“To all efforts of men to cooperate, fate has attached a penalty. Whenever a common interest exists, an antagonism of interest springs out of it.
If forces are joined for a hunt, division of the bag must follow, and neither an equal division nor an unequal division will satisfy everybody. If they are joined for battle, the brunt must fall on some and not on others. If two till a field together, each becomes concerned that the other does not shirk or consume undue share of the yield. Labor needs capital, and capital can do nothing without labor, in the welfare of their common business their interests are identical. Yet the net income must be somehow divided, and, in this cooperation, what is more for the one is less for the other: at the point of distribution the appearance of harmony vanishes. No one whose mind refuses to face both the agreement and the divergence of these interests can be more than a blind guide for the present age.
Beside the discords of apportionment, there are the discords of dissent in the conduct of the common enterprise. For the most part, human beings are gifted in the capacity for falling in behind leadership; but it is a rare group in which there is no superfluity of planning intelligence, or the conceit of it. Hence human groups move habitually under the friction of divergent counsels. It is physically easier for men to live together than to live apart. It is morally easier for them to live apart than to maintain permanently a successful partnership or friendship.
Hence the word ‘cooperation,’ amiable of sound, flourished by many a reformer as the key to social problems, solves nothing. Every new cooperation or stage in cooperation is the beginning of new difficulty. Deliberate cooperation is of all human efforts the most liable to shipwreck. Experimental communities, socialistic or other, whose presumptive advantage is gained by increasing the existing burden of cooperation, must find a way of arbitrary relief from the added strain in enhanced authority, or else in heightened religion a way of replenishing their energy toward harmony: otherwise they must perish, as most such experiments have perished.
In sum, we may say that there is in the nature of human associations a law of decline–of decline, that is, in their energy of union, which subtly ushers every such enterprise toward death.”
More likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth /
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
The post wherein I relish the rhetorical flair of philosopher Gilbert Ryle /
“So it seemed to be beyond question that the measurable dimensions of an object, say its thermometer temperature or its speed in yards per second, characterized it in the same general sort of way as its colour or taste were naively supposed to do. It seemed natural to list them both as Qualities. It then seemed necessary to draw a line between the qualities which have to be mentioned and operated with in physical theory and the qualities which cannot. They were in fact so distinguished—first, I believe, by Boyle—as the ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary Qualities’ respectively. But then the scientifically blue-blooded Primary Qualities could not tolerate sharing a bench with the rude Secondary Qualities, and these had, in consequence, to be deprived of their title to be qualities of things at all. Clearly the mistake was to put them on the same bench at the start, but Aristotle’s economy in benches was not yet recognized to be a piece of personal stinginess.”
If only all philosophical writing were this lucid and trenchant. Aristotle’s economy in benches was not yet recognized to be a piece of personal stinginess. What a joy it is to read Ryle!
Knowledge and Certainty /
Is there a difference?
“Can I discover in myself whether I know something, or merely believe it.”
Designed for use rather than for ostentation /
I post this extended quotation from Gibbon for the pure enjoyment of 18th Century English prose. Our current use of the language is horribly impoverished by comparison.
“The family of Gordianus was one of the most illustrious of the Roman senate. On the father’s side, he was descended from the Gracchi; on his mother’s, from the emperor Trajan. A great estate enabled him to support the dignity of his birth, and, in the enjoyment of it, he displayed an elegant taste and beneficent disposition. The palace in Rome, formerly inhabited by the great Pompey, had been, during several generations, in the possession of Gordian’s family. It was distinguished by ancient trophies of naval victories, and decorated with the works of modern painting. His villa on the road to Preneste, was celebrated for baths of singular beauty and extent, for three stately rooms of an hundred feet in length, and for a magnificent portico, supported by two hundred columns of the four most curious and costly sorts of marble. The public shows exhibited at his expense, and in which the people were entertained with many hundreds of wild beasts and gladiators, seem to surpass the fortune of a subject; and whilst the liberality of other magistrates was confined to a few solemn festivals in Rome, the magnificence of Gordian was repeated, when he was ædile,
every month in the year, and extended, during his consulship, to the principal cities of Italy. He was twice elevated to the last mentioned dignity, by Caracalla and by Alexander; for he possessed the uncommon talent of acquiring the esteem of virtuous princes, without alarming the jealousy of tyrants. His long life was innocently spent in the study of letters and the peaceful honours of Rome; and, till he was named proconsul of Africa by the voice of the senate and the approbation of Alexander, he appears prudently to have declined the command of armies and the government of provinces. As long as that emperor lived, Africa was happy under the administration of his worthy representative; after the barbarous Maximin had usurped the throne, Gordianus alleviated the miseries which he was unable to prevent. When he reluctantly accepted the purple, he was above fourscore years old; a last and valuable remains of the happy age of the Antonines, whose virtues he revived in his own conduct, and celebrated in an elegant poem of thirty books. With the venerable proconsul, his son, who had accompanied him into Africa as his lieutenant, was likewise declared emperor. His manners were less pure, but his character was equally amiable with that of his father. Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than for ostentation.”