Jean Delville, The School of Silence (1929)
The Death of Marcus Aurelius
Thursday, May 7, 2026
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Wednesday, May 6, 2026
The Basel Dance of Death 17
Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Physician (1616)
"Sir Doctor, observe the anatomy
on me, whether it is well made.
Because you have also dispatched many,
who all do now resemble me."
on me, whether it is well made.
Because you have also dispatched many,
who all do now resemble me."
"I have with my inspecting the water
helped both men and women.
Who will inspect my water now?
I must now go away with Death."
helped both men and women.
Who will inspect my water now?
I must now go away with Death."
Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3.4
But someone will say, what then? Does it make no difference, whether a man murders his father or his slave? If you instance these acts abstractedly, it is difficult to decide of what quality they are.
If to deprive a parent of life is in itself a most heinous crime, the Saguntines were then parricides, because they chose that their parents should die as freemen rather than live as slaves. Thus, a case may happen in which there may be no guilt in depriving a parent of life, and very often we cannot without guilt put a slave to death.
The circumstances therefore attending this case, and not the nature of the thing, occasion the distinction: these circumstances as they lean to either case, that case becomes the more favorable; but if they appertain alike to both, the acts are then equal.
There is this difference—that in killing a slave, if wrong is done, it is a single sin that is committed; but many are involved in taking the life of a father. The object of violence is the man who begat you, the man who fed you, the man who brought you up, the man who gave your position in your home, your family, and the state. This offense is greater by reason of the number of sins involved in it, and is deserving of a proportionately greater punishment.
If to deprive a parent of life is in itself a most heinous crime, the Saguntines were then parricides, because they chose that their parents should die as freemen rather than live as slaves. Thus, a case may happen in which there may be no guilt in depriving a parent of life, and very often we cannot without guilt put a slave to death.
The circumstances therefore attending this case, and not the nature of the thing, occasion the distinction: these circumstances as they lean to either case, that case becomes the more favorable; but if they appertain alike to both, the acts are then equal.
There is this difference—that in killing a slave, if wrong is done, it is a single sin that is committed; but many are involved in taking the life of a father. The object of violence is the man who begat you, the man who fed you, the man who brought you up, the man who gave your position in your home, your family, and the state. This offense is greater by reason of the number of sins involved in it, and is deserving of a proportionately greater punishment.
—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3
I have a vivid memory of one particular week while I was in high school, which challenged me to look at justice in a whole new light.
When we arrived on Monday morning, all the chatter was about a celebrity who had been murdered over the weekend. Even among my progressive friends, there was much talk about a swift and severe retribution: “We’ve lost someone who touched so many lives! The killer needs to rot in jail for what he did!”
Later that day, I noticed some police cars in an alley down the block. The owner of our local diner explained how a homeless man had been beaten to death during the night. His biggest concern was whether the delivery truck could be unloaded on time, and my schoolmates only shrugged when I mentioned what I felt was a terrible tragedy.
For the next few days, the newspapers were full of moving tributes for a singer. I could not find any mention of the vagrant. I knew neither of them personally, but I had great difficulty believing that the life of the one was so much more valuable than that of the other. We place the dignity in the trappings of a life, and so easily forget what makes the man.
Whatever the degree of the circumstances, the crime is still the same in kind, though it is often difficult to see through the layers of our many attachments and aversions. Why, for example, do we say that it is worse to kill our own kin than it is to kill a stranger? Or why are we more offended at the abuse of children and the elderly?
Behind the impressions of malice or brutality, we are also compounding many different offenses into one, such that mistreating my wife is both a violation of her rights as person and the betrayal of a special bond of fidelity, and thus it should carry with it a harsher penalty.
The wrong, of course, remains a wrong, regardless of the many different ways I may express it, or how many times I may commit it. I notice how the courts like to pile up endless lists of charges in cases where the public is especially outraged, though I sometimes wonder if one count is already more than enough to prove the point, and five or ten life sentences will hardly end up being all that different.
At the very least, I should not say that my lie is less of an injustice because I only told it once, or that my treachery is less severe because it happened so long ago. I ought to feel regret for any of my vices, and not to believe that a greater or lesser penalty somehow changes my fundamental responsibility.
I have a vivid memory of one particular week while I was in high school, which challenged me to look at justice in a whole new light.
When we arrived on Monday morning, all the chatter was about a celebrity who had been murdered over the weekend. Even among my progressive friends, there was much talk about a swift and severe retribution: “We’ve lost someone who touched so many lives! The killer needs to rot in jail for what he did!”
Later that day, I noticed some police cars in an alley down the block. The owner of our local diner explained how a homeless man had been beaten to death during the night. His biggest concern was whether the delivery truck could be unloaded on time, and my schoolmates only shrugged when I mentioned what I felt was a terrible tragedy.
