gods of Grecian poetry. Charlemagne and his Paladins, Arthur and his knights of the round table, the heroes of the iron age of chivalrous poetry, were seen through the same magnifying mist of distance, and their exploits were celebrated with even more extravagant hyperbole. These legends, combined with the exaggerated love that pervades the songs of the troubadours, the reputation of magic that attached to learned men, the infant wonders of natural philosophy, the crazy fanaticism of the crusades, the power and privileges of the great feudal chiefs, and the holy mysteries of monks and nuns, formed a state of society in which no two laymen could meet without fighting, and in which the three staple ingredients of lover, prize-fighter, and fanatic, that composed the basis of the character of every true man, were mixed up and diversified, in different individuals and classes, with so many distinctive excellencies, and under such an infinite motley variety of costume, as gave the range of a most extensive and picturesque field to the two great constituents of poetry, love and battle.

¶20 From these ingredients of the iron age of modern poetry, dispersed in the rhymes of minstrels and the songs of the troubadours, arose the golden age, in which the scattered materials were harmonized and blended about the time of the revival of learning; but with this peculiar difference, that Greek and Roman literature pervaded all the poetry of the golden age of modern poetry, and hence resulted a heterogeneous compound of all ages and nations in one picture; an infinite licence, which gave to the poet the free range of the whole field of imagination and memory. This was carried very far by Ariosto, but farthest of all by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, who used time and locality merely because they could not do without them, because every action must have its when and where: but they made no scruple of deposing a Roman Emperor by an Italian Count, and sending him off in the disguise of a French pilgrim to be shot with a blunderbuss by an English archer. This makes the old English drama very picturesque, at any rate, in the variety of costume, and very diversified in action and character; though it is a picture of nothing that ever was seen on earth except a Venetian carnival.

¶21 The greatest of English poets, Milton, may be said to stand alone between the ages of gold and silver, combining the excellencies of both; for with all the energy, and power, and freshness of the first, he united all the studied and elaborate magnificence of the second.

¶22 The silver age succeeded; beginning with Dryden, coming to perfection with Pope, and ending with Goldsmith, Collins, and Gray.

¶23 Cowper divested verse of its exquisite polish; he thought in metre, but paid more attention to his thoughts than his verse. It would be difficult to draw the boundary of prose and blank verse between his letters and his poetry.

¶24 The silver age was the reign of authority; but authority now began to be shaken, not only in poetry but in the whole sphere of its dominion. The contemporaries of Gray and Cowper were deep and elaborate thinkers. The subtle scepticism of Hume, the solemn irony of Gibbon, the daring paradoxes of Rousseau, and the biting ridicule of Voltaire, directed the energies of four extraordinary minds to shake every portion of the reign of authority. Enquity was roused, the activity of intellect was excited, and poetry came in for its share of the general result. The changes had been rung on lovely maid and sylvan shade, summer heat and green retreat, waving trees and sighing breeze, gentle swains and amorous pains, by versifiers who took them on trust, as meaning something very soft and tender, without much caring what: but with this general activity of intellect came a necessity for even poets to appear to know something of what they professed to talk of. Thomson and Cowper looked at the trees and hills which so many ingenious gentlemen had rhymed about so long without looking at them at all, and the effect of the operation on poetry was like the discovery of a new world. Painting shared the influence, and the principles of picturesque beauty were explored by adventurous essayists with indefatigable pertinacity. The success which attended these experiments, and the pleasure which resulted from them, had the usual effect of all new enthusiasms, that of turning the heads of a few unfortunate persons, the patriarchs of the age of brass, who, mistaking the prominent novelty for the all-important totality, seem to have ratiocinated much in the following manner: "Poetical genius is the finest of all things, and we feel that we have more of it than any one ever had. The way to bring it to perfection is to cultivate poetical impressions exclusively. Poetical impressions can be received only among natural scenes: for all that is artificial is anti-poetical. Society is artificial, therefore we will live out of society. The mountains are natural, therefore we will live in the mountains. There we shall be shining models of purity and virtue, passing the whole day in the innocent and amiable occupation of going up and down hill, receiving poetical impressions, and communicating them in immortal verse to admiring generations." To some such perversion of intellect we owe that egregious confraternity of rhymesters, known by the name of the Lake Poets; who certainly did receive and communicate to the world some of the most extraordinary poetical impressions that ever were heard of, and ripened into models of public virtue, too splendid to need illustration. They wrote verses on a new principle; saw rocks and rivers in a new light; and remaining studiously ignorant of history, society, and human nature, cultivated the phantasy only at the expence of the memory and the reason; and contrived, though they had retreated from the world for the express purpose of seeing nature as she was, to see her only as she was not, converting the land they lived in into a sort of fairy-land, which they peopled with mysticisms and chimæras. This gave what is called a new tone to poetry, and conjured up a herd of desperate imitators, who have brought the age of brass prematurely to its dotage.

