Tidbits from Montaigne 70

In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition;  it is express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. 

—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 3.13 

IMAGE: Philippe de Champaigne, Moses with the Ten Commandments (1648) 

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 184

On all occasions these thoughts should be at hand: 

Lead me, O God, and Thou, O Destiny
Be what it may the goal appointed me,
Bravely I’ll follow; nay, and if I would not,
I’d prove a coward, yet must follow still! (Cleanthes)

Again:

Who to Necessity doth bow aright,
Is learn’d in wisdom and the things of God. (Euripides)

Once more:

Crito, if this be God’s will, so let it be.

As for me, Anytus and Meletus can indeed put me to death, but injure me, never! (Socrates) 

Jacob Wresting with the Angel 15

Odilon Redon, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (c. 1910) 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.15

M. But as the perturbations of the mind make life miserable, and tranquility renders it happy; and as these perturbations are of two sorts, grief and fear, proceeding from imagined evils, and as immoderate joy and lust arise from a mistake about what is good, and as all these feelings are in opposition to reason and counsel; when you see a man at ease, quite free and disengaged from such troublesome commotions, which are so much at variance with one another, can you hesitate to pronounce such a one a happy man? 
 
Now, the wise man is always in such a disposition; therefore the wise man is always happy. 
 
Besides, every good is pleasant; whatever is pleasant may be boasted and talked of; whatever may be boasted of is glorious; but whatever is glorious is certainly laudable, and whatever is laudable doubtless, also, honorable: whatever, then, is good is honorable (but the things which they reckon as goods they themselves do not call honorable); therefore what is honorable alone is good. 
 
Hence it follows that a happy life is comprised in honesty alone. 
 
Such things, then, are not to be called or considered goods, when a man may enjoy an abundance of them, and yet be most miserable. Is there any doubt but that a man who enjoys the best health, and who has strength and beauty, and his senses flourishing in their utmost quickness and perfection—suppose him likewise, if you please, nimble and active, nay, give him riches, honors, authority, power, glory—now, I say, should this person, who is in possession of all these, be unjust, intemperate, timid, stupid, or an idiot—could you hesitate to call such a one miserable? 
 
What, then, are those goods in the possession of which you may be very miserable? Let us see if a happy life is not made up of parts of the same nature, as a heap implies a quantity of grain of the same kind. And if this be once admitted, happiness must be compounded of different good things, which alone are honorable; if there is any mixture of things of another sort with these, nothing honorable can proceed from such a composition: now, take away honesty, and how can you imagine anything happy? 
 
For whatever is good is desirable on that account; whatever is desirable must certainly be approved of; whatever you approve of must be looked on as acceptable and welcome. You must consequently impute dignity to this; and if so, it must necessarily be laudable: therefore, everything that is laudable is good. 
 
Hence it follows that what is honorable is the only good. And should we not look upon it in this light, there will be a great many things which we must call good. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.15 
 
The Auditor was struggling to make the connection between a virtuous life and a happy life, so any solution will have to clarify these terms, explaining how, at the very least, the one leads us into the other, or that the two are actually one and the same. Having now read so much modern philosophy, it is easy for me to get caught up in the same false dichotomy, believing I must either be a stuffy moralist or a carefree hedonist, with no room for anything in between. It doesn’t have to be that way. 
 
Far beyond any superficial feelings of “having fun”, happiness is what we seek for its own sake, and never as a means to something else. Our joys will increase as our very nature is perfected, not by the accumulation of luxuries. Our torments will decrease as we shed our anxieties, not by drowning in diversions. Rather than splintering happiness into tiny pieces, we are called to bind it with a simplicity of purpose—find the one behind the many. 
 
Cicero returns to the Stoic classification of our disordered passions, that we might recognize how a confusion in our judgments is the source of our miseries. We suffer from grief and fear when we have a false understanding of harm, either present or future, and we suffer from gratification and lust when we have a false understanding of benefit, either present or future. 
 