For the next few days, the newspapers were full of moving tributes for a singer. I could not find any mention of the vagrant. I knew neither of them personally, but I had great difficulty believing that the life of the one was so much more valuable than that of the other. We place the dignity in the trappings of a life, and so easily forget what makes the man.
Whatever the degree of the circumstances, the crime is still the same in kind, though it is often difficult to see through the layers of our many attachments and aversions. Why, for example, do we say that it is worse to kill our own kin than it is to kill a stranger? Or why are we more offended at the abuse of children and the elderly?
Behind the impressions of malice or brutality, we are also compounding many different offenses into one, such that mistreating my wife is both a violation of her rights as person and the betrayal of a special bond of fidelity, and thus it should carry with it a harsher penalty.
The wrong, of course, remains a wrong, regardless of the many different ways I may express it, or how many times I may commit it. I notice how the courts like to pile up endless lists of charges in cases where the public is especially outraged, though I sometimes wonder if one count is already more than enough to prove the point, and five or ten life sentences will hardly end up being all that different.
At the very least, I should not say that my lie is less of an injustice because I only told it once, or that my treachery is less severe because it happened so long ago. I ought to feel regret for any of my vices, and not to believe that a greater or lesser penalty somehow changes my fundamental responsibility.
—Reflection written in 5/1999
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
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Monday, May 4, 2026
Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 62
LXII.
In outward actions to spend to much time,
Is of stupidity too sure a sign;
As long to exercise, and long to eat,
To spend whole days, at least, to cram down meat,
To try what drink your belly will contain,
To be disgorg'd, to be piss'd out again,
Then half an hour, like a dull grinning fool,
To make wry faces over a close stool;
Or like a brutish swine, in sensual strife,
To wallow out whole hours with your dull wife,
When all this precious time should be assign'd,
For brave endeavours to improve your mind.
Is of stupidity too sure a sign;
As long to exercise, and long to eat,
To spend whole days, at least, to cram down meat,
To try what drink your belly will contain,
To be disgorg'd, to be piss'd out again,
Then half an hour, like a dull grinning fool,
To make wry faces over a close stool;
Or like a brutish swine, in sensual strife,
To wallow out whole hours with your dull wife,
When all this precious time should be assign'd,
For brave endeavours to improve your mind.
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode 6
While we were looking over this final entry in the series, she began to wonder: "Why does Hogarth have to be so over the top, so melodramatic? I understand that these folks are selfish, and lustful, and treacherous, but am I expected to believe that this sort of terrible punishment will befall all the villains of the world? I see all kinds of nasty people who are sitting pretty."
I knew better than to say anything, because she soon offered her own reply: "But they aren't really sitting pretty, are they? Their vices leave them rotting on the inside, though that would make for sort of a boring painting, so Hogarth takes their internal misery and reflects it in an external story. It's like an allegory about the state of their souls. Their Fortune mirrors their Nature."
Well, there you have it! Your sins might not drag you into poverty, or burden you with some wasting disease, or leave you completely alone, but they will never permit you a moment of peace.
Silvertongue has been hanged at Tyburn for the murder of the Earl, and the Countess can only return to her perpetually cash-strapped father. Though she has incurred no legal penalty, her life of status is now definitely over. Not even the needs of her child can overcome her guilt—or is it just shame? She has taken a fatal dose of laudanum.
Only the old maid seems to show any grief. The father is already removing his daughter's wedding ring, the last vestige of her former glory, in a desperate attempt to feed his avarice. The starving dog proves how far he has now fallen.
The child gives her mother one last kiss, though the marks on her face and the brace on her leg betray her final fate. The doctor berates the servant for having provided the drug, even as he appears more concerned with his professional pride than with his patient's comfort.
While I do know of some swindlers, dissemblers, and philanderers who found themselves penniless and friendless, I fear that most of them are living under the illusion of success. Don't let yourself be tricked by the facade.
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode VI: The Lady's Death (painting, 1743)
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode VI: The Lady's Death (engraving, 1743)
Sunday, May 3, 2026
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Saturday, May 2, 2026
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Friday, May 1, 2026
Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3.3
You borrow, says one, these views from philosophers. I was afraid you would have told me that I borrowed it from panderers.
But Socrates reasoned in the manner you do—by Hercules, you say well; for it is recorded that he was a learned and a wise person.
Meanwhile as we are contending, not with blows, but with words, I ask you whether good men should inquire what was the opinion of porters and laborers, or that of the wisest of mankind? Especially too as no truer sentiment than this can be found, nor one more conducive to the interests of human life.
For what influence is there which can more deter men from the commission of every kind of evil, than if they become sensible that there are no degrees in sin? That the crime is the same, whether they offer violence to private persons or to magistrates. That in whatever families they have gratified their illicit desire, the turpitude of their lust is the same.
But Socrates reasoned in the manner you do—by Hercules, you say well; for it is recorded that he was a learned and a wise person.
Meanwhile as we are contending, not with blows, but with words, I ask you whether good men should inquire what was the opinion of porters and laborers, or that of the wisest of mankind? Especially too as no truer sentiment than this can be found, nor one more conducive to the interests of human life.
For what influence is there which can more deter men from the commission of every kind of evil, than if they become sensible that there are no degrees in sin? That the crime is the same, whether they offer violence to private persons or to magistrates. That in whatever families they have gratified their illicit desire, the turpitude of their lust is the same.
—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 3
The observant teacher quickly discovers all of the ways his students will try to escape from an argument that makes them feel uncomfortable, and one of them is what I like to call the “stigma of snobbery”, a sort of corollary to the informal fallacy of ad populum.
“Yeah, well only eggheads say things like that! Why should I listen to some snooty philosopher?”
Indeed, if you are merely referring to a professional scholar, he may have much to teach you about footnotes and etymologies, even as he may not have much to offer you on becoming a wiser and a better human being. But do you include a Socrates, or a Diogenes, or an Epictetus in such a category? Were their noses in books, or were they out on the streets?
If I want to get something done right, whose guidance should I seek? It is the carpenter who can show me how to craft a chair, not the banker. It is the farmer who can advise me on growing a crop, not the lawyer. And it is the philosopher, properly understood, who can teach me right from wrong, not the celebrity demagogue of the hour.
The power to master a trade is within all of us, though only a few will freely choose the self-discipline necessary for such an excellence. Do not confuse the pretension of elitism with the authenticity of merit.
The Stoic claim about all virtues and vices being equal in kind is far more than a theoretical notion. It does me a world of good to remember why there is no such thing as a little bit of theft, or a little bit of adultery, or a little bit of murder, and that whatever the degrees of circumstance, each and every instance is a violation of my nature. As much as I justified the trifling diversion as harmless, it was a surrender of character from the very beginning.
When I first began to take my Catholic faith seriously, I was taken aback by the stark simplicity of an old-school confession: “number and species”. I was not being asked to provide any elaborate narrative for my sins, as if this could somehow alleviate my responsibility, and I was just required to state what I had done, and how many times I had done it.
If it involved mortal sin—grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent—then each and every instance was itself a deal-breaker, which completely separated me from sanctifying grace. Behind the formal language, it turned out to be a healthy dose of common sense.
The libertine will assume I am being priggish and repressed, but I have found that gently nurturing my conscience, without falling back on any cheap excuses, has allowed me to become far more compassionate and merciful: I know precisely what sort of a total jerk I have been, so I can hardly hold it against you. Beware the equivocation of the knave!
The observant teacher quickly discovers all of the ways his students will try to escape from an argument that makes them feel uncomfortable, and one of them is what I like to call the “stigma of snobbery”, a sort of corollary to the informal fallacy of ad populum.
“Yeah, well only eggheads say things like that! Why should I listen to some snooty philosopher?”
Indeed, if you are merely referring to a professional scholar, he may have much to teach you about footnotes and etymologies, even as he may not have much to offer you on becoming a wiser and a better human being. But do you include a Socrates, or a Diogenes, or an Epictetus in such a category? Were their noses in books, or were they out on the streets?
If I want to get something done right, whose guidance should I seek? It is the carpenter who can show me how to craft a chair, not the banker. It is the farmer who can advise me on growing a crop, not the lawyer. And it is the philosopher, properly understood, who can teach me right from wrong, not the celebrity demagogue of the hour.
The power to master a trade is within all of us, though only a few will freely choose the self-discipline necessary for such an excellence. Do not confuse the pretension of elitism with the authenticity of merit.
The Stoic claim about all virtues and vices being equal in kind is far more than a theoretical notion. It does me a world of good to remember why there is no such thing as a little bit of theft, or a little bit of adultery, or a little bit of murder, and that whatever the degrees of circumstance, each and every instance is a violation of my nature. As much as I justified the trifling diversion as harmless, it was a surrender of character from the very beginning.
When I first began to take my Catholic faith seriously, I was taken aback by the stark simplicity of an old-school confession: “number and species”. I was not being asked to provide any elaborate narrative for my sins, as if this could somehow alleviate my responsibility, and I was just required to state what I had done, and how many times I had done it.
If it involved mortal sin—grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent—then each and every instance was itself a deal-breaker, which completely separated me from sanctifying grace. Behind the formal language, it turned out to be a healthy dose of common sense.
The libertine will assume I am being priggish and repressed, but I have found that gently nurturing my conscience, without falling back on any cheap excuses, has allowed me to become far more compassionate and merciful: I know precisely what sort of a total jerk I have been, so I can hardly hold it against you. Beware the equivocation of the knave!
—Reflection written in 5/1999
Thursday, April 30, 2026
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Wednesday, April 29, 2026
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Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Maxims of Goethe 86
Whether memoirs are written by masters of servants, or by servants of masters, the processes always meet.
IMAGE: Nicolaes Maes, The Idle Servant (1655)
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