¶25 The descriptive poetry of the present day has been called by its cultivators a return to nature. Nothing is more impertinent than this pretension. Poetry cannot travel out of the regions of its birth, the uncultivated lands of semi-civilized men. Mr. Wordsworth, the great leader of the returners to nature, cannot describe a scene under his own eyes without putting into it the shadow of a Danish boy or the living ghost of Lucy Gray, or some similar phantastical parturition of the moods of his own mind.

¶26 In the origin and perfection of poetry, all the associations of life were composed of poetical materials. With us it is decidedly the reverse. We know too that there are no Dryads in Hyde-park nor Naiads in the Regent's-canal. But barbaric manners and supernatural interventions are essential to poetry. Either in the scene, or in the time, or in both, it must be remote from our ordinary perceptions. While the historian and the philosopher are advancing in, and accelerating, the progress of knowledge, the poet is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking up the ashes of dead savages to find gewgaws and rattles for the grown babies of the age. Mr. Scott digs up the poachers and cattle-stealers of the ancient border. Lord Byron cruises for thieves and pirates on the shores of the Morea and among the Greek Islands. Mr. Southey wades through ponderous volumes of travels and old chronicles, from which he carefully selects all that is false, useless, and absurd, as being essentially poetical; and when he has a commonplace book full of monstrosities, strings them into an epic. Mr. Wordsworth picks up village legends from old women and sextons; and Mr. Coleridge, to the valuable information acquired from similar sources, superadds the dreams of crazy theologians and the mysticisms of German metaphysics, and favours the world with visions in verse, in which the quadruple elements of sexton, old woman, Jeremy Taylor, and Emanuel Kant, are harmonized into a delicious poetical compound. Mr. Moore presents us with a Persian, and Mr. Campbell with a Pennsylvanian tale, both formed on the same principle as Mr. Southey's epics, by extracting from a perfunctory and desultory perusal of a collection of voyages and travels, all that useful investigation would not seek for and that common sense would reject.

¶27 These disjointed relics of tradition and fragments of second-hand observation, being woven into a tissue of verse, constructed on what Mr. Coleridge calls a new principle (that is, no principle at all), compose a modern-antique compound of frippery and barbarism, in which the puling sentimentality of the present time is grafted on the misrepresented ruggedness of the past into a heterogeneous congeries of unamalgamating manners, sufficient to impose on the common readers of poetry, over whose understandings the poet of this class possesses that commanding advantage, which, in all circumstances and conditions of life, a man who knows something, however little, always possesses over one who knows nothing.

¶28 A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community.He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward. The brighter the light diffused around him by the progress of reason, the thicket is the darkness of antiquated barbarism, in which he buries himself like a mole, to throw up the barren hillocks of his Cimmerian labours. The philosophic mental tranquillity which looks round with an equal eye on all external things, collects a store of ideas, discriminates their relative value, assigns to all their proper place, and from the materials of useful knowledge thus collected, appreciated, and arranged, forms new combinations that impress the stamp of their power and utility on the real business of life, is diametrically the reverse of that frame of mind which poetry inspires, or from which poetry can emanate. The highest inspirations of poetry are resolvable into three ingredients: the rant of unregulated passion, the whining of exaggerated feeling, and the cant of factitious sentiment: and can therefore serve only to ripen a splendid lunatic like Alexander, a puling driveller like Werter, or a morbid dreamer like Wordsworth. It can never make a philosopher, nor a statesman, nor in any class of life an useful or rational man. It cannot claim the slightest share in any one of the comforts and utilities of life of which we have witnessed so many and so rapid advances. But though not useful, it may be said it is highly ornamental, and deserves to be cultivated for the pleasure it yields. Even if this be granted, it does not follow that a writer of poetry in the present state of society is not a waster of his own time, and a robber of that of others. Poetry is not one of those arts which, like painting, require repetition and multiplication, in order to be diffused among society. There are more good poems already existing than are sufficient to employ that portion of life which any mere reader and recipient of poetical impressions should devote to them, and these having been produced in poetical times, are far superior in all the characteristics of poetry to the artificial reconstructions of a few morbid ascetics in unpoetical times. To read the promiscuous rubbish of the present time to the exclusion of the select treasures of the past, is to substitute the worse for the better variety of the same mode of enjoyment.

¶29 But in whatever degree poetry is cultivated, it must necessarily be to the neglect of some branch of useful study: and it is a lamentable spectacle to see minds, capable of better things, running to seed in the specious indolence of these empty aimless mockeries of intellectual exertion. Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious business of the playthings of its childhood, is as absurd as for a full-grown man to rub his gums with coral, and cry to be charmed to sleep by the jingle of silver bells.

¶30 As to that small portion of our contemporary poetry, which is neither descriptive, nor narrative, nor dramatic, and which, for want of a better name, may be called ethical, the most distinguished portion of it, consisting merely of querulous, egotistical rhapsodies, to express the writer's high dissatisfaction with the world and every thing in it, serves only to confirm what has been said of the semibarbarous character of poets, who from singing dithyrambics and "Io Triumphe," while society was savage, grow rabid, and out of their element, as it becomes polished and enlightened.

¶31 Now when we consider that it is not the thinking and studious, and scientific and philosophical part of the community, not to those whose minds are bent on the pursuit and promotion of permanently useful ends and aims, that poets must address their minstrelsy, but to that much larger portion of the reading public, whose minds are not awakened to the desire of valuable knowledge, and who are indifferent to any thing beyond being charmed, moved, excited, affected, and exalted: charmed by harmony, moved by sentiment, excited by passion, affected by pathos, and exalted by sublimity: harmony, which is language on the rack of Procrustes; sentiment, which is canting egotism in the mask of refined feeling; passion, which is the commotion of a weak and selfish mind; pathos, which is the whining of an unmanly spirit; and sublimity, which is the inflation of an empty head: when we consider that the great and permanent interests of human society become more and more the main spring of intellectual pursuit; that in proportion as they become so, the subordinacy of the ornamental to the useful will be more and more seen and acknowledged; and that therefore the progress of useful art and science, and of moral and political knowledge, will continue more and more to withdraw attention from frivolous and unconducive, to solid and conducive studies: that therefore the poetical audience will not only continually diminish in the proportion of its number to that of the rest of the reading public, but will also sink lower and lower in the comparison of intellectual acquirement: when we consider that the poet must still please his audience, and must therefore continue to sink to their level, while the rest of the community is rising above it: we may easily conceive that the day is not distant, when the degraded state of every species of poetry will be as generally recognized as that of dramatic poetry has long been: and this not from any decrease either of intellectual power, or intellectual acquisition, but because intellectual power and intellectual acquisition have turned themselves into other and better channels, and have abandoned the cultivation and the fate of poetry to the degenerate fry of modern rhymesters, and their olympic judges, the magazine critics, who continue to debate and promulgate oracles about poetry, as if it were still what it was in the Homeric age, the all-in-all of intellectual progression, and as if there were no such things in existence as mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, moralists, metaphysicians, historians, politicians, and political economists, who have built into the upper air of intelligence a pyramid, from the summit of which they see the modern Parnassus far beneath them, and, knowing how small a place it occupies in the comprehensiveness of their prospect, smile at the little ambition and the circumscribed perceptions with which the drivellers and mountebanks upon it are contending for the poetical palm and the critical chair.

by Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)

on Kant's "First Antinomy"

The German poet and physician Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), like many members of the scientific community before Einstein, agreed with Kant on the subjective character of our intuition for time and space. According to this, grass appears to be fresh and green because this is the way our mind assembles sense data in that intuitive order we use to call 'time' and 'space.' It is the space of Euclid's geometry, but it might not necessarily be identical to the physical backstage from which perceptions are presented to our senses.

After some hard thinking Kant came to the conclusion that pure reason can't help but run into contradictory "antinomies" of equal probability, between which to decide would be impossible, if reason unaided by experience would attempt to penetrate the true nature of this physical backstage. Kant thought that it all fizzles down to four pairs of such antinomies, all of which create a conundrum about the most basic building blocks in our understanding of the world. Here is the first:

Thesis
"The world has a beginning in time, and is also limited in regard to space."

Proof:
Let us assume that the world has no beginning in time. Then, up to every given moment, an eternity must have elapsed, and so passed away an infinite series of successive conditions or states of events in the world. Yet the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it never can be completed by means of a successive enumeration. It follows that an infinite series that already has elapsed is impossible and that, consequently, a beginning in time is a necessary condition of the world's existence.

In regard to space, let us assume its infinity. In this case, the world must be the infinite total of coexistent occurrences. Now we cannot understand the dimensions of a quantity in any other way than by means of enumerating its members, and the total of an infinite quantity requires the repeated addition of ever more members. Accordingly, to cogitate an infinite world, which fills all available space, an infinite time must be regarded as having elapsed in the enumeration of all co-existing events; which we have already established as being impossible. For this reason an infinite aggregate of actual occurrences cannot be considered to be the sum total of all there is, because its survey is restricted by the particular point in time on which it is taking place. Hence the world, in regard to extension in space, cannot be infinite. It is limited by the progress of time.

Kant adds:

"In other words: The true intuitive conception of infinity is: that the successive enumeration in the measurement of a given quantum can never be completed. From which follows, without possibility of a mistake, that an eternity of actual successive states up to a given (the present) moment cannot have elapsed, and that the world must therefore have a beginning."

Comment:
"Without possibility of a mistake," is of course a tat too optimistic: Georg Cantor (*1845 Ý1918) brought some clarity to our understanding of the nature of infinite numbers, which by definition, have as many members as the collection as a whole. In a Cantor set the number of members at any given point is always infinite. For instance, in a finite set of integers that is larger than eight, the number of prime numbers is smaller than the sum of all the numbers together. In an infinite set of integers however, every selection of a class when taken out from the total of members, represents itself as an infinite set of integers.

Leibnitz was the first to notice this, and thought it to be a contradiction and therefore excluded the possibility of infinite numbers. Since Georg Cantor we know it is not. If applied to Kant's hypothesis, the conclusion has to be: if the Universe is composed of an infinite number of events, then it doesn't matter when and where we put down our stick and start counting. Regardless into which direction we are going to look, the resulting figure will always be member of an infinite set, even if we look into one direction only. So even if we count only events that have occurred in the past, the figure can only be infinite.

The real question of course is: how can we possibly know, that the Universe is indeed a product of an infinite number of events? Reason alone won't be able to tell us.

Antithesis

The world has no beginning, and no limits in space, but is, in relation both to time and space, infinite."

Proof:
Let us presume that the world has a beginning. Any beginning of something is an incident in time which is preceded by a time in which it didn't occur. It follows that there must have been a time in which the world did not exist. But in such period the beginning of everything is impossible, because the conditions and causes required to make things happen are lacking. ("Causation," Schopenhauer notes, "is not like a hired cab which one dismisses once it has arrived at its desired destination.") From which follows, that any given series of events may have a beginning, but the total of all events cannot have a beginning, and is therefore infinite. (In modern parlance we would term it as having no boundary in time which is not quite the same as "infinity.")

As for space, let us first, for argument's sake, take for granted, that the world is finite and limited in space. It follows, that its extension must be surrounded by a void space which is not limited. We must therefore speak not only of a relation of things in space, but also of a relation of things to space. Now, as the world is an absolute whole, out of and beyond which no event can be discovered, this relation of the world to a void space is merely a relation to no occurrence, i.e. no relation at all. Consequently, the world, in regard to extension is infinite.