In contrast, balanced emotions, like caution, joy, and wish, will proceed from a peace of mind, the recognition that the good and the evil are not in the things, but in our estimation and use of those things. Because he knows the true source of his blessings, the wise man is also a good man, and because he does not permit fortune to intrude upon his serenity, the good man is also a happy man. 
 
If there is a genuine good in it, there will also be a lasting satisfaction in it. If there is a lasting satisfaction in it, then it will also be worthy. If it is worthy, then it will also be deserving of respect. Once again, while not everything we may choose to acclaim is virtuous, it is certain that everything virtuous is praiseworthy, and it is in this sense of merit that the honorable life is also the happy life. 
 
I fondly remember my Pipa telling me why a man had nothing but his word, such that I now realize how the carpenter was speaking like the best of the philosophers. If I can maintain my integrity, the commitment to a properly formed conscience, those circumstances I was so sure would destroy me have now become occasions to grow in excellence. The achievement need not be grand in the eyes of the world to suffice for the dignity of the soul. 
 
Without prudence, what use are my talents? Without fortitude, where is the point to power? Without temperance, what becomes of a healthy body? Without justice, how can I attend to my friends? A man could well become clever, rich, vital, and eminent, but without the guidance of the virtues he will never be happy. The best solution is to look past the fragments of fortune on the outside to the purity of the conviction on the inside. 
 
Yes, there is good reason why the Romans were so fond of placing the goddess Virtus and the god Honos together. Their temples in the city were connected, such that it is said one had to pass through the former before entering into the latter. 

—Reflection written in 2/1999 

Cormac McCarthy

Netherlandish Proverbs 8

"To be armed to the teeth." 

To be heavily armed. 

Aesop's Fables 82

The Fox and the Goat 

By an unlucky chance a Fox fell into a deep well from which he could not get out. 

A Goat passed by shortly afterwards, and asked the Fox what he was doing down there. 

"Oh, have you not heard?" said the Fox; "there is going to be a great drought, so I jumped down here in order to be sure to have water by me. Why don't you come down too?" 

The Goat thought well of this advice, and jumped down into the well. 

But the Fox immediately jumped on her back, and by putting his foot on her long horns managed to jump up to the edge of the well. 

"Good-bye, friend," said the Fox; "remember next time, 

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties." 

Simplicity

"Simplicity" 

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity— 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.14

M. To me such are the only men who appear completely happy; for what can he want to complete a happy life who relies on his own good qualities, or how can he be happy who does not rely on them? 
 
But he who makes a threefold division of goods must necessarily be diffident, for how can he depend on having a sound body, or that his fortune shall continue? But no one can be happy without an immovable, fixed, and permanent good. 
 
What, then, is this opinion of theirs? So that I think that saying of the Spartan may be applied to them, who, on some merchant’s boasting before him that he had dispatched ships to every maritime coast, replied that a fortune which depended on ropes was not very desirable. 
 
Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? For of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy: the happy man should be safe, well-fenced, well-fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. 
 
As he is not called innocent who but slightly offends, but he who offends not at all, so it is he alone who is to be considered without fear who is free from all fear, not he who is but in little fear. For what else is courage but an affection of mind that is ready to undergo perils, and patient in the endurance of pain and labor without any alloy of fear? 
 
Now, this certainly could not be the case if there were anything else good but what depended on honesty alone. But how can anyone be in possession of that desirable and much-coveted security (for I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which freedom a happy life depends) who has, or may have, a multitude of evils attending him? How can he be brave and undaunted, and hold everything as trifles which can befall a man? Or so a wise man should do, unless he be one who thinks that everything depends on himself. 
 
Could the Lacedaemonians without this, when Philip threatened to prevent all their attempts, have asked him if he could prevent their killing themselves? Is it not easier, then, to find one man of such a spirit as we are inquiring after, than to meet with a whole city of such men? 
 