Kant adds:

"I am not unaware, that there are some ways of escaping this conclusion. It may, for example, be alleged, that a limit to the world, as regards both space and time, is quite possible, without at the same time holding the existence of an absolute time before the beginning of the world, or an absolute space extending beyond the actual world - which is impossible. I am quite well satisfied with the latter part of this opinion of the philosophers of the Leibnitzian school. Space is merely a form of intuition for the external, but not a real object in itself; it is not a correlate of phenomena, it is the form, our faculty of perception uses, to present phenomena to our understanding.

Space, therefore, cannot be regarded as absolute and determinative of the existence of things, because it is not itself an object, but only the form which makes possible the representation of objects. Consequently, things and occurrences determine space; they render all the possible predicates of space (size and relation). But we cannot affirm the converse, that space, as something selfsubsistent, can determine real things in regard to size or shape, for it is in itself not a real thing. Space may therefore be limited by phenomena, but phenomena cannot be limited by an empty space without them. This is true of time also.

All this being granted, it is nevertheless indisputable, that we can't help it but be possessed by figments of a void space without Universe and void time before the world, if we allow ourselves to think in terms of cosmic boundaries relatively to space or time."

Comment:
I mentioned it before: these days, physicists speak of 'space without a boundary,' but maintain that this is not exactly the same as infinity. Kant based his deduction on Newton's proposition of an absolute space. Forerunners of modern cosmology like Ernst Mach (1838-1916), Einstein and Minkowsky (1864-1909), maintain that it is meaningless to speak of "space" without physical features. In fact there is no such thing as "empty" space; - which brings us back to Leibnitz and even further to the first half of the 5th century BC, to the ancient philosophers of the Eleatic school, like Parmenides and Xenophanes.

Kant's own comment refers to a letter by Gottfried Leibnitz (16461716), in which he responded to Newton's idea of the reality of an absolute space that is independent of the existence of matter: "I am not saying that matter and space are the same thing. I only say, there is not space, where there is no matter; and that space in itself is not an absolute reality." This seems to come close to Kant's own position, but Kant wishes us to understand that the intuition of time and space is not merely a feature of our brain structure, nor some sort of innate idea, but a logical necessity that needs to be assumed at the outset, in order to enable us to cogitate perceptions.

The way we do it, is to understand our percepts as events that stretch through time and space. The question whether "intuitions" of a different nature could do the same service for us did never occur to Kant, because he felt certain, that the fundamental necessity of an intuition for time and space holds universally true for all people and across the board of the animal world, even for an alien species in a galaxy far, far away. But is this really true? Is it really the only possible way to arrange the features of our perceptions?

If I am not mistaken, postKantian mathematics and modern physics made it their trade to proliferate in alternatives to such "intuitions." Since Gauss (1777-1855), Rieman (1826-1866), Maxwell (1831-1879) and Einstein (1879-1955), even Mercator (15121594) and Ptolemy (87-150 AD), physicists understand that space is not something separate from matter. There is a continuum between the low energy of near void space and the energy that is equivalent to the mass of material objects, which manifests itself in electromagnetic and gravitational geodesics and curved surfaces. So when Max Planck (1858-1947) had established his constant, there gradually transpired two very basic facts:

1. Space can never be absolutely void.

2. Space has a grainy sub-structure in which virtual energy, in packages of tiny bursts, makes an extremely brief appearance in the form of real energy. When we measure the time of such occurrence we shall miss the place of its appearance at least by a Plancklength, and if our measurement captures the place of appearance, we will not be able to tell the exact time of the event. This uncertainty between interdependent parameters is a fundamental fact of quantum reality. But it is the accumulating force of these tiny bursts that pushes entire galaxies apart, and seems to fill the void between with gaseous new matter, according to the latest deductions from the observable fact that the mutual escape velocities of galaxies continue to increase.

whats the meaning of this?

For almost two millennia, from Aristotle to Occam, the finest minds of the West got themselves bogged down over the question whether universal designations like "redness" or "morality" possess the same degree of reality as proper names. The debate between realists and nominalists was never concluded. Historically, nominalism turned out to be the more useful analytical tool and outlived its opposition.

Two thousand years of debate without coming to conclusions seems an awful lot of time and waste of brain power. But not to acknowledge their handicap, would do grave injustice to the often brilliant minds who had foundered on the long road to a solution. What confounded the issue, has partly been a matter of inappropriate terminology, and partly of not permissible preconceptions.

1. Every verbal icon (proper names, concrete nouns) is a representation by proxy of an entity from the world external to language itself - regardless whether this world is imagined or real.

2. All icons share "iconicity" i.e. the purpose they are designed for, or the feature they hold in common when they function as icons.

From which follows that there are indeed universals, but ironically in an entirely subjective fashion. "Redness" is a variable assessment on our part of how to classify and label the different sections along the continuum of optical wave lengths. But the color "red" of any given object is as objective and invariable as the prismatic hue angle that controls color definition.

What designates the "iconicity" of an icon is based on the instincts and expectancies which give shape to our perceptions. In other words "universals" add the human element to our understanding of things. On the other hand, icons as such, are objective representations of entities that exist independently before human judgement designates a context.

Two questions: What about purely fictional entities, like unicorns, whose existence seems to depend entirely on designated contexts? Well that might be as illusory as the unicorns themselves. We just don't differentiate between designating context to real motorcars or to figments of faith. Even if we don't "really" believe in unicorns, tradition and imagination present them to us, as if they were real.

Second question: what happens to this contextual designation, if different species or cultures exchange similar icons but respectively base it on different sets of universals? (Because this is what kept this debate going in the first place: In order to have appearances in the real world being shaped by a "higher" order, Plato needed to assign superior reality to his archetypical idealizations, which he believed were doing the shaping.)

However if we accept Plato's condition in our premise, we blur the demarcation between the world of representational icons and their functionality for the world of speech and conversation. It is a bit like the ladder in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus." Universals are instrumental for communication and reasoning. But once understanding sets in, we can kick off the ladder that has brought us there.

wishy-washy with an agenda
"When Science Meets Religion" by Ian G. Barbour

Faith and science really have nothing in common, and it is science which draws the line, not on grounds of what it knows or doesn't know, but for the methodology involved to acquire this knowledge. Faith is unscientific, not because it leads to God, but because it is a bad method to build bridges. It is really as simple as that. And a scientist who claims that faith and science hold common ground or could be "reconciled," oversteps exactly this line and loses all his credibility as a scientist. His opinions become a matter of private believes.

It is Mr. Barbour's contention that in the relationship between religion and science there are four options: the first is termed "conflict," which the author sees to be "represented by fundamentalists and scientific materialists." This is a telling way of labelling. Telling for Mr. Barbour's own bias that is. Since when has confronting the baloney become the automatic definition for philosophical materialism? So I am a materialist? How interesting. Finally, somebody is telling me! Option number two is termed "independence," meaning two languages operating in separate domains. A third option is termed "dialogue," and the last suggestion is called "integration."

Well, this kind of categorizing is just a red herring! To begin with: there is no actual conflict because the two sides are not really talking or listening to each other, hence there is no "dialogue" either. At best they exchange monologues in different tongues. And if, God forbid, ever there should be an "integration" then this would throw us straight back to medieval scholasticism and excommunication or worse as an accepted practice. Have we already forgotten, that for most periods in history and practically in every culture, science had been received with open hostility? And you know why? Not for its knowledge, but because science is asking questions.

And what about the second "option?" What option? "Independence" is a condition for doing science, not merely a choice. Whenever faith interferes with scientific methodology, you can be sure to get bad science, either because it sets a premium on the application of its methodology or because it limits the latitude of hypothetical propositions. To be scientific means, to expose yourself to a rigorous regimen of verification and falsification. This is a matter of ethics, as much as of method. It is certainly a good thing, if both sides treat each other with courtesy, but this changes nothing of the fundamental chasm - no matter how civil the behavior, the two positions remain mutually exclusive.

I mean what kind of dialogue is there anyway with an institution, who to the present day has seen it as her god-given right to persecute "heretics," culture, learning, science and art, whenever and wherever they happen to dissent from doctrine? A scientist who willingly subjects himself to this sort of brainwash puts in question his own credibility. Who cares for a sorry figure like Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who compromised on his scientific integrity only to find himself shunned even by his own church! This is the best part! So much for dialogue! No! There cannot be honest dialogue with doctrine, because dialogue implies a quid pro quo, which doctrine is never willing to grant.

the first Millerite?
"Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium" by Bart D. Ehrman

The author compares Jesus with the Millerites. I first had to read up on Millerites to understand the reference. Till then I had no idea that the Millerites are at the root of Weiko and Koresh. By now I have learned to appreciate that these things are as American as power-tools and apple pie. What intrigued me most, was the fact that the movement didn't die after that first prophetic flop. On the contrary, after a few quiet years came Ellen White, then Adventists and 7th day Adventists (whatever all this means - had these people no jobs?) and finally the Branch Davidians; and there are even people who still continue putting up "rebuttals" on the web.

However it is actually quite interesting to see the pattern:

1. prophesy of a new millennium creates a movement
2. prophesy fails, movement loses support but doesn't completely collapse
3. guy or gal comes and gives it a slightly different spin
4. movement picks up again
5. movement branches out into heresies and orthodoxies.

Doesn't this look exactly like what had happened 2000 years ago with Peter and Paul impersonating Ellen White? However the indictment nailed over Jesus's head (or between his ankles as was the practice) doesn't exactly say "Crucified for false Prophesy." All four gospels deal mainly with the problem of "missing (messianic) credentials." Apparently Davidic lineage was required for the messianic job-description, but John and Mark don't even try to bring Davidic lineage into the equation: Jn. 7:41; 52 defends his champion against the valid objection that Jesus is neither of Davidic stock nor born in the right place. (That's the guy history has to look for.) Mark evades the problem by referring to his hero's magical prowess (Mk 8:11; Lk 11:20; Mk 3:27 and parallels.) If you look at it, this is really Jesus' only defence, when asked.

In other words Davidic lineage and the genealogies in Matthew and Luke are just poppycock. In fact these two "gospels" are no gospels at all but the earliest apologies on record and meant to answer early criticism from Jews and Gentiles. Luke addresses the Hellenistic middlebrow who after business-hours kicked back to read the Stoics, and Matthew is probably the last ditch attempt at a reconciliation with the Jewish communities before Bar-Kokhba. So we have Matthew and Luke, out of their own generosity, not only adding the Davidic lineage (though badly bungling it) but they also incorporate the 'Q' document, because it became necessary to shift Jesus' image away from the politically incriminating prophet of apocalyptic upheaval.

So at the bottom of it all, we are presented with a Jesus who announced the arrival of the new millennium as a fact born out by his own presence. John 2:7 creates a very apt metaphor. But since nothing had really changed, ways had to be found to explain this away, such as Paul does in his letters, or Mark in his popularized account. The emphasis shifts from "it has already happened because I am here" to "I came to warn you - the end of times is at hand." Matthew and Luke address different issues, but historically it seems clear that from the very beginning Christianity focused more on Jesus as a person than on the teaching, which may have been appended from sources of a later period.

In the end it was crunch time in Jerusalem, and whatever the spin, Jesus completely disappears from the records. It was a disaster and even the most devoted followers fled head over heal to Galilee. Only there and within the smallest circle the resurrection was first proclaimed. We have only their word for it ever since. The transfiguration scene in Mark 9:2-10 may open a glimpse on what really had happened and it is no different from Paul's conversion at Damascus. Later Emperor Constantine's mother became the first tourist to visit the "empty grave" in Jerusalem. It had to be located first. The empress did it by pointing her manicured finger at a spot on the ground and tourism was in business.

The interment in Joseph of Arimathaea's tomb was of course meant to be temporary from the beginning; the plan was to remove the body for burial in his hometown after the holidays. For some of Jesus companions the swift disinterment came as a surprise, which created the legend. We have archaeological evidence for such practices and even remains of a man who had been crucified in Jerusalem, but for interment was transported to his place of residence. The ossuary is now on display in Haifa. There is also the question why Pilate should have released the body at all? The law stated that a convicted criminal was to be left rotting on the cross. Anyway if you go digging for Jesus' remains, go to Nazareth or Capernaum - but hire yourself a few good body guards and walk in bulletproof. Tallyho!

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