Now, if to this courage I am speaking of we add temperance, that it may govern all our feelings and agitations, what can be wanting to complete his happiness who is secured by his courage from uneasiness and fear, and is prevented from immoderate desires and immoderate insolence of joy by temperance? I could easily show that virtue is able to produce these effects, but that I have explained on the foregoing days. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.14 
 
In workaday language, people often say that they’re happy when they’re satisfied, which is quite correct, even if it demands that we consider how to align what we might want with what we really need. To know what will make us content requires an understanding of what will perfect our very nature, and it’s that last bit that too often gets overlooked. 
 
I was first exposed to such insights by Aristotle instead of Plato, but in this regard, at least, the two approaches are in broad agreement. There was a moment of remarkable clarity when I read why the end of happiness had to be both complete, to which nothing more can be added, and self-sufficient, depending upon what we do, not upon what is done to us. I was equally ashamed and relieved to learn how I had failed to set myself a well-founded standard, which had led to much desperate grasping, with little sense of what was actually worth keeping. 
 
If I achieve some worldly triumph, and yet I still remain restless, it is not doing what is necessary, for there remains more to be desired. If I find myself in some favorable circumstances, and yet I still feel empty, it is likely a reliance on the actions of others, and not about my own merits. 
 
I have sought to increase the quantity of the wrong sort of qualities, feeding the belly with dishes that cannot sustain me. I remain wretched because I am ignorant of my true good, and the change must come from my attitude, not from imposing my demands on the world. 
 
To place the human good in a medley of sources is to dilute the essential with the accidental, confusing my own nature with the nature of everything else. While the conditions of fortune and of the body will set the stage, it is the soul that must play the part. It is for this reason that the Stoic does not properly speak of the circumstances as good or bad in themselves, only becoming good or bad through the influence of our judgments. 
 
If it does not offer me fulfillment, it isn’t worth chasing, and if it can be taken from me, it isn’t mine to begin with. Once I can achieve such an estimation, I will cease to complain about how the bully is trampling on my rights. He has lost so much of himself, and I can maintain the one thing within myself that matters. 
 
Though I am not terribly impressed by the machismo of the Spartans, I do believe that their curt responses to decadent scoundrels confirm a sincere presence of character. Pity the man whose happiness relies on the strength of a few ropes, and do not be intimated by the man who threatens to destroy your lands, for he has no power over the way you choose to live and to die. I also seem to recall a story about Lycurgus claiming that his city did not need walls of stone, as it relied upon walls of men. 
 
Genuine courage is concerned with a solid conscience, not with a display of boastfulness. As extraordinary as it may seem, the aim is to banish fear by going straight to the source of judgements about benefit and harm, not to repress or to merely minimize fear by setting up distractions. 
 
Genuine temperance is concerned with a serene mastery of self, not with severe pontification. As extraordinary as it may seem, the aim is to soothe desire by going straight to the source of judgments about pleasure and pain, not to stifle or to merely conceal desire by putting on an act. 
 
Conviction and integrity make it possible. Our terrors and lusts will decrease in their influence, slowly but surely, as our virtues of constancy and moderation increase from habit, day by day. 

—Reflection written in 2/1999 

Jacob's Ladder 4

Francesco Maffei, Jacob's Dream (c. 1650) 

Jacob's Ladder 3

Nicolas Dipre, Jacob's Dream (c. 1500) 

Jacob's Ladder 2

Elias Moskos, Jacob's Ladder (c. 1666) 

Jacob's Ladder 1

William Blake, Jacob's Dream (1805) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 269

As one can ascend to the top of a house by means of a ladder or a bamboo or a staircase or a rope, so diverse also are the ways and means to approach God, and every religion in the world shows one of these ways. 

IMAGE: J.M.W. Turner, The Vision of Jacob's Ladder (1830) 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.13

M. From Plato, therefore, all my discourse shall be deduced, as if from some sacred and hallowed fountain. 
 
Whence can I, then, more properly begin than from Nature, the parent of all? For whatsoever she produces (I am not speaking only of animals, but even of those things which have sprung from the earth in such a manner as to rest on their own roots) she designed it to be perfect in its respective kind. 
 
So that among trees and vines, and those lower plants and trees which cannot advance themselves high above the earth, some are evergreen, others are stripped of their leaves in winter, and, warmed by the spring season, put them out afresh, and there are none of them but what are so quickened by a certain interior motion, and their own seeds enclosed in every one, so as to yield flowers, fruit, or berries, that all may have every perfection that belongs to it; provided no violence prevents it. 
 
But the force of Nature itself may be more easily discovered in animals, as she has bestowed sense on them. For some animals she has taught to swim, and designed to be inhabitants of the water; others she has enabled to fly, and has willed that they should enjoy the boundless air; some others she has made to creep, others to walk. 
 
Again, of these very animals, some are solitary, some gregarious, some wild, others tame, some hidden and buried beneath the earth, and every one of these maintains the law of nature, confining itself to what was bestowed on it, and unable to change its manner of life. And as every animal has from nature something that distinguishes it, which every one maintains and never quits; so man has something far more excellent, though everything is said to be excellent by comparison. 
 
But the human mind, being derived from the Divine Reason, can be compared with nothing but with the Deity itself, if I may be allowed the expression. 
 
This, then, if it is improved, and when its perception is so preserved as not to be blinded by errors, becomes a perfect understanding, that is to say, absolute reason, which is the very same as virtue. 
 
And if everything is happy which wants nothing, and is complete and perfect in its kind, and that is the peculiar lot of virtue, certainly all who are possessed of virtue are happy. And in this I agree with Brutus, and also with Aristotle, Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polemon. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.13 
 
The card-carrying Stoic may be offended by Cicero’s bypassing of Zeno to focus back on Plato, but I am more interested in what stands behind the names, since an argument from the order of Nature is perennial, and is hardly exclusive to any one school. In contrast to the subjective bent of post-modernity, common sense reminds us how we have not been tossed into a void, and why the purpose of any creature is to be found through its own identity. 
 
The intensity of my passions might tempt me to wallow in my dread, and yet I need only open my eyes to observe how everything is filled with essence, and it is thus charged with meaning. Whatever exists has its distinct form, constantly working toward its end, in its own particular way. Where there is motion and action, there is also a source and a goal. Where there is rest and cessation, there is also a harmony and a fulfillment. And where one thing ceases to be, it is always transformed into something new. 
 
I need not be a philosopher or a poet to grasp this, because it is already given to me in the fact of experience, which is the very foundation for my awareness. It’s only that some of us have the discipline to express it more clearly, and some of us have the gift to magnify its beauty. The innate order is hardly hidden from us—we instead choose to ignore it in favor of making too much noise. 
 
Consider how plant life, in all its diversity, shares in the common functions of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. The botanist studies and classifies its power to achieve such goals, whether it is possesses mighty branches or delicate sprigs. 
 
Consider further how animal life, adapted in so many ways to so many conditions, adds the functions of locomotion and sensation. The zoologist studies and classifies its power to achieve such goals, whether it is by flying through the air or creeping on the ground. 
 
Consider finally how human life, whatever the time or the place, is granted the function of reason, to not merely be driven by instinct but to have the free choice of judgment. The psychologist, as originally and properly understood, studies and classifies the mind as a distinct power, differing from the others in kind, not merely in degree. 
 
And while all things share in the Absolute simply by their being, and some creatures participate in the Divine by expressing life, man is more fully in the image and likeness of God through the presence of knowledge and will. This essence is within him, before he even has the urge to question it, and we do ourselves a great disservice by treating human nature as if it were no different than that of an oak or a horse. 
 
Nature has not acted in vain by producing our own peculiar nature. Once I ask myself why I am here, the answer is revealed in the question itself: where I have informed my understanding, and thereby discovered what is worthy of love, I am fulfilling my rightful purpose. Anything beyond this is to be embraced if it supports this aim, and to be shunned if it proves a hindrance. 
 
Happiness will only appear mysterious or unattainable when I am looking for it in all the wrong places. What belongs to the nature of another does not define the good of my own nature, and it becomes rather the opportunity for me to perfect the exercise of my inner character. I become complete by setting out to complete the task of being uniquely human, leaving nothing more to be desired. 
 
Where the reasoning is sound, the virtues can thrive, and so we can find joy in our excellence. 

—Reflection written in 2/1999 

IMAGE: Roelant Savery, The Earthly Paradise (1622) 

Abandoned Places 62

Nature 64

Abandoned Places 61

Nature 63

Stockdale on Stoicism 50

Then I got back into trouble. At that time, the commissar of prisons had had me isolated and under almost constant surveillance for the year since I had staged a riot in Alcatraz to get us out of leg irons. 

I was barred from all prisoner cell-blocks. I had special handlers, and they caught me with an outbound note that gave leads I knew the interrogators could develop through torture. The result would be to implicate my friends in "black activities," as the North Vietnamese called them. 

I had been through those ropes more than a dozen times, and I knew I could contain material—so long as they didn't know I knew it. But this note would open doors that could lead to more people getting killed in there. We had lost a few in big purges—I think in torture overshoots—and I was getting tired of it. 

It was the fall of 1969. I had been in this role for four years, and saw nothing left for me to do but check out. 

I was solo in the main torture room in an isolated part of the prison the night before what they told me would be my day to spill my guts. There was an eerie mood in the prison. Ho Chi Minh had just died and special dirge music was in the air. I was to sit up all night in traveling irons. 

My chair was near the only pane-glass window in the prison. I was able to waddle over and break the window stealthily. I went after my wrist arteries with the big shards. I had knocked the light out, but the patrol guard happened to find me passed out in a pool of blood but still breathing. The Vietnamese went to General Quarters, got their doctor, and saved me. 

Why? It was not until after I was released years later that I learned that that very week, my wife, Sybil, was in Paris demanding humane treatment for prisoners. She was on world news, a public figure, and the last thing the North Vietnamese needed was me dead. 

There was a very solemn crowd of senior North Vietnamese officers in that room as I was revived. Prison torture, as we had known it in Hanoi, ended for everybody that night. 

Of course, it was months before we could be sure that was so. All I knew at the time was that, in the morning, after my arms had been dressed and bandaged, the commissar himself brought in a hot cup of sweet tea, told my surveillance guard to take off my leg irons, and asked me to sit at the table with him. 

"Why did you do this, Stockdale? You know I sit with the army's General Staff; they've asked for a full report this morning." It was not unusual for us to talk like that by that time. 

But he never once mentioned the note, nor did anybody else thereafter. That was unprecedented. After a couple of months in a tiny isolated cell we called Calcutta to let my arms heal, they blindfolded me and walked me right into the "Las Vegas" cell block. The isolation and special surveillance were over. I was put, solo of course, in the Mint.

Dave Hatcher knew I was back because I walked under his window, and though he could not peek out, he could listen, and over the years he had attuned his ear to my walking "signature," my limping gait. 

Soon enough, the rusty wire over the sink in the washroom was bent to the north—Dave Hatcher's signal for "note in the bottle under the sink for Stockdale." 

Like an old fighter pilot, I checked my six o'clock, scooped the note up fast, and concealed it in my prison pajama pants, carefully. Back in my cell, after the guard locked the door, I sat on my toilet bucket—where I could stealthily jettison the note if the peephole cover moved—and unfolded Hatcher's sheet of low-grade paper toweling on which he had printed with rat dropping, without comment or signature, the last verse of Ernest Henley's poem lnvictus:

"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate; 
I am the captain of my soul." 